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When the Shewanella oneidensis bacterium “breathes” in certain metal and sulfur compounds anaerobically, the way an aerobic organism would process oxygen, it produces materials that could be used to enhance electronics, electrochemical energy storage, and drug-delivery devices.

The ability of this bacterium to produce molybdenum disulfide—a material that is able to transfer electrons easily, like graphene—is the focus of research published in Biointerphases by a team of engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“This has some serious potential if we can understand this process and control aspects of how the bacteria are making these and other materials,” said Shayla Sawyer, an associate professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer.

Quantum computers have enormous potential for calculations using novel algorithms and involving amounts of data far beyond the capacity of today’s supercomputers. While such computers have been built, they are still in their infancy and have limited applicability for solving complex problems in materials science and chemistry. For example, they only permit the simulation of the properties of a few atoms for materials research.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago (UChicago) have developed a method paving the way to using quantum computers to simulate realistic molecules and complex materials, whose description requires hundreds of atoms.

The research team is led by Giulia Galli, director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM), a group leader in Argonne’s Materials Science division and a member of the Center for Molecular Engineering at Argonne. Galli is also the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and a Professor of Chemistry at UChicago. She worked on this project with assistant scientist Marco Govoni and graduate student He Ma, both part of Argonne’s Materials Science division and UChicago.

Yamaha has finally unveiled its new Yamaha YDX MORO electric mountain bike line. The new models feature Yamaha’s latest mid-drive e-bike motor and a brand new frame design unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The possibility of achieving room temperature superconductivity took a tiny step forward with a recent discovery by a team of Penn State physicists and materials scientists.

The surprising discovery involved layering a two-dimensional material called molybdenum sulfide with another material called molybdenum carbide. Molybdenum carbide is a known superconductor—electrons can flow through the material without any resistance. Even the best of metals, such as silver or copper, lose energy through heat. This loss makes long-distance transmission of electricity more costly.

“Superconductivity occurs at very low temperatures, close to absolute zero or 0 Kelvin,” said Mauricio Terrones, corresponding author on a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published this week. “The alpha phase of Moly carbide is superconducting at 4 Kelvin.”

A transformative experiment is yielding fresh insights 40 years after the effect’s discovery — and energizing transdisciplinary collaborations.

Through a cross-species study of metformin, a common drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes, a team of researchers and clinicians from the Donnelly Center and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) has shown that it could one day be possible to repair brain injury using resident cells in the brain.

“No one’s actually shown before that you can take a drug where there’s a known mechanism on endogenous stem cells and demonstrate that it’s even possible to induce brain growth and positive recovery,” says Donald Mabbott, Program Head and Senior Scientist in the Neurosciences & Mental Health program at SickKids, and co-author of a study published in Nature Medicine on July 27.

Mabbott says metformin is a potential game-changer in terms of how childhood brain injury is treated.

International team of scientists with Mainz participation proposes plans for high-intensity gamma radiation source at CERN.

The ‘Gamma Factory initiative’ – an international team of scientists – is currently exploring a novel research tool: They propose to develop a source of high-intensity gamma rays using the existing accelerator facilities at CERN. To do this, specialized ion beams will be circulated in the SPS and LHC storage rings, which will then be excited using laser beams so that they emit photons. In the selected configuration, the energies of the photons will be within the gamma radiation range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is of particular interest in connection with spectroscopic analysis of atomic nuclei. Furthermore, the gamma rays will be designed to have a very high intensity, several orders of magnitude higher than those of systems currently in operation.

The FDA is “extremely concerned” by the growing risks of toxic sanitizers.

This sucks.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), found in many household products and food packages, have raised concerns because of their persistence and possible toxicity to people and wildlife. Because the compounds don’t break down naturally, they have become environmental contaminants. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have studied the transport of 29 PFAS into and out of the Arctic Ocean, detecting a newer compound for the first time in Arctic seawater.

After studies indicated that two PFAS—PFOA and PFOS—can cause cancer, a compromised immune response and other health problems in lab animals, the two compounds were voluntarily phased out by industry. However, these legacy compounds are still widely detected in the environment. Intended as a safer replacement for PFOA, HFPO-DA (sold under the trade name GenX) is now thought to pose similar health and persistence concerns. Hanna Joerss and colleagues wanted to investigate the long-range, oceanic transport of legacy and replacement PFAS to the Arctic Ocean—a remote body of water connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Fram Strait, which is located between Svalbard and Greenland.

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