Science Innovations

Sodium atoms can be 'driven off' by heating to leave the new orthorhombic silicon structure © NPG The new Si24 allotrope has an open-framework structure of 5-, 6- and 8-membered sp3-bonded silicon rings © Duck Young Kim New silicon allotrope could revolutionise solar cells A new, direct band gap allotrope of silicon has been synthesised by researchers in the US. It could potentially revolutionise solar cells and light-emitting devices by combining the light absorbency of materials like gallium arsenide with the processing advantages of traditional silicon. The present synthesis is long and expensive, but the researchers think it might be possible to get around this. Silicon is the mainstay of the electronics industry, but the common cubic diamond-structured allotrope has an indirect band gap, which means electrons cannot travel between the valence and conduction bands simply by absorbing or emitting a photon: they also require a phonon to conserve mo...

The first non-cluster bond between boron and beryllium has been reported by scientists in Germany. 10 years ago, few reactions existed where boron behaved as an nucleophile. That all changed with the advent of lithium diazaborolide in 2006 , and boron has been partnering up with myriad main- group, transition metal and lanthanide elements ever since. However, despite beryllium sitting right next to boron in the periodic table, a classical two-centre/two-electron bond had never been reported between the two neighbours, until now. Holger Braunschweig and colleagues at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg have successfully synthesised a linear beryllium bis (diazaborolyl) compound by reacting lithium diazaborolide with beryllium chloride. It contains two highly polar covalent bonds between beryllium and boron, with the beryllium atom as the electrophilic centre – in contrast to the ionic bonding that is typical between lithium diazaborolide and othe...

Posted by: Deepak Kumar New research suggests that a cancer drug developed from sea sponges could help women with one of the most advanced stages of breast cancer live five months longer.  A drug called eribulin could help extend the lives of women with the most advanced forms of breast cancer by at least two months, new research suggests. The drug mimics the behaviour of a compound naturally found in sea sponges. Although it’s not a cure, research presented at the National Cancer Research Institute in Liverpool, UK, has revealed that women with advanced triple negative breast cancer can live for an average of five extra months when taking the drug. The drug is already being used to treat women who have previously undergone two rounds of chemotherapy, but this is the first time it's been tested as an earlier form of treatment. It's now passed Phase III clinical trials, which is the last step before a drug is released onto the market. The incredible resul...

Posted by: Deepak Kumar Controversial new research claims that only a small fraction of the human genome is actually doing something important. Over the years, there's been plenty of back and forth over how much of our DNA is important - for decades much of it was thought of as “junk DNA”, but geneticists have gradually come to believe that some of these seemingly pointless segments of DNA may be crucial to regulating the rest of the genome. Importantly, researchers from the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) in 2012 stated that about 80 percent of human DNA has some kind of “biochemical function” as Sci-News reports. The study was controversial, because many researchers argued that the definition of "biochemical function" was too broad, and that just because activity occurs on the DNA, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has a function. Of course, how do you test the impact that each segment of DNA has on the body? The new study, le...

Scientists have discovered an on/off switch for ageing cells Posted By: - Tarun Researchers have found a molecular “switch” that controls how fast cells age, and could play an important role in ageing and cancer. In our bodies, our cells are constantly dividing in order to replenish our lungs, skin, liver and other organs. But most human cells can’t divide forever, and eventually this causes our organs and tissues to degrade as we age. The "timekeeper" of our cells are telomeres - little DNA caps that sit at the end of our chromosomes, sort of like that plastic bit at the end of your shoelace. Each time a cell divides, these telomeres get shorter and shorter until eventually they're so short the cell can no longer divide. But researchers know that there is a way to stop the telomere from wearing down - some cells can produce an enzyme called telomerase, which rebuilds telomeres and let’s cells divide indefinitely. However they've struggled to...

Posted By: - Tarun Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark have developed a new form of crystalline cobalt salt that acts like a super-effective oxygen sponge. Once it sucks up oxygen, it will hold on to it indefinitely until it's gently heated or exposed to low oxygen pressure, at which point it will quietly release its oxygen hoard back out into the atmosphere. About 10 liters of it would be needed to suck all of the oxygen out of an average-sized room. "The material can absorb and release oxygen many times without losing the ability. It is like dipping a sponge in water, squeezing the water out of it and repeating the process over and over again,” said lead researcher and Nano bioscience professor Christine McKenzie, in a press release. "When the substance is saturated with oxygen, it can be compared to an oxygen tank, containing pure oxygen under pressure. The difference is that this material can hold three times as much oxygen." ...