Exoplanet hunters should check for N2O

TRAPPIST-1 system
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists at UC Riverside are suggesting something is missing from the typical roster of chemicals that astrobiologists use to search for life on planets around other stars — laughing gas.

Chemical compounds in a planet’s atmosphere that could indicate life, called biosignatures, typically include gases found in abundance in Earth’s atmosphere today.

“There’s been a lot of thought put into oxygen and methane as biosignatures. Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake,” said Eddie Schwieterman, an astrobiologist in UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

This conclusion, and the modeling work that led to it, are detailed in an article published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

To reach it, Schwieterman led a team of researchers that determined how much nitrous oxide living things on a planet similar to Earth could possibly produce. They then made models simulating that planet around different kinds of stars and determined amounts of N2O that could be detected by an observatory like the James Webb Space Telescope.

Driving high? Chemists make strides toward a marijuana breath analyzer

The researchers’ THC-powered fuel cell sensor, with its H-shaped glass chamber.
Credit: Evan Darzi 

A UCLA chemist and colleagues are now a step closer to their goal of developing a handheld tool similar to an alcohol Breathalyzer that can detect THC on a person’s breath after they’ve smoked marijuana.

In a paper published in the journal Organic Letters, UCLA organic chemistry professor Neil Garg and researchers from the UCLA startup ElectraTect Inc. describe the process by which THC introduced, in a solution, into their laboratory-built device can be oxidized, creating an electric current whose strength indicates how much of the psychoactive compound is present.

With the recent legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in many states, including California, the availability of a Breathalyzer-like tool could help make roadways safer, the researchers said. Studies have shown that consumption of marijuana impairs certain driving skills and is associated with a significantly elevated risk of accidents.

In 2020, Garg and UCLA postdoctoral researcher Evan Darzi discovered that removing a hydrogen molecule from the larger THC molecule caused it to change colors in a detectable way. The process, known as oxidation, is similar to that used in alcohol breath analyzers, which convert ethanol into an organic chemical compound through the loss of hydrogen. In most modern alcohol breath analyzer devices, this oxidation leads to an electric current that shows the presence and concentration of ethanol in the breath.

Since their 2020 finding, the researchers have been working with their patent-pending oxidation technology to develop a THC breath analyzer that works similarly. ElectraTect has exclusively licensed the patent rights from UCLA.

Bristol physicists play key role in new measurement relating the Higgs boson to dark matter

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Geneva, Switzerland
Credit: Brice, Maximilien: CERN

Researchers from the University of Bristol have been working with scientists globally to further unravel the way a unique fundamental particle, known as the Higgs boson, might interact with dark matter.

The team of physicists helped conduct the experimental analysis from the most powerful particle accelerator ever built – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Analyzing data collected with a general-purpose detector called the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), at the LHC, they searched for invisible decays of the Higgs boson and achieved the most precise results to date, allowing for new insights into dark matter properties.

The results, presented at the 12th Higgs Hunting Conference in Paris last month, provide the strongest constraints on how dark matter interacts with the normal matter in our universe, assuming the dark matter mass is similar to or a few times heavier than that of a proton.

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson 10 years ago, scientists at CERN have made rapid progress in measuring and determining the properties of this unique fundamental particle by studying the different ways in which it decays. One of the most intriguing channels to search for is the “invisible” channel – a decay to particles that the experimental apparatus cannot detect. In the Standard Model of particle physics such an invisible decay is predicted to happen once in every 1000 Higgs boson decays by decaying into four neutrinos, the only “invisible” particles known in the Standard Model.

Scientists chart how exercise affects the body

MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers mapped out many of the cells, genes, and cellular pathways that are modified by exercise or high-fat diet.
Photo Credit: Gabin Vallet

Exercise is well-known to help people lose weight and avoid gaining it. However, identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie this process has proven difficult because so many cells and tissues are involved.

In a new study in mice that expands researchers’ understanding of how exercise and diet affect the body, MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers have mapped out many of the cells, genes, and cellular pathways that are modified by exercise or high-fat diet. The findings could offer potential targets for drugs that could help to enhance or mimic the benefits of exercise, the researchers say.

“It is extremely important to understand the molecular mechanisms that are drivers of the beneficial effects of exercise and the detrimental effects of a high-fat diet, so that we can understand how we can intervene, and develop drugs that mimic the impact of exercise across multiple tissues,” says Manolis Kellis, a professor of computer science in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and a member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The researchers studied mice with high-fat or normal diets, who were either sedentary or given the opportunity to exercise whenever they wanted. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the researchers cataloged the responses of 53 types of cells found in skeletal muscle and two types of fatty tissue.

Dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered global tsunami that scoured seafloor thousands of miles from impact site

The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species.

It also triggered a monstrous tsunami with mile-high waves that scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles from the impact site on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, according to a new University of Michigan-led study.

The study, published online Oct. 4 in the journal AGU Advances, presents the first global simulation of the Chicxulub impact tsunami to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. In addition, U-M researchers reviewed the geological record at more than 100 sites worldwide and found evidence that supports their models’ predictions about the tsunami’s path and power.

“This tsunami was strong enough to disturb and erode sediments in ocean basins halfway around the globe, leaving either a gap in the sedimentary records or a jumble of older sediments,” said lead author Molly Range, who conducted the modeling study for a master’s thesis under U-M physical oceanographer and study co-author Brian Arbic and U-M paleoceanographer and study co-author Ted Moore.

