RSC - Advancing the Chemical Sciences


Chemistry World

 

News December 2004


Fungi get the micro treatment

Novel formulation for cereal farmers


Lighting up the science debate

November 10th was a busy day at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.


Record Breakers

Record breakers

Materials scientists at the University of Oxford, UK, are poised to join the Guinness World Records hall of fame with their latest breakthrough - the world's smallest test tube.


Sanofi-Aventis opens for business

The merger of French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Synthelabo with its Franco-German rival Aventis to create the largest pharmaceutical company in Europe has been formally approved...


If you can't stand the heat...

Michelin-starred chef builds his own lab and funds a new PhD


Ionic liquids pair up for catalysis

Researchers have taken a key step towards rationalising the solvent properties of ionic liquids (ILs), which are composed entirely of ions and have been hailed the 'green' solvents...


20 years after Bhopal

Campaigners in India and worldwide have been making plans for a concerted effort to mark the 20th anniversary of the methyl isocyanate gas leak from a Union Carbide (UC) pesticide ...


Drug developers face discrimination charge

Historically, members of the Black and Asian communities have been under-represented in clinical trials, but tailoring drug development to race wouldn't redress any imbalance, say ...


CIA's Hackitt in Shanghai

UK fact-finding mission to China


Proteomics in a spin

Why turn to tens of thousands of pounds-worth of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipment when a standard bench centrifuge will do? It's a question posed following t...


Crossing the boundaries

RSC to launch new journals


Technical trouble

Paul Boateng, chief secretary to the Treasury in the UK, has called on politicians and scientists to recognise the importance of further education (FE) in the UK.


Under the hammer

Those wanting to make a quick buck could do worse than raiding their old schools' chemistry laboratories. An RSC periodic table poster recently sold for a staggering £6000, with a ...


A pheromone a day keeps the midges away

Chemical ecologists have taken a key step towards understanding the sex life of a notorious insect pest. The discovery spells good news for apple growers.


Palatial surroundings for EuCheMS launch

European chemists gathered recently in the former home of late, disgraced RSC fellow Elena Ceausescu to launch the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS...


Nano balls and bowls

Understanding half-buckyballs has potential for new materials


Locating a poison

It's a diet of toxic beetles for some frogs and birds


Long-distance relationships

New work on information transfer in molecules sheds light on enzyme reactivity


MS treatment all in the timing

Thyroid hormone therapy could help reverse demyelination


Screening at the flick of a riboswitch

Directed molecular evolution paves the way to decaffeinated coffee plants


Sweet centres

Dendrimers with sugar interiors could be used as enzyme mimics


Aircraft clouding the skies

Cirrus cloud formation may be affected by wet exhaust soot


Softly, softly approach to analysis

New SERS probe for biological samples


Did volcanoes help life erupt?

Early peptides could have been formed from amino acids in volcanic gas


Length matters for carbon nanotubes

Long carbon nanotubes hold promise for new composite materials


catalyst

Catalytic behaviour

Small changes mean big effects for designer catalysts


Hanging out with single droplets

Aerosol measurements are improved with optical tweezers


Making bonds all over again

Recycling catalysts brings new dimension to carbon-carbon bond formation


Toxic oxygen

Toxic products in biological systems linked to applied magnetic fields


Nanotubes roll out the blue carpet

Sapphire provides the ideal surface for templated growth of nanotubes


One state not enough for liquid phosphorus

X-ray studies reveal molten phosphorus existing in two different density states


The birds, the bees and the platypuses

Complex genetics of platypus sex determination - part bird, part mammal


Nanotechnologists employ algal architects

Natural diatom skeletons form a scaffold for artificial nano constructs


Microchips killed the radio star

Scientists from the US have adapted standard equipment used for making vinyl records to assemble cell networks and produce microfluidic structures.


Careful chlorine measurements

Researchers in the US have reported a new robust system to measure accurately very low concentrations of chlorine in fossil fuels.


Perfect peak separation

A new technique looks set to surprise analytical chemists and revolutionise ion chromatography.


Boat-shaped by design

A miniature protein with a stable folded boat-shaped structure has been designed by a team of Indian chemists.


Metal mimics

German scientists have made progress in the quest to mimic the activity of catechol oxidase, the copper-containing enzyme found in fungi, bacteria and plants.


Buckyballs get a soft landing

When the 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry went to the discoverers of C60, or 'buckyballs' as they were affectionately known, the fullerenes suddenly shot to superstar status. And inte...


Macromolecular menagerie

How polymers, whether man-made or biological, organise themselves into structures ranging in size from nanometres to micrometres was the subject of a Faraday Discussion meeting, Se...


New ligand on the block

UK scientists have found an alternative to the cyclopentadienyl (Cp) ligand, historically the dominating anion in olefin polymerisation catalysis.


A-peeling polymers

Researchers at the University of Hull, UK, have developed a new self-assembly technique to make arrays of microlenses.


Searching for drugs

A new set of simple empirical rules for drug design that avoids any 'wet' chemistry or complicated calculations has been mooted by chemists in Cambridge, UK.