Category Archives: Chemistry

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/m7b92s/clinical_chemistry) has announced the addition of the "Clinical Chemistry Market Report & Forecast (2012 - 2015): Global Analysis" report to their offering.

Valued at more than US$ 9 Billion in 2011, Clinical Chemistry market is likely to grow moderately from 2012 to 2015. In Clinical Chemistry Tests segment: Toxicology, Hemoglobin and Cholesterol testing contributed more than 40% of market revenues in 2011, and in future also they are likely to dominate the market till 2015. Faecal Occult Blood testing market, Cardiac Enzyme testing market and Prothrombin Time/International Normalized Ratio (PT/INR) testing market all these three testing markets are expected to grow with double digit CAGR from 2012 - 1015.

In countries analysis segment, United States and Europe together holds more than 85% market share in 2011. But by 2015 China is expected to nearly double its market revenue from 2011; thus reducing the market share of Europe in worldwide Clinical Chemistry market by 2015. Brazil Clinical Chemistry market is bigger than India but it is expected to grow with a CAGR of single digit compared to double digit of India from 2012 - 2015. In the coming years, the Clinical Chemistry market will undertake important change. These changes will be caused by the convergence of new and more stringent regulations, advances in diagnostic technologies, automation, IT and intensifying competition.

Renub Research report entitled Clinical Chemistry Market Report & Forecast (2012 - 2015): Global Analysis provides a comprehensive assessment of the nine clinical chemistry tests market & reviews, analyses and projects clinical chemistry market for global and seven countries market. The report also provides market landscape and market share information in the clinical chemistry market. The report also entails major drivers and challenges of clinical chemistry market.

Tests Covered

- Blood Gas & Electrolyte Test

- Cardiac Enzyme Test

- Faecal Occult Blood Test

- Drugs of Abuse Test

Read more from the original source:
Research and Markets: Clinical Chemistry Market Report & Forecast (2012 - 2015): Global Analysis - China Set to Double ...

By Jaclyn Reiss, Globe Correspondent

Boston firefighters and a hazmat team spent more than two hours testing the air at a Boston College chemistry building Sunday night after a strange odor was reported, but found no culprit, fire officials said.

The incident is the third time in just over a year that Boston firefighters have responded to the colleges Merkert Chemistry Center.

Students noticed a strange smell after entering a third-floor lab of the chemistry building, located at 2609 Beacon St. in Brighton, around 6:45 p.m. The students called Boston College Police, who notified the Boston Fire Department.

Fire officials declared the incident a level-three hazmat response, which means the firefighter entry team were fully suited up when they entered the building, said fire department spokesman Steve MacDonald.

However, after three different hazmat team entries, all tests came back negative for anything hazardous. No one was injured.

These are students used to being in chemistry labs, so for them to smell a strange odor is of course cause for concern, MacDonald said. They did the right thing.

Crews had cleared out by around 9:15 p.m., and the building was turned back over to to the college.

BCs own safety team dealing with the lab on a daily basis will check it further, but everything on our end came back negative, MacDonald said. They have lab safety managers and a whole team of people who deal with things like this.

City Public Heath will also check the building again Monday morning, he said.

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Hazmat situation at Boston College chemistry lab over after fire department finds no danger

— Grotto or artwork?

They (whoever they are) say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. But what about when you need to move a chemistry filled artwork and the entire installation needs to be moved from it’s original site in London to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, around 200 miles away?

The artwork in question is Seizure, a flat (or apartment for our transatlantic readers) encrusted in shimmering blue crystals of copper sulfate pentahydrate that Bibi first blogged about in 2009.That puts my attempts with dangling a string into a jam jar of copper sulfate solution on the kitchen windowsill to shame.

Although Seizure had remained in the block of flats since it was first made, the council estate that contained it was condemned and so for the artwork to be saved it had to be removed intact. Luckily for the removal men, the flat had already been encased in a watertight steel box back when the artwork was first made, to allow the copper sulfate solution to be safely poured into the flat without it then leaking everywhere. After cutting away from around it, the steel-encased flat has now been removed and will be set in the greenery of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park inside a new housing.

So, until I can take a trip up to see the artwork in its new home, did any of our readers go and see it in its original location? Let us know if you have any good pictures.

Laura Howes

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2

Fancy a giggle? Brian Clegg looks at the important – and frivolous –  uses of nitrous oxide in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2

A member of RSC staff (and Chemistry World fan) recently suggested to me that it’s been 100 years since the idea of solar fuels was born. His evidence? A paper by Italian chemist Giacomo Luigi Ciamician published in Science on 27 September 1912. In it, Ciamician proposes how we might harness the enormous power of the Sun to produce fuels from plants:

‘Is it possible or, rather, is it conceivable that…the cultivation of plants may be so regulated as to make them produce abundantly such substances as can become sources of energy…? I believe that this is possible.’

