Synthesis of Palladium Nanoparticles: The Dawn of a Modern Mechanism

A portion of the proposed mechanism for synthesizing palladium nanoparticles.

So what are nanoparticles?  What are they good for, and why should we care about them?  Many of us might have heard of the terms “nanoparticles” or “nanotechnology,” but a good portion of us probably don’t know what these terms mean.  Nanoparticles are incredibly small objects that span no more than 100 nanometers in size; a nanometer is one billionth of a meter!  According to chemists and other scientists who study such tiny objects, nanoparticles behave as one whole unit regarding their characteristics and transport.

An image including several several nanoparticles with different sizes, visualized under transmission electron microscopy. One of these circular objects represents one nanoparticle; a group of nanoparticles is known as a nanocluster.
Image Source: Nanoparticle

Now that we’ve gotten definitions out of the way, what are nanoparticles really used for?  According to Nanoparticle Blog, nanoparticles have a variety of applications, such as in medicine, electronics, renewable energy, and more.  For example, according to Xiu et al. (2012), silver nanoparticles can aid silver ions to promote lysis in some bacteria, which is the process involving bacterial death by breaking their cell walls.

An image describing many applications of nanoparticles.
Image Source: Nanoparticle Blog

Although we know how to make use of nanoparticles, we do not necessarily know the mechanism behind the synthesis of these nanoparticles.  This unknown factor could be very important.  So far, for instance, chemists have understood that nanoparticles are made by mixing certain chemicals.  However, there are almost always byproducts that are formed along with the desired compound(s) in chemical reactions.  Let’s say that we’re using palladium nanoparticles to create a drug.  What if these byproducts changed the properties of a drug?  Thus, knowing the synthesis mechanism of such nanoparticles is potentially crucial with regards to how we use them.

Renee Man, a graduate student of the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia.

Luckily, Renee Man, a graduate student of the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia, together with Adam Brown and Dr. Michael Wolf published a scientific research article this year that proposed a mechanism directed specifically to palladium nanoparticles.

 

 

 

Below is a video that describes Man’s proposed mechanism and its advantages that make it an ideal model for the mechanism of palladium nanoparticles:

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As mentioned in the video, there are three main important things to note when considering Man’s proposed mechanism of palladium nanoparticles.  First, one can synthesize palladium nanoparticles at low temperatures when following this mechanism.  Unlike other methods, used today, that require temperatures above 300˚ C, this mechanism works perfectly well at temperatures near 80˚ C!  This means that the reaction can be relatively much safer to monitor; no one likes to stand beside reactions taking place at 300˚ C.  Secondly, since the reaction can be done at lower temperatures, one can save a large amount of energy.  This leads us to the last but not least benefit of the mechanism:  by taking advantage of basic conditions, synthesis of palladium nanoparticles can be sped up by a significant amount, thus saving time, and again, energy.

Finally, below is a podcast of our interview with Renee Man.  The podcast mainly discusses Man’s research with respect to the mechanism for palladium nanoparticles and how the mechanism came about:

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By:  Pedram Laghaei, Kathleen Leask, Alan Lam, and Fardad Behzadi

Video Credits:

Narrated by Alan Lam

Podcast Credits:

Narrated by Kathleen Leask

Special thanks to Renee Man for the interview.

Concussions: Impacts on the Brain

The brain is a complex organ, and while researchers have made great strides in understanding its function and mechanisms, we still know relatively little about the consequences of damage to the delicate structure.

The brain is suspended in the skull cavity, and sharp accelerations can sometimes cause collisions between the unyielding bone of the skull and soft tissue, bruising the surface and damaging important neural connections within. This is known as a concussion, an injury common in contact sports where blows to the head are frequent.

A concussion can be harmful to anyone, but could the impact be greater on a developing brain, like that of a teenager’s?

Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul

Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul, a physical therapist and neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, set out to discover the true extent of brain damage on concussed adolescents.

“The common perception of people is that your brain stops developing when you’re 3-5 years old. That’s not exactly true… the frontal areas of your brain are still developing when you’re a teenager,” she says, adding that this frontal area is what collides with the skull when a concussion occurs. The frontal and temporal lobes are most vulnerable to injury, and damage to these areas is associated with impairments of regular function. The study that her team conducted at UBC used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to gauge the extent of damage to the brain.