Artificial Enzyme Splits Water

Enzyme-like water preorganization in front of a Ruthenium water oxidation catalyst.
Image credit: Team Würthner

Progress has been made on the path to sunlight-driven production of hydrogen. Chemists from Würzburg present a new enzyme-like molecular catalyst for water oxidation.

Mankind is facing a central challenge: it must manage the transition to a sustainable and carbon dioxide-neutral energy economy.

Hydrogen is considered a promising alternative to fossil fuels. It can be produced from water using electricity. If the electricity comes from renewable sources, it is called green hydrogen. But it would be even more sustainable if hydrogen could be produced directly with the energy of sunlight.

In nature, light-driven water splitting takes place during photosynthesis in plants. Plants use a complex molecular apparatus for this, the so-called photosystem II. Mimicking its active center is a promising strategy for realizing the sustainable production of hydrogen. A team led by Professor Frank Würthner at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Center for Nanosystems Chemistry at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) is working on this.

Solar Harvesting System has Potential to Generate Solar Power 24/7

Bo Zhao, Kalsi Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering, and his doctoral student, Sina Jafari Ghalekohneh, have created new architecture that improves the efficiency of solar energy harvesting to the thermodynamic limit.
Source: University of Houston

The great inventor Thomas Edison once said, “So long as the sun shines, man will be able to develop power in abundance.”

He wasn’t the first great mind to marvel at the notion of harnessing the power of the sun; for centuries inventors have been pondering and perfecting the way to harvest solar energy.

They’ve done an amazing job with photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight directly into energy. And still, with all the research, history and science behind it, there are limits to how much solar power can be harvested and used – as its generation is restricted only to the daytime.

A University of Houston professor is continuing the historic quest, reporting on a new type of solar energy harvesting system that breaks the efficiency record of all existing technologies. And no less important, it clears the way to use solar power 24/7.

"With our architecture, the solar energy harvesting efficiency can be improved to the thermodynamic limit,” reports Bo Zhao, Kalsi Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering and his doctoral student Sina Jafari Ghalekohneh in the journal Physical Review Applied. The thermodynamic limit is the absolute maximum theoretically possible conversion efficiency of sunlight into electricity.

Finding more efficient ways to harness solar energy is critical to transitioning to a carbon-free electric grid. According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, solar could account for as much as 40% of the nation’s electricity supply by 2035 and 45% by 2050, pending aggressive cost reductions, supportive policies and large-scale electrification.

Mouse-human comparison shows unimagined functions of the Thalamus

With mathematical models, Bochum and US researchers have simulated processes in the brain of mice and humans.
Credit: RUB, Marquard

Researchers have reproduced the brain functions of the mouse and human in the computer. Artificial intelligence could learn from this.

For a long time, the thalamus was considered a brain region that is primarily responsible for processing sensory stimuli. Current studies have increased the evidence that it is a central switch in cognitive processes. Researchers of neuroscience around Prof. Dr. Burkhard Pleger in Collaborative Research Center 874 of the Ruhr University Bochum and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA) observed learning processes in the brains of mice and humans and reproduced them in mathematical models. They were able to show that the region of the mediodoral nucleus in the thalamus has a decisive share in cognitive flexibility. They report in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Restoring abandoned agricultural land in the Murray-Darling Basin

Abandoned agricultural land in the Murray Darling Basin.
Photo credit: Peta Zivec

A Griffith study has found the number of diverse seeds stored in abandoned land in the Murray-Darling Basin and essential paddock trees, make the region highly resilient to agriculture.

Published in Restoration Ecology, the study investigated the ability of semi-arid landscapes in the northern MDB to store seeds in soil seed banks, animal scat and in leaf litter and assessed the species richness, abundance and composition of these seed banks.

“Restoring abandoned agricultural lands is vital for the Murray-Darling Basin to revive the key ecological functions and services the river and its surrounding regions once provided,” said Dr Peta Zivec, a research fellow at the Australian Rivers Institute

“With large-scale regeneration projects being extremely costly and labor intensive, natural regeneration, where the vegetation regrows via the seeds already stored within the landscape, can be a cost-effective alternative approach to restoring large agricultural areas.

Technology for Conditioning Radioactive Waste Developed in Ural Region

The containers have a metal insert with a sorbent.
Photo credit: EKSORB press-service

Ural specialists have developed and tested a technology for conditioning (conversion from liquid to solid state) of liquid radioactive waste. The traditional scheme involves mixing sorbent enriched with radioactive isotopes of cesium-134 and 137 and cobalt-60 during the purification of liquid radioactive waste with cement mortar and placing it in special concrete protective containers. However, this requires a large number of containers, which increases the cost of processing and the volume of storage facilities to place the containers. Composite inorganic sorbents have been gaining popularity lately because they concentrate radionuclides very well from a large volume of liquid with a small volume of the sorbents themselves.

Scientists have developed a technology that makes it possible to condition liquid radioactive waste and then safely store the resulting solid waste. The technology is being developed by the EKSORB Scientific Production Enterprise (Ekaterinburg) with the support of the Foundation for Assistance to Innovations and in cooperation with the Ural Federal University.

The specialists tested the technology on a pilot plant. It was used to clean more than three cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste of BN-350 Reactor. As a result, the activity of cesium-137 decreased from 78 million Bq/L to 20 Bq/L, cobalt-60 - from 10 thousand Bq/L to less than 400 Bq/L. The clean concrete product was obtained from the cleaned solutions. After cleaning, the resulting solid waste can be stored safely, the developers assure.