US president Joe Biden has signed another continuing resolution (CR) to maintain funding for government agencies and avoid a government shutdown for the time being, nearly half a year into the fiscal year, but many science advocates are not celebrating even though this keeps research funders afloat.

Funding the government with short-term continuing resolutions over five months into the fiscal year is dysfunctional, stated Sudip Parikh, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a 4 March statement. With the passage of this CR, Congress yet again takes only one step back from the brink of effectively surrendering our global leadership in science and technology to other nations that have chosen to prioritise investments in biomedical research, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, fusion, [science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine] education, and more, he continued.

If Congress fails to fund the federal government by 30 April, large automatic cuts to research and development will be triggered, Parikh warned. These cuts would have real and lasting consequences for the science and technology foundations of our future health, economy, and national security. He urged Congress to pass full-year appropriations bills before the end of April to ensure that US science and technology leadership is maintained.

With the latest CRs passage, the new funding deadline for several federal agencies and programmes is 8 March and for the remainder it is 22 March.

Meanwhile, just days after the CR was signed, congressional appropriators unveiled a six-bill funding package, dubbed a minibus, as a step to moving some agencies off a CR. But the research community had some concerns about that measure, which was released on 3 March.

For example, The Science Coalition representing more than 50 of Americas top public and private research universities cautioned that cuts to certain federal science agencies in the minibus, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), will restrict US research and innovation, impede progress on critical societal challenges, and jeopardise the USs scientific leadership.

While trends vary by agency, proposed cuts to vital federal science agencies like NSF are troubling, stated Science Coalition president Jill Pentimonti. She noted that the minibus would reduce the NSFs budget below the enacted level in its baseline funding.

The Association of American Universities president, Barbara Snyder, is pleased that Congress has reached agreement on a package of bills to fund a portion of the government through the end of fiscal year 2024. Nevertheless, she said she is deeply concerned about the budget proposed for the NSF in particular.

The funding proposed in the package would reduce NSFs capacity by almost $500 million or more than 5% below current levels, Snyder stated. By undercutting the NSFs work, we are gambling our nations future as a global leader in science and innovation.

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US science funding hangs in the balance with continuing resolutions - Chemistry World

Its not very often that you see a pharmaceutical company completely giving up on a drug thats already won regulatory approval and has reached the market at least not without uncovering some serious side effect that didnt show up in the clinical trials. With many of the difficult, risky parts of the process already traversed, it should be time to sell some product and recoup some investments. And you wouldnt have put all that effort into a product that you didnt believe was going to be able to do that, naturally.

But it does happen. A famous example was Exubera, an inhaled insulin product. The idea was that this route would be so much easier and faster than self-injection that it would capture a good share of a very large market. Pfizer had convinced itself of this, and had convinced a number of financial analysts as well. So, it came as a rude surprise when the product absolutely flopped. Physicians werent particularly interested in prescribing it, and patients werent particularly interested in trying it. The company withdrew it from the market the very next year. In another example, some of the early drugs approved against Hepatitis C were also abandoned quickly due to overwhelming competition and vanishing revenues.

The newest example is Aduhelm (aducanumab), the anti-amyloid antibody developed by Eisai and Biogen, which was (in)famously approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) despite the objections of its own advisory panel and its own statisticians. The controversy was so great that Medicare (the state-backed medical programme for over-65s, and a huge customer for any Alzheimers drug) refused to pay for it unless patients were involved in another clinical trial to determine if the drug actually had any real benefit. Youd think that would be the sort of question youd have cleared up before a drug hit the market, but for some reason the FDA decided that Everything Was Different Now.

Biogen announced recently that it is discontinuing Aduhelm, and this definitely wasnt due to overwhelming competition. There was nothing else like it on the market, but very, very few physicians were prescribing it after Medicare and other large insurers balked. The drug was also never approved in Europe or elsewhere. Unlike Pfizer with Exubera, though, Biogen had another reason to give up on Aduhelm: it has, along with Eisai, another anti-amyloid antibody approved Leqembi (lecanemab) and they want to concentrate their resources on that one. Truth be told, the clinical data for it are not (in my opinion) much more compelling than Aduhelms, and there are safety concerns as well. Standard opinion in the drug business has been that the first effective drug against Alzheimers would surely be a record-setting success, but that word effective is causing difficulties. Its possible that the word safe will also become troublesome; that will bear watching, too. The same concerns hold for donanemab another antibody from Eli Lilly that is expected to be approved soon.

You can draw different lessons from Aduhelms failure depending on your prior views. Libertarian types have long championed the idea of approving drugs based mostly on safety, and letting the independent judgments of physicians and patients sort things out afterwards. Aduhelm certainly wasnt approved on efficacy, so perhaps its failure at the hands of insurance (both public and private) is what the libertarians had in mind? But the heavy hand of the US government (in the form of Medicares rejection) surely spoils that story. You could also see the Medicare decision as the last line of defense holding against the effects of an unusually bad regulatory decision. From one perspective thats heartening, but it really shouldnt have to come to that. Medicare is not really designed as a drug approval mechanism. You can stop a car by overheating the emergency brake and steering into a wall of tyres, but thats not a sustainable way to drive to work.

So the progress of the next two antibodies will be of great interest. My opinion is that if the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimers were as strong as we used to think it was, then these drugs should have led to greater things. If youd told everyone back in 1990 about their undeniable amyloid-clearing effects, the last clinical outcome youd have expected would be everyone having to squint their eyes and turn up the room lights to see any sort of real-world effect. The world is still waiting for a good Alzheimers drug. I cannot begin to guess when it might arrive.

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From one sinking ship to another? | Opinion - Chemistry World

Multiple factors point to a successful 2024 for the oil and gas industry, with many betting on niche services. With the drive to enhance current services and increase efficiency, the service sector alone is well-positioned to prosper. Offering the best in service and beating the competition will secure business and establish relationships. Still, the critical component of the equation is finding that particular service or meeting that individual need that levies such a magnitude of success in driving up profits that the end user can only function with it.

Gary Griesenbeck, CEO of Orion Water Solutions, discovered the secret to success early when starting his company in 2016. Competing in the emerging market, Orion treats produced water generated through hydraulic fracturing, a staple to North American shales success. During the earlier years of operation, fracking, as hydraulic fracturing is commonly called, demanded massive quantities of fresh water to be used during operation. Due to the costs and demand for increasing amounts, science pointed to the potential in treating produced water that returns from the well during fracking.

It was a natural migration from using fresh water to produced water, says Griesenbeck.

No matter the water type used, according to Griesenbeck, it must be chemically treated to ensure safe use during fracking procedures. Bacteria and other components that contaminate frack water can damage the wellbore and cause such financial devastation that oil and gas companies would spend millions without seeing any positive return on the investment.

It is essential to keep naturally occurring bacteria and other contaminants out of the well, says Griesenbeck. We treat 500,000 to 600,000 barrels of water per day.

When considering Orions contribution of treated water per day and pairing that with estimations from other companies and competitors that conduct the same operation, the need to enhance that ability suddenly surfaces as a niche service that ensures increased profits.

Ivan Sager identified the available opportunity and utilized his technical background to establish XPC Water, a company focusing on water chemistry analytics and real-time data alerting. While companies like Orion own their data, the XPC platform acquires, normalizes, assesses and cultivates data to provide valuable insights to the end user, enabling a streamlined approach to managing water treatment.

According to Sager, the XPC platform is a multi-tenant application that uses advanced pattern recognition to categorize water quality and alert the user of critical spikes. Orion refers to its configuration on the platform as remote data visualization (RDV) that provides operators and managers the analytics needed to manage and monitor the injected chemicals before the water is sent downhole and then treat the water as it exits the wellbore called produced water.

Pennies spent on chemicals count when processing massive volumes of water and identifying overdosage or anomalies in the process is critical, says Sager.

Griesenbeck breaks his company service down into two equally essential services. Orion disinfects water going down the wellbore using chlorine dioxide (CLO2) and then treats the produced water through a Dissolvable Air Flotation (DAF) Process. These require a disciplined and focused approach to chemical management. Orion sets up remote processing sites at each fracking location to provide these services. As a result, managing the water chemistry of each specific site proves difficult, and errors can lead to loss of revenue.

XPC Water provides the solution by capturing and monitoring data centrally. The XPC platform records and reports all essential cost and performance data for each job site. This includes downtime, pump failure, and chemical use, which Griesenbeck estimates to be 20 to 30 percent of his sales. XPC provides reports, emails and text messaging that display chemistry data with a barrels per day trend and cost-to-treat data.

This information is essential, says Griesenbeck. A number diverging from the norm signals that something is wrong.

With XPCs ability to provide accurate data that can be managed in real-time, the operator can correctly add chemicals and treat water as needed. This influences chemical usage and provides the ability to refrain from wasting chemicals.

Staying on top of chemical usage greatly enhances efficiency and is often a make or break for operators, says Sager.

While oil and gas companies strive to streamline and refrain from enduring additional costs, when expenditures are made, they are typically costly. Software, automation and further areas of expense demand significant investment, but the XPC platform proves genius in its ability to be integrated with existing systems utilized by the end user.

How Orion generates data that is acquired by XPC has no relevance. Data cultivation is triggered on the XPC side of the equation. As a result, XPCs technology can be integrated with any data processing system.

Our goal is to remove friction and be the bridge to allow secure and rapid data collaboration and collaboration, says Sager. We simply integrate with other platforms. We format the data, and then the customer can import it, or we leverage our open standards Application Programming Interface (API).

Orion can retrieve the XPC data through its hardware compilation. While under habitat with XPC, the information resides in a secure cloud-based environment. Sager says by leveraging the end users existing investments, XPC ensures rapid implementation and profitability.

Technology knows few limitations, and when efficiency can be further improved, a place of necessity is established. Building upon the foundation of what XPC and Orion offer the industry, the company identified another outlet to enhance business needs. XPC is blazing the frontier of artificial intelligence with Chatxpc. This technology will optimize production operations by offering insights into the impact of multiple production parameters and suggesting the optimal production design. Additionally, it will play a role in real-time monitoring of production operations, identifying potential problems, and suggesting appropriate corrective actions.

AI is machine learning algorithms, and that data helps predict spikes and forecast chemical usage, says Sager. Generative AI will allow the operator to generate detailed content from the data that will be used in reports or management of the operations.

According to Sager, the primary advantage of Chatxpc lies in its ability to address technical issues quickly and accurately as they surface. Through its ability to recognize complex terms and concepts, Chatxpc will provide explanations and examples to assist the user in sending or accessing data more quickly.

The XPC technology depicts a robust picture of how it ensures efficiency and its positive fiscal impact can be forecasted in additional business areas. Griesenbeck sees a ne

ed for the XPC platform in multiple areas of the oil and gas industry alone.

The push for remote operations will require technology to support rapid data acquisition and analysis. The XPCs platform enables such a process. Additionally, as oil and gas companies attempt to manage aging infrastructure while constructing new, spill prevention becomes paramount. XPC would offer an invaluable service by providing the means to monitor pipeline levels and a medium for calculating the decrease in pipeline capacity after a spill. Accurate accounting of content
s that contact the earth is critical in managing environmental disasters.

With over 218 million barrels of water, XPC has perfected the niche in enabling efficiency and profitability in water treatment capabilities. With the abundance of possibilities, XPC can impact oil and gas for the greater good of the environment and its users.

Anyone using chemistry can benefit from the XPC platform, says Griesenbeck. Storage facilities, retailers and collection batteries for saltwater could all see ideal results. RDV has improved my profit margin easily by two to three percent.

Headline photo: From left to right: Tee Jay Hayes, Operator, and Anthony Yanez, Field Supervisor, verifying data at a produced water recycling location. Photos courtesy of XPC Water Solutions.

Freelance Writer and Photographer

Nick Vaccaro is a freelance writer and photographer. In addition to providing technical writing services, he is an HSE consultant in the oil and gas industry with twelve years of experience. Vaccaro also contributes to SHALE Oil and Gas Business Magazine, American Oil and Gas Investor, Oil and Gas Investor, Energies Magazine and Louisiana Sportsman Magazine. He has a BA in photojournalism from Loyola University and resides in the New Orleans area. Vaccaro can be reached at 985-966-0957 ornav@vaccarogroupllc.com.

3 Ways Technology is Going to Shape the Oil and Gas Industry Free to Download Today

Oil and gas operations are commonly found in remote locations far from company headquarters. Now, it's possible to monitor pump operations, collate and analyze seismic data, and track employees around the world from almost anywhere. Whether employees are in the office or in the field, the internet and related applications enable agreater multidirectional flow of information and control than ever before.

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Good Chemistry Bonds XPC Water with Orion Water Solutions - OILMAN Magazine

Greg Voth, a professor at the University of Chicagos department of chemistry, presented Overcoming the Multiscale Challenge for Biomolecular Systems on his findings in protein modeling during the UW department of chemistrys Borden Endowed Lecture on Feb. 28.

The Weston and Sheila Borden Endowed Lecture, which sponsors annual presentations by theoretical chemistry researchers, is one of five lectures supported by the departments endowed funds.

Voth, whose work focuses on computer simulations of biomolecules, has an extensive history with the biological applications of computation.

I started years ago, in college, and was fascinated by science, and especially theoretical science, Voth said. Somewhere, as I went through graduate school, computers became more and more powerful and available. And so you could kind of see the blending of scientific concepts with computation I realized these biological questions are really fascinating, and very challenging.

Voths lecture focused specifically on multiscale theory: the challenge of modeling intricate systems efficiently and accurately. His lab has completed this through ultra-coarse-grained (UCG) modeling systems that can interpret complicated biomolecular interactions while maintaining low resolution.

I do computer simulations, and we're very interested in dealing with very complex systems, usually ones involving biology, Voth said. The difficulty of using straightforward computer simulations to get at that [is that] they're very big; they take a long time to evolve These systems of interest [have] way too many atoms, so we have to develop special methods. And these are called multiscale methods theyre ways of dealing with this complexity.

Protein modeling innovations are especially important in understanding how biomolecules work. By modeling the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) capsid, Voth hopes there will be advancements in understanding the virus.

In the specific case of HIV, we've discovered how a key part of the virus assembles, Voth said. [A virus] replicates in your infected cells and reassembles, and it goes and attacks another cell [If] we can understand key aspects of that, [we can] potentially find weaknesses that could be drug targets for therapeutics.

UCG modeling has also pushed the limitations of computational technology. Beth Fawcett, a masters student in chemistry at UW, remarked on the significance of the seminar.

I've worked in data science for five years, so it was really cool to see [this lecture], Fawcett said. After watching this talk, it seems like there's still going to be computational challenges, even though there's been a lot of advancements [in modeling proteins]. Theres been a wall for the number of computations you can do with traditional computing, so it was really cool to see that they were able to leverage what is currently available to get the HIV capsid model.

More information about the Voth groups research can be found here.

Reach contributing writer Amiya McLean at news@daily.com. X: @amiyamcllean

Like what youre reading? Support high-quality student journalism by donating here.

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Greg Voth delivers Borden Endowed Lecture in theoretical chemistry - Dailyuw

Eighty-five percent of the Earths air resides in the lowest layer of its atmosphere, or troposphere. Yet, major gaps remain in our understanding of the atmospheric chemistry that drives changes in the tropospheres composition.

One especially important gap in knowledge is the formation and prevalence of secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), which impact the planets radiation balance, air quality and human health. But that gap is closing due to the groundbreaking discoveries of an international team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The scientists detail their findings in a new paper published this month in Nature Geosciences.

The team focused on a class of compounds known as Criegee intermediates (CIs). Researchers suspect that CIs play a critical role in the formation of SOAs when they combine via a process called oligomerization. But no one had ever directly identified the chemical signatures of this process in the field until now.

First, we discovered that CI chemistry may play a bigger role in altering the composition of the troposphere than current atmospheric models account for probably by an order of magnitude. Carl Percival, researcher at NASAs JPL

Using the most advanced methods available for detecting gas-phase molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere, the team took field measurements in the Amazon rainforest, one of the most crucial SOA areas on Earth. There, they found clear evidence consistent with reactions of a Criegee intermediate compound containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (CH2OO).