The study was conducted using a group of teen athletes, some of whom had experienced a sports-related concussion within the past two months and others who had not  Each athlete underwent an MRI scan which measured the rates of diffusion of the fluids within the brain.

The results were surprising to the team, who had expected to find clear evidence of damage, and lower rates of diffusion in the concussed group compared to the uninjured group.

“But it was completely opposite to what we had expected, we thought we would find a decrease in [one of the tests] but we found an increase… It was like solving a puzzle trying to find out what was so different.”

Diffusion Tensor Imaging scan for a healthy brain(left) and concussed brain(right)

Dr. Virji formulated a theory as to why the changes were different than expected: the neural damage in the brain was subtle, not outright breaking but causing smaller tears in the neuron which collect fluids and cause edema. This could throw off a diffusion tensor image but still indicates damage present in the brain long after the actual injury occurred.

“I wasn’t expecting to find changes in the kids who have had a concussion two months prior, but we still did… Kids and adolescents take longer to recover.”

These findings call to question the established guidelines concerning returning concussed athletes to play and school, as all of the concussed athletes scanned in the study had returned to their sport. Luckily, thanks to the findings of Dr. Virji and her team, new light is being shed on the nature of concussions on a teenager’s developing brain. This will hopefully lead to safer practices regarding the athletes care both during the game, and after.

Celebrating Hockey without injury

This podcast covers further the nature of this resistance by the public towards concussions in adolescents, and how the established safety measures are not adequate enough to prevent brain injury.

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For more information, feel free to watch this video on the impact of Dr. Virji’s research.

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By: Ammar Vahanvaty, Derrick Lee and Ashley Dolman

 

How Sea Breezes Affect You!

The term sea breeze in itself seems rather simple. In fact, the every-day person probably believes that a sea breeze is, well, just a breeze – they are commonly overlooked. Yet they would be surprised to learn how much research actually goes into studying sea breezes that occur all over the world and the huge impacts that they can have on society as a whole.

Dr.Steyn from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has dedicated many years of his life to studying sea breezes and the different interactions they can have with the atmosphere. He has found that sea breezes and the winds associated with them are actually involved in the spreading of pollution all around the world.

Image showing energy plant releasing pollution into the air. Image by flickr user thewritingzone

How might this affect the general public? Well, our governments spend millions of taxpayer dollars to implement pollution reduction programs in their countries but fail to realize that much of the pollution that they are trying to cleanup actually comes from other regions of the world through wind circulation.

Furthermore, the growing shortage of fossil fuels has become a major problem in our society. Researchers estimate that the petrochemical supply will run out in about 50 years. We are fortunate to have researchers like Dr.Steyn, who are investigating
the occurrence and frequency of sea breezes, and are collecting a vast body of knowledge that could be used to substitute many forms of unsustainable energy.

In the video below, Dr.Steyn explains how sea breezes form, how they can actually help pollution spread, and how sea breezes data can be used for energy production.

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As you saw, sea breezes can be a major contributor to the way in which pollution is circulated around the world and can greatly influence where and how we build wind energy farms in the future.

The story doesn’t end there. Not only is collecting data and understanding sea breeze important for pollution and energy, it also influences the way we live our daily lives. It is surprising how great of an impact sea breeze can have on society and how less people know about them. From the way we travel, to the way that we spend our free time, sea breezes are everywhere.

 Sea breezes can have a significant impact on the way that planes land at airports and how surfers spend their time in the water. These two everyday examples are influenced by the direction of the sea breeze. Sea breezes are very regular in that they are onshore by day and are offshore by night. During the day, the land heats up more than the ocean because it has a lower heat capacity.

Image showing how sea breezes blow during the day and night. Image from Mr.Bent’s Educational Blog

This creates a low-pressure system near the land and causes the sea breeze to blow towards the shore. On the other hand, the complete opposite occurs during the night, when the land cools and creates a high-pressure system. This results in the sea breeze blowing towards the water. Surfers call this type of breeze an offshore wind, which is highly desired as it hollows out the wave, allowing for a more radical surf experience.

The podcast below gives a more in-depth explanation of how sea breezes affect people’s day-to-day lives.

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Hopefully, you’re convinced that the sea breeze is not just any breeze; it is a very important atmospheric phenomenon that may influence your lifestyle more than you care to know. They are not to be overlooked – they help planes land, circulate pollution but still, as we found when interviewing UBC students on their opinion about sea breezes, most people only pay attention to sea breeze when it “affects what [they] wear when it’s cold out.”

