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Archive for the ‘chemistry’ category: Page 126

Mar 7, 2023

Scientists Discover How To Generate New Neurons in the Adult Brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

A team of biologists has discovered how to awaken neural stem cells and reactivate them in adult mice.

Some areas of the adult brain contain quiescent, or dormant, neural stem cells that can potentially be reactivated to form new neurons. However, the transition from quiescence to proliferation is still poorly understood. A team led by scientists from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Lausanne (UNIL) has discovered the importance of cell metabolism in this process and identified how to wake up these neural stem cells and reactivate them. Biologists succeeded in increasing the number of new neurons in the brain of adult and even elderly mice. These results, promising for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, are to be discovered in the journal Science Advances.

<em>Science Advances</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal that is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was launched in 2015 and covers a wide range of topics in the natural sciences, including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, materials science, and physics.

Mar 7, 2023

Beyond COVID vaccines: what’s next for lipid nanoparticles?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, engineering, nanotechnology

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) transport small molecules into the body. The most well-known LNP cargo is mRNA, the key constituent of some of the early vaccines against COVID-19. But that is just one application: LNPs can carry many different types of payload, and have applications beyond vaccines.

Barbara Mui has been working on LNPs (and their predecessors, liposomes) since she was a PhD student in Pieter Cullis’s group in the 1990s. “In those days, LNPs encapsulated anti-cancer drugs,” says Mui, who is currently a senior scientist at Acuitas, the company that developed the LNPs used in the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. She says it soon became clear that LNPs worked even better as carriers of polynucleotides. “The first one that worked really well was encapsulating small RNAs,” Mui recalls.

But it was mRNA where LNPs proved most effective, primarily because LNPs are comprised of positively charged lipid nanoparticles that encapsulate negatively charged mRNA. Once in the body, LNPs enter cells via endocytosis into endosomes and are released into the cytoplasm. “Without the specially designed chemistry, the LNP and mRNA would be degraded in the endosome,” says Kathryn Whitehead, professor in the departments of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mar 7, 2023

PLEASURE GENERATORS in the Brain: The Neuroscience of Pleasure Explained

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, evolution, media & arts, neuroscience, sex

Brave new world let’s create happiness for everyone by putting microelectrode arrays in our brains but be careful not to create a situation like death by ecstacy by Larry Niven.


In the brain, pleasure is generated by a handful of brain regions called, “hedonic hotspots.” If you were to stimulate these regions directly, you would likely feel pleasurable sensations. However, not all of the hedonic hotspots are the same–some generate the raw sensations of pleasure whereas others are responsible for consciously interpreting and elaborating on the raw pleasure produced by the other hotspots. In this video, in addition to exploring the neuroscience of pleasure, we’ll see how understanding pleasure, happiness, meaning, and purpose can help us live better lives.

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Mar 7, 2023

Open source software could deliver huge time savings for computational chemists

Posted by in categories: chemistry, robotics/AI

A new program can streamline the process of creating, launching and analysing computational chemistry experiments. This piece of software, called AQME, is distributed for free under an open source licence, and could contribute to making calculations more efficient, as well as accelerating automated analyses.

‘We estimate time savings of around 70% in routine computational chemistry protocols,’ explains lead author Juan Vicente Alegre Requena, at the Institute of Chemical Synthesis and Homogeneous Catalysis (ISQCH) in Zaragoza, Spain. ‘In modern molecular simulations, studying a single reaction usually involves more than 500 calculations,’ he explains. ‘Generating all the input files, launching the calculations and analysing the results requires an extraordinary amount of time, especially when unexpected errors appear.’