This discovery is extremely significant because we were able to make direct connections between what we actually saw in the field, what we anticipated was happening with oligomerization of CIs and what we were able to characterize in the lab and determine theoretically, explained Rebecca L. Caravan, an assistant chemist at Argonne and first author on the paper.

These field observations constitute just one component of the innovative science enabled by the collaboration across the laboratories.

In addition to the field measurements, we were able to employ the worlds most advanced experimental methods for directly characterizing the Criegee intermediate reactions. We used the most advanced theoretical kinetics to predict reactions we cant measure directly. And we took advantage of the most advanced global chemistry modeling to assess the effects we would expect oligomerization to have in the troposphere based on those kinetics, said Craig A. Taatjes, a combustion chemist at Sandia.

This combination of components produced some critically important findings.

First, we discovered that CI chemistry may play a bigger role in altering the composition of the troposphere than current atmospheric models account for probably by an order of magnitude, said Carl Percival, a researcher at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Second, the updated modeling that we performed based on our work produced only a fraction of the oligomerization signatures we observed in the field.

This could mean that CI chemistry could be driving even more transformation within the troposphere, or that other, yet unidentified chemical mechanisms are at work.

We still have a lot of work to do to fully define the role of CI reactions in the troposphere, concluded Caravan. But these findings significantly expand our understanding of one potentially significant pathway for SOA formation in the most important layer of the earths atmosphere.

Besides Caravan, Argonne authors include Ahren Jasper and Stephen Klippenstein.

Funding for the work carried out at Argonne and Sandia was provided by DOEs Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences program and the National Nuclear Security Administration. NASA funded the research done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Researchers provide unprecedented view into aerosol formation in Earths lower atmosphere - Argonne National Laboratory

Frank Popoff, who as chief executive and chairman tried to make Dow Chemical more conciliatory toward regulators and environmentalists in the late 1980s and 90s, and who prodded the chemical industry to adopt safer practices, died on Feb. 25 at his home in Midland, Mich., where Dow is based. He was 88.

A spokesman for the company said the cause was cancer.

When the Bulgarian-born Mr. Popoff was named Dows president and chief executive in 1987, the company had begun trying to shed its image as a pugnacious chemical giant that had manufactured napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War; released toxic waste, like dioxins, into the Tittabawassee River from its plant in Midland; and fought the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent flyover inspections of its emissions.

An estimated $50 million advertising campaign, begun two years before Mr. Popoff rose to the top, used the slogan Dow lets you do great things. It was intended to change public perceptions of Dow, promoting an image of it as a nicer corporation, underlining its charitable giving and humanitarian uses of its products.

I think we have a fair amount of work to do in terms of the way we are viewed, Mr. Popoff told The New York Times in 1987, shortly before succeeding Paul F. Oreffice as chief executive. We know well never change Ralph Naders mind. But Dow is at peace with itself, and we want our people to feel good about the company, too.

The company was best known then for manufacturing chemicals, including chlorine, as well as for using chemicals in making plastics, pharmaceuticals and supermarket goods like Saran Wrap, Fantastik cleaning liquid and Ziploc bags.

Regulators and environmentalists were heavily focused on chemicals at the time. In 1991, Mr. Popoff and another Dow executive, David Buzzelli, set up a panel of outside environmental policy advisers among them Lee Thomas, a former E.P.A. administrator who scrutinized Dows operations and were able to obtain confidential information. A current version of that panel remains in place at Dow.

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Frank Popoff, Who Sought to Lead a Friendlier Dow Chemical, Dies at 88 - The New York Times

MOUNT ZION Every day in the summer since he was a little kid, JC Anderson would be in the driveway with friends playing pickup basketball.

That group included Lyncoln Koester, Sam Driscoll, Brayden Trimble and Anderson, with Koester winning the games to 21 most often between the four.

Mount Zion celebrates its 47-46 win of the 3A Springfield Super-sectional boys basketball game against Centralia at the BOS Center. The Braves' players have a bond that started as kids.

Now, Koester is the Braves' leading scorer and Anderson is a dominant post presence while Trimble and Driscoll are playing key roles as starters on a 35-1 team that will play in its first-ever state tournament this weekend with a 9:30 a.m. tip on Friday against Chicago Mount Carmel in the IHSA Class 3A State Tournament semifinals in Champaign.

"I remember it like it was yesterday, man," Anderson said. "Off each other, we just thrived."

Mount Zion's Grant McAtee takes the ball to the basket earlier this season.

Andersons mother, Becky Clayton-Anderson, would, from in the house, hear them mixing it up as little kids years before theyd grow up and become one of the most dominant basketball teams in the state, and the best team in Mount Zion history.

"It was just the best thing as a basketball player watching them all out there just playing, and they would fight and hit and punch and cuss at each other, and then they'd get done playing and they're just best friends," Clayton-Anderson said. "I just smile ear to ear every time they're out there playing because that's what it's all about growing up together and playing together. They just always have each other's backs; they always have."

The Braves beat Centralia 47-46 on Monday at the Class 3A Springfield Super-sectionals, overcoming a seven-point fourth-quarter deficit after a season where their offense has helped them mow through most of the teams in their path. Mount Zion averages 64.3 points per game, but its grit helped it overcome an early deficit against local rival MacArthur in the sectional finals as well.

Mount Zion players celebrate their 47-46 super-sectional win.

"They just don't give up," Braves coach Dale Schuring said. "They've got a determination and grit and a toughness to them that you've got to have in these types of situations. They've shown it every time we've needed it and they came through again."

That winning edge has been slowly building with the Braves as their roster got older. With juniors like Koester, Driscoll and Trimble, along with senior starter Grant McAtee, theres years of experience throughout the teams lineup. Thats a big reason why the team has put together a record-breaking run after a 1-14 record in 2020-21.

"It takes time," Schuring said. "The juniors ... they've been playing since they were freshmen, but 14-year-olds against 17- and 18-year olds, it's not as fair as you would think no matter how talented you are. It's a progression. They've gotten stronger; they've gotten better. It's so gratifying for them that they've shown that and they get the opportunity to go to state."

As the players grew physically and mentally over the past few seasons theyve become a local juggernaut. They feature high-level athletes, but its the understanding and speed they can play with together that has allowed the Braves to go on a special postseason run.

Mount Zion's JC Anderson celebrates during the Braves' win against Centralia in the super-sectionals.

"We knew we always had the potential to be big, but I think it's just Coach Schuring helped us a lot," Anderson said. "He disciplined us and he helped our heads not get too big. So it's just been being patient and waiting for our turn."

The Braves are ready to take the intensity they built in their games in the Anderson driveway to the floor at the State Farm Center.

"It's a special group," Anderson said. "Words can't explain it. No one believed we'd be here. We don't have five-star players. We don't have (Division I) basketball recruits, but we have chemistry like no other."

Signs cheer on the Mt. Zion boys basketball team, who are heading to the state final for the first time, outside McGaughey Elementary School on Thursday.

Jill Sams puts up signs in town for the Mt. Zion boys basketball team, who are heading to the state final for the first time, on Thursday.

Whitney Getz, Kamry Getz, 4, and Macklin Sams, 3, put up signs in town for the Mt. Zion boys basketball team, who are heading to the state final for the first time, on Thursday.

Signs cheer on the boys basketball team, who are heading to the state final for the first time, in Mt. Zion on Thursday.

Mount Zion senior Tyson Evans high-fives basketball team members Thursday as the Braves head to the State Farm Center in Champaign for the state final tournament.

Mount Zion students cheer as the boys basketball team heads to the State Farm Center in Champaign for the state final tournament on Thursday.

The Mount Zion boys basketball team proceeds past students on the way to the bus on Thursday to head to the State Farm Center in Champaign and prepare for the state final tournament.

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Chemistry taking Mount Zion boys basketball to doorstep of state title - Herald & Review

Much of chemistry is taught in metaphors: electron clouds, energy flows, close-packed spheres, reaction landscapes and flipping magnets. These pictures, while embedded into a deeper theoretical structure, provide mental shortcuts that help make predictions, formulate experiments and cement understanding. And yet, danger lurks in such ideas; they can also prevent us from seeing things that might otherwise be obvious. As the biologist and cybernetics guru Norbert Weiner wrote so pithily, The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.

This phrase came to my mind when I was trying to make sense of the strange lineage of apparatus that I first saw in the stores of the Science Museum in London. Early in the 19th century, chemical distillation underwent a transition, driven by the need to separate members of the homologous series of organic compounds. Small differences in boiling temperature between, say, butyl and amyl alcohol meant that the use of a traditional retort (a bent, long-necked flask) required multiple distillations to obtain pure material. When Adolphe Wurtz introduced his tube bulles (bubble tube) one-shot distillations with good separation became standard.

But how did it work? There was little real understanding: key concepts like equilibrium, vapour pressure, temperature and energy were still, at best, in their infancy. Distillation theory was based around the rise of the lighter ethereal vapour and the descent of the wet phlegm. The spirits industry described the process as washing; what today we would call fractionation was called dephlegmation. In the 1820s the FrenchBelgian still designer Jean-Baptiste Cellier-Blumenthal mashed up several designs to create the first highly efficient continuous still with bubble trays, horizontal platforms arranged in stacks where the vapour bubbled its way through the descending wash.

The difference would be spotted by Eduard Linnemann. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he studied chemistry in Heidelberg, taught by Robert Bunsen and August Kekul. Linnemann followed Kekul to Ghent as his assistant before heading to Lemberg in Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine) to become assistant to another ex-Heidelberg academic, Leopold von Pebal. He got lucky. Just as Linnemann secured his habilitation, von Pebal received the call from the University of Graz and decamped, leaving Linnemann to slide seamlessly into his place in 1865. He was soon full professor.

Throughout this time, Linnemann had been working on homologous series, publishing boiling temperatures and helping to reinforce the structural theory of chemistry. In 1871, he unveiled a new design of fractionator. His paper reveals a hint of insecurity, observing that laboratory distillation lagged far behind industry. In industrial installations a kind of washing takes place because the vapour is compressed and forced to bubble through the liquid. This washing is not possible in a simple or even Wurtz distillation. He therefore proposed a new fractionator that combined the two approaches: little baskets of platinum mesh inserted at intervals in the tube to collect the liquid, making washing possible.Furthermore, as flames were used for heating, superheated vapour never reached the thermometer, yielding more accurate boiling temperatures.

Linnemanns paper was widely read and his method was adopted in textbooks of organic chemistry, including Ludwig Gattermanns. Yet when our glassblower, John Cowley, built one for me a couple of years ago with little copper mesh baskets, the results were rather maddening the baskets filled with liquid and the fractionator tended to belch liquid upwards unless the flask was heated extremely slowly. This flooding issue was well known and spurred the development of several dozen designs over the next 40 years, sporting little funnels, glass loops and channels. All but one has disappeared: only the Snyder column survives, used with the Kuderna-Danish pesticide residue concentrator. Its glass beads serve to create pools of liquid that prevent the analyte escaping with solvent aerosol.

But for Linnemann there was also trauma: Galicia was granted increasing autonomy and the university was polonised. He lost his post, moving first to Brnn (today Brno in the Czech Republic) and then to Prague. His interests shifted to the search for new rare earth elements. Though increasingly ill he continued to work in the lab. While analysing the mineral orthite, a silicate with a peculiar composition, he observed new lines in the flame spectrum of an acid extract. Convinced that he had discovered a new element, he wrote a paper on his deathbed announcing the discovery of austrium. It was not to be. Months after his death, the Austrian chemist Richard Pribram and Paul-mile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, the French element hunter-extraordinaire, showed the spectral lines to correspond to those of one of Lecoqs own elements, gallium. Linnemanns name would fade into obscurity.

Was Linnemanns thinking trapped by the seductively simple idea of washing? That suspicion makes me very nervous. How many deeply embedded metaphors prevent us from seeing things that are deep and important?

I amgrateful to Talitha Humphrey who tested Linnemanns and other columns and began to exhume his story. Rupert Cole also invited me into the Science Museum stores and Philip Ball put Norbert Weiner on my map.

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Linnemann's baskets and distillation in the early days of understanding equilibrium - Chemistry World

Scientists from the University of Rochesterhave developed new electrochemical approaches to clean up pollution from forever chemicals found in clothing, food packaging, firefighting foams, and a wide array of other products. A new Journal of Catalysis study describes nanocatalysts developed to remediate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS.

The researchers, led by assistant professor of chemical engineering Astrid Muller, focused on a specific type of PFAS called Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which was once widely used for stain-resistant products but is now banned in much of the world for its harm to human and animal health. PFOS is still widespread and persistent in the environment despite being phased out by US manufacturers in the early 2000s, continuing to show up in water supplies.

Muller and her team of materials science PhD students created the nanocatalysts using her unique combination of expertise in ultrafast lasers, materials science, chemistry, and chemical engineering.

Using pulsed laser in liquid synthesis, we can control the surface chemistry of these catalysts in ways you cannot do in traditional wet chemistry methods, says Muller. You can control the size of the resulting nanoparticles through the light-matter interaction, basically blasting them apart.

The scientists then adhere the nanoparticles to carbon paper that is hydrophilic, or attracted to water molecules. That provides a cheap substrate with a high surface area. Using lithium hydroxide at high concentrations, they completely defluorinated the PFOS chemicals.

Muller says that for the process to work at a large scale, they will need to treat at least a cubic meter at a time. Crucially, their novel approach uses all nonprecious metals, unlike existing methods that require boron-doped diamond. By their calculations, treating a cubic meter of polluted water using boron-doped diamond would cost $8.5 million; the new method is nearly 100 times cheaper.

In future studies, Muller hopes to understand why lithium hydroxide works so well and whether even less expensive, more abundant materials can be substituted to bring the cost down further. She also wants to apply the method to an array of PFAS chemicals that are still prevalently used but have been linked to health issues ranging from development in babies to kidney cancer.

Muller says that despite their issues, outright banning all PFAS chemicals and substances is not practical because of their usefulness in not only consumer products, but in green technologies as well.

I would argue that in the end, a lot of decarbonization effortsfrom geothermal heat pumps to efficient refrigeration to solar cellsdepend on the availability of PFAS, says Muller. I believe its possible to use PFAS in a circular, sustainable way if we can leverage electrocatalytic solutions to break fluorocarbon bonds and get the fluoride back out safely without putting it into the environment.

Although commercialization is a long way off, Muller filed a patent with support from URVentures, and foresees it being used at wastewater treatment facilities and by companies to clean up contaminated sites where they used to produce these PFAS chemicals. She also calls it a social justice issue.

Often in areas with lower income across the globe, theres more pollution, says Muller. An advantage of an electrocatalytic approach is that you can use it in a distributed fashion with a small footprint using electricity from solar panels.

Visit link:
Harmful 'forever chemicals' removed from water with new electrocatalysis method - University of Rochester

Chemical giant Chemours has suspended three senior executives, including its chief executive and chief financial officer, pending an internal review over suspicious accounting and compensation practices.

The DuPont spin-off postponed reporting its 2023 financial results in mid-February, saying it needed extra time to complete the reporting process. But on 29 February there were further revelations, with chief executive Mark Newman, chief financial officer Jonathan Lock, and principal accounting officer Camela Wisel placed on administrative leave for the duration of the review.

The review will be overseen by auditors and independent lawyers. It will focus on processes for reviewing reports made to the Chemours ethics hotline, and practices for managing working capital, including company metrics that impact financial incentives for senior managers. In submissions to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Chemours provided estimates of its top line financials for 2023, and promised to file official, audited figures as soon as practicable.

This is about as serious as you could get. The suggestion is that the financials were off, and they were allegedly done in an improper way, says Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, US. Theyre saying that the numbers on which the incentives plans were based many be inaccurate and people may have been overpaid based on the metrics that were reported.

Theyre going to have to go back and reconstruct the actual financial performance of the company for the period involved, says Elson. The audit committee [likely] had a whistleblower; they investigated and found that there was substance to the accusations.

This is a shock. DuPont was a staid, conservative, blue-blood company and it was assumed that Chemours was similar, but these are serious allegations, says Elson. To remove both a [chief executive] and the [chief financial officer] is very rare.

