Category Archives: Chemistry

You can watch the video version of this podcast above, or listen to the audio-only version from the Chemistry in its element podcast feed here:

Or read the edited transcript below.

Ben Valsler

Were in the midst of a climate crisis. In response, countries are pledging significant action to reduce their carbon emissions the European Union intends to be carbon neutral by 2050, for example, and China by 2060. The Paris Climate Agreement was adopted by almost 200 parties in 2015, obliging countries to set out their plans to reduce greenhouse emissions in increasingly ambitious five-year cycles. And carbon consciousness has also made its way into corporate culture, with organisations like BASF aiming for carbon neutral growth by 2030, and General Motors aiming for 2040.

When discussing large-scale carbon reduction, the focus is often on power generation replacing fossil fuels with solar, wind or tidal energy or on new technologies like carbon capture and storage. But for a truly sustainable future, we need a wider view.

Chris Stumpf

Im Chris Stumpf, and I work at Waters Corporation. Im a senior manager, and I focus on market development. Really, what Ive been looking at pretty extensively as of late is the area of electronics, and also sustainability. Ive kind of developed the title of green ambassador within the company because Im tying in a lot of the electronics, especially lithium ion batteries. It connects into carbon neutrality, but also into supporting sustainability goals of a lot of corporations and a lot of countries around the world as theyre trying to meet their carbon neutrality stated goals.

Ben Valsler

Waters Corporation is the worlds leading specialty measurement company they dont make lithium ion batteries or research new sustainable materials themselves, but they develop chromatography, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis techniques that enable scientists and industry worldwide to answer cutting edge questions.

Chris Stumpf

I think there is a common thread with this, and I think a lot of this is really accelerated due to Covid-19. What weve discovered is that supply chains are being disrupted and theres this need to be able to manufacture within countries. A lot of the supply chain, as it stands now, is not sustainable. So one way of reducing that is to use 5G, which enables the Internet of Things, which enables automated manufacturing. Theres also artificial intelligence, which can be focused directly on managing specific aspects of the supply chain, and continuous manufacturing, things like that. The underlying technology for a lot of that is energy, and how you can store and use energy where it needs to be used. One way to do that is with batteries, specifically lithium ion batteries. Theyre the dominant battery type today. Currently, they enable electric and hybrid electric cars, and theyre used in the electric grid, for smart grids. Their use is going to be very pervasive across the landscape. In addition, theyre heavily used in consumer electronics, our smartphones and our laptops, and all these types of devices that we use nowadays.

Ben Valsler

While all of these technologies play a role in fostering development and reducing our reliance on existing, outdated infrastructure, batteries perhaps seem the least exciting on the list. Its only about 30 years since the first commercial lithium ion battery, but in that time theyve become ubiquitous, commonplace, even forgettable.

Chris Stumpf

AI and 5G receive a lot of publicity. I mean, theyre even in pop culture you can think about Stephen Kings novel Cell, based on creating zombies with cellphone towers. And Steven Spielberg had a movie in 2001, based on artificial intelligence and creating like an [artificial] human person.

But right now, were taking this lithium ion battery technology for granted. Its everywhere: its in our laptops and our cell phones. And theres still a lot to be done.

The chemistry Nobel prize winners in 2019, Goodenough, Wittingham and Yoshino-san, said there are six things that still need to be done with regards to research: reducing the cost, improving the safety, increasing the charge density. For example, if youre going to put these lithium ion batteries on an aeroplane, or a big tractor-trailer truck or something like that, you need a lot more energy density.

Then theres the question of whether lithium ion battery technology, as its being practised today, with the liquid electrolyte fluid and the cathode and anode, is the right approach. Should we go with another type of technology? Do we use solid state, for example? Or do we replace the electrodes with other types of technology? The lithium and cobalt that are in the anode and cathode are not really that sustainable its a bit difficult to justify this from a sustainability perspective. Could you perhaps replace some of that with more common metals like sodium? Theres a lot of opportunity here for really basic R&D to decide which direction to go in, and which is the most commercially viable option.

Ben Valsler

Sustainability means different things to different people. For a business strategy to be sustainable, it needs to ensure profits are greater than costs. But this can conflict with the environmental bottom line ensuring no environmental or ecological damage to sustain the natural world for generations to come. Taking a global view, the United Nations has set out 17 sustainable development goals, which include affordable and clean energy, climate action and responsible consumption and production alongside gender equality, sanitation, peace and justice.

