Magnetic Field Helps Thick Battery Electrodes Tackle Electric Vehicle Challenges

Source: University of Texas at Austin

As electric vehicles grow in popularity, the spotlight shines more brightly on some of their remaining major issues. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are tackling two of the bigger challenges facing electric vehicles: limited range and slow recharging.

The researchers fabricated a new type of electrode for lithium-ion batteries that could unleash greater power and faster charging. They did this by creating thicker electrodes – the positively and negatively charged parts of the battery that deliver power to a device – using magnets to create a unique alignment that sidesteps common problems associated with sizing up these critical components.

The result is an electrode that could potentially facilitate twice the range on a single charge for an electric vehicle, compared with a battery using an existing commercial electrode.

“Two-dimensional materials are commonly believed as a promising candidate for high-rate energy storage applications because it only needs to be several nanometers thick for rapid charge transport,” said Guihua Yu, a professor in UT Austin’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Texas Materials Institute. “However, for thick-electrode-design-based next-generation, high-energy batteries, the restacking of nanosheets as building blocks can cause significant bottlenecks in charge transport, leading to difficulty in achieving both high energy and fast charging.”

The key to the discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses thin two-dimensional materials as the building blocks of the electrode, stacking them to create thickness and then using a magnetic field to manipulate their orientations. The research team used commercially available magnets during the fabrication process to arrange the two-dimensional materials in a vertical alignment, creating a fast lane for ions to travel through the electrode.

To Stop Viruses, SDSU Researchers are Figuring Out How They're Built

Multiple protein subunits (green, purple and red) of a plant-infecting virus have separate nucleation and growth phases similar to the MS2 bacteria-infecting virus (right).
Source: Protein Data Bank.

An SDSU team, along with Harvard and UCLA collaborators, are researching how distantly related viruses self-organize to improve disease-fighting tactics.

Without a multi-page instruction manual or a commanding Captain America, how do viruses assemble hundreds of individual pieces into elaborate structures capable of spreading disease?

Solving the secret of self-assembly can pave the way for engineering advancements like molecules and robots that put themselves together. It could also contribute to more efficient packaging, automated delivery and targeted design of medicine in the fight against viruses that cause colds, diarrhea, liver cancer and polio.

“If we understand the physical rules of how viruses assemble, then we can try to make them form incorrect structures to hinder their spread,” said Rees Garmann, a chemist at San Diego State University and lead author of a new paper published in the journal PNAS that fills in a piece of the puzzle.

An ocean inside the Earth? Water hundreds of kilometers down

The diamond from Botswana revealed to the scientists that considerable amounts of water are stored in the rock at a depth of more than 600 kilometers.
Photo credit: Tingting Gu, Gemological Institute of America, New York, NY, USA

The transition zone between the Earth's upper and lower mantle contains considerable quantities of water, according to an international study involving the Institute for Geosciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The German-Italian-American research team analyzed a rare diamond formed 660 meters below the Earth's surface using techniques including Raman spectroscopy and FTIR spectrometry. The study confirmed something that for a long time was only a theory, namely that ocean water accompanies subducting slabs and thus enters the transition zone. This means that our planet's water cycle includes the Earth's interior. 

Study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

An ocean inside the Earth? Water hundreds of kilometers down It is located at a depth of 410 to 660 kilometers. The immense pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ causes the olive-green mineral olivine, which constitutes around 70 percent of the Earth's upper mantle and is also called peridot, to alter its crystalline structure. At the upper boundary of the transition zone, at a depth of about 410 kilometers, it is converted into denser wadsleyite; at 520 kilometers it then metamorphoses into even denser ringwoodite.

Is SARS-CoV-2 hiding in your fat cells?

Left: Catherine Blish, MD, PhD, professor of infectious diseases. Right: Tracey McLaughlin, MD, professor of endocrinology.
Source: Stanford Medicine | Stanford University

A study by Stanford Medicine investigators shows that SARS-CoV-2 can infect human fat tissue. This phenomenon was seen in laboratory experiments conducted on fat tissue excised from patients undergoing bariatric and cardiac surgeries, and later infected in a laboratory dish with SARS-CoV-2. It was further confirmed in autopsy samples from deceased COVID-19 patients.

Obesity is an established, independent risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as for the patients’ progression, once infected, to severe disease and death. Reasons offered for this increased vulnerability range from impaired breathing resulting from the pressure of extra weight to altered immune responsiveness in obese people.

