Bioengineers Succeed in Producing Plastics Without the Use of Fossil Fuels

Computer rendering of E. coli bacteria. A newly developed E. coli strain is capable of efficiently producing unnatural polymers, through a one-step fermentation process. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 26, 2009) — A team of pioneering South Korean scientists have succeeded in producing the polymers used for everyday plastics through bioengineering, rather than through the use of fossil fuel based chemicals. This groundbreaking research, which may now allow for the production of environmentally conscious plastics, is published in two papers in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

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The Hidden Uses of Everyday Explosives

Impact Study The slug and gunpowder have been removed from the cartridge, so it’s only the primer that’s going off when it’s hit from below by the point of a center punch (triggered by pulling a string from a safe distance). Mike Walker

From Popular Science:

When you stop and look, you may be surprised to find yourself surrounded by all kinds of explosives--some that detonate easier than dynamite.

The explosive C4, a favorite for everything from demolition to terrorism to action movies, is in fact one of the safest explosives. How can an explosive be safe? If it’s hard to set off by accident. C4 is so stable that you can light it with a match (it burns but does not explode) or shoot it (it splatters but does not explode). To go bang, it requires a detonator that produces both heat and shock.

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Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone To The 'Island Of Stability'

Members of the group that confirmed the production of element 114 in front of the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator at the 88-Inch Cyclotron, from left: Jan Dvorak, Zuzana Dvorakova, Paul Ellison, Irena Dragojevic, Heino Nitsche, Mitch Andre Garcia, and Ken Gregorich. Not pictured is Liv Stavestra. (Credit: Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Creative Services Office)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

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IBM Scientists Take First Close-Up Image Of A Single Molecule

Pentacene, Up Close: IBM Research - Zurich

From Popular Science:

As part of a greater effort to someday build computing elements at an atomic scale, IBM scientists in Zurich have taken the highest-resolution image ever of an individual molecule using non-contact atomic force microscopy. Performed in an ultrahigh vacuum at 5 degrees Kelvin, scientists were able to "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time," a feat necessary for the further development of atomic scale electronic building blocks.

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New Way To Split Water Into Hydrogen And Oxygen Developed

3-D rendering of H2O molecules. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2009) — The design of efficient systems for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, driven by sunlight is among the most important challenges facing science today, underpinning the long term potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents. In this context, it is important to establish new mechanisms by which water splitting can take place.

Now, a unique approach developed by Prof. David Milstein and colleagues of the Weizmann Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department, provides important steps in overcoming this challenge. During this work, the team demonstrated a new mode of bond generation between oxygen atoms and even defined the mechanism by which it takes place. In fact, it is the generation of oxygen gas by the formation of a bond between two oxygen atoms originating from water molecules that proves to be the bottleneck in the water splitting process. Their results have recently been published in Science.

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Material Slicker Than Teflon Discovered By Accident

A piece of steel (left) coated with a thin layer of the super-slippery material just 2 to 3 micrometers thick - such coatings provide a kind of eternal lubrication to reduce friction and save energy
(Image: US DoE Ames Lab)

From The New Scietist:

A superhard substance that is more slippery than Teflon could protect mechanical parts from wear and tear, and boost energy efficiency by reducing friction.

The "ceramic alloy" is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride.

BAM, as the material is called, was discovered at the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory in Iowa in 199, during attempts to develop a substance to generate electricity when heated.

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My Comment: The article does not examine the military applications, but its applications from enhancing protective vests to protecting machinery and vehicles from explosives is obvious. this .... if it works out .... has applications that will significantly protect the soldier when in the battlefield.

Turning Tequila Into Diamonds

Image from The Tequila-Man

From Foreign Policy Blog:

Tequila doesn't just produce hangovers any more. Under the right conditions, the alcohol can be turned into diamonds.

Researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, experimenting with making thin films of diamond from organic solutions, decided to conduct their tests using a "pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila." They heated the tequila to 1,470ºF, breaking down its molecular structure. The resulting carbon film, upon close examination, had formed into an almost perfect diamond structure. Tequila's mix of 40 percent ethanol and 60 percent water is the reason it serves as the perfect compound for creating synthetic diamonds.

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Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

Wired Science has the videos. The link is HERE.

A New Explosive

A high-energy-density nitrate ester (1) with unique properties was synthesized in good yield in a three-step process. Destructive stimuli studies and explosive performance calculations show that (1) has similar performance properties to those of well-characterized explosives.

From E! Science News:

Since the discovery of nitroglycerin in 1846, the nitrate ester group of compounds has been known for its explosive properties. A whole series of other nitrate esters have been subsequently put to use as explosives and fuels. A research team led by David E. Chavez at Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) has now developed a novel tetranitrate ester. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the compound has a particularly interesting characteristic profile: it is solid at room temperature, is a highly powerful explosive, and can be melt-cast into the desired shape. Nitrate esters are organic nitric acid compounds that can contain enormous explosive force. However, their liquid physical state makes handling very difficult. By mixing in various other components, Alfred Nobel developed dynamite, a distinctly safer and easier to handle nitroglycerine-based explosive. The only solid nitrate ester used as an explosive before is nitropenta. Because of its high melting point of about 140 °C, nitropenta must be pressed into the desired form.

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Nobel Prize For Chemistry Announced

Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Roger Y. Tsien of UC San Diego will share the 2008 Nobel Prize for chemistry.(Photo from L.A. Times)

Three Chemists Win Nobel Prize -- New York Times

One Japanese and two American scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for taking the ability of some jellyfish to glow green and transforming it into a ubiquitous tool of molecular biology to watch the dance of living cells and the proteins within them.

Osamu Shimomura, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and Boston University Medical School, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, will share the $1.4 million prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The green fluorescent protein, or G.F.P. for short, was observed in 1962 in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which drifts in the ocean currents off the west coast of North America.

Dr. Shimomura was able to identify the protein and showed that it glowed bright green under ultraviolet light.

Dr. Chalfie showed how the protein could be used as a biological identifier tag by inserting the gene that produces the protein into the DNA of an organism.

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More News On The Nobel Prize For Chemistry

Chemistry Nobel Prize Awarded for Glowing Protein Work -- National Geographic
Scientists Go for the Glow in Fluorescent Proteins -- Wired News
Three U.S.-based scientists share Nobel chemistry prize -- L.A. Times
Japanese, American Scientists Win Nobel Chemistry Prize -- Voice Of America
Green jellyfish protein scientists win Nobel -- Reuters
Chemistry Nobel Glows Fluorescent Green -- Scientific American
A Nobel for Illuminating Biology -- Technology Review
How Green Was the Nobel Prize in Chemistry -- Scientific American
Cell Illuminators Win Chemistry Nobel -- Wired News
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Beauty of Fluorescent Protein -- Wall Street Journal
Nobel Prize in chemistry commends finding and use of green fluorescent protein -- Science News
Nobel prize for chemistry illuminates disease -- The Guardian
Chemistry Nobel Prize Awarded to Scientists Who Discovered and Developed GFP Fluorescent Protein -- GEN
Nobel won after 50 yrs, 100,000 jellyfish -- Daily Yomiuri
Nobel winners recall postwar struggles -- Japan Times
Nobel prize laureate finds winning news on internet -- AFP
Glowing Gene's Discoverer Left Out Of Nobel Prize -- NPR
Nobel Predictions: Score! -- Newsweek
US takes 2008 chemistry prize, Nobel league lead - October 08, 2008 -- Nature
Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and their research, according to the Nobel Foundation -- AP

Does Hot Water Freeze Faster Than Cold Water?

