The purpose of this cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) between Sasol North America, Inc., and the oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was to improve the stability of alumina-based industrial catalysts through the combination of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) at ORNL and innovative sample preparation techniques at Sasol. Outstanding progress has been made in task 1, 'Atomistic processes of La stabilization'. STEM investigations provided structural information with single-atom precision, showing the lattice location of La dopant atoms, thus enabling first-principles calculations of binding energies, which were performed in collaboration with Vanderbilt University. The stabilization mechanism turns out to be entirely due to a particularly strong binding energy of the La tom to the {gamma}-alumina surface. The large size of the La atom precludes incorporation of La into the bulk alumina and also strains the surface, thus preventing any clustering of La atoms. Thus highly disperse distribution is achieved and confirmed by STEM images. la also affects relative stability of the exposed surfaces of {gamma}-alumina, making the 100 surface more stable for the doped case, unlike the 110 surface for pure {gamma}-alumina. From the first-principles calculations, they can estimate the increase in transition temperature for the 3% loading of …

Supramolecular chemistry represents a way to mimic enzyme reactivity by using specially designed container molecules. We have shown that a chiral self-assembled M{sub 4}L{sub 6} supramolecular tetrahedron can encapsulate a variety of cationic guests, with varying degrees of stereoselectivity. Reactive iridium guests can be encapsulated and the C-H bond activation of aldehydes occurs, with the host cavity controlling the ability of substrates to interact with the metal center based upon size and shape. In addition, the host container can act as a catalyst by itself. By restricting reaction space and preorganizing the substrates into reactive conformations, it accelerates the sigmatropic rearrangement of enammonium cations.

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Although the phylogenetic relationships of many organisms have been convincingly resolved by the comparisons of nucleotide or amino acid sequences, others have remained equivocal despite great effort. Now that large-scale genome sequencing projects are sampling many lineages, it is becoming feasible to compare large data sets of genome-level features and to develop this as a tool for phylogenetic reconstruction that has advantages over conventional sequence comparisons. Although it is unlikely that these will address a large number of evolutionary branch points across the broad tree of life due to the infeasibility of such sampling, they have great potential for convincingly resolving many critical, contested relationships for which no other data seems promising. However, it is important that we recognize potential pitfalls, establish reasonable standards for acceptance, and employ rigorous methodology to guard against a return to earlier days of scenario-driven evolutionary reconstructions.

Interview with Raymond Tavary, a flight engineer in the Marine Corps during WWII. He answers questions about his job in the military and what life was like during the war.

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