Credit: DESY / Heiner Mueller-Elsner
The key are the ultra-fast flashes of light, with which the team led by Dr. Friedrich Roth works at FLASH in Hamburg, the world s first free-electron laser in the X-ray region. We took advantage of the special properties of this X-ray source and expanded them with time-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (TR-XPS). This method is based on the external photoelectric effect, for the explanation of which Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. For the first time, we were able to directly analyze the specific charge separation and subsequent processes when light hits a model system such as an organic solar cell. We were also able to determine the efficiency of the charge separation in real-time, explains Dr. Roth from the Institute of Experimental Physics at TU Bergakademie Freiberg.
Credit: ICIQ/Francesco Della Monica
Finding innovative and sustainable solutions to our material needs is one of the core objectives of green chemistry. The myriad plastics that envelop our daily life - from mattresses to food and cars - are mostly made from oil-based monomers which are the building blocks of polymers. Therefore, finding bio-based monomers for polymer synthesis is attractive to achieve more sustainable solutions in materials development.
In a paper published in
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, researchers from the Kleij group present a new route to prepare biobased polyesters with tuneable properties. The researchers are building upon the multifunctional structure of the terpene β-elemene: three double bonds which have distinct reactivity, allowing to selectively transform these bonds and thus tweaking the functionalities in the backbone of the polymer. This multi-functional terpene scaffold is rather unique and allows to fine-tune structural diversity
Credit: Yuepeng Pan
Removal of pollutants from the air, or atmospheric deposition, is a natural cleaning mechanism. However, the removed toxic matters don t just disappear on the Earth. China s Soil Pollution Survey released in 2014 shows that 19.4% of the Chinese farmland soil was polluted and 82% of pollutant was toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, which can cause chronic health problems.
Atmospheric deposition is an important source of these heavy metals in the soil but it tends to be neglected. Unlike sources from irrigation water, sewage sludge, fertilizers and livestock manures, atmospheric deposition can t easily be perceived. And the paucity of measurements also makes it difficult to track what happens to heavy metals when they fall from the air to the soil.
Oak Brook, IL - The March edition of
SLAS Discovery features the cover article, Therapeutic and Vaccine Options for COVID-19: Status After 6 Months of the Disease Outbreak by Christian Ogaugwu (Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria ), Dawid Maciorowski, Subba Rao Durvasula, Ph.D., Ravi Durvasula, M.D., and Adinarayana Kunamneni, Ph.D. (Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, IL, USA).
This cover article focuses on the therapeutic and vaccine options available against the novel coronavirus, roughly six months after the outbreak; because the COVID-19-related death toll worldwide had reached 500,000 in six months (and ballooned to over 2,000,000 at the time of publishing) the importance of options to temper the disease cannot be overemphasized. The article highlights the available treatment alternatives for mild and serious active cases of COVID-19 infections and explores the vaccine options that should aid to confer immunity to vaccinated individuals. In addition