Chris Stumpf

In addition to a clean environment, they also want to promote civil stability, because they want to minimise extreme wealth inequality to reduce the possibilities of war. So with regards to lithium ion batteries, that framework of sustainability and trying to source your materials plays a part in those 17 development goals of the United Nations. Thinking about the Paris Climate treaty, if we can maintain our carbon emissions to 1990 levels, then we can arrest the increase in the Earths temperature. Basically, that justifies the investment in all this R&D for lithium ion batteries and all the products they are going into.

Yoshino-san talked about lithium ion batteries being the bedrock of the sustainable society. But theres other things that we dont quite realise, until we get to that world of having a lot of our consumer electronics and cars and aeroplanes and things like that running on lithium ion batteries or another alternative. Its an enabling technology. Its playing a small part in this overall scheme of sustainability. Its not the only thing thats going to help with this, because its kind of a hybrid situation where we have lots of things that we need to do in order to reach a sustainable future, but its the foundation of that, in my opinion.

Ben Valsler

If batteries are to be the bedrock of the sustainable society, its vital that we understand how to tailor them to specific uses the battery in your laptop has a very different specification to the ones in the latest electric cars. This is where measurement technologies come into their own, helping with everything from blue-skies research to efficient manufacture.

Neil Demarse

Hi, my name is Neil Demarse. I am a product manager for our microcalorimetry products.

Because theyrecontained and non-moving, you can think of batteries as a machine almost. Its a complex device. Theres not a lot of techniques that can be used to study whole cell batteries. A lot of them are destructive techniques. Having a test that you can use to look at the chemicals separately, but also look at whole cell batteries is important. Thats where calorimetry really has a very important contribution to the research field.

Research is also starting to look at bringing in some of the tools that biochemists or biopharmaceutical sciences are using because of their sensitivity: HPLC and mass spectrometry. Theres also cryo EM, which was historically used just in protein science; now, its being carried over into material characterization for batteries. As the batteries change and the performance demands accelerate, thats where theyre drawing in some of these tools that wouldnt traditionally be used by chemical engineers or chemists. Theres not a one-size-fits-all battery, so theres going to be a lot of research to determine how best to build certain batteries for certain applications.

Chris Stumpf

In order to think about things like safety or energy density, as far as an analytical characterization perspective, you have to go back and think about the battery itself. Theres four primary things that you have to think about when you when you think about a battery. Theres the anode and the cathode, and were all familiar with the terminals of batteries that is basically the anode and the cathode. Inside, there is the electrolyte. Theres additives and all this stuff that is put in there partly to enhance the performance of the battery, but also to suppress potential fires and things like that. Then on the inside, there is a polymer separator. Its purpose is basically to prevent a short circuit between anode and cathode. If you actually have a short circuit if the polymer gets punctured, or if it shrinks the battery gets hot very quickly. And if the battery gets hot very quickly, it can cascade because a lot of the time, these cars will have thousands of these batteries in in a battery pack. It can cascade like dominoes.

Neil Demarse

Calorimetry can tell you how fast reactions are happening, how much of a reaction is happening, even the fact that there is a reaction happening [at all]. So a researcher might have some data on their chemistry before it goes into the battery, or if you were to cut it open, but calorimetry tells you how all those components together react are there reactions in there that we dont want? Were measuring heat; do those reactions get too hot?

The chemistry that goes into the battery is going to help the charge density and the battery life cycle. Safety is also something that can be looked at early on in the R&D process to make sure that chemicals are compatible. High-precision coulometry is another technique thats paired with calorimetry to understand these parasitic reactions, the small minute reactions that researchers want to understand because it points directly to how good their batterys going to be.

Chris Stumpf

But youve also got the capabilities of really understanding the chemistry thats going on, and all the side reactions. These side reactions basically rob the battery of its main goodness: the power that its generating. If you can understand that from a molecular perspective, with techniques such as mass spectrometry, or maybe for the whole battery itself using battery calorimetry, then you can really get to understand how you can actually make this battery last 20 years, 40 years, 100 years.

