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Category: chemistry

Autism’s Link to Parkinson’s Risk May Finally Be Explained

People with autism may be up to six times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease in later life. New research offers a potential explanation based on the role of transporter molecules that recycle unused dopamine in the brain.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter crucial for managing movement and executive functions, and for reinforcing behavior. It’s well known that Parkinson’s is characterized by a drop in dopamine levels, while disruptions in the transport of the chemical have also been linked to autism.

With that context, researchers led by a team from the University of Missouri in the US took a novel approach using a technology known as a DaT SPECT scan, which is typically used to diagnose Parkinson’s in much older people.

China succeeds in mimicking photosynthesis and transforming CO₂ and water into fuel: the experiment that could revolutionize the production of synthetic gasoline

Could future gasoline come from thin air and sunlight instead of oil wells? A team of Chinese scientists has unveiled a lab system that imitates plant photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide and water into gasoline building blocks using only sunlight. Their work hints at a way to recycle a major greenhouse gas while still using existing engines and fuel infrastructure.

In an artificial photosynthesis study, the researchers report a “charge reservoir” material that stores solar energy as electrical charge, then delivers it on demand to drive reactions. The system converts carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, a key building block for synthetic fuels, and uses water as its only electron source instead of extra helper chemicals.

Although still a lab device, the setup works under natural sunlight and is meant to connect renewable energy to industry and transport.

How an acid found in grapes could help recycle battery metals

Cobalt and nickel are vital components for batteries, superalloys and catalysts, used in technologies ranging from smartphones to jet engines. But when it comes to recycling, they are notoriously difficult to separate because they are chemically nearly identical. To solve this, a team led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in the United States has developed a cleaner and cheaper way to extract these elements. And it is thanks in part to grapes.

Bacteria that generate electricity: How a shellfish-based gel could monitor wastewater and food

Microbial bioelectronic sensors use living bacteria that can create an electrical signal in response to the presence of a target substance, or analyte. These types of sensors offer many advantages over other types of biosensors based on proteins and enzymes: The bacteria can perform multiple functions, survive in a variety of environments and even grow and regenerate for potential long-term use.

However, building devices using living bacteria poses several challenges. The mediators some bacteria use to send and receive electrons, creating the electric signal, can be swept away from the sensor by liquid environments researchers would want to monitor, like wastewater. Some mediators are toxic to humans or the environment. Rice University researcher Rafael Verduzco developed a safe bioelectronic sensor that allows for effective electronic communication even in liquid environments. The study was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This system uses a naturally occurring polymer chitosan, which is found in the hard outer shells of crustaceans. In our system, the chitosan also acts kind of like a shell to keep the bacteria from escaping. It is also modified to have anchor points the mediators can attach to, which are critical to transport electrons,” said Verduzco, corresponding author on the paper and the A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “This material provides a flexible way to encapsulate the bacteria and enhance electronic signals. Since it’s based on a low-cost and renewable polymer, we think it has great potential for real-world applications.”

Quantum computers must overcome major technical hurdles before tackling quantum chemistry problems

Although the potential applications of quantum computing are widespread, a new feasibility study suggests quantum computers still face major hurdles in solving quantum chemistry problems. The study, published in Physical Review B, evaluates what criteria are needed for a quantum advantage in searching for the ground state energy of molecules. The researchers attempt this feat using two different algorithms with differing strengths and weaknesses.

The team first determined the criteria for the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm, which is used for noisy, near-term devices and sets an upper bound to the level of imprecision or decoherence in quantum hardware. The researchers derived quantitative criteria for VQE and QPE based on error rates, energy scales, and overlap with the ground state.

Results showed that VQE is extremely sensitive to hardware errors and decoherence. The team says that achieving chemical accuracy would require error rates far below current hardware capabilities. Available error mitigation techniques offer only limited improvement and scale poorly with system size.

From guesswork to guidance: How machine learning speeds dopant design for water-splitting photocatalysts

MLIP calculations successfully identify suitable dopants for a novel photocatalytic material, report researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo. As demonstrated in their study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a materials informatics approach could predict which ions can be stably introduced into orthorhombic Sn3O4, a promising and recently discovered photocatalytic tin oxide.

Their experiments revealed that aluminum-doped samples achieved 16 times greater hydrogen production than the undoped material, paving the way for next-generation clean energy applications.

Building a sustainable hydrogen economy requires clean and efficient ways to produce hydrogen at scale. One particularly attractive approach is photocatalysis—using materials called photocatalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen utilizing sunlight.

Real-time protein quality control keeps cells healthy

Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a biochemical technique that captures fleeting “handshakes” between newly made proteins and the cellular helpers. These short interactions are important because they can determine whether a protein turns out healthy and useful or is faulty and in need of removal. The research has been published in the journal Molecular Cell.

Cells produce vast numbers of proteins to sustain life. But building a protein is not only about assembling a chain of amino acids in the right order. As the protein chain is being produced, it must begin folding into the correct three-dimensional shape and avoid attaching to the wrong partners.

When folding goes wrong, misfolded proteins can become sticky, clump together, and disrupt cellular health. Cells reduce this risk by running “quality checks” even while proteins are still being made. However, identifying the key players in this early surveillance has been challenging because their interactions with newly forming protein chains are brief and easily missed.

Comprehensive digital materials ecosystem can perform ‘sanity check’ to guide design

There is a near-infinite number of material candidates out there—and simply not enough time to hunker down in the lab and test them all. Thankfully, researchers have a variety of tools (such as AI) at their disposal to streamline what would otherwise be a time-consuming process of trial-and-error.

To create an efficient materials design workflow, a team of researchers at Tohoku University is suggesting not just one tool—but a whole toolbox that works together as a cohesive kit. The work is published in the journal Chemical Science.

This comprehensive system is called a “digital materials ecosystem” because it integrates multiple processes together instead of treating them as disconnected steps. For example, the ecosystem is capable of not only predicting how certain materials will react, but also orchestrating multi-step scientific workflows including searching for evidence, screening candidates, and deciding what to test next.

Inside the light: How invisible electric fields drive device luminescence

Fleeting electron-hole pairs are giving scientists a new window into optimizing light-emitting devices (LEDs). Using quantum magnetic resonance, Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have discovered how shifting internal electric fields dictate whether these devices shine brightly or dimly. Their study is published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

Light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) are simple, flexible, and low-cost thin-film devices that generate light from an electric current. Unlike conventional organic LEDs, LECs contain just a single active layer—an organic semiconductor blended with mobile ions—sandwiched between two electrodes. This structural simplicity makes them promising tools for next-generation light-emitting technologies.

Inside that apparently simple structure, however, things aren’t so simple after all.

Physicists observe rare nuclear isomer in ytterbium-150 for first time

Nuclear isomers are crucial probes for studying the structure of nuclei. Unlike chemical isomers—which have the same chemical formula but different arrangements of atoms—nuclear isomers are nuclei that exist in a long-lived and relatively stable excited state.

Normally, an atomic nucleus resides in its lowest-energy state, known as the ground state. Under external perturbations, such as nucleus-nucleus collisions, however, a nucleus can be excited to a higher-energy state.

While most excited nuclear states are extremely short-lived and rapidly decay back to the ground state, some nuclei remain “trapped” in an excited state for a remarkably long time. Such isomeric states help reveal the structure of the nucleus due to its high sensitivity to the underlying shell structure as well as to changes in single-particle levels.

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