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https://youtu.be/atG3H3rTTsI

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Materials from Mr. Waggle. All materials are uploaded

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This post discusses the use of student generated posters and includes a video guide for students on how to prepare posters

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Zaid Mamsa

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Meet Google Drive - One place for all your files

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Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage - free.

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https://eic.rsc.org/ideas/student-posters-on-chemistry-topics/2010091.article

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5.2 Intro Homework
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/thermodynamics-chemistry/enthalpy-chemistry-sal/v/hess-s-law-example

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/thermodynamics-chemistry/enthalpy-chemistry-sal/v/hess-s-law-and-reaction-enthalpy-change

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Acid rain: Causes, effects and solutions

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Acid rain is any form of precipitation that contains acidic components, such as sulfuric or nitric acid. It affects nearly everything it touches

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The smallest magnetic-memory bit ever made-an aggregation of just 12 iron atoms created by researchers at IBM-shows the ultimate limits of future data-storage systems.

Let's get small: This scanning tunneling microscope image shows a group of 12 iron atoms, the smallest magnetic memory bit ever made.

The magnetic memory elements don't work in the same way that today's hard drives work, and, in theory, they can be much smaller without becoming unstable. Data-storage arrays made from these atomic bits would be about 100 times denser than anything that can be built today. But the 12 atoms making up each bit must be painstakingly assembled using an expensive and complex microscope, and the bits can hold data for only a few hours and at low temperatures approaching absolute zero, so the miniscule memory elements won't be found in consumer devices anytime soon.

As the semiconductor industry bumps up against the limits of scaling by making memory and computation devices ever smaller, the IBM Almaden research group, led by Andreas Heinrich, is working from the other end, building computing elements atom-by-atom in the lab.

The necessary technology for large-scale manufacturing at the single-atom scale doesn't exist yet. Today, says Heinrich, the question is, "What is it you would want to build on the scale of atoms for data storage and computation, in the distant future?"

As engineers miniaturize conventional devices, they're finding that quantum physics, which never had to be accounted for in the past, makes devices less stable. As conventional magnetic memory bits are miniaturized, for example, each bit's magnetic field begins to affect its neighbors', weakening each bit's ability to hold on to a 1 or a 0.

The IBM researchers found that it was possible to sidestep this problem by using groups of atoms that display a different kind of magnetism. The key, says Heinrich, is the magnetic spin of each individual atom.

In conventional magnets, whether they're found holding up a note on the refrigerator or in a data-storage array, the magnetic spins of the atoms are aligned. It's this alignment that leads to instability when magnetic-memory elements are miniaturized. The IBM researchers made their tiny memory elements by lining up iron atoms whose spins were counter-aligned.

The researchers both constructed and wrote data to the tiny memory elements using a scanning tunneling microscope, a device developed at IBM Zürich in 1981. This microscope has a very thin conducting probe that can be used to image a surface and push individual atoms around.

Heinrich says his team found it could make antiferromagnetic memory using fewer than 12 atoms, but these were less stable. With 12 atoms, the memory elements obey classical physics, and the read-and-write pulses applied through the microscope probe are similar to those used in today's hard drives. This research is described today in the journal Science.

Any realistic nonvolatile data storage technology has to be able to hold onto the data for 10 years at temperatures well over room temperature, says Victor Zhirnov, a research scientist at the Semiconductor Research Corporation, who was not involved with the work. The IBM bits can hold onto a 1 or a 0 for just a few hours, and only at very low temperatures, but Heinrich says it should be possible to increase their stability for operation at more realistic temperatures by using 150 atoms per bit rather than 12-still a miniscule number compared to existing forms of memory.

However, making a realistic technology was not the aim of the current work, says Heinrich. His aim is to explore whether other kinds of computing elements can be made from a few atoms, perhaps by embracing quantum. "We have to have the foresight not to worry about the next step, but to jump to something potentially revolutionary," he says.

Katherine Bourzac

I'm a freelance journalist based in San Francisco, California, and a contributing editor at MIT Technology Review, where I was previously on staff as materials science editor. I write about materials science, computing, and medicine. My favorite... More nanomaterial is carbon nanotubes and my favorite quasiparticle is the plasmon. I serve on the board of the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. I graduated from MIT's science writing program in 2004.

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Magnetic Memory Miniaturized to Just 12 Atoms

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The smallest magnetic-memory bit ever made-an aggregation of just 12 iron atoms created by researchers at IBM-shows the ultimate limits of future data-storage systems. The magnetic memory elements don't work in the same way that today's hard drives work, and, in theory, they can be much smaller without becoming unstable.

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Polytetrafluoroethylene will not dissolve in acetone or ether or concentrated sulfuric acid. When Roy Plunkett first found it coating some storage canisters in 1938, he tried to destroy the substance with just about every technique known to science. A young employee at DuPont, Plunkett had been hired to develop a new refrigerant. But when he cooled and compressed a gas he was testing, a waxy white powder unexpectedly formed-that stuff he couldn't eradicate. The material was brought to the attention of US Army general Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, who commissioned DuPont to design a plant that used polytetrafluoroethylene seals and gaskets. (The noxious chemicals needed to produce weapons-grade uranium corroded virtually every other material.) When Plunkett's invention was eventually declassified after the war, DuPont gave it the consumer-friendly name Teflon and found a use more compatible with Cold War capitalism: coating pots and pans. The reason your omelet doesn't stick to Teflon is related to the material's imperviousness to those A-bomb ingredients. PTFE is a polymer-a long chainlike molecule-made of carbon and fluorine atoms. The fluorine bonds so strongly to the carbon backbone that other atoms can't break in, so they simply slide across the surface. In fact, the biggest challenge is getting Teflon to adhere to the pan itself. The details of that process are held as closely as the nuclear codes.
This article appears in the November issue. Subscribe now.
More Great WIRED Stories

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How Teflon Went From Wartime to Dinner Time

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Polytetrafluoroethylene will not dissolve in acetone or ether or concentrated sulfuric acid. When Roy Plunkett first found it coating some storage canisters in 1938, he tried to destroy the substance with just about every technique known to science. A young employee at DuPont, Plunkett had been hired to develop a new refrigerant.

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Scientists study plant behavior to improve material design. Pexels

Carbon-fixing materials - substances powered by the sun that use atmospheric carbon dioxide to grow and repair themselves, just as plants do - don't yet exist outside the lab. But scientists are getting tantalizingly close to making them a commercial reality. When they become available, they likely initially will enjoy widespread use as "self-healing" coatings, such as in car trims, cells phones, and fabrics. When their surfaces become cracked or scratched, they will easily be able to fill in the gaps with exposure to air and sunlight, without requiring additional action. Also, transporting them will be more cost and energy efficient, as they could first be shipped to manufacturers and builders in a lightweight size. Once at their destination, they would then be exposed to air and sunlight, where they would expand, solidify, and harden. Designing materials that not only avoid using fossil fuels, but also eat up atmospheric carbon dioxide, holds obvious benefits for the environment and the climate, the researchers said.

Cracked cell phone screen. Pexels

"As humans, we can chose to build the world out of petroleum from the ground, creating the plastics as fibers and sheets that we see all around us, or we could follow nature and use the carbon in the air," said Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT. "The first step is imagining materials that grow and repair like plants and trees. The next step is reducing them to practice. Then, after refinement and optimization, we can begin to replace our decaying materials with these new, continuously renewing versions."

The beauty of the product "is that it needs nothing but atmospheric carbon dioxide and ambient light, both of which are ubiquitous," Strano added. "These materials incorporate mass from carbon in the air and self-repair continuously and automatically without any external stimuli. Building with carbon dioxide and ambient light uses the energy available to us today. This is sustainability reduced to its most basic definition."

Plants self-repair naturally. Pexels

Strano's lab recently created a material that reacts chemically with carbon dioxide from the air to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself and - unlike other efforts in the field to simulate natural biological processes - doesn't need input from the outside, such as heat, ultraviolet light, chemicals, or mechanical stress, the scientists said. The result was a synthetic gel-like polymer that uses the same biological components plants do to harness sunlight - chloroplasts - which the scientists obtained from spinach leaves. The polymer continuously converts the CO ₂ into a carbon-based substance that reinforces itself.

In recent years, researchers have been searching for innovative methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. These gases are driving climate change and global warming, often with dangerous effects on humans and ecosystems. "Materials like this are a step in the correct direction," Strano said. "They are not just carbon neutral. They are carbon negative."

