From University of Washington: “UW, PNNL to host energy research center focusing on bio-inspired design and assembly”

From University of Washington

August 3, 2018
James Urton

The United States Department of Energy has awarded an expected $10.75 million, four-year grant to the University of Washington, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and other partner institutions for a new interdisciplinary research center to define the enigmatic rules that govern how molecular-scale building blocks assemble into ordered structures — and give rise to complex hierarchical materials.

PNNL

The Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales, or CSSAS, will bring together researchers from biology, engineering and the physical sciences to uncover new insights into how molecular interactions control assembly and apply these principles toward creating new materials with novel and revolutionary properties for applications in energy technology.

“This center seeks to understand the fundamental rules of how order emerges from the interaction of simple building blocks,” said CSSAS Director François Baneyx, the Matthaei Professor and Chair of the UW Department of Chemical Engineering. “What are the energetics, rates and pathways involved, and what properties emerge when simple components come together in increasingly complex layers? Those are some of our driving questions.”

The UW-based CSSAS is among the newest members of the Energy Frontier Research Centers announced June 29 by the Department of Energy. These centers, operated out of universities and national labs, are funded by the Department of Energy and devoted to specific goals in energy science. The work at the CSSAS will focus on understanding the principles of “hierarchical synthesis” — the process by which molecules come together, bind, interact and create layer upon layer of higher-ordered structures.

The initial stage of the assembly of protein building blocks (left) and a self-assembled peptoid sheet (right). Scale bars indicate length in nanometers.Jim De Yoreo/Chun-Long Chen

CSSAS experiments will focus on protein-based building blocks, but will also probe protein-like synthetic compounds called peptoids as well as inorganic nanoparticles. Studying the biologically inspired assembly of these systems individually and in combination will shed new light on how living organisms, through billions of years of adaptation and evolution, have created complex hierarchical systems to solve a host of challenges, said Baneyx.

Understanding hierarchical synthesis would allow engineers to design and build new materials with unique properties for innovative technological advancements that can come about only when scientists exert precise control over a material. For example, controlling how charges move precisely through a material — or how a substrate is shuttled between the active sites of a series of enzymes positioned with nanoscale precision — could be key to creating new materials for energy storage, transmission and generation. The precision control that scientists envision could also yield functional materials that are self-healing or self-repairing, and have other custom physical properties designed within them.

“Scientists have been trying to create these types of innovative materials largely through ‘top-down’ approaches, and often by reverse engineering an interesting biological material,” said Baneyx. “We will begin with the blocks themselves, exploring how order evolves in the synthesis process when the blocks are put together and interact.”

CSSAS research will focus on three major areas:

Investigating the emergence of order from the interactions of individual building blocks, be they peptoids, inorganic nanoparticles or protein-based particles
Probing how hierarchy unfolds as these building blocks are combined to construct lattices, active structures and hybrid materials
Using machine learning, computational simulations and big data analytics to learn new ways to control the assembly dynamics of hierarchical structures

No image caption or credit

These investigations will build upon work conducted at the UW Institute for Protein Design, led by UW biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator David Baker, and harness the expertise of researchers at the University of Chicago, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. David Baker, Baker Lab, U Washington

David Baker’s Rosetta@home project, a project running on BOINC software from UC Berkeley

Rosetta@home BOINC project

The CSSAS effort was enabled by the Northwest Institute for Materials Physics, Chemistry, and Technology, or NW IMPACT, which was formally launched earlier this year by UW President Ana Mari Cauce and PNNL Director Steven Ashby to fertilize cross-disciplinary collaborations between UW and PNNL researchers. NW IMPACT co-director Jim De Yoreo, who is the PNNL chief scientist for materials synthesis and simulation across scales and also holds a joint appointment at the UW in both chemistry and materials science and engineering, will serve as the deputy director of the CSSAS.

“This center’s focus is ultimately on unlocking potential,” said Baneyx. “Once we understand the fundamental rules governing the assembly of bioinspired building blocks, we will be able to design new materials to meet a broad range of technological needs.”

For more information, contact Baneyx at 206-685-7659 or baneyx@uw.edu and De Yoreo at 509-375-6494 or james.deyoreo@pnnl.gov.

See the full article here .

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The University of Washington is one of the world’s preeminent public universities. Our impact on individuals, on our region, and on the world is profound — whether we are launching young people into a boundless future or confronting the grand challenges of our time through undaunted research and scholarship. Ranked number 10 in the world in Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings and educating more than 54,000 students annually, our students and faculty work together to turn ideas into impact and in the process transform lives and our world. For more about our impact on the world, every day.
So what defines us —the students, faculty and community members at the University of Washington? Above all, it’s our belief in possibility and our unshakable optimism. It’s a connection to others, both near and far. It’s a hunger that pushes us to tackle challenges and pursue progress. It’s the conviction that together we can create a world of good. Join us on the journey.

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From Brookhaven National Lab: “High-Caliber Research Launches NSLS-II Beamline into Operations”

From Brookhaven National Lab

August 2, 2018
Stephanie Kossman
skossman@bnl.gov

Pratt & Whitney conduct the first experiments at a new National Synchrotron Light Source II beamline.

Bruce Ravel is the lead scientist at the Beamline for Materials Measurement (BMM), a new, state-of-the-art experimental station at NSLS-II. BMM was constructed and is operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

A new experimental station (beamline) has begun operations at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Called the Beamline for Materials Measurement (BMM), it offers scientists state-of-the-art technology for using a classic synchrotron technique: x-ray absorption spectroscopy.

