The Most Dangerous Surgery

Septal myectomy is a surgical procedure performed to reduce the muscle thickening that occurs in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Septal myectomy is one treatment option for HCM when symptoms persist despite optimal treatment with medications, or if obstruction severely restricts blood ejection from the heart.

A Search for the New

Why the rules are changing in the search for super heavies?

The hunt for new elements is one of the most exciting frontiers of science, and the attempts to create new atomic nuclei are closely followed around the world. With no gaps in our current periodic table, the days of discovering an element in nature are probably over. Instead, isotopes of new elements are created in laboratories by nuclear fusion and typically have very short half-lives, which makes identification and verification difficult.

Of course, all claims to have discovered a new element need proof before they are accepted by the scientific community and ‘priority’ – the right to be recognised as an element’s discoverer – is decided. Now a group of experts from around the world have reviewed how such claims can be confirmed, which is likely to decide the criteria of element discovery as we push into the eighth row of the periodic table.

The need for this review is tied into the often contentious history of element discovery. Between 1955 and 1984, contradictory results – all claiming the discovery of new elements with atomic numbers 101 to 109 – were published in the scientific literature, mostly from teams at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), US and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Russia. After 1976, experiments were also conducted at the newly founded research laboratory GSI in Darmstadt, Germany. As these elements come after fermium, element 100, the debate surrounding the claims is sometimes known as the ‘transfermium wars’.

In order to dissolve the uncertainties, the ‘Transfermium Working Group’ (TWG) was set up by the International Unions of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) and Physics (Iupap). The outcome was a compilation of criteria, published in 1991, which need to be fulfilled so that priority of discovery of a new element could be assigned.

To address this problem, Iupac and Iupap established a new Joint Working Group (JWG) at the beginning of 2017 tasked to review the 1991 criteria in the light of the experimental and theoretical advances in heavy element research. The group comprised members from five laboratories that have discovered an element – JINR, GSI, LBNL as well as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US and Riken, Japan – and one member from Lund University, Sweden. The group’s decisions were published in 2018.

The group found that, in general, the nature of the data is such that an absolutely secure identification in a first discovery experiment – its ‘discovery profile’ – is rarely possible when new regions in the chart of nuclei are explored. This proved to be the case with the discovery of spherical superheavy nuclei – elements 114 to 118 – from 1999 to 2010. However, combining the information from various irradiations and measurements, new elements can be safely and quickly identified.

 -Nathania Adora Cahyadi

Source:https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-criteria-for-discovering-a-new-element/3010459.article

Mendeleev's Ultimate Goal

Ever heard about the Periodic Table? Ever learned about the Periodic Table? Ever learned anything about the elements? If not, com check this post out. I will explain everything about the Periodic Table. I will explain how it is found, and who discovered it. So, what are you waiting for, come check this post out!

The Quantum Realm

Hey, have you watched the Ant-man Marvel Movies. If you have, you will see that ant-man can shrink and be tinnier than a molecule. This is not just fiction. This is also science. It has something to do with the Quantum Realm and Particles. It is a really fascinating topic. Yet, scientist are still struggling. There are still millions of information to be discovered sooner or later. 

Ant-Man knows the quantum realm holds shocking revelations and irrational solutions. Taking a page from the Marvel Universe, researchers based at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, designed a more efficient quantum transport system by adding even more noise to it. They published their results on July 24 in npj Quantum Information.

"Energy transport is at the core of natural life, as well as our current technology," said Kae Nemoto, a professor at the National Institute of Informatics and an author of the paper. "Many technological improvements have been achieved by better device engineering to reduce the effects of noise and imperfections, which seems like a perfectly logical approach. We found—although nature already knew this—that energy transport can actually be enhanced by adding environmental noise."

Within quantum mechanics, energy behaves like a child in a mirror funhouse. The child's face stares back from a maze of reflective surfaces, and it's almost impossible for her to find the exit until she moves. As she moves, her many reflected faces move across the mirrors. Once she exits, her reflection is gone from the mirrors.

The scientists examined how bacteria manage to efficiently harvest energy from light sources through photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, the energy moves throughout the cell all at once, looking for its destination. Once it finds the spot, all of the other versions collapse in. The energy doesn't expend itself bouncing all over the cell—it splits the work. However, this process cannot be exempted from environmental effects. Usually, environmental noise is considered as a negative factor. For example, interference from physically close neighbors tends to slow down the process significantly.

-Nathania Adora Cahyadi
Source: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scientists-quantum-realm-energy.html

A World That is Safe

To drug Addicts: Imagine a world with drugs that are safe, and won't harm your human body. It is like a dream come true. 

Physics and Chemistry scholars from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) have invented a new method which could speed up the drug discovery process and lead to the production of higher quality medicinal drugs which are purer and have no side effects. The technique, which is a world-first breakthrough, uses a specific nanomaterial layer to detect the target molecules in pharmaceuticals and pesticides in just five minutes.


The new HKBU invention can be applied to the drug discovery process, as well as the production and quality control stages of pharmaceutical manufacturing. It can also be used in environmental monitoring. The paper, which is entitled "Chiral Nanoparticle-Induced Enantioselective Amplification of Molecular Optical Activity," was published in the international journal Advanced Functional Materials (volume 29, issue 8, February 2019).

The team was jointly led by Associate Professor Dr Jeffery Huang Zhifeng and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Lin Yang from the Department of Physics, and Associate Professor Dr Ken Leung Cham-fai and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Kwan Chak-shing from the Department of Chemistry at HKBU.

Medicinal drugs and pesticides are composed of organic molecules. Normally each molecule has two "chiral" versions which are mirror images of each other in terms of absolute configuration. While otherwise identical, these "right-handed" and "left-handed" molecules can have totally different effects.

For example, anti-inflammatory drug naproxen of a particular type of chirality can treat arthritis pain while its mirror image twin can result in liver poisoning. As a result, selecting only useful chiral molecules during the drug discovery process can help produce pure drugs that can cure specific diseases with no adverse effects.

-Nathania Adora Cahyadi

Source:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190429095038.htm

The Immortal Jellyfish

Ever heard the word Immortal? It means that you will never die. For humans, That is for sure impposible. But recently, scientist discovered a new species of Jellyfish. Turns out, that Jellyfish is an immortal creature.

The good news is that you can be immortal. The bad news is that you have to become a floating blob of jelly to do so. Scientists have discovered a jellyfish which can live forever.

Prevention Of Cancer

No one likes getting sick, I mean who wants to be sick? If you are sick, you won't be able to do regular activities, you won't be able to eat delicious food, and mostly, you need to consume those nasty medicine. So, if you don't wanna get a severe sickness, such as cancer. Here are some ways on how to prevent it.