Ben Valsler

Fine-tuning the chemistry within a battery isnt enough to make a perfect product the right battery case is essential to allowing that chemistry to work in situ. To confirm a case wont collapse in the real world, researchers use techniques like thermo-gravimetric analysis, or TGA. By applying heat to a material in a controlled way, they can precisely measure not just physical deformation, but chemical changes that would indicate degradation or oxidation.

Chris Stumpf

The polymer that the casing is made out of is actually very important. Youd like to make a casing thats resistant to being crushed in a car accident, for example.So you can design a casing and use analytical characterization in order to build that polymer so that it resists that. You can put the right additives in the electrolyte on the inside so that if the thing does start to heat up, it can trigger some type of flame repression. Theres a number of these things that you can do from an analytical perspective to build a high performing battery that that has a lot of the energy performance that you want. But at the same time youve got to think about the safety perspectives as well.

Ben Valsler

One essential component of a sustainable future highlighted by the United Nations goal of responsible consumption and production centres around what happens to a product at the end of its useful life. Electronic waste is a growing problem the UN estimated 50 million tonnes was reported in 2018, and levels are expected to double by 2050. This includes complex equipment that is hard to recycle and can contain components that are toxic or hard to replace creating a vicious circle whereby materials are mined in environmentally damaging ways, only to be returned to landfill in just a few years. With batteries, as with other electronic components, research and characterisation can help us to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Neil Demarse

Theres a lot of work going into understanding recycling. Apple is one of the largest recyclers of batteries in the world. Its no surprise they have batteries in all of their devices. Im sure they want those back and they have a process that might be able to recycle some or all of the battery. Theres lots of other techniques, but there are still questions: how do you take something thats a static machine full of chemicals and take it apart? How do you recycle these small little pieces? Theres some initiatives or research that go into, were going to grind up the battery and try to purify certain parts of it by just making it smaller and smaller and smaller, mechanically. Others, open up a battery and extract certain materials, but I think it is a big challenge understanding how batteries are going to be recycled. Whats the best way to do that? I dont think it necessarily fits our current recycling process as we know it of separating [components]. Its easy to separate trash. With batteries, its a lot more complex.

Chris Stumpf

Right now, theres regulations in order to collect these batteries, because we dont want them to get into the waste stream. But as far as collecting enough material to reuse it, I think the amount of electric cars is actually not high enough to make that economically feasible. Theres two major areas that people look at with regard to recycling batteries. The first is relatively straightforward: you take the battery pack in some kind of casing from a car, you open that case off, and theres all these individual battery cells. You can test each one of those cells and you can pull out the ones that are bad and replace them with good ones. Then you can repurpose that battery pack, either by putting it back into another car, or you can put it into a Smart Grid, which might have less aggressive energy requirements. It actually might last a lot longer in the electric grid. Its basically a reconditioning of the battery.

The second one is to take that battery pack out of the car or the cell phone or whatever, open up the battery pack, take out the cells, and grind them up. Then try to separate things into cobalt, magnesium, lithium etc. to get back to virgin materials. Thats another area where you need analytical characterization; you need mass spectrometry, NMR, TGA, DSC, all these types of techniques in order to just understand the physical properties and the molecular properties of this, and to see if youve actually got yourself back to where you want to be.

Ben Valsler

Pure, virgin materials have fairly well understood properties. But when a material has been reclaimed from a disused battery, we need to be certain that it will behave in the same way before it returns to the manufacturing process. With many companies operating on a financial knife edge, the risks of using recycled or reclaimed materials that may contain impurities can be too much to bear.

Chris Stumpf

Without the analytical characterisation, without the molecular understanding of the anode and the cathode material, the electrolyte, and the polymer materials that the the battery cells made out of, without that molecular and physical understanding with a TGA, you can actually take that polymer and you can melt it with a thermoplastic. You need to know when these polymers melt, because thats part of the manufacturing process. You melt these polymers and then you blow mold them, or you do different types of manufacturing with them. But you need to be able to understand that because if the temperatures shifted, somehow, its not going to work in the existing manufacturing process, and youre going to have to do all this adaptation. So really, you need to understand, Do I still have that same polymer or has it has it degraded somehow? If you take a polymer from a battery, for example and use it in a different application, maybe in a car bumper, if that polymer now is brittle, its going to break right away. Its not going to be a good application in a car because you need that bumper to resist that impact. So absolutely, analytical characterisation across the whole, from the very beginning of making a battery to the circular economy and reusing the components, youve got to understand that from each step of that process.