“There are critical questions in all areas of science that can be solved using x-ray absorption spectroscopy, from energy sciences and catalysis to geochemistry and materials science,” said Bruce Ravel, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which constructed and operates BMM through a partnership with NSLS-II.

X-ray absorption spectroscopy is a research technique that was developed in the 1980s and, since then, has been at the forefront of scientific discovery.

“The reason we’ve used this technique for 40 years and the reason why NIST built the BMM beamline is because it adds a great value to the scientific community,” Ravel explained.

The first group of researchers to conduct experiments at BMM came from jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. Senior Engineer Chris Pelliccione and colleagues used BMM to study the chemistry of jet engines.

Pratt & Whitney Senior Engineer Chris Pelliccione (left) with NIST’s Bruce Ravel (right) at BMM’s workstation.

“We investigated the ceramic thermal barrier coatings used in jet engines,” Pelliccione said. “Due to the extreme temperature and pressure that these components operate in, the data from this investigation will help us design for durability. Our experiment at BMM was designed to understand some of the chemical interactions in more detail for today’s programs as well as tomorrow’s new breakthroughs.”

Coupling BMM’s advanced design with NSLS-II’s ultra-bright x-ray light, the scientists at Pratt & Whitney were able to determine the spatial distribution of chemical interactions in the coating.

The Beamline for Materials Measurement (BMM) at the National Synchrotron Light Source II.

“We needed a beamline with a small focused beam size and high flux to obtain the quality of data we were interested in,” Pelliccione said. “BMM offers both of these capabilities and our measurements were very successful. We were able to extract valuable information about the coatings that is not easily accessible through other research techniques.”

Pratt & Whitney conducted its experiments at BMM during the final “commissioning” stage of the beamline, and the high-caliber research launched BMM into general operations.

“We hope to take advantage of the fantastic beamlines that are already up and running at NSLS-II, as well as those that are coming online soon,” Pelliccione concluded.

Ravel added, “It was incredibly gratifying to send Pratt & Whitney home with such valuable data. It is a very important part of NIST’s mission to work with companies and to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness.”

More about NIST and NSLS-II

NSLS-II is one of the world’s newest and most advanced synchrotron light sources. NSLS-II currently has 26 beamlines in operations and three in commissioning and construction phases. The facility has space for an additional 30 beamlines to be constructed. With the goal of “seeing” detailed views of chemical reactions, NSLS-II partnered with NIST to develop and operate three beamlines—SST-1, SST -2 and BMM—at NSLS-II.

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BNL RHIC Campus

BNL/RHIC Star Detector

BNL RHIC PHENIX

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. The Laboratory’s almost 3,000 scientists, engineers, and support staff are joined each year by more than 5,000 visiting researchers from around the world. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

From Pacific Northwest National Lab: “New approaches to chemical and electrical energy conversions”

From Pacific Northwest National Lab

July 16, 2018
Susan Bauer
susan.bauer@pnnl.gov
(509) 372-6083

For the second time, the U.S. Department of Energy renewed funding for a center designed to explore fundamental scientific principles that underpin technologies such as solar energy and fuel cells. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, together with partners at Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, and Purdue University, earned the renewal through significant achievements in developing catalysts that can convert energy between electrical and chemical forms. Building on their success, and expanding their team, researchers are now poised to take on new challenges.

The Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis was established in 2009 as a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. DOE recently announced awards of $100 million for 42 new or continuing EFRCs, including this one led by PNNL. The centers are charged with pursuing the scientific underpinnings of various aspects of energy production, storage and use.

Since 2009, CME researchers have been studying molecules called catalysts that convert electrical energy into chemical bonds and back again. Chemical bonds can store a huge amount of energy in a small amount of physical space. Of interest are catalysts that pack energy into bonds involving hydrogen, oxygen or nitrogen. Among the reactions studied are production of hydrogen, which can be used in fuel cells, and the reduction of oxygen, the reaction that balances the oxidation reaction of fuel cells.

In the past four years, the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis has reported:

the fastest electrocatalysts for production of hydrogen,
the fastest electrocatalysts for reduction of oxygen,
and the most energy-efficient molecular electrocatalyst for reduction of oxygen.

These fundamental scientific discoveries are important for our energy future. For example, a catalyst breaks chemical bonds to produce electricity in a fuel cell. An energy-efficient catalyst produces more power from fuel than an inefficient one — and fuel cells for vehicles need to release energy as fast as the explosions in a gasoline engine do.

These efforts have sharpened scientists’ understanding of the central challenges in the field and laid the foundation for the ambitious goals for future studies.

Directed by PNNL chemist Morris Bullock, the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis expects to receive $3.2 million per year for the next four years and involve researchers from several complementary disciplines.

“We are excited to be able to further our scientific mission by developing new approaches to circumventing traditional relationships found between rates and energy efficiency,” said Bullock. “These parameters are often correlated, such that improvements in one are obtained at the expense of the others. Typically, the faster catalysts are less energy efficient, and the more energy efficient catalysts are slower. To make breakthrough progress, we seek to remarkably improve catalyst performance through system-level design.”

PNNL leads another Energy Frontier Research Center, Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) which is focused on solving the chemistry challenges found in tanks holding a wide array of radioactive chemical waste generated from weapons production.

See the full article here .

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington.

