X-ray Spectrometry / Ezine
Journal Highlight: The determination of elements in welding fume by X-ray spectrometry and UniQuant
Date: Apr 11, 2011
Author:
A method is proposed to determine elements in welding fume using X-ray fluorescence and a fundamental parameter software package known as UniQuant.
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Enantioselective synthesis: XRD facilitates anticancer drug preparation
Date: Apr 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
X-ray diffraction has been carried out on a chemical cousin of the natural product "Nutlins" and has helped in the enantioselective synthesis of this novel, but potentially important class of anticancer agents.
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Quantum prediction: polymorphs determined theoretically
Date: Mar 15, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Frank Leusen and his co-workers at the University of Bradford, England, have turned to a quantum mechanical approach to help them predict the three known possible polymorphic structures of a sulfonimide. The work could assist crystallographers in structure determination of unknowns.
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Journal Highlight: Determination of essential and toxic trace elements in ten herbal medicines using energy-dispersive XRF analysis
Date: Mar 14, 2011
Author:
The elemental concentration of 19 elements in 10 ayurvedic drugs has been analyzed using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence, with some alarming results for mercury.
Read MorePump it up: crystal clue to bacterial resistance
Date: Mar 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Two parts of the three-part system that pumps toxins from bacteria and allows them to resist the chemical onslaught of antibiotics has been identified and described using crystallography. The structure could help in the development of new drugs that might circumvent antibiotic resistance.
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Biology by X-ray: ultra-short pulses, less damage
Date: Feb 15, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Researchers have discovered that ultra-short X-ray pulses can produce exquisite measurements at the molecular level of biological objects by grabbing a "snapshot" just before the sample succumbs to radiation damage.
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Journal Highlight: Photon-in photon-out soft X-ray spectroscopy for materials science
Date: Feb 7, 2011
Author:
A brief overview is given of the three elements of photon-in photon-out spectroscopy: X-ray absorption spectroscopy, X-ray emission spectroscopy and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering.
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Genetics beyond the genome: epigenetic structural insight
Date: Feb 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Epigenetics is the field of science aimed at understanding how some genes are regulated without changes to the underlying DNA code occurring. Now, work that helps decipher some of the ways in which enzymes act on the proteins surrounding DNA within cells reveals through X-ray diffraction how an acetylation complex fits like a halo over a histone in the enzyme-substrates.
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Seeing DVDs in a new light: X-ray reading
Date: Jan 15, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Although few of us will not have played a DVD and perhaps even fewer mused at the colourful reflections from the surface of an optical disk. However, little is known about the detailed structural changes that take place when data are stored on such optical media. Now, researchers in Finland and Japan have turned to synchrotrons, X-ray spectroscopy, and simulations to shed light on this phenomenon.
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Journal Highlight: Hawk: the image reconstruction package for coherent X-ray diffractive imaging
Date: Jan 10, 2011
Author:
Hawk is the first publicly available and fully open source software program for reconstructing images from continuous diffraction patterns. The software handles all steps leading from a raw diffraction pattern to a reconstructed two-dimensional image.
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