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2011 is the International Year of Chemistry and also sees the launch of Sustainability as a University-wide societal engagement theme at Newcastle, so it is appropriate for significant progress to be made in structural characterisation at Diamond Light Source as part of a Newcastle School of Chemistry project developing carbon capture technology and its application in making ‘green’ solvents that, in turn, can be used for environmentally friendly processes to synthesise useful chemicals. ...
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Thin films comprising ordered stacks of purple membrane (PM) sheets containing the light-driven proton pump bacteriorhodopsin, were infiltrated with methacrylic acid monomers to produce intercalated lamellar bionanocomposites with expanded interlayer spacing. Subsequent in situ polymerization and crosslinking of the guest methacrylic acid molecules resulted in intercalated poly(acrylate)/PM free-standing films, which showed increased stability in water, structural integrity and enhanced ...
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To establish successful infection, a retrovirus must insert a DNA replica of its genome into host cell chromosomal DNA. This process is orchestrated by integrase, a viral enzyme that belongs to the DDE(D) nucleotidyltransferase/transposase superfamily. A tetramer of integrase assembles on viral DNA ends forming a highly stable nucleoprotein complex termed intasome 1,2. The intasome engages chromosomal DNA within a target capture complex to carry out strand transfer, irreversibly joining the ...
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Lassa fever virus kills more than five thousand people in West Africa every year, with many survivors having hearing and neurological problems.1 As no vaccine or effective drugs are available, and the infection can transmit from person to person, the Lassa fever virus is classed as a hazard group four virus and is regarded as a potential biological weapon. The nucleoprotein of Lassa fever is the most abundant protein in the virus and plays essential roles in virus translation, transcription, ...
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The serpins are a family of proteins of special interest to structural biologists because of their ability to spontaneously undergo a profound change in conformation.1 This conformational transition reflects the prime role of the serpins as protease inhibitors but it has also been adapted in individual serpins to allow the modulation of their function.2 A series of structures over the last 20 years has shown how this flexibility enables the serpins to act as controlling factors in key ...
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In metallo-supramolecular chemistry small molecules are organised into larger, more complex assemblies through the use of reversible metal-ligand coordination interactions. These assemblies are highly complicated and are often polyhedral or prismatic in shape and of nanometre scale. Given the right conditions they effectively make themselves in a process called self-assembly. They may have significant internal space where other molecules can be trapped or even react, acting like nano-sized ...
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Anions are of central importance in natural, medical, and industrial systems: mis-regulation of chloride channels is known to be a cause of cystic fibrosis; use of nitrates and phosphates in fertilisers has caused enormous environmental damage through eutrophication; and pertechnetate is a radioactive bi-product of the nuclear industry. Stimulated by the fundamental roles negatively charged species play in these areas, there has been enormous interest in the field of supramolecular anion ...
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Making the power of synchrotron light available to more businesses, building new experimental equipment and developing new capabilities are three of the areas of collaboration in a trans-Atlantic memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Diamond Light Source and Canadian Light Source Inc. (CLS) in Saskatoon.
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Piezoelectric materials are mainstream components for both consumer and industrial applications in a market worth an estimated $10.7 billion annually. The vast majority of this realm is served by the ceramic lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which contains up to 60% by weight of lead; there is considerable international effort at present to find viable lead free alternatives to PZT. High-energy synchrotron radiation available on the Extreme Conditions Beamline, I15 at Diamond Light Source has ...
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We have made use of the I15 beamline at Diamond Light Source to investigate the high pressure behaviour of Ti2.85O4N, a novel oxynitride synthesized by the unusual route of atmospheric pressure chemical vapour deposition, at pressures up to 68 GPa. At ambient pressure this phase adopts the pseudo-brookite Cmcm structure, and anisotropic compression was observed up 18 GPa, at which pressure a first order phase transition was observed to new orthorhombic (Pmc21) structure. Further compression ...
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Tungstates of 3d-transition metals form an important family of inorganic materials with applications in various fields. CuWO4 is one of them, being well known as a semiconductor with technological applications in scintillator detectors, laser hosts, photoanodes, optical fibers, etc. In the last few years it has also attracted attention as a multiferroic material with an intriguing magnetic phase diagram. CuWO4 has been studied at ambient pressure to characterize its optical, magnetic, and ...
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Iron is necessary for many cellular reactions and is therefore an essential nutrient for all living organisms. However, insolubility and toxicity of iron make its acquisition and processing a great challenge for living organisms. Thus to overcome such difficulties, bacteria have developed iron homeostasis mechanisms that involve control of three key processes: iron uptake, iron utilisation and storage of excess iron. Among these processes, uptake of iron plays a particularly crucial role for ...
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Growing concerns about fuel security and global warming have made the development and use of sustainable (low carbon) sources of energy an increasingly attractive proposition. Harvesting energy from sunlight at low-cost using photovoltaic devices is a rapidly growing research area, with organic based photovoltaics (OPVs) attracting particular interest as they have the potential advantages of low manufacturing-cost (as they are fabricated using solution based techniques) and ...
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Spherulites are roughly spherical structures, and their name derives from the Greek for ‘ball’ and ‘stone’. Spherulites occur in various forms in nature. Those that form from polymers self-assemble into arrays of fibres that radiate out from the centre of the structure, and they are typically observed with diameters on the micrometre-scale. The arrangement of the fibres in the spherulite gives rise to birefringence, which may be observed when the spherulite is placed between crossed ...
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Templates are widely used to arrange molecular components so that they can be covalently linked to generate complex molecules that are not readily accessible by classical synthetic methods. Nature uses sophisticated templates such as the ribosome, whereas chemists use simple ions or small molecules. But as we tackle the synthesis of larger targets, we require larger templates — which themselves become synthetically challenging. Recently, we have shown that Vernier complexes can solve this ...
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Inorganic-organic frameworks, particularly metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), have attracted considerable attention over the last decade because they exhibit a wide range of interesting physical properties.1 These include the ability to store or separate gases and perform catalytic reactions in nanoporous MOFs; while fascinating magnetic and electronic properties are found in denser frameworks. The transition metal gallate frameworks, M(C7HxO5)·2H2O (M = metal and x = 3 or 4) have ...
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A range of techniques have been used to show that the behaviour of the superconductivity in LiFeAs is quite different from that in the other iron arsenide superconductors, and the system shows some similarities with the FeSe system.
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Crystalline porous solids, such as aluminosilicate zeolites have achieved widespread use in commercial processes of adsorption and catalysis. However, they are limited for many fine chemical conversions of complex organic molecules by the size of their pores, which typically do not exceed 1 nm. Mesoporous silicas are known with pore sizes of 3 nm upwards, but these lack long range order, so that crystallography cannot be used to measure, understand and improve their catalytic performance. ...
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The alteration shown by silver leaf applied to polychrome carved wood and altarpieces to imitate metal objects (arms, garments, tools and decorative mouldings) is a very generalised phenomenon. The processes involved are not well understood, limiting the development of adequate conservation strategies. The object of the study was to determine and clarify the alteration mechanisms. For this, several silver foils from polychrome carved wood, mouldings as well as flat surfaces of altarpieces ...
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Combinatorial high-throughput screening at Diamond may prove useful in discovering novel bulk hydrogen storage materials, according to new research published this month in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Faraday Discussions journal.
A team of researchers from the ‘HyStorM’ project, a collaboration between Oxford University, Johnson Matthey, Ilika Technologies and the ISIS facility, funded by the Technology Strategy Board, used innovative high-resolution Powder X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) ...
