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Hydrogen from gold and rust

23.05.2013

Duke University engineers have developed a new way to produce pure hydrogen that could help solve the problem of unsustainable fossil fuels. There is a lot of hydrogen in the environment, but the production and transport of molecular hydrogen on an industrial scale is still an expensive and complicated matter. Moreover, with modern technologies for the production of hydrogen, carbon monoxide is often a by-product, which is toxic to humans and animals.

For the first time, scientists have managed to create a catalytic process for reforming petroleum products, which reduces the formation of harmful CO to almost zero. The new process produces hydrogen at much lower temperatures, with carbon dioxide and water as by-products. It should be noted that despite CO2 emissions during hydrogen production, atmospheric pollution by this greenhouse gas will even decrease, since hydrogen burns cleanly, with the formation of water.

The new hydrogen production process is based on the use of nanoparticle catalysts made of gold and iron oxide (rust). This is the know-how, because until now gold has been used as the only catalyst, while engineers at Duke University have used iron oxide as an enhancer of the catalytic reaction.

Thanks to the new catalyst, carbon monoxide emissions are negligible in the production of hydrogen: less than 0,002% or 20 parts per million. This not only reduces atmospheric pollution, but also allows the production of pure hydrogen suitable for use in fuel cells. What's more, the new catalyst has been running for over 200 hours without any sign of reduced efficiency or increased COXNUMX emissions.

While the exact mechanism of the catalyst is unknown - until now it was believed that iron oxide serves only as a supporting structure for gold. However, it turned out that it is able to directly influence the reforming reaction of petroleum products. Scientists believe that this is due to the size of gold nanoparticles and plan to continue experiments in this direction. It remains to be hoped that they will finally be able to find a sufficiently effective and safe method for the industrial production of hydrogen fuel.

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neurons of loneliness 24.02.2016

Loneliness affects the cellular structure of the brain, strengthening the connections between certain neurons and causing them to react violently to social contacts.

While studying the effect of drugs on dopamine neurons in mice, Gillian Matthews and her colleagues noticed that in animals that sat in isolation for 24 hours, interneuronal connections increased in the so-called dorsal raphe nucleus, and increased connections occurred in those mice. who did not receive any drugs. (The nuclei of the suture are clusters of neurons located in the midline of the medulla oblongata, they are divided into several groups according to their structure and functions, but in general this area of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbthe brain has not been studied very well.)

Further experiments confirmed that the cells of the dorsal nucleus do indeed respond to the lack of communication - it is known that strengthening of connections, strengthening of interneuronal synapses occurs when the nerve chain is active, when a signal runs along it, and strengthening of synapses during loneliness indicated that local neurons respond to social isolation.

However, there was one feature in their behavior: if the mouse was kept together with comrades, then the neurons of the nucleus did not work very hard, but if the mouse moved from a solitary cell to a company, then the activity of the neural circuits of the dorsal nucleus increased sharply, although not for long.

In other words, neurons seemed to become more sensitive to social cues during isolation. This was also manifested in behavior: the mice released from the "loners" were more sociable than those that did not sit there. If the activity of nerve cells was suppressed artificially, then the animals did not show any burst of social activity.

Curiously, the behavioral response accompanying changes in the functioning of neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus also depended on the social status of the mouse itself: those who occupied a higher position in the group began to communicate especially strongly after a period of forced loneliness. In general, everything is like with people: among Homo sapiens, the most popular "individuals" also do not think of themselves outside of society, well, and those who are not very popular generally sometimes prefer to stay in some deserted place - all the worries are less.

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