Better insight into molecular interactions

New experimental and theoretical tools allow to listen how molecules in solutions do communicate

2013-08-21

(Press-News.org) "Basically we are looking at how atoms and molecules interact in biochemical materials in solution", says Professor Dr. Emad Flear Aziz, leader of the Young Investigator Group for Functional Materials in Solution at the HZB and Professor at Freie Universität Berlin. Their now published work is based on a discovery by Aziz' team made three years before: They then analyzed samples with x-ray spectroscopy and observed the disappearance of photons at some specific photon energy. These results have been replicated by other teams worldwide. To explain this effect, Aziz and colleagues proposed a "dark channel mechanism", which should provide information about binding processes and interactions between atoms or molecules. This explanation stirred a big debate among scientists.

Now they have gathered arms with theoretical physicists around Professor Oliver Kühn from the University of Rostock in order to get a coherent picture: Aziz' team sharpened the experimental methods further using a new approach to high resolution spectroscopy. In order to understand, how the spectral findings are linked to binding and structural processes inside the sample, Oliver Kühn and his postdoc Sergey Bokarev provided a theoretical tool, based on ab initio calculations of energy levels inside the molecules. "We can map all electronic states in the systems we probe, and we can distinguish those which are involved in building bonds with neighbors from those which are not involved", Aziz explains. Metaphorically speaking: if the interacting molecules produce a sort of party chatter, the scientists are now able to listen to specific conversations. They are convinced that these new tools will bring deeper insights into the chemistry of life.

### See the original publication in PRL "State-Dependent Electron Delocalization Dynamics at the Solute-Solvent Interface: Soft-X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy and Ab Initio Calculations"
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.083002
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i8/e083002

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Playing video games can boost brain power

2013-08-21

Certain types of video games can help to train the brain to become more agile and improve strategic thinking, according to scientists from Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL). The researchers recruited 72 volunteers and measured their 'cognitive flexibility' described as a person's ability to adapt and switch between tasks, and think about multiple ideas at a given time to solve problems. Two groups of volunteers were trained to play different versions of a real-time strategy game called StarCraft, a fast-paced game where players have ...

Epic ocean voyages of baby corals revealed

2013-08-21

The study, by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Miami, will help predict how coral reef distributions may change in response to changing oceans. Coral are well known as the colourful plant-like structures which form coral reefs. However, each coral is actually a colony of anemone-like animals, which start out life as tiny, free-floating larvae about the size of a full-stop. Using a computer model, the researchers simulated how these young corals disperse in the world's oceans. Coral reefs, a vital cultural and economic resource for many of the world's ...

First scientific method to authenticate world's costliest coffee

2013-08-21

The world's most expensive coffee can cost $80 a cup, and scientists now are reporting development of the first way to verify authenticity of this crème de la crème, the beans of which come from the feces of a Southeast Asian animal called a palm civet. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Eiichiro Fukusaki and colleagues point out that Kopi Luwak (Indonesian for "civet coffee") is the world's costliest coffee, often fetching $150-$200 per pound. Palm civets eat coffee berries, digest the soft fruit surrounding the bean and excrete the ...

New tests for determining health and environmental effects of nanomaterials

2013-08-21

A group of international experts from government, industry and academia have concluded that alternative testing strategies (ATSs) that don't rely on animals will be needed to cope with the wave of new nanomaterials emerging from the boom in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Their consensus statement from a workshop on the topic appears in the journal ACS Nano. Andre Nel and colleagues explain that many new engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are appearing in laboratories, factories and consumer products as a result of advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology. These fields ...

Viewing Fukushima in the cold light of Chernobyl

2013-08-21

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster spread significant radioactive contamination over more than 3500 square miles of the Japanese mainland in the spring of 2011. Now several recently published studies of Chernobyl, directed by Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina and Anders Møller of the Université Paris-Sud, are bringing a new focus on just how extensive the long-term effects on Japanese wildlife might be. Their work underscores the idea that, in the wake of the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, there have been many lost opportunities to better understand ...

Home cooking, traffic are sources of key air pollutants from China

2013-08-21

Almost 80 percent of air pollution involving soot that spreads from China over large areas of East Asia — impacting human health and fostering global warming — comes from city traffic and other forms of fossil-fuel combustion, such as home cooking with coal briquettes. That's the conclusion of a study in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, which resolves long-standing questions about sources of air pollution responsible for Asia's infamous atmospheric brown clouds. Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues from China, South Korea and the United States point out in ...

First update in a century in testing drugs for elemental impurities

2013-08-21

For the first time in more than 100 years, drug and dietary supplement manufacturers are updating the tests used to ensure that their products contain safe levels of metal impurities, and the stringent new requirements, instruments and costs are the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Ann Thayer, C&EN senior correspondent, explains that in 1905, the nonprofit standards-setting U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) first introduced ...

Psychotherapy lags as evidence goes unheeded

2013-08-21

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Psychotherapy has issues. Evidence shows that some psychosocial treatments work well for common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression and that consumers often prefer them to medication. Yet the use of psychotherapy is on a clear decline in the United States. In a set of research review papers in the November issue of the journal Clinical Psychology Review, now available online, psychologists put psychotherapy on the proverbial couch to examine why it's foundering. Their diagnosis? Much as in many human patients, psychotherapy ...

Use of tPA for ischemic stroke nearly doubled from 2003 to 2011

2013-08-21

Contact: Cassandra Aviles cmaviles@partners.org 617-724-6433 Sue McGreevey smcgreevey@partners.org 617 724-2764 Massachusetts General Hospital Use of tPA for ischemic stroke nearly doubled from 2003 to 2011 Clot-dissolving drug administered to greater variety of patients, still not fully utilized Use of the "clot-busting" drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to treat patients with strokes caused by a blockage of blood flow nearly doubled between 2003 and 2011. In their paper receiving online release in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and ...

Forest-interior birds may be benefiting from harvested clearings

2013-08-21

IRVINE, Penn., August 21, 2013 – Efforts to conserve declining populations of forest-interior birds have largely focused on preserving the mature forests where birds breed, but a U.S. Forest Service study suggests that in the weeks leading up to migration, younger forest habitat may be just as important. In an article published recently in the American Ornithologist Union's publication "The Auk," research wildlife biologist Scott Stoleson of the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station suggests that forest regrowth in clearcuts may be vital to birds as they prepare ...

Better insight into molecular interactions

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: