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One tequila, two tequila, real tequila?
USA Today (online) May 7
….Nothing ruins a visit to Chi-Chi's faster than an adulterated margarita, but a study appearing in the June 14 Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society, details a new test to detect fake tequila. "Because of frequent fraud (e.g., adulteration with grain spirits), the authenticity control of Agave spirits is of a high concern," notes the study….. In the study, led by German chemist Dirk Lachenmeier of the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory of Karlsruhe, 31 samples of various tequilas were analyzed for the presence of the various compounds mentioned above. Oxalates varied wildly, says the study, but the concentration of the other compounds was significantly higher in all of the high-quality tequilas. Using this knowledge, the scientists described a spectroscope test that can chemically distinguish high from low-quality tequila in two minutes. (The story also ran on WTOP radio in Wash. DC)

Scientists tout switchgrass as gasoline alternative: Abundant wild plant has high ethanol yield
Edmonton Journal (Alberta) May 6, by Charles Mandel
With gas prices steadily climbing, several American academics are advocating not just a switch, but switchgrass as a solution. The perennial tall grass, which is found in Manitoba, Ontario and throughout the United States, may be the answer to high pump prices and dependence on fossil fuels, contend three researchers at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. A study published in the American Chemical Society's journal, Environmental Science & Technology, calls for more ethanol produced from switchgrass rather than from corn.

Seekers of black cohosh may be getting something else
The Philadelphia Inquirer (online) May 1 by Tom Avril
The scientific jury is still out on whether black cohosh, a popular herbal supplement said to alleviate hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms, really works. But a new study suggests that what some U.S. consumers are buying isn't black cohosh at all, but a related herb grown in Asia. The Asian species is used in traditional Chinese medicine but is not said to have any effect on menopausal symptoms. In the study, published last month in an online edition of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, authors said 3 of 11 samples purchased were of the Asian variety. A fourth contained a mix of both herbs. The remaining seven were indeed black cohosh, but there was a wide range in the levels of compounds reputed to be beneficial. The samples, mostly purchased at stores in the New York City area, were analyzed using a technique called liquid chromatography. The authors came from City University of New York, Columbia University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Pesticides discovered in tobacco smoke
The Jerusalem Post Apr 27 by Judy Seigel
The discovery in the US that tobacco smoke contains carcinogenic pesticides did not surprise the Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking, which demands that the Health Ministry recognize tobacco products as "drugs" and requires that manufacturers list all their harmful ingredients on a printed insert in each packet. Council chairman Amos Hausner was referring to news just issued by the Colorado School of Mines that previously undetected pesticides in tobacco smoke were discovered by its researchers and published online in the American Chemical Society journal, Analytical Chemistry….. Researchers John Dane, Crystal Havey and Kent Voorhees reported that using electron monochromator-mass spectrometry, they found three pesticides - suspected of being toxic to the human endocrine system as well as carcinogenic - in a wide sampling of experimental and commercial cigarette smoke samples. The three nitro-containing pesticides, commonly used in tobacco farming practices, survive the combustion process when cigarettes are lit and smoked, they wrote. None of the three pesticides has been previously reported in either the mainstream or sidestream (passive) smoke from current US tobacco…. "No information exists for long-term low-level inhalation exposures to these compounds," said Voorhees, "and no data exists to establish the possible synergistic effect of these pesticides with each other, or with the other 4,700-plus compounds that have been identified in tobacco smoke."

Nano World: Nanotubes may unfold proteins
UPI (United Press International) Apr 25 by Charles Q. Choi
NEW YORK-Bottling proteins in nanotubes may cause them to unfold, which may drive researchers exploring nanotubes as drug-delivery vehicles to rethink their strategies, experts told UPI's Nano World. These findings could have greater implications when it comes to our understanding of how proteins are assembled by nature's own nanotechnology, the organic machinery that synthesizes and folds proteins, added researcher Vijay Pande, a biophysical chemist and structural biologist at Stanford University in California….Scientists worldwide are experimenting with nanotubes and other hollow nanoparticles as packages to carry drugs into cells. Pande and his colleagues reported their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

A cheaper way to fight the flu
Science Magazine Apr 26
Making oseltamivir, the antiviral drug that has become the world's first-line defense if an influenza pandemic strikes, is a long and complicated process. But in papers published online yesterday by the Journal of the American Chemical Society, two research teams say they have found alternative synthetic routes that could make oseltamivir--better known by its brand name Tamiflu--easier to produce and perhaps affordable for developing countries too…. An easier synthesis could help. In one of the new studies, Harvard chemist and Nobel laureate Elias Corey describes a synthetic pathway that starts with 1,3-butadiene and acrylic acid, "two of the cheapest things you can buy," Corey says; as an additional advantage, the route avoids an intermediate, explosive step in the current production process. A team led by Corey's former student Masakatsu Shibasaki at the University of Tokyo, meanwhile, describes a somewhat longer process that also avoids the expensive starting compounds currently used to make oseltamivir.

Water helps make dense storage devices
PHILADELPHIA, Apr 26 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they have demonstrated a little water can help create ultra-dense storage systems for computers and electronics. A team of experimentalists and theorists at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and Harvard University has proposed a new and surprisingly effective means of stabilizing and controlling ferroelectricity in nanostructures: terminating their surfaces with fragments of water. Ferroelectrics are technologically important "smart" materials for many applications because they have local dipoles, which can switch up and down to encode and store information.
"It is astonishing to see that a single wire of even a few atoms across can act as a stable and switchable dipole memory element," Jonathan Spanier, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Drexel, said. Spanier and his colleagues successfully demonstrated the benefits of using water to stabilize memory bits in segments of oxide nanowires that are only about 3 billionths of a meter wide. The team's work is reported in the April issue of Nano Letters.

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