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NJIT Chemist wins Wallace H. Coulter Award for Career Achievements – EurekAlert

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NJITs Wunmi Sadik takes center stage as the honored keynote speaker at the 75th annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy.

Credit: Ricky Haldis Photography

NJIT Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Wunmi Sadik has recently been honored with the prestigious Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship during a guest appearance at one of the largest scientific conferences on laboratory science in the world, Pittcon.

The Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship is presented each year at Pittcon to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to, and made important contributions that have had a significant impact on education, practice and/or research in laboratory science.

Sadik, chair ofNJIT's Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences,was recognized for leadership and scientific breakthroughs spanning a 30-year career that began as a researcher with the Environmental Protection Agency in 1994.

Shes noted for contributing to advancements in the fields of nanomaterials, green chemistry and sustainability, while sparking innovation in analytical sensor technologies used for the detection of everything from drugs and explosives to human disease and environmental contamination.

The award included a $10,000 honorarium and a spot as featured guest speaker atthis year's Pittcon in San Diegoheld Feb. 24-28, which drew nearly 30,000 attendees.

This award is hugely significant to me on a personal and professional level, Sadik toldPittcon Todayahead of her appearance. On a professional level, I have attended Pittcon for the last 30 years and have witnessed leaders in the field deliver the Coulter Lecture many times. It is gratifying to be recognized along with these outstanding leaders in Analytical Chemistry for my work and career thus far.

On a personal level, my family and I attended Pittcon many years ago together several times. My children always looked forward to getting their pictures taken at the Pittcon Souvenir stand and receiving their Future Scientist badges. As adult professionals, they will watch me receive the Coulter Award. It is a privilege to see how Pittcon has influenced their careers in chemistry and medicine, law and private equity, and economics and computer science.

Sadiks Pittcon presentation addressed the potential of bridging nanoscience and sustainability to improve healthcare and the environment. The topic has been a career focus for Sadik which led her to co-found theSustainable Nanotechnology Organization a nonprofit dedicated to the responsible use of nanotechnologies around the world.

Her plenary lecture, titled Sustainable Nanomaterials for Sensing Human Health and the Environment, highlighted a range of applications for nanomaterials shes been developing as director ofNJITs BioSMART Center.

Sadik's latest efforts at NJIT have includednano-sized biosensors for measuring pain biomarkers in human bloodthat could allow clinicians to objectively measure pain experienced by their patients. Shes also recently contributed to cutting-edge approaches for rapidly detecting anddegrading toxic PFAS chemicals(per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in the environment.

The Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship is the latest career milestone for Sadik, who earned notable distinction in the field of chemistry in 2023 when she was named fellow by the American Chemical Society.

Sadik is also a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, The National Academy of Inventors, and the Royal Society of Chemistry, and has published over 200 peer-reviewed works with 400 invited lectures and conference contributions to date. She holds 12 U.S. patents and patent applications and is the founder of three startup companies.

Disclaimer: 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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Chemistry in Pictures: Toxin testing ring – Chemical & Engineering News

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Why the Oil and Chemical Lobby Is Taking Aim at New York’s Plastic Waste Bill – DeSmog

A version of this piece was originally published by ExxonKnews.

Last week at the New York State Capitol, more than 300 advocates joined lawmakers for a rally to urge the passage of a landmark waste reduction bill that proponents say is the best piece of legislation in the country aimed at lessening plastic trash. The bill is gaining fast momentum but lobbyists for major oil and chemical companies want to make sure it doesnt cross the finish line.

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would dramatically cut the amount and toxicity of plastic garbage New Yorkers throw away by targeting the source. It would reduce plastic packaging in New York by half over the next 12 years, and it would prevent a slew of toxic chemicals from being used in those materials. Notably, it would also shift the cost of managing plastic waste from municipal governments and taxpayers to the companies that produce it including oil majors like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade association for those same chemical and plastic producers, is hoping to prevent that from happening. The ACC isfighting to weaken the bill, which it claims is overly restrictive in its definitions of toxic substances and recycling. Its major gripe: the legislation would not allow for chemical or advanced recycling, a process that would use heat and chemicals to break down plastic waste and supposedly turn it into new plastic.