Ben Valsler

So as we collectively try to find ways to adapt to a challenging future, to meet the ambitious targets we set for our varying definitions of sustainability, its essential that we use every tool available to us to probe, analyse and understand the technology that we take for granted. And with that understanding we will be able to build, and rebuild, better batteries that can realise Akira Yoshinos vision of them as the bedrock of a sustainable society.

For more on this topic, check out the new Chemistry World sustainability collection curated content created with our partners. You can find that at chemistryworld.com/sustainability.

This podcast featured Chris Stumpf and Neil Demarse of Waters, and was produced in partnership with Waters Corporation. Im Ben Valsler from Chemistry World, thank you for joining me.

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Batteries: The bedrock of the sustainable future | Sponsored - Chemistry World

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Nick Saban could not hide his excitement when it came to discussing certain players during spring practice.

After securing his second undefeated national title at Alabama, he graduated marquee playmakers to the National Football League.

Some are concerned about how the Crimson Tide will look offensively; however, others are prepared to see a fearsome defense take the field in the fall. When he was not talking about COVID-19 vaccinations, name-image-and-likeness, or the explosion of graduate transfers, Saban spoke on the potential chemistry of this years Alabama team. He had a first-year starting quarterback in Mac Jones win a national championship, but now the mantle falls on sophomore Bryce Young for a repeat.

Well, its always a working progress but I do think the summer program is where the leadership on the team has the best chance to flourish, Saban said at the Old Overton Golf course. The coaches are not always around, so the players have more input. Weve had our annual leadership on the lake, and I think the players are excited about the opportunities and challenges this season will bring.

Offensively, names such as Brian Robinson, Evan Neal, Chris Owens, John Metchie, Slade Bolden, and Jahleel Billingsley have to dictate the temperature in the room. Alabama carried a young offense in 2011 and 2015; nevertheless, both groups won a national championship.

It will be intriguing to see how this team stacks up, but it knows the mentality it must have to win consistently.

The Tide is going after its second repeat since the 2011 and 2012 seasons.

*Get the BEST Alabama football insider information, message board access, and recruiting coverage today!SIGN UP HEREto unlock our subscriber-onlycontent!*

Stephen M. Smith is the managing editor and seniorwriter forTouchdown Alabama Magazine. Youcan like him onFacebookor follow him on Twitter, via@CoachingMSmith.

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Nick Saban is 'excited' about the chemistry this Alabama team has the potential of having - Touchdown Alabama Magazine

Remember the storyline that the Brooklyn Nets might struggle in the postseason as the chemistry among their All-Star trio develops? Well, never mind.

The Nets defeated the short-handed Boston Celtics, 141-126, with Kevin Durant (42), Kyrie Irving (39) and James Harden (23) combining for 104 points. And Harden added a career playoff-high 18 assists as the Celtics took a 3-1 series lead over the Celtics.

With Durant, Irving and Harden playing just eight games together in the regular season, it might seem that the Nets would need some time to figure out how to best complement each other even as they downplayed such talk.

Irving rebounded from a poor-shooting Game 3 loss by hitting 6 of his 12 3-pointers. After the game, a fan threw a water bottle at him as he left the court.

Mental toughness? One of the best Ive ever seen. For him, all the emotions or whatever is going through his mind, which Im sure a million things go through his mind, Harden said of Irving. He goes out there, blocks everything out and just (is) himself and from a guy that probably would say he didnt play his best game in Game 3, came in and had a killer instinct, killer mentality, and had a will to win Game 4. It showed. He was aggressive, and when Kais aggressive like that, nobody can guard him. That gives our team energy as well. Big-time effort from him, big-time effort from our team.

It helps that they are playing a short-handed Celtics team missing Jaylen Brown (out for the playoffs, wrist surgery) and Kemba Walker (out for Game 4 with left knee bone bruise).

Durant is averaging 34.7 points, Harden is averaging 26.2 and Irving is at 24.7.

The 104 points scored by Durant, Irving and Harden tied an NBA playoff record for three teammates set by Boston's John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens in 1973 and matched in 1986 by Dominique Wilkins, Randy Whitman and Spud Webb.

