A surprising discovery at TU Wien: A catalyst seems to contradict usual laws and can exhibit completely different activity states at the same time. Sometimes chemical reactions in the lab work the way you imagine them to, and sometimes they don’t. Neither is unusual. What is highly unusual, however, is what a research team at TU Wien has now observed when studying hydrogen oxidation on a rhodium catalyst: The surface of a rhodium foil can be highly chemically active in…
Researchers from Osaka University and Osaka City University synthesize and crystallize a molecule that is otherwise too unstable to fully study in the laboratory, and is a model of a revolutionary class of magnets. Since the first reported production in 2004, researchers have been hard at work using graphene and similar carbon-based materials to revolutionize electronics, sports, and many other disciplines. Now, researchers from Japan have made a discovery that will advance the long-elusive field of nanographene magnets. In a…
The new molecule can improve the yield of reactions for generating pharmaceuticals and other useful compounds. By mimicking photosynthesis, the light-driven process that plants use to produce sugars, MIT researchers have designed a new type of photocatalyst that can absorb light and use it to drive a variety of chemical reactions. The new type of catalyst, known as a biohybrid photocatalyst, contains a light-harvesting protein that absorbs light and transfers the energy to a metal-containing catalyst. This catalyst then uses…
Experts have developed a unique method for retrieving high resolution images of fingermarks from curved objects like bullet casings that offers greater detail and accuracy than traditional forensic methods. Scientists from the University of Nottingham developed a rotation stage to allow researchers and forensic practitioners to perform highly sensitive, non-destructive Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) measurements and develop high resolution fingerprint images on surfaces that conventional fingerprint imaging fails to pick up at all. The rotation stage that they have developed opens up new…
Engineering quantum states of molecules on surfaces. Scaling down information devices to the atomic scale has brought the interest of using individual spins as a basic unit for data storage. This requires precise detection and control of spin states and a better understanding of spin-spin interactions. For the first time ever, scientists at the IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience at Ewha Womans University (QNS) have imaged the spin of an individual molecule using electron spin resonance in a scanning tunneling…
Vibrationally excited molecular hydrogen is an essential species for determining the chemical composition in the interstellar medium. Vibrational excited interstellar H2 has been detected in shock-heated gas and in photodissociation regions (PDRs) near hot stars, which was formed by collisions and fluorescence excitation in PDRs. Recently, a research group led by Prof. YUAN Kaijun and Prof. YANG Xueming from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) demonstrated vibrationally excited H2 production from water photochemistry using the Dalian Coherent Light…
A peptide sensor to detect water-soluble polymers in wastewater, a major contributor to pollution on par with microplastics, has been developed by scientists from Tokyo Institute of Technology. The new technique takes advantage of the bonding that occurs between peptides and different polymers to train a machine learning algorithm that can both identify and quantify a large number of pollutants in a single solution. From dying coral reefs to diminishing fish populations, marine pollution due to plastics is a growing…
When crucial connections are missing. Research team led by University of Göttingen investigates the importance of “tight junctions” for cell movement. The ability of cells to move together in harmony is crucial for numerous biological processes in our body, for example wound healing, or the healthy development of an organism. This movement is made possible by the connections between individual cells. These connections, in turn, are established by various protein molecules which transfer the necessary forces and information between neighbouring…
Scientists at UNIGE show that during development, the different populations of neurons needed for connections between brain areas share similar genetic programs, but which unfold at different speeds. The cerebral cortex, located at the surface of the brain, handles the cognitive, language, and complex functions that allow us to represent the world or project ourselves into the future. By being able to categorize and associate the stimuli it receives from our five senses, the cortex links this information together to…
Studies of common copper-zinc oxide catalyst suggest strategies for improving water-free conversion. Chemists have been searching for efficient catalysts to convert methane—a major component of abundant natural gas—into methanol, an easily transported liquid fuel and building block for making other valuable chemicals. Adding water to the reaction can address certain challenges, but it also complicates the process. Now a team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has identified a new approach using a common industrial catalyst that…
Many insect species are currently expanding their geographical ranges in response to climate change. In the northern hemisphere, most of these species are moving northward, to escape the warming climate in the south. New habitat colonisation occurs first with only a few establishing individuals. Consequently, the new populations are usually genetically poorer than the more central populations. Other factors can also lead to genetic diversity loss. One of these may be the spread of the symbiotic bacterium Wolbachia in the…
What sponges can tell us about the evolution of the brain. As you read these lines the highly sophisticated biological ‘machine’ that is your brain is at work. The human brain is made up of approximately 86 billion neurons and controls not only our bodily functions from vision to movement but also provides consciousness and understanding. Despite its central importance the brain’s origins have not yet been uncovered. The first animal brains appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. Today,…
Study suggests a way to curb clonal hematopoiesis — and prevent leukemia — by targeting rogue clones’ anti-inflammatory defenses. As we age, many of us acquire mutations that cause some of our blood stem cells to multiply faster than others, forming their own distinct populations or “clones.” This is known as clonal hematopoiesis. In some cases, a single clone originating from a single genetically altered or mutated stem cell can expand to make up as many as 30 percent of…
Using nanopore DNA sequencing technology, researchers from TU Delft and the University of Illinois have managed to scan a single protein: by slowly moving a linearized protein through a tiny nanopore, one amino acid at the time, the researchers were able to read off electric currents that relate to the information content of the protein. The researchers published their proof-of-concept in Science today. The new single-molecule peptide reader marks a breakthrough in protein identification, and opens the way towards single-molecule…
A team of researchers led by Nicole Pogodalla and Prof. Dr. Christian Klämbt from the Institute of Neuro- and Behavioral Biology at University of Münster now demonstrated for the first time an internal diffusion barrier in the brain of fruit flies – in addition to the already known blood-brain barrier. The neurons, located in the brain are interconnected in a complex pattern and establish special communication points, the synapses. All neurons require a constant environment in order to function reliably….
Seagrasses provide a vital habitat in shallow coastal seas. They also remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Up to now, researchers have assumed that the plants take up nitrogen necessary for growth primarily from the seawater and sediment. However, in many regions where seagrasses thrive little nitrogen is available. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology show that seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea lives in symbiosis with bacteria that reside in their roots and provide the…
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