While global attention has for decades been focused on reducing maternal mortality, population-based data on other causes of death among women of reproductive age has been virtually non-existent. A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that non-communicable diseases accounted for 48 percent of 1,107 investigated female deaths in rural Bangladesh between 2002 and 2007. The findings lend urgency to review global health priorities to address neglected and potentially fatal non-communicable diseases affecting rural women in South Asia. The study is published in the May 2013 edition of the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
For the study, researchers surveyed a population of more than 130,000 women of reproductive age in Bangladesh using a pregnancy surveillance system established during the JiVitA-1 community-based maternal vitamin A or beta-carotene supplementation trial. The researchers prospectively recorded deaths among enrolled women. Employing a modified World Health Organization verbal autopsy method, physicians interviewed families at home about the events and circumstances leading up to the death of each woman. A separate set of physicians independently reviewed the verbal autopsies to ascertain the primary cause of death: 22 percent were related to pregnancy, 17 percent due to infection and 9 percent attributable to injuries (both unrelated to pregnancy), while 48 percent of the fatalities were assigned to non-communicable diseases, among which circulatory system diseases and cancer were the top causes.
?While reducing mortality from pregnancy remains a high priority, these findings highlight the need to address and reduce the risk of death unrelated to pregnancy among women of reproductive age. The causes and risk factors need to be better understood to design interventions to reduce risk, likely focusing on nutrition, health education, early screening and health care for rural women in their prime of life,? said Alain Labrique, PhD, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School?s Department of International Health and lead author of the study.
?Beyond pregnancy - the neglected burden of female mortality in young women of reproductive age in Bangladesh: a prospective cohort study? was written by Alain B. Labrique, Shegufta S. Sikder, Lee Wu, Mahbubur Rashid, Hasmot Ali, Barkat Ullah, Abu A. Shamim, Sucheta Mehra, Rolf Klemm, Hashina Banu, Keith P. West, Jr., and Parul Christian. The manuscript can be accessed at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.12245/abstract.
Financial support for the research was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Center for Human Nutrition in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Original trial support came from the U.S. Agency for International Development, with additional support from the Sight and Life Research Institute. Partial support for this data analysis was provided by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health through a Global Field Experience Fund, a Framework Award in Global Health (Center for Global Health), and a Delta Omega Scholarship (Delta Omega Honor Society).
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health media contact: Tim Parsons at 410-955-7619 ortmparson@jhsph.edu.
Simply because you do not know everything about do-it-yourself doesn?t suggest you can?t find out more. There are plenty of things that you could learn in order to build innovative skills and generate greater success at your residence projects. Get more understanding of the various projects you might complete at your residence, starting with your home improvement tips in the following paragraphs.
Should you not curently have some, install some fans in your rooms. You can use those to cool rooms and circulate the environment, reducing the necessity to make use of your air conditioning unit. As a result you will save cash your electric bill and many likely boost the endurance of the ac.
Never install non-operable windows after a do-it-yourself effort. Aside from picture windows or large, exotic glazing, every standard-sized window should be capable to opening. In spite of climate, for every home you will have times of year and times for the day when cracking your window open is the greatest form of air conditioning. http://ac-heating-experts-ranchocucamonga.us/residential-airconditioning.php
Consider yourself before visual aesthetics when starting home improvements. A pond with your front yard may be nice, but getting your child fall in and drown can be horrifying. You may want to put in a desk, however the money could be be better invested in installing air conditioning in a Florida home.
Keep your fans circulating, or invest in some if you do not currently make use of them. Rooms are kept more cool with all the circulating air produced by fans. Furthermore, the use of them instead of air conditioning on days past that aren?t scorching, the amount of energy consume is reduced, helping you to enjoy lower electric power bills.
If your snow on your roof melts very quickly, check the insulation with your attic. Snow shouldn?t melt in any respect on a roof as long as the attic is keeping the temperature in your house along with the cold outside. Replacing the insulation will even lessen your heating bills as the heat is no longer used to warm-up the attic also.
An incredible do-it-yourself project that you will save a bundle is always to put in a programmable thermostat. These thermostats can let you program in many different different settings so that you are choosing your heating and air conditioning system only when it?s needed and without needing to monitor it constantly.