This is not just about enforcement; its about creating a more sustainable future where economic and environmental interests are aligned, wrote Craig Cookson, senior director of plastics sustainability at the ACC, in a Januaryop-edfor the Albany Times-Union. A good EPR [Extended Producer Responsibility] bill will not only support New Yorks mechanical recycling infrastructure; it would also allow for innovation, including science-based advanced recycling solutions.

Yet experts and advocatesagreethat chemical recycling doesnt work, and when it does, is mostly used to createmore fossil fuels to be burned. Proponents of New Yorks bill, like Beyond Plastics director and former EPA administrator Judith Enck, say the industry is teeing up a false solution to distract from and undermine real action.

The American Chemistry Council is deathly afraid of effective policies that will actually reduce the production of plastics, because that means less chemicals to be sold to make plastics, Enck said. Theyre showing up, talking to legislators and saying dont reduce plastic packaging, we can just send it all to chemical recycling facilities, which is a lie. Thankfully they have not succeeded so far.

New Yorks bill is widely supported by activists, a majority of members of both the state Senate and Assembly, and even the mayor of New York City. Its fate, up against the full force of industry lobbying and disinformation, could signal whether these companies can still control the response to the crises theyve caused or whether theyre in for a reckoning.

In recent years, the ACC hasramped up its advertisingof chemical recycling technology as a solution to plastic waste as its member companies promise to construct new facilities alongside expanding petrochemical operations across the country.

But an Octoberreportby the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and Beyond Plastics found that only 4 out of the 11 chemical recycling facilities that have been built in the U.S. are fully operational and even if all of them were fully operating, their combined capacity would represent just 1.3 percent of the plastic waste produced in the country per year.

Chemical recycling is more of a marketing and lobbying technique than an actual solution to the plastics problem, Enck said.

Plastic production is expected to double in the next20 years, and theclimateandpublic healthcrisesit creates are growing exponentially, too. Microplastics have been discovered in human blood, lungs, and breastmilk and most recentlyin human placentas. As oil and gas majors grow their plastics and petrochemical businesses as aPlan Bfor expanding fossil fuel operations, putting companies in the drivers seat does not bode well for actually reducing plastic waste, advocates say.

Still, the ACC will only back a producer responsibility system that would count chemical recycling facilities as recycling and be directed by the private sector. New Yorks bill, in contrast, would establish a new Office of Inspector General to ensure compliance and an advisory council that would include representatives from environmental justice communities.

The American Chemistry Council wants industry to run the program, said Dawn Henry, a former commissioner for the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources and senior adviser for Beyond Plastics. We cant allow that environmental justice demands that we leverage our political power to stop the plastic industry from polluting, exploiting, and expanding in vulnerable communities.

Those harms would only be further entrenched by chemical recycling, which iscarbon intensiveand involves emitting a mess of toxic chemicals and burning hazardous waste, according to Beyond Plasticsreport. Chemical recycling facilities and the materials they produce are often sited and sent to the same communities already most burdened by plastics production, said Henry, because companies are counting on their low political influence. Even if New York doesnt have its own chemical recycling facilities, the ACCs vision would mean New Yorkers would continue to exacerbate pollution in lower-income communities and communities of color like Louisianas Cancer Alley,a 170-mile stretch along the Gulf Coast littered with petrochemical and oil refining facilities sited primarily in Black communities.

We are in the belly of the beast, and our health is suffering from it, said Jo Banner, a lifelong resident of St. John the Baptist Parish and co-founder of Louisiana advocacy groupThe Descendants Project. Im not interested in their greenwashing campaigns, she said of the plastic industry. At the end of the day, they will only find a new way to poison us.

While campaigning for chemical recycling, the industry is working to kill policies that would actually curb its pollution. The Plastics Industry Association and 53 other companies and trade groupsfiled an opposition statementagainst the bill for its bans on toxic substances which they claim is without sound-scientific basis. The ACC paid lobbying firms in New York Statenearly $250,000during the 2023 legislative session increasing its spending by more than half fromtwo years prior. According to Beyond Plastics, the ACC has lobbied to water down producer responsibility bills in at least 10 other states, and has successfully lobbied 24 states to pass laws that weaken environmental protections against chemical recycling processes like pyrolysis and gasification (turning plastics into chemicals or more oil and gas).

