Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090517152557.htm

A new type of battery has the capability to hold up to ten times more storage than current designs. This is made possibly because it is an air-fuelled battery. This new design can improve performance and the renewable energy industry. This battery will use energy from the wind and from the sun. Since there are no chemicals in the battery, there is more space to be used for energy. These batteries will be cheaper than the rechargeable's that we use now. With this new battery, we will be able to be more resourceful.

Chemical Robots being developed in Europe

Dr. Stepanek's prototype "chobots" are less than a hair's breadth across:

Frantisek Stepanek of Prague's Institute of Chemical Technology has announced that he is developing a new variety of nanobots.  The holy grail of nanoscience has been to develop effective nanobots - robots that are small enough to travel inside the human body and make repairs.  One of the great hurdles scientists have been facing in creating these potentially life-saving machines has been the difficulty of shrinking the gears and circuitry used in traditional robots down to a scale that can potentially flow through the bloodstream or even enter cells.  Dr. Stepanek hopes to overcome this hurdle by avoiding it entirely: instead of trying to create a small version of a computer, he is creating artificial versions of simple life.  Although his creations are not alive (they do not evolve or reproduce), Dr. Stepanek hopes that (eventually) they will be capable of tasks such as delivering medicine or detecting and destroying cancerous cells.  Like living organisms, however, their programming (instructions) will be encoded as chemical patterns inside of their gelatinous cells.  The individual efficacy of each "chobot" (as they are called) is limited, however, just like their biological counterparts (such as white blood cells), they will function en masse: by sending out molecular signals to each other, the chobots will be able to work as a team to solve problems from killing cancerous cells to cleaning water supplies.  

BBC News: 'Chemical robots' swarm together:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8044200.stm

Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life

Recently, an english chemist has found, "The hidden gateway to the RNA world," the chemical milieu which life forms were thought to have emerged from earth, billions of years ago. For twenty years, this question of the origin of life has puzzled, even thwarted both scientists and researchers. It is only now that we know how the building blocks of life, as known as RNA, spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. If correct, these finds could solve countless other mysteries about the origin of life. The english chemist, John D. Sutherland, makes an analogy comparing RNA and evolution. He says that his research is like doing a crossword puzzle, and that it gets easier and easier as he finds more clues. Many call him a pioneer of perbiotic  chemistry. He also goes on to say that the spontaneous appearance of some nucleotides on the primitive earth had created life, and that it was, "a near miracle."

"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/science/14rna.html"

Molecular Chemistry takes a New Twist

In a discovery that could have implications for biological research, new calculations show that a basic tenet of chemistry is wrong. The new finding indicates that in some molecules quantum forces trump the traditional explanation. The find focuses on ethane, which has two carbon atoms bonded to each other. On the other end of the carbon-carbon bond the methyl group, spins like a three-pronged turnstile, says chemist Frank Weinhold of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Scientist Vojislava Pophristic spent 5 years crunching calculations with a supercomputer to figure out what underlies the stability of ethane's staggered conformation. First, she mathematically modeled ethane and removed the parts of the calculations that relate to the steric effect. The ethane molecule remained staggered. She then looked at the other known influence on ethane twisting which is known as hyperconjugation. When Pophristic blocked the electron jumping by placing a hypothetical screen between the two methyl groups, ethane's structure finally assumed the eclipsed form. Hyperconjugation, not steric effects, makes staggered ethane stable, they conclude. Researchers can no longer assume that steric effects play the major role in determining stable forms.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_22_159/ai_76157728/

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-27-2004-52238.asp
Chemistry of love

As it turns out love can be somewhat controlled by chemistry. The common symptoms of love, including sweaty palms, shaky knees and general restlessness, are caused by a natural chemical, Phenylethylamine. Its release from the brain can be triggered from deceptively simple actions like the meeting of the eyes or touching of the hands. Heady emotions, racing pulses and heavy breathing results, and all these are clinically explained as an overdose of this chemical. For instance, chocolate is known to have very high level of this chemical. The latest discovery in this field shows that the arrangement of molecules in this chemicals and the whole world is excited because now humans can actually concoct love potions. In other words, humans could isolate the chemical compound and making drugs that can induce love. What would happens is that an individual would take the drug, and than fall in love with the next person you see.
This new discovery is a large step for discovery the reasons of love and how in the future it might even be possible to control love with a set of drugs which would lead to humans even having more power over the world than ever before.

Self-Mending Plastic

Today most plastics that are recyclable such as water bottles and grocery bags are called thermoplastics. They are polymers that can be melted down and turned into something else. A second category of plastics called thermoset resins cant be turned into new plastics as easily. These resins include electrical insulation and epoxy glue. Most of these products made from these plastics end up as trash and are unusable again.

