Chemistry – Page 61 – David Bradley

Horseradish Down on the Farm – How Saucy

pig-swine-flu A mixture of horseradish and peroxide can (apparently) dampen swine farm odours.

According to news from the American Chemical Society, as cities expand, encroaching suburbanites are raising a stink about unpleasant odors emanating from neighbouring hog farms. But a simple, inexpensive concoction of horseradish root and hydrogen peroxide developed by Pennsylvania State University researchers could help deodorize swine and other animal manure, perhaps putting an end to a festering war of the noses.

“The problem of odors from farm manure has never been solved. Yet it is a problem that needs to be addressed given the strain it puts on the increasing number of people living nearby,” says Jerzy Dec, “Our new approach is a very simple method that doesn’t really take a lot of time, money or effort to do.”

In laboratory studies, Dec and his colleagues mixed horseradish root – purchased at a vegetable market – with hydrogen peroxide. Horseradish root contains large amounts of peroxidase, an enzyme that when combined with peroxide neutralizes phenols. Phenols are chemical compounds that are a common source of odors in manure.

A panel of six trained odor evaluators randomly sniffed treated and untreated manure samples. Overall, the panelists found the samples treated with the horseradish mixture had odors about 50 percent less intense than untreated ones. Chemical analysis indicated the deodorizing effects lasted for at least 72 hours.

In pilot-scale tests, the horseradish mixture effectively deodorized more than 50 gallons of hog manure, Dec says. Larger tests are planned.

I was going to say this has got to be hogwash…but then that’s exactly what it is!

Political scientists

Who says science isn’t political? One of my oldest contacts in the world of crystallography recently contacted me about the Petition for Open Data in Crystallography. The initiative, like similar efforts in the realm of genomics, hopes to persuade the curators of crystal structure information (the CSD, ICSD, CRYSMET and ICDD) to provide an open access, “lite” version of their content, crystal data and powder patterns. I’d urge you to take a look and vote on this important issue before the next meeting of the IUCr in August 2005.

Charcoal Production Process

Another intriguing search brought a reader to the sciencebase science news site, they were looking for the charcoal production process apparently, anyway, I don’t believe I have a ready-made article on the subject so instead would like to direct you to the Wikipedia entry on Charcoal.

Another reader was looking for the molecular structure of oxygen. In molecular form it is either O₂ (the stuff we breathe, dioxygen) or O₃ (ozone, the stuff it’s best not to breathe, but without which we’d all fry under the sun’s UV), but it oxygen also has radical and ionic forms. Again, Wikipedia is a good place to look for such information – Oxygen

Chemistry of Popping Popcorn

If you’re like me, you loathe having to pick out the unpopped kernels from a big stack of popcorn. Now, one of the most powerful techniques in chemical science, X-ray diffraction, could lead to a much more satisfying experience next time you settle down with a bucket of popcorn. The technique has provided new insights into why some popcorn kernels pop and why others are dysfunctional.

According to Bruce Hamaker, crystallographer Rangaswamy Chandrasekaran and colleagues at the Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research and Department of Food Science, Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, moisture loss from popcorn kernels is the underlying cause of much disappointment and broken teeth for fans of the puffed corn product. There can be no worse sensation than when reaching the bottom of a bucket of popcorn you pluck out a few unpopped kernels rather than the expanded seeds. Indeed, unpopped kernels could be said to be one of life’s great tragedies. More…

Meanwhile, the chemistry of popping popcorn aside, here’s a video showing you how to make popcorn with your iPhone:

UPDATE: Lifehacker has a nice simple method on how to filter out the unpopped kernels from microwaveable popcorn.

Jonathan Goodman

My chemical colleague Jonathan Goodman was kind enough to allow me to syndicate Chem Inf Letts on the Sciencebase site, so I thought I’d give him another plug in the SciObs blog and see if we can knock the “other” JG off the search engines’ top slot for the Prof’s name. After all, a chemistry professor, in my humble opinion, is a far more relevant character for the search engine’s to list at number one than the other guy (even if he is a maths professor!)

Couple of Weeks Ago

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the news (in The Alchemist on ChemWeb.com) that NASA scientists had announced evidence of life on Mars. Thence followed withdrawals, denials, and retribution. Apparently, the announcement was pre-emptive of a paper in Nature and the scientists and NASA having realised their faux pas, allegedly then claimed not to have staked a claim for life on Mars after all. space.com who made the original announcement then published a follow-up that effectively retracted the claim. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has been making its own proclamations: ESA – Science – Chances of life are linked to water and the media is full of it. Could it be that the publishers of Nature were simply trying to keep editorial control of such earth (or should that be mars) shattering results. It’s pretty unlikely, but the truth will likely emerge in the next week or so, as the pressure builds…

Ranitidine and other molecules

Occasionally, I get queries from students asking me where they can find the structure of this or that compound, usually it’s something like sildenafil (Viagra), ranitidine (Zantac), or rofecoxib (Vioxx) and is pertinent to their current chemistry homework assignment.

There are lots of databases on the web that contain great swathes of molecular structures including some that I wrote about for Nature recently, such as PubChem. But, another place to start your search might be Molecular Heaven or ChemSpider.com

But, what I don’t understand is why students cannot use the search engines, surely the easiest option would be to type in “molecular model” or structure and the name of the compound. When I tried molecular model ranitidine, the first hit had a molecular structure and loads of other information on the anti-ulcer drug. Of course, with ChemSpider you will likely get more curated data together with more detailed information, so perhaps I’ve answered my own question in that regard.

POST UPDATED: ChemSpider information added September 16, 2008

Oak Aged Mythology

Oak aged mythology – According to recent research at the Public University of Navarre, wine makers get no benefit to their product from leaving wines to mature in oak casks for more than a year. In fact, chemical analysis showed that levels of aromatics in the wine from the oak casks begin to decrease if the wine is left to mature for too long. Legislation insists that Gran Reserva wines be kept for 18 months, but science shows that this isn’t based on sound chemical principles.

Jonathan Goodman

Jonathan Goodman tells me that “Most highly strained molecules have small rings, and most explosive molecules have nitrogen and oxygen atoms close to carbon and each other so they can rearrange easily.” However, when he asks chemists if they can think of a molecule which would spontaneously fall apart, even though it contains only carbon and hydrogen, there are four bonds to every carbon and one to each hydrogen, there are only single bonds, and there are no rings, the usual response is that all such molecules should be stable. His paper shows that this is incorrect, even for rather simple molecules.” Check out his paper on this in J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2005, 45, 81-87 (DOI: 10.1021/ci0497657) You can access the paper by pasting the DOI into the sciencebase DOI lookup tool

Green Fluorescent Protein

The eerie green glow of a jellyfish protein is perhaps nothing sinister, but the anti-science lobby will be having a field day when they hear about the latest amazing research underway at Rockefeller University.

There, Albert Libchaber’s team has created a vesicle that can express genes as if it were a living cell, and in particular the gene for the jellyfish’s green fluorescent protein (GFP). The artificial cell comprises lipids from egg white, various bits of E. coli, and a viral enzyme for good measure.

All of which, to many non-scientists, will sound like a Sci-Fi recipe for disaster. The reason for using GFP is that it provides such an obvious indicator of success, just imagine the headlines if they had used the gene for botulin or some other deadly bacterium. Indeed, who’s to say they haven’t? Watch out for another Michael Crichton blockbuster coming to a bookstore near you soon…

UPDATE: The discovery and development of GFP has won three US scientists the https://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/nobel-prize-for-chemistry-2008.html.