Although he doesn’t use the term, Ciamician is clearly talking about biofuels:

‘…it seems quite possible that the production of organic matter may be largely increased… The harvest, dried by the sun, ought to be converted, in the most economical way, entirely into gaseous fuel…’

And from there he goes on to describe artificial photosynthesis:

‘For our purposes the fundamental problem from the technical point of view is how to fix the solar energy through suitable photochemical reactions. To do this it would be sufficient to be able to imitate the assimilating processes of plants.’

The paper covers the use of sunlight to power the production of all kinds of useful compounds, not just fuels. But it’s this idea of capturing energy from the sun – deliberately and directly – to store in chemical form for later use that is arguably its most compelling. The idea falls within a generalised concept of solar power (or solar energy) but can be demarcated from making electricity directly from sunlight, as photovoltaic solar cells do.

And it’s a hot topic today. Earlier this year, the RSC published a report into solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis describing the rapid rate of progress in this area in recent years.

Indeed, the whole paper seems very prescient. Ciamician highlights a widespread and growing dependence on fossil fuels and questions how industry would cope with a sudden and unexpected price spike.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he makes a few false steps in his comments about biofuels:

‘There is no danger at all of using for industrial purposes land which should be devoted to raising foodstuffs. An approximate calculation shows that on the Earth there is plenty of land for both purposes, especially when the various cultivations are properly intensified and rationally adapted to the conditions of the soil and the climate.’

But to be fair there were fewer than two billion people on the planet back in 1912. Who could have predicted the impact of a four fold increase over the next 100 years?

In predicting how our rampant thirst for energy would lead us to the Sun, Ciamician seems to be peering into the future with remarkable clarity.

Andrew Turley

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2

Artist's impression of how arsenic life would look

The saga of arsenic life appears to be finally coming to a close. Two papers out in Science this week put under the microscope the claim that the bacterium could incorporate arsenic into its DNA in place of phosphorus. And the two teams found no evidence that the bacteria could make use of arsenic.

When the arsenic life story kicked off back in December 2010, it was big news. (You can read our coverage of it here, here and here.) The discovery by a Nasa team led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon that a bacterium could make use of an exotic element not normally used by life cracked open the door an inch to the idea that there could be life on more planets than ever thought possible. After all, if we could find bacteria thriving in the arsenic laced lakes of California, then surely they could be eking out a living on inhospitable planets.

However, some researchers were less than impressed with the science and they took to social media channels to register their concerns with the paper, with Nasa and with Science for letting the paper get through. The paper quickly became a serious headache for the journal, and in June 2011 they took the unusual step of publishing eight short critical responses to the original paper that caused all the controversy, followed by a defence from Wolfe-Simon.

One of the most vocal critics of the arsenic life claim, Rosie Redfield, was soon blogging what she saw as the problems with the authors’ interpretation of the data. One of her biggest gripes was the way the authors inferred that the bacterial DNA contained arsenic – by examining the molecule’s arsenic to phosphorus ratio. She and others pointed out that if phosphate were being replaced by arsenate, the DNA ought to be extremely susceptible to hydrolysis. If arsenate containing DNA were stable, it would fly in the face of years of chemical data on how these compounds behaved.

Redfield is the lead author on the first paper, which examines whether arsenate DNA even exists. They grew the bacteria up in the same way as Wolfe-Simon’s group, isolated the DNA and washed it thoroughly. They picked up very little arsenic in the sample and conclude that the original result was all down to contamination. They also performed tests on the DNA immediately after it was isolated from the bacterium and then two months later to check for the expected hydrolysis of arsenate containing DNA and found none.

Another controversial point in the original arsenic life paper was that the bacterium was metabolising arsenate in levels of phosphate thought to be too low to allow it to grow. Alex Bradley, a microbiologist at Harvard University, US, pointed out, however,  that the medium Wolfe-Simon’s team said contained too little phosphate for bacteria to survive on actually contained 300 times more phosphate than that found in the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic – a place where microbes thrive.

The second paper examined this by attempting to grow the bacterium in a truly phosphate free environment. They found no evidence that the bacterium can replace arsenate with phosphate. They did discover some arsenate-based compounds when growing up the bacteria, but concluded that this was the result of abiotic processes as the compounds disappeared with more stringent washing of the cells.

I guess the takeaway message here is that GFAJ-1 is just a hardy bacteria that can survive levels of arsenic toxic to most life. That and calling the bacterium that is meant to be the crowning achievement of your research career ‘Give Felisa A Job’ is unwise – unless you’re absolutely certain you’ve covered all your bases.

Patrick Walter

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2