A special thanks to Dr.Steyn for the Interview.

By: Gagandeep, Grattin, Ki Won, and Dragana.

Wood Preservation: Quantification of Active Copper in Treated Wood

Dr. Kennepohl, the Chemistry Professor at the University of British Columbia

Pierre Kennepohl from the department of chemistry in University of British Columbia, and his team, John N.R. Ruddick and Wei Xue, have conducted a research; quantification of copper (II) in micronized basic copper carbonated (BCC) treated wood using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Basically, the research was started to identify the formation of mobile copper in BCC treated wood, to quantify the amount of mobile copper formed, and to identify how this mobile copper component is affected by external environments.  The mobilization of the copper is dependent on the acid groups present in wood, and provided sufficient micronized copper is present. This was confirmed in the commercial material.

Wood preservatives were suspected to have violated pesticides law

A recent article noted that some companies using wood preservatives were suspected to have violated pesticides law because the preservatives consisted of biocidal properties from reacted copper (Environmental Protection, 2013). Because these companies did not fully understand the environmental implications of using micronized BCC treated wood, this caused the mislabeling of the preservatives. We think outdated labels from reacted copper may lead to neurological damage, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and use of biocides may  increase susceptibility to attack by new forms of pests and disease.

However, preserving wood with copper has been commercially used and micronized basic copper carbonate (BCC) is the new main active ingredient in the U.S. An advantage of this new preservative is that it avoids the higher copper leaching into the environment and it also avoids enhanced potential for corrosion observed in alkaline copper treated wood. Therefore, understanding the quantity of the reacted copper (II) in micronized copper treated wood measures the effectiveness of this new wood preservation method, while considering the effect of biocidal activities and potential environmental hazards. Also, it is important to consider different testings and experiments to measure the effectiveness of new wood preservation methods as they are developed.

In addition, Dr. Kennepohl and his graduate students are working on their next research, building upon the results from the study of quantifying copper contents in woods. What they are looking at is different types of wood, and to investigate if copper is well-distributed into all of the wood structure. Dr.Kennepohl will also apply the new method of quantifying copper to determine if the amount of total copper has changed after the attack from the fungi. For the first time, professor Kennephol and his team have developed a method of quantitatively looking at wood samples in order to fully understand how these systems work; this research may lead to further, more effective criteria for use of wood preservatives around the world and will also have a large impact on the food industry in the next millennium.

The following podcast focuses on how this new wood preservation method by using BCC is compared to other common forms of preservatives, highlighting its potential advantages and disadvantages.

Play Pod-Cast

For the video, we focused on how professor Kennepohl and his research team technically quantified copper in micronized BCC treated wood.

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By: Brian Ahn, Jonathan Lui, Derek Song

Pod-Cast Credits:

Narrated by Derek Song

Video Credits:

Narrated by Jonathan Lui

Special thanks to Dr. Kennepohl for the interview.

 

What if Extinction Wasn’t Permanent?

The gastric-brooding frog was first discovered in 1972 and was native to Queensland, Australia. This frog belongs to the genus Rheobatrachus which contains only two species. Both are now extinct. These two species were so fascinating because of their unique way of reproduction. The female would swallow the eggs after fertilization, carry them in her stomach and then orally give birth to the offspring. The average number of juveniles that was observed in the stomach of a female was 21-26.

Below is a picture of a female frog giving birth orally to one of her offspring:

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

While the offspring are in the mother’s stomach, she does not eat, and as her stomach grows larger in size, the lungs deflate to make room. In order to breathe, she must rely on gas exchange that occurs across the surface of her skin.

The gastric-brooding frog went extinct in 1983 and it has been suggested that this may have occurred due to a variety of reasons: habitat loss, pollution and/or pathogens. The other species in the genus Rheobatrachu, the Platypus frog, also went extinct in the early 80s.

According to this article, scientists in Australia are now trying to bring the gastric-brooding frog back from extinction through a cloning technique called somatic-cell nuclear transfer.

Basically, the researchers extracted cell nuclei from tissues of the gastric-brooding frog (which was collected in the 1970s and frozen) and implanted these nuclei into donor eggs. The donor eggs used in this case were from the Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatu, which is distantly related to the gastric-brooding frog. The nuclei in the donor eggs were inactivated and replaced with the nuclei from the extinct species.  After this occurred, some of the eggs started to spontaneously divide and formed into early embryos. None of the embryos survived for more than a couple of days. Genetic tests were done to confirm that the genes in the embryos were those of the gastric-brooding frog.

