Chemistry – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jan 9
2026

Sensor lights up to reveal scopolamine, a common substance used for sexual assault

A team from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has led the development of a new sensor capable of quickly and easily detecting scopolamine, one of the substances most commonly used in crimes of chemical submission, especially in sexual assaults. The sensor detects the presence of this drug in less than five minutes with high sensitivity. The research is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

“Scopolamine is a substance that is difficult to detect using conventional methods, especially when found in drinks. For this reason, our group from the IDM Institute at the UPV set out to develop new, simple tools that can immediately alert us to its presence,” says Vicente Martí Centelles, a researcher at the Interuniversity Research Institute for Molecular Recognition and Technological Development (IDM) at the UPV.

Jan 8
2026

The electrifying science behind Martian dust

Mars, often depicted as a barren red planet, is far from lifeless. With its thin atmosphere and dusty surface, it is an energetic and electrically charged environment where dust storms and dust devils continually reshape the landscape, creating dynamic processes that have intrigued scientists.

Planetary scientist Alian Wang has been shedding light on Mars’s electrifying dust activities through a series of papers. Her latest research, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, explores the isotopic geochemical consequences of these activities.

Jan 8
2026

New evidence for a particle system that ‘remembers’ its previous quantum states

In the future, quantum computers are anticipated to solve problems once thought unsolvable, from predicting the course of chemical reactions to producing highly reliable weather forecasts. For now, however, they remain extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances and prone to information loss.

A new study from the lab of Dr. Yuval Ronen at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Nature, presents fresh evidence for the existence of non-Abelian anyons—exotic particles considered prime candidates for building a fault-tolerant quantum computer. This evidence was produced within bilayer graphene, an ultrathin carbon crystal with unusual electronic behavior.

In quantum mechanics, particles also behave like waves, and their properties are described by a wave function, which can represent the state of a single particle or a system of particles. Physicists classify particles according to how the wave function of two identical particles changes when they exchange places. Until the 1980s, only two types of particles were known: bosons (such as photons), whose wave function remains unchanged when they exchange places, and fermions (such as electrons), whose wave function becomes inverted.

Jan 8
2026

THz spectroscopy system bypasses long-standing tradeoff between spectral and spatial resolution

Terahertz (THz) radiation, which occupies the frequency band between microwaves and infrared light, is essential in many next-generation applications, including high-speed wireless communications, chemical sensing, and advanced material analysis.

To harness THz waves, scientists rely on functional devices like metasurfaces and resonant gratings, which exhibit sharp and effective resonance features. Characterizing and optimizing these high-performance devices, however, remains a technical challenge.

The difficulty stems from a fundamental tradeoff when performing THz measurements: achieving high spectral resolution versus high spatial resolution. To accurately capture the narrow spectral fingerprints of certain gases and the features of devices with a high quality factor (Q), researchers need very high spectral resolution.

Jan 8
2026

Potential Anti-Cancer Fungal Compound Finally Synthesized After 55 Years

The fungal compound verticillin A, discovered more than 50 years ago, has long been regarded for its potential cancer-fighting capabilities. S cientists have now managed to artificially synthesize the compound for the first time, meaning they can study it in more detail and potentially develop new cancer treatments.

Being able to produce verticillin A on demand in the lab is a major step forward. In nature, it’s found only in small amounts in a microscopic fungus and is very difficult to extract.

Before now, the complex chemical structure and inherent instability of verticillin A made it tricky to synthesize, but researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have overcome both problems.

Jan 7
2026

A trio of AI methods tackles enzyme design

Naturally occurring enzymes, while powerful, catalyze only a fraction of the reactions chemists care about.

That’s why scientists are eager to design new-to-nature versions that could manufacture drugs more efficiently, break down pollutants, capture carbon, or carry out entirely new forms of chemistry that biology never evolved.

Young galaxies grow up fast: Research reveals unexpected chemical maturity

Astronomers have captured the most detailed look yet at faraway galaxies at the peak of their youth, an active time when the adolescent galaxies were fervently producing new stars.

The observations focused on 18 galaxies located 12.5 billion light-years away. They were imaged across a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to radio over the past eight years by a trio of telescopes: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope; NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST); and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile, of which the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a partner. Data from other ground-based telescopes were also used to make measurements, such as the total mass of stars in the galaxies.

“With this sample, we are uniquely poised to study galaxy evolution during a key epoch in the universe that has been hard to image until now,” says Andreas Faisst, a staff scientist at IPAC, a science and data center for astronomy at Caltech. “Thanks to these exceptional telescopes, we have spatially resolved these galaxies and can observe the stages of star formation as they were happening and their chemical properties when our universe was less than a billion years old.”

Jan 7
2026

A stress-related chemical could initiate symptoms of depression

Depression, one of the most prevalent mental health disorders worldwide, is characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, impaired daily functioning and a loss of interest in daily activities, often along with altered sleeping and eating patterns. Past research findings suggest that stress can play a key role in the emergence of depressive symptoms, yet the biological processes via which it might increase the risk of depression remain poorly understood.

Researchers at Wenzhou Medical University, Capital Medical University and other institutes in China recently carried out a study investigating the biological processes that could link stress to the onset of depression. Their results, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that stress influences the levels of a chemical known as formaldehyde (FA) in specific parts of the brain, which could in turn disrupt their normal functioning, contributing to the emergence of depression.

Jan 6
2026

Antenatal melatonin for cardiovascular deficits in fetal growth restriction

Recent Research by Charmaine R. Rock of Hudson Institute of Medical Research et al. examines antenatal melatonin for cardiovascular deficits in fetal growth restriction 🫀 💊

🔗 📜 Read the study here.

The results of the present study indicate that melatonin has the potential to mitigate the progressive development of impaired endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in growth-restricted lambs. However, this benefit is associated with transient impairment of endothelial function on the first day of life. It would be prudent to investigate the physiological implications of this early vascular dysfunction during the critical period of cardiovascular adaptation to postnatal life. Adjustments to the antenatal melatonin treatment regime, such as tapering the dose before and after birth, could be explored to support a smoother cardiovascular transition on the first day of life.

Additionally, because the present study was conducted up to 4 weeks of age, equivalent to an ∼1-year-old human infant, extending the study outcomes into adulthood is important to determine whether endothelial function is sustained or continues to improve with age, potentially achieving full restoration to the relaxation abilities observed in control lambs. Furthermore, given that functional assessment of the carotid artery was not possible in our study, future research should include such testing to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how FGR impacts vascular function.

The present study provides novel insight into the short-and longer-term, and region-specific impact of melatonin on the cardiovascular system. Our findings demonstrate that, although antenatal melatonin improves the contribution of NO to endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in the femoral artery of newborn FGR+MLT lambs, it is accompanied by an overall reduction in femoral endothelium-dependent vasodilatory capacity. Notably, this reduction in endothelial function is transient and improves by 4 weeks of age, which contrasts with the progressive impairment of endothelial function seen in untreated FGR lambs. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed elevated oxidative stress and inflammatory markers in the femoral artery of 4-week-old FGR+MLT lambs.

Jan 6
2026

This CRISPR breakthrough turns genes on without cutting DNA

A new CRISPR breakthrough shows scientists can turn genes back on without cutting DNA, by removing chemical tags that act like molecular anchors. The work confirms these tags actively silence genes, settling a long-running scientific debate. This gentler form of gene editing could offer a safer way to treat Sickle Cell disease by reactivating a fetal blood gene. Researchers say it opens the door to powerful therapies with fewer unintended side effects.