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Immortal Styrofoam meets its match: Scientists find bacteria that eats material, turns it into usable plastic
MSNBC Mar 7
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11714663/
Despite being made 95 percent of air, Styrofoam plastic’s manufactured immortality has posed a problem for recycling efforts. More than 3 million tons of the durable material is produced every year in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Very little of it is recycled. Help may come from bacteria that have been found to eat Styrofoam material and turn it into usable plastic. ... Kevin O’Connor of University College Dublin and his colleagues heated polystyrene foam, the generic name for Styrofoam plastic, to convert it to styrene oil. ... A synthetic form is used in car parts and electronic components. Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates). PHA can be used to make plastic forks and packaging film. It is resistant to heat, grease, and oil. It also lasts a long time. But unlike Styrofoam plastic, PHA biodegrades in soil and water. The process will be detailed in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.

“Nano-skin” could create super-bendy screens
United Press International Mar 3
A flexible polymer infused with billions of carbon nanotubes could be used to make incredibly bendy displays and other novel electronic devices, researchers say. The “nano-skin” polymer was created by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, US. Nanotubes are excellent electrical conductors and group member Swastik Kar says the material may well be used to build highly efficient electronic parts for highly flexible electronic displays. “Researchers have long been interested in making composites of nanotubes and polymers, but it can be difficult to engineer the interfaces between the two materials,” says Pulickel Ajayan, who headed the RPI research team. The research is published in the March 2006 edition of the journal Nano Letters.

Your health: Pucker power
The Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada) Mar 7
Eating a red or white grapefruit daily may lower lipid levels for some people, according to a recent study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Fruits and vegetables top most lists of foods that may help keep cholesterol levels in line, with people advised to eat at least five servings a day. This study looked at the effect grapefruit might have. … Those who ate red grapefruit also lowered their triglyceride levels. Lipid levels did not change for the group that did not eat grapefruit.

Brown rice can lower your blood pressure
Hindustan Times Mar 3
Washington, D.C.—A new study has revealed that rice bran lowers blood pressure in rats, as scientists in Japan have shown that this waste product of rice processing, called rice bran, significantly lowers blood pressure in rats whose hypertension resembles that of humans. The team reports their findings in the March 8 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. Researchers at Tohoku University and Japan’s National Research Institute of Brewing demonstrated that adding rice bran to the diets of hypertensive, stroke-prone rats lowered the animals’ systolic blood pressure by about 20 percent and, via the same mechanism, inhibited angiotensin-1 converting enzyme, or ACE.” There’s much work being done on various bran fractions to nail down any health benefits,” says the journal’s editor, James Seiber, Ph.D., who is also director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Western Regional Research Center in Davis, Calif. “This particular paper caught my attention for two reasons: the potential of bringing a waste product like rice bran into beneficial use, and the way the group went about their study with good controlled experiments using an appropriate model.”

Japanese researchers find new way to make Tamiflu
Reuters Mar 2
TOKYO—A team of Japanese researchers has developed a new way of producing the anti-flu drug Tamiflu that does not rely on natural ingredients and may help ensure more stable supplies, the head of the team said. Tamiflu, produced by Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG, is considered one of the best defenses against bird flu in humans, and there are fears of a possible shortage in the event of a global flu pandemic. In a finding that may eventually lessen risks of a shortage, Professor Masakatsu Shibasaki of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences said his team had found a way to make Tamiflu without using shikimic acid, which is produced from a spice called star anise. By using a chemical ingredient instead, the new method eliminates weather as a risk factor in Tamiflu production, Shibasaki said in a telephone interview this week. “If things go well, I hope we may be able to pave the way toward giving supplies to society in around two years,” Shibasaki said, adding that he would soon submit a paper on his team’s findings to the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Method for identifying molecules studied
United Press International (UPI) Mar 1
DURHAM, N.C.—Duke University theoretical chemists are investigating a new way to identify the best molecules for drugs, electronic devices, or an array of other uses.
The new computer method would address the fact that “there aren’t enough atoms in the universe to make all the reasonable-sized molecules that could be made,” said Chemistry Professor David Beratan. Their technique—for which they are seeking a patent—focuses on a certain universal property of molecules. Called a “linear combination of atomic potentials,” the property is applicable to all molecules. The research was detailed in the Feb. 17 online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Little green molecules: Chemists have invented a new class of catalysts that can destroy some of the worst pollutants before they get into the environment
Scientific American Mar 2006 by Terrence J. Collins and Chip Walter
The fish that live in the Anacostia River, which flows through the heart of Washington, D.C., are not enjoying its waters very much. The Anacostia is contaminated with the molecular remnants of dyes, plastics, asphalt, and pesticides. Recent tests have shown that up to 68 percent of the river’s brown bullhead catfish suffer from liver cancer. … The Anacostia is just one of dozens of severely polluted rivers in the U.S. The textile industry alone discharges 53 billion gallons of wastewater—loaded with reactive dyes and other hazardous chemicals—into America’s rivers and streams every year. New classes of pollutants are turning up in the nation’s drinking water: traces of drugs, pesticides, cosmetics, and even birth-control hormones. … Fortunately, help is on the way. … As outlined by the Green Chemistry Institute of the American Chemical Society, the first principle of this community is: “It is better to prevent waste than to treat it after it has been created.”

Library leaders press colleges to archive online journals
The Chronicle of Higher Education March by Andrea L. Foster
Some library leaders are urging colleges and academic libraries to take action to preserve online scholarly journals, saying they could vanish into oblivion should publishers go out of business or face other calamities. … Unlike print journals, which libraries own and can keep forever, electronic journals are provided to libraries under a kind of lease.  Brian D. Crawford, chairman of the executive council of the Association of American Publishers’ professional and scholarly division, says, “publishers embrace a call for innovative solutions to ensuring long-term preservation and access” to electronic journals and added that “many publishers are doing this now.” Mr. Crawford, who is also the senior vice president for journal publishing at the American Chemical Society, said the council could not speak for its members on the issue of making archival deposit a condition of licensing journals.

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