New Insights Into the Hydrogen Bonding of Hydrogen Sulphide

What do ice cubes in a drink have to do with the smell of grandma's famous egg salad?

15-Nov-2024 - Water and the bad smelling molecule hydrogen sulphide do not seem to have a lot in common at first sight. However, when investing a little energy, some differences disappear. At first glance, the ice cube in your soft drink and the smell of grandma’s famous egg salad don’t seem to have much in ...

New procedure for better thermoplastics

New insights thanks to nano imaging and spectroscopy at the IRIS beamline of BESSY II

06-Nov-2024 - Bio-based thermoplastics are produced from renewable organic materials and can be recycled after use. Their resilience can be improved by blending bio-based thermoplastics with other thermoplastics. However, the interface between the materials in these blends sometimes requires enhancement to ...

Evaluating the link between chemicals and declining insect populations

Using a library of 1,000+ agrochemicals, scientists saw significant changes in behaviour and long-term survival of different insect populations

29-Oct-2024 - Few people are fans of stink bugs, mosquitoes, or boll weevils, but insects play a key role in the circle of life that makes up the planet’s environment. In fact, world-renowned biologist E. O. Wilson famously declared that if insects vanished, our environment would collapse. Scientists have ...

“Dictionaries” make fluorescence-based data for integrative structure models and their dynamics accessible

3D structures of biomolecules

23-Oct-2024 - A research team from Germany and the USA led by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has developed a data description that can provide results from fluorescence measurements for structural and dynamic modelling of large biomolecules. The authors explain in the scientific journal Nature ...

Effects of chemical mixtures: Neurotoxic effects add up

Study demonstrates for the first time the toxicological relevance of chemical mixtures as they occur in humans

22-Oct-2024 - Chemicals are omnipresent today: they enter our bodies through food, air or the skin. But how do these complex mixtures of chemicals affect our health? In a study published in the journal Science, a research team from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has shown that chemicals ...

Sulfurous acid H2SO3 - and it does exist

World's first proof under atmospheric conditions calls textbook opinion into question

05-Sep-2024 - Once again, the atmosphere amazes us with its diverse chemical processes. For the first time, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) in Leipzig have demonstrated the existence of sulfurous acid (H2SO3) under atmospheric conditions in the gas phase. The results ...

Quantitative molecular characterization of polyolefin recyclates

13-Aug-2024 - Polyolefin waste is largely only recycled thermally. Material downcycling dominates here. From an economic and legislative point of view, more upcycling, i.e. the use in product categories of equal or higher value, is urgently required. However, information on the molecular structure of ...

Using PETRA III to watch the disabling of a penicillin killer

Scientists observe in detail the binding and formation of covalent bonds of an inhibitor to a bacterial enzyme that disables common antibiotics

31-Jul-2024 - Antibiotic resistance is a major and particularly in recent years a growing challenge in medicine. Scientists around the world are searching for new and efficient compounds to treat bacterial infections, especially infections caused by multi-resistant bacteria. A research collaboration of ...

Harmful substances in soft plastic lures: Risks for anglers and the environment

Harmful phthalates and endocrine disruptors are released from common soft plastic baits

04-Jul-2024 - Soft plastic lures are increasingly being used in recreational angling worldwide. Their loss in the environment has raised concerns among anglers and environmentalists regarding possible environmental and health risks. A study on the potential effects of soft plastic lures on the environment and ...

How many water molecules does it take to dissolve hydrochloric acid?

13-Jun-2024 - Scientists from DESY have made a significant step towards understanding the solvation processes of hydrochloric acid (HCl) at the molecular scale. HCI is a prototypical acid that is often used for research and in industry and also plays a part in atmospheric chemistry – for example in the growth ...