Clean or replace the filters on your home?s heating and air conditioning system. Dirty filters increase the risk for system less capable. Often filter cleaning or replacement is a very easy job that could be done by the homeowner. Even when you have to hire a professional, you likely recoup the costs relatively quickly. www.ac-heating-experts-ranchocucamonga.us/residential-airconditioning.php
Install fans to disperse heat and cooling better throughout your home. Throughout the mild seasons, fans can provide each of the cooling you will need. Through the entire colder winter time, your fans can disseminate the nice and cozy air from the heating system faster, lowering expensive heating costs.
If you possibly could think of a fantastic do-it-yourself project, you can also do what can be done to put an idea into action. The ideas in the following paragraphs, if applied, can get you on a fantastic start. So, precisely what are you awaiting? Get started immediately!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government intends to revive a vacant position coordinating policy for the military prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is looking at candidates, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama is facing renewed pressure from foreign governments and human rights advocates to close the prison who assail it as a lasting stain on the United States' international reputation.
Obama last month renewed his years-old pledge to try to close the camp, where the United States is holding about 166 detainees, in most cases without charge or trial. Some detainees have been there since 2002 and scores are on hunger strike in protest against their indefinite detention.
In January, the U.S. State Department reassigned the special envoy, Daniel Fried, who had been in charge of trying to persuade countries to take Guantanamo inmates approved for transfer and no one was assigned to take his place. The vacancy was viewed by many Guantanamo inmates and rights group as a strong sign that Obama did not consider closing the prison a priority.
"We're in the process of working on that now. We're looking at candidates," Holder told a news conference. However, he did not say who the candidates were to fill the position of coordinating Guantanamo, or whether the person eventually appointed would work at the State Department, the White House or elsewhere.
Holder, the highest U.S. law enforcement official and an Obama appointee, has supported using the civilian courts to put some of the remaining detainees on trial.
The administration will make "a renewed effort to close Guantanamo," Holder said, citing the prison's high cost and the impact on U.S. relations with other nations.
(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Howard Goller and Christopher Wilson)
This is Strikeforce champion Tarec Saffiedine's two-year-old son, and he has some training to do on this laundry basket. Check out his technique on low kicks. Clearly, he has been watching Daddy and learning from him. The older Saffiedine is making his UFC debut in July against Robbie Lawler. Will he be as effective as his son is against the laundry?
This Feb. 20, 2008 photo provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows insects for sale at a market in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday, May 13, 2013, hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Arnold Van Huis, FAO, ho)
This Feb. 20, 2008 photo provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows insects for sale at a market in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday, May 13, 2013, hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Arnold Van Huis, FAO, ho)
This undated photo provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows a plate with insects during an insect cuisine competition at an unknown location in Laos. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday, May 13, 2013, hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Thomas Calame, FAO, ho)
Eva Muller, Director of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forest Economic Policy and Products Division, speaks during a press conference to launch a report on edible insects, in Rome, Monday, May 13, 2013. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. FAO on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
Gabon's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Gabriel Tchango speaks during a press conference to launch a report on edible insects, in Rome, Monday, May 13, 2013. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. FAO on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
This undated photo provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows a packaging containing locusts for sale in the Netherlands. The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday, May 13, 2013, hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency's Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. (AP Photo/Paul Vantomme, FAO, ho)
ROME (AP) ? The latest weapon in the U.N.'s fight against hunger, global warming and pollution might be flying by you right now.
Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the U.N., they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world.
Some edible insect information in bite-sized form:
WHO EATS INSECTS NOW?
Two billion people do, largely in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday as it issued a report exploring edible insect potential.
Some insects may already be in your food (and this is no fly-in-my-soup joke). Demand for natural food coloring as opposed to artificial dyes is increasing, the agency's experts say. A red coloring produced from the cochineal, a scaled insect often exported from Peru, already puts the hue in a trendy Italian aperitif and an internationally popular brand of strawberry yogurt. Many pharmaceutical companies also use colorings from insects in their pills.
PACKED WITH PROTEIN, FULL OF FIBER
Scientists who have studied the nutritional value of edible insects have found that red ants, small grasshoppers and some water beetles pack (gram-per-gram or ounce-per-ounce) enough protein to rank with lean ground beef while having less fat per gram.
Bored with bran as a source of fiber in your diet? Edible insects can oblige, and they also contain useful minerals such as iron, magnesium, phosphorous, selenium and zinc.
WHICH TO CHOOSE?
