Energy & Green Tech
A planned underwater hydrogen pipeline connecting Barcelona and Marseille is a risky project, but one that is key for the European Union's energy independence.
Dec 7, 2022
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4
Engineering
To power our increasingly electrified society, energy storage technology must evolve and adapt to meet the growing demand. Lithium-ion batteries, already essential to myriad technology, will require dramatic improvements ...
Jun 29, 2022
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57
Computer Sciences
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, mass vaccinations have begun to raise the tantalizing prospect of herd immunity that eventually curtails or halts the spread of SARS-CoV-2. But what if herd immunity is never fully achieved—or ...
May 3, 2021
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44
Electronics & Semiconductors
Researchers dipped their new, printed sensors into tuna broth and watched the readings.
Jun 29, 2020
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13
Electronics & Semiconductors
A team of Brown University researchers has made substantial progress in an effort to create a new type of molecular data storage system.
Feb 4, 2020
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923
Electronics & Semiconductors
Solution-processed semiconductors, including materials such as perovskites and quantum dots (i.e., small particles of matter in the quantum size regime), are substances with a conductivity ranging between that of insulators ...
Nov 25, 2019 feature
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303
Engineering
Organic electronic devices, which are made of small molecules or polymers (i.e., substances composed primarily or completely of similar units bound together) are known to have several advantageous properties. In fact, organic ...
Nov 19, 2019 feature
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80
Engineering
People who suffer from end stage renal disease frequently undergo dialysis on a fixed schedule. For patients this artificial washing of the blood is a major burden. To remove toxins from the blood, large quantities of dialysis ...
Oct 1, 2019
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0
Software
New simulation technology developed by TU Graz is designed to make the production of biopharmaceuticals more efficient, cost-effective and comprehensible for manufacturers.
Sep 12, 2019
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9
Energy & Green Tech
Batteries power most of our devices, and even some cars. But researchers now report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a step toward running electronic devices in homes and offices on the light coming from lamps scattered ...
Mar 13, 2019
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26
In pharmacology and biochemistry, a small molecule is an organic compound that is not a polymer. Biopolymers such as nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides (such as starch or cellulose) are not small molecules, although their constituent monomers—ribo- or deoxyribonucleotides, amino acids, and monosaccharides, respectively—are often considered to be. Very small oligomers are also usually considered small molecules, such as dinucleotides, peptides such as the antioxidant glutathione, and disaccharides such as sucrose.
While small molecules almost always have a lower molecular weight than biopolymers, a very small protein with a defined fold, such as the artificial ten-amino-acid protein chignolin[1], can indeed be smaller than some exceptionally large small molecules such as triglycerides.
Small molecules can have a variety of biological functions, serving as cell signalling molecules, as tools in molecular biology, as drugs in medicine, and in countless other roles. These compounds can be natural (such as secondary metabolites) or artificial (such as antiviral drugs); they may have a beneficial effect against a disease (such as FDA approved drugs) or may be detrimental (such as teratogens and carcinogens).
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