Strano, postdoctoral fellow Seon-Yeong Kwak and eight others at MIT and the University of California at Riverside, described their findings in a study recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Top: a crack in the self-healing material, composed of a hydrogel (dark green) embedded with plant-derived chloroplasts (light green). Bottom: in daylight, the material reacts with carbon dioxide to fill the gap. Strano Research Group

The chloroplasts catalyze the reaction of carbon dioxide into glucose. But isolated chloroplasts are very unstable, meaning that they tend to stop working after several hours once removed from the plant. Strano and his colleagues developed ways to significantly increase the catalytic lifetime of extracted chloroplasts, and plan to replace these chloroplasts with non-biological catalysts to further strengthen their action. The latter will be more stable, last longer and perform the same functions, Strano said.

The material the researchers used - a gel matrix composed of a polymer made from aminopropyl methacrylamide (APMA) and glucose, an enzyme called glucose oxidase, and the chloroplasts - becomes stronger as it incorporates the carbon. Although it is expected to function well as a coating or crack filler, it isn't yet strong enough to become building material. Additional advances in chemistry and materials science are required before it can be widely used in construction and composite materials, the researchers said.

Still, the scientists said they already are capable of producing the material by the ton. Initial commercial applications - self-healing coatings, and as a crack filler - are realizable in the "near term," they said. "In its most basic form, production of these materials is simple, and should not be costly or complex," said co-author Kwak, adding: "The material starts out as a liquid. It is exciting to watch it as it starts to grow and cluster" into a solid form.

The Department of Energy - which funded the initial MIT work - is sponsoring a new program to expand the research, and has asked Strano to direct it, according to MIT. "Materials science has never produced anything like this," Strano said. "These materials mimic some aspects of something living, even though it's not reproducing.

"There's carbon everywhere," he added. "We build the world with carbon. Humans are made of carbon. Carbon dioxide need not be purely a burden and a cost. It also is an opportunity. Making a material that can access the abundant carbon all around us is a significant opportunity for materials science."
Marlene Cimons writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture.

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Your future smartphone could fix its broken screen by pulling carbon from the air

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Plants self-repair and regenerate naturally. Your devices could soon do the same.

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/appendix-implicated-parkinsons-disease

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181024083326.htm

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Scientists at Indiana University found high levels of a previously unsuspected pollutant in homes, in an electronic waste recycling facility and in the natural environment. People are likely to be exposed to this pollutant by breathing contaminated dust or through skin contact.

The chemical, tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) phosphate or TDTBPP, is part of a family of organophosphates that are known to be toxic. However, little information is known about the toxicity of TDTBPP or how it gets into our environment. The chemical may be used as a flame retardant or as a plasticizer in consumer products. It may also be formed as other chemicals degrade. It may even be an impurity in a structurally related compound.

"We found surprisingly high levels of TDTBPP everywhere we looked," said Marta Venier, a scientist at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the first author of the study. "The fact that this potentially toxic chemical is so abundant, but was previously unknown, is another example of the ineffective management of chemicals in the United States."

Many common commercial chemicals, including TDTBPP, are not subject to regulatory scrutiny under the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act unless they are used for new purposes, and much of the information about their commercial use is private. Therefore, it is difficult for environmental chemists to track how these pollutants enter the environment and what kind of effects they might cause once they do. Many chemicals go undetected until scientists perform a general environmental scan, like this study conducted by scientists at IU.

The researchers studied dust samples from an e-waste dismantling facility in Ontario, Canada. Chemicals similar to TDTBPP are often used in the production of plastics, wires, printed circuit boards and electronic equipment, making e-waste recycling facilities an important place to search for previously undetected pollutants.

The researchers also studied dust from 20 residential homes in Ontario and analyzed outdoor samples from southwestern Lake Michigan to measure the amounts of TDTBPP in ambient air, water and sediment. They found that levels of TDTBPP were particularly high in house dust.

"Our research is the first step," Venier said. "Now that we know that TDTBPP is prevalent, especially in homes, scientists can flag it for further study and focus on understanding the effects of TDTBPP on people."

The study, "Tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) Phosphate: A Previously Unrecognized, Abundant, Ubiquitous Pollutant in the Built and Natural Environment," will be published Oct. 30 in Environmental Science & Technology. The authors were Venier, William Stubbings, Jiehong Guo, Kevin Romanak and Ronald A. Hites of Indiana University; Liisa Jantunen of Environment and Climate Change Canada; Lisa Melymuk of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic; and Linh V. Nguyen, Victoria Arrandale and Miriam L. Diamond of the University of Toronto.

An April 2018 study by several of the same authors reported on the detection in the environment of a little-known chemical, called TTBP-TAX, that is part of a new class of triazine-based "alternative" flame retardants. It was also published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Journal References:

1. Marta Venier, William A. Stubbings, Jiehong Guo, Kevin Romanak, Linh V Nguyen, Liisa Jantunen, Lisa Melymuk, Victoria Arrandale, Miriam L. Diamond, Ronald A. Hites. Tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) Phosphate: A Previously Unrecognized, Abundant, Ubiquitous Pollutant in the Built and Natural Environment. Environmental Science & Technology, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b02939

2. Jiehong Guo, William A. Stubbings, Kevin Romanak, Linh V. Nguyen, Liisa Jantunen, Lisa Melymuk, Victoria Arrandale, Miriam L. Diamond, Marta Venier. Alternative Flame Retardant, 2,4,6-Tris(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy)-1,3,5-triazine, in an E-waste Recycling Facility and House Dust in North America. Environmental Science & Technology, 2018; 52 (6): 3599 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b06139

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genes; staying healthy; today's healthcare; chemistry; electronics; inorganic chemistry; environmental issues; environmental science; environmental awareness

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High levels of previously unsuspected pollutant uncovered in homes, environment

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Scientists have found high levels of a previously unsuspected pollutant in homes, in an electronic waste recycling facility and in the natural environment. People are likely to be exposed to this pollutant by breathing contaminated dust or through skin contact.

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Carbon emissions are acidifying the ocean so quickly that the seafloor is disintegrating.

According to a study published this week in PNAS , this sets off a feedback loop that acidifies the ocean even more quickly, a process that is already killing off foundational marine life species such as coral and threatening the balance of all ocean ecosystems on which we depend.

"Our study confirms that humans are now a geological force capable of impacting the Earth's system, like a super-volcano or a meteoritic impact," Olivier Sulpis, an earth science researcher at McGill University and lead author on the study, said to Motherboard in an email.

The root of the problem is that a foundational chemical reaction that keeps the oceans at pH levels that are conducive to life is being thrown out of whack.

Calcium carbonate, or calcite, lines the ocean floor. When calcite combines with carbon dioxide and water, the reaction produces calcium ions and bicarbonate ions. Because of this, the surrounding water becomes less acidic over long periods of time-think tens to thousands of years. But when you throw more carbon dioxide into the equation, all of the seafloor calcite starts to get used up to power these reactions in extremely large amounts, meaning that the ocean floor is dissolving. Now, there's not enough calcite but more carbon dioxide than ever, driving up acidity levels.

Foundational species in the marine food chain, such as coral, are fine-tuned to thrive within a very particular range of pH levels. When those levels change for a long period of time, these species-as well as the fish, bacteria, mollusks, and ocean life that depends on them- simply can't survive. The last time the oceans were as acidic as they are now, 96 percent of ocean life was extinct.

According to Sulpis, calcium carbonate is still dissolving carbon dioxide in the water, which means there is still a chemical force fighting against ocean acidification. But the rate at which we're emitting carbon dioxide, which then gets absorbed by the ocean, is far greater and faster than the rate at which carbon dioxide gets taken up by calcium carbonate on the ocean floor.

Just how bad is the damage? According to the study, in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, adjacent to Europe, 40 to 100 percent of the seafloor has been dissolved at the most severe locations. Supis told Motherboard in an email that the dissolution is worst in the northwest Atlantic because the ocean currents corral human-made carbon dioxide to the region in massive quantities. The more carbon dioxide, the more difficult it is for calcium carbonate to react and dissolve the molecule.

According to the paper, until now there's been no concerted assessment of carbon dioxide-driven dissolution of the seafloor. There are practical obstacles to mapping the entirety of the ocean floor-namely, it's expensive, difficult, and dangerous. Sulpis told Motherboard it would simply be impossible to get samples from the entire ocean floor to conduct a physical survey of the changes down there.

"Real observations of calcite dissolving in-situ at the seafloor are very challenging to obtain because we would have to, first, reach the bottom of the sea and, second, stay there long enough so that we can measure some significant dissolution, which could take many decades," Sulpis said. For that reason, it's only possible to get this type of information through oceanic modeling and analysis.