State of the series: Nets lead 3-1. Game 5 is Tuesday in Brooklyn (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT)

Story continues

James Harden had 23 points and 18 assists in the Nets' 141-126 win over the Celtics on Sunday.

The Clippers claimed there was no reason to panic after they were swept in the first two games of this playoff series at home. It appears they were right. The Clippers are showing the kind of resilience expected of a title contender by overpowering the Mavericks from the start to even up their series. Kawhi Leonard led the way with 29 points on an efficient 11 of 15 shooting. And suddenly, the Clippers may have revived their title-contender status. At the very least, they regained home-court advantage. Were where we were supposed to be, said Nicolas Batum. We're supposed to be at 2-2, technically. So we're going to go home and have to take care of home court. Mavericks star Luka Doncic, who had 19 points on 9 of 24 shooting, was certainly in pain, coach Rick Carlisle said, after he played through a strained neck for a second consecutive game.

State of the series: Series tied 2-2. Game 5 is Wednesday in Los Angeles (10 p.m. ET, TNT)

Its easy to think of the Hawks as a solo act. Trae Young is clearly their leader, but their supporting cast isnt bad, either. John Collins contributed 22 points and Danilo Gallinari added 20 to support Youngs 27 points to help the Hawks take a 3-1 series lead. The Hawks have a chance to advance out of the first round of the postseason for the first time since 2016. We have so many guys who are skilled with the basketball, Collins said. We have great chemistry with each other. I think the sky's the limit with this team when we do the right things.

State of the series: Hawks lead 3-1. Game 5 is Wednesday in New York (Time TBD)

The Phoenix Suns got even Sunday. With stifling defense and balanced offense, coupled with Anthony Davis missing the second half with a groin injury and Chris Paul playing his best ball since injuring his right shoulder in Game 1. The playoffs bring you to your limits in a lot of ways and that's how you grow, Suns coach Monty Williams said. You're watching our young team grow on the fly. With Davis out and Paul looking more like himself in posting a team-high 18 points, nine assists and zero turnovers in 32 minutes, Phoenix returns home with huge momentum for Tuesday's Game 5 at Phoenix Suns Arena.

--- Duane Rankin

State of the series: Series tied 2-2. Game 5 is Tuesday in Phoenix (10 p.m. ET TNT)

NBA PLAYOFF SCHEDULE: First-round matchups, results, game times and TV info

Joel Embiid has been the dominant force and is easily having the best postseason of his career. That is why the Sixers, the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, have a chance to sweep their first playoff series since 1991 when they beat the Milwaukee Bucks 3-0. Embiid had a career playoff-high 36 points on 18 shots in Game 3. I cant imagine anybody playing better than him, Wizards coach Scott Brooks. As a result, the Sixers definitely have a sweep on their mind. We want to get the sweep so we can get some rest, 76ers guard Ben Simmons said. But this is a tough team. You never know what you are going to get every night, especially with [Bradley] Beal and [Russell] Westbrook. So weve got to come prepared on Monday.

State of the series: Sixers lead 3-0. Game 4 is Monday in Washington (7 p.m. ET, TNT)

The last time the Grizzlies were in the postseason, Mike Conley was one of the main reasons they got there. In their first trip back since 2017, Conley might be one of the main reasons for their early exit. The former face of the Grit and Grind Grizzlies that made seven straight trips to the postseason, Conley is having the kind of success in Utah that he had in Memphis. And that is good news for the No. 1 Jazz. He has averaged 23 points against the Grizzlies, helping the Jazz to a 2-1 series lead. Mike was terrific on both ends of the floor. He was Mike Conley, Donovan Mitchell said after Game 3. And he always has been for us all year, and he's taken it to an even another level. And I feel like when you have a guy like that who can handle the ball, who can control the game, as well, it makes my life and my job easier. So when I get certain shots, it's because he sees things, he's communicating that with me or he's putting me in positions to go ahead and score and make plays too. A lot of that too is Mike Conley being here. He's big time.

State of the series: Jazz lead 2-1. Game 4 is Monday in Memphis (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT)

If you study a box score of a Trail Blazers game and discover that Damian Lillard shoots 1 of 10 from the field, there wouldnt be much expectation of a successful outcome for Portland. But Lillard had just 10 points in Game 3, and the Blazers defeated the Nuggets 115-95. Norman Powell, who won an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, picked up the slack. Powell led the Blazers with 29 points to help the Blazers even the series. If he continues to play well and Lillard rebounds, the Blazers could make make trouble for the Nuggets. I love these types of games, these kinds of moments. It's the moment where nothing else matters, Powell said. You get caught up in the course of the season with stats sometimes, this-that-and-the-other, road trips, but when you get into the playoffs, the only thing that matters is winning.

