Chemistry

A newly discovered family of chemical structures known as zeolites could increase the value of biogas and natural gas that contains carbon dioxide. The zeolites -- crystalline aluminosilicates with frameworks that contain windows and cavities the size of small molecules -- can separate out carbon dioxide more effectively from fuel gases than those previously known. Existing zeolites have widespread use in industrial processes that involve gas separation and catalytic conversion, for example to remove nitrogen and carbon dioxide from compressed air to generate oxygen in hospitals and…

By Marsha Lewis, Inside Science – Each year, about 32 billion bottles of wine are bought and sold around the world.  Each bottle contains about two and a half pounds of grapes, and to transform those grapes into a beverage with the perfect aroma, color, and taste, winemakers carefully monitor the complex chemistry bubbling away in wineries’ fermentation tanks. “I would say the trickiest part of making wine is getting the flavors right,” said Linda Bisson, a yeast geneticist at the University of California, Davis. The single most important step to making a good wine is fermentation,…

Wearing a computer on your sleeve may be a lot cooler than a plastic watch with an Apple logo on it - researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have designed a responsive hybrid material fueled by an oscillatory chemical reactions. They can even perform computations based on changes in the environment or movement, and respond to human vital signs. The material system is sufficiently small and flexible enough to be integrated into fabric or introduced as an inset into a shoe. Anna C. Balazs, Ph.D., distinguished professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and Steven P. Levitan, Ph.…

Recent research has reignited concerns that exposure to chemicals from plastics might be to blame for low sperm counts in young men. I share the concerns about the high prevalence of low sperm counts (one in six young men), and my research is directed at trying to identify what causes it. But whether plastics are to blame isn’t a simple matter. Plastics are part of the fabric of our everyday lives and perform many essential functions. Without their thousands of uses, many of which are not obvious to us, our modern world could not function as it is. Plastics bring everyday benefits whether…

Before there were cells on Earth, simple, tiny catalysts most likely evolved the ability to speed up and synchronize the chemical reactions necessary for life to rise from the primordial soup. But what those catalysts were, how they appeared at the same time, and how they evolved into the two modern superfamilies of enzymes that translate our genetic code have not been understood. Scientists have provided what they say is the first direct experimental evidence for how primordial proteins developed the ability to accelerate the central chemical reaction necessary to synthesize proteins and…

In collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture, the University of the Basque Country Department of Analytical Chemistry has identified the volatile compounds in damaged walnuts that insects find attractive and which is threatening the harvests of these nuts in California. These are the first studies carried out on walnuts which are designed to specify the components of the aroma and which can be used to control the moth pests in the most sustainable way, besides helping to cut the use of pesticides and control agents.  The UPV/EHU's research team, comprising professor…

New research has shown that pH lowering of municipal water supplies, a common strategy used to control the release of soluble lead from plumbing materials, can affect corrosion of cast iron water mains, resulting in increased levels of both particulate iron and particulate lead in drinking water. The results of intensive laboratory and field testing of samples from a municipal system following consumer complaints of "red water" and the link between iron corrosion and lead leaching are described in an article in Environmental Engineering Science. In the article, Sheldon Masters and Marc…

There are about 10,000 compounds used to make cosmetics, and they are monitored by government agencies in a way that products go inside the body, such as 'alternative' medicine and supplements, are not. Because of the elaborate record-keeping, including for 300,000 women who make soap in their kitchen, if Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats have their way, there is a need for analytical methods, at least at companies who can make a profit selling them. In the European Union, Regulation 1223/2009 established a list of components and conditions for using those components, such as…

A convenient procedure to visualize defects on graphene layers by mapping the surface of carbon materials with an appropriate contrast agent was introduced by a team of researchers from Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) involved in an international collaborative project.Developed imaging (tomography) procedure has revealed organized patterns of defects on large areas of carbon surfaces. Several types of defects on the carbon surface can be "caught" and captured on the microscopic image within a few minutes. Graphene and related 2D materials are…

People with home-brewed beer rigs and backyard distilleries already know how to employ yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. - they soon might be able to turn sugar-fed yeast into a microbial factory for producing morphine and potentially other drugs, including antibiotics and anti-cancer therapeutics.  It might be the age of home-brewed pharmaceuticals, DIY Bio taken to the next level. Over the past decade, a handful of synthetic-biology labs have been working on replicating in microbes a complex, 15-step chemical pathway in the poppy plant to enable production of therapeutic drugs…