Electrocatalysis will play an increasingly important role in future in the transition to more sustainable energy. Thanks to chemist Isis Ledezma Yanez, we now know more about the hydrogen evolution process. PhD defence on the 9th of June.

Slowly but surely Western countries are converting to more sustainable sources of energy. If the government has its way, by 2023 the energy for around 8 million households will be generated by windmills.

Storing energy

There are a number of obstacles that first have to be overcome before this will be possible. One such obstacle is that it is difficult to store energy. That needs to be resolved, because windmills also turn at night, when energy consumption is low.

Electrocatalysis may play a role in finding a solution in the future. Using the excess energy for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in electrolyzers is a potential way of storing this energy in the form of chemical bonds. When the bond between the protons is broken, the stored energy is released again and can be used in hybrid vehicles.

Role of the solvent

In recent years chemists have carried out a lot of research on electrocatalysis, focusing in particular on the role of the catalyst, which sets off the chemical reaction by lowering the energy barrier for the reaction to occur. The most effective electrocatalyst known to date is based on platinum. However, little is known about the role of the solvent in the catalytic process.

Ledezma Yanez says in her dissertation that it is very difficult to compare the effectiveness of different molecular electrocatalysts in non-aqueous solvents because of the presence of water traces. The image is disturbed by the water in which the protons are preferentially dissolved. These protons bind to the water more easily than to the other solvent, which makes it impossible to measure 'pure' protons, affecting the accuracy of the measurement. This shows that the role of the solvent is much more important than it was previously thought.

Cost-effective electrolyzers

She also developed a new kinetic model which explains how the energy for the water reorganization impacts on the speed of the hydrogen evolution, which is of paramount importance for the development of cost-effective electrolyzers, which can use earth-abundant elements such as nickel and iron. This method would avoid a lot of unnecessary energy loss and solves a long-known puzzle in electrochemistry.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Leiden. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

An international team of scientists, including the University of Kentucky's Renbin Yan, have uncovered a new class of galaxies, called "red geysers," with supermassive black hole winds so hot and energetic that stars can't form.

Over the last few billion years, a mysterious kind of "galactic warming" has caused many galaxies to change from a lively place where new stars formed every now and then to a quiet place devoid of fresh young stars. But the mechanism that produces this dramatic transformation and keeps galaxies quiet has been one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in galaxy evolution.

"These galaxies have the necessary ingredients for forming new stars but they are not doing it -- why?" said Yan, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UK.

Researchers compare it to having deserts in densely clouded regions; rain and vegetation would be expected, not a barren landscape. Yan and astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are solving the mystery in a study published today in Nature, announcing the discovery of the red geysers.

Red geysers are old galaxies hosting low-energy supermassive black holes which drive intense interstellar winds. These winds suppress star formation by heating up the ambient gas found in galaxies and preventing it from cooling and condensing into stars.

Yan, also the survey scientist for the survey called Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA), was working with the international team, including lead author Edmond Cheung of the University of Tokyo, to study hundreds of galaxies when they caught a supermassive black hole blasting away at the cold gas in its host galaxy.

"With MaNGA's technological upgrade to the Sloan Foundation Telescope, we can make detailed maps of galaxies ten to a hundred times faster than we could just ten years ago," Yan said.

Yan and his team at MaNGA are mapping the details of 10,000 nearby galaxies -- the largest survey yet of its kind -- with the goal to understand the galaxies' life cycles. Unlike previous SDSS surveys, they are not only mapping the centers of galaxies where supermassive black holes live, but the outer edges of the galaxies as well, which allowed them to discover the red geyser galaxy.

The winds powered by these supermassive black holes could come and go quickly. It is difficult to catch the moment they show up. "Since MaNGA studies so many galaxies, our snapshots can reveal even the quickest changes to galaxies," Yan said. "And that's how we found Akira."

"Akira," an example of a red geyser galaxy nicknamed by Cheung, has a companion galaxy that called "Tetsuo." Akira is pulling gas away from Tetsuo, which fuels Akira's supermassive black hole. The winds driven by the black hole are the reason that Akira is currently a red geyser galaxy.

Kevin Bundy, MaNGA principal investigator, came up with the name "red geyser" because these wind outbursts reminded him of the sporadic eruptions of a geyser and because failure to form new stars left the galaxy with only red stars.

As with global warming on Earth, galactic warming has long-term consequences for red geyser galaxies -- their gas can no longer form new stars.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Kentucky. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Edmond Cheung, Kevin Bundy, Michele Cappellari, Sébastien Peirani, Wiphu Rujopakarn, Kyle Westfall, Renbin Yan, Matthew Bershady, Jenny E. Greene, Timothy M. Heckman, Niv Drory, David R. Law, Karen L. Masters, Daniel Thomas, David A. Wake, Anne-Marie Weijmans, Kate Rubin, Francesco Belfiore, Benedetta Vulcani, Yan-mei Chen, Kai Zhang, Joseph D. Gelfand, Dmitry Bizyaev, A. Roman-Lopes, Donald P. Schneider. Suppressing star formation in quiescent galaxies with supermassive black hole winds. Nature, 2016; 533 (7604): 504 DOI:10.1038/nature18006

Earthquakes triggered by human activity have been happening in Texas since at least 1925, and they have been widespread throughout the state ever since, according to a new historical review of the evidence published online May 18 in Seismological Research Letters.