In order to understand the full extent of how we've affected the chemistry of the ocean, scientists will need to conduct studies on the ocean floor through a combination of mathematical modeling-which was done for this study-and real-life sampling. But the deadly consequences of our actions are already in motion. Based on our most optimistic forecasts for ocean acidification, which assume that we fundamentally restructure our society in order to mitigate climate change, 90 percent of coral reef communities will bleach by 2100. In short, we're in trouble.

"Geologists in millions of years may look at the Anthropocene as a brown layer of sediments lost in the geological record," Sulpis said. "It's a bit mind blowing. So at the end of the day, when we do take a step back and contemplate these results, it becomes scary."

Listen to our podcast about the world's greatest mysteries that were solved by science.

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The Seafloor is Dissolving Because of Climate Change

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According to a new study, ocean acidification is setting off a dangerous feedback loop that's dissolving the very bottom of the ocean.

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Eventually, a similar process could be used to sequester greenhouse gases. Instead of converting carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel, Carbon Engineering could pump it deep into the ground, reducing the amount of heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. But such a technique wouldn't give Carbon Engineering any product to sell, and there are no buyers stepping up to front the effort, for now.

"The main, near-term market is making carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels," Keith told me. "We see this as a technology for decarbonizing transportation."

Speaking from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Keith said he was "pretty optimistic" about climate change. "The reason is that the market for these low-carbon fuels is much, much better than they were a few years ago. At the same time, low-carbon power-electricity generated by solar and wind-has just gotten much cheaper."

Outside experts said they were encouraged by Keith and his colleagues' approach, but cautioned that it would take time to examine every cost estimate and engineering advance in the paper. The consensus response was something like: Hmm! I hope this works!

"I don't question that the range of costs they report are valid. I think the lower end of $100 per ton of CO 2 produced through their approach is probably doable in five years or so and that their higher end of $250 per [ton of] CO ₂ is more doable with their technology today," says Jennifer Wilcox, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

"The improvements that Carbon Engineering have made all seem appropriate, and I am comfortable that their estimated costs are within the window of what I would expect from such improvements," says Roger Aines, a senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's energy program.

"The strongest part of this paper, in my opinion, is the fact that they've actually tested the technology in a prototype plant for a few years. That's a big deal, and offers a proof of principle that's way stronger than simple calculations or computational models," says Scott Hersey, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Olin College.

Caldeira said that the paper offered hope for the trickiest parts of the economy to adapt to climate change. "This suggests that the hardest-to-decarbonize parts of the economy (e.g. steel, cement manufacture, long-distance air travel, etc.) might continue just as they are now, and we just pay for CO ₂ removal," he told me.

He continued: "Depending on how you count things, global GDP is somewhere in the neighborhood of $75 to $110 trillion. So, to remove all of this CO ₂ would be something like 3 to 5 percent of global GDP (if the $100 a ton number is right). This puts an upper bound on how expensive it could be to solve the climate problem, because there are lots of ways to reduce emissions for less than $100 a ton."

Keith said it was important to still stop emitting carbon-dioxide pollution where feasible. "My view is we should stick to trying to cut emissions first. As a voter, my view is it's cheaper not to emit a ton of [carbon dioxide] than it is to emit it and recapture it."

"But once emissions are heading downhill and we're heading back down to zero-which maybe could be 10 or 15 years from now-then I'm happy to see more large-scale removal of carbon dioxide."

Robinson Meyer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers climate change and technology.

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Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline

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Eventually, a similar process could be used to sequester greenhouse gases. Instead of converting carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel, Carbon Engineering could pump it deep into the ground, reducing the amount of heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411174145.htm

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Last week, Anker debuted a tiny new power brick, crediting its small size with the component it uses instead of silicon: gallium nitride (GaN). It's the latest example of the growing popularity of this transparent, glass-like material that could one day unseat silicon and cut energy use worldwide.

For decades now, silicon has been the backbone of the technology industry, but we are "reaching a theoretical limit on how much it can be improved," says Danqing Wang, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University who conducts GaN research. All materials have a "band gap," which is related to how well they can conduct electricity. GaN has a wider band gap than silicon, which means it can sustain higher voltages than silicon can survive, and the current can run through the device more quickly, says Martin Kuball, a physicist at the University of Bristol who leads a project on GaN in power electronics.

"It takes some effort to switch to gallium nitride."

As a result, GaN electronics are far more efficient than their silicon counterparts, and they lose less energy. "You can make things very small, or you can pack more GaN in the same area," says Wang. "The performance is better." And when you lose less energy, not only can you make charging devices smaller, but you can also use less power in the first place. According to Kuball, replacing all current electronics with GaN could potentially cut power use by 10 or 25 percent.

Plus, because GaN can survive at higher temperatures than silicon, using it can influence design in more complicated environments. Right now, the electronics in a car are mounted far away from the engine to keep them from getting too hot, says Kuball. GaN erases this constraint and could open up new possibilities that change how cars are designed in the future.

The material has long been dominant in another area: lasers and photonics. GaN is one of the few materials to give off blue light; it's used in Blu-rays to make disc-reading possible. It's also frequently used in LEDs. Wang's team is making tiny GaN lasers the size of a micron - which is 1/100th the size of a human hair and too small to see with the naked eye - that can be used in microscopes to make research more precise.

Photonics aside, why haven't we replaced silicon with GaN yet? "Silicon is very mature," says Kuball. "People are used to it and have been doing this for a long time, and obviously what you find when you introduce a new type of material or electronic is that you need to keep testing it for reliability." GaN isn't a perfect material either, adds Wang, because some methods of growing it can cause defects that make it less effective.

But we're used to silicon. It's cheap, and all the manufacturing techniques are already set up for it. GaN is still a little more expensive. "It takes some effort to switch to gallium nitride," says Wang, though she points out that some people are looking at ways to grow gallium nitride crystals on top of silicon in the hopes of taking advantage of the existing manufacturing platforms.

Large semiconductor manufacturers like Texas Instruments and Nexperia do have GaN research programs, according to Kuball, and there's no shortage of startups working on the technology. Still, we have yet to see the true impact of GaN in the power electronics field. "These little adapters are a nice toy, but where GaN will really matter is in converters for electric cars and photovoltaics," Kuball adds. In the meantime, "it's a cool little thing to have something smaller."

Anker was not available for comment as of press time.

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Gallium nitride is the silicon of the future

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Last week, Anker debuted a tiny new power brick, crediting its small size with the component it uses instead of silicon: gallium nitride (GaN). It's the latest example of the growing popularity of this transparent, glass-like material that could one day unseat silicon and cut energy use worldwide.

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Single-molecule magnets are molecules capable of remembering the direction of a magnetic field that has been applied to them over relatively long periods of time once the magnetic field is switched off. Thus, one can "write" information into molecules. Single-molecule magnets have potential applications, for example, as high-density digital storage media and as parts of microprocessors in quantum computers. Practical applications have, however, been greatly hindered by the fact that single-molecule magnets are operational only at extremely low temperatures. Their intrinsic memory properties often vanish if they are heated more than a few degrees above absolute zero (-273°C); therefore, single-molecule magnets can be only studied under laboratory conditions by cooling them with liquid helium.
More favorable conditions for technological applications
Researchers have now, for the first time, managed to synthesize and characterize a single-molecule magnet which retains its memory properties above the temperature of liquid helium (-196°C). The magnet can be called the first high-temperature single-molecule magnet.

- When considering our everyday life, liquid nitrogen is extremely cold. However, compared to liquid helium, which has so far been required to study single-molecule magnets, the liquid nitrogen temperature is a huge leap upwards. Liquid nitrogen is more than 300 times cheaper than liquid helium and much more readily available, enabling technological applications. Therefore, the research constitutes an important scientific milestone, describes postdoctoral researcher Akseli Mansikkamäki from the Department of Chemistry of the University of Jyväskylä.
New insights from computations
The new dysprosium metallocene compound is the culmination of several years of research. The project has required the development of new approaches in organometallic lanthanide chemistry and deep insights of the relationship between the microscopic electronic structure and magnetic properties of the studied systems.

Computational methods based on quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity play an important role in the characterization and design of new single-molecule magnets. The large computational resources available today have enabled, for example, to clarify the interaction between crystal vibrations and the electronic structure of molecules studied in the present work, Mansikkamäki explains.

The research also provides new insights and guidelines how to further improve the magnetic properties of single-molecule magnets and how to bring technological applications closer to reality.