Therefore, Alegre and his colleagues decided to code a piece of software to skip several steps and streamline calculations. Among other advantages, AQME works with simple inputs, instead of the optimised 3D chemical structures usually required by other solutions. ‘It’s exceptionally easy,’ says Alegre. ‘AQME is installed in a couple of minutes, then the only indispensable input is as a simple Smiles string.’ Smiles is a system developed by chemist and coder Dave Weininger in the late 1980s, which converts complex chemical structures into a succession of letters and numbers that is machine readable. This cross-compatibility could allow integration with chemical databases and machine-learning solutions, most of which include datasets in Smiles format, explains Alegre.

Mar 7, 2023

Dr. Moupali Das, MD, MPH — Gilead Sciences — Dedicated To Ending The HIV Epidemic

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, health, policy

Dedicated to ending the HIV epidemic — dr. moupali das, MD, MPH, executive director, HIV clinical research, gilead sciences.


Dr. Moupali Das, MD, MPH, is Executive Director, HIV Clinical Research, in the Virology Therapeutic Area, at Gilead Sciences (https://www.gilead.com/), where she leads the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical drug development program, including evaluating the safety and efficacy of a long-acting, twice yearly, subcutaneous injection being studied for HIV prevention. Her responsibilities also include expanding the populations who may benefit from PrEP.

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Mar 7, 2023

What makes a neural network remember?

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, robotics/AI

Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals—both biochemical and electrical—and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.

Now, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have altered a commonly used computer model of called a Hopfield network in a way that improves performance by taking inspiration from biology. They found that not only does the new network better reflect how neurons and other cells wire up in the , it can also hold dramatically more memories.

The complexity added to the network is what makes it more realistic, says Thomas Burns, a Ph.D. student in the group of Professor Tomoki Fukai, who heads OIST’s Neural Coding and Brain Computing Unit. “Why would biology have all this complexity? Memory capacity might be a reason,” Mr. Burns says.

Mar 7, 2023

Researchers fabricate novel flexible supercapacitors on paper

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, wearables

Wearable devices such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, and virtual reality headsets are becoming commonplace. They are powered by flexible electronics that consist of electrodes with plastic or metal foil as substrates. However, both of these come with their own drawbacks. Plastics suffer from poor adhesion and low durability, while metal foils make the devices bulky and less flexible.

In light of this, paper is a promising alternative. It is porous, light, thin, foldable, and flexible. Moreover, paper has randomly distributed fibers that provide a large surface area for depositing active electrode material, making for excellent electrochemical properties.

Accordingly, researchers have developed various paper-based supercapacitors, devices that store electric charge and energy, by stacking multiple sheets, acting as positive and negative electrodes and separators. However, such an arrangement increases device size and resistance. In addition, they tend to form creases, peel off, and slip over each other, which further deteriorate device performance.

Mar 3, 2023

‘Forever chemicals’ in your toilet paper might give you cancer: study

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry

Your toilet paper might give you cancer, according to scientists. Experts from the University of Florida warn that your toilet paper could contain toxic “forever chemicals,” also known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs), which have previously been linked to certain cancers and even low sperm count.

Mar 2, 2023

Putting Carbon Dioxide to Good — Scientists Use Electrochemistry To Convert Carbon to Useful Molecules

Posted by in categories: chemistry, innovation

A joint effort in chemistry has resulted in an innovative method for utilizing carbon dioxide in a positive – even beneficial – manner: through electrosynthesis, it is integrated into a series of organic molecules that play a crucial role in the development of pharmaceuticals.

During the process, the team made an innovative discovery. By altering the type of electrochemical reactor used, they were able to generate two distinct products, both of which are useful in medicinal chemistry.

The team’s paper was recently published in the journal Nature. The paper’s co-lead authors are postdoctoral researchers Peng Yu and Wen Zhang, and Guo-Quan Sun of Sichuan University in China.

Mar 2, 2023

Breakthrough in Quantum Chemistry: Tunnel Effect Experimentally Observed in Molecules

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics, quantum physics

While tunneling reactions are remarkably hard to predict, a group of researchers were able to experimentally observe such an effect, marking a breakthrough in the field of quantum chemistry.

Tunnel Effect

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