The News Review:
- Unexplained atmospheric chemistry detected
- Cognis Adopts Principles of Green Chemistry and Green Engineering
- Students watch ‘awesome’ chemistry experiments
- Bisphenol A: The Goods on a Bad Plastic
- Changes Could Be Coming for Pre-Meds and the MCAT
- Kemi ba finds the right chemistry for success at CSUB
- New Light-driven Nanomotor Is Simpler More Promising Scientists Say
Unexplained atmospheric chemistry detected
Science News
The team?s next step says Rohrer will include testing samples of air from the region in the lab to see if light-stimulated reactions produce similarly anomalous amounts of hydroxyl radicals. Results of the new research ?are interesting? says Jeff Gaffney an atmospheric chemist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. ?I?m not surprised that models [of atmospheric chemistry] are unable to accurately estimate hydroxyl levels when there are a lot of volatile organic chemicals in the air? he notes. Another possible complication to getting accurate field data he adds is that some of the atmosphere?s volatile substances are so reactive that they disappear before equipment can measure them. With new advances in equipment scientists are just now able to make some types of atmospheric measurements in heavily polluted air says Allen L. Robinson an environmental engineer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. f the team?s study site in the Pearl River delta he notes: ?There?s obviously some interesting chemistry going on there.
Cognis Adopts Principles of Green Chemistry and Green Engineering
Azom.com
The company already makes extensive use of natural solutions and 50 percent of the raw materials it uses are renewable. From these it manufactures environmentally sound high-performance products which help its customers to succeed in their markets. Now Cognis has taken another step down the path of environmental sustainability by adopting the widely recognized 24 principles of Green Chemistry and Green Engineering as its roadmap for the development of new solutions products and processes. The aim is to further increase the proportion of natural-source raw materials make better use of residues further optimize catalysts and make additional cuts in its emissions. Comments Cognis CE Antonio Trius: “The chemical industry has a major role to play in developing the innovative and sustainable solutions that are necessary to succeed in the markets of tomorrow. The 24 principles help us to strike the right balance between environmental goals economical viability and product performance and convenience. Cognis is one of the first companies to put a set of objective ‘green’ criteria at the heart of its decision-making and operational processes.
Related from Work-at-home-business-zone: Special Report: Business of Green Britain’s Ideal: Green Homes
Students watch ‘awesome’ chemistry experiments
Herald Times Reporter
Until last year the chemistry students went to L. Clarke Middle School to give demonstrations for the eighth-graders. Koch changed the audience to fourth-graders last year when her son was in fourth grade and decided to stay with the new age group.
Bisphenol A: The Goods on a Bad Plastic
Huffington Post
This is just one of dozens of pieces of worrisome evidence about BPA to come out of peer-reviewed scientific literature over the past decade. I write about many more of them in The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens ur Health and Well-being (North Point Press 2008). No one can say for sure that BPA causes these health problems. Nevertheless there are ample reasons to take precautions with the use of this chemical. It’s been almost two years since a scientific advisory panel convened by the NIEHS raised the warning flag regarding the continued use of BPA in certain types of consumer products.
Changes Could Be Coming for Pre-Meds and the MCAT
Wall Street Journal Blogs
Say 10 years from now your recommendations have been implemented. How is a typical pre-med’s life different from today?It’s going to open up the ability to colleges to be more innovative and — this is the key word — interdisciplinary in teaching. We could envision courses where you learn physics and chemistry and biology in the same course and see how they interrelate to each other whereas right now a pre-med takes say a year of physics a year of chemistry a year of organic chemistry. The hope is that these science courses will be much more interesting. Pre-med students and biology undergraduates will be drawn in by how fascinating science is rather than seeing it as this awful thing to get through in order to get to medical school. Usually the kind of broad-based change recommended in this report is a response to some perceived failure of the current system. Was there a lack of flexibility that you saw in incoming medical students?The drive for this actually came out of a report addressing why American college students don’t go into the biological sciences.
Kemi ba finds the right chemistry for success at CSUB
Mas
I don’t like the cold” said ba who experienced her first-ever snow this past winter while attending a research conference in Utah. Hoping to become a pharmacist she began taking classes at Bakersfield College and then transferred to CSUB. “I changed my major many times but chemistry is what I love” ba added. “Last year I was accepted to a summer research program at UC Santa Cruz where I was introduced to ‘green chemistry’ and was fascinated. Now my ultimate dream is to use research to make clean and renewable energy products very efficient and affordable. Right now solar panels are very expensive but maybe I can find a way to bring the price down so that anyone can access them. Then I want to teach at the college level.
New Light-driven Nanomotor Is Simpler More Promising Scientists Say
Science Daily (press release)
In a paper expected to appear soon in the online edition of the journal Nano Letters the UF team reports building a new type of "molecular nanomotor" driven only by photons or particles of light. While it is not the first photon-driven nanomotor the almost infinitesimal device is the first built entirely with a single molecule of DNA — giving it a simplicity that increases its potential for development manufacture and real-world applications in areas ranging from medicine to manufacturing the scientists say. "It is easy to assemble has fewer parts and theoretically should be more efficient" said Huaizhi Kang a doctoral student in chemistry at UF and the first author of the paper. The scale of the nanomotor is almost vanishingly small. In its clasped or closed form the nanomotor measures 2 to 5 nanometers — 2 to 5 billionths of a meter. In its unclasped form it extends as long as 10 to 12 nanometers. Although the scientists say their calculations show it uses considerably more of the energy in light than traditional solar cells the amount of force it exerts is proportional to its small size.