PNNL scientists conduct basic and applied research and development to strengthen U.S. scientific foundations for fundamental research and innovation; prevent and counter acts of terrorism through applied research in information analysis, cyber security, and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; increase the U.S. energy capacity and reduce dependence on imported oil; and reduce the effects of human activity on the environment. PNNL has been operated by Battelle Memorial Institute since 1965.

From SLAC Lab: “In a first, scientists precisely measure how synthetic diamonds grow”

From SLAC Lab

August 2, 2018
Glennda Chui

A SLAC-Stanford study has precisely measured for the first time how synthetic diamonds grow from diamondoid seeds, like the one at left. (Greg Stewart, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

A SLAC-Stanford study reveals exactly what it takes for diamond to crystallize around a “seed” cluster of atoms. The results apply to industrial processes and to what happens in clouds overhead.

Natural diamond is forged by tremendous pressures and temperatures deep underground. But synthetic diamond can be grown by nucleation, where tiny bits of diamond “seed” the growth of bigger diamond crystals. The same thing happens in clouds, where particles seed the growth of ice crystals that then melt into raindrops.

Scientists have now observed for the first time how diamonds grow from seed at an atomic level, and discovered just how big the seeds need to be to kick the crystal growing process into overdrive.

The results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shed light on how nucleation proceeds not just in diamonds, but in the atmosphere, in silicon crystals used for computer chips and even in proteins that clump together in neurological diseases.

“Nucleation growth is a core tenet of materials science, and there’s a theory and a formula that describes how this happens in every textbook,” says Nicholas Melosh, a professor at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who led the research. “It’s how we describe going from one material phase to another, for example from liquid water to ice.”

But interestingly, he says, “despite the widespread use of this process everywhere, the theory behind it had never been tested experimentally, because observing how crystal growth starts from atomic-scale seeds is extremely difficult.”

An illustration shows how diamondoids (left), the tiniest possible specks of diamond, were used to seed the growth of nanosized diamond crystals (right). Trillions of diamondoids were attached to the surface of a silicon wafer, which was then tipped on end and exposed to a hot plasma (purple) containing carbon and hydrogen, the two elements needed to form diamond. A new study found that diamond growth really took off when seeds contained at least 26 carbon atoms. (Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

The smallest possible specks

In fact, scientists have known for a long time that the current theory often overestimates how much energy it takes to kick off the nucleation process, and by quite a bit. They’ve come up with potential ways to reconcile the theory with reality, but until now those ideas have been tested only at a relatively large scale, for instance with protein molecules, rather than at the atomic scale where nucleation begins.

To see how it works at the smallest scale, Melosh and his team turned to diamondoids, the tiniest possible bits of diamond. The smallest ones contain just 10 carbon atoms. These specks are the focus of a DOE-funded program at SLAC and Stanford where naturally occurring diamondoids are isolated from petroleum fluids, sorted by size and shape and studied. Recent experiments suggest they could be used as Lego-like blocks for assembling nanowires or “molecular anvils” for triggering chemical reactions, among other things.

The latest round of experiments was led by Stanford postdoctoral researcher Matthew Gebbie. He’s interested in the chemistry of interfaces – places where one phase of matter encounters another, for instance the boundary between air and water. It turns out that interfaces are incredibly important in growing diamonds with a process called CVD, or chemical vapor deposition, that’s widely used to make synthetic diamond for industry and jewelry.

“What I’m excited about is understanding how size and shape and molecular structure influence the properties of materials that are important for emerging technologies,” Gebbie says. “That includes nanoscale diamonds for use in sensors and in quantum computing. We need to make them reliably and with consistently high quality.”

Diamond or pencil lead?

To grow diamond in the lab with CVD, tiny bits of crushed diamond are seeded onto a surface and exposed to a plasma – a cloud of gas heated to such high temperatures that electrons are stripped away from their atoms. The plasma contains hydrogen and carbon, the two elements needed to form a diamond.

This plasma can either dissolve the seeds or make them grow, Gebbie says, and the competition between the two determines whether bigger crystals form. Since there are many ways to pack carbon atoms into a solid, it all has to be done under just the right conditions; otherwise you can end up with graphite, commonly known as pencil lead, instead of the sparkly stuff you were after.

Diamondoid seeds give scientists a much finer level of control over this process. Although they’re too small to see directly, even with the most powerful microscopes, they can be precisely sorted according to the number of carbon atoms they contain and then chemically attached to the surface of a silicon wafer so they’re pinned in place while being exposed to plasma. The crystals that grow around the seeds eventually get big enough to count under a microscope, and that’s what the researchers did.

The magic number is 26

Although diamondoids had been used to seed the growth of diamonds before, these were the first experiments to test the effects of using seeds of various sizes. The team discovered that crystal growth really took off with seeds that contain at least 26 carbon atoms.

Even more important, Gebbie says, they were able to directly measure the energy barrier that diamondoid particles have to overcome in order to grow into crystals.

“It was thought that this barrier must be like a gigantic mountain that the carbon atoms should not be able to cross – and, in fact, for decades there’s been an open question of why we could even make diamonds in the first place,” he says. “What we found was more like a mild hill.”

Gebbie adds, “This is really fundamental research, but at the end of the day, what we’re really excited about and driving for is a predictable and reliable way to make diamond nanomaterials. Now that we’ve developed the underlying scientific knowledge needed to do that, we’ll be looking for ways to put these diamond nanomaterials to practical use.”