            Chemists at the University of Groningen in Netherlands have created a thermoset plastic that when heated heals it self instead of decomposing. They are composed of polyketones that are cross linked using bismaleimide which is an organic compound. The reaction is reversible as well. When the plastic is heated to about 300 degrees the material becomes unlinked but when is cools is become a polymer again. The metal can be used for the same uses many plastics are used for.

            This invention is a large step for the understanding of self-healing materials that will someday lead to the creation of recyclable thermoset plastics. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/science/28obheal.html?_r=1&ref=science

On a Hunt for Fishless Lakes, Teeming With Life

In Washington County, Maine, scientists are in search of fish along the Machias river; however, there are no fish. Biologists say fishless lakes are hubs of biodiversity but because of fisherman, the fish are being moved around. Maine woods have some of the last fishless lakes in the Northeast because of the acidity of the water. This acidity is too great for the fish to live in ergo these lakes have been fishless since the glaciers receeded. On the study was Dr. deMaynadier who found frogs, salamanders and damselflies that thrive only where fish are absent. With international concern about amphibian declines, fishless lakes have been receiving more attention elsewhere. A decade ago, Dr. McPeek often visited a fishless lake on a steep bluff above the Connecticut River in Vermont. “All of the zooplankton, all of the insects, all of the amphibians that bred there were completely different than the lake with fish that’s half a mile down the road,” he said. But somebody has since stocked it with carp. “Now this lake is just ruined,” Dr. McPeek said. The quote above displays how easy it is to ruin an ecological miracle. Fishless lakes are a beautiful thing and by simply adding one fish to a fishless lake, it can be ruined forever.

Proteins By Design

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323154349.htm
Biochemists from the University of Pennsylvania have used design and engineering principles in order to build a protein from scratch. This protein was built to transport oxygen to the brain and the peripheral nervous system. No one has ever created a protein with its main function being to carry oxygen. To build this protein , these biochemists had to start with three amino acids to get the design in the protein that they wanted. Since heme and oxygen degrade in water, the scientists had to design exteriors of the helix that would repel water. Then, the team had to use chemical tests to prove that their protein did actually capture oxygen, and when it did bind to the iron heme molecule, the reaction took place and there was a color change from dark red to scarlet, almost identical to natural neuroglobin. Dutton, part of the team says, "Using the bound oxygen to do chemistry will be like adding the wheels. Our approach to building a simple protein from scratch allows us to add on, without getting more and more complicated.”

Ice Cubes in Space

In late 2004 and 2005, two large icy bodies where discovered at the fringes of the solar system. The two moons have surfaces unlike most Kuiper Belt objects. They are made of nearly pure crystals. The larger moon is called Hi'iaka and the smaller is called Namaka. Both moos are two small to have gone under any heating prossess that might have caused the heavier elements to sink to their cores. Micheal Brown of the Califronia Institite of Techhnology in Pasadena, who codiscovered the moons, said, "These things could be, essentially, ice cubes." He feels that the two moons were chipped off the surface of the dwarf planet Haumea, due to a cataclysmic event. Hawaiin mythology has said that Hi'iaka and Namaka are both the duaghter so of Haumea, the goddess of fertility. Brown commented sayd that they are indeed offspings of the dwarf planent.
In the next couple of years namaka will travel across different sections of Haumea. This will tell researchers the exact shape and size of the moons. Finally, on July 2, 2009, Namaka will pass in front of Hi'iaka revealing various new information about both bodies.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/42280/title/Ice_cubes_in_space

Stem Cell Research: New Way To Make Stem Cells Avoids Risk Of Cancer

The team of researchers reports that it has created induced human pluripotent stem (iPS) cells completely free of viral vectors and exotic genes. By reprogramming skin cells to an embryonic state using a plasmid rather than a virus to ferry reprogramming genes into adult cells, the Wisconsin group's work removes a key safety concern about the potential use of iPS cells in therapeutic settings.The new method, which is reported in March 26 in the journal Science, also removes the exotic reprogramming genes from the iPS equation, as the plasmid and the genes it carries do not integrate into an induced cell's genome and can be screened out of subsequent generations of cells. Thus, cells made using the new method are completely free of any genetic artifacts that could compromise therapeutic safety or skew research results, according to the Science report.

