#atomic level

The Mendeleyev’s Chart

Atoms as fundamental building blocks

Everything in your body is made from elements in the periodic table such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, iron, etc. These elements combine to form molecules such as proteins, lipids, DNA, neurotransmitters that structure your cells, including neurons.

Neurons and electrochemical activity

Neurons are made of molecules, which in turn are made of atoms. Their firing, action potentials, is caused by ion movement (Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺) across membranes. This is physics and chemistry in motion, not “magic thought energy.”

Neurotransmitters and communication

Chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, GABA are molecules composed of C, H, O, N atoms. They transmit signals between neurons, creating patterns of activation that correspond to sensations, thoughts, emotions.

Experience as emergent pattern

When billions of neurons fire in organized patterns, integrated with your body and sensory inputs, consciousness arises as a patterned output of these atomic interactions. Warmth, light, sound, thought, everything is just atomic events organized in extremely complex structures.

Memory and higher cognition

Synaptic changes (strengthening, weakening) are biochemical and structural, atoms reconfiguring themselves. Every “idea” or “self-reflection” is a temporarily stable pattern of atomic-level changes in your brain and body.

Everything is one substance

pondering on the meaning of a sound mind... 💭

$afromagnetic

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THE SAFIRE SUN - Clean energy endgame? 

It’s a moonless night. The wind howls outside. A door opens slowly, as if pushed by an invisible hand.

“Cre-e-e-a-k.”

That sound — a horror movie cliché — is the result of friction. A stealthier entrance calls for oiling the door’s hinges.

Friction is everywhere — from a violinist bowing a string to children skidding down a slide. In the right situation, the ubiquitous force can have big effects: Interleave the pages of two phone books, and the friction between the pages will hold the books together so tightly that they become strong enough to suspend a car above the ground.

But scientists can’t fully explain, at the scale of atoms and molecules, why one pair of materials sticks while another moves with ease. The extreme slipperiness of ice, for example, has been a puzzle for more than 160 years. The multitude of water molecules on an icy surface creates a sheen that can send a car spinning or a penguin tobogganing. But getting a handle on the details of how this slippery surface arises from the water molecules is surprisingly tricky.

Despite its everyday nature, “we still don’t really understand a lot of things about friction,” says mechanical engineer Ali Erdemir of Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. On its most basic level, friction results from the interactions between atoms in two materials that are butted up against one another. But, Erdemir says, “there is a disconnect” between the large-scale processes of friction that we can see, feel or hear and the smaller, atomic properties of materials that produce those well-known behaviors.

Now, by scrutinizing atoms’ wily ways, scientists are devising new techniques to cut down on friction, going beyond known slippery surfaces like ice, Teflon and the banana peel of countless comedy gags. Some scientists have found ways to bring friction down to near-zero levels, a property known as superlubricity. Others are studying quantum effects that reduce friction.

Atomic acrobatics might help turn friction up and down at will, a useful ability since there are times when friction, a force working against the motion of a sliding or rolling object, is helpful. The frictional force of tires on asphalt, for example, lets a car turn without spinning out. But friction also saps the car’s speed, so that more energy is needed to keep the vehicle moving.

Atomic-level motion may drive bacteria's ability to evade immune system defenses

A study from Indiana University has found evidence that extremely small changes in how atoms move in bacterial proteins can play a big role in how these microorganisms function and evolve.                                

The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a major departure from prevailing views about the evolution of new functions in organisms, which regarded a protein's shape, or "structure," as the most important factor in controlling its activity.

"This study gives us a significant answer to the following question: How do different organisms evolve different functions with proteins whose structures all look essentially the same?" said David Giedroc, Lilly Chemistry Alumni Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Chemistry, who is senior author on the study. "We've found evidence that atomic motions in proteins play a major role in impacting their function."

Daiana A. Capdevila et al, Entropy redistribution controls allostery in a metalloregulatory protein, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017).  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620665114

New Post has been published on http://www.newsnish.com/technology/science/lightning-reshapes-rocks-at-the-atomic-level/

Lightning Reshapes Rocks at the Atomic Level

A lightning strike can reshape a mineral’s crystal structure, according to a new study. Researchers once believed only meteorites could do so.