This research took place at SIMES, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, with major funding from the DOE Office of Science. In addition to SLAC and Stanford, researchers contributing to this study came from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, University Hasselt in Belgium and the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Justus-Liebig University in Germany.

See the full article here .

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SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the DOE’s Office of Science.

From Michigan State University: “Heaviest known calcium atom discovered by MSU-led team”

From Michigan State University

July 11, 2018
Karen King
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams office
517-908-7262
kingk@frib.msu.edu

Oleg Tarasov
National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory office
(517) 908-7320
tarasov@nscl.msu.edu

Researchers from Michigan State University and the RIKEN Nishina Center
in Japan discovered eight new rare isotopes of the elements phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, scandium and, most importantly, calcium. These are the heaviest isotopes of these elements ever found.

Isotopes are different forms of elements found in nature. Isotopes of each element contain the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons. The more neutrons that are added to an element, the “heavier” it is. The heaviest isotope of an element represents the limit of how many neutrons the nucleus can hold.

Also, isotopes of the same element have different physical properties. “Stable” isotopes live forever, while some heavy isotopes might only live for a few seconds. Some even heavier ones might barely exist fractions of a second before disintegrating.

The most interesting short-lived isotopes synthesized during a recent experiment at RIKEN’s Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory were calcium-59 and calcium-60, which are now the most neutron-laden calcium isotopes known to science.

The superconducting ring cyclotron at the Riken Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF)—the largest accelerator of its kind in the world.

The nucleus of calcium-60 has 20 protons and twice as many neutrons. That’s 12 more neutrons than the heaviest of the stable calcium isotopes, calcium-48. This stable isotope disintegrates after living for hundreds of quintillion years, or 40 trillion times the age of the universe. In contrast, calcium-60 lives for a few thousandths of a second.

Proving the existence of a certain isotope of an element can advance scientists’ understanding of the nuclear force – a longstanding quest in nuclear science.

“At the heart of an atom, protons and neutrons are held together by the nuclear force, forming the atomic nucleus,” said Oleg Tarasov, a staff physicist at MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

SeGA, a machine used to study rare isotopes, sits inside of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

“Scientists continue to research what combinations of protons and neutrons can exist in nature even if it is only for fleeting fractions of a second.”

Alexandra Gade, professor of physics at MSU and NSCL chief scientist, is interested in the comparison of the new discoveries to nuclear models. In a way, these models paint a picture of the nucleus at different resolutions.

“Some of these models that describe nuclei at the highest resolution scale predict that 20 protons and 40 neutrons will not hold together to form Ca-60,” Gade said. “The discovery of calcium-60 will prompt theorists to identify missing ingredients in their models.”

Two of the other new isotopes of sulfur and chlorine, S-49 and Cl-52, were not predicted to exist by a number of models that paint a lower resolution picture of nuclei. Their ingredients can now be refined as well.

Creating and identifying rare isotopes is the nuclear-physics version of a formidable needle-in-a-haystack problem. To synthesize these new isotopes, researchers accelerated an intense beam of heavy zinc particles onto a block of beryllium. In the resulting debris of the collision, with a minuscule chance, a rare isotope such as calcium-60 is formed. The intense zinc beam that enabled the discovery of calcium-59 and calcium-60 was provided by the RIBF, which is presently home to the world’s most powerful accelerator facility in the field. The isotopes calcium-57 and 58 were discovered in 2009 at NSCL.

In the future, MSU’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will allow scientists to potentially make calcium-68 or even calcium-70, which may be the heaviest calcium isotopes.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and MSU.

This research was featured on the cover in the July 11 edition Physical Review Letters and was selected for an Editors’ Suggestion.

The National Science Foundation’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory is a center for nuclear and accelerator science research and education. It is the nation’s premier scientific user facility dedicated to the production and study of rare isotopes.

MSU is establishing FRIB as a new scientific user facility for the Office of Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Under construction on campus and operated by MSU, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry.

See the full article here .

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Michigan State University (MSU) is a public research university located in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. MSU was founded in 1855 and became the nation’s first land-grant institution under the Morrill Act of 1862, serving as a model for future land-grant universities.

MSU pioneered the studies of packaging, hospitality business, plant biology, supply chain management, and telecommunication. U.S. News & World Report ranks several MSU graduate programs in the nation’s top 10, including industrial and organizational psychology, osteopathic medicine, and veterinary medicine, and identifies its graduate programs in elementary education, secondary education, and nuclear physics as the best in the country. MSU has been labeled one of the “Public Ivies,” a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.

Following the introduction of the Morrill Act, the college became coeducational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture. Today, MSU is the seventh-largest university in the United States (in terms of enrollment), with over 49,000 students and 2,950 faculty members. There are approximately 532,000 living MSU alumni worldwide.

From University of Washington: “Oxygen levels on early Earth rose and fell several times before the successful Great Oxidation Event”

From University of Washington

July 9, 2018
Peter Kelley

The Jeerinah Formation in Western Australia, where a UW-led team found a sudden shift in nitrogen isotopes. “Nitrogen isotopes tell a story about oxygenation of the surface ocean, and this oxygenation spans hundreds of kilometers across a marine basin and lasts for somewhere less than 50 million years,” said lead author Matt Koehler.Photo Roger Buick.

Earth’s oxygen levels rose and fell more than once hundreds of millions of years before the planetwide success of the Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago, new research from the University of Washington shows.

