Category: 6. Chemistry

by Julie Wurth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Credit: Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) In a breakthrough for environmentally friendly chemical production, researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) have developed an economical way to make succinic acid, an important industrial chemical,…

Graphical abstract. Credit: Environmental Science & Technology (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.2c05642 A team of A*STAR scientists has made a significant breakthrough in understanding how perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is processed by the human body. Led by Dr. James Chan, Junior Principal Investigator at A*STAR’s Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) and the A*STAR Skin… Continue…

Theoreticians have developed a new method for calculating molecular transition rates on non-trivial energy landscapes. Their slimline approach not only reduces intractable many-body mechanics to manageable computations, but also lets them quantify the individual phenomena that assist or hinder transitions.1 Many-body quantum mechanics forms the mathematical basis for understanding molecular behaviour. But while it is…

The 2023 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for their work on techniques that enable scientists to track the movement of electrons on ultrafast timescales. The Nobel committee that picked the winners cited the trio’s work on ‘experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for…

The announcement will be live here on Wednesday, 4 October, 10:45 BST (at the earliest). Watch live and join in with our Nobel prize bingo. The bingo card below is randomly generated, so is likely to be unique to you – this means you can play along with friends. While you’re watching, click any…

On 14 September, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) non-prescription drug advisory committee (NDAC) unanimously agreed that orally administered phenylephrine does not work as a nasal decongestant. The decision kicks off a long process of consultation on the drug’s continued use. Phenylephrine is included in hundreds of over-the-counter (OTC) cold and flu remedies worldwide,…

An unprecedented four-electron carbon intermediate has been isolated and characterised by researchers in the US. The team used a two-step approach to remove the non-bonding electrons from a stable carbene intermediate to create a crystalline doubly oxidised carbene. Carbenes were first discovered at the beginning of the 20th century but their extreme reactivity made them…

In a previous study, we found that DART-MS is particularly suitable for the detection of nicotine22. As shown in Fig. 1, nicotine adsorbed on the surface of various objects from air polluted with tobacco smoke can be detected with high sensitivity and intensity by the DART ion source. Figure 1 DART-MS spectrum of a piece of…