Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

This new single-agent phototherapy system may form a valuable new approach to fighting cancer. Credit: Graphic courtesy of Oregon State University

Oregon State University today announced an important advance in the field of cancer imaging and phototherapy. It uses a single chemical compound, silicon naphthalocyanine, that has both diagnostic and therapeutic value. It makes cancer cells glow when exposed to near-infrared light, so a surgeon can identify the cancer and remove it + the compound creates heat and reactive oxygen species within any remaining cancer cells, killing them.

In tests completed with laboratory animals, tumors were completely eradicated without side effects, and did not return...

Rosetta’s detection of molecular oxygen

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has made the 1st in situ detection of oxygen molecules outgassing from a comet, a surprising observation that suggests they were incorporated into the comet during its formation.

Rosetta has been studying Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for over a year and has detected an abundance of different gases pouring from its nucleus. Water vapour, CO and CO2 are the most prolific, with a rich array of other N-, S- and C-bearing species, and even ‘noble gases’ also recorded...

The researchers, led by University of Cambridge, used ultrafast laser pulses to observe how a photon, can be converted into 2 energetically excited particles, known as spin-triplet excitons, through a process called singlet fission. If the process of singlet fission can be controlled, it could enable solar cells to double the amount of electrical current that can be extracted.

In conventional semiconductors such as silicon, when 1 photon is absorbed it leads to the formation of 1 free electron that can be harvested as electrical current. However certain materials undergo singlet fission instead, where the absorption of a photon leads to the formation of 2 spin-triplet excitons...