Beetles and caterpillars are the most common meals among the more than 1,900 edible insect species that people eat. Other popular insect foods are bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. Less popular are termites and flies, according to U.N. data.
ECO-FRIENDLY
Insects on average can convert 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of feed into 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of edible meat. In comparison, cattle require 8 kilograms (17.6 pounds) of feed to produce a kilogram of meat. Most insects raised for food are likely to produce fewer environmentally harmful greenhouse gases than livestock, the U.N. agency says.
DON'T SWAT THE INCOME
Edible insects are a money-maker. In Africa, four big water bottles filled with grasshoppers can fetch a gatherer 15 euros ($20). Some caterpillars in southern Africa and weaver ant eggs in Southeast Asia are considered delicacies and command high prices.
Insect-farms tend to be small, serving niche markets like fish bait businesses. But since insects thrive across a wide range of locations ? from deserts to mountains ? and are highly adaptable, experts see big potential for the insect farming industry, especially those farming insects for animal feed. Most edible insects are now gathered in forests.
LET A BUG DO YOUR RECYLING
A 3 million euro ($4 million) European Union-funded research project is studying the common housefly to see if a lot of flies can help recycle animal waste by essentially eating it while helping to produce feed for animals such as chickens. Right now farmers can only use so much manure as fertilizer and many often pay handsome sums for someone to cart away animal waste and burn it.
A South African fly factory that rears the insects en masse to transform blood, guts, manure and discarded food into animal feed has won a $100,000 U.N.-backed innovation prize.
___
Details about the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's work on edible insects at www.fao.org/forestry/edibleinsects
Follow Frances D'Emilio at http://twitter.com./fdemilio
Seth Meyers replaces Fallon: Seth Myers has been tabbed to replace Jimmy Fallon as 'Late Night' show host starting next year. As Seth Meyers replaces Fallon, current 'Late Night' host Fallon will be taking Jay Leno's spot as host of the 'Tonight' show.
By David Bauder,?Associated Press / May 13, 2013
Seth Meyers (r.) replaces Jimmy Fallon (l.) as host of 'Late Night' on NBC.
Chris Pizzello/AP
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Seth Meyers is moving from his "Weekend Update" desk to his own late night show on NBC.
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The network said Sunday that the 12-year "Saturday Night Live" cast member will replace Jimmy?Fallon at the 12:35 a.m. "Late Night" show next year. Fallon is moving up an hour as Jay Leno's replacement on the "Tonight" show.
Meyers was considered the lead candidate for the "Late Night" job ever since Fallon's promotion was announced. The announcement solidifies Lorne Michaels as the comedy kingmaker at NBC. He'll be the executive in charge of "Late Night," ''Tonight" and "Saturday Night Live," which will all originate from New York's Rockefeller Center.
Meyers, 39, has been the head writer at "Saturday Night Live" for eight seasons. He's in his seventh year as "Weekend Update" host, to which he devotes all of his on-air time now.
And like Fallon before him, Meyers is making the move from "Weekend Update" to "Late Night."
"We think Seth is one of the brightest, most insightful comedy writers and performers of his generation," said Bob Greenblatt, NBC entertainment chairman. His topical comedy is "perfect for the 'Late Night' franchise," he said.
The late-night show began with David Letterman in 1982, and its other hosts have been Conan O'Brien and Fallon.
Meyers is a Northwestern University graduate and began his comedy career in Chicago. His chief television competition will be Craig Ferguson on CBS and "Nightline" on ABC. Like television in general, the late-night audience has dispersed in several directions, with DVR viewing of shows taped earlier a big alternative at night.
Late-night comedy is one of the NBC's few strong suits, with "Saturday Night Live" often drawing a bigger audience than most of what the network airs in prime-time. With Meyers' appointment, NBC is hoping for a smooth transition to a younger generation.
"I only have to work for Lorne for five more years before I pay him back for the time I totaled his car," Meyers quipped. "12:30 on NBC has long been incredible real estate. I hope I can do it justice."
Behind the scenes, Michael Shoemaker will remain with "Late Night" as producer, NBC said.
Nano-breakthrough: Solving the case of the herringbone crystalPublic release date: 12-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nicole Casal Moore ncmoore@umich.edu 734-647-7087 University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR---Leading nanoscientists created beautiful, tiled patterns with flat nanocrystals, but they were left with a mystery: Why did some sets of crystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style? To find out, they turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The result gives nanotechnology researchers a new tool for controlling how objects one-millionth the size of a grain of sand arrange themselves into useful materials---and a means to discover the rest of the tool chest. A paper on the research is published online May 12 in Nature Chemistry.