The new work was conducted in the laboratory of James Thomson, the UW-Madison scientist who was the first to successfully culture human embryonic stem cells in 1998 and, in 2007, co-discovered a way to make human-induced pluripotent stem cells. Thomson, a professor in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, is also the director of regenerative biology for the Morgridge Institute for Research, the private, nonprofit side of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison. "We believe this is the first time human-induced pluripotent stem cells have been created that are completely free of vector and transgene sequences," says Thomson. The new study was led by geneticist Junying Yu, the Wisconsin researcher who, with Thomson, co-discovered a method for reprogramming adult skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, the master cells that arise at the earliest stages of development and that ultimately develop into all 220 cell types in the human body.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090326141547.htm

A Polymer Coating That Can Heal Itself Thanks to UV Light http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/science/17obheal.html?ref=science

For years scientists have been trying to develop a self-healing polymer for use on cars, furniture and other objects, which, like skin, after a crack or scratch occurs quickly heals itself. Many believed that the answer was to embed paints with microspheres that when broken in the act of a scratch or crack, chemicals flow from the tiny spheres into the void. Biswajit Ghosh and Marek W. Urban of the university of Southern Mississippi have come up with another approach, which incorporates not a sphere but a ring-shaped chemical, oxetane, that is incorporated in the polyurethane polymer. Another compound in the polymer, chitosan, forms cross-links at the laces where the oxetane breaks, healing the scratch. Given that the last of your car scratches receives plenty of UV light, which is used as energy to reform broken bonds, and has this amazing type of paint, that scratch could disappear before the next time you drive it. No more annoying and unsightly scratches!!!!

Undersea Volcano Erupts Off Tonga Coast

On March 18, an undersea volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga shooting clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky above the South Pacific ocean. This volcano was one of the many undersea volcanoes in an an area where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered. It has been said that it was a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale. The undersea volcano has sent smoke and steam 13 miles into the atmosphere. There was no sign the offshore eruption posed any danger to residents, he said, with trade winds blowing gas and steam away from the island. Residents said the steam and ash column first appeared on Monday morning, after a series of sharp earthquakes were felt in the capital, Nuku'alofa. A similar eruption like this had occurred in the same area in 2002.

http://news.aol.com/article/undersea-tonga-volcano/386757

Waking up dormant HIV

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/22822/Waking_up_dormant_HIV.html

HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) has emerged as an extremely effective HIV treatment that keeps virus levels almost undetectable; however, HAART can never truly eradicate the virus as some HIV always remains dormant in cells. But, a chemical called suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), recently approved as a leukemia drug, has now been shown to 'turn on' latent HIV, making it an attractive candidate to weed out the hidden virus that HAART misses. the researchers examined whether SAHA had any effect on HIV latency. They found that SAHA could indeed stimulate latent HIV to begin replicating, which exposes the infected cell to HAART drugs. SAHA could activate HIV in both laboratory cells as well as from blood samples taken from HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. Most importantly, this successful activation was achieved using clinical doses of SAHA, suggesting toxicity will not be a problem.

E.P.A. Proposes Tracking Industry Emissions

The Environmental Tracking Industries Emissions (E.P.A) proposed a rule requiring a broad range of industries to tally and report their greenhouse gas emissions.The proposal would require about 13,000 factories, power plants and other facilities to report their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases that are linked to global warming according to the climate scientists. The E.P.A. says that the rule, promulgated under the Clean Air Act, would account for 85 percent to 90 percent of the country’s emissions of heat-trapping gases, excluding small manufactures.“This is the foundation of any serious program to cap and reduce global warming pollution,” said the policy director for the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The E.P.A. estimated that the cost to industry would be $160 million in the first year, then fall to $127 million a year. Manufacturers would be required to report emissions from the vehicles they make. Automobile Manufactures are saying that theirorganization was still reviewing the proposal, but that the reporting requirement was not new for the automobile industry.“E.P.A. already knows the carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles,” a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said, “because E.P.A. measures grams per mile of CO2 from automobiles.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/washington/11epa.html?_r=1&ref=science

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/43684/Teenage_stress_has_implications_for_adult_health.html

Teenage Stress has Implications for Adult Health

Links have now been made between stress in the teenage years and later development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has been proven that even the healthiest of teenagers are experiencing stress and inflammation during their adulthood. Fights with peers have been declared powerful predictors that lead to such immense stress. No matter how often these stresses occur, they can still impact teenagers greatly.

From a teenager's point of view, stress takes up a big part of our lives. Our mind is always filled with thoughts regarding other subjects when we should be focusing on the task at hand. Both physically and mentally we are all tired and could use a break. To know that all this stress could quite possibly affect us in our adulthood is frightening. With more research and study, hopefully the overall stress of everyone can be limited to a minimum amount not only for our own sanity but our personal health. 

The article could have shown more examples and provided more information. I felt as if i was getting the same information over and over again when i actually wanted to learn something new. The topic was well presented and proved the point but a lack of information suggests that there is more research to do. 