But the new study provides a more direct reason: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can directly infect adipose tissue (which most of us refer to as just plain “fat”). That, in turn, cooks up a cycle of viral replication within resident fat cells, or adipocytes, and causes pronounced inflammation in immune cells that hang out in fat tissue. The inflammation even converts uninfected “bystander” cells within the tissue into an inflammatory state.

Discovery of Er Blood Group System

Scientists from the University of Bristol and NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT) have discovered a rare new blood group system. The findings, published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, also solve a 30-year mystery.

A person’s blood type is determined by the presence or absence of proteins known as blood groups that are present on the surface of red blood cells. Although most people are familiar with the concept of blood groups such as ABO or Rh (the plus or minus), there are many other important blood groups. Where mismatches exist between one person’s blood and that of another, the possibility of alloimmunization (the process by which a person generates an antibody against a blood group antigen that they do not carry) arises. The presence of alloantibodies can have clinical consequences in transfusion or pregnancy by triggering an attack by the immune system

Researchers from Bristol’s School of Biochemistry and NHSBT’s International Blood Group Reference Laboratory (IBGRL) spearheaded an international collaboration which sought to investigate a 30-year mystery surrounding the basis of three known, but genetically uncharacterized, antigens that did not fit into any known blood group system.

A potential new treatment for brain tumors

Featured photo at top of Pankaj Desai, left, and senior graduate research assistant Aniruddha Karve, right, in the lab.
Photo credit: Andrew Higley | University of Cincinnati

A research question posed in Pankaj Desai’s lab has led to a decade of research, a clinical trial and major national funding to further investigate a potential new treatment for the deadliest form of brain tumors.

Desai, PhD, and his team at the University of Cincinnati recently received a $1.19 million grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to continue research into the use of a drug called letrozole to treat glioblastomas (GBM).

Research progression

GBMs are aggressive brain tumors that patients often are unaware of until symptoms emerge and the tumor is substantial. Current treatments include immediate surgery to safely remove as much tumor as possible, radiation and chemotherapy, but the tumor often recurs or becomes resistant to treatments. The average patient survives no more than 15 months after diagnosis.

The medication letrozole was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for postmenopausal women with breast cancer in 2001. The drug works by targeting an enzyme called aromatase that is present in breast cancer cells and helps the cancer grow.

DNA nets capture COVID-19 virus in low-cost rapid-testing platform

Tiny nets woven from DNA strands cover the spike proteins of the virus that causes COVID-19 and give off a glowing signal in this artist’s rendering. 
Image courtesy of Xing Wang

Tiny nets woven from DNA strands can ensnare the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, lighting up the virus for a fast-yet-sensitive diagnostic test – and also impeding the virus from infecting cells, opening a new possible route to antiviral treatment, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators demonstrated the DNA nets’ ability to detect and impede COVID-19 in human cell cultures in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“This platform combines the sensitivity of clinical PCR tests and the speed and low cost of antigen tests,” said study leader Xing Wang, a professor of bioengineering and of chemistry at Illinois. “We need tests like this for a couple of reasons. One is to prepare for the next pandemic. The other reason is to track ongoing viral epidemics – not only coronaviruses, but also other deadly and economically impactful viruses like HIV or influenza.”

DNA is best known for its genetic properties, but it also can be folded into custom nanoscale structures that can perform functions or specifically bind to other structures much like proteins do. The DNA nets the Illinois group developed were designed to bind to the coronavirus spike protein – the structure that sticks out from the surface of the virus and binds to receptors on human cells to infect them. Once bound, the nets give off a fluorescent signal that can be read by an inexpensive handheld device in about 10 minutes.

Simple Process Extracts Valuable Magnesium Salt from Seawater

Seawater from the PNNL-Sequim campus fueled this research project.
Photo Credit: Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Since ancient times, humans have extracted salts, like table salt, from the ocean. While table salt is the easiest to obtain, seawater is a rich source of different minerals, and researchers are exploring which ones they can pull from the ocean. One such mineral, magnesium, is abundant in the sea and increasingly useful on the land.

Magnesium has emerging sustainability-related applications, including in carbon capture, low-carbon cement, and potential next-generation batteries. These applications are bringing renewed attention to domestic magnesium production. Currently, magnesium is obtained in the United States through an energy-intensive process from salt lake brines, some of which are in danger due to droughts. The Department of Energy included magnesium on its recently released list of critical materials for domestic production.