From Live Science:

Determining whether or not hot water can freeze faster than cold water may seem like a no-brainer. After all, water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. And wouldn’t water hot enough to kill E. coli bacteria (about 120 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) take a longer path than cooler water at a fall New England beach (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 degrees Celsius) towards a frigid future as ice? While a logical assumption, it turns out that hot water can freeze before cooler water under certain conditions.

This apparent quirk of nature is the "Mpemba effect," named after the Tanzanian high school student, Erasto Mpemba, who first observed it in 1963. The Mpemba effect occurs when two bodies of water with different temperatures are exposed to the same subzero surroundings and the hotter water freezes first. Mpemba’s observations confirmed the hunches of some of history’s most revered thinkers, such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon, who also thought that hot water froze faster than cold water.

Evaporation is the strongest candidate to explain the Mpemba effect. As hot water placed in an open container begins to cool, the overall mass decreases as some of the water evaporates. With less water to freeze, the process can take less time. But this doesn’t always work, especially when using closed containers that prevent evaporated water from escaping.

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Super Atoms

This superatom of aluminum and hydrogen is surprisingly stable.

Small, But Super -- Science News

These 'atoms' can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, but they have special powers

Gold comes in many colors. Since ancient times, glass artists and alchemists alike have known how to grind the metal into fine particles that would take on hues such as red or mauve. At scales even smaller, clusters of just a few dozen atoms display even more outlandish behavior. Gold and certain other atoms often tend to aggregate in specific numbers and highly symmetrical geometries, and sometimes these clusters can mimic the chemistry of single atoms of a completely different element. They become, as some researchers say, superatoms.

Recently researchers have reported successes in creating new superatoms and deciphering their structures. In certain conditions, even familiar molecules such as buckyballs — the soccer-ball–shaped cages made of 60 carbon atoms — unexpectedly turn into superatoms.

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Strongest Material Ever Tested

From Technology Review:

Graphene, praised for its electrical properties, has been proven the strongest known material.

Materials scientists have been singing graphene's praises since it was first isolated in 2005. The one-atom-thick sheets of carbon conduct electrons better than silicon and have been made into fast, low-power transistors. Now, for the first time, researchers have measured the intrinsic strength of graphene, and they've confirmed it to be the strongest material ever tested. The finding provides good evidence that graphene transistors could take the heat in future ultrafast microprocessors.

Jeffrey Kysar and James Hone, mechanical-engineering professors at Columbia University, tested graphene's strength at the atomic level by measuring the force that it took to break it. They carved one-micrometer-wide holes into a silicon wafer, placed a perfect sample of graphene over each hole, and then indented the graphene with a sharp probe made of diamond. Such measurements had never been taken before because they must be performed on perfect samples of graphene, with no tears or missing atoms, say Kysar and Hone.

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Improving Our Ability To Peek Inside Molecules

Massively parallel holography at high resolutions. (a) A lithographic test sample imaged by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) next to a 30-nm-thick twin-prime 71x73 array with 44-nm square gold scattering elements. The scale bar is 2 mm. (b) The diffraction pattern collected at the ALS (1 x 106 photons in a five second exposure, 200 mm from the sample). (c) The real part of the reconstructed hologram. d) The simulation with 1 x 106 photons. The grey scale represents the real part of the hologram. (e) A simulation with the same number of photons, but a single reference pinhole. (f) Line through the two dots indicated in image (c). (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2008) — It's not easy to see a single molecule inside a living cell. Nevertheless, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are helping to develop a new technique that will enable them to create detailed high-resolution images, giving scientists an unprecedented look at the atomic structure of cellular molecules.

The LLNL team is collaborating with scientists across the country and in Germany and Sweden to utilize high-energy X-ray beams, combined with complex algorithms, to overcome difficulties in current technology.

The work began more than five years ago as a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project, headed by Stefano Marchesini. He has since transferred to Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBNL), leaving the project in the hands of Stefan Hau-Riege, a materials science physicist at LLNL.

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