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The 100 MW Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station, with the largest power and capacity in the world so far, was connected to the grid in Dalian, China, on September 29, and it will be put into operation in mid-October.

This energy storage project is supported technically by Prof. Li Xianfeng’s group from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. And the system was built and integrated by Rongke Power Co. Ltd.

The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station was approved by the Chinese National Energy Administration in April 2016. As the first national, large-scale chemical energy storage demonstration project approved, it will eventually produce 200 megawatts (MW)/800 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity.

Personalized Bio-Engineered Human Hearts For All — Dr. Doris A. Taylor, Ph.D., CEO, Organamet Bio Inc.

Dr. Doris A. Taylor, Ph.D. is Chief Executive Officer of Organamet Bio Inc. (https://organametbio.com/) an early phase start-up committed to saving lives and reducing the cost of healthcare for those with heart disease. Organamet has a goal is to make personalized bio-engineered human hearts, available to all who need them, within 5 years, increasing availability and access to hearts, decreasing or eliminating need for immunosuppression, reducing total lifetime transplant costs, and improving quality of life.

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Advancements in 3D printing have made it easier for designers and engineers to customize projects, create physical prototypes at different scales, and produce structures that can’t be made with more traditional manufacturing techniques. But the technology still faces limitations—the process is slow and requires specific materials which, for the most part, must be used one at a time.

Researchers at Stanford have developed a method of 3D printing that promises to create prints faster, using multiple types of resin in a single object. Their design, published recently in Science Advances, is 5 to 10 times faster than the quickest high-resolution printing method currently available and could potentially allow researchers to use thicker resins with better mechanical and electrical properties.

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Every summer, weather forecasters blast news about African dust plumes crossing the southern United States. And to most people, it’s just dust, but to researchers at Texas A&M University, it’s much more.

Researchers have developed a new method called isotope-resolved chemical mass balance to identify dust participles using isotopic measurements. Their new research builds off previous studies where they identified and quantified the dust by determining the elemental composition.

The study was recently published in Environmental Science & Technology.

PRESS RELEASE — There has been a lot of buzz about quantum computers and for good reason. The futuristic computers are designed to mimic what happens in nature at microscopic scales, which means they have the power to better understand the quantum realm and speed up the discovery of new materials, including pharmaceuticals, environmentally friendly chemicals, and more. However, experts say viable quantum computers are still a decade away or more. What are researchers to do in the meantime?

A new Caltech-led study in the journal Science describes how machine learning tools, run on classical computers, can be used to make predictions about quantum systems and thus help researchers solve some of the trickiest physics and chemistry problems. While this notion has been shown experimentally before, the new report is the first to mathematically prove that the method works.

“Quantum computers are ideal for many types of physics and materials science problems,” says lead author Hsin-Yuan (Robert) Huang, a graduate student working with John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and the Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology (IQIM). “But we aren’t quite there yet and have been surprised to learn that classical machine learning methods can be used in the meantime. Ultimately, this paper is about showing what humans can learn about the physical world.”

Scientists discover that 1 in 5 metal compounds display anti-fungal properties-they are non-toxic too.

Metal compounds could be the answer to the growing problem of drug-resistant fungal infections, according to new research published in the American Chemical Society on Sept .23.

The compounds could help develop much-needed antifungal drugs-particularly for immunocompromised patients susceptible to fungal infections.

Ideally, the nanopore dimensions should be comparable to those of the analyte for the presence of the analyte to produce a measurable change in the ionic current amplitude above the noise level. Nanopores can be formed in several ways, with a wide range of pore diameters. Biological nanopores are formed by the self-assembly of either protein subunits, peptides or even DNA scaffolds in lipid bilayers or block copolymer membranes^1,3,6,17,18. They possess atomically precise dimensions controlled by biopolymer sequences, providing the ability to recognize biomolecules with constriction diameters of ~1–10 nm. Solid-state nanopores are crafted in thin inorganic or plastic membranes (for example, SiN_x), which allows the nanopores to have extended diameters of up to hundreds of nanometres, permitting the entry or analysis of large biomolecules and complexes. The tools for fabricating solid-state nanopores, which include electron/ion milling^4,5, laser-based optical etching^19,20 and the dielectric breakdown of ultrathin solid membranes^21,22, can be used to manipulate nanopore size at the nanometre scale, but allow only limited control over the surface structure at the atomic level in contrast to biological nanopores. The chemical modification and genetic engineering of biological nanopores, or the introduction of biomolecules to functionalize solid-state nanopores²³, can further enhance the interactions between a nanopore and analytes, improving the overall sensitivity and selectivity of the device^{2,17,24,25,26}. This feature allows nanopores to controllably capture, identify and transport a wide variety of molecules and ions from bulk solution.