Testing times for Chameleon chromium

A new standard for chemical testinghas been developed for a carcinogenic chromium salt. US scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have issued a new reference material that will help envionmental scientists detect the cancer causing pollutant more accurately in soil samples. This new eference will provide a benchmark for high qualit chemical measurnments needed to guide cleanup efforts. Reprocessed chromium waste contians compounds of both trivalent and hexavalent forms of Chromium. In the 40's and 50's this waste was dumped on sites all over the US. They now all require cleanup. Cleanup efforts are confused by the ambiguous chemistr of chromium. Its ions interact with organic carbon and iron in the soil and are affected by soil pH. The result of this is that the higher VI or lower III oxidation state may be present at different levels. This may pose significent threas to health do to leaking into ground water through environmental exposure. To aid in reducing uncertainty surrounding these important measurements. Scientist have prepared and assigned certified values for standard reference material. The standard reference material will allow investigators to calibrate their analytical equipment and so identify safe or contaminated sites much more precisely.

http://www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/spotlight/issue69/testing_times_chameleon_ch.html

Satellite will Track CO2

Thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide is found in the air from burning fossil fuel every year. Half remain in the air while the other half disappears. The NANA satellite scheduled to be launched on Tuesday will help to understand the goings of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the main heat-trapping gas behind the warming of the planet.
The new data could help improve climate models and the understanding of carbon sinks what are oceans that absorb. Some year’s carbon dioxide stays in the air which indicates some of the sinks that absorb some of the carbon dioxide. There are variations each year so some years it will stay in the air and some years it will disappear. “Something out there is changing dramatically,” said David Crisp, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is the principal investigator of the mission. Before the beginning of the Industrial revolution the CO2 levels were about 280 parts per million. The level is 387 parts per million today and is projected to rise sharply in the coming decades. Scientists have a good estimate about how much CO2 is being released because of the burning of fossil fuels but other human impacts like clearing forest and harvesting crops also affects CO2 but scientists yet know how.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/science/earth/23carbon.html?_r=1&ref=science

Theory and Experiment Meet, and a New Form of Boron Is Found

Artem R. Oganov, a professor of geosciences at Stony Brook University, calls “a stream of discoveries and misdiscoveries.” . They have found a form of boron that is nearly as hard as diamond. In 1808, within a week and a half of each other, two research efforts, led by chemists Sir Humphrey Davy in London and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard in Paris, announced that they had isolated boron. They had not. Another great chemist, Henri Moissan, later showed that the two earlier groups had made a compound consisting of 60 percent boron. Moissan also claimed to have isolated boron. He too was wrong, although he did do better: a compound with 90 percent boron.Not until 1909 was a sample of 99 percent pure boron produced.boron comes in multiple forms — as many as 16 have been reported. Alpha boron, is a dark but transparent red. Beta boron is black and looks like coal. Even today, scientists do not definitively know which of these two forms is the stable form. (It is probably beta boron.) The third form is a horrendously complicated structure known as T-192. The fourth form is the newly discovered one.

Obama Welcomed By Scientists

With a new president comes a new world of science. When Obama said he would “restore science to its rightful place,” he was signaling an end to eight years of stark tension between science and government. Science staff members held parties in the office on this day because it was a start to a new beginning after the tensions of the last eight years. Obama plans to build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together, something that Bush had not done. With expectations so high, and promises of progress in stubborn areas like alternative energy, Obama has a lot of eyes watching him. With a new president, and a new beginning Obama is bound to have great success in renewing the bond between scince and government.

Current Events-Nicole Carpenter

Europe has recently taken little effort to reduce the release of power related carbons into the atmosphere, but by establishing an Emissions Preformance Standards (EPS) in Europe, it would do so in the least costly way. Currently, Europe has not outlawed any systems, like coal fueling of factories, which are very high in pollution. However, enforcing the EPS would ensure Europe to only invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and capturing the CO2. If the rules of the ETS were enforced, by 2020, Europe will have cut their green house gas emissions by two-thirds. It would be more cost-effective than ensuring this act later, and the government could make money from selling green gas emission permits rather than giving away. The EPS has great potential to greatly reduce the amount of green house gas emittents in Europe.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090120171459.htm