"The excitement in this is not in the herringbone pattern, it's about the coupling of experiment and modeling, and how that approach lets us take on a very hard problem," said Christopher Murray, the Richard Perry University Professor and professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Murray's group is renowned for making nanocrystals and arranging them into larger crystal superstructures.
Ultimately, researchers want to modify patches on nanoparticles in different ways to coax them into more complex patterns. The goal is a method that will allow people to imagine what they would like to do and then design a material with the right properties for the job.
"By engineering interactions at the nanoscale, we can begin to assemble target structures of great complexity and functionality on the macroscale," said U-M's Sharon Glotzer, the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering.
Glotzer introduced the concept of nanoparticle "patchiness" in 2004. Her group uses computer simulations to understand and design the patches.
Recently, Murray's team made patterns with flat nanocrystals made of heavy metals, known to chemists as lanthanides, and fluorine atoms. Lanthanides have valuable properties for solar energy and medical imaging, such as the ability to convert between high- and low-energy light.
They started by breaking down chemicals containing atoms of a lanthanide metal and fluorine in a solution, and the lanthanide and fluorine naturally began to form crystals. Also in the mix were chains of carbon and hydrogen that stuck to the sides of the crystals, stopping their growth at sizes of around 100 nanometers, or 100 millionths of a millimeter, at the largest dimensions. By using lanthanides with different atomic radii, they could control the top and bottom faces of the hexagonal crystals to be anywhere from much longer than the other four sides to non-existent, resulting in a diamond shape.
To form tiled patterns, the team spread a thin layer of nanocrystals and solvent on top of a thick fluid. As the solvent evaporated, the crystals had less space available, and they began to pack together.
The diamond shapes and the very long hexagons lined up as expected, the diamonds forming an Argyle-style grid and the hexagons matching up their longest edges like a foreshortened honeycomb. The hexagons whose sides were all nearly the same length should have formed a similar squashed honeycomb pattern, but instead, they lined up in more complicated, alternating herringbone style.
"Whenever we see something that isn't taking the simplest pattern possible, we have to ask why," Murray said.
They posed the question to Glotzer's team.
"They've been world leaders in understanding how these shapes could work on nanometer scales, and there aren't many groups that can make the crystals we make," Murray said. "It seemed natural to bring these strengths together."
Glotzer and her group built a computer model that could recreate the self-assembly of the same range of shapes that Murray had produced. The simulations showed that if the equilateral hexagons interacted with one another only through their shapes, most of the crystals formed the foreshortened honeycomb pattern---not the herringbone.
"That's when we said, 'Okay, there must be something else going on. It's not just a packing problem,'" Glotzer said.
Her team, which included U-M graduate student Andres Millan and research scientist Michael Engel, then began playing with interactions between the edges of the particles. They found that that if the edges that formed the points were stickier than the other two sides, the hexagons would naturally arrange in the herringbone pattern.
The teams suspected that the source of the stickiness was those carbon and hydrogen chains---perhaps they attached to the point edges more easily. Since experimentation doesn't yet offer a way to measure the number of hydrocarbon chains on the sides of such tiny particles, Murray asked Ju Li, now the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to calculate how the chains would attach to the edges at a quantum mechanical level.
Li's group confirmed that because of the way that the different facets cut across the lattice of the metal and fluorine atoms, more hydrocarbon chains could stick to the four edges that led to points than the remaining two sides. As a result, the particles become patchy.
"Our study shows a way forward making very subtle changes in building block architecture and getting a very profound change in the larger self-assembled pattern," Glotzer said. "The goal is to have knobs that you can change just a little and get a big change in structure, and this is one of the first papers that shows a way forward for how to do that."
The paper is titled "Competition of shape and interaction patchiness for self-assembling nanoplates."
