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Archive for the ‘chemistry’ category: Page 276

Jul 29, 2020

Solving materials problems with a quantum computer

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, information science, particle physics, quantum physics, supercomputing

Quantum computers have enormous potential for calculations using novel algorithms and involving amounts of data far beyond the capacity of today’s supercomputers. While such computers have been built, they are still in their infancy and have limited applicability for solving complex problems in materials science and chemistry. For example, they only permit the simulation of the properties of a few atoms for materials research.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago (UChicago) have developed a method paving the way to using quantum computers to simulate realistic molecules and complex materials, whose description requires hundreds of atoms.

The research team is led by Giulia Galli, director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM), a group leader in Argonne’s Materials Science division and a member of the Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne. Galli is also the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and a Professor of Chemistry at UChicago. She worked on this project with assistant scientist Marco Govoni and graduate student He Ma, both part of Argonne’s Materials Science division and UChicago.

Jul 29, 2020

Using Artificial Intelligence to Smell the Roses

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

Summary: New artificial intelligence technology can accurately predict how any chemical is going to smell to humans.

Source: UCR

A pair of researchers at the University of California, Riverside, has used machine learning to understand what a chemical smells like — a research breakthrough with potential applications in the food flavor and fragrance industries.

Jul 28, 2020

Hydrogel mimics human brain with memorizing and forgetting ability

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, neuroscience

Hokkaido University researchers have found a soft and wet material that can memorize, retrieve, and forget information, much like the human brain. They report their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The learns things, but tends to forget them when the is no longer important. Recreating this dynamic process in manmade materials has been a challenge. Hokkaido University researchers now report a hydrogel that mimics the dynamic memory function of the brain: encoding information that fades with time depending on the memory intensity.

Hydrogels are flexible materials composed of a large percentage of water—in this case about 45%—along with other chemicals that provide a scaffold-like structure to contain the water. Professor Jian Ping Gong, Assistant Professor Kunpeng Cui and their students and colleagues in Hokkaido University’s Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) are seeking to develop hydrogels that can serve biological functions.

Jul 28, 2020

‘Love hormone’ oxytocin could be used to treat cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s

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

Scientists discover that oxytocin could be used to treat cognitive disorder like Alzheimer’s disease.


Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disorder in which the nerve cells (neurons) in a person’s brain and the connections among them degenerate slowly, causing severe memory loss, intellectual deficiencies, and deterioration in motor skills and communication. One of the main causes of Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of a protein called amyloid β (Aβ) in clusters around neurons in the brain, which hampers their activity and triggers their degeneration.

Studies in animal models have found that increasing the aggregation of Aβ in the hippocampus—the brain’s main learning and memory center—causes a decline in the signal transmission potential of the neurons therein. This degeneration affects a specific trait of the neurons, called ‘,’ which is the ability of synapses (the site of signal exchange between neurons) to adapt to an increase or decrease in signaling activity over time. Synaptic plasticity is crucial to the development of learning and cognitive functions in the hippocampus. Thus, Aβ and its role in causing cognitive memory and deficits have been the focus of most research aimed at finding treatments for Alzheimer’s.

Now, advancing this research effort, a team of scientists from Japan, led by Professor Akiyoshi Saitoh from the Tokyo University of Science, has looked at oxytocin, a hormone conventionally known for its role in the female reproductive system and in inducing the feelings of love and well-being. “Oxytocin was recently found to be involved in regulating learning and memory performance, but so far, no previous study deals with the effect of oxytocin on Aβ-induced ,” Prof Saitoh says. Realizing this, Prof Saitoh’s group set out to connect the dots. Their findings are published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communication.

Continue reading “‘Love hormone’ oxytocin could be used to treat cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s” »

Jul 27, 2020

Researchers Use Pencil to Draw Bioelectronic Devices on Human Skin

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

Scientists from the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Yale University have demonstrated that a combination of pencils and paper could be used to create on-skin bioelectronic devices that might be used to monitor personal health. They’ve fabricated and evaluated a rich variety of pencil-paper-based bioelectronic devices, ranging from biophysical sensors and sweat biochemical sensors to thermal stimulators, ambient humidity energy harvesters, and transdermal drug-delivery systems.