A paper published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters shows how researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Washington (UW) have found a simple way to isolate a pure magnesium salt, a feedstock for magnesium metal, from seawater. Their new method flows two solutions side-by-side in a long stream. Called the laminar coflow method, the process takes advantage of the fact that the flowing solutions create a constantly reacting boundary. Fresh solutions flow by, never allowing the system to reach a balance.

Air Pollution Can Amplify Negative Effects of Climate Change

Photo credit: Alexei Scutari

The impacts of air pollution on human health, economies and agriculture differ drastically depending on where on the planet the pollutants are emitted, according to a new study that could potentially incentivize certain countries to cut climate-changing emissions.

Led by The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California San Diego, the study is the first to simulate how pollutants affect both climate and air quality for locations around the globe.

The research, which is published in Science Advances, analyzed the climate and air quality impacts of aerosols — tiny solid particles and liquid droplets that contribute to smog and are emitted from industrial factories, power plants and vehicle tailpipes. Aerosols create unique global patterns of impact on human health, agricultural and economic productivity when compared with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are the focus of efforts to mitigate climate change.

Although CO2 and aerosols are often emitted at the same time during the combustion of fuel, the two substances behave differently in Earth’s atmosphere, said co-lead author Geeta Persad, an assistant professor in UT Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences.

Fighting fungal infections with metals

A Petri dish with red agar on which grows a fungal strand in the shape of the element symbol for platinum (Pt).
Credit: CO-ADD

An international collaboration led by researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Queensland in Australia has demonstrated that chemical compounds containing special metals are highly effective in fighting dangerous fungal infections. These results could be used to develop innovative drugs which are effective against resistant bacteria and fungi.

Each year, more than one billion people contract a fungal infection. Although they are harmless to most people, over 1.5 million patients die each year as a result of infections of this kind. While more and more fungal strains are being detected that are resistant to one or more of the available drugs, the development of new drugs has come to a virtual standstill in recent years. Today, only around a dozen clinical trials are underway with new active agents for the treatment of fungal infections. “In comparison with more than a thousand cancer drugs that are currently being tested on human subjects, this is an exceptionally small number,” explains Dr. Angelo Frei of the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Bern, lead author of the study. The results have been published in the journal JACS Au.

Boosting antibiotics research with crowd sourcing

The CO-ADD Team at work in the laboratory.
Credit: CO-ADD

To encourage the development of anti-fungal and antibacterial agents, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have founded the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, or CO-ADD. The ambitious goal of the initiative is to find new antimicrobial active agents by offering chemists worldwide the opportunity to test any chemical compound against bacteria and fungi at no cost. As Frei explains, the initial focus of CO-ADD has been on “organic” molecules, which mainly consist of the elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and do not contain any metals.

However, Frei, who is trying to develop new metal-based antibiotics with his research group at the University of Bern, has found that over 1,000 of the more than 300,000 compounds tested by CO-ADD contained metals. “For most folks, when used in connection with the word ‘people’, the word metal triggers a feeling of unease. The opinion that metals are fundamentally harmful to us is widespread. However, this is only partially true. The decisive factor is which metal is used and in which form,” explains Frei, who is responsible for all the metal compounds in the CO-ADD database.

Low toxicity demonstrated

Dr. Angelo Frei at work in the laboratory.
Credit: Angelo Frei

In their new study, the researchers turned their attention to the metal compounds which showed activity against fungal infections. Here, 21 highly-active metal compounds were tested against various resistant fungal strains. These contained the metals cobalt, nickel, rhodium, palladium, silver, europium, iridium, platinum, molybdenum and gold. “Many of the metal compounds demonstrated a good activity against all fungal strains and were up to 30,000 times more active against fungi than against human cells,” explains Frei. The most active compounds were then tested in a model organism, the larvae of the wax moth. The researchers observed that just one of the eleven tested metal compounds showed signs of toxicity, while the others were well tolerated by the larvae. In the next step, some metal compounds were tested in an infection model, and one compound was effective in reducing the fungal infection in larvae.

Considerable potential for broad application

Metal compounds are not new to the world of medicine: Cisplatin, for example, which contains platinum, is one of the most widely used anti-cancer drugs. Despite this, there is a long way to go before new antimicrobial drugs that contain metals can be approved. “Our hope is that our work will improve the reputation of metals in medical applications and motivate other research groups to further explore this large but relatively unexplored field,” says Frei. “If we exploit the full potential of the periodic table, we may be able to prevent a future where we don’t have any effective antibiotics and active agents to prevent and treat fungal infections.”

The study was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the University of Queensland, among others.

Source/Credit: University of Bern

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