Category Archives: Chemistry

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

At the American Chemical Societys Spring 2012 National Meeting & Expo, PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment, today announced the launch of its Ensemble for ChemistryTM integrated informatics suite for enhancing chemist productivity and decision-making, for industry segments including biopharmaceutical, environmental, food and chemical, as well as academia and government.

The Ensemble for Chemistry platform provides a suite of software applications to improve chemists efficiency. This is delivered through tools and content for more efficient planning and recording of experiments, the creation of structure-searchable databases of compounds, reactions and data, and the ability to locate, share and communicate results directly in their workflow.

The software suite allows users to manage chemical structures and their associated data and properties in intelligent and intuitive ways, and integrates disparate data from customers' Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELN), informatics systems and databases, maximizing the value of an organization's scientific intellectual capital.

Chemists across a wide range of scientific and commercial endeavors, whether from academic, biopharma, environmental, food or other segments, share the same core informatics needs ease of use, workflow efficiency, data integrity, knowledge sharing and collaboration, and secure storage, said Michael Stapleton, general manager, Informatics, PerkinElmer. The Ensemble for Chemistry suite provides researchers with the tools they need to understand the chemistry behind the names, structures and reactions, so that compounds and associated data are leveraged effectively on business-relevant pipeline projects.

The Ensemble for Chemistry suite helps businesses meet the challenges facing chemists by enabling them to:

About PerkinElmer, Inc.

PerkinElmer, Inc. is a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment. The Company reported revenue of approximately $1.9 billion in 2011, has about 7,000 employees serving customers in more than 150 countries, and is a component of the S&P 500 Index. Additional information is available through 1-877-PKI-NYSE, or at http://www.perkinelmer.com.

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PerkinElmer Launches Ensemble for Chemistry Informatics Platform at ACS 2012

LANSING, MI (WNEM) -

Going Green could earn you an award from the state. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (EPA) has announced open nominations for the fourth annual Michigan Green Chemistry Governor's Awards.

The Governor's Awards recognize advances that incorporate the principles of green chemistry into chemical design, manufacture, or use, or that promote activities which support or implement those technologies and efforts. The awards acknowledge efforts to design and implement safer and more sustainable chemicals, processes, and products.

Awards are open to individuals, groups, and organizations, both non-profit and for profit. The program was established by the Michigan Green Chemistry Roundtable, and it celebrates innovations using green chemistry in Michigan. Eleven awards have been presented in the first three years of the program.

Entries must be sent no later than July 20. The awards will be presented at the 2012 Michigan Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference: "Driving Sustainable Manufacturing," which is scheduled Oct. 26 at Wayne State University.

For a copy of the nomination packet, or more information on the Michigan Green Chemistry Program, visit the DEQ Web site at http://www.michigan.gov/greenchemistry, or call the DEQ Environmental Assistance Center at 800662-9278.

Copyright 2012 WNEM (Meredith Broadcasting). All rights reserved.

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State opens up nominations for green chemistry awards

We’ve had the heart on a chip, kidney on a chip and brain on a chip. Now, we’ve got another body part on a chip – the gut.

This gut on a chip, designed by Donald Ingber from Harvard University in the US, and colleagues, is quite special as it mimics the gut’s structure, conditions and even the peristaltic motions (gut muscles contracting and relaxing in turn along the tube to move food along). The team hopes that it’ll replace animal guts used in studies, such as seeing how drugs are absorbed into the body through the gut.

The team made the device from two microfluidic channels separated by a porous flexible membrane coated with extracellular matrix and lined with human intestinal epithelial cells. To recreate the natural gut’s environment, they had fluid flowing through the tube at a low rate and they exerted a strain on the tube at constant intervals to mimic peristalsis.

