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Four Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have partnered with Los Angeles-based SoCalGas and Munich, Germany-based Electrochaea to develop an electrobioreactor to allow excess renewable electricity from wind and solar sources to be stored in chemical bonds as renewable natural gas.

When renewable electricity supply exceeds demand, electric-utility operators intentionally curtail production of renewable electricity to avoid overloading the grid. In 2020, in California, more than 1.5 million megawatt hours of renewable electricity were curtailed, enough to power more than 100,000 households for a full year.

This practice also occurs in other countries. The team’s electrobioreactor uses the renewable electricity to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. The microbes then use the hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide into methane, which is a major component of natural gas. Methane can then be moved around in natural gas pipelines and can be stored indefinitely, allowing the renewable energy to be recovered when it is most needed.

For the first time, scientists have developed artificial nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, with several additional properties in the laboratory. The DNA carries the genetic information of all living organisms and consists of only four different building blocks, the nucleotides. Nucleotides are composed of three distinctive parts: a sugar molecule, a phosphate group and one of the four nucleobases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. The nucleotides are lined up millions of times and form the DNA double helix, similar to a spiral staircase. Scientists from the UoC’s Department of Chemistry have now shown that the structure of nucleotides can be modified to a great extent in the laboratory.

The researchers developed so-called threofuranosyl nucleic acid (TNA) with a new, additional base pair. These are the first steps on the way to fully artificial nucleic acids with enhanced chemical functionalities. The study ‘Expanding the Horizon of the Xeno Nucleic Acid Space: Threose Nucleic Acids with Increased Information Storage’ was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Artificial nucleic acids differ in structure from their originals.

Are you or someone you know struggling with porn addiction? Do you wonder how to quit porn effectively? To quit porn addiction, we need to understand the root causes of porn addiction first. This is a tough subject to talk about, which is why we made this video.

“Cannabis vapes are newly regulated products in Canada, so we don’t yet have much scientific data about them,” said Dr. Andrew Waye. “This is an opportunity for us to look at some of the questions concerning the risks and unknowns of cannabis vapes.”

Do vapes pose health risks on par with the very tobacco and cannabis products it’s using to safeguard against? This is what a recent study presented at the ACS (American Chemical Society) Spring 2024 meeting hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential health risks that vaping devices could pose, specifically pertaining to the vaping liquids that possess toxic metal nanoparticles, with both regulated and unregulated vaping devices. This study holds the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the long-term health risks by vaping, which until now have been deemed a “safer” alternative to smoking cigarettes or cannabis.

MRNA with engineered poly(A) tails produces prolonged higher levels of protein.

And the g-forces???

Rockets being passé, China is working on using an electromagnetic railgun to launch crewed spacecraft the size of a Boeing 737, weighing 50 tonnes, into orbit. This remarkably ambitious project is even more ambitious than it seems at first glance.

Call it a railgun, a catapult, or a mass driver, the idea of replacing rockets with an electromagnetic accelerator is a very attractive option. Instead of lifting off on chemical rockets that have to carry fuel and fuel to lift the fuel and fuel to lift the fuel and the additional fuel, it makes more sense to keep as much of the launching system on the ground while leaving the vehicle as light as possible.

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Astrophysicists have a cerium problem—models predict that certain stars should contain much less of this heavy element than astrophysical observations find. Recently performed experiments at CERN’s neutron time-of-flight (n_TOF) facility have widened the gap between theory and observations by 20% [1]. The researchers behind the work say that the results highlight the need for high-accuracy measurements of the nuclear properties of atoms, as well as for updated nucleosynthesis models of element formation. “Our experiment made the problem worse,” says Simone Amaducci of the INFN Laboratori Nationali del Sud, Italy. “That was unexpected, but it’s also interesting because it means there is something we don’t understand about how nucleosynthesis happens.”

Most of the Universe’s heavier elements form in stars via one of the so-called neutron-capture processes, in which an atomic nucleus absorbs one or more neutrons. In the slow neutron-capture process, or “s process,” the absorptions are spread out in time. As such, each absorption event results in either a stable nucleus with the same number of protons but one additional neutron or an unstable nucleus, which then radioactively decays to produce the nucleus of the next element in the periodic table—the one with one additional proton.

Using currently available models of the s process, researchers have correctly predicted the abundances of elements as heavy as barium (56 protons), lanthanum (57 protons), praseodymium (59 protons), and neodymium (60 protons) in stars that are known to be enriched via the s process. But the models appear to break down for cerium (58 protons), as the abundance predictions for this element in some low-mass, low-metallicity globular cluster stars have disagreed by up to 30% with observations. “This discrepancy is very strange, as the theory works for the neighboring elements,” says Sergio Cristallo, a team member who works on problems related to neutron capture at the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy. “There is nothing in the models that should cause such a discrepancy just for one element.”

In an article published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Brazilian researchers describe a strategy to enhance the efficiency and stability of solar cells made of perovskite, a semiconductor material produced in the laboratory. The results of the project could be highly positive for the future of the solar power sector.

Developed by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, the method involves the use of a class of materials known as MXenes, a family of two-dimensional materials with a graphene-like structure combining transition metals, carbon and/or nitrogen, and surface functional groups such as fluoride, oxygen or hydroxyl. Their properties include high electrical conductivity, good thermal stability, and high transmittance (relating to the amount of light that passes through a substance without being reflected or absorbed).

Scientists from Massey University in New Zealand, the University of Mainz in Germany, Sorbonne University in France, and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) discuss the limit of the periodic table and revising the concept of the “island of stability” with recent advances in superheavy element research. Their work first appeared in Nature Reviews Physics.

In addition to the Nature Reviews Physics, Physics Reports has published a review on the atomic electronic structure theory for superheavy elements.

What is the heaviest bound nucleus and the heaviest bound atom and what are their properties? The nuclei of chemical elements with more than 103 protons are labeled as “superheavy.” They are part of a vast unknown territory of these nuclei that scientists are trying to uncover. Exploring this uncharted territory provides prospects for discoveries that connect the broad areas of science.