As documented in anew reportby the Center for Climate Integrity (of which ExxonKnews is a project), oil and chemical companies and their trade associations have known for decades that plastic recycling was not an effective solution to plastic waste but colluded to deceive consumers into thinking it was. While telling lawmakers and the public they could just recycle plastic, they flooded the market with it, knowing most would end up in landfills and the ocean. As one Exxon employee told staffers at the American Plastics Council (APC) in 1994 about plastic recycling, We are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results.

That remains true today. As was the case with conventional recycling, the companies promoting pyrolysis know its a fundamentally uneconomical process, as Exxon Chemical Vice President Irwin Levowitz told APC staffers in 1994. The same year, SPI, a plastic industry trade association of which Exxon was a member, tried and failed to get the Oregon Attorney General to count it as real recycling so it could meet its targets in the state.

Yet since that evidence of the industrys deception was released, the ACC has doubled down. In astatementresponding to the CCI report, Ross Eisenberg, president of Americas Plastic Makers (a brand of the ACC), called plastics necessary to meet our renewable energy, clean water, connectivity, and global health and nutrition goals and claimed that investments in advanced recycling can be a game changer to better manage our vital plastic resources.

We are advocating for smart public policies that will unleash more investments and create an environment that will help modernize the way plastics are made and remade today and in the future, Eisenberg said.

Enck says the industry is just continuing to do what it has done for decades promote false solutions to prevent real ones. Just like the fossil fuel industry has lied about the impacts of climate change, the American Chemistry Council has lied about the role of conventional recycling for plastics and now theyre lying about chemical recycling, she said. They know that lawmakers want to do something to solve the problem, so they keep pushing the narrative that a breakthrough is right around the corner.

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What’s the most expensive piece of glassware you ever broke? Chemists share their stories – Chemistry World

Everyone whos ever worked in a lab knows the pain of when something goes horribly wrong. Used the wrong solvent? Check. Accidentally poured your product painstakingly isolated over several weeks down the sink? Check. Tipped acid in the organic waste bin? Whoops.Inadvertently made an explosive? Yikes.

This week Keith Hornberger, executive director, chemistry at clinical-stage biotechnology company Arvinas in the US, related on X, formerly Twitter, that his son was left feeling a bit unhappy after he broke a beaker in a school chemistry lab. In an effort to cheer his son up and make him feel a bit better about his lab disaster he asked for scientists best stories of the biggest or most expensive piece of glassware theyd ever broken.

The science community did not disappoint. There were over 100 different stories of scientists having a smashing time with particularly expensive equipment, hazardous substances and precious metals. Weve picked out some of our highlights.

The biggest piece of glassware to go tinkle?

And the most expensive mishap? Oof!

After all these tales of glassware woes there is a happy ending though. At least one person felt better as a result!

If you have your own story of a glassware disaster you can add it to the thread or share it with us below the line in the comments.

Correction: Keith Hornbergers affiliation should be Arvinas not Columbia University.

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Hydrogen veterans have lithium-ion in crosshairs with ‘physics-meets-chemistry’ battery alternative – Recharge

A UK start-up led by veterans of the hydrogen sector has launched what it claims is a breakthrough energy storage technology that it hopes can take on industry-leading lithium-ion batteries.

Superdielectrics this week launched its hybrid energy storage technology, which it calls Faraday 1.

The Cambridge-based start-up said it has combined electric fields (physics) and conventional chemical storage (chemistry) to create a new aqueous polymer-based supercapacitor.

The start-up developed the tech with researchers at the University of Bristol, who identified and validated the key mechanisms involved.

Superdielectrics is commercialising technology arising from fundamental scientific research carried out at Bristol and the University of Surrey into aqueous polymers with what are described as exceptional electrochemical properties.

According to the start-up, this allows its technology to overcome the disadvantages that have hampered supercapacitors which store energy in magnetic fields in comparison to conventional batteries, while also offering positive advantages.

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Energy storage is crucial to helping bring more intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar onto grids, helping to smooth out their natural fluctuations in output.

Pumped hydro storage and lithium-ion batteries dominate the energy storage sector currently but both have issues. Hydropower is limited to very specific mountainous geographies, while lithium-ion batteries rely on expensive critical minerals and have a habit of occasionally bursting into flames.

The technology behind the Faraday 1 has completed over 1 million hours of testing, said Superdielectrics.

This has created a system that it claims can already significantly outperform lead-acid batteries a commonly used type of battery that has relatively low power density.

Superdielectrics claimed its technology also has the potential, with further development, to match or exceed existing lithium-ion batteries.