Below is a simplistic diagram of how somatic-cell nuclear transfer works:

Wikipedia.org

Even though the experiment did not successful create an adult specimen of the extinct frog, the researchers are confident that it won’t be long until such a procedure will be able to be performed successfully.

The article further states that researchers from all over the world recently gathered in Washington for a conference in order to discuss the progress being made in the attempts to bring other extinct species back to life.

Possible candidates include the woolly mammoth and the dodo.

I find this so exciting!

Can you imagine having a zoo full of “extinct” animals, or even dinosaurs!?

Dragana Savic

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric-brooding_frog

Liver kept alive for 24 hours outside of body

Hundreds of thousands of lives are leaning on the edge waiting for the right organ and a new life. However, donated liver still remains a scarce resource these days and many lives are lost while waiting for the right liver. What makes the situation worse, is that over 2000 livers were wasted every year in the US and Europe because they were damaged during transport by the ice pack and solution used as the only method of preservation. However, a new device has recently been unveiled in London, England by the University of Oxford that keeps a donated liver at body temperature before they reached the patient waiting for transplant.

Because of the fact that an available liver must be matched with an appropriate receiver, it’s rare that an available liver is in close proximity to the receiver’s hospital. Therefore a long transportation time is sometimes incurred during which the liver is easily damaged because it is kept out of it optimal living conditions. The new device, however, allows the donated liver to be kept for at least 24 hours, what’s even more amazing, is that the liver keeps on functioning while in the device.

A donor liver connected with the device

The device simply acts as a body and supply the liver with oxygenated blood and nutrients, but the trick is, how much and at what pressure. “The key is that the system ‘listens’ to the organ to find out how much blood to supply, and at what pressure,” says Stuart Kay, of Team Consulting in Cambridge, UK. There are multiple sensor for the flow of fluid, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and sugar concentration in blood to create the optimum environment for the liver. Currently this device only works for donated livers, but the researchers at Cambridge are certain that it can be modified to fit other organs as well.

Check out this video on the actually hooking up of the liver and the device!

http://www.newscientist.com/video/2228569979001-device-keeps-liver-alive-outside-the-body.html

by Jonathan Lui

Panda Feces and Biofuel Production

These days that everyone is talking about climate change and increase in greenhouse gases, bio-fuels can be a good alternative to fossil fuels. Bio-fuels are liquid, gas or solid fuel that are produced from bio-masses such as corn, sugarcane, wheat, oil seed and so on. Production of these edible crops requires  high quality agricultural lands; using them for bio-fuel production can cause food scarcity, environmental concerns (replacing forest with crop lands) and economical costs. To minimize the negative effects of bio-fuel production on human beings, scientists are hoping to use  inedible super-tough plant materials known as lignocellulose  instead of using humans’ food source in production of bio-fuels. However breaking down lignocellulose in switch grass, corn stalks and wood chips requires high heat, pressure and harsh acids.

Who could imagine that solution to those limitations can be found in panda’s feces. There is an enzyme produced by bacteria found in panda’s gut that is strong enough to breakdown the tough plant materials. Researcher Ashli Brown and her colleagues have collected and analyzed panda’s feces and found several digestive bacteria that are similar to those found in termites that digest wood. Pandas eat 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo, leaves and stems everyday and have the ability to break down 95% of plant cellulose into nutrition. By isolating the bacteria in the giant panda’s gut, Brown is hoping to find the most powerful digestive enzyme that can be used in production of bio-fuels in order to genetically engineer this enzyme gene into yeast for massive production.

Using the enzyme contained within the giant panda’s gut in production of bio-fuels can be clearly faster, cleaner and less costly than the traditional method used today. This also can help in reduction of hunger by avoiding burning edible food source for bio-fuel production. Another point is that “The discovery also teaches a lesson about the importance of biodiversity and preserving endangered animals,” Brown said. I believe that every living thing such as plants or animals around us could be a beneficial source of products that may save our lives, so  we have to take action in saving those endangered plants and animals in order to save the beneficial resources that they provide us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flJCcyAUn24

Simin Yahyavi

Bee Stings Could Help Save People’s Lives!