— A schematic of the gut-on-a-chip showing the flexible porous extracellular matrix-coated membrane lined by gut epithelial cells crossing horizontally through the middle of the central microchannel, with vacuum chambers on both sides. The mechanical strain is exerted by applying suction to the vacuum chambers

Under these conditions, a columnar epithelium developed, which grew into folds – similar to the structure of intestinal villi. Then, the team grew a normal intestinal microbe (Lactobacillus rhamnosus) on the epithelium’s surface, which survived for around a week (not an easy thing to achieve, they say).

Together, these components make a more realistic model than current systems that could be used for absorption and toxicity studies, transport, drug tests and to develop new intestinal disease models.

If you want to find out more about body parts on chips and their uses, the journal Lab on a Chip has loads of papers on the topic.

Elinor Richards

                  

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

Scurvy sea dogs are a lot less scurvy thanks to this week’s compound, and Linus Pauling was convinced it could do much more. Simon Cotton puts the ‘c’ in citrus with vitamin C in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

                  

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

This year marks a very special anniversary for the noble gases – it’s 50 years since the synthesis of xenon hexafluoroplatinate (Xe⁺[PtF₆]^–). What’s so special about that? Well, before xenon hexafluoroplatinate everyone thought the noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon) were completely inert.

It’s one of the earliest things you’re taught in school chemistry lessons. The noble gases don’t react because their highest energy ‘shell’ of electrons is full – they don’t need to share electrons to feel complete. Thus they reside lonely and aloof in their own little world at the far end of the periodic table.

But in 1962 UK chemist Neil Bartlett coaxed them out to play with the other elements while while working with fluorine. The key was platinum hexafluoride (PtF₆), an incredibly powerful oxidising agent that Bartlett and his colleagues had shown would react with oxygen gas. The first ionisation potential of xenon is almost the same as that of oxygen, thought Bartlett. So why not give it a shot?

An explosion of interest followed, and 50 years later we’re still making new noble gas compounds. And to celebrate, the University of British Columbia in Canada, the institution at which Bartlett made his breakthrough, is hosting a special seminar on 23 March. Guest speakers include Derek Lohmann, who worked with Bartlett on the synthesis and use of platinum hexafluoride. He told me that at the time the team wasn’t wholly aware of what an important milestone it was working towards: ‘The initial feeling was one of disbelief and then euphoria.’ It took a very powerful reagent, he explained. ’Like fluorine itself and many other compounds of fluorine, platinum hexafluoride is a very reactive species owing to its ability to attract electrons.’

Andrew Turley

                  

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

Public release date: 24-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6042

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2012 More than a dozen symposia and other events at the American Chemical Society (ACS) 243rd National Meeting & Exposition are being sponsored or recommended by noted science communicator and ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D. They range from a science outreach event for children at PETCO Park to news from an emerging field of chemistry that promises to produce medicines inside patients' bodies, as well as a symposium on communicating science to the public.

Communicating science is a major part of Shakhashiri's presidential theme for the year. The William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Shakhashiri is noted internationally for pioneering the use of demonstrations in the teaching of chemistry in classrooms, as well as to the public in museums, convention centers, shopping malls and retirement homes and at his Science is Fun website. The Encyclopedia Britannica termed Shakhashiri the "dean of lecture demonstrators in America."

Shakhashiri said the symposia connect with the grand challenges that face society and scientists in the 21st century, challenges that range from helping to sustain Earth and its people in the face of population growth and climate change to finite resources, malnutrition and spreading disease.

A schedule of the sessions appears at the end of this press release, and individual topics can be accessed online.

Among the speakers in the plenary session, which is among Shakhashiri's recommendations:

Carolyn Bertozzi will deliver the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture. She is the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of sugars that coat the surfaces of cells. Her innovations could someday lead to new ways of making medicines inside the human body.

Another highlight of the ACS 243rd National Meeting & Exposition is a session called, "Communicating Chemistry to the Public." A featured speaker is Paul Raeburn, winner of the ACS 2012 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. Raeburn is a distinguished science writer, author, editor and program director of New Horizons in Science. Other speakers include ACS President Shakhashiri and the following:

Originally posted here:
American Chemical Society Presidential Sessions focus on outreach, chemistry innovations