Tag Archives: elements

Foundations of Carbon-Based Life Leave Little Room for Error

Life as we know it is based upon the elements of carbon and oxygen. Now a team of physicists, including one from North Carolina State University, is looking at the conditions necessary to the formation of those two elements in the universe. They’ve found that when it comes to supporting life, the universe leaves very little margin for error.

Both carbon and oxygen are produced when helium burns inside of giant red stars. Carbon-12, an essential element we’re all made of, can only form when three alpha particles, or helium-4 nuclei, combine in a very specific way.  The key to formation is an excited state of carbon-12 known as the Hoyle state, and it has a very specific energy – measured at 379 keV (or 379,000 electron volts) above the energy of three alpha particles. Oxygen is produced by the combination of another alpha particle and carbon. (more…)

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Vortex Loops Could Untie Knotty Physics Problems

University of Chicago physicists have succeeded in creating a vortex knot—a feat akin to tying a smoke ring into a knot. Linked and knotted vortex loops have existed in theory for more than a century, but creating them in the laboratory had previously eluded scientists.

Vortex knots should, in principle, be persistent, stable phenomena. “The unexpected thing is that they’re not,” said Dustin Kleckner, a postdoctoral scientist at UChicago’s James Franck Institute. “They seem to break up in a particular way. They stretch themselves, which is a weird behavior.” (more…)

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Searching for the Solar System’s Chemical Recipe

Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Dynamics Beamline points to why isotope ratios in interplanetary dust and meteorites differ from Earth’s

By studying the origins of different isotope ratios among the elements that make up today’s smorgasbord of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and interplanetary ice and dust, Mark Thiemens and his colleagues hope to learn how our solar system evolved. Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, has worked on this problem for over three decades.

In recent years his team has found the Chemical Dynamics Beamline of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to be an invaluable tool for examining how photochemistry determines the basic ingredients in the solar system recipe. (more…)

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Fungi, Fungi Everywhere

New research shows fungi living beneath the seafloor are widespread

Fungi living beneath the seafloor are widespread in ocean environments around the world, according to a new paper by scientists at the University of Delaware and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

“They’re ubiquitous,” said co-author Jennifer Biddle, assistant professor of marine biosciences at UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “They are everywhere.” (more…)

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Yale Team Finds Order Amidst the Chaos Within the Human Genome; Mom and Dad’s Contributions Counted and Fossil DNA Not Dead After All

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project is the effort of hundreds of scientists to describe the workings of the human genome. Their research, outlined in 30 papers published in multiple journals Sept. 5, has confirmed our genome is far more complex than originally thought.  Regions that contain instructions for making proteins, which carry out life’s functions, account for only about 1 percent of our genome. ENCODE has shed light on the other 99%. Almost 80 percent of the genome is biochemically active, much of it involved in some sort of regulation of genes. Vast regions of our DNA once considered “junk” contain some 400,000 regulators called enhancers, which play a key role activating or silencing genes despite residing far away from the gene itself. Yale University researchers played a key role ENCODE, helping to author 9 of the 30 papers published in four journals on Sept. 5. Some of their work is described below.

The massive Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) unveiled Sept. 5 reveals a human genome vastly more rich and complex than envisioned even a decade ago. In a key supporting paper published in the journal Nature, the lab of Yale’s Mark Gerstein, the Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics, has found order amidst the seeming chaos of trillions of potential molecular interactions. (more…)

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Sediment Chemicals in Coastal Rivers Overall Lower in U.S. than Worldwide Averages

Almost all the sediment-associated chemical concentrations found in 131 of the nation’s rivers that drain to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts are lower than worldwide averages, according to a new study by the USGS. These coastal rivers are a significant pathway for the delivery of sediment-associated chemicals to the world’s coastal zones and oceans.

“I hope that the results of this new study will remind everyone that it is not only river water that can transport chemicals and pollutants, but also the associated sediment load,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Our citizens expect high environmental quality as compared with worldwide averages, but clean water alone will not suffice if river sediments are host to toxic heavy metals and concentrated organics that can produce dead zones.” (more…)

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Atomic Weights of Ten Chemical Elements About to Change

For the first time in history, a change will be made to the atomic weights of some elements listed on the Table of Standard Atomic Weights of the chemical elements found in the inside covers of chemistry textbooks worldwide.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s (IUPAC) Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights is publishing a new table that will express atomic weights of ten elements as intervals, rather than as single standard values. The new table is the result of cooperative research supported by the U.S. Geological Survey, IUPAC, and other contributing Commission members and institutions. (more…)

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