all chemistry stories

Jeremy Knowles, eminent chemist, Harvard leader, 72

404132862 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:32:05 -0400

Jeremy R. Knowles, an eminent chemist and longtime leader of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, died April 3 at his home in Cambridge, after a struggle with cancer.

HMS researchers find how gold fights arthritis

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:26:43 -0400

Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than 75 years, but, until now, how the metals work has been a mystery. Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers report in the Feb. 27 issue of Nature Chemical Biology that special forms of gold, platinum, and other classes of medicinal metals work by stripping bacteria and virus particles from the grasp of a key immune system protein.

Scientists create high-speed nanowire circuits

50443248 — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:15:22 -0400

Chemists and engineers at Harvard University have made robust circuits from minuscule nanowires that align themselves on a chip of glass during low-temperature fabrication, creating rudimentary electronic devices that offer solid performance without high-temperature production or high-priced silicon.
The researchers, led by chemist Charles M. Lieber and engineer Donhee Ham, produced circuits at low temperature by running a nanowire-laced solution over a glass substrate, followed by regular photolithography to etch the pattern of a circuit. Their merging of low-temperature fabrication and nanowires in a high-performance electronic device is described this week in the journal Nature.

Repairing DNA damage

50443248 — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:36:05 -0400

Scientists have discovered some fascinating details about a handy repair service in your genes that that not much is known about. It searches through the huge amounts of DNA in the core of every human cell and recognizes parts that have become damaged due to the wear and tear of life. Then it removes and helps replace the faulty part without you being aware of it.
For the first time, researchers at Harvard University have taken snapshots of one of these protective "mechanics" at work. It's a protein that checks out parts known as "bases," the building blocks of DNA, which makes up our genes and carries the blueprints for our biology and behavior.

Brighter model for global warming

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:08:56 -0400

To environmental chemist Scot Martin, chemistry is a way of understanding the Earth and some of its most pressing problems.
From global warming to heavy metal pollution in groundwater, Martin, named Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry last July, is using the tools of chemistry to shed light on how natural processes interact with human activities to affect the environment.

A giant step toward miniaturization

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:35:38 -0400

Incredibly tiny integrated circuits could have applications well beyond faster, smaller computers and cell phones with features only fantasized about today. For example, nanocircuits might make possible sensors that can detect a single virus in your blood. "It could turn manufacturing of high-end technology upside down," says Charles Lieber, Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry. "It could affect all electronic circuits in the world. And that's really cool." This is the first time that bridging two different types of materials has been done at the nanometer level. The implications for more efficient electronics and sensing devices are obvious. Lieber is already working with Intel Corp., the world's largest producer of electronic chips.

Letting nature do the work

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:20:10 -0400

It's called self-assembly, and essentially it's the study of how tiny structures assemble themselves, such as happens in living organisms. At present, researchers who study self-assembly are working with nonliving or static devices. Professor George Whitesides' team, for instance, oversaw the autonomous coming together of 1,500 tiny cubes of silicon on a surface smaller than 1 square inch in less than three minutes. In the same building at Harvard, Charles Lieber, Hyman Professor of Chemistry, uses similar techniques to put together devices measured in millionths of an inch, which may find application in tomorrow's computers and as detectors of disease or bioterrorist toxins. These static devices, however, have already begun to evolve into structures that closely mimic living things, including proteins, DNA, viruses, and even a somewhat humanlike brain.

A strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:16:12 -0400

A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being injected with anthrax toxin. But when the toxin was followed minutes later with an injection of an inhibiting agent known as a polyvalent ligand -- itself completely innocuous -- the rats were protected from the toxin's effects. Asked if the polyvalent ligand can be tested in humans, research team leader R.

Young stars in Orion may solve mystery of our solar system

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:15:43 -0400

Scientists who study how our solar system formed have been hard pressed to explain the presence of extremely unusual chemical isotopes found in ancient meteoroids orbiting the Earth. The isotopes are short-lived and had to have been formed no earlier than the creation of the solar system, some five billion years ago. Yet these elements cannot be produced by a star as massive as our Sun under normal circumstances. So it has long been assumed that those isotopes were left there by a powerful, nearby star explosion. Now, scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory to look at young stars in the Orion Nebula have uncovered important clues about how those chemical isotopes got into our solar system. These young stars in Orion behave much as our own Sun would have at the same age.

Black silicon: A new way to trap light

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:04:34 -0400

Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like platinum. One day, they decided to put a chip of gray silicon into a vacuum chamber, add some halogen gas, and scan it with ultrashort, ultra-intense laser pulses. Each pulse lasted a mere 100 millionths of a billionth of a second. However, the energy in a single pulse approximates focusing all the sunlight hitting Earth at one time onto a space the size of a fingernail. After more than 500 pulses, the silicon turned black. It wasn't burned; rather, its surface had been etched by the heat and gas into a dazzling forest of billions of minute needlelike spikes.