New studies conducted by NASA may suggest that the moon may have not always been a desolate, frozen wasteland.  A rock, collected on the first trip to the moon 36 years ago has shown a surprising clue that leads to the conclusion of there once being a volcanic and molten surface.  This was concluded when the rock, Troctolite 76535 which is made up of olivine and plagioclase, was found to have a magnetic field.  A magnetic field can indicate either, a large collision creating an extreme amount of force and heat, or  the constant melting and solidifying of iron.  Due to troctolite 76535 being made 300 million years after the moon was made there could have been no cataclysmic collision.  Another point of evidence supporting the thought of a volcanic surface and a magnetic field around the moon is that earthquakes have been occurring periodically on the moon.  This is due to a molten core heating and congealing under the surface, which causes tremors.  The magnetic field generated by the once molten surface and the still molten core lead experts to believe that a magnetic field about a fifteenth as strong as Earth's once existed on the moon.

www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/science/space/20moon.html_?r=&ref=science

Current Events-Medicaid

New York City’s governor, David Paterson, wants release a budget next week that will include cuts to the state Medicaid program to reimburse hospitals and doctors for services to low-income patients. This program would provide for broken bones to be put in casts, but treatment for asthma may be cut back. Many State officials argue that New York has been inefficient in Medicare spending, and use money toward expensive hospital treatment of problems that could be handled in the doctor’s office. On the other hand, many people are saying that hospitals employ more people than on Wall Street and cutting back the budget would hurt salaries of employees, causing many to be laid off because of the cut back of money brought into the hospitals. Also, this proposal would affect everyone in the state greatly, as 30% of hospitals are Medicaid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/nyregion/11hospitals.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

New drug combo may boost stem cell production

Researchers announced Thursday that a combination of drugs (using Genzyme Corp's Mozobil ) shows it may be possible to make bone marrow produce & release extra adult stem cells into the bloodstream to repair the heart and broken bones.
Researchers hope that studying this through mice can be used in the future to help tackle autoimmune diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis -> where the body confuses healthy tissues for foreign substances and therefore, attacks itself). Hoping to release extra stem cells, we could potentially call up extra numbers of whichever stem cells the body needs, hoping to lead to new treatments of various diseases and injuries by mobilizing a person’s own stem cells from within. Stem cells are the body's master cells, giving rise to various tissues and the blood. They are found throughout the organs, blood and tissue and are in immature form until they generate needed cell types.

Sometime in the future, doctors hope to use stem cells in a new field called regenerative medicine in which tailor-made transplants of tissues and perhaps organs can be grown from a patient's own cells.
To start experimenting with the mice, they treated them with two naturally occurring proteins in the bone marrow called VEGF and G-CSF growth factor. Then the mice received a shot of Genzyme's stem-cell transplantation drug Mozobil.
The G-CSF in combination with the Mozobil produced hematopeotic stem cells (stimulates stem cells involving in making blood cells) Researchers wanted to see if the VEGF growth factor stimulated other types of stem cells involved in building heart, bone tissue, and blood vessels.
The results of the experiment found that the mice given the VEGF and Mozobil released about 100 times more stem cells into the bloodstream compared to the mice that didn’t receive the treatment. The next step is determining whether this technique can be used to actually repair damage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/science/space/11planet.html?_r=1&ref=space

CARBON DIOXIDE (NO S.U.V.'s) DETECTED ON A DISTANT PLANET

Astronomers have found traces, around one part per million to 10 parts per million, of Carbon Dioxide on planet HD 189733b, 63 light years away, while attempting to search for extraterrestrial life. In reality, the planet is far too large and far to hot to support any life, but this discovery goes to prove the capabilities that scientists now have at their disposal. When HD 189733b passed directly in front of and behind its parent star as it orbited, astronomers were able to compare the near-infrared light from the star alone (when the planet was behind it) with the combined light from both using the Hubble Space Telescope. The difference between the two spectrums revealed the light emitted from the planet and the mix of colors in the planet's light contained the telltale signs of carbon dioxide. This discovery came as a big surprise since carbon would prefer to from Carbon monoxide or Methane given the stellar situation, but this discovery further draws the question over the possibility of life in the universe that surrounds us.  

Carbonates confirmed on Mars

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/December/120801.asp

New discoveries of Mars appear to show large outcrops of carbonate bearing rocks, indicating that regions of the Red Planet could once have been an ideal environment for life to thrive. Around four billion years ago, the climate of Mars was similar to Earth, with water on the surface and a carbon dioxide atmosphere. However, since Mars has no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind, the atmosphere was gradually stripped away and dramatic climate change turned the planet into an inhospitable desert. The chemical composition of rocks on the surface provides a clue for determining whether or not life could have survived on Mars. If conditions were right for carbonate-bearing rocks to form, they would also have been favorable for life. However, previous studies of Martian soil by missions such as the Mars Exploration Rovers in 2004 have found very little carbonate indicating that any water on the Martian surface was likely to be far too acidic to have supported life.