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nature of water; chemistry; graphene; vehicles; electronics; inorganic chemistry; organic chemistry; spintronics

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Molecular memory can be used to increase the memory capacity of hard disks

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Scientists have taken part in research where the first molecule capable of remembering the direction of a magnetic above liquid nitrogen temperatures has been prepared and characterized. The results may be used in the future to massively increase the storage capacity of hard disks without increasing their physical size.

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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology researchers have cracked the chemical mechanism that will enable development of a new and more efficient photo-chemical process to produce hydrogen fuel from water, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications.

The team is the first to successfully reveal the fundamental chemical reaction present in solar power that could form the missing link to generate the electricity necessary to accomplish this process. It allows the process to unfold naturally instead of relying on large amounts of human-made energy sources or precious metals to catalyze the reaction. Production of hydrogen does not emit greenhouse gases, but the process has until now required more energy than is generated and as a result has limited commercial viability.

"This discovery could have a significant impact on efforts to replace carbon-based fuels with more environmentally friendly hydrogen fuels," according to the team led by BGU researchers Dr. Arik Yochelis and Dr. Iris Visoly-Fisher and Prof. Avner Rothschild of the Technion. "Car manufacturers seek to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles that are considered efficient and environmentally friendly and unlike electric vehicles, allow for fast refueling and extended mileage."

Hydrogen production for fuel requires splitting water molecules (H2O) into two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The research reveals a breakthrough toward understanding the mechanism that occurs during the photochemical splitting of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) over iron-oxide photo-electrodes, which involves splitting the photo-oxidation reaction from linear to two sites.

After years of challenging experiments during which Prof. Rothschild's laboratory was unable to overcome the barrier in efficiency, he approached Drs. Yochelis and Visoly-Fisher to collaborate and complete the puzzle.

"Beyond the scientific breakthrough, we have shown that the photo-electrochemical reaction mechanism is related to the family of chemical reactions for which Prof. Gerhard Ertl was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry," says Dr. Yochelis of the BGU's Alexandre Yersin Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics in the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. "Our discovery opens new strategies for photochemical processes."

Journal Reference:

Yotam Y. Avital, Hen Dotan, Dino Klotz, Daniel A. Grave, Anton Tsyganok, Bhavana Gupta, Sofia Kolusheva, Iris Visoly-Fisher, Avner Rothschild, Arik Yochelis. Two-site H2O2 photo-oxidation on haematite photoanodes. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06141-0

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alternative fuels; energy and resources; fuel cells; chemistry; organic chemistry; vehicles; automotive and transportation; fossil fuels

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Breakthrough in process to produce hydrogen fuel

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Researchers have cracked the chemical mechanism that will enable development of a new and more efficient photo-chemical process to produce hydrogen fuel from water, according to a new article.

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Meena Yuqob. 5

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An innovative filtering material may soon reduce the environmental cost of manufacturing plastic. Created by a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the advance can extract the key ingredient in the most common form of plastic from a mixture of other chemicals -- while consuming far less energy than usual.

The material is a metal-organic framework (MOF), a class of substances that have repeatedly demonstrated a talent for separating individual hydrocarbons from the soup of organic molecules produced by oil refining processes. MOFs hold immense value for the plastic and petroleum industries because of this capability, which could allow manufacturers to perform these separations far more cheaply than standard oil-refinement techniques.

This promise has made MOFs the subject of intense study at NIST and elsewhere, leading to MOFs that can separate different octanes of gasoline and speed up complex chemical reactions. One major goal has proved elusive, though: an industrially preferred method for wringing out ethylene -- the molecule needed to create polyethylene, the plastic used to make shopping bags and other everyday containers.

However, in today's issue of the journal Science, the research team reveals that a modification to a well-studied MOF enables it to separate purified ethylene out of a mixture with ethane. The team's creation -- built at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and China's Taiyuan University of Technology and studied at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) -- represents a major step forward for the field.

Making plastic takes lots of energy. Polyethylene, the most common type of plastic, is built from ethylene, one of the many hydrocarbon molecules found in crude oil refining. The ethylene must be highly purified for the manufacturing process to work, but the current industrial technology for separating ethylene from all the other hydrocarbons is a chilly but high-energy process that cools down the crude to more than 100 degrees below zero Celsius.

Ethylene and ethane constitute the bulk of the hydrocarbons in the mixture, and separating these two is by far the most energy-intensive step. Finding an alternative method of separation would reduce the energy needed to make the 170 million tons of ethylene manufactured worldwide each year.

Scientists have been searching for such an alternative method for years, and MOFs appear promising. On a microscopic level, they look a bit like a half-built skyscraper of girders and no walls. The girders have surfaces that certain hydrocarbon molecules will stick to firmly, so pouring a mixture of two hydrocarbons through the right MOF can pull one kind of molecule out of the mix, letting the other hydrocarbon emerge in pure form.

The trick is to create a MOF that allows the ethylene to pass through. For the plastics industry, this has been the sticking point.

"It's very difficult to do," said Wei Zhou, a scientist at the NCNR. "Most MOFs that have been studied grab onto ethylene rather than ethane. A few of them have even demonstrated excellent separation

performance, by selectively adsorbing the ethylene. But from an industrial perspective you would prefer to do the opposite if feasible. You want to adsorb the ethane byproduct and let the ethylene pass through."

The research team spent years trying to crack the problem. In 2012, another research team that worked at the NCNR found that a particular framework called MOF-74 was good for separating a variety of hydrocarbons, including ethylene. It seemed like a good starting point, and the team members scoured the scientific literature for additional inspiration. An idea taken from biochemistry finally sent them in the right direction.

"A huge topic in chemistry is finding ways to break the strong bond that forms between carbon and hydrogen," said UTSA professor Banglin Chen, who led the team. "Doing that allows you to create a lot of valuable new materials. We found previous research that showed that compounds containing iron peroxide could break that bond."

The team reasoned that to break the bond in a hydrocarbon molecule, the compound would have to attract the molecule in the first place. When they modified MOF-74's walls to contain a structure similar to the compound, it turned out the molecule it attracted from their mixture was ethane.

The team brought the MOF to the NCNR to explore its atomic structure. Using a technique called neutron diffraction, they determined what part of the MOF's surface attracts ethane -- a key piece of information for explaining why their innovation succeeded where other efforts have fallen short.

"Without the fundamental understanding of the mechanism, no one would believe our results," Chen said. "We also think that we can try to add other small groups to the surface, maybe do other things. It's a whole new research direction and we're very excited."

While Zhou said the team's modified MOF does work efficiently, it may require some additional development to see action at a refinery.

"We proved this route is promising," Zhou said, "but we're not claiming our materials perform so well they can't be improved. Our future goal is to dramatically increase their selectivity. It's worth pursuing further."

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chemistry; materials science; inorganic chemistry; energy and resources; organic chemistry; petroleum; engineering and construction; energy technology

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Novel material could make plastic manufacturing more energy-efficient

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An innovative filtering material may soon reduce the environmental cost of manufacturing plastic. The material, a metal-organic framework, can extract ethylene, the key ingredient in the most common form of plastic, from a mixture of other chemicals -- while consuming far less energy than usual.

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Walid Yuqob 5

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Scientists at Indiana University found high levels of a previously unsuspected pollutant in homes, in an electronic waste recycling facility and in the natural environment. People are likely to be exposed to this pollutant by breathing contaminated dust or through skin contact.

The chemical, tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) phosphate or TDTBPP, is part of a family of organophosphates that are known to be toxic. However, little information is known about the toxicity of TDTBPP or how it gets into our environment. The chemical may be used as a flame retardant or as a plasticizer in consumer products. It may also be formed as other chemicals degrade. It may even be an impurity in a structurally related compound.

"We found surprisingly high levels of TDTBPP everywhere we looked," said Marta Venier, a scientist at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the first author of the study. "The fact that this potentially toxic chemical is so abundant, but was previously unknown, is another example of the ineffective management of chemicals in the United States."

Many common commercial chemicals, including TDTBPP, are not subject to regulatory scrutiny under the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act unless they are used for new purposes, and much of the information about their commercial use is private. Therefore, it is difficult for environmental chemists to track how these pollutants enter the environment and what kind of effects they might cause once they do. Many chemicals go undetected until scientists perform a general environmental scan, like this study conducted by scientists at IU.

The researchers studied dust samples from an e-waste dismantling facility in Ontario, Canada. Chemicals similar to TDTBPP are often used in the production of plastics, wires, printed circuit boards and electronic equipment, making e-waste recycling facilities an important place to search for previously undetected pollutants.

The researchers also studied dust from 20 residential homes in Ontario and analyzed outdoor samples from southwestern Lake Michigan to measure the amounts of TDTBPP in ambient air, water and sediment. They found that levels of TDTBPP were particularly high in house dust.