Chemours share price dropped by around half following the announcement. Several days later, it remains down almost a third. Market analyst Michael Leithead at Barclays said in a note to investors: What we think many perceived as a relatively minor accounting hang-up two weeks ago now appears wider, longer, and with more ramifications than the market initially believed.

See more here:
Chemours suspends chief and senior executives over accounting issues - Chemistry World

Everyone wants to know the answer to how

As a chemist at the California-based Scripps Research, Krishnamurthy has investigated the rise of RNA, the bridge between prebiotic chemistry to protobiology, and the complex emergence of protocellsa kind of ancestor of cells that make up all living things. Krishnamurthy even co-leads a NASA Astrobiology initiative investigating the origins of life on Earth.

Now, Krishnamurthy and his team have potentially uncovered another missing piece of Earths biological puzzle: the method behind the formation of the very first cells. In a new paper published in the journal Chem, scientists discovered that a process called phosphorylationwhen a phosphate group is attached to a moleculecould have occurred much early in Earths history, and created a pathway for the creation of protocells from fatty acids.

Weve now discovered a plausible way that phosphates could have been incorporated into cell-like structures earlier than previously thought, which lays the building blocks for life, Krishnamurthy said in a press statement. This finding helps us better understand the chemical environments of early Earth so we can uncover the origins of life and how life can evolve on early Earth.

The big question for Krishnamurthy and his team, according to the researchers, was trying to figure out how these protocells transitioned to a double chain of phosphatesa structure that is more stable and can create chemical reactions. To understand this, the team recreated the conditions of early Earth in the lab by using chemicals such as fatty acids and glycerol. These mixed solutions were cooled, heated, and shaken to stimulate chemical reactions. They were also tested with different ratios, temperatures, and pH levels to investigate how these structures form. By also including dyes, the researchers could witness the formation of vesicles, which are similar to protocells.

It turns out the fatty acids were able to transition to a phospholipid environment, suggesting that phosphorylation could have taken place much earlier than previously believed. The theory of this process occurring so early is backed up by the fact that phosphates are present in nearly every chemical reaction in the body, according to the press statement. Because of this, the likelihood of them playing a critical role in the development of life on Earth was pretty high.

Weve discovered one plausible pathway for how phospholipids could have emerged during this chemical evolutionary process, Scripps research biophysicist Ashok Deniz said in a press statement. Phospholipids are a further evolved vesicle membrane. Its exciting to uncover how early chemistries may have transitioned to allow for life on Earth. Our findings also hint at a wealth of intriguing physics that may have played key functional roles along the way to modern cells.

While this is an important step in understanding the complex chemistry that eventually gave rise to Earths stunning biodiversity, scientists still have a long way to go before confidently uncovering the whole story. For Krishnamurthy, and the rest of his team, the work continues.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

Excerpt from:
This Could Be How the Earth's First Cells Formed - Popular Mechanics

Last November, Pfizer announced plans to discontinue its Pharmaceutical Sciences Small Molecule capabilities at its Discovery Park location in Sandwich, UK, to consolidate the facilities at two primary sites, one in the US and one in India.

This decision impacted approximately 500 roles, more than half of the 940 people currently employed at the facility.

Research fellow Ivan Marziano was one of those to be made redundant, along with his entire team.

It was a set of very well interconnected teams that were affected, says Marziano, who marked his 25th anniversary at Pfizer on 1 January. Its always a very shocking thing to hear and it takes a lot of time to process, he adds. Im still on my first job I started working for Pfizer initially as a contractor a week before I had my PhD viva and Ive been here ever since.

The news was met with an immediate outpouring of support from the scientific community. At the time of the announcement, Marziano was in a large external meeting and describes the response as amazing.

The news hit the mainstream press straight away so people were aware of what was going on. There were a number of academic and industrial institutions at the meeting that we were in who wanted to help as much as possible.

Another colleague attending that same meeting was Rohan. Rohan, who was also informed that his job was at risk, had the spontaneous idea of setting up a hashtag and group #SandwichTogether on LinkedIn to enable the wider scientific community to support those affected.

Growing up in what he describes as a financially humble background in India, Rohan said that in his experience, people affected by adversity tend to help each other. Its a natural instinct, he explains. It became my coping mechanism.

I thought, I need to be with people to feel that Im not alone in this, so I created the hashtag and invited my friends, they invited their friends and now we have so many people in that group, he adds.

The group now has around 440 members and hundreds of posts highlighting vacancies and new opportunities have been shared using the hashtag, as have offers of support to help with skills such as CV writing, networking and interview preparation.

Its fantastic to get that this this level of support from the wider community, but also it sends a message of hope, says Marziano.

Rohan said he really started to see the advantages of the group when recruiters began to ask to join the group. One of these was Reiss McNally, co-founder of Molecular Search, which specialises in recruitment for contract development and manufacturing organisations. McNally says he felt a sense of responsibility to highlight the roles his organisation had available.

Although he had seen similar hashtags being used before, none had had the longevity of #SandwichTogether. I think because its on a larger scale, there is a lot more collaboration and people are asking how do we support the community? outside of just saying, good luck, hopefully you obtain a role.

McNally said that those working at Sandwich have a breadth of experience that a lot of companies would value. He recommends that those who have been made redundant try to ignore the negative connotations of being made redundant and focus on the unique skill set that you have because youre going to be an asset to another business straightaway.

I look at the colleagues around me and think organisation X will be very lucky to have you

Ivan Marziano

It is this kind of outlook that has been key to Marziano and his team when considering the future.

