Author: David Bradley

Search PubChem for Gluconic Acid

Several readers hit the sciencebase.com site searching for gluconic acid. This sugar-like compound occurs naturally in fruit, honey and wine and is used industrially as an acidity regulator in food and drink (E574). It is also used in cleaning products to remove mineral deposits (it is a strong chelating agent for calcium, iron, aluminium, and copper).

Anyway, if you’re after more information and chemical structures of small molecules, you can find more than five million of them using the PubChem search box on ChemSpy.com

Cats aren’t all good

Toxic metals emitted from automotive catalytic converters have been detected in urban air in the USA. The research was carried out by scientists in Sweden working with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The researchers discovered high concentrations of the elements platinum, palladium, rhodium and osmium in air over the Boston metropolitan area. Although these particles are not a serious health risk, evidence suggests they potentially could pose a future danger as worldwide car sales increase from an estimated 50 million in 2000 to more than 140 million in 2050.

Scientists have also detected elevated concentrations of these elements in Europe, Japan, Australia, Ghana, China and Greenland.

Finding ways to “stabilize” these metal particles within the converters “should be a priority to limit their potential impact,” says Sebastien Rauch of Chalmers University of Technology in Goeteborg.

Catalytic converters reduce noxious emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants, but as with all technology there is a counterpoint in this discovery of their constituent elements in the environment. Previously, UK researchers have investigated techniques that could be used to “mine” valuable heavy metals, such as platinum, from road run-off. Whether or not this kind of recycling could ever be viable or whether or not it would reduce atmospheric contamination is still wide open to discussion.

Hoodia gordonii

An extract of the succulent plant, Hoodia gordonii, with the seemingly cryptic name of P57AS3 (or P57 for short) has received a lot of media attention recently because this compound acts as a potent appetite suppressant. Indeed, trials have shown that it reduces daily calorie intake by 1000 kcal. According to Alok Jha writing in The Guardian on December 3, p57 has attracted the attention of food company Unilever having already been investigated by Pfizer and Cambridge-based Phytopharm. This begs the question, why? Surely, the last thing a company that manufactures icecream and such would want to suppress anyone’s appetite…

Anyway, a paper in the journal Brain Research describes p57 as a “steroidal glycoside” with “anorectic activity in animals”. Now, these are technical terms with precise definitions for professionals. Personally, I’d be cautious of taking a product that is essentially a steroid that triggers anorexia, wouldn’t you? Then again, the side-effects of obesity can be far worse. Just remember, if you’re chasing after this purportedly natural compound on the internet, that another infamous appetite suppressant, which goes by the name of cocaine is just as “natural”.

Girls Aloud find the right chemistry

Bet you never thought you’d see a kitchy, yet somehow chic, Brit girl band featuring in the Sciencebase blog!

Well, I couldn’t resist giving the waspish popsters Girls Aloud a mention because their new album due out this week is called “Chemistry”.

Polydor records who promote and press the band say: “Sarah, Nicola, Nadine, Kimberley and Cheryl have made a quirky British pop album. In a genre where girl bands dream of being Destiny’s Vogue, Girls Aloud have made an album that reflects what it’s like to be a 20-something girl living in the UK….blah, blah, blah….”

Like anyone cares, know what I’m sayin? All we really want, what we really, really want is to know that Chemistry also features the new hit single “Biology”.

My friends at the Institute of Physics must be kicking themselves that they didn’t get a mention, but I bet the permanantly poptastic Royal Society of Chemistry with its perpetual penchant for publicity will be rubbing its collective hands with glee as all those teenyboppers start sending in their application forms for membership. Grrrl power to the chemists!

Yeah, right, whateva, d’you fink I’m bovvered?

Black holes are intergalactic

According to a Cambridge U press release just in, the longest ever X-ray observation (1 million seconds) of a galaxy cluster proves that black holes can span intergalactic distances and actually block growth of the largest galaxies.

The Cambridge team has obtained new evidence that black holes are far more powerful cosmic entities than previously thought. Their influence can span vast distances, the researchers claim, heating the gas between galaxies and putting a restraining order on galactic size as stars can only form when gases cool. “It’s as if a heat source the size of a fingernail heats up a region the size of Earth,” team member Andrew Fabian explained.