"Our research is the first step," Venier said. "Now that we know that TDTBPP is prevalent, especially in homes, scientists can flag it for further study and focus on understanding the effects of TDTBPP on people."

The study, "Tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) Phosphate: A Previously Unrecognized, Abundant, Ubiquitous Pollutant in the Built and Natural Environment," will be published Oct. 30 in Environmental Science & Technology. The authors were Venier, William Stubbings, Jiehong Guo, Kevin Romanak and Ronald A. Hites of Indiana University; Liisa Jantunen of Environment and Climate Change Canada; Lisa Melymuk of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic; and Linh V. Nguyen, Victoria Arrandale and Miriam L. Diamond of the University of Toronto.

An April 2018 study by several of the same authors reported on the detection in the environment of a little-known chemical, called TTBP-TAX, that is part of a new class of triazine-based "alternative" flame retardants. It was also published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Journal References:

1. Marta Venier, William A. Stubbings, Jiehong Guo, Kevin Romanak, Linh V Nguyen, Liisa Jantunen, Lisa Melymuk, Victoria Arrandale, Miriam L. Diamond, Ronald A. Hites. Tri(2,4-di-t-butylphenyl) Phosphate: A Previously Unrecognized, Abundant, Ubiquitous Pollutant in the Built and Natural Environment. Environmental Science & Technology, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b02939

2. Jiehong Guo, William A. Stubbings, Kevin Romanak, Linh V. Nguyen, Liisa Jantunen, Lisa Melymuk, Victoria Arrandale, Miriam L. Diamond, Marta Venier. Alternative Flame Retardant, 2,4,6-Tris(2,4,6-tribromophenoxy)-1,3,5-triazine, in an E-waste Recycling Facility and House Dust in North America. Environmental Science & Technology, 2018; 52 (6): 3599 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b06139

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genes; staying healthy; today's healthcare; chemistry; electronics; inorganic chemistry; environmental issues; environmental science; environmental awareness

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High levels of previously unsuspected pollutant uncovered in homes, environment

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Scientists have found high levels of a previously unsuspected pollutant in homes, in an electronic waste recycling facility and in the natural environment. People are likely to be exposed to this pollutant by breathing contaminated dust or through skin contact.

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Moss, one of the world's oldest plants, is surprisingly in tune with the atmosphere around it. Now in a study appearing in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry, scientists report that they have found a simple and inexpensive way to detect air pollutants, specifically sulfur dioxide, in real time based on subtle changes in moss leaves. The discovery could rapidly alert authorities to potentially dangerous alterations in air quality using a sustainable, natural plant sensor.

Plants have evolved the ability to sense light, touch, gravity and chemicals in the air and soil, allowing them to adapt and survive in changing environments. Thus, plants have been used in studies to assess the long-term damage caused by accumulated air pollution worldwide. However, this type of study requires skilled personnel and expensive instrumentation. Xingcai Qin, Nongjian Tao and colleagues wanted to develop an easier way to use moss, a particularly good indicator of sulfur dioxide pollution, as a rapid, real-time sensor.

The researchers gathered wild moss and exposed it to various concentrations of sulfur dioxide in a chamber. Using a highly sensitive, inexpensive webcam, the research team found that moss leaves exposed to sulfur dioxide slightly shrank or curled and changed color from green to yellow. Some of these changes, analyzed with an imaging algorithm, began within 10 seconds of exposure to the pollutant. However, once the sulfur dioxide was removed from the chamber, the moss leaves gradually recovered. This result suggests that the plant, unlike traditional colorimetric sensors, can regenerate its chemical sensing capacity. The researchers conclude that combining remote webcams or drones with moss or other plant-based sensors could lead to cheaper, faster and more precise monitoring of the air for sulfur dioxide and other pollutants over vast regions.

Journal Reference:

Xingcai Qin, Ying Zhu, Jingjing Yu, Xiaojun Xian, Chenbin Liu, Yuting Yang, Nongjian Tao. Chemical Sensing in Real Time with Plants Using a Webcam. Analytical Chemistry, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.8b03863

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endangered plants; nature; botany; air quality; air pollution; pollution; origin of life; early climate; evolution

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Moss rapidly detects, tracks air pollutants in real time

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Moss, one of the world's oldest plants, is surprisingly in tune with the atmosphere around it. Now scientists report that they have found a simple and inexpensive way to detect air pollutants, specifically sulfur dioxide, in real time based on subtle changes in moss leaves.

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Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make bullet-resistant armor plates.

Wood is abundant and relatively low-cost-it literally grows on trees. And although it has been used for millennia to build everything from furniture to homes and larger structures, untreated wood is rarely as strong as metals used in construction. Researchers have long tried to enhance its strength, especially by compressing and "densifying" it, says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. But densified wood tends to weaken and spring back toward its original size and shape, especially in humid conditions.

Now, Hu and his colleagues say they have come up with a better way to densify wood, which they report in the February 7 Nature. Their simple, two-step process starts with boiling wood in a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfite (Na2SO3), a chemical treatment similar to the first step in creating the wood pulp used to make paper. This partially removes lignin and hemicellulose (natural polymers that help stiffen a plant's cell walls)-but it largely leaves the wood's cellulose (another natural polymer) intact, Hu says.

The second step is almost as simple as the first: Compressing the treated wood until its cell walls collapse, then maintaining that compression as it is gently heated. The pressure and heat encourage the formation of chemical bonds between large numbers of hydrogen atoms and neighboring atoms in adjacent nanofibers of cellulose, greatly strengthening the material.

The results are impressive. The team's compressed wood is three times as dense as the untreated substance, Hu says, adding that its resistance to being ripped apart is increased more than 10-fold. It also can become about 50 times more resistant to compression and almost 20 times as stiff. The densified wood is also substantially harder, more scratch-resistant and more impact-resistant. It can be molded into almost any shape. Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant: In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five days swelled less than 10 percent-and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely.

A five-layer, plywoodlike sandwich of densified wood stopped simulated bullets fired into the material-a result Hu and his colleagues suggest could lead to low-cost armor. The material does not protect quite as well as a Kevlar sheet of the same thickness-but it only costs about 5 percent as much, he notes.

The team's results "appear to open the door to a new class of lightweight materials," says Ping Liu, a materials chemist at the University of California, San Diego, unaffiliated with the Nature study. Vehicle manufacturers have often tried to save weight by switching from regular steel to high-strength steel, aluminum alloys or carbon-fiber composites-but those materials are costly, and consumers "rarely make that money back in fuel savings," Liu says. And densified wood has another leg up on carbon-fiber composites: It does not require expensive adhesives that also can make components difficult, if not impossible, to recycle.

Densified wood provides new design possibilities and uses for which natural wood is too weak, says Peter Fratzl, a materials scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany who did not take part in the study. "Instead of creating a design for the material at hand, researchers can create a material to suit the design they want," he says, alluding to a familiar process among aerospace engineers who have a long history of developing ever-stronger alloys to meet their needs.

One possible obstacle to the widespread use of densified wood will be engineers' ability to scale up and accelerate the process, Liu notes. Hu and his team spent several hours making each coffee-table book-size slab of densified wood used for testing. But there are no practical reasons the process could not be sped up or used to make larger components, Hu contends.

Although Hu and his team have sought to enhance wood's strength, other researchers have pursued more unusual goals-such as making it transparent. One team, led by materials scientist Lars Berglund at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has come up with a way to make windowpanes of wood. The first step in that process (as in Hu's) is to remove lignin, a substance that not only stiffens wood but also creates its brownish color. The researchers infuse the lignin-free wood with a polymer called methyl methacrylate (MMA), a material better known by trade names such as Plexiglas and Lucite.

Because MMA's index of refraction (a measure of how much it bends light) matches that of the lignin-free wood, rays of light pass right through the MMA-infused composite instead of getting bounced around inside empty cells. This renders the material remarkably clear. Berglund and his team described their feat two years ago in Biomacromolecules. Coincidentally, at the same time Hu and his colleagues were also developing a method for rendering wood transparent.

Research like Hu's and Berglund's can only add to the wild prospects for the future of materials science. Someday soon it might be possible to live in a home made almost completely from one of Earth's most abundant and versatile building materials-from floors to rafters, walls to windows. In the garage there may be a car whose chassis and bumpers could be composed of densified wood rather than steel and plastic-knock on wood.
Sid Perkins, who writes most often about Earth and planetary sciences, materials science and paleontology, is based in Crossville, Tenn.

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Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding Bullet--It's Super Wood!

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Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys.