The evidence comes from a new study that indicates a second and much earlier “whiff” of oxygen in Earth’s distant past — in the atmosphere and on the surface of a large stretch of ocean — showing that the oxygenation of the Earth was a complex process of repeated trying and failing over a vast stretch of time.

The finding also may have implications in the search for life beyond Earth. Coming years will bring powerful new ground- and space-based telescopes able to analyze the atmospheres of distant planets. This work could help keep astronomers from unduly ruling out “false negatives,” or inhabited planets that may not at first appear to be so due to undetectable oxygen levels.

“The production and destruction of oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere over time was a war with no evidence of a clear winner, until the Great Oxidation Event,” said Matt Koehler, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences and lead author of a new paper published the week of July 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These transient oxygenation events were battles in the war, when the balance tipped more in favor of oxygenation.”

In 2007, co-author Roger Buick, UW professor of Earth and space sciences, was part of an international team of scientists that found evidence of an episode — a “whiff” — of oxygen some 50 million to 100 million years before the Great Oxidation Event. This they learned by drilling deep into sedimentary rock of the Mount McRae Shale in Western Australia and analyzing the samples for the trace metals molybdenum and rhenium, accumulation of which is dependent on oxygen in the environment.

Now, a team led by Koehler has confirmed a second such appearance of oxygen in Earth’s past, this time roughly 150 million years earlier — or about 2.66 billion years ago — and lasting for less than 50 million years. For this work they used two different proxies for oxygen — nitrogen isotopes and the element selenium — substances that, each in its way, also tell of the presence of oxygen.

“What we have in this paper is another detection, at high resolution, of a transient whiff of oxygen,” said Koehler. “Nitrogen isotopes tell a story about oxygenation of the surface ocean, and this oxygenation spans hundreds of kilometers across a marine basin and lasts for somewhere less than 50 million years.”

The team analyzed drill samples taken by Buick in 2012 at another site in the northwestern part of Western Australia called the Jeerinah Formation.

The researchers drilled two cores about 300 kilometers apart but through the same sedimentary rocks — one core samples sediments deposited in shallower waters, and the other samples sediments from deeper waters. Analyzing successive layers in the rocks years shows, Buick said, a “stepwise” change in nitrogen isotopes “and then back again to zero. This can only be interpreted as meaning that there is oxygen in the environment. It’s really cool — and it’s sudden.”

The nitrogen isotopes reveal the activity of certain marine microorganisms that use oxygen to form nitrate, and other microorganisms that use this nitrate for energy. The data collected from nitrogen isotopes sample the surface of the ocean, while selenium suggests oxygen in the air of ancient Earth. Koehler said the deep ocean was likely anoxic, or without oxygen, at the time.

The team found plentiful selenium in the shallow hole only, meaning that it came from the nearby land, not making it to deeper water. Selenium is held in sulfur minerals on land; higher atmospheric oxygen would cause more selenium to be leached from the land through oxidative weathering — “the rusting of rocks,” Buick said — and transported to sea.

“That selenium then accumulates in ocean sediments,” Koehler said. “So when we measure a spike in selenium abundances in ocean sediments, it could mean there was a temporary increase in atmospheric oxygen.”

The finding, Buick and Koehler said, also has relevance for detecting life on exoplanets, or those beyond the solar system.

“One of the strongest atmospheric biosignatures is thought to be oxygen, but this study confirms that during a planet’s transition to becoming permanently oxygenated, its surface environments may be oxic for intervals of only a few million years and then slip back into anoxia,” Buick said.

“So, if you fail to detect oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere, that doesn’t mean that the planet is uninhabited or even that it lacks photosynthetic life. Merely that it hasn’t built up enough sources of oxygen to overwhelm the ‘sinks’ for any longer than a short interval.

“In other words, lack of oxygen can easily be a ‘false negative’ for life.”

Koehler added: “You could be looking at a planet and not see any oxygen — but it could be teeming with microbial life.”

Koehler’s other co-authors are UW Earth and space sciences doctoral student Michael Kipp, former Earth and space sciences postdoctoral researcher Eva Stüeken — now a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland — and Jonathan Zaloumis of Arizona State University.

The research was funded by grants from NASA, the UW-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory and the National Science Foundation; drilling was funded by the Agouron Institute.

For more information, contact Koehler at koehlerm@uw.edu or Buick at 206-543-1913 or buick@ess.washington.edu

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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The University of Washington is one of the world’s preeminent public universities. Our impact on individuals, on our region, and on the world is profound — whether we are launching young people into a boundless future or confronting the grand challenges of our time through undaunted research and scholarship. Ranked number 10 in the world in Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings and educating more than 54,000 students annually, our students and faculty work together to turn ideas into impact and in the process transform lives and our world. For more about our impact on the world, every day.
So what defines us —the students, faculty and community members at the University of Washington? Above all, it’s our belief in possibility and our unshakable optimism. It’s a connection to others, both near and far. It’s a hunger that pushes us to tackle challenges and pursue progress. It’s the conviction that together we can create a world of good. Join us on the journey.

From Science Alert: “These Scientists Have a Tantalising New Answer to The Mysterious ‘Gaia Puzzle’ “

From Science Alert

5 JUL 2018
JAMES DYKE,
TIM LENTON

(Louis Maniquet/Unsplash)

marianaboterop

We will likely never know how life on Earth started. Perhaps in a shallow sunlit pool.

Or in the crushing ocean depths miles beneath the surface near fissures in the Earth’s crust that spewed out hot mineral-rich soup. While there is good evidence for life at least 3.7 billion years ago, we don’t know precisely when it started.

