Easily synthesized chemical filter could stop the greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere.
How can carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, be removed from the exhaust of fossil fuel power plants before it ever enters the atmosphere? New research findings suggest that a promising answer lies in a simple, economical, and potentially reusable material that was analyzed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Scientists there from multiple institutions have determined why this material works as well as it does.
Aluminum formate was the team’s object of study. It is one of a class of substances called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). As a group, MOFs have exhibited tremendous potential for filtering and separating organic materials — often the various hydrocarbons in fossil fuels — from one another. Some MOFs have shown promise at refining natural gas or separating the octane components of gasoline; others might contribute to reducing the cost of plastics manufacturing or cheaply converting one substance to another. Their capacity to perform such separations comes from their inherently porous nature.
Aluminum formate, which the scientists refer to as ALF, has a talent for separating carbon dioxide (CO2) from the other gases that commonly fly out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. According to NIST’s Hayden Evans, it also lacks the shortcomings that other proposed carbon filtration materials have. Evans is one of the lead authors of the team’s research paper, which was published on November 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
“What makes this work exciting is that ALF performs really well relative to other high-performing CO2 adsorbents, but it rivals designer compounds in its simplicity, overall stability and ease of preparation,” said Evans, a chemist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). “It is made of two substances found easily and abundantly, so creating enough ALF to use widely should be possible at very low cost.”
https://scitechdaily.com/nist-breakt...t-smokestacks/
How can carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, be removed from the exhaust of fossil fuel power plants before it ever enters the atmosphere? New research findings suggest that a promising answer lies in a simple, economical, and potentially reusable material that was analyzed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Scientists there from multiple institutions have determined why this material works as well as it does.
Aluminum formate was the team’s object of study. It is one of a class of substances called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). As a group, MOFs have exhibited tremendous potential for filtering and separating organic materials — often the various hydrocarbons in fossil fuels — from one another. Some MOFs have shown promise at refining natural gas or separating the octane components of gasoline; others might contribute to reducing the cost of plastics manufacturing or cheaply converting one substance to another. Their capacity to perform such separations comes from their inherently porous nature.
Aluminum formate, which the scientists refer to as ALF, has a talent for separating carbon dioxide (CO2) from the other gases that commonly fly out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. According to NIST’s Hayden Evans, it also lacks the shortcomings that other proposed carbon filtration materials have. Evans is one of the lead authors of the team’s research paper, which was published on November 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
“What makes this work exciting is that ALF performs really well relative to other high-performing CO2 adsorbents, but it rivals designer compounds in its simplicity, overall stability and ease of preparation,” said Evans, a chemist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). “It is made of two substances found easily and abundantly, so creating enough ALF to use widely should be possible at very low cost.”
https://scitechdaily.com/nist-breakt...t-smokestacks/
The Brain Isn’t Symmetrical – Researchers Reveal New Insight About the Brain
At first glance, the human body seems to be symmetrical: two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, and even the nose and mouth appear to be mirrored on an imaginary axis that divides most people’s faces. Finally, the brain is split into two nearly equal-sized halves, and the furrows and bulges follow a similar pattern. The initial impression, however, is misleading since there are small, functionally relevant differences between the left and right sides of the different brain regions.
The two hemispheres have distinct functional specializations. For instance, most individuals process language mostly in their left hemisphere whereas spatial attention is primarily processed in their right hemisphere. Work can thus be distributed more effectively to both sides, and the overall range of tasks is expanded.
However, this so-called lateralization, or the tendency for brain regions to process certain functions more in the left or right hemisphere, differs between people. And not only in the minority whose brains are mirror-inverted in comparison to the majority. Even people with classically arranged brains have varying degrees of asymmetry. Previous research has indicated that this, in turn, may have an effect on the functions themselves.
For instance, dyslexia is characterized by a lack of left asymmetry in certain language areas. Inadequate brain lateralization may also contribute to conditions such as schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and children’s hyperactivity.
Until now, however, it hasn’t been clear how much brain asymmetry variance, across individuals, is heritable and how much is due to different demands. Furthermore, are similar features of brain asymmetry also present in monkeys?
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) and Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) have now investigated the asymmetry of functional gradients, describing axes of smooth variations of brain function across the cortex. They found that there are subtle variations in the functional organization of brain regions on the left and right sides of the brain. On the left side, regions involved in language processing are most distant from those implicated in vision and sensation.
Whereas on the right side the so-called frontoparietal network, responsible for attention and working memory, for example, is most distant from those sensory regions. The researchers also found that individual differences in these functional arrangements were heritable, meaning that they are partly influenced by genetic factors. At the same time, a large portion of this asymmetry in human brains could not be accounted for by genetic factors. This means some asymmetry is influenced, at least in part, by the person’s experience.
https://scitechdaily.com/the-brain-i...out-the-brain/
At first glance, the human body seems to be symmetrical: two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, and even the nose and mouth appear to be mirrored on an imaginary axis that divides most people’s faces. Finally, the brain is split into two nearly equal-sized halves, and the furrows and bulges follow a similar pattern. The initial impression, however, is misleading since there are small, functionally relevant differences between the left and right sides of the different brain regions.
The two hemispheres have distinct functional specializations. For instance, most individuals process language mostly in their left hemisphere whereas spatial attention is primarily processed in their right hemisphere. Work can thus be distributed more effectively to both sides, and the overall range of tasks is expanded.
However, this so-called lateralization, or the tendency for brain regions to process certain functions more in the left or right hemisphere, differs between people. And not only in the minority whose brains are mirror-inverted in comparison to the majority. Even people with classically arranged brains have varying degrees of asymmetry. Previous research has indicated that this, in turn, may have an effect on the functions themselves.
For instance, dyslexia is characterized by a lack of left asymmetry in certain language areas. Inadequate brain lateralization may also contribute to conditions such as schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and children’s hyperactivity.
Until now, however, it hasn’t been clear how much brain asymmetry variance, across individuals, is heritable and how much is due to different demands. Furthermore, are similar features of brain asymmetry also present in monkeys?
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) and Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) have now investigated the asymmetry of functional gradients, describing axes of smooth variations of brain function across the cortex. They found that there are subtle variations in the functional organization of brain regions on the left and right sides of the brain. On the left side, regions involved in language processing are most distant from those implicated in vision and sensation.
Whereas on the right side the so-called frontoparietal network, responsible for attention and working memory, for example, is most distant from those sensory regions. The researchers also found that individual differences in these functional arrangements were heritable, meaning that they are partly influenced by genetic factors. At the same time, a large portion of this asymmetry in human brains could not be accounted for by genetic factors. This means some asymmetry is influenced, at least in part, by the person’s experience.
https://scitechdaily.com/the-brain-i...out-the-brain/
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