Jul 26, 2020

New Photonic Crystal Light Converter: Powerful Tool for Observation in Physics and Life Sciences

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

Spectroscopy is the use of light to analyze physical objects and biological samples. Different kinds of light can provide different kinds of information. Vacuum ultraviolet light is useful as it can aid people in a broad range of research fields, but generation of that light has been difficult and expensive. Researchers created a new device to efficiently generate this special kind of light using an ultrathin film with nanoscale perforations.

The wavelengths of light you see with your eyes constitute a mere fraction of the possible wavelengths of light that exist. There’s infrared light which you can feel in the form of heat, or see if you happen to be a snake, that has a longer wavelength than visible light. At the opposite end is ultraviolet (UV) light which you can use to produce vitamin D in your skin, or see if you happen to be a bee. These and other forms of light have many uses in science.

Continue reading “New Photonic Crystal Light Converter: Powerful Tool for Observation in Physics and Life Sciences” »

Jul 25, 2020

ERK-Mediated Mechanochemical Waves Direct Collective Cell Polarization

Posted by in category: chemistry

During collective cell migration, directional information is transmitted from a leading edge to the follower cells as a form of ERK activation waves. Hino et al. demonstrate that a mechanochemical feedback loop coupling cell deformation and ERK activation enables sustained propagation of the directional information over a tissue-scale expanse.

Jul 24, 2020

Machine learning reveals recipe for building artificial proteins

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, chemistry, food, information science, robotics/AI

Proteins are essential to the life of cells, carrying out complex tasks and catalyzing chemical reactions. Scientists and engineers have long sought to harness this power by designing artificial proteins that can perform new tasks, like treat disease, capture carbon, or harvest energy, but many of the processes designed to create such proteins are slow and complex, with a high failure rate.

In a breakthrough that could have implications across the healthcare, agriculture, and energy sectors, a team lead by researchers in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago has developed an -led process that uses big data to design new proteins.

By developing machine-learning models that can review protein information culled from genome databases, the researchers found relatively simple design rules for building . When the team constructed these artificial proteins in the lab, they found that they performed chemistries so well that they rivaled those found in nature.

Jul 24, 2020

Advanced Photon Source upgrade will transform the world of scientific research

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry

From chemistry to materials science to COVID-19 research, the APS is one of the most productive X-ray light sources in the world. An upgrade will make it a global leader among the next generation of light sources, opening new frontiers in science.

In the almost 25 years since the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, first opened at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, it has played an essential role in some of the most pivotal discoveries and advancements in science.

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Jul 23, 2020

How does cooperation evolve?

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, evolution

In nature, organisms often support each other in order to gain an advantage. However, this kind of cooperation contradicts the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin: Why would organisms invest valuable resources to help others? Instead, they should rather use them for themselves, in order to win the evolutionary competition with other species. A new study led by Prof. Dr. Christian Kost from the Department of Ecology at Osnabrueck University has now solved this puzzle. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Current Biology. The research project was performed in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena.

Interactions between two or more organisms, in which all partners involved gain an advantage, are ubiquitous in nature and have played a key role in the of life on Earth. For example, root bacteria fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, thus making it available to plants. In return, the plant supplies its root bacteria with nutritious sugars. However, it is nevertheless costly for both interaction partners to support each other. For example, the provision of sugar requires energy, which is then not available to the plant anymore. From this results the risk of cheating interaction partners that consume the sugar without providing nitrogen in return.

The research team led by Prof. Dr. Christian Kost used bacteria as a model system to study the evolution of mutual cooperation. At the beginning of the experiment, two bacterial strains could only grow when they provided each other with . Over the course of several generations, however, the initial exchange of metabolic byproducts developed into a real cooperation: both partners increased the production of the exchanged amino acids in order to benefit their respective partner. Even though the increased amino acid production enhanced growth when both partners were present, it was extremely costly when individual bacterial strains had to grow without their partner.