But these passing aeons have produced something perhaps even more remarkable: life has persisted.

Despite massive asteroid impacts, cataclysmic volcano activity and extreme climate change, life has managed to not just cling on to our rocky world but to thrive.

How did this happen? Research we recently published with colleagues in Trends in Ecology and Evolution offers an important part of the answer, providing a new explanation for the Gaia hypothesis.

Developed by scientist and inventor James Lovelock, and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, the Gaia hypothesis originally proposed that life, through its interactions with the Earth’s crust, oceans, and atmosphere, produced a stabilising effect on conditions on the surface of the planet – in particular the composition of the atmosphere and the climate.

With such a self-regulating process in place, life has been able to survive under conditions which would have wiped it out on non-regulating planets.

Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis while working for NASA in the 1960s. He recognised that life has not been a passive passenger on Earth.

Rather it has profoundly remodelled the planet, creating new rocks such as limestone, affecting the atmosphere by producing oxygen, and driving the cycles of elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon.

Human-produced climate change, which is largely a consequence of us burning fossil fuels and so releasing carbon dioxide, is just the latest way life affects the Earth system.

While it is now accepted that life is a powerful force on the planet, the Gaia hypothesis remains controversial. Despite evidence that surface temperatures have, bar a few notable exceptions, remained within the range required for widespread liquid water, many scientists attribute this simply to good luck.

If the Earth had descended completely into an ice house or hot house (think Mars or Venus) then life would have become extinct and we would not be here to wonder about how it had persisted for so long.

This is a form of anthropic selection argument that says there is nothing to explain.

Clearly, life on Earth has been lucky. In the first instance, the Earth is within the habitable zone – it orbits the sun at a distance that produces surface temperatures required for liquid water.

There are alternative and perhaps more exotic forms of life in the universe, but life as we know it requires water. Life has also been lucky to avoid very large asteroid impacts.

A lump of rock significantly larger than the one that lead to the demise of the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago could have completely sterilised the Earth.

But what if life had been able to push down on one side of the scales of fortune? What if life in some sense made its own luck by reducing the impacts of planetary-scale disturbances?

This leads to the central outstanding issue in the Gaia hypothesis: how is planetary self-regulation meant to work?

While natural selection is a powerful explanatory mechanism that can account for much of the change we observe in species over time, we have been lacking a theory that could explain how the living and non-living elements of a planet produce self-regulation.

Consequently the Gaia hypothesis has typically been considered as interesting but speculative – and not grounded in any testable theory.

Selecting for stability

We think we finally have an explanation for the Gaia hypothesis. The mechanism is “sequential selection”. In principle it’s very simple.

As life emerges on a planet it begins to affect environmental conditions, and this can organise into stabilising states which act like a thermostat and tend to persist, or destabilising runaway states such as the snowball Earth events that nearly extinguished the beginnings of complex life more than 600 million years ago.

If it stabilises then the scene is set for further biological evolution that will in time reconfigure the set of interactions between life and planet. A famous example is the origin of oxygen-producing photosynthesis around 3 billion years ago, in a world previously devoid of oxygen.

If these newer interactions are stabilising, then the planetary-system continues to self-regulate. But new interactions can also produce disruptions and runaway feedbacks.

In the case of photosynthesis it led to an abrupt rise in atmospheric oxygen levels in the “Great Oxidation Event” around 2.3 billion years ago.

This was one of the rare periods in Earth’s history where the change was so pronounced it probably wiped out much of the incumbent biosphere, effectively rebooting the system.

The chances of life and environment spontaneously organising into self-regulating states may be much higher than you would expect.

In fact, given sufficient biodiversity, it may be extremely likely. But there is a limit to this stability.

Push the system too far and it may go beyond a tipping point and rapidly collapse to a new and potentially very different state.

This isn’t a purely theoretical exercise, as we think we may able to test the theory in a number of different ways. At the smallest scale that would involve experiments with diverse bacterial colonies.

On a much larger scale it would involve searching for other biospheres around other stars which we could use to estimate the total number of biospheres in the universe – and so not only how likely it is for life to emerge, but also to persist.

The relevance of our findings to current concerns over climate change has not escaped us. Whatever humans do life will carry on in one way or another.

But if we continue to emit greenhouse gasses and so change the atmosphere, then we risk producing dangerous and potentially runaway climate change.

This could eventually stop human civilisation affecting the atmosphere, if only because there will not be any human civilisation left.

The ConversationGaian self-regulation may be very effective. But there is no evidence that it prefers one form of life over another. Countless species have emerged and then disappeared from the Earth over the past 3.7 billion years.

We have no reason to think that Homo sapiens are any different in that respect.

See the full article here .

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From Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO: “Gene discovery unlocks mysteries of our immunity”

From Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO

7.1.18

Ofa Fitzgibbons
Communication Advisor
+61 2 4960 6188
Ofa.Fitzgibbons@csiro.au

Australia’s national science agency CSIRO has identified a new gene that plays a critical role in regulating the body’s immune response to infection and disease.

The C6orf106 or “C6” gene. No image credit.

The discovery could lead to the development of new treatments for influenza, arthritis and even cancer.

The gene, called C6orf106 or “C6”, controls the production of proteins involved in infectious diseases, cancer and diabetes. The gene has existed for 500 million years, but its potential is only now understood.

