Category Archives: Chemistry

Washington, Jan 29 (ANI): A researcher is studying materials
that use light or darkness to purify air filled with toxins
that are harmful to human health and the environment.

The research, conducted by Manindu Weerasinghe from Kansas State
University, Sri Lanka, could one day lead to filters,
humidifiers and other devices that can detoxify air in
windowless rooms, manufacturing facilities and other indoor
areas.

"Indoor pollutants can come from things like asbestos, markers
and new carpet, and are very harmful in just small amounts,"
Newswise quoted Weerasinghe as saying.

"A room like an office or a laboratory that may have few or no
windows will have higher levels of indoor air pollutants than a room that
has lots of windows. Also, if the room does not have good
ventilation those levels would increase," she said.

For her research, Weerasinghe is testing and analysing
photocatalysts and dark catalysts,
materials made by chemically bonding a metal to oxygen.
Photocatalysts react to light while dark catalysts react to
darkness.

The photocatalysts being tested are made from chromium or
vanadium with titanium. Cobalt is used for the dark catalysts.
Finding which metal is most effective at combating pollutants
is key.

Weerasinghe is also adding varying amounts of pure silica to
each catalyst mixture. Silica is the substance used to make
glass and ceramics and serves as an insulator in chemical
reactions. Based on test results, adding silica improves a
catalyst's ability to remove air pollutants.

"Right now it's not really clear why and how pure silica works
so well, so that's something I hope to also answer with more
experiments," she said.

"Glass is not toxic and silica is very abundant and
inexpensive, so it could be a very good material to use if this
work moves from laboratory-scale production to an
industrial-scale production," Weerasinghe said.

Once made, each photocatalyst and dark catalyst is tested in a
chamber filled with air pollutants. Oxygen is added and the
catalyst is exposed to light or darkness, triggering a chemical
reaction that converts air pollutants in the chamber into
smaller, less harmful levels of carbon dioxide over
time.

Although carbon dioxide is not the ideal byproduct, it is
produced at such small levels that it presents fewer problems
to health and the environment than the air pollutants,
Weerasinghe said.

Of the photocatalysts, chromium photocatalysts reduce the most
air pollutants. Although the work is still in its early stages,
Weerasinghe is finding that the results are more complex. Tests
using the cobalt dark catalysts show significant gains over the
photocatalysts.

"In fact, the cobalt system is 10 times more active than the
chromium system at degrading pollutants," Weerasinghe said.

"It's also a rapid response system, meaning that about 10
minutes into the experiment the cobalt starts to react. This is
something that wasn't expected because these experiments are
about using light. But the best results are coming from a
system that doesn't use light to react," she added.

In one instance, Weerasinghe tried to find the point at which
the dark catalyst stopped reacting. After three days into the
experiment no drop-off point could be found. She plans further
studies to investigate this unexpected phenomenon. (ANI)

See more here:
Chemistry research may help free environment of toxins

Somewhere in a dim and distant chemistry lesson we were first introduced to the atom. We learned that it has a nucleus (a bit like the sun) and that around the nucleus, dutifully obeying classical mechanics, orbited the electrons (much like the planets). The simplicity of the idea seduced even the great Niels Bohr. Everything seemed so perfect, so beautifully inter-related: from the atomic to the cosmic, the universe resonated with harmonious similitude. But, of course, it couldn’t last.

Before long, we got a little older and encountered Erwin Schrödinger – the man with the power to split reality and whose mind birthed the equation that would shatter our illusion. We learned, to our horror, that quantum theory says ‘no’.

The veil was torn from our eyes and the electron’s true nature was revealed – elusive, treacherous, chimeric; the unholy offspring of the union of wave and particle. Everywhere and nowhere, the electron was impossible to pin down, and suddenly uncertainty was the only certainty. We stared, aghast, as tutors’ chalk calmly described the loops and lobes of the mathematical prisons that surround the nucleus, their unfamiliar lines mutely stating ‘it’s probably in there’.

Well, some scientists in Germany have now brought the classical and quantum worlds a step closer together to make those electrons behave as Bohr thought they ought. By putting an electron in a highly excited state and confining its slippery nature with some well-chosen electromagnetic fields, they’ve succeeded in creating atoms whose electrons orbit the nucleus in just the circular, ‘planetary’ paths proposed by Bohr; a tiny replica of a solar system. Indeed, the very trick they use has an astronomical inspiration – the Trojan asteroids orbit in the same path and with the same period as Jupiter, without spreading out, owing to the stabilising action of Jupiter’s gravity. In this atomic analogue, the electromagnetic field, tuned to oscillate at the frequency of the electron’s orbit, supplies the stabilising force that stops the electron wave packet spreading out around the atom.