State of the series: Series tied 2-2. Game 5 is Tuesday in Denver (9 p.m. ET, NBATV)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brooklyn Nets' Big 3 had record-scoring night in cruising past Celtics

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Brooklyn Nets get an A+ on their chemistry test, cruise to easy NBA playoff win over Celtics - Yahoo Sports

A new chemical probe glows in the presence of a bacterial enzyme that contributes to antibiotic resistance. Credit: The University of Texas at Austin

In the perpetual arms races between bacteria and human-made antibiotics, there is a new tool to give human medicine the edge, in part by revealing bacterial weaknesses and potentially by leading to more targeted or new treatments for bacterial infections.

A research team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has developed chemical probes to help identify an enzyme, produced by some types of E. coli and pneumococcal bacteria, known to break down several common types of antibiotics, making these bacteria dangerously resistant to treatment.

In response to antibiotic treatment, bacteria have evolved various mechanisms to resist that treatment, and one of those is to make enzymes that basically chew up the antibiotics before they can do their job, said Emily Que, assistant professor of chemistry and one of the leading researchers on the team. The type of tool we developed gives us critical information that could keep us one step ahead of deadly bacteria.

In a paper published online on May 26, 2021, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers zeroed in on the threat posed by the bacterial enzyme called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM). They set out to create a molecule that glows when it comes into contact with the NDM enzyme. When these chemical probes are added to a test tube, they bind to the enzyme and glow. Such a tool could be used to alert doctors to what kind of bacterial threat is affecting their patients and tell them which antibiotics to use.

NDM breaks down antibiotics in the penicillin, cephalosporin and carbapenem classes, which are some of the safest and most effective treatments for bacterial infections. Other classes of antibiotics exist, but they may carry more side effects, have more drug interactions and may be less available in some parts of the world.

In addition to indicating the presence of the NDM enzyme, the florescent chemical probe developed by Que and Walt Fast, a professor of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry, may help find a different way to combat these resistant bacteria. One treatment option that doctors use with resistant bacteria is to combine common antibiotics and an inhibitor. Although there is no known clinically effective inhibitor for NDM-producing bacteria, Ques probe could help find one.

Once the probe has bound to the enzyme and begun to glow, if an effective inhibitor is introduced, it will knock the probe loose and the glow would stop. This allows scientists to test a high volume of potential drugs very quicklyresearch Que and Fast hope to continue in the future.

This allows us to work towards developing therapies and eventually understanding evolutionary characteristics of such proteins, said Radhika Mehta, a recent UT Austin doctoral graduate and lead author on the paper. Mehta is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Merchant Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study also examined a process called nutritional immunity, which comes from the human bodys production of proteins in response to an infection. The proteins snatch up all the available metals in the body, such as the zinc required to make NDM, rendering the bacteria more susceptible to attack.

The evolution of this bacteria since its discovery in 2008 indicates that not only is it developing antibiotic resistance, its attempting to combat this natural human immune process. Thats particularly scary, Que said.

Ques probe can also be used to study nutritional immunity and NDM because it will glow only in the presence of the zinc needed to form the enzyme.

Reference: Visualizing the Dynamic Metalation State of New Delhi Metallo--lactamase-1 in Bacteria Using a Reversible Fluorescent Probe by Radhika Mehta, Dann D. Rivera, David J. Reilley, Dominique Tan, Pei W. Thomas, Abigail Hinojosa, Alesha C. Stewart, Zishuo Cheng, Caitlyn A. Thomas, Michael W. Crowder, Anastassia N. Alexandrova, Walter Fast and Emily L. Que, 26 May 2021, Journal of the American Chemical Society.DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c00290

Radhika Mehta, Dann D. Rivera, Dominique Tan, Pei W. Thomas, Abigail Hinojosa, Alesha C. Stewart and Walter Fast of The University of Texas at Austin; David J. Reilley and Anastassia N. Alexandrova of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Zishuo Cheng, Caitlyn A. Thomas and Michael W. Crowder of Miami University also contributed to the research. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

Continue reading here:
A Glowing New Weapon in the Fight Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria - SciTechDaily

INDIANAPOLIS Local businesses were evacuated, and neighbors were advised to stay inside, after a chemical reaction sent a plume of orange vapor into the air on the east side.