Don’t you just love these comparisons? Why not say a gas fire heating up Jupiter instead, or an LED heating up the moon, or something equally unimaginable…oh well…the research replete with simile I assume is published in the December “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”. It’s like a single research paper illuminating a pan-galactic civilisation, or not as the case may be.

How to avoid colds and flu

These past few days I’ve felt rather listless, had vaguely aching limbs, a mild headache that comes and goes, and a dull, throbbing ache where I had my flu jab more than a month ago…could it be that I’ve actually caught flu, and that the vaccine has held off the worst of the symptoms? That throbbing pain at the site of the jab seems to be the smoking gun, but I’m not sure whether there is some persistent immune response at the site of an injection that might cause recurrent symptoms when one is struck subsequently by the live virus…

Anyone know for sure? I’d be interested in qualified comments

Meanwhile check out our practical tips on how to avoid colds and flu.

Golden Anniversary for Chemistry News

Reactive Reports, the chemistry Webzine from science writer David Bradley and software company ACD/Labs, celebrate its fiftieth issue this month. The Webzine grew from discussions between ACD/Labs VP and Chief Science Officer Antony Williams and David Bradley and were aimed at finding a way to bring the best chemistry news to a growing Web audience.

The first issue was published in September 1999 and covered issues that are as topical today as they were then – novel anticancer drugs from natural products, how to improve battery life to cut energy costs, and nanotechnology for building the next generation of electronics.

Reactive Reports has picked up several prestigious awards in its almost seven-year history including being a finalist in the Pirelli Awards for the innovative use of multimedia in science, a Scientific American sci-tech Web award, and a Scout Report Selection.

The Webzine’s growing archive now contains more than 200 chemistry news items as well a humor section, reviews of 150 chemistry Websites, and a links section to point readers to other useful chemistry resources.

With Issue 50, Reactive Reports changes course slightly, gone are the Star Picks and in their place we present a new profile section featuring a different chemical innovator each month. This month it’s chemical Web pioneer Peter Murray-Rust of the University of Cambridge who has much to say about open source issues and how chemists can make the most of new technology.

We also have the usual round-up of chemistry news and a news feature on Chmoogle the chemical search engine.

We hope the new format of Reactive Reports will make the next 50 issues even more educational and stimulating for our readers. Get a sneak preview of Issue 50 and check our reactions now!

Seeing Red

If you ever wondered what happened to RedNova then you need look no further, it signed the deedpoll and changed its name to RedOrbit, which has a much more esoteric but newsy I reckon. Anyway, it’s still got the great content, breaking world news in almost every field, and some fantastic images. The Discovery of the Day is an absolute treat. Today it was an Idea LED Maple Clock, which looks like a wooden brick with red LEDs, but makes a total change from all that brushed aluminium effect and translucent plastic that seems to be the order of the day for gadgets (iPods excepted, of course).

Nice to see their Quiz Me feature has a chemical question! Elemental, my dear Doctor…

Kissing Tips

Interesting piece of research turned up in a recent PubMed search about the benefits of kissing on allergic response and how kissing can reduce prick test response to house dust mite and cedar pollen in susceptible individuals. It’s not new and subsequent work has shown that people with food allergies who kiss someone who has eaten foodstuffs to which they’re allergic can suffer nasty consequences. Still, it gives us a chance to show a Rodin sculpture on sciencebase (next month, I’ll drag out my mistletoe photographs, if someone adds a comment to this item to remind me)

Flight of the humble bee

By combining videos of free-flying honeybees with information from robotic models, researchers have come up with a sweet solution to explain the aerodynamics of bee flight.

Most flying insects beat their wings in large strokes to help them fly. But certain types of bee have to be different.

Michael Dickinson and colleagues demonstrated that honeybees fly using much shorter strokes (approximately degrees) and beat them faster than is to be expected based on the size of the bee. Aside from exploiting the effects of the wings rapidly changing at the start of each stroke, it also means that the bees’ buzz is of a much higher frequency than it should be.

By using a high-frequency, low-amplitude stroke, honeybees can gain a much wider range of aerodynamic power than other insects, which comes in handy when they’re loaded up with pollen.

Not exactly a story for the onset of winter here, but it got me buzzing (Hah!)