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Four new elements added to Mendeleev's periodical table

Following a 5-month period, the names earlier proposed by discoverers have been approved

MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has officially added four new elements to Mendeleev's periodical table, including moscovium named in honor of the Moscow region and oganesson honoring Dr. Yuri Oganessian, a report at the IUPAC said on Wednesday.

"On 28 November 2016, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) approved the name and symbols for four elements: nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), respectively for element 113, 115, 117, and 118," the report said.

"Following a 5-month period, the names earlier proposed by discoverers have been approved by the IUPAC Bureau," it said.

"The following names and symbols are officially assigned: nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113, moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115, Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117, and oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118.

The super-heavy element oganesson, named after Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian, stresses his "pioneering contributions to transactinoid elements research."

"His (Dr. Oganessian’s) many achievements include the discovery of superheavy elements and significant advances in the nuclear physics of superheavy nuclei including experimental evidence for the ‘island of stability’," IUPAC said.

"Moscovium is in recognition of the Moscow region and honors the ancient Russian land that is the home of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, where the discovery experiments were conducted using the Dubna Gas-Filled Recoil Separator in combination with the heavy ion accelerator capabilities of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions," the report said.

"The name nihonium with the symbol Nh for element 113 was proposed by the discoverers at RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science (Japan); the name came from Nihon which is one of the two ways to say ‘Japan’ in Japanese, and literally mean ‘the Land of Rising Sun’," IUPAC indicated.

"Tennessine is in recognition of the contribution of the Tennessee region of the United States, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, to superheavy element research.".