Chemistry

To prevent a global health crisis, scientists around the world are searching for ways to fight bacteria that can evade the current arsenal of antibiotics. A promising target for new and improved antibiotics are riboswitches, small stretches of RNA that regulate a process necessary for the production of proteins by the bacterial cell.

Designing the next generation of efficient energy conversion devices for powering our electronics and heating our homes requires a detailed understanding of how molecules move and vibrate while undergoing light-induced chemical reactions.

Chemical engineers at Monash University have developed an industrial process to produce acetic acid that uses the excess carbon dioxide(CO₂) in the atmosphere, and has a potential to create negative carbon emissions.

The structure harnesses a strange physical phenomenon and could enable engineers to manipulate light in new ways. Study: Entropy compartmentalization stabilizes open host-guest colloidal Clathrates. (DOI: 10.1038/s41557'023 -01200-6) Cage structures made with nanoparticles could be a route toward making organized nanostructures with mixed materials, and researchers at the University of Michigan have shown how to achieve this through computer simulations.

Many people remember a specific food they enjoyed as children, whether it's a special pie made by a grandparent, a once-a-year tasty treat for a holiday or spring rolls from a street vendor. But while the memory of the experience is readily available, the recipe to make that food is not.

Among all greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide is the highest contributor to global warming. Without action by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the average temperature of the world will increase by about 1.5 degrees Celsius.