Oxidative mechanochemistry for direct, room‐temperature, solvent‐free conversion of palladium and gold metals into soluble salts and coordination complexes

Plastic Made of Vanillin

From inexpensive mass products to tailored high-tech materials, our modern world without plastics is unimaginable. The major downside to this is the use of fossil fuels and the growing quantities of waste. A new approach could be the production of high-grade plastics made from biomass that ... more

More Data in Chemistry

Databases containing huge amounts of experimental data are available to researchers across a wide variety of chemical disciplines. However, a team of researchers have discovered that the available data is unsuccessful in predicting the yields of new syntheses using artificial intelligence ( ... more

Writing with Light on Titania

Researchers have succeeded in producing a coating material that can be written on using UV light and the writing erased again using oxygen. Changes to rewritable paper could help reduce paper waste in a wide variety of applications. The material is made from three non-toxic components and i ... more

The unfolding landscape of the congenital myasthenic syndromes

Abstract Congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) are heterogeneous disorders in which the safety margin of neuromuscular transmission is impaired by one or more specific mechanisms. Since the advent of next‐generation sequencing methods, the discovery of novel CMS targets and phenotypes ha ... more

Passive transfer models of myasthenia gravis with muscle‐specific kinase antibodies

Abstract Myasthenia gravis (MG) with antibodies to muscle‐specific kinase (MuSK) is characterized by fluctuating fatigable weakness. In MuSK MG, involvement of bulbar muscles, neck, and shoulder and respiratory weakness are more prominent than in acetylcholine receptor (AChR) MG. MuSK au ... more

Acetylcholine receptor antibody–mediated animal models of myasthenia gravis and the role of complement

Abstract Because of the failure of many promising therapeutics identified in preclinical evaluation, funding sources have established guidelines for increased rigor in animal evaluations. The myasthenia gravis (MG) community of scientists has developed guidelines for preclinical assessme ... more

Smart skin made of recyclable materials may transform medicine and robotics

Smart skin that can respond to external stimuli could have important applications in medicine and robotics. Using only items found in a typical household, researchers have created multi-sensor artificial skin that's capable of sensing pressure, temperature, humidity, proximity, pH, and air ... more

How mercury contamination affects reptiles in the Amazon basin

Mercury contamination in water and on land is of worldwide concern due to its toxic effects on ecosystems and human health. Mercury toxicity is of particular concern to reptiles because they are currently experiencing population declines. Also, reptiles are ideal indicators of mercury conta ... more

Bioengineers Succeed in Producing Plastic Without the use of Fossil Fuels

A team of pioneering South Korean scientists have succeeded in producing the polymers used for everyday plastics through bioengineering, rather than through the use of fossil fuel based chemicals. This groundbreaking research, which may now allow for the production of environmentally consci ... more