The Indianapolis Fire Department and Marion County Public Health Department were called to 2728 N. Emerson Ave. Thursday morning.

IFD said the orange cloud, which was visible along I-70, resulted from a reaction between nitric acid and moisture inside a container. The reaction pushed smoke into the area, which quickly began to dissipate.

IFD urged neighbors to shelter in place and close their doors and windows. Nearly 30 people were evacuated from a pair of nearby businesses as a precaution, IFD said.

The vapor can be irritating to the eyes and lungs, IFD said, adding that hazardous material crews were responding to the scene.

The Marion County Public Health Department said it would assist with monitoring air quality.

More here:
Chemical reaction sends plume of orange smoke into air on east side, leads to shelter in place advisory - Fox 59

Despite acquiring "third star" James Harden one month ago to form an All-Star triumvirate with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Nets have traveled a bumpy road since then. Irving was on a personal leave of absence at the time, Durant was just coming off one COVID-19 quarantine and since has undergone a second quarantine that ended Friday.

The Nets Big 3 played their seventh game together as a unit Saturday night at Golden State to begin a five-game West Coast road trip that figured to be their toughest test of the season, and they didnt have starting center DeAndre Jordan, who missed the game for personal reasons. Counting Golden State, the Nets had just 10 games left before the All-Star break in March, and they still are searching for answers.

The good thing is they have played their best against the top teams, and they are facing four teams with winning records plus a quality Kings team that slipped one game below .500 with a loss on Friday night.

"We seem to get up and play better against the better teams," coach Steve Nash said before the Nets departed on their cross-country trek. "The West Coast definitely will challenge us. All these teams [also including the Suns, Lakers and Clippers] are very good. I hope we match the level that is asked of us and play to our level.

"The idea is to win games, but the big picture is: Are we getting better? Are we putting ourselves in position to be a more formidable team down the road? Thats the No. 1 priority for me over wins and losses. Weve got so many guys that have been in and out of the lineup, so were still in our infancy as far as trying to jell and put this group together."

The Nets recently snapped a three-game losing streak that was their worst of the season with a win over the Pacers on Wednesday in their best defensive performance of the season. Durant said his time off allowed him to focus on what the Nets have to work on most.

"Just being on the same page to start games on the defensive side," Durant said. Pointing to the final game of their recent losing streak, he added, "I watched the Detroit game, and we were down 14 points at the end of the first quarter. No matter who were playing against, thats a big deficit. We just want to start off games with intensity and keep building from there."

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Long road trips offer an opportunity to build an off-the-court bond that translates to better performance on the court, and that is especially true in the midst of a pandemic when everyone is stressed by the need to observe strict NBA health and safety protocols.

"With the bus rides, plane rides, being in the locker room with these guys, I feel like we still are in a bubble no matter what," Durant said. "I think were building that chemistry and getting to know each other on a personal level.

"Obviously, being out and going out to dinners and being able to hang out in public together definitely would help, but I still think were getting a lot of team bonding and building as were going through the season. Its about executing what we need to do on both ends of the floor, staying on one page, and I think were trending in the right direction."

The Nets have made no secret of their championship aspirations, and its obvious they have one of the most high-powered offenses in the league. But the win over the Pacers showed the importance of communication and what Nash describes as "connectivity" on defense to their long-term success.

The coach said the Nets are a quiet team, so this road trip comes at a great point in the season because it might help to galvanize them. "In the old days, we bonded by going out to dinner together, going to a bar," Hall of Famer Nash said of his playing days. "You cant do that in COVID. Its not a normal world.

"Its a challenge for us being a new group, new [coaching] staff, the changes, the trade, COVID. We just havent had a clean runway. In the good, old days, I would have put my credit card behind the bar and told the guys to go out and have a good time, but that aint happening in COVID. So well have to find creative ways to grow and find that bond."

Greg Logan has worked for Newsday since 1982 covering a wide array of sports and events, currently including the Brooklyn Nets beat.

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Logan: Nets seek answers, trying to get their chemistry right - Newsday