Chemistry

In the demonstration below, a bit of acetone has been put on the corner of the brick to get the process started: This demonstrates the remarkable effects of inherent, embedded, intelligible structural, quantitative properties of fluorine and other elements and molecules. With lesser materials, we can see similar, even more spectacular effects: Notice, the table of standard electrode potentials of selected ions: A world that exhibits lawlike, reliable properties that are structural and/or quantitative shows how such properties are integrated into the fabric or architecture of being. END

That could impact our understanding of early Earth. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe but finding it on Earth is tricky. So researchers resorted to a computer simulation and found a promising possible compound: Helium-bearing compounds have, until very recently, been considered unlikely to exist under the physical conditions on or inside the Earth, Chen says, but in his opinion, his team’s new predictions change that view. Chen suggests that primordial helium reacted with FeO2 back when the Earth was new, forming a solid material. The compound is sufficiently heavy that it would only rise to the surface through so-called mantle plumes, which are columns of hot, solid rock that move up to the crust. When Read More ›

Doug Axe, Intro of recalls current CalTech winner Frances Arnold: In a conversation in her office one day, I said that I wanted to do work on protein evolution. She was skeptical, for pragmatic reasons. “Is that the kind of work that people will want to fund?”, she asked. I smile recalling that, but up to that point she had been trying to modify enzymes (proteins that do chemistry) by thinking carefully about the effects certain changes to their amino-acid sequences ought to have. She and the graduate students working with her soon found that it was much harder to anticipate the effects of designed changes than they had thought. That’s when she made the shift to what is known Read More ›

From researchers at Princeton: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement of its atoms. The analysis could lead to predicting primes with high accuracy, said the researchers. The study was published Sept. 5 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. “There is much more order in prime numbers than ever Read More ›

From Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote about three of the deadly neurotoxins being produced by cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during an ongoing algae bloom in South Florida (See Florida’s Deadly Algae Bloom – Why Is It So Dangerous?). The toxins range from structurally simple and easy for organic chemists to synthesize in the lab to moderately complex and not simple at all. But there are numerous examples of plants, marine organisms, and bacteria that easily biosynthesize molecules that are so complex and difficult to make synthetically that chemistry grad students and post-docs who were given the unenviable task of doing so are probably still waking up in cold sweats thinking about what they Read More ›

From David Nguyen at Think Tank Learning: See also: What is Randomness? Part 1, with David Nguyen: Contextual bias

Yes, re this recent item (paper, public access), Rob Sheldon, our physics color commentator writes, — I’m no chemist, my last class being Organic Chem in college, but I’ll take a stab at this paper. Like most of these Origin-of-Life papers, the chemistry is awesome, the interpretation, well, a bit pretentious. OOL Theories: Among the favorite materialistic origin stories, there is “DNA-first”, “RNA-first” and “Metabolism-first”. I suppose we might add “protein-first” and “cellwall-first” to the list as well. Once a self-replicating structure of your favorite model was in place, then the magic of natural selection would automatically add wings to your pig, and Voila! OOL. The Problem: that first self-replicating system is a real pain. It has to be simple enough Read More ›

Dr E. Selensky occasionally requests that UD posts an article on his behalf. What follows is his latest: ______________ Arguably, the RNA world model is excessively complex: it operates too complex structures and involves too complex interactions. The origin of life, some researchers believe, must have been simpler.In an attempt to close the gap between chemistry and life by naturalistic means a new model has been proposed recently, yet another one of many, that seeks to explain the rise of RNAs. This model is called template-assisted ligation. It has been proposed by Alexey Tkachenko and Sergei Maslov at American Institute of Physics. They hope it can help shed light on what could have preceded the RNA world.The crux of the Read More ›

Recently I had a lengthy discussion with an acquaintance about evolution and the various concepts and claims that we find under the heading of the word “evolution.”  At one point I brought up the origin of life and he promptly insisted: “that’s not part of evolution.” “Perhaps,” I offered, “but consider that the origin of life is generally included under the heading of ‘evolution’ in biology textbooks, complete with optimistic discussions about the famous experiment by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey.” “Furthermore,” I continued, “researchers have long talked about ‘chemical evolution’ in relation to the origin of life.  What do they mean by ‘evolution’ in that context, if the origin of life is not part of evolution?”  Indeed, although Darwin Read More ›

Awarded to Drs. Frasier Stoddart, Ben Feringa, and Jean-Pierre Sauvage. From Akshat Rathi at Quartz: Stoddart’s inspiration came from nature. All life is powered by tiny biological machines that nature has had billions of years to perfect. The most fundamental processes of life, such as translating genetic code to make proteins or ensuring that cellular waste is recycled, require the use of molecular machines, which are 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, and function only on chemical energy. “Stoddart wanted to use chemistry to make similar-sized machines that would do our bidding. Like traditional machines, these would need parts, motors and a source of energy, but doing so on a molecular level is far more complicated.” More. Notice how Read More ›

We talk to Marcos Eberlin, Thomson Mass Spectrometry Lab, Brazil: 1. Enezio tells me you are interested in the concept of design in nature. Do you relate it to your work in mass spectrometry or to other, larger issues, or both? J. J. Thomson, the father of mass spectrometry—the man who discovered the electron and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906—once said in a paper he published in Nature. As we conquer peak after peak, we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the Read More ›