Without a clear sense of direction, or an understanding of what the opportunities are, it can be very easy to get yourself in a slump, he says.

I have 500 colleagues who are affected by this process and the first question that springs to mind is, where are the 500 of us going to end up? This helps colleagues to think about their next career steps and having that knowledge of whats out there can help catalyse some thoughts in that direction.

I look at the colleagues around me and think organisation X will be very lucky to have you, Marziano continues. We are ultimately looking for that win-win situation part of it is the support of the community [which], from a humane perspective, has been amazing, but lets not forget that there are also business advantages here, because you are dealing with incredibly competent and well-trained scientists.

Rohan says he is not surprised by the response to the hashtag because it reflects the positive attitude and culture already in existence at the Sandwich site. We help each other a lot, he says.

If I find a job that is suitable for me, as well as my colleagues, and if I share it with my colleagues, then I compete with them instead of competing with people who are unknown. And then if one of us gets it we can facilitate others getting suitable jobs in that organisation.

Marziano says the hashtag has helped to promote a sense of collective ownership.

The community was shaken up but since then, [#SandwichTogether has] just snowballed. Its a powerful mechanism to show how much impact social media can have in a constructive way.

Read the original post:
The community of colleagues supporting each other through redundancy - Chemistry World

Whether its mocktails, alcohol-free beer or low-alcohol wines and spirits, theres no question that keeping people hangover-free is big business.

In the UK, the no- and low-alcohol beer market was worthmore than 350 million in 2021, and in China its a multibillion-pound industry. And although theres no such thing as truly no-alcohol beer alcohol-free labelled beers can contain up to 0.5% alcohol by volume(ABV) removing most of the booze is down to some basic chemistry.

An alcohol molecule has at least one hydroxyl (OH) functional group bound to a carbon atom. This means even something as complicated as cholesterol is still, technically, an alcohol. But, the drinks labels dont describe the chemical definition instead, they mean ethanol (CH3CH2OH).

Ethanol isnt just for drinking: it makes a terrific fuel and is an important industrial precursor to make other molecules too. It has a lot of different effects on the body far too many to go into here but the important part comes when you consume more than your liver can metabolise, and it interferes with neurotransmission in the brain. The result is that you get drunk. However, low-alcohol beer has so little alcohol that your body can usually deal with it easily, keeping you hangover-free.

Brewers follow the same process used for thousands of years to make beer. First, they mash malted barley in hot water. Then, they extract sugars in a liquid known as wort, boil it with hops and ferment the liquid. The fermentation process involves yeast a fungus that feeds on the sugars to produce ethanol, carbon dioxide and by-products that add flavour.

No yeast, no fungus creating ethanol, no flavour

There are multiple tactics a brewer can employ to ban the booze. One is to sidestep the fermentation process altogether by not adding yeast to the wort: no yeast, no fungus creating ethanol, but also no flavour. Unless you use additives to spice up the flavour, you get a rubbish-tasting beer. Another option is equally simple: just dilute your beer. By adding water, you reduce the ABV, but also make weak beer.

This leaves the modern process of dealcoholisation: removing the alcohol after fermentation. Again, there are a range of techniques that brewers can use, but most involve either heat or a membrane-based process.

One common approach is vacuum distillation. This involves heating the beer at low pressure, which means the ethanol and water in the beer evaporate at different temperatures and separate. Brewers take the ethanol out, and reblend the remaining liquid, this time with a little carbonic acid. The downside is that they lose various flavour molecules with the alcohol. Brewers must separate the liquid once more, then reintroduce the flavours into the now (nearly) alcohol-free beer. A variation on the technique is stripping, in which water vapour or a non-reactive gas (such as nitrogen) is passed through the wort under vacuum to carry away the ethanol. You can decaffeinate coffee beans using a similar technique.

Another alternative is reverse osmosis. Rather than low pressure, the brewer uses high pressure to force the beer through a semipermeable membrane. This membrane allows water and ethanol through but leaves larger molecules (such as those that give beer its taste) behind as a concentrate. Brewers can then dilute the concentrate with fresh water to make the booze. The downside is that, although most of the flavourful stuff is in the concentrate, they lose some smaller molecules or those dissolved in the beers gases. Without care and attention, the beer loses its flavour, smell, colour and even stability meaning that your alcohol-free beer isnt as good as the real thing.

Why not watch, and share, this TikTok over a brew?

Kit Chapman

Watch, and share, this TikTok (bit.ly/47KgGCn) over a brew

Read the original here:
How is alcohol-free beer made? | Everyday chemistry | RSC Education - Education in Chemistry

The South Korean battery trade fair has been running since Wednesday at the Coex Convention & Exhibition Centre in Seoul. According to the company, the SF cell presented there by SK On has been improved, particularly in terms of energy density. The version of the cell with a high nickel content in the cathode presented in 2021 already offered a charging time of 18 minutes for the usual charging window of ten to 80 per cent. This charging time also applies to the 2024 version, although the energy density is said to be nine per cent higher resulting in a longer range with the same battery size or a smaller and cheaper battery with the same range. However, SK On does not specify whether the statement refers to the volumetric or gravimetric energy density.

According to SK On, it has succeeded in shortening the transport path of the lithium ions through a special coating process that drastically reduces the anode resistance, as well as through an anode alignment process. In addition, an optimised fast charging protocol with analysis solutions was also used in the development of the Advanced SF Battery in order to maximise the charging speed.

In addition to the Advanced SF Battery with the same charging time but higher energy density, SK On has