Murray is also a professor of materials science and engineering. Glotzer is also a professor of materials science and engineering, macromolecular science and engineering, physics and applied physics. Li is also a professor of material science and engineering.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Nano-breakthrough: Solving the case of the herringbone crystalPublic release date: 12-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nicole Casal Moore ncmoore@umich.edu 734-647-7087 University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR---Leading nanoscientists created beautiful, tiled patterns with flat nanocrystals, but they were left with a mystery: Why did some sets of crystals arrange themselves in an alternating, herringbone style? To find out, they turned to experts in computer simulation at the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The result gives nanotechnology researchers a new tool for controlling how objects one-millionth the size of a grain of sand arrange themselves into useful materials---and a means to discover the rest of the tool chest. A paper on the research is published online May 12 in Nature Chemistry.
"The excitement in this is not in the herringbone pattern, it's about the coupling of experiment and modeling, and how that approach lets us take on a very hard problem," said Christopher Murray, the Richard Perry University Professor and professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Murray's group is renowned for making nanocrystals and arranging them into larger crystal superstructures.
Ultimately, researchers want to modify patches on nanoparticles in different ways to coax them into more complex patterns. The goal is a method that will allow people to imagine what they would like to do and then design a material with the right properties for the job.
"By engineering interactions at the nanoscale, we can begin to assemble target structures of great complexity and functionality on the macroscale," said U-M's Sharon Glotzer, the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering.
Glotzer introduced the concept of nanoparticle "patchiness" in 2004. Her group uses computer simulations to understand and design the patches.
Recently, Murray's team made patterns with flat nanocrystals made of heavy metals, known to chemists as lanthanides, and fluorine atoms. Lanthanides have valuable properties for solar energy and medical imaging, such as the ability to convert between high- and low-energy light.
They started by breaking down chemicals containing atoms of a lanthanide metal and fluorine in a solution, and the lanthanide and fluorine naturally began to form crystals. Also in the mix were chains of carbon and hydrogen that stuck to the sides of the crystals, stopping their growth at sizes of around 100 nanometers, or 100 millionths of a millimeter, at the largest dimensions. By using lanthanides with different atomic radii, they could control the top and bottom faces of the hexagonal crystals to be anywhere from much longer than the other four sides to non-existent, resulting in a diamond shape.
To form tiled patterns, the team spread a thin layer of nanocrystals and solvent on top of a thick fluid. As the solvent evaporated, the crystals had less space available, and they began to pack together.
The diamond shapes and the very long hexagons lined up as expected, the diamonds forming an Argyle-style grid and the hexagons matching up their longest edges like a foreshortened honeycomb. The hexagons whose sides were all nearly the same length should have formed a similar squashed honeycomb pattern, but instead, they lined up in more complicated, alternating herringbone style.
"Whenever we see something that isn't taking the simplest pattern possible, we have to ask why," Murray said.
They posed the question to Glotzer's team.
"They've been world leaders in understanding how these shapes could work on nanometer scales, and there aren't many groups that can make the crystals we make," Murray said. "It seemed natural to bring these strengths together."
Glotzer and her group built a computer model that could recreate the self-assembly of the same range of shapes that Murray had produced. The simulations showed that if the equilateral hexagons interacted with one another only through their shapes, most of the crystals formed the foreshortened honeycomb pattern---not the herringbone.
"That's when we said, 'Okay, there must be something else going on. It's not just a packing problem,'" Glotzer said.
Her team, which included U-M graduate student Andres Millan and research scientist Michael Engel, then began playing with interactions between the edges of the particles. They found that that if the edges that formed the points were stickier than the other two sides, the hexagons would naturally arrange in the herringbone pattern.
The teams suspected that the source of the stickiness was those carbon and hydrogen chains---perhaps they attached to the point edges more easily. Since experimentation doesn't yet offer a way to measure the number of hydrocarbon chains on the sides of such tiny particles, Murray asked Ju Li, now the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to calculate how the chains would attach to the edges at a quantum mechanical level.
Li's group confirmed that because of the way that the different facets cut across the lattice of the metal and fluorine atoms, more hydrocarbon chains could stick to the four edges that led to points than the remaining two sides. As a result, the particles become patchy.
"Our study shows a way forward making very subtle changes in building block architecture and getting a very profound change in the larger self-assembled pattern," Glotzer said. "The goal is to have knobs that you can change just a little and get a big change in structure, and this is one of the first papers that shows a way forward for how to do that."
The paper is titled "Competition of shape and interaction patchiness for self-assembling nanoplates."
Murray is also a professor of materials science and engineering. Glotzer is also a professor of materials science and engineering, macromolecular science and engineering, physics and applied physics. Li is also a professor of material science and engineering.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 12-May-2013
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