Category Archives: Admin

Silk: Real or Fake?

Posted on October 16, 2017 by | 1 comment

Do you have traditional dress or clothing item  handed down you from past generations? You may think that it is made of a special fabric or thread but imagine finding out, even though it has been kept safe for hundreds of years, it is actually made of a fake material.

 

That is what researchers at the University of Washington have recently discovered for “Buyid silks” thought to be from the Buyid period. They tested the many of the silks using various methods to determine the authenticity.

Buyid Silks. Source: Wikimedia Commons

By amino acid racemization (AAR), which is a recently discovered technique to date silks, that out of the 13 different specimens tested, only one was truly from the Buyid Dynasty. Other techniques that were used were iconography, weaving patterns and radio carbon dating. It was also found that the other 12 specimens showed high levels of AAC for other chemicals that are not consistent with the historical dating of the Buyid Dynasty. By using the other chemicals it was seen that “The result is a silk fabric that looks very similar to a historical silk…”. They concluded that AAC can be used as a biomarker to determine the authenticity of silks and if they date back to their historical time.

Amino Acid Racemization. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Keeping personal artifacts from your family is always an exciting thing however being able to test whether or not the piece is really from the said period can be beneficial for insurance or personal reasons. The next time you are handed a piece of ancient fabric, it is best to ask if it has been tested to determine its authenticity.

-Harjot Gill

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The “Beats” To Success

Posted on October 16, 2017 by | 4 comments

Everyone wants to excel at work; for instance, students want to ace their exams, and program developers want to finish their projects on time. What if there is a simple way to help enhance your work performance? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

According to Beauchene and her team, listening to binaural auditory beats has a significant effect on information transfer and visuospatial working memory. 

But what is a binaural auditory beat? Here is a clip of a 15 Hz binaural beat:

A binary auditory beat occurs when one hears two tones with different frequency on each ear and perceives as a single tone with frequency of the difference between two tones. So the beat you heard from the clip above, being 15 Hz, means you were listening to two beats with frequency difference of 15 Hz.

Fig 1. Example of a 15 Hz Binaural Beat

To find out what type of binaural beats has the most effect on brain activity, Beauchene and her team carried out an experiment on a group of participants. They were provided with 6 different conditions: 3 with either no beats, pure beats, or classical beats, and 3 with different types of binary beats (5 Hz, 10 Hz, and 15 Hz). They were also given a working memory task – a delayed match-to-sample visuospatial task – to carry out while under 6 different conditions.

Fig 2. Delayed match-to-sample visuospatial working memory task

The electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were taken while the participants performed the experimental tasks for data analysis.

It turns out that the participants who listened to 15 Hz binaural beats had the most accurate performance in working memory task, compared to any other conditions. As shown in the graph below, there was a 3% increase in Δ Accuracy over 5 minutes for participants who listened to 15 Hz binaural beat, while all other beats made negative changes.

Fig 3. Δ Accuracy

In addition, Beauchene says listening to 15 Hz binaural beats showed “the least change in network connection strengths between the maintenance and retrieval portions of the working memory trials.” This tells how the networks were better preserved throughout the working memory task while they were under the condition of 15 Hz binaural beats.

Beauchene’s team concludes listening to the 15 Hz binaural beats is effective in retrieving better and more accurate memory. This answers the question in the beginning – yes, there is an easy way to augment your work performance. So why don’t you give it a try listening to the 15 Hz binaural beats while studying for the next exam? Who knows, it could boost up your marks by helping you memorize more easily yet accurately.

-Clair Yoon

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A Trip To Masdar City

Posted on September 30, 2017 by | 1 comment

Nearly a decade ago the project of the world’s first most sustainable and developed city has started, this city is Masdar City. Masdar is a renewable energy company based in Abu Dhabi. The project costs approximately 22 billion $, it first began in 2006, and it’s planned to contain more than 1500 businesses after it’s awaiting completion in 2030. Masdar should be a model for our future cities.

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So what is special about this city?. In today’s world, access to a dependable energy supply is becoming more difficult day after day, and everyday the demand for energy grows bigger and bigger. This 6 km² city uses green materials for the infrastructure and reduces water and energy consumption by 40% compared to an average city of its size and advancement. Masdar city is also the first zero-carbon and a zero-waste city.  

Masdar is home to the one of the most advanced solar energy technology in the world. It uses multiple solar power plants to convert the sun’s heat into electricity. The city supports scientific research to find efficient methods to increase the energy production reduce the consumption. 