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-create-artificial-wood-that-is-water-and-fire-resistant/

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The planet's coral reefs are in trouble. Thanks to warming and acidifying oceans, the animals that make up coral reefs are dying, turning the reefs themselves into algae-covered ghost towns. This represents a loss of habitat for numerous nearby creatures, many of which evolved to only live in the reefs. So the deaths of the corals can lead to the deaths of many other species. From monitoring the reefs by listening to them to local action and working to understand the dynamics of coral illness, scientists and conservationists are taking a lot of approaches to stem the tide. Still, without drastic action on our part, the oceans are going to get warmer-and more coral will die-a predicted three-quarters of the world's reefs by 2100.

This grim story was illuminated by a ray of hope this week, in the form of a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. After years of attempts, Smithsonian Institution researchers in Hawaii have figured out how to cryogenically preserve coral larvae. That means it's possible to save the genetic diversity of existing coral, perhaps for centuries. The preserved coral larvae can help reseed dead or injured reefs and, as coral research continues to work on the problem of reef death, may someday launch a reef renaissance.

"As reef degradation accelerates, the need for restoration tools has become innovative," the paper authors write. Although scientists have been able to freeze coral sperm for a while, they need fresh eggs to fertilize-an issue if you're trying to save a species from going extinct in the wild. A possible solution is freezing coral in their larval stage ( they do not have what we'd call an embryonic stage), but "large, multi-celled organisms are usually difficult to freeze," explains study author Jon Daly. Until now, nobody had successfully cryopreserved and awoken coral larvae, but Daly and his coauthers were able to find the right method to preserve Fungia scutaria larvae and defrost them successfully.

With some experimentation, the paper authors found that freezing coral larvae in the first days of their life cycle using a super-fast method called "vitrification" was successful in cryopreserving larvae who could be awoken with laser warming to swim again.

Among the technical difficulties they faced is the fact that fish embryos and coral larvae are protected from the ocean by "space capsules," explains coauthor Mary Hagedorn. The same protections that keep them safe from the sea also make them difficult to cryopreserve without giving the tissue what we could colloquially call "freezer burn." (The problem of freezer burn is one of the many issues faced by the field of human cryonics.)

Usually, the use of cryoprotectants-substances that work with the cells to make freezing without freezer burn possible-helps in the preservation process. But unlike mammalian embryos that are not protected from their mothers' uteruses, marine embryos are hard to penetrate. By using the right cryoprotectants and relatively undeveloped larvae, the team was able to saturate the baby coral with the protective substance and keep ice crystals from forming during the freezing process.

The size and protection of the embryos is also an issue when it comes time to wake them. If you've ever tried to defrost a couple of pounds of ground meat in the microwave, you'll have a sense of the issues: it doesn't de-ice uniformly. And you certainly don't want your precious coral larvae starting to cook around their edges while their centers are still frozen. The team got around this by surrounding the embryos with gold nanorods, which converted a laser's light into heat and uniformly warmed the larvae.

Comparatively few marine animals are cryopreserved as embryos or larvae-something Hagedorn says needs to change if we want any hope of saving ocean biodiversity. "One of the things that we are really concerned about is our ability to bank this material long-term around the world," she explains. There's nothing like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for marine life, she says-but there should be.

"We need to develop these tools now," says Hagedorn. It takes a while to learn how to do things like this, she says, but without tools to preserve the living genetic diversity of threatened species, they may go extinct before we have any chance of saving them. Thawing and reintroducing coral larvae to the oceans isn't exactly de-extinction, since the tissue never died, unlike-for example-efforts to clone the wooly mammoth.

But cryopreservation is just one piece of the puzzle. "This sort of work is designed to go hand-in-hand with adaptations in other areas," Daly says. Hopefully, advances in other areas of coral preservation will help conservationists make use of coral. "It's really important to do it now, while there is diversity," he says. Those other advances might come after that diversity is gone, in the ocean at least.

While the thought that coral reefs are disappearing is a grim one, "this is something that we can do," Daly says. It's arguably an investment in the future-even if it's one that nobody alive today will see. "There's always a possibility that people hundreds of years from now may want coral reefs back again," Hagedorn says.

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We can save coral reefs by putting them on ice

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The planet's coral reefs are in trouble. Thanks to warming and acidifying oceans, the animals that make up coral reefs are dying, turning the reefs themselves into algae-covered ghost towns. This represents a loss of habitat for numerous nearby creatures, many of which evolved to only live in the reefs.

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Scientists at Stanford University have developed electrochemical cells that convert carbon monoxide (CO) derived from CO ₂ into commercially viable compounds more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. Their research, published October 25 in the journal Joule, provides a new strategy for capturing CO ₂ and converting it into chemical feedstocks.

CO ₂ capture from emission sources is an attractive option for mitigating climate change, but it is an expensive process that harvests a product without commercial value. However, scientists can add value to captured CO ₂ by using electrolysis, a technique that uses an electric current to break down compounds, to convert it into more desirable products such as ethylene for polymer production or acetate as a reagent for chemical synthesis.

"C2 products such as ethylene, acetate, and ethanol are inherently more valuable than C1 products such as methane because they are versatile chemical feedstocks," says senior author Matthew Kanan, an associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University.

While converting CO ₂ to CO is already commercially possible, developing technology that can produce in-demand C2 chemicals from CO on an industrial scale is still a challenge. Electrolysis must convert CO into products at a high rate with a low overall energy demand in order to be viable. Previous electrochemical cells have required a large excess of CO to achieve a high electrolysis rate, which results in dilute products that must be concentrated and purified -- a process that requires more energy (at greater expense).

The electrochemical cells created by Kanan and his team combat these inefficiencies with a modified design that produces a concentrated stream of ethylene gas and a sodium acetate solution 1,000 times more concentrated than product obtained with previous cells. The cell uses a gas diffusion electrode (GDE) combined with a carefully designed flow field that greatly improves the delivery of CO to the electrode surface and the removal of products. The team also eliminated the need for an electrolyte solution in the cell by interfacing the GDE directly with a membrane. As a result, both ethylene and concentrated acetate solution are produced at the electrode and swept out of the cell in a single vapor stream.

"Prior to this work, the combination of a high electrolysis rate, high CO conversion, and concentrated product streams had not been achieved," says Kanan.

The team is currently scaling up their prototype to determine whether the design needs to be modified to succeed on an industrial scale, with hopes that they can eventually combine their CO electrolysis cells with existing technologies for converting CO ₂ into CO. The device may also be useful for space exploration, in particular deep space missions where it is not possible to resupply from Earth. In collaboration with researchers led by John Hogan at the NASA Ames Research Center, the team is working to combine electrochemical synthesis with microbial biosynthesis to recycle the CO ₂ breathed out by astronauts into food and nutrients.

This research was supported by NASA and the Global Climate and Energy Project.

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fuel cells; energy and resources; chemistry; organic chemistry; biochemistry; petroleum; inorganic chemistry; energy technology

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Efficient electrochemical cells for carbon dioxide conversion

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Scientists have developed electrochemical cells that convert carbon monoxide derived from carbon dioxide into commercially viable compounds more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. Their research provides a new strategy for capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into chemical feedstocks.

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As the world's temperatures go up, the Arctic keeps losing its ice. This winter, the area covered by sea ice was the second smallest on record - after last year. And many experts believe that this summer, the Arctic ice cap will shrink to record lows. Why should I care, you ask?

"The Arctic is a natural freezer," says Michael Mann, a climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, in an email to The Verge. "Just like you'd be concerned if all of the ice in your freezer melted, so should you be concerned about the loss of Arctic sea ice."

"The Arctic is a natural freezer."

The changes that are happening in the Arctic don't just affect the Arctic. Our planet is an interconnected system, and the vanishing ice is already having ripple effects down south. Among them: faster global warming, rising sea levels, and possibly more extreme natural disasters. ( Plus, the polar bears will suffer.) Scientists are still trying to figure many things out, but pretty much everyone agrees that a melting Arctic isn't a good thing.

"This whole climate change is a big can of worms," says Ignatius Rigor, coordinator of the International Arctic Buoy Program at the University of Washington. "It's pretty scary because we're starting to realize more and more how big of an impact we're having on the planet."

So here are some ways that the vanishing Arctic ice is affecting the rest of the world - you included.

The albedo effect

The albedo effect is just a fancy expression for a very simple concept: white surfaces like ice and snow reflect about 80 percent of the Sun's energy back into space. That allows us to keep cool. But if those white spots disappear, the darker ocean and land will absorb 90 percent of that heat, accelerating global warming. "If you have a black car, it gets hotter in the summer than if you have a white car," says Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.