The earthquakes are caused by oil and gas operations, but the specific production techniques behind these quakes have differed over the decades, according to Cliff Frohlich, the study's lead author and senior research scientist and associate director at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Frohlich said the evidence presented in the SRL paper should lay to rest the idea that there is no substantial proof for human-caused earthquakes in Texas, as some state officials have claimed as recently as 2015.

At the same time, Frohlich said, the study doesn't single out any one or two industry practices that could be managed or avoided to stop these kinds of earthquakes from occurring. "I think we were all looking for what I call the silver bullet, supposing we can find out what kinds of practices were causing the induced earthquakes, to advise companies or regulators," he notes. "But that silver bullet isn't here."

The researchers write that since 2008, the rate of Texas earthquakes greater than magnitude 3 has increased from about two per year to 12 per year. This change appears to stem from an increase in earthquakes occurring within 1-3 kilometers of petroleum production wastewater disposal wells where water is injected at a high monthly rate, they note.

Some of these more recent earthquakes include the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport sequence between 2008 and 2013; the May 2012 Timpson earthquake; and the earthquake sequence near Azle that began in 2013.

Frohlich and his colleagues suspected that induced seismicity might have a lengthy and geographically widespread history in Texas. "But for me, the surprise was that oil field practices have changed so much over the years, and that probably affects the kinds of earthquakes that were happening at each time," Frohlich said.

In the 1920s and 1930s, for instance, "they'd find an oilfield, and hundreds of wells would be drilled, and they'd suck oil out of the ground as fast as they could, and there would be slumps" that shook the earth as the volume of oil underground was rapidly extracted, he said.

When those fields were mostly depleted, in the 1940s through the 1970s, petroleum operations "started being more aggressive about trying to drive oil by water flooding" and the huge amounts of water pumped into the ground contributed to seismic activity, said Frohlich.

In the past decade, enhanced oil and gas recovery methods have produced considerable amounts of wastewater that is disposed by injection back into the ground through special wells, triggering nearby earthquakes. Most earthquakes linked to this type of wastewater disposal in Texas are smaller (less than magnitude 3) than those in Oklahoma, the study concludes.

The difference may lie in the types of oil operations in each state, Frohlich said. The northeast Texas injection earthquakes occur near high-injection rate wells that dispose of water produced in hydrofracturing operations, while much of the Oklahoma wastewater is produced during conventional oil production and injected deep into the underlying sedimentary rock.

For the moment, there have been no magnitude 3 or larger Texas earthquakes that can be linked directly to the specific process of hydrofracturing or fracking itself, such as have been felt in Canada, the scientists concluded.

Frohlich and colleagues used a five-question test to identify induced earthquakes in the Texas historical records. The questions cover how close in time and space earthquakes and petroleum operations are, whether the earthquake center is at a relatively shallow depth (indicating a human rather than natural trigger); whether there are known or suspected faults nearby that might support an earthquake or ease the way for fluid movement, and whether published scientific reports support a human cause for the earthquake.

In 2015, the Texas legislature funded a program that would install 22 additional seismic monitoring stations to add to the state's existing 17 permanent stations, with the hopes of building out a statewide monitoring network that could provide more consistent and objective data on induced earthquakes.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Seismological Society of America. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Cliff Frohlich, Heather DeShon, Brian Stump, Chris Hayward, Matt Hornbach, and Jacob I. Walter. A Historical Review of Induced Earthquakes in Texas. Seismological Research Letters, 2016 DOI: 10.1785/0220160016

Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum were the first ones to prove the existence of an olfactory receptor in pigment-producing cells in human skin, the so-called melanocytes

 The team headed by Prof Dr habil. Hanns Hatt demonstrated that the violet-like scent Beta-Ionone can activate the receptor.

Together with colleagues from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the university hospital in Jena, the researchers at Bochum's Department for Cellphysiology reported their findings in theJournal of Biological Chemistry.

Cause of black skin cancer

The group identified the olfactory receptor 51E2 in cell cultures of melanocytes from human skin. Those cells produce the black melanin which renders tanned skin. Excessive growth of melanocytes may cause too much pigmentation and possibly trigger black skin cancer.

Signalling pathways in cells identified

The researchers identified the signalling pathway in detail that is activated by the 51E2 receptor. If a fitting odorant binds to the receptor, a reaction cascade is triggered similar to the one occurring in olfactory cells of the nose: the concentration of calcium ions increases.