“Our immune system produces proteins called cytokines that help fortify the immune system and work to prevent viruses and other pathogens from replicating and causing disease,” CSIRO researcher Dr Cameron Stewart said.

“C6 regulates this process by switching off the production of certain cytokines to stop our immune response from spiralling out of control.

“The cytokines regulated by C6 are implicated in a variety of diseases including cancer, diabetes and inflammatory disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis.”

The discovery helps improve our understanding of our immune system, and it is hoped that this understanding will enable scientists to develop new, more targeted therapies.

Dr Rebecca Ambrose was part of the CSIRO team that discovered the gene, and co-authored the recent paper announcing the discovery in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

“Even though the human genome was first fully sequenced in 2003, there are still thousands of genes that we know very little about,” Dr Rebecca Ambrose, a former CSIRO researcher, now based at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research said.

“It’s exciting to consider that C6 has existed for more than 500 million years, preserved and passed down from simple organisms all the way to humans. But only now are we gaining insights into its importance.”

Having discovered the function of C6, the researchers are awarded the privilege of naming it, and are enlisting the help of the community to do so.

“The current name, C6orf106, reflects the gene’s location within the human genome, rather than relating to any particular function,” Dr Stewart said.

“We think we can do better than that, and are inviting suggestions from the public.”

A shortlist of names will be made available for final approval by a governing third party.

The breakthrough builds on decades of work in infectious diseases, by researchers from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

See the full article here .

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CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is Australia’s national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.

From Imperial College London: “New type of photosynthesis discovered”

From Imperial College London

15 June 2018
Hayley Dunning

Colony of cells where colours represent chlorophyll-a and -f driven photosynthesis. Dennis Nuernberg

The discovery changes our understanding of the basic mechanism of photosynthesis and should rewrite the textbooks.

It will also tailor the way we hunt for alien life and provide insights into how we could engineer more efficient crops that take advantage of longer wavelengths of light.

The discovery, published today in Science, was led by Imperial College London, supported by the BBSRC, and involved groups from the ANU in Canberra, the CNRS in Paris and Saclay and the CNR in Milan.

The vast majority of life on Earth uses visible red light in the process of photosynthesis, but the new type uses near-infrared light instead. It was detected in a wide range of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) when they grow in near-infrared light, found in shaded conditions like bacterial mats in Yellowstone and in beach rock in Australia.

As scientists have now discovered, it also occurs in a cupboard fitted with infrared LEDs in Imperial College London.

Photosynthesis beyond the red limit

The standard, near-universal type of photosynthesis uses the green pigment, chlorophyll-a, both to collect light and use its energy to make useful biochemicals and oxygen. The way chlorophyll-a absorbs light means only the energy from red light can be used for photosynthesis.

Since chlorophyll-a is present in all plants, algae and cyanobacteria that we know of, it was considered that the energy of red light set the ‘red limit’ for photosynthesis; that is, the minimum amount of energy needed to do the demanding chemistry that produces oxygen. The red limit is used in astrobiology to judge whether complex life could have evolved on planets in other solar systems.

However, when some cyanobacteria are grown under near-infrared light, the standard chlorophyll-a-containing systems shut down and different systems containing a different kind of chlorophyll, chlorophyll-f, takes over.

Cross-section of beach rock (Heron Island, Australia) showing chlorophyll-f containing cyanobacteria (green band) growing deep into the rock, several millimetres below the surface. Dennis Nuernberg

Until now, it was thought that chlorophyll-f just harvested the light. The new research shows that instead chlorophyll-f plays the key role in photosynthesis under shaded conditions, using lower-energy infrared light to do the complex chemistry. This is photosynthesis ‘beyond the red limit’.

Lead researcher Professor Bill Rutherford, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: “The new form of photosynthesis made us rethink what we thought was possible. It also changes how we understand the key events at the heart of standard photosynthesis. This is textbook changing stuff.”

Preventing damage by light

Another cyanobacterium, Acaryochloris, is already known to do photosynthesis beyond the red limit. However, because it occurs in just this one species, with a very specific habitat, it had been considered a ‘one-off’. Acaryochloris lives underneath a green sea-squirt that shades out most of the visible light leaving just the near-infrared.

The chlorophyll-f based photosynthesis reported today represents a third type of photosynthesis that is widespread. However, it is only used in special infrared-rich shaded conditions; in normal light conditions, the standard red form of photosynthesis is used.

It was thought that light damage would be more severe beyond the red limit, but the new study shows that it is not a problem in stable, shaded environments.

Co-author Dr Andrea Fantuzzi, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: “Finding a type of photosynthesis that works beyond the red limit changes our understanding of the energy requirements of photosynthesis. This provides insights into light energy use and into mechanisms that protect the systems against damage by light.”

These insights could be useful for researchers trying to engineer crops to perform more efficient photosynthesis by using a wider range of light. How these cyanobacteria protect themselves from damage caused by variations in the brightness of light could help researchers discover what is feasible to engineer into crop plants.

Textbook-changing insights

More detail could be seen in the new systems than has ever been seen before in the standard chlorophyll-a systems. The chlorophylls often termed ‘accessory’ chlorophylls were actually performing the crucial chemical step, rather than the textbook ‘special pair’ of chlorophylls in the centre of the complex.

This indicates that this pattern holds for the other types of photosynthesis, which would change the textbook view of how the dominant form of photosynthesis works.

