Chemistry – Page 51 – David Bradley

Lead in China’s children

Researchers in Beijing have carried out a meta-analysis of AAS and ICP-MS results published during 1994-2004 to obtain a countrywide picture of how the level of lead in children’s blood is changing and how where they live effects their exposure to this toxic element.

Perhaps predictably, the team found that those children living in urban or industrial regions had much higher levels of lead than those living in rural areas. The figures they reviewed also contrast sharply with the children’s western counterparts who have much lower lead levels on average. The issue is a matter of significant public health importance for China, the researchers say.

Exposure to lead can affect the central nervous system and affect learning ability and growth. It is ubiquitous in the environment and can be absorbed in the human body by inhalation and ingestion from a variety of sources such as contaminated water, soil, food, lead-containing products such as paint and from vehicle exhausts in areas where tetra-ethyl lead is still used as engine an anti-knocking agent.

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Anaerobics class

A QSPR (quantitative structure-property relationship) study of the anaerobic biodegradation of chlorophenols could lead to an improvement in the disposal of these potentially carcinogenic industrial waste products.

Youzhi Dai, Dasen Yang, Fei Zhu, Lanyan Wu, Xiangzheng Yang, and Jianhua Li of the Department of Environmental Engineering, at Xiangtan University, People’s Republic of China have based their analysis on quantum chemical and physicochemical descriptors, using partial least squares analysis to obtain a good prediction of the QSPR for the disappearance rate constant (logK) of chlorophenols (CPs) in an anaerobic microbial culture.

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True blue electric blue

polymer-led-mullen Wide angle X-ray scattering, photoluminescence, polarizing optical microscopy, differential calorimetry, and dielectric spectroscopy have been used to study the optical properties of a range of blue-light emitting organic compounds. The mechanism of the self-assembly of these oligoindenofluorenes up to the polymer, their thermal properties, and associated molecular dynamics also reveal important clues about their behaviour and potential for applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS) and other devices.

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A peak you reach

Rather than relying on MRI and follow-up biopsy to provide information about a suspect abnormality in the breast, researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have demonstrated in preliminary trials that NMR spectroscopy could be used to significantly reduce the number of biopsies required to detect the early stages of breast cancer. NMR can lock on to the choline peak associated with malignancy during the MRI scan.

Lia Bartella MD and her colleagues found that NMR could reduce the need for biopsy by 58%. They demonstrated that 23 of 40 suspicious lesions could have been spared biopsy, and none of the resultant cancers would have been missed, in a study group. “All cancers in this study were identified with MR spectroscopy,” explains Bartella, “There were no false-negative results. These results should encourage more women to take this potentially life-saving test.”

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Alchemical musings

In my guise as ChemWeb’s Alchemist this week I report on how there may be no need for a magic bullet in cancer chemotherapy and a basic (as opposed to acidic) approach could be all that is needed. Also spotted a smashing discovery that could explains glassy substances and precludes an ideal standard for physicists.

The Alchemists all sees the swirling clouds clearing as various holes in the ozone layer finally seem to be on the mend, and we learn of a co-polymer that not only fends off barnacles but can smell nice too.

Finally, spontaneous chiral resolution with achiral ligands.

Google Pharmacy Phake

You know how keen Google is to expand it’s breadth? Well, how about this, it seems it’s swapped the oo in it’s logo for some ooh-la-la, in the shape of two blue diamonds stamped Pfizer.

Before you rush to get stocked up on tamiflu and viagra, however, check out The Register article on Google Pharmacy which reveals it to be a front for a fake drugs seller. How do they know it’s a fake seller, well they claim to be able to provide generic versions of dozens of drugs that are not yet off-patent, that’s how.

The spam that arrived advertising Google Pharmacy stated: “We’ve just launched a pharmaceutical interfaces for Google, as well as several new features for the people buying pills and using pharmaceutical interfaces”. Poor grammar aside, you just can rest assured that it was definitely not the real thing right from the start. Or, could you?

According to an unrelated article on WebProNews, the sponsored Googlads that appear when you search for the likes of “Vicodin” or “Oxycontin” are not necessarily from fully legitimate companies either. Some of these sites, which appear above and to the side of search results in the popular search engine, are selling direct drugs that usually require a doctor’s prescription.

Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, is according to WebProNews, talking with Google about a third-party service that will help them differentiate between rogue and legitimate pharmacies.

It will be interesting to see whether that works out, or whether the pharma spammers and scammers will simply find a way around it.

Round solution to a salty problem

Have you ever been frustrated by salt in humid weather? The little cubic grains get all sticky and clump together and won’t leap on to your seaside fish and chips no matter how hard you shake the salt shaker. The simple solution is simply to not use salt, after all they repeatedly tell us too much salt is bad for us.

Indian chemists worried that was too simple a solution of have come up with a way to make round salt that could be a boon to consumers and industry. According to an ACS news release, round salt represents a dream come true for researchers who have strived for years to smooth the shape of common salt.

Table salt (sodium chloride) adopts a cubic close-packed crystal structure and so the crystals themselves normally exist as cubes. Pushpito Ghosh, P. Dastidar and colleagues at the Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Bhavnagarwere not happy with this and have devised a method for making large quantities of salt in an almost spherical, bead-like, form. They describe how in the July 5 issue of Crystal Growth & Design. They use glycine to modify the crystal growht process and effectively force the sodium chloride crystals to grow at different rates on different crystal faces, so they end up with a different symmetry.

In this novel round form, rhombic dodecahedral, to be strict, salt can flow much more freely, without caking, that claggy effect of humid summer weather, which is great news for fish and chip fans. A bigger market may be industries that store and use sodium chloride by the tonne to make everything from bulk chemicals to dyes, fertilizers, paper and pharmaceuticals. For these companies, non-caking salt would flow more freely on the production line.