This, in turn, activates the signalling pathways at the end of which phosphate groups are transferred to specific enzymes, such as MAP-kinases. The newly detected receptor uses this mechanism to regulate enzyme activity and, consequently, cell growth and melanin production.

Starting point for melanoma therapy

"The receptor and its activating odor molecule might constitute a new starting point for a melanoma therapy," says Hanns Hatt. If healthy melanocytes turn into tumour cells, they strongly increase the proliferation rate, but they focus less efficiently on their actual functions. The Beta-Ionone odorant appears to affect these properties using the relevant receptor. Hanns Hatt's team is currently analysing the causes and effects in melanoma cells gained through biopsies.

The scent researcher from Bochum expects the newly detected receptor to have other potential applications: "With its help, we might be able to treat pigmentation disorders of the skin, and they might also be used in tanning products," says Hatt.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Lian Gelis, Nikolina Jovancevic, Sophie Veitinger, Bhubaneswar Mandal, Hans-Dieter Arndt, Eva M. Neuhaus, Hanns Hatt. Functional Characterization of the Odorant Receptor 51E2 in Human Melanocytes. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2016; jbc.M116.734517 DOI:10.1074/jbc.M116.734517

Scientists at USC have developed a new tool to modify brain activity and memory in targeted ways, without the help of any drugs or chemicals.

The GFE3 protein may help researchers map the brain's connections and better understand how inhibitory synapses modulate brain function, said lead author Don B. Arnold, a professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

It also may enable them to control neural activity and lead to advancements in research for diseases or conditions ranging from schizophrenia to cocaine addiction, Arnold said.

The new tool is a protein that carries a death sentence for synaptic proteins in specific cells. The protein can be encoded in animal genomes to effectively switch off their inhibitory synapses -- connections between neurons -- increasing their electrical activity.

"GFE3 harnesses a little known and remarkable property of proteins within the brain," Arnold said.

The protein takes advantage of an intrinsic process -- the brain's cycle of degrading and replacing proteins. Most brain proteins last only a couple of days before they are actively degraded and replaced by new proteins. GFE3 targets proteins that hold inhibitory synapses together to this degradation system and as a result, the synapses fall apart.

"Rather than a cell deciding when a protein needs to be degraded, we sort of hijack the process," Arnold said.

For the study published in the journal Nature Methods on June 6, the team of scientists studied the protein's effect in both mice and zebrafish. The researchers found that GFE3 protein triggered the neurons on the two sides of the spine to work in opposition, generating uncoordinated movements.

Previously, drugs could be used to inhibit inhibitory synapses in the brain, for instance benzodiazapines, which treat anxiety, insomnia or seizures. But the drugs inhibit all the cells in a particular area, not just the neurons that are the intended target.

"Unfortunately, cells that have very different, even opposite functions tend to be right next to each other in the brain," Arnold said. "Thus, pharmacological experiments are especially difficult to interpret. By encoding GFE3 within the genome, we can target and modulate the inhibitory synapses of specific cells without affecting other cells that have different functions."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Southern California. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Scientists Build World’s Smallest Light Powered Engine

Scientists Build World’s Smallest Light Powered Engine 

The smallest engine’s size is few billionths of a metre. The prototype device is created with particles of gold, bounded together with special form of gel, temperature-responsive polymers. It causes an active force on a microscopic scale that is a hundred times greater per unit than any muscle or motor.

When the nano engine is heated to a reliable temperature with a laser, it reserves large amount of elastic energy in a fraction of a second, as the polymer coatings removes all the water from the gel and slump. It also has the effect of forcing the gold nanoparticles to bind together into tight clusters. Also, when the device is cooled, the polymers take on water and enlarge and after that nanoparticles are strongly and rapidly propelled separately.

“It’s like an explosion. We have hundreds of gold balls flying apart in a millionth of a second when water molecules inflate the polymers around them,” said Tao Ding from University of Cambridge in the UK.

“We know that light can heat up water to power steam engines. But now we can use light to power a piston engine at the nanoscale,” said Ventsislav Valev, now based at the University of Bath.

Building nanomachines have been fantasy of scientists including people. Nanomachines have been developed but there isn’t any available technology which could make them move, these are currently under the shadow of science fiction. The latest method is not complicated and can be immensely quick and exert large forces, researchers claimed.

The researchers claimed that the devices are cost effective to manufacture, bio compatible, fast to respond, and energy efficient.

The leader of the research, Jeremy Baumberg from the University of Cambridge has dubbed the devices as “ANTs” or actuating nano transducers.

“Like real ants, they produce large forces for their weight. The challenge we now face is how to control that force for nano-machinery applications,” Baumberg said.

AOA A7 Apps. is now official

AOA A7 Apps. is now official

• Yes , I am working on some games and apps listed below

-Urdu Keyboard
-tic tac toe evolution
-A7 camera
-Space capturer
-Run thief run
-Turkish keyboard
-Game of clones

I have completed only one app that is Awesome facts which download link will be available soon . :
)