Dr Dennis Nürnberg, the first author and initiator of the study, said: “I did not expect that my interest in cyanobacteria and their diverse lifestyles would snowball into a major change in how we understand photosynthesis. It is amazing what is still out there in nature waiting to be discovered.”

Peter Burlinson, lead for frontier bioscience at BBSRC – UKRI says, “This is an important discovery in photosynthesis, a process that plays a crucial role in the biology of the crops that feed the world. Discoveries like this push the boundaries of our understanding of life and Professor Bill Rutherford and the team at Imperial should be congratulated for revealing a new perspective on such a fundamental process.”

See the full article here .

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Imperial College London is a science-based university with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Consistently rated amongst the world’s best universities, Imperial is committed to developing the next generation of researchers, scientists and academics through collaboration across disciplines. Located in the heart of London, Imperial is a multidisciplinary space for education, research, translation and commercialisation, harnessing science and innovation to tackle global challenges.

From Michigan State University: “Is there an end to the periodic table?” This is For All The Chemists OUT There

From Michigan State University

Karen King
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams office:
517-908-7262
kingk@frib.msu.edu

Witold Nazarewicz
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams office:
(517) 908-7326
witek@frib.msu.edu

Witold Nazarewicz is the chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and an MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in physics. He is part of an international team of researchers that is unlocking the mysteries of atomic nuclei. Photo courtesy of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.

As the 150th anniversary of the formulation of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements looms, a Michigan State University professor probes the table’s limits in a recent Nature Physics Perspective.

Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the formulation of the periodic table created by Dmitry Mendeleev. Accordingly, the United Nations proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. At 150 years old, the table is still growing. In 2016, four new elements were added: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson. Their atomic numbers – the number of protons in the nucleus that determines their chemical properties and place in the periodic table – are 113, 115, 117 and 118, respectively.

It took a decade and worldwide effort to confirm these last four elements. And now scientists wonder: how far can this table go? Some answers can be found in a recent Nature Physics Perspective by Witek Nazarewicz [link is above], Hannah Distinguished Professor of Physics at MSU and chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.

All elements with more than 104 protons are labeled as “superheavy,” and are part of a vast, totally unknown land that scientists are trying to uncover. It is predicted that atoms with up to 172 protons can physically form a nucleus that is bound together by the nuclear force. That force is what prevents its disintegration, but only for a few fractions of a second.

These lab-made nuclei are unstable and spontaneously decay soon after they are formed. For the ones heavier than oganesson, this might be so quick that it prevents them from having enough time to attract and capture an electron to form an atom. They will spend their entire lifetime as congregations of protons and neutrons.

If that is the case, this would challenge the way scientists today define and understand atoms. They can no longer be described as a central nucleus with electrons orbiting it much like planets orbit the sun.

And as to whether these nuclei can form at all, it is still a mystery.

Scientists are slowly but surely crawling into that region, synthesizing element by element, not knowing what they will look like, or where the end is going to be. The search for element 119 continues at several labs, mainly at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia, at GSI in Germany and RIKEN in Japan.

“Nuclear theory lacks the ability to reliably predict the optimal conditions needed to synthesize them, so you have to make guesses and run fusion experiments until you find something. In this way, you could run for years,” said Nazarewicz.

Although the new Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at MSU is not going to produce these superheavy systems, at least within its current design, it might shed light on what reactions could be used, pushing the boundaries of current experimental methods. If element 119 is confirmed, it will add an eighth period to the periodic table.

This was captured by the Elemental haiku by Mary Soon Lee:

Will the curtain rise?

Will you open the eighth act?

Claim the center stage?

The discovery might not be too far off. Soon could be now or in two to three years, Nazarewicz said.

Another exciting question remains. Can superheavy nuclei be produced in space? It is thought that these can be made in neutron star mergers, a stellar collision so powerful that it literally shakes the very fabric of the universe. In stellar environments like this where neutrons are abundant, a nucleus can fuse with more and more neutrons to form a heavier isotope. It would have the same proton number and therefore is the same element but heavier. The challenge here is that heavy nuclei are so unstable that they break down long before adding more neutrons and forming these superheavy nuclei. This hinders their production in stars. The hope is that through advanced simulations, scientists will be able to “see” these elusive nuclei through the observed patterns of the synthesized elements.

As experimental capabilities progress, scientists will pursue these heavier elements to add to the remodeled table. In the meantime, they can only wonder what fascinating applications these exotic systems will have.

“We don’t know what they look like, and that’s the challenge,” Nazarewicz said. “But what we have learned so far could possibly mean the end of the periodic table as we know it.”

MSU is establishing FRIB as a new scientific user facility for the Office of Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Under construction on campus and operated by MSU, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry.

See the full article here .

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Michigan State University (MSU) is a public research university located in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. MSU was founded in 1855 and became the nation’s first land-grant institution under the Morrill Act of 1862, serving as a model for future land-grant universities.

MSU pioneered the studies of packaging, hospitality business, plant biology, supply chain management, and telecommunication. U.S. News & World Report ranks several MSU graduate programs in the nation’s top 10, including industrial and organizational psychology, osteopathic medicine, and veterinary medicine, and identifies its graduate programs in elementary education, secondary education, and nuclear physics as the best in the country. MSU has been labeled one of the “Public Ivies,” a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.

Following the introduction of the Morrill Act, the college became coeducational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture. Today, MSU is the seventh-largest university in the United States (in terms of enrollment), with over 49,000 students and 2,950 faculty members. There are approximately 532,000 living MSU alumni worldwide.