The technology charges over ten times faster than lead-acid batteries and has a high cycle life, said Superdielectrics. It also has a negligible fire risk.

The new technology is also low cost as it uses readily available abundant raw materials, said Superdielectrics.

Jim Heathcote, CEO of Superdielectrics, claimed: The properties that our technology possess enables it to compete with and exceed current solutions in the energy storage arena across a number of key metrics whilst leading the way in sustainability, recyclability and affordability.

Heathcote and Superdielectrics finance chief Marcus Scott in its early years led ITM Power, the hydrogen fuel cell and electrolyser specialist that was one of the first movers in the H2 sector.

Professor David Fermin, head of the University of Bristol Electrochemistry and Solar Team, said that these state-of-the-art supercapacitors have the potential to become a game-changer in energy storage.

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From one sinking ship to another? | Opinion – Chemistry World

Its not very often that you see a pharmaceutical company completely giving up on a drug thats already won regulatory approval and has reached the market at least not without uncovering some serious side effect that didnt show up in the clinical trials. With many of the difficult, risky parts of the process already traversed, it should be time to sell some product and recoup some investments. And you wouldnt have put all that effort into a product that you didnt believe was going to be able to do that, naturally.

But it does happen. A famous example was Exubera, an inhaled insulin product. The idea was that this route would be so much easier and faster than self-injection that it would capture a good share of a very large market. Pfizer had convinced itself of this, and had convinced a number of financial analysts as well. So, it came as a rude surprise when the product absolutely flopped. Physicians werent particularly interested in prescribing it, and patients werent particularly interested in trying it. The company withdrew it from the market the very next year. In another example, some of the early drugs approved against Hepatitis C were also abandoned quickly due to overwhelming competition and vanishing revenues.

The newest example is Aduhelm (aducanumab), the anti-amyloid antibody developed by Eisai and Biogen, which was (in)famously approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) despite the objections of its own advisory panel and its own statisticians. The controversy was so great that Medicare (the state-backed medical programme for over-65s, and a huge customer for any Alzheimers drug) refused to pay for it unless patients were involved in another clinical trial to determine if the drug actually had any real benefit. Youd think that would be the sort of question youd have cleared up before a drug hit the market, but for some reason the FDA decided that Everything Was Different Now.

Biogen announced recently that it is discontinuing Aduhelm, and this definitely wasnt due to overwhelming competition. There was nothing else like it on the market, but very, very few physicians were prescribing it after Medicare and other large insurers balked. The drug was also never approved in Europe or elsewhere. Unlike Pfizer with Exubera, though, Biogen had another reason to give up on Aduhelm: it has, along with Eisai, another anti-amyloid antibody approved Leqembi (lecanemab) and they want to concentrate their resources on that one. Truth be told, the clinical data for it are not (in my opinion) much more compelling than Aduhelms, and there are safety concerns as well. Standard opinion in the drug business has been that the first effective drug against Alzheimers would surely be a record-setting success, but that word effective is causing difficulties. Its possible that the word safe will also become troublesome; that will bear watching, too. The same concerns hold for donanemab another antibody from Eli Lilly that is expected to be approved soon.

You can draw different lessons from Aduhelms failure depending on your prior views. Libertarian types have long championed the idea of approving drugs based mostly on safety, and letting the independent judgments of physicians and patients sort things out afterwards. Aduhelm certainly wasnt approved on efficacy, so perhaps its failure at the hands of insurance (both public and private) is what the libertarians had in mind? But the heavy hand of the US government (in the form of Medicares rejection) surely spoils that story. You could also see the Medicare decision as the last line of defense holding against the effects of an unusually bad regulatory decision. From one perspective thats heartening, but it really shouldnt have to come to that. Medicare is not really designed as a drug approval mechanism. You can stop a car by overheating the emergency brake and steering into a wall of tyres, but thats not a sustainable way to drive to work.

So the progress of the next two antibodies will be of great interest. My opinion is that if the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimers were as strong as we used to think it was, then these drugs should have led to greater things. If youd told everyone back in 1990 about their undeniable amyloid-clearing effects, the last clinical outcome youd have expected would be everyone having to squint their eyes and turn up the room lights to see any sort of real-world effect. The world is still waiting for a good Alzheimers drug. I cannot begin to guess when it might arrive.

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