At a rock outcropping in southern France, a jagged fracture runs along the granite. The surface in and around the crevice is discolored black, as if wet or covered in algae. But, according to a new paper coauthored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Reto Gieré, the real explanation for the rock’s unusual features is more dramatic: a powerful bolt of lightning. Using extremely high-resolution microscopy, Gieré, professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, and his coauthors found that not only had the lightning melted the rock’s surface, resulting in a distinctive black “glaze,” but had transferred enough pressure to deform a thin layer of quartz crystals beneath the surface, resulting in distinct atomic-level structures called shock lamellae.

Prior to this study, the only natural events known to create this type of lamellae were meteorite impacts.

“I think the most exciting thing about this study is just to see what lightning can do,” Gieré said. “To see that lightning literally melts the surface of a rock and changes crystal structures, to me, is fascinating.”

Gieré said the finding serves as a reminder to geologists not to rush to interpret shock lamellae as indicators of a meteorite strike. “Most geologists are careful; they don’t just use one observation,” he said, “But this is a good reminder to always use multiple observations to draw big conclusions, that there are multiple mechanisms that can result in a similar effect.”

Gieré collaborated on the study with Wolfhard Wimmenauer and Hiltrud Müller-Sigmund of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Richard Wirth of GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam and Gregory R. Lumpkin and Katherine L. Smith of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.

The paper was published in the journal American Mineralogist. Geologists have long known that lightning, through rapid increases in temperature as well as physical and chemical effects, can alter sediments. When it strikes sand, for example, lightning melts the grains, which fuse and form glass tubes known as fulgurites.

Fulgurites can also form when lightning strikes other materials, including rock and soil. The current study examined a rock fulgurite found near Les Pradals, France. Gieré and colleagues took samples from the rock, then cut thin sections and polished them.

Under an optical microscope, they found that the outer black layer — the fulgurite itself — appeared shiny, “almost like a ceramic glaze,” Gieré said.

The layer was also porous, almost like a foam, due to the lightning’s heat vaporizing the rock’s surface. A chemical analysis of the fulgurite layer turned up elevated levels of sulfur dioxide and phosphorus pentoxide, which the researchers believe may have derived from lichen living on the rock’s surface at the time of the lightning strike.

The team further studied the samples using a transmission electron microscope, which allows users to examine specimens at the atomic level. This revealed that the fulgurite lacked any crystalline structure, consistent with it representing a melt formed through the high heat from the lightning strike.

But, in a layer of the sample immediately adjacent to the fulgurite, slightly deeper in the rock, the researchers spotted an unusual feature: a set of straight, parallel lines known as shock lamellae. This feature occurs when the crystal structure of quartz or other minerals deform in response to a vast wave of pressure.

“It’s like if someone pushes you, you rearrange your body to be comfortable,” Gieré said. “The mineral does the same thing.”

The lamellae were present in a layer of the rock only about three micrometers wide, indicating that the energy of the lightning bolt’s impact dissipated over that distance. This characteristic deformation of crystals had previously only been seen in minerals from sites where meteorites struck. Shock lamellae are believed to form at pressures up to more than 10 gigapascals, or with 20 million times greater force than a boxer’s punch.

Gieré and colleagues hope to study rock fulgurites from other sites to understand the physical and chemical effects of lightning bolts on rocks in greater detail.

Another takeaway for geologists, rock climbers and hikers who spend time on rocks in high, exposed places is to beware when they see the tell-tale shiny black glaze of a rock fulgurite, as it might indicate a site prone to lightning strikes. “Once it was pointed out to me, I started seeing it again and again,” he said. “I’ve had some close calls with thunderstorms in the field, where I’ve had to throw down my metal instruments and run.”

The study was supported in part by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.

A new microscope uses virtual reality to let you walk through atomic-level vistas  #vr #virtualreality

In case you ever really wanted to wander around the face of a penny, there’s a new technology on the horizon that may be able to help. Nanotronics Imaging has created a new system, called nVisible, that lets anyone walk through a three-dimensional, digital visualization of a microscopic landscape, using a virtual reality headset.

The technology utilizes the company’s 3D-printed nSpec…