The albedo effect due to vanishing sea ice is already responsible for about 25 percent of global warming, according to Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University's School of Environment and Biological Sciences. So we're all getting hotter because sea ice is shrinking, and the Arctic is warming up twice as fast as the rest of the world. That, in and of itself, can lead to even more problems.

Sea level rise

Sea ice floats, so when it melts, it does not raise sea levels. But warmer temperatures in the Arctic are causing another type of ice to disappear as well: land-based ice in Greenland. If that ice melts, it causes sea levels to go up. Scientists estimate that if the entire Greenland ice sheet - which is roughly three times the size of Texas - melted, sea levels would soar 20 feet.

"Certain cities will have to be abandoned."

The seas are already rising, and so far, Greenland has contributed to only 4 to 5 percent of that rise, says Francis. But melt rates are accelerating, and that poses a serious threat to anyone living on the coast. In the US, that's about 40 percent of the population. Residents in Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland are already experiencing more flooding. And the situation isn't going to get better.

"Certain cities will have to be abandoned," Wadhams says. Rigor agrees: "Our coastal towns aren't really built for this."

In Alaska, there's also another problem tied to vanishing sea ice. The ice protects coastal towns from big waves, Rigor says. Just this winter, as ice in the Bering Sea shrunk to record levels, huge waves pummeled the town of Diomede, engulfing homes. Erosion is also forcing the 400-plus residents of Newtok, Alaska, to relocate.

More extreme weather

There's another way that a warming Arctic might hit close to home: many scientists believe that it might affect extreme weather events in North America and Europe. Earlier this year, for instance, research showed that when the Arctic is unusually warm, extreme winter weather is two to four times more likely in the eastern US.

That may be happening because a warming Arctic disrupts the jet stream, "a river of fast-moving wind high over our heads" that "basically controls and creates all the weather that we experience," Francis says. The difference in temperature between the Arctic and the mid latitudes, where we live and it's warmer, is one of the driving forces of the jet stream. But as the vanishing ice is causing the Arctic to warm twice as fast as the rest of the world, that temperature difference is diminishing. And that's weakening the winds in the jet stream, Francis says. A weaker jet stream also has more waves, and that means more extreme weather that lingers for longer.

"a river of fast-moving wind high over our heads"

Francis says we've already seen this jet stream disruption in action this winter, as the eastern US experienced record-breaking freezing temperatures, a "bomb cyclone," and three nor'easters in just 11 days. But others say there's still "a lot of debate in the scientific community" on whether or not a warming Arctic is to blame, according to Julienne Stroeve, professor of polar observation and modelling at University College London.

More research is looking into this. And it's not just about the US or Europe. A study in 2017 showed that there's a link between shrinking Arctic ice and a build-up of smog in China.

Thawing permafrost

Rising temperatures in the Arctic are also causing frozen ground, called permafrost, to thaw in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. That's concerning because permafrost traps huge amounts of carbon - at least as much carbon as it's in the atmosphere right now, Francis says. If the permafrost warms up, it can start releasing this carbon in the form of two powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gases, methane and carbon dioxide, making global warming worse.

One study published in Nature Geoscience in 2012 estimated that thawed permafrost could contribute up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2300. That may not seem like much, but most scientists believe that we need to keep warming well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) if we want to stave off the worst effects of climate change. And the greenhouse gas leak from the permafrost is independent from all the carbon dioxide we keep pumping into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel. Those CO2 concentrations aren't going down.

Wadhams says that offshore permafrost also poses a danger: the frozen, underwater sediments in the Arctic are rich in methane, and if those layers start melting, we could see "a very sudden, big burst of warming that would be disastrous," he says. But Francis says that offshore permafrost is much less of a concern right now since the ocean waters deep down are still very cold. "We got other things that are much bigger to worry about right now," she says.

the ice is also becoming thinner

What's next?

Since the 1980s, the area covered by Arctic sea ice in the summer has shrunk by about 40 percent, according to NASA. The ice is also becoming thinner. It's really hard to predict when we could see ice-free summers in the Arctic, but it could be as soon as in 20 to 40 years, Francis says. (In the winter, the North Pole has six months of darkness, so it's likely that the ice will stay during that time of the year for a long time.) It all depends on how warm our planet gets - and to limit that, we need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere.

The likely solution, according to Wadhams, is the development of "carbon capture" technology that can remove CO2 from the air. Some projects are doing this already, but they're not large scale enough to really make a difference. But if we devote enough research dollars to the problem, Wadhams is confident that we will find a solution. Francis agrees: once emitted, CO2 stays in the air for 100 to 200 years, so "all of the emissions that have occurred are going to affect us for a long time, unless we can figure out a way to remove them from the atmosphere."

Wadhams adds: "In the end, that's the only thing that will save us from global warming."

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Here's what vanishing sea ice in the Arctic means for you

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As the world's temperatures go up, the Arctic keeps losing its ice. Why should I care, you ask? Our planet is an interconnected system, and the vanishing ice is already having ripple effects down south. Among them: faster global warming, rising sea levels, and possibly more extreme natural disasters.

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Solar panels might be the energy source of the future, but they also create a problem without an easy solution: what do we do with millions of panels when they stop working?

In November 2016, the Environment Ministry of Japan warned that the country will produce 800,000 tons of solar waste by 2040, and it can't yet handle those volumes. That same year, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimated that there were already 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste worldwide and that this number would grow to 78 million by 2050. "That's an amazing amount of growth," says Mary Hutzler, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research. "It's going to be a major problem."

Usually, panels are warrantied for 25 to 30 years and can last even longer. But as the solar industry has grown, the market has been flooded with cheaply made Chinese panels that can break down in as few as five years, according to Solar Power World editor-in-chief Kelly Pickerel.

To understand the challenges of solar waste, it's helpful to understand how the panels are built. There are different types of solar panels, but most of them contain aluminum, glass, silver, and an elastic material called ethylene-vinyl acetate. The problem is that they can also contain more dangerous and sometimes cancer-causing, materials such as lead, chromium, and cadmium. Functional panels are sealed off with glass and are very safe. But when the glass breaks or the panels are damaged, those substances can leak.

Recycling isn't economically viable right now for solar panels

This risk is especially high with poorly made solar panels installed in areas that experience extreme weather, like hurricanes and hail. Winds and rain can break the glass, allowing chemicals to leach into the soil and then into the water system, according to Hutzler. Pickerel points out that though solar power helped Puerto Rico recover after Hurricane Maria, there were a couple areas on the island where panels were damaged. "In those situations, we have to make sure that we collect the damaged panels," she says.

To be clear, damaged solar panels leaching toxic materials isn't an enormous risk, given how much solar panels help address the near-term dangers of global warming and how many other dangers are present during hurricanes. But it's one we need to keep in mind since climate change experts suggest that these extreme weather events are here to stay.

Solar panels are just one part of the problem of old electronics, which is now the fastest-growing category of waste. China once accepted about 70 percent of the world's e-waste, but it started refusing to take recycling a couple of years ago. Since then, Western countries have started shipping their waste to Southeast Asian countries, but it's not a long-term solution. For example, companies sometimes sell old (but not dead) panels to other countries that want them for cheap, but, again, that just moves the waste around.

While it's far from the only industry struggling to dispose of old devices, there's an extra challenge with solar panels: recycling isn't economically viable right now. Solar panels do contain some valuable materials, including silver and copper, but not as much as cellphones and other gadgets. And they definitely don't contain enough to make up for the high costs of safely breaking down a panel into its constituent parts. As a result, the Electric Power Research Institute has suggested that storing old panels long-term, like in a landfill, might be the most practical option until the recycling situation is figured out. Similarly, Pickerel adds that people sometimes collect damaged panels and put them in shipping containers so they're all at least in one area.

Still, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the major industry group, is working with recycling centers in hopes of addressing this problem early, according to Justin Baca, SEIA's vice president of markets and research. Two years ago, SEIA established a national recycling program, reaching out to US-based recyclers to vet their processes and make deals.

Right now, they're working with five recycling centers. "The volumes are really low right now, which is both a blessing and a curse," says Baca. "It's a blessing in that it's good not to have a lot of waste. But not having a lot of waste means traditional recyclers aren't very interested, since it only becomes economical to do at certain waste volumes." At the same time, he adds, that makes it difficult to know what recycling costs could be in the future. If the volume goes up, maybe it will be worth it to recycling companies.

Pickerel says that this is a problem that will need a legislative solution. "I don't think different materials is going to do anything," she says. "Things are changing where we're using no frames, and that makes it even harder to recycle because there's no aluminum [in the frames to reuse]." A policy change, she thinks, will really make a difference.

