Category Environment/Geology

The crystal structure of magnesium peroxide, MgO2, courtesy of Sergey Lobanov, created using K. Momma’s program for drawing crystal structures. Credit: Sergey Lobanov 

New Carnegie research demonstrates different magnesium compounds could be abundant inside other planets as compared to Earth. O and Mg are the two most-abundant elements in Earth’s mantle. However, when predicting the chemical compositions of rocky, terrestrial planets outside of our own Solar System, they shouldn’t assume that other rocky planets would have Earth-like mantle mineralogy, according to Carnegie’s Sergey Lobanov, Nicholas Holtgrewe, and Alexander Goncharov.

Eg. elevated oxygen contents have been observed in stars that host rocky planets...

Norovirus structure (Copyright: BV Prasad)

“More than 80% of human norovirus genotypes were detected in oyster samples or oyster-related outbreaks,” said corresponding author Yongjie Wang, PhD. In the study, they downloaded all oyster-related norovirus sequences deposited during 1983-2014 into the National Center for Biotechnology’s GenBank database, and into the Noronet outbreak database. They conducted genotyping and phylogenic analyses, and mapped the norovirus’s genetic diversity and geographic distribution over time.

In earlier research, the investigators found that 90% of human norovirus sequences in China came from coastal regions. The current research showed that the same is true all over the world, except in tropical regions, from which sequences are absent...

Conceptual model shows how porphyrin COFs embedded in a cathode could be used to split carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen for making renewable fuels and other valuable chemical products. Credit: Courtesy of Omar Yaghi, Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley

Porphyrin CO2 catalysts have been incorporated into the sponge-like crystals of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) to create a molecular system that not only absorbs carbon dioxide, but also selectively reduces it to CO, a primary building block for a wide range of chemical products including fuels, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

With the reduction of atmospheric CO2 emissions in mind, Yaghi and his MIU group designed and developed the first COFs as a means of separating CO2 from flue gases...