Free flowing or not, it doesn’t round off the problem of whether or not salt is good or bad for you.

Chirality – panda thumb

The chirality of life, an issue I’ve discussed on numerous occasions in these and other pages, emerges as yet another source of pseudo-science for the intelligent design lobby. Apparently, the bias in handedness among the molecules of life – amino acids, DNA, etc, could not have arisen spontaneously without a guiding hand…

An interesting discussion on this very subject is underway at The Panda’s Thumb blog, it will be interesting to see where it leads. However, my own interviews with chemists on this subject over the years point to a wide range of natural phenomena that could have led to the emergence of the chiral bias with no need to invoke a supernatural hand.

Tequila time!

Back online after a short break and catching up with my various articles that have published while I was away!

So, in the latest issue of Reactive Reports you can read about a testing times for tequila, whether celebrating Cinco de Mayo or just having another relaxing day in Margaritaville. The new chemical test could be the assurance you need that the bottle you’re downing is genuine tequila. Also in this issue, we find out how to test the byproducts of cell death, get the fizz on the benzene in soft drinks story, and follow the life and times of cheminformatics expert Wendy Warr.

Elemental Discoveries – the first chemistry webzine 1995-

This is the old Current Issue page for David Bradley’s Elemental Discoveries, which he launched in December 1995 and ran as part of sciencebase.com when it was launched in July 1999. Below is an archive of titles up to June 2006 issue. You can get more up-to-date listings of science articles here.

To celebrate a decade on the web, I re-launched Elemental Discoveries as an all-new Science News and Blog section within Sciencebase. You can grab our RSS newsfeed to keep up to date, or pick a specific subject feed to get just those posts in your area of interest, whether that’s astronomy, chemistry, sex, or whatever. Below you will find our selection of the best of the blog each month archived up to June 2006.

Archives:

In Issue 93:
June 2006
Coffee and alcohol, The erotic brain, Sperm and eggs

In Issue 92:
May 2006
Llama Caffeine Dip Test, Taxol to a T, Artificial Sweeteners and Cancer, Zoo Poo

In Issue 91:
April 2006
Sex Gets Up Women’s Noses, Carbon Nanosheets, Interview with Martin Walker

In Issue 90:
March 2006
Critical Trials TGN1412, Interview with Steve Bryant, Black Eyed Peas

In Issue 89:
February 2006
Loud music and ecstasy, Uber Pluto, Face Off, Sporty Nanotubes

In Issue 88:
January 2006
Keep Eating Your Greens, Promise of a Rain Garden, Say NO to Straddling Molecules, , Review: Avoiding a Hacking Nightmare
This is the archive of the original Elemental Discoveries as it operated from Spring 1996 until the beginning of 2006:

In Issue 87:
December 2005
Father Christmas Research – seasonal family trees
Healthy Pregnancy – Pregnant women should exercise more
Asthma Treatment (ebook) – asthma relief

In Issue 86:
November 2005
Massive black hole – is it or isn’t it?
How to avoid colds and flu – perfectly timed perennial tips
Women in Science – Short review of the story of Dorothea Bate, unearthed

In Issue 85:
October 2005
Bird flu symptoms – why shouldn’t all get in a flap over avian influenza (just yet)

In Issue 84:
September 2005
Scientific Research in the Past – What do museum researchers get up to

In Issue 83:
August 2005
Weights and Measures – Understanding changing fundamental constants

In Issue 82:
June-July 2005
Corporate Academia – science at the commercial end from the people who straddle the divide
Movie physics – science at the movies from the people who put it there
Extreme science – science at the extremities from the people who know

In Issue 81:
May issue of Elemental Discoveries
Automated image sorting – software that does for pictures what OCR does for text
Embargoed news story – revisiting an old issue

In Issue 80:
April 2005 Mechanism of muscle contraction
Adenosine triphosphate, muscle and myosin
h2h TV
Topics in Thermodynamics
Drugs on the internet

In Issue 79:
March 2005 Folding Protein Sensors
X -ray Movies
Material comforts for cyclists.

In earlier issues:
Digging in the dirt – liquid crystals under the illuminating gaze of the Advanced Photon Source
Ibogaine against alcohol and drug addiction – cure-all or hallucinogenic red herring
The latest physics research – into Einstein’s Brownian motion
Spyware, trojans and worms – computer security and viral updates
Envirox fuel catalyst – UK bus fleet equipped with “green” catalyst
Active galactic nuclei – quasars, black holes and galaxies, Royal Society report from David Bradley
Dissecting the atom – Research at ANL’s APS – annual report entry by David Bradley

Catalytic clues – More ANL APS scientific results
SAXS and the water channel – Ditto
Are films ferroelectric? – Yes, according to APS results
Discipline for gold nanocrystals – More good science at the Advanced Photon Source
X-rays shed light on machinery of photosynthesis – another? Yes!
Engineering a solution for gene therapy with plasmid DNA – One more, for now.
Epilepsy research update Guest writer Michael Marshall the epilepsy’s window on the brain
Does the MMR vaccine cause autism? Michael Marshall clarifies the controversy.
More medical news headlines here.
Distribution, that’s the name of the game – Distributed, or Grid, computing
Contractual Obligation – An increasing trend towards the all too casual employment
A hands-on approach to forensic science – The examination of handwritten documents
Deep-sea exploration – How do scientists cope under pressure? In the depths of the ocean?
The growing problem of biopiracy – Attempts to patent and commercialise
Accidents will happen – human reactions to chemicals and biological reagents
Predicting climate change – As carbon dioxide levels double