Platinum might outweigh gold in the jewelry market, but as part of an ongoing effort to produce efficient and affordable fuel cells, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are studying how gold atoms might enhance the value of the pricier metal. Specifically, they're looking for ways to use gold to prevent the destruction of platinum in the chemical reactions that take place in fuel cells.
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Virginia Tech chemists are looking for biobased alternatives and environmentally friendly reaction pathways to replace a toxic intermediate that is a critical component of many polymer products.
Isocyanates are important to many products we take for granted – from paint to spandex running shorts. But the high reactivity for which the chemical group is valued also makes this compound toxic when breathed.
The emerging field of metagenomics, where the DNA of entire communities of microbes is studied simultaneously, presents the greatest opportunity -- perhaps since the invention of the microscope -- to revolutionize understanding of the microbial world, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report calls for a new Global Metagenomics Initiative to drive advances in the field in the same way that the Human Genome Project advanced the mapping of our genetic code.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are trying to design catalysts inspired by photosynthesis, the natural process by which green plants convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates. The goal is to design a bio-inspired system that can produce fuels like methanol, methane, and hydrogen directly from water and carbon dioxide using renewable solar energy.
Some day, heart attack survivors might have a patch of laboratory-grown muscle placed in their heart, to replace areas that died during their attack. Children born with defective heart valves might get new ones that can grow in place, rather than being replaced every few years. And people with clogged or weak blood vessels might get a new “natural” replacement, instead of a factory-made one.
Maps of the sea surface temperature around Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island in the Pacific Ocean are being produced daily and are available online in full resolution in near-real time as part of the Medspiration project, an ESA-funded effort to represent the most reliable temperature of the seas on a global basis.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are employing some modern day alchemy in an effort to find a material with properties of rare and high-priced palladium. If they’re successful, it could remove a major roadblock from the path of hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles.
Hydrogen fuel-cell technology sounds almost too good to be true. You combine cheap and plentiful hydrogen and oxygen gas, the fuel cell generates electricity and the by-product is simply water. But it’s a little more involved.
Biology and chemistry researchers from Virginia Tech are creating molecular complexes to bind to and disrupt the DNA of diseased tissues, such as tumors or viruses. Testing the activity of each of the therapeutic molecule designs has been a time-consuming process. But a student’s invention now provides rapid screening to accelerate discovery of promising new drugs.
High concentrations of nitrogen dioxide gas — inhaled for even very brief periods following fires, explosions of military munitions or detonations of terrorist devices — could cause serious lung damage, scientists reported today at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Given the huge shortage of donor organs, researchers have been trying to find ways to transplant animal organs across different species (known as "xenotransplantation"), with the eventual aim of transplanting animal organs into humans. The major stumbling block, says Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin (US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) in a paper in PLoS Medicine, is that the immune system in the animal receiving the organ tends to reject the transplant.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University has analyzed the simplest known biological clock and figured out what makes it tick. The results of their analysis are published in the March 27 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology.
The medication tilarginine, a drug that was believed could be beneficial for patients who develop cardiogenic shock (low blood pressure due to impaired cardiac function) after a heart attack, did not reduce the risk of death up to six months after a heart attack, according to a JAMA study published online March 26. The study is being released early to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology's annual conference.
Researchers in Japan have developed a pair of molecular-scale scissors that open and close in response to light. The tiny scissors are the first example of a molecular machine capable of mechanically manipulating molecules by using light, the scientists say.
Gene therapy - the idea of using genetic instructions rather than drugs to treat disease - has tickled scientists' imaginations for decades, but is not yet a viable therapeutic method. One sizeable hurdle is getting the right genes into the right place at the right time.
Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are now developing a tool to tackle this problem.
An international team of researchers has discovered that two types of plant proteins are at work in the transport of an important growth hormone, a finding that could have applications in creating plants with specific characteristics.