There are signs that policies are changing. Hutzler mentions that one solution energy policymakers are considering is adding a fee onto the cost of the solar panels that would make it easier for them to be removed and recycled. Washington state is taking an even more proactive approach: last year, it passed legislation that requires solar panel manufacturers to have a recycling plan for their products. In June, Europe opened its first solar panel recycling plant. These are all small steps in the right direction, but we still need a comprehensive plan in place before the panels shut down. It's all well and good to be excited about a promising technology, but we still need to think about what happens after.

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More solar panels mean more waste and there's no easy solution

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As solar panels become more and more popular, they are also creating a new problem: waste. It's not an immediate problem, but it's one we'll need to figure out in the next few decades, especially because recyclers aren't always interested, and the panels contain hazardous chemicals that can leach into water.

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-Jorge P:4

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Whey protein is often used as a supplement by people who want to build muscle.

Credit: Whey protein photo via Shutterstock

Whey protein is a popular diet supplement among people of all ages. Baby formulas include it, as do nutrition shakes for the elderly. Weight-loss supplements contain whey powder as an appetite suppressor, yet young men buy whey protein powder by the gallon in hopes of building muscle mass.

Much of whey protein's appeal is in its texture. Whey is the liquid left behind when milk is turned to cheese. The protein in whey is one of the two main proteins in milk, the other is a protein called casein. (When an acidic substance such as vinegar is mixed into milk, these two proteins will separate -- the casein proteins glob together to form solids called curds, leaving the whey as a liquid.)

Whey protein may show up in your favorite baked goods or ice cream as a way to replace the consistency of fat without the actual fat.

Like all proteins, whey protein is made of building blocks called amino acids. Protein in the body is primarily used for muscle growth and to repair tissues. When people digest food, they break down the proteins into amino acids, and then use those amino acids to build new proteins.

Body builders prize whey protein as a good source of the amino acids leucine, isoleucine and valine. Together these amino acids make up the BCAAs (3-branched chain amino acids) that are important in building muscle. There are nine essential amino acids that humans must get from food to survive and thrive. In addition to BCAAS, whey protein also contains all the essential amino acids.

Early studies have linked whey protein supplements with a stronger immune system and athletic endurance. But whey protein supplements are touted as a way to increase energy, fight stress and improve mental focus. Very early studies indicate whey protein may have a role in the body's cancer-fighting abilities. Whey protein is also said to help control blood sugar, lower cholesterol, treat asthma and possibly prevent allergies.

Do whey protein supplements work?

Whey protein supplements can certainly provide high-quality protein in the diet. But most health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommend getting your protein from food and not supplements if given the choice. Meat, poultry, fish, legumes, tofu, eggs, nuts, seeds and milk are all good sources of the essential amino acids people need.

Early studies have shown taking whey protein supplements before or after exercise can improve muscle strength, lean-muscle growth and immunity. One study of 387 U.S. Marines put protein supplements to test during basic training. At the end of 54 days, the protein-supplemented group showed stronger immune systems, with 33 percent fewer medical visits than the Marines given a placebo, or a carbohydrate and fat supplement. Marines taking the protein supplements also experienced less muscle soreness and had 28 percent fewer medical visits for muscle and joint problems. The members of the group taking protein supplements were also less likely to visit doctors for infections during the study, published in 2003 in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Among other protein supplements, small studies show whey protein may have an edge at increasing muscle mass. In one study, researchers at the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Connecticut divided 63 men and women into groups receiving a soy supplement, a whey supplement or a carbohydrate supplement. Over the course of a nine-month training regimen, researchers found that those taking whey protein gained several more kilograms of muscle mass than people taking the other supplements, according to the 2013 article published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

But the timing of taking whey protein supplements can change how effective they are. A 2009 joint statement by the American Dietetic Association (ADA), Dietitians of Canada (DC) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) noted that eating protein during exercise did little to improve athletic performance. The statement recommended eating a low-fat, high-carb snack that is moderate in protein content before exercise, to make fuel available to the muscles.

Protein digested after exercise provides the amino acids the body needs to repair and build new muscles. Eating whey protein right after exercise could be especially useful because whey protein has a high level of leucine, an easily absorbed amino acid, according to Joslin Diabetes Center.

Many of whey protein's purported health benefits are linked to a powerful antioxidant called glutathione. People with HIV, liver disease, diabetes and various cancers can all develop low glutathione levels in the body. The body can make its own glutathione from the amino acid cysteine, and whey happens to be high in cysteine. Studies confirm eating whey protein increases the levels of glutathione in the body. However, there is only preliminary evidence investigating whether whey protein has a meaningful effect on the health of people with conditions linked to low glutathione.

Small studies done in people show whey protein may have a modest effect on asthma symptoms, inflammation after stroke and some liver conditions by indirectly increasing glutathione levels. Animal studies show whey protein supplements fed to rats can prevent inflammation and early signs of complications from obesity and diabetes, according to a 2012 review published in the journal Lipids in Health and Disease. The review also found promising evidence that whey protein can trigger the release of hormones that make people feel full, and very preliminary evidence that whey protein may help lower high blood pressure.

Whey protein also shows a potential for lowering blood sugar. A study of 14 people with type 2 diabetes found that combining whey protein with a high-sugar meal increased people's insulin production and quelled the expected blood sugar spike following the meal. The study was published i 2005 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Are whey protein supplements safe?

The safety of whey protein supplements depends largely on the dose. Most Americans eat twice the protein they need, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Excess protein of any kind will be stored as fat in the body, and can increase the risk of dehydration.

Too much protein may also increase a person's risk for calcium loss and osteoporosis. That's because acids are released into the bloodstream when protein is digested, and the body uses calcium to neutralize these acids. It is possible that the extra calcium needed will be leeched from bones, according to the NIH. However, studies are inconclusive on this point. Some research shows high-protein diets are correlated with more fractures, but other research has found people with high-protein diets have increased bone density, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

Athletes can safely eat more protein than people who are not physically active. In fact, an athlete who does not get enough protein will sustain some muscle damage and take longer to recover. The average person needs 0.8 grams of protein a day per every kilogram of body weight. This translates to about 50 to 65 grams of protein a day, or roughly 4 ounces of meat and 1 cup of cottage cheese. On the other hand, an athlete may need 1.2 grams or even up to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight a day, according to various statements by the American Dietetic Association, the American College of Sports Medicine and the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

Because whey is a dairy product, people with milk allergies should avoid whey protein. People who are lactose intolerant should also take caution. Different whey protein powders can vary in calories, and fat and lactose content. Whey protein isolate is 90 percent protein and contains little to no fat, cholesterol or lactose. But whey protein concentrate can have 29 to 90 percent protein, and as the proportion of protein goes down, the fat and lactose content in a whey protein supplement increases. Protein supplements of any kind may cause additional strain on the kidneys if a person has a kidney condition.

Most supplements on the market haven't caused problems, but there is less oversight of supplements sold in the United States than of prescription drugs. In their joint statement, the American Dietetic Association and the American College of Sports Medicine noted some cases of protein supplements also containing anabolic steroids. One 2010 experiment by Consumer Reports tested 15 protein drinks purchased online or from stores in the New York metro area. The study found three products that would exceed the daily limit of arsenic, cadmium and mercury set by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention if a person consumed more than the three recommended servings.

Whey protein may also interact with some medications. Whey protein supplements can decrease the effectiveness of the Parkinson's drug levodopa. Whey protein supplements may also reduce how much of the osteoporosis drug alendronate is absorbed by the body, making the medicine less effective. Whey protein supplements may reduce the effectiveness of quinolone and tetracycline antibiotics. People with diabetes may experience changes in blood sugar when taking protein supplements.

It is best to talk to your doctor about your athletic goals and personal needs before starting protein supplements. Overall, the International Society of Sports Nutrition considered a short-term regimen of whey protein supplements safe for most healthy adults.

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Whey protein is a popular diet supplement among people of all ages. Baby formulas include it, as do nutrition shakes for the elderly. Weight-loss supplements contain whey powder as an appetite suppressor, yet young men buy whey protein powder by the gallon in hopes of building muscle mass.

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This concrete can trap CO2 emissions forever

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But concrete has an emissions problem. Its essential ingredient, cement, has a huge carbon footprint. Cement is the glue that makes concrete strong, but the process of making cement requires superheating calcium carbonate, or limestone, and releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

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Plastic island: How our trash is destroying paradise

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Eight million tons of plastic end up in our oceans every year. What it's done to this island is a stark warning.