With electron in such highly excited states, the atoms themselves are pretty huge – on the order of hundredths of millimetres, bigger even than some biological cells.

The group think it should now be possible to excite further electrons into such states to create multiply-excited ‘planetary atoms’. And as the classical meets the quantum, we should gain a better understanding of the relationship between these worlds.

So well done, Burgdörfer et al, for standing up to the electron and showing that with a little cunning and some good old brute force, we can at last recapture the lost atoms of our youth.

Philip Robinson

                  

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

In this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast, Duncan McMillan breathes life into carbon monoxide: a silent killer whose calling card is the ironically healthy hue of its victims. But, as Duncan explains, these days canary-based CO detectors are a thing of the past and we’re even learning that CO can be helpful to us, as well as harmful.

                  

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

Alnylam cuts one third of workforce – New Novo Nordisk diabetes R&D centre – And Georgia Gulf spurns $1.1 bn takeover bid

PHARMACEUTICAL – US biotech Alnylam is planning to cut one third of its workforce. According to the 2010 annual report, the company employed 172 people, including 142 researchers, at the start of 2011. Based on those figures, around 57 people are now facing redundancy. Alnylam specialises in drugs based on RNA interference, a process through which genes are naturally turned on or off in biological systems by short lengths of RNA.

PHARMACEUTICAL – Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk, which specialises in insulin products, says it is to establish a type 1 diabetes R&D centre in Seattle, US. The centre will open this summer, employing 20 researchers led by Matthias von Herrath, currently director of the Center for Type 1 Diabetes Research at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. The company says that there has been ‘a lack of major scientific progress’ in this area over the last decade – type 2 diabetes has drawn the focus owing to the dramatic rise in the number of people living with the disease, which is closely linked with obesity.

PHARMACEUTICAL – US generics company Watson has bought Australian company Ascent Pharmahealth for A$375 million (£240 million). Ascent specialises in generics, consumer skincare products and over the counter medicines, and Watson says that the move makes it the fifth largest generics company in Australia based on sales and gives it a significant presence in south-east Asia. Ascent employs 300 people in Australia and south-east Asia, and across those two regions the company made A$150 million in sales in 2011. Watson says that in Australia the market for generics is growing 8% per year.

CHEMICAL – US chemical company Georgia Gulf has rejected a $1.1 billion (£700 million) takeover bid from Westlake Chemical. Earlier this month, Westlake said it would buy the firm for $30 per share. But the Georgia Gulf board described the bid as ‘financially inadequate and not in the best interest of Georgia Gulf stockholders’. Georgia Gulf makes chlorovinyl and aromatic chemicals, as well as vinyl-based construction products. Westlake makes petrochemicals, polymers and construction products.

PHARMACEUTICAL – Contaminated drugs have killed 27 people in Pakistan prompting a rapid recall, according to Reuters. The drugs were distributed to patients with heart problems at a government institute in Lahore. Investigators suspect that that metal shards may be the cause of the symptoms, which include heavy bleeding.

CHEMICAL – European speciality chemical group Solvay is planning to create an ‘energy services’ business, which it is calling ‘the first concrete outcome’ of its €3.4 billion (£2.8 billion) merger with Rhodia in April 2011. The business will seek to reduce energy costs and emissions within Solvay, as well as selling services to other companies. Currently, Solvay spends €1.2 billion per year on energy.

Andrew Turley

                  

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

Even before it was published, the arsenic life story (about a microorganism that uses the toxic element arsenic instead of phosphorus to live) was causing controversy. But while many people went back and forth with criticisms, Rosie Redfield has been trying to repeat Wolfe-Simon’s experiments, and chronicling them in her blog.

This isn’t the first ‘peer-review by blog’, as our reader’s might remember from 2009. But following the blog has been both incredibly interesting and a wonderful reminder to me of the ‘joys’ of lab work. Open notebook science is still in it’s infancy, but Redfield is using her blog to document both her arsenic experiments and the other work her lab is doing, and even introduces experiments suggested by commenters.

Anyhow, it now looks like there’s just about enough evidence to refute the arsenic life paper, and so Redfield is writing it up.