Nanopore technology was initially developed for the practicable stochastic sensing of ions and small molecules^2,27,28. Subsequently, many developmental efforts were focused on DNA sequencing^1,7,8,9. Now, however, nanopore applications extend well beyond sequencing, as the methodology has been adapted to analyse molecular heterogeneities and stochastic processes in many different biochemical systems (Fig. 1). First, a key advantage of nanopores lies in their ability to successively capture many single molecules one after the other at a relatively high rate, which allows nanopores to explore large populations of molecules at the single-molecule level in reasonable timeframes. Second, nanopores essentially convert the structural and chemical properties of the analytes into a measurable ionic current signal, even achieving enantiomer discrimination²⁹. The technology can be used to report on multiple molecular features while circumventing the need for labelling chemistries, which may complicate the overall analysis process and affect the molecular structures. For example, nanopores can discriminate nearly 13 different amino acids in a label-free manner, including some with minute structural differences³⁰. An important aspect is the ability of nanopores to identify species³¹ that lack suitable labels for signal amplification or whose information is hidden in the noise of analytical devices. Consequently, nanopores may serve well in molecular diagnostic applications required for precision medicine, which achieves the identification of nucleic acid, protein or metabolite analytes and other biomarkers^{11,32,33,34,35}. Third, nanopores provide a well-defined scaffold for controllably designing and constructing biomimetic systems, which involve a complex network of biomolecular interactions. These nanopore systems track the binding dynamics of transported biomolecules as they interact with nanopore surfaces, hence serving as a platform for unravelling complex biological processes (for example, the transport properties of nuclear pore complexes)^36,37,38,39. Fourth, chemical groups can be spatially aligned within a protein nanopore, providing a confined chemical environment for site-selective or regioselective covalent chemistry. This strategy has been used to engineer protein nanoreactors to monitor bond-breaking and bond-making events^40,41.

Here we discuss the latest advances in nanopore technologies beyond DNA sequencing and the future trajectory of the field, as well as the opportunities and main challenges for the next decade. We specifically address the emerging nanopore methods for protein analysis and protein sequencing, single-molecule covalent chemistry, single-molecule analysis of clinical samples and insights into the use of biomimetic pores for analysing complex biological processes.

The new material is far superior to today’s non-stick options.

Researchers at Tufts University have developed a method for developing silk-based materials that refuse to stick to water and exhibit non-stick properties that surpass those of current non-stick surfaces, according to a press release by the institution published on Friday.

“The success we had with modifying silk to repel water extends our successes with chemically modifying silk for other functionalities—such as the ability to change color, conduct electrical charge, or persist or degrade in a biological environment,” said David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor of Engineering at Tufts.

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Skoltech scientists modeled the behavior of nanobubbles appearing in van der Waals heterostructures and the behavior of substances trapped inside the bubbles. In the future, the new model will help obtain equations of state for substances in nano-volumes, opening up new opportunities for the extraction of hydrocarbons from rock with large amounts of micro-and nanopores. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Chemical Physics.

The van der Waals nanostructures hold much promise for the study of tiniest samples with volumes from 1 cubic micron down to several cubic nanometers. These atomically thin layers of two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and dichalcogenides of transition metals, are held together by weak van der Waals interaction only. Inserting a sample between the layers separates the upper and bottom layers, making the upper layer lift to form a nanobubble. The resulting structure will then become available for transmission electron and atomic force microscopy, providing an insight into the structure of the substance inside the bubble.

The properties exhibited by substances inside the van der Waals nanobubbles are quite unusual. For example, water trapped inside a nanobubble displays a tenfold decrease in its dielectric constant and etches the diamond surface, something it would never do under normal conditions. Argon which typically exists in liquid form when in large quantities can become solid at the same pressure if trapped inside very small nanobubbles with a radius of less than 50 nanometers.