Most people that have been stung by a bee would agree that it is a very painful and uncomfortable experience that they would not want to experience again. The pain takes days to go away, and the scar that a bee sting leaves may last weeks. Now though, it looks like a bee sting may not be as bad as it seems. Researchers at the Washington University School of medicine have found that a chemical found in the venom of a bee sting can destroy the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). What is extremely important is the fact that even though the chemical can kill the HIV virus, regular cells are immune to this chemical and are not affected by it in any way.

Image showing bee injecting venom. Taken from google images creative commons

Researchers believe that their findings will help them develop a vaginal gel that may help prevent the spreading of the HIV virus and be used for therapy. Although they don’t think that the gel may cure the disease completely, it may be used as a preventative measure in areas where HIV is particularly common. The active chemical that researchers believe is causing the observed effects is called melittin. This chemical works by poking holes in the nuclear envelope of the virus, causing large amounts of damage that cannot be easily repaired.

To obtain their findings, researchers loaded melittin into nanoparticles and administered them to patients. These kinds of particles have been found to very effectively treat tumors, so the scientists decided to test them to see if they would be affective in treating other types of diseases. The researchers saw that when the nanoparticles came into contact with HIV infected cells they were destroyed, while the nanoparticles simply “bounced off” the normal cells, which are much larger in size.

Nanoparticle incapsulating a chemical in the middle. This is the kind of mechanism the researchers used. Image from flicker user IBM Research

This is a major breakthrough in the world of science and medicine because HIV has been very hard to treat and prevent in the past. Also, HIV is a relatively common disease and many people suffer from it. It is approximated that about 36.1 million people around the world currently suffer from HIV. Furthermore, 21% of those that are infected in North America don’t even know that they are carriers of the deadly virus. Also, since the melittin loaded nanoparticles are so versatile, the researchers believe that this discovery could lead to the development of treatments for patients suffering from Hepatitis B and C.

Below is a short news report on this groundbreaking discovery:

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So the next time you get stung by a bee and are panicking, calm down and just remember that the venom that the bee just injected you with is being used right now to potentially save millions of lives around the world.

Gagandeep Gill

Could Peptides Be The Cure For Depression?

For the first time ever, scientists at the UCLA have measured the release of the peptides hypocretin and melanin concentrating hormone (MCH) within humans. Hypocretin’s release is increased when the person is happy, but minimal when they are upset. MCH levels are maximized when the subject is asleep, but those levels diminished awake.

“The current findings explain the sleepiness of narcolepsy, as well as the depression that frequently accompanies this disorder” explains Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Research at UCLA. The measurable changes of these peptides’ release will eventually allow researchers to develop medications that target the changes in brain chemistry.

In 2000, Siegel was the first to show a biological cause of narcolepsy when he found that people who suffer from the illness had 95 percent less hypocretin nerve cells for in their brain than people who don’t have narcolepsy. Due to the strong affiliation between depression and narcolepsy, Siegel expanded his study by researching how hypocretin could be connected to depression.

Image Source: micah.sparacio.org

Siegel retrieved information on hypocretin and MCH levels from the patients who had intracranial depth electrodes implanted in their brains. The patient’s actions were recorded while they ate, fell asleep, woke up, were social with other patients, and watched television. Every 15 minutes, the patients’ activity was recorded along with the release levels of the peptides. Each waking hour, the patient filled out a questionnaire where they rated with mood and attitudes.

Siegel found that positive emotions, social interactions, and the act of waking up had higher hypocretin levels, while the levels of MCH were at their highest when the patient was falling asleep and were at their lowest when the patient wasn’t being social. “These results suggest a previously unappreciated emotional specificity in the activation of arousal and sleep in humans” Siegel explained. “The findings suggest that abnormalities in the pattern of activation of these systems may contribute to a number of psychiatric disorders”

Siegel mentioned that several drug companies are in the process of developing hypocretin antagonists to be used as sleeping pills, but this study means that not only will these drugs induce sleep, but they will also influence the person’s mood.

Recent studies have suggested that depression-fighting drugs, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may have the same effect as a placebo as they are not based on the changes in neurotransmitter levels. Because as many as 10% of the US population suffers from depression, I think this study is a breakthrough in our knowledge on depression and I hope that this will lead to the production of a drug that can balance the release of these neurotransmitters.

Kathleen Leask