I’ve loved following the story, but I think it will also be interesting to see what happens next. Will Redfield’s paper be accepted? Or will the ‘prior publication’ of data a problem. And if the paper is accepted, will Wolfe-Simon’s be retracted. Whatever the outcome, these are interesting times for scientific publication.

Laura Howes

                  

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

While the peer review process often draws criticism, most would agree that it is a necessary, indeed integral aspect of conducting research. Even the most ardent critics acknowledge that the simple, even elegant, system has shown itself to be at least an adequate tool for a difficult job.

But peer review is not perfect and when it is itself scrutinised, there are various shortcomings that one might wish to address. Now, a group of researchers based at the University of Jyväskyklä, in Finland, want to take peer review and make it better. As they see it, the problems with peer review are that the process is slow, that reviewers receive no credit or recognition for their work, and that the quality of reviews is often poor. They also note that peer review is often attacked with accusations of bias, and as rejected papers trickle down the hierarchy of journals, the review process is repeated, needlessly consuming the time of an ever-increasing number of reviewers.

Their solution is a new website – Peerage of Science (PoS) – described by its founders as ‘a social network for peer review’. ‘This is not a revolution,’ says one of the founders, Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, ‘but a re-volition’. For Seppänen, PoS is the solution to the shared problems of peer review, that will be driven by the scientific community’s desire to change the system and to progress and safeguard their science.

— Peerage of Science’s founders: Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, Mikko Mönkkönen and Janne Kotiaho

At its heart, PoS is a simple idea. It is a web tool that facilitates peer review – authors upload their manuscripts and the community reviews them, following an automated process controlled by PoS. So far, so similar, but it is in the details of the system’s operation that PoS hopes to tackle some of peer review’s problems.

Perhaps most interesting of these is the mechanism for review. Having established their credentials (a publication in a peer-reviewed journal will suffice), participating reviewers choose whichever manuscripts take their fancy, with deadlines (set by the authors) that fit their schedule. Furthermore, all the reviews (called peer essays) a manuscript receives are themselves then subject to review – each reviewer is required to score the other reviews of the same manuscript. In this way, reviewers receive a rating (called the peer essay quality) based upon their peers’ opinion of their reviews, designed to give reviewers some recognition for their contributions and to encourage a higher quality of review. In a final twist, every review a manuscript receives generates two review obligations for the authors. So you don’t get something for nothing: to use the system, you must actively support the system.

To address accusations of bias that often dog the traditional peer review approach, the whole thing is conducted anonymously. Although reviewers are permitted to reveal themselves at any point and indeed, if they wish, they can even publish their ‘peer essays’ in Proceedings of the Peerage of Science. That’s right: a journal of referee reports. Inscrutable as this might appear, the idea is to give reviewers another means to demonstrate their expertise, to further reward their time and effort.

But of course the aim of peer review is to get published, so how does PoS include that essential third party – the journal editor? Ultimately, the idea is that journals will participate in the PoS system – journal editors can track relevant manuscripts as they proceed through the PoS system and can offer to publish them at any point during the process. At the moment, however, this will only happen if ecology is your thing (Ecography is the only journal currently participating). But the system also allows an author to export the PoS review to support submission to any journal. And this is an essential aspect of PoS – it is in providing the outcome of PoS reviews to publishers that the founders hope to commercialise their efforts.

The PoS team have clearly got big plans for their system and are passionate about improving peer review. And looking through the current peer community, they are not alone – various august institutions are already represented in PoS’s peer community (though, at present, nary a chemist among them). But while the aspirations of PoS have to be commended, there are some important questions to be asked. Will publishers be willing to recognise this system of peer review? And is it truly any less susceptible to abuse than the current review methods; does the online anonymity even enable it? And what if nobody reviews your paper? Mike Foster makes some very good points in his blog and it’s clear that the debate is just getting started (and PoS are eager to be involved).

It would seem that the success of this enterprise relies most heavily on the peer community. As with any social network, achieving a critical population level is the key. So are scientists willing to participate, or would they rather just let the publishing houses continue take care of the whole process on their behalf? Perhaps the greatest challenge facing PoS is simply that the established publication route is so familiar and works well enough that the improvements offered by PoS won’t be attractive enough to overcome the inertia of the status quo. What do you think? Would you join the peerage of science? Is this the future of peer review?

Philip Robinson

                  

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