Another advancement in imaging from INRS professor François Légaré's team

A molecule's transformation filmed at high resolution

2014-07-21

(Press-News.org) François Légaré's team at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre successfully imaged a chemical reaction with a spatial and temporal resolution greatly exceeding that obtained to date using microscopes. The team used a femtosecond laser source to shoot a molecular movie of how an acetylene molecule turns into vinylidene. An article presenting the advancement was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

"The approach we developed combines multiphoton ionization and Coulomb explosion imaging. With the significantly improved resolution of the image, we were able to reveal previously unknown details of this isomerization process and clarify the dynamics of proton migration. This form of imaging uses a compact laser source and is a simple option for studying the ultrafast molecular dynamics of other small organic molecules," said Banting postdoctoral fellow and primary author of the article Heide Ibrahim.

This isomerization process has already been observed using large equipment like free electron lasers with very energetic photons. However, the techniques most commonly employed to track nuclear rearrangement in a molecule were largely insensitive to the subtle and irregular changes that occur during a chemical reaction.

The experiments were designed by postdoctoral fellow Heide Ibrahim and professor François Légaré and conducted at INRS's Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) laboratory (Laboratoire de sources femtosecondes) in collaboration with the University of Waterloo, the National Research Council of Canada, and Université de Sherbrooke. The results showed for the first time that multiple oscillations can occur between the two isomers acetylene and vinylidene.

INFORMATION: About This Publication The article entitled "Tabletop imaging of structural evolutions in chemical reactions demonstrated for the acetylene cation" appeared in Nature Communications on July 18, 2014. The research was conducted by Heide Ibrahim, Samuel Beaulieu, Bruno E. Schmidt, Nicolas Thiré, Eric Bisson, Vincent Wanie, Mathieu Giguère, Jean-Claude Kieffer, and François Légaré of INRS, Benji Wales and Joseph Sanderson of the University of Waterloo, Emmanuel P. Fowe and André D. Brandrauk of Université de Sherbrooke, Michael Spanner and Michael S. Schuurman of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), and Christoph T. Hebeisen of the University of Ottawa and NRC. Financial support was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FQRNT), and the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations.

About INRS Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS) is the top-ranking graduate research and training university in Canada in terms of research intensity. INRS brings together some 150 professors and close to 700 students and postdoctoral fellows in its centres in Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, and Varennes. Conducting fundamental research essential to the advancement of science in Quebec as well as internationally, INRS research teams also play a critical role in developing concrete solutions to problems facing our society.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

NRL reveals new meteorological insight into mid-level clouds

2014-07-21

WASHINGTON -- Research meteorologists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division (MMD) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, employing the Navy's Mid-Course Doppler Radar (MCR) at Cape Canaveral, were able to characterize mid-level, mixed-phase altocumulus clouds. In altocumulus clouds, at medium altitudes ranging from 6,000 feet to 20,000 feet above mean sea level, water droplets can remain in a supercooled liquid phase at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, the freezing point of water. The supercooled liquid water found at temperatures ...

Mental health issues in children with relatives who participated in manhunt after Boston Marathon

2014-07-21

Children with relatives who were called upon to participate in the interagency manhunt following the Boston Marathon attack carried a particularly heavy mental health burden, according to a Depression and Anxiety study that included surveys of Boston-area parents and other caretakers. Researchers found that the proportion of youth with likely PTSD was 5.7 times higher among youth with relatives in the manhunt than among youth without. Children with relatives in the manhunt also experienced more emotional symptoms and hyperactivity or inattention. "Beyond informing our ...

Researchers simplify process to purify water using seed extracts

2014-07-21

Researchers have streamlined and simplified a process that uses extracts from seeds of Moringa oleifa trees to purify water, reducing levels of harmful bacteria by 90% to 99%. The hardy trees that are drought resistant are cultivated widely throughout many countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The protocol, which is outlined in a Current Protocols in Microbiology review, is low-cost and efficient, making it especially useful for people living in extreme poverty in developing countries who are presently drinking highly turbid and contaminated water. Of these, some ...

Replacing coal and oil with natural gas will not help fight global warming

2014-07-21

Both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger greenhouse gas footprint than do coal or oil, especially for the primary uses of residential and commercial heating. Dr. Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, came to this conclusion after assessing the best available data and analyzing greenhouse gas footprints for both methane (including shale gas and conventional gas) and carbon dioxide over a timescale of 20-years following emissions. The findings are published in Energy Science & Engineering. "While emissions of carbon dioxide ...

Mothers of children with autism benefit from peer-led intervention

2014-07-21

Peer-led interventions that target parental well-being can significantly reduce stress, depression and anxiety in mothers of children with disabilities, according to new findings released today in the journal Pediatrics. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Vanderbilt University examined two treatment programs in a large number of primary caregivers of a child with a disability. Participants in both groups experienced improvements in mental health, sleep and overall life satisfaction and showed less dysfunctional parent-child interactions. "The well-being ...

Carbyne morphs when stretched

2014-07-21

Applying just the right amount of tension to a chain of carbon atoms can turn it from a metallic conductor to an insulator, according to Rice University scientists. Stretching the material known as carbyne -- a hard-to-make, one-dimensional chain of carbon atoms -- by just 3 percent can begin to change its properties in ways that engineers might find useful for mechanically activated nanoscale electronics and optics. The finding by Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues appears in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. Until recently, ...

Philosopher uses game theory to understand how words, actions acquire meaning

2014-07-21

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Why does the word "dog" have meaning? If you say "dog" to a friend, why does your friend understand you? Kansas State University philosopher Elliott Wagner aims to address these types of questions in his latest research, which focuses on long-standing philosophical questions about semantic meaning. Wagner, assistant professor of philosophy, and two other philosophers and a mathematician are collaborating to use game theory to analyze communication and how it acquires meaning. "If I order a cappuccino at a coffee shop, I usually don't think about ...

New technique uses 'simulated' human heart to screen drugs

2014-07-21

A Coventry University scientist has developed a pioneering new way – using samples of beating heart tissue – to test the effect of drugs on the heart without using human or animal trials. The breakthrough is the work of Dr Helen Maddock – an expert in cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology from the University's Centre for Applied Biological and Exercise Sciences – and could lead to the lives of hundreds of future patients being saved and the quality of their treatments improved. Adverse effects of drugs on the cardiovascular system are a major cause of many medical ...

Age-related macular degeneration occurs much earlier than previously assumed

2014-07-21

It is widely accepted that age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of visual impairment and blindness in industrialized countries. However, it is questionable whether it can continue to be defined as a disease in people in their 50s and beyond. Investigations to determine the incidence of age-related macular degeneration undertaken as part of the Gutenberg Health Study of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have shown that even persons under the age of 50 years may be affected by an early form of the eye disease. ...

Our daily bread

2014-07-21

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most widely cultivated cereal crop in the world and provides 20 percent of the food calories consumed by humans. A polyploid species, hexaploid bread wheat contains six duplicated copies of its genome and is more than five times larger than the human genome. This makes genome research in wheat particularly difficult. Dr. Klaus Mayer, Head of the Research Unit Plant Genome and Systems Biology at HMGU, in collaboration with his colleagues Matthias Pfeifer, Dr. Karl Kugler and Manuel Spannagl, succeeded in gaining insights into complex ...

Another advancement in imaging from INRS professor François Légaré's team

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: