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By adding weak linkers to a polymer network, chemists dramatically enhanced the material's resistance to tearing. A team of chemists from MIT and Duke University has discovered a counterintuitive way to make polymers stronger: introduce a few weaker bonds into the material. Working with a type of polymer known as polyacrylate elastomers, the researchers found that they could increase the materials' resistance to tearing up to tenfold, simply by using a weaker type of crosslinker to join some of the polymer building blocks.

The results could help turn up unconventional superconducting materials. Under certain conditions - usually exceedingly cold ones - some materials shift their structure to unlock new, superconducting behavior. This structural shift is known as a "nematic transition," and physicists suspect that it offers a new way to drive materials into a superconducting state where electrons can flow entirely friction-free.

Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes - or even directly from the air - and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun. We are not just interested in decarbonisation, but de-fossilisation - we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels in order to create a truly circular economy Erwin Reisner The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products.

Using the power of prediction, University of Wisconsin-Madison mechanical engineers have quickly discovered several promising high-performance polymers out of a field of 8 million candidates. The aerospace, automobile and electronics industries use these polymers, known as polyimides, for a wide variety of applications because they have excellent mechanical and thermal properties - including strength, stiffness and heat resistance.

Utrecht University has appointed chemist Eefjan Breukink as professor of Microbial Membranes and Antibiotics. Breukink and his group are engaged in research aimed at finding new antibiotics that target bacterial cell membranes, the structures that separate the inside and outside of bacteria. Breukink: "It is my dream to discover an antibiotic that will truly aid us in combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria." Cell membranes are a fundamental component of all living cells, whether they are bacterial, animal, plant, or fungal.

New paper in the prestigious journal Science outlines a new catalyst that can purify exhaust gases at room temperature. Although passenger vehicle catalytic converters have been mandatory for over 30 years, there is still plenty of room for improvement. For instance, they only work correctly when the engine is sufficiently hot, which is not always the case, especially with hybrid vehicles.

Subsoils are the largest storehouses for carbon, as well as one of the most important sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Global warming is accelerating the decomposition of soil humus. It is also affecting the waxy and woody compounds which help plants store carbon in their leaves and roots and were previously thought to be stable.

Single-atom vacancies in atomically thin insulators created in ultra-high vacuum Single photons have applications in quantum computation, information networks, and sensors, and these can be emitted by defects in the atomically thin insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Missing nitrogen atoms have been suggested to be the atomic structure responsible for this activity, but it is difficult to controllably remove them.

Using a complex cast of metal-studded pigments, proteins, enzymes, and co-enzymes, photosynthetic organisms can convert the energy in light into the chemical energy for life. And now, thanks to a study , we know that this organic chemical reaction is sensitive to the smallest quantity of light possible - a single photon.

Through the Gemini-North Telescope in Hawai'i, the chemical composition of WASP-76 b is revealed in unprecedented detail, giving new insights also into the composition of giant planets. An international team led by Stefan Pelletier , a Ph.D. candidate at Université de Montréal's Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets announced today having made a detailed study of the extremely hot giant exoplanet WASP-76 b. Using the MAROON-X instrument on the Gemini-North Telescope, the team was able to identify and measure the abundance of 11 chemical elements in the atmosphere of the planet.

For the first time ever, a molecule able to prevent the invasion of blood cells by parasites of the genus Plasmodium , responsible for malaria, has been identified and described by CNRS scientists, * in collaboration with American and English colleagues. Their findings, which have just been published in Nature Communications, confirm the key role that myosin A-the 'molecular motor' of Plasmodium -plays in their infiltration of human hosts and penetration of their red blood cells, which triggers malarial attacks.

MIT researchers work to discover biodegradable polyesters, with support from the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, J-WAFS, and DIC Corp. Products made from polymers - ranging from plastic bags to clothing to cookware to electronics - provide many comforts and support today's standard of living, but since they do not decompose easily, they pose long-term environmental challenges.

The sliver of sargassum seaweed 19-year-old Sofia Hoffman collected from the shoreline of Crandon Park Beach's Bear Cut Preserve looked more like a dying clump of grass than the fresh piece of marine algae it once was. But the sample was exactly what she set out to find. Hoffman, along with a group of other college students, planned to run a chemical analysis of the seaweed sample in a lab, searching for the presence of microbes that could play a role in fueling certain aerosol emissions.

Scientists from the Radboud University have developed synthetic molecules that resemble real organic molecules. A collaboration of researchers, led by Alex Khajetoorians and Daniel Wegner, can now simulate the behaviour of real molecules by using artificial molecules. In this way, they can tweak properties of molecules in ways that are normally difficult or unrealistic, and they can understand much better how molecules change.

A researcher from the James Watt School of Engineering is a co-author of a new study which could significantly improve future generations of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Dr Guanchen Li contributed to the research, which is led by the University of Oxford and published in Nature . Using advanced imaging techniques, the researchers revealed mechanisms which cause lithium metal solid-state batteries (Li-SSBs) to fail.

Research team develops organic redox polymer as positive electrode material for aluminium-ion batteries Aluminium-ion batteries are seen as a promising alternative to conventional batteries that use scarce and difficult-to-recycle raw materials such as lithium. This is because aluminium is one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust, is easier to recycle, and is also safer and less expensive than lithium.

How we are contaminating our waters with microplastics and a multitude of chemicals. A plastic sandwich wrapper bobs in the water where the Limmat River flows out of Lake Zurich. The current carries it downstream through Zurich's historic centre before eventually depositing it on the bank of Werd island.

At TU Wien (Vienna, scientists use microscopy techniques to observe chemical reactions on catalysts more precisely than before yielding a wealth of detail. This made clear why some effects cannot be predicted. Catalysts composed from tiny metal particles play an important role in many areas of technology - from fuel cells to production of synthetic fuels for energy storage.

A new form of low-cost, 3D-printed water pollution sensor could make a splash in the world of environmental monitoring, its developers say. A team of researchers from universities in Scotland, Portugal and Germany developed the sensor, which can help detect the presence of very low concentrations of pesticides in water samples.

Researchers have managed to produce slow electrons in a solution. In the future, such electrons could help make certain chemical reactions more efficient. What the international team of researchers actually set out to do was to detect a mysterious chemical object: a dielectron in solution. A dielectron is made up of two electrons, but unlike an atom, it has no nucleus.