Image 2: The 10MW Solar Photovolatic Plant in Masdar City

Since the average temperature in Abu Dhabi is 36°C, the buildings use social canopies to provide shade to walking pedestrians and thus reduce the energy consumed in air conditioners. 

As we know transportation has one of the biggest effects on the environment, and the amount of fuel used by vehicles is enormous, so how does Masdar City deal with this problem? The city uses a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) that rely on solar energy. This electronic train like vehicle carries three to six passengers and it moves along built guideways.

Image 3: Masdar’s PRT system

Masdar is the city of the future and a model for what our cities should develop to.

Renad Aldebasi 

 

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Fuelling Up – Is Cooking Oil the Next Generation of Energy?

Posted on September 25, 2017 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever had a craving for something greasy or deep-fried, like onion rings, calamari, deep-fried mars bars or some McNuggets?

Deep-fried foods, like the ones pictured, use cooking oil. Source: Shock Mansion

Those food items all share a common factor; restaurants fry and cook these foods with cooking oil, especially for those deep-fried items going in the fryer.

Now when you think of the cooking oil that is used, you’d probably expect it to be disposed as waste after use and that would be the end of it.

However, multiple studies have been done around the world, specifically in China and Vietnam, where researchers produce biodiesel – a biofuel, using cooking oil.

Biofuels sustainably replace fossil fuels.  Biofuels are typically plant based fuels similar to fossil fuels, which we fill our cars with. The key difference is that biofuels use plants grown in the present day, whereas fossil fuels are ancient sources of plant and biological matter.

Biofuels, while more sustainable, are not as easily produced as originally thought. Maintaining and growing crops are highly energy intensive and many conservationists, including Jane Goodall, think that the crops should remain strictly as a food source. However, with oil prices rising and carbon dioxide levels in the air increasing, finding a sustainable approach to fossil fuels will help reduce global warming and provide both ecological and economical benefits.

This is where biodiesel comes in. Biodiesel is a well known biofuel that is used throughout Europe as a fuel source for cars. Presently, it is still being produced using plant crops, but new advancements are being made for how biodiesel can be sourced.

Biodiesel already fuels cars in certain European countries. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Two different studies, one done in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and the other in China have successfully converted waste cooking oil from local restaurants into biodiesel. Both methods use transesterfication, and reagents – potassium hydroxide (KOH) and methanol to synthesize biodiesel.  Each study used a two-step synthesis, where the reagents were heated for an extended time.

These have been highly successful, producing biodiesel yields between 88-97%. Besides the high yields, the researchers from the study in Ho Chi Minh City, say that their biodiesel required only minor modifications to work in engines.

While places around the globe are looking at cooking oils as the alternative, a similar study is going on in our own backyard. Student members of Enactus, a non-profit organization at UBC have been researching and converting cooking oil used by UBC Food Services into biodiesel, in an initiative called Green Pursuit.

With so many different groups and organizations looking for the solution, it could be in the near future where you are enjoying a greasy burger with fries and the oil produced from it would then fuel your car.

Biodiesel converted from cooking oil could be what we fill up our cars with in the near future. Source: Pixabay

– Jessica Hasker

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New Advances in Structural Colouration

Posted on September 24, 2017 by | Leave a comment

There are countless examples of colouration via nanoscale texturing found in nature and it seems like a superior alternative to chemical pigmentation, however, developing a technique that would allow us to generate a wide range of structural colours has proven to be a difficult task.

Structural colours are produced by the scattering of light off nanoparticles, whereas pigmentary colours are produced through the absorption of light by molecules. The reason scientists are interested in structural colours is because they are less dependent on the use of toxic organic and metal-based materials and have proven to be more resistant to photo and chemical bleaching compared to pigmentary colours. In a recent study conducted by Dr. Xiao and a team of researchers, tiny balls of melanin were aggregated into clusters called ‘supraballs’. Individual nanoparticles of melanin are responsible for skin pigmentation and appear black, however, altering the spacing of the nanoparticles in the supraballs affects how light is scattered, thus generating a spectrum of structural colours.

Microstructures of supraballs – http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/9/e1701151.full

Altering the spacing of the nanoparticles was achieved by adding a thin silica shell to the surface of the nanoparticles to control how tightly packed they were. By varying the diameter of the silica coating, the nanoparticles formed differently nanostructured supraballs which were able to scatter light to produce a wide range of colours. Additionally, using nanoparticles of different dimensions allowed for the shading of colours to be altered. Melanin was chosen as the nanoparticle core due to its large refractive index (RI) and broadband absorption in the visible range, which reduces the scattering of incoherent light and subsequently increases colour purity. The high RI melanin core and low RI silica shell makes for higher reflectance and brighter, more vibrant colours.

One of the main reasons this finding is considered a breakthrough in structural colouration research is due to the simplicity of the technique used to create the supraballs. This technique contrasts previously known methods, which are far more complicated and do not have the same potential for commercial application. The silica-coated melanin nanoparticles self-assemble into supraballs clusters via a water-in-oil reverse emulsion process. The supraballs are then separated by centrifugation. This process does not rely on the use any surfactant molecules to stabilize the emulsion and is fast and easily scalable.

With all the benefits structural colours have over pigmentary colours, along with recent advances in techniques used to create the nanomaterials which generate these structural colours, it is only a matter of time before we see this technology go to market.

– Joseph Bergvinson

Citations:

Hamers, L. (2017, September). Tiny ‘supraballs’ put a new spin on creating long-lasting color. Science News. Retrieved from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tiny-supraballs-put-new-spin-creating-long-lasting-color

Xiao, M., Hu, Z., Wang, Z., Li, Y., Tormo, A. D., Le, T. N., Wang, B., Gianneschi, N. C., Shawkey, M. D., Dhinojwala, A. (2017). Bioinspired Bright Nonirridescent Photonic Melanin Supraballs. Journal of Science Advances, 3(9). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1701151

 

 

 

 

 

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Discovering Life on Extra-Solar Planets

Posted on September 18, 2017 by | Leave a comment

Imagine if Earths’ oceans were to suddenly rise at exponential rates and all land masses be covered in water, as depicted in the 2009 movie 2012. Where would we go to live the rest of our lives? One option is finding other extra-solar planets that could support life.

Researches from various background at different institutions around the world purpose a mission called Darwin to essentially search for like on other extra-solar planets. As the mission has not been carried out yet, there are not results to report. However, they plan on characterizing terrestrial extrasolar planets in terms of plants similar to earths rocky terrain at mid-inferred wavelengths. Darwin is a five-year mission, purposed in 2009, however this paper does not state a start date. This research will help discover other plants that can possibly host human life which I believe will be helpful if a disaster is to occur on Earth.

Extra-solar planets. Image by ESA/Hubble

So far this is only a purposed mission therefore there have not been any findings or results.

The plan is to carry out Darwin in two phases. The first phase, lasting about two years, will be to search for plants capable of supporting humans through spectral characterization. The second phase, lasting about three years, will be acquiring spectral data of each detected planet. Analytical chemistry techniques will be used to search for gasses such as CO2, H2O, CH4 and O3 and determine if the quantities are similar to those on earth at this moment. If quantities are similar, then this will be a major breakthrough.

Chemical Analysis. Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Although there has already been demonstrations of the technology needed for Darwin, the main goal of the mission is to successfully discover a plant that can maintain human life. The researchers hope that Darwin will address the question of “humankind’s origin, and its place in the Universe”.

-Harjot Gill

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Can electric cars be actually worse for the environment?

Posted on September 18, 2017 by | Leave a comment

Electric cars are not as green as people think according to several scientific studies. Although they are popularly known as being eco-friendlier than using gas fuel, in the long run it might contribute even more to global warming. However, this new technology is still under development so it is early for scientist to be certain about the long term effect.

There are several aspects to take into account when determining why electric batteries might generate more contamination than gas motors. While using the car might not emit any greenhouse gas: making their batteries, recycling its chemicals, and the source of electricity that powers the car contribute in such extent that in the overall it might be more harmful to the environment than gas fueled cars if not assessed.

Most electric car batteries, as in Tesla, are lithium and cobalt based which require much more energy for their production than a conventional car motor. The energy required for mining these compounds is higher than to extract oil. Additionally, chemical compounds used for their manufacturing release greenhouse gases that contribute equally as CO2 to global warming. However, the emission caused by extracting these metals is substantially lower than the CO2 emitted by cars. Still it accounts for the fact that manufacturing electrical cars contribute to global warming.

Moreover, chemicals used for electrical batteries are very toxic for the environment if not properly recycled. While this may not affect us today because regular cars have not been completely replaced by electric cars, in the future it may be a problem when the amount of worn batteries are substantially higher. When this replacement happens, there would be a greater amount of people with cars since the cost of electricity to charge a car is not as high as gas, making it more affordable for people to own one. At the beginning of the transition this does not pose a major threat, but it should be taken into account for the future when the amount of worn batteries needed for handling as toxic waste or recycle is much greater.

Most importantly, the greatest concern for environmental impact of electrical cars is the source of energy that powers them. If the country you live in derives its energy from burning oil and coal, the CO2 emission it produces is significantly greater than that of a regular car during its lifetime, posing a greater threat for global warming. As the transition towards electrical cars takes place, there would be greater energy production demand, so much more needs to be generated. If this energy is not from an ecological source, the pollution generated to supply this amount of energy is significantly higher, making electric cars actually much more contaminant than using gas-powered cars.

In the overall, electric cars appear to be better for the environment than regular cars but that does not mean that they don’t contribute to global warming. Moreover, if is not well assessed it can actually be more harmful for the environment in the long run.

Andrea Olaizola

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No More Battery Explosions!

Posted on September 18, 2017 by | Leave a comment

Remember how recently Samsung had to discontinue their sales of Galaxy Note 7 because of their lithium battery explosion? It had been quite an issue for the world, Samsung being one of the top companies for mobile phone sales.

Battery Explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Image from flickr

However, there is no more need to worry about your phone exploding in your hands thanks to Dr. Suo and his team – they have found a way to make both safe and high-voltage lithium battery.

Originally, for high-voltage batteries (>3.0V), flammable and non-aqueous toxic electrolytes were used. They had a huge downside of causing safety and environmental concerns, especially in large-scale applications. The idealistic non-flammable and green aqueous electrolytes were too low in voltage (1.50V), reduction of water leading to hydrogen evolution being the main problem.

Suo and his team came up with another type of electrolyte called a “water-in-bisalt” (WIBS) electrolyte that fixes the problem at a wide 3.0V stability window. Suo says, “In such a concentrated environment of electrolyte, the salt anion decomposes on the anode, forming the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) before the hydrogen evolution. SEI formation in aqueous electrolytes decreases the amount of water molecules around the Li+ molecules, reducing the electrochemical activity of water. This maximizes the full cell energy density, as Li+ is a limited resource within the battery cell.”

In short, the SEI layer formation in the WIBS electrolyte enhances the battery power and ability to repeat the cycle, as it prevents any side reactions occurring at the anode.

The team has concluded that the electrochemical coupling of electrolyte of LiMn2O4 and C-TiO2 through the carbon coating and super-concentrated aqueous electrolyte could stabilize the cycling ability of the lithium battery.

Carbon, being catalytically inert, introduces extra kinetic barrier to water splitting; and being highly conductive, it also reduces charge transfer resistance and polarization. Also, WIBS electrolyte being high in ionic density, it terminates hydrogen evolution and enhances the formation of more protective SEI.

This is the first time to propose the new non-hazardous electrolyte battery. With this, there could be many more improvements made to commercial applications from small items like cellphones, to big items like cars. Despite this new proposed electrolyte, there still needs to be more work and refining done to the power and energy density of the new battery before it can be commercialized. Hopefully in a few years the world could be using safe, non-explosive phones.

Clair Yoon

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The blog works!

Posted on September 18, 2017 by | Leave a comment

This post will test the utility of the WordPress dashboard for uploading a post to the CHEM 300 blog site

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CHEM 300 Course Blog

Posted on September 15, 2017 by | Leave a comment

Welcome to the CHEM 300 course blog!

Here are few things to make note of before you get started with your posts. First of all, you should read the blogging resources page under the Create menu. This will help you out a lot if you are brand new to using WordPress. On this page, you will find video tutorials about writing posts on this blog, adding media to your posts, tagging, and categorizing. You will also find a link to the rubric we’ll use to grade your blog posts.

Next, check out the blogging guidelines. Here you will find the answer to the question: “What are we supposed to blog about?” You can also check out one of last term’s blogs for some additional inspiration.

There are a few important things to keep in mind when blogging. Please do not assume that just because something is online, it is OK for you to use it. For example, unless it is explicitly stated, an image on the internet cannot just be copied, saved, and used in your own post without permission to do so. We’ve provided you with a lot more detail about properly using online content, but if you have questions, let us know.

This blog also contains a lot of resources for you. For example, still under the Create menu, you will find a  list of suggested software to use for your projects. We’ve also collected some writing and presentation resources.  Basic audio/visual equipment can be borrowed from CHEM300. Contact the course coordinator for more info.

Under the Explore menu, you will find some sample podcasts and videos, links that may be of interest or assistance, a list of groups and associations related to communicating science as well as a list of local museums and science centres. The Explore menu also contains a library resources page, which you should definitely have a look at. Finally, there is a bookshelf that lists relevant books that are on reserve for you in Woodward Library.

Let us know if you have any questions about the blog or would like to see any other resources made available. Or, if you find something that you think would be useful to the rest of the class, tell us, and we can add it to the resources. Better yet — write a post about it!

Happy blogging!

The CHEM 300 Team

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