A chemical called kynurenic acid may play a role in diseases characterised by cognitive impairments or psychosis, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder. Newly developed drugs that reduce this acid in the brain show promise in reducing symptoms of these conditions.
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a faraway planet’s skies, scoring another first for the exoplanet science community.
WASP-39b, otherwise known as Bocaprins, can be found orbiting a star some 700 light-years away. It is an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — as massive as Saturn but much closer to its host star, making for an estimated temperature of 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (871 degrees Celsius) emitting from its gases, according to NASA. This “hot Saturn” was one of the first exoplanets that the Webb telescope examined when it first began its regular science operations.
The new readings provide a full breakdown of Bocaprins’ atmosphere, including atoms, molecules, cloud formations (which appear to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket as scientists previously expected) and even signs of photochemistry caused by its host star.
The finding could have implications on drug development beyond neuroscience.
A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen has found that V-ATPase, an enzyme thought to be a key component of brain function, switches off randomly, even for hours at a time. This discovery has the potential to change our understanding of how our brain functions, according to a press release.
V-ATPase is an enzyme that can break down ATP molecules, the cell’s energy currency, as they pump protons across cellular membranes.
Continue reading “A key enzyme in brain function shuts off randomly, study reveals” »
It is easier to form more substituted carbocations because of destabilisation in the parent substrate, rather than stabilisation in the reactive intermediate, new research shows.1
Many organic transformations involve carbocations as reactive intermediates. These are usually formed via a heterolytic C–X bond dissociation to give a carbocation C+ and an anion X-. Current understanding is that the bond dissociation energy decreases with increased methyl substitution because of the stabilising effect of the methyl groups, as well as relief due to steric repulsion: going from substrate to carbocation gives the substituents proportionally more room in a more substituted system. However, a team in the Netherlands, led by Matthias Bickelhaupt at VU Amsterdam, has investigated this from a different angle.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies.
The telescope’s array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a “hot Saturn”—a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away—known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.
Continue reading “James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before” »
“We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres.”
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided a detailed molecular and chemical profile of a distant exoplanet’s skies in a world first, a blog post from the space agency reveals.
However, the new observations from James Webb reveal the makeup of the exoplanet’s atmosphere like never before and reveal further details of active chemistry and clouds.
Researchers have investigated the capability of known quantum computing algorithms for fault-tolerant quantum computing to simulate the laser-driven electron dynamics of excitation and ionization processes in small molecules. Their research is published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation.
“These quantum computer algorithms were originally developed in a completely different context. We used them here for the first time to calculate electron densities of molecules, in particular their dynamic evolution after excitation by a light pulse,” says Annika Bande, who heads a group on theoretical chemistry at Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers (HZB). Bande and Fabian Langkabel, who is doing his doctorate with her, show in the study how well this works.
“We developed an algorithm for a fictitious, completely error-free quantum computer and ran it on a classical server simulating a quantum computer of ten qubits,” says Langkabel. The scientists limited their study to smaller molecules in order to be able to perform the calculations without a real quantum computer and to compare them with conventional calculations.
Sponsored by Kishore Tipirneni’s new book “A New Eden” available here: https://getbook.at/NewEden | Abiogenesis – origin of life. Living matter from non-living matter. The origin of living organisms from inorganic or non-living material is called abiogenesis. But abiogenesis is not evolution.
Despite the incredible variations of life we see today, at the fundamental level, all living things contain three elements: Nucleic acids, Proteins, and lipids. These three things had to have been present in order for life to start.
Continue reading “How did life begin? Abiogenesis. Origin of life from nonliving matter” »
Tumor cells in the most common pancreatic cancer share nutrients to live and grow. A new discovery by University of California, Irvine biologists and collaborators during a four-year investigation could help lead to better treatments for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, which accounts for over 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases. The scientists’ paper appears in Nature Cancer. While pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, it is among the leading causes of cancer death in the United States.
One obstacle in treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, known as PDA, is that it generally does not show early symptoms. Another hurdle is the complexity of its dense and fibrous tumors. Consequently, they do not have fully functioning blood vessels in the tumor. On one front, this makes it difficult to deliver effective chemotherapy. However, it also means the tumors have developed a different kind of metabolism.
“Without blood vessels, PDA cells aren’t getting the normal nutrients they need, so they have come up with other ways to nourish themselves and grow,” said Christopher Halbrook, assistant professor of molecular biology & biochemistry, and lead and co-corresponding author. Understanding this process is essential for devising treatments targeting the cancer’s metabolism.
9 nov 2022.
The challenge of fabricating nanowires directly on silicon substrates for the creation of the next generation of electronics has finally been solved by researchers from Tokyo Tech. Next-generation spintronics will lead to better memory storage mechanisms in computers, making them faster and more efficient.
As our world modernizes faster than ever before, there is an ever-growing need for better and faster electronics and computers. Spintronics is a new system which uses the spin of an electron, in addition to the charge state, to encode data, making the entire system faster and more efficient. Ferromagnetic nanowires with high coercivity (resistance to changes in magnetization) are required to realize the potential of spintronics. Especially L 10-ordered (a type of crystal structure) cobalt-platinum (CoPt) nanowires.
Conventional fabrication processes for L 10-ordered nanowires involve heat treatment to improve the physical and chemical properties of the material, a process called annealing on the crystal substrate; the transfer of a pattern onto the substrate through lithography; and finally the chemical removal of layers through a process called etching. Eliminating the etching process by directly fabricating nanowires onto the silicon substrate would lead to a marked improvement in the fabrication of spintronic devices. However, when directly fabricated nanowires are subjected to annealing, they tend to transform into droplets as a result of the internal stresses in the wire.
