News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

For the first time, a team led by Prof. Jian-Wei Pan and Prof. Bo Zhao at the University of Science and Technology of China, have successfully observed scattering resonances between atoms and molecules at ultralow temperatures, shedding light on the quantum nature of atom-molecule interactions that have so far only been discussed in theory.

When molecules interact with the oscillating field of a laser, an instantaneous, time-dependent dipole is induced. This very general effect underlies diverse physical phenomena. Now scientists from the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) report on an experiment in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, where the dependence of the driven-dipole response on the bound state of an electron in a methyl iodine molecule is revealed.

Electronegativity is one of the most well-known models for explaining why chemical reactions occur. Now, Martin Rahm from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has redefined the concept with a new, more comprehensive scale. His work, undertaken with colleagues including a Nobel Prize-winner, has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

At the present time, dengue is one of the most important arboviruses affecting man, becoming a serious global public health problem, especially in subtropical and tropical countries, where environmental conditions favor the development and proliferation of the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Dengue is caused by a type of flavivírus, which is an enveloped virus of spherical geometry.

A pair of researchers at Case Western Reserve University have come up with a new way to create ammonia from nitrogen and water at low temperature and low pressure. They've done it successfully so far in a laboratory without using hydrogen or the solid metal catalyst necessary in traditional processes.

Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) have collaborated with researchers from Zhejiang University and South China University of Technology to develop a novel system of real-time, in-situ monitoring of molecular aggregation based off of circular dichroism (CD) that is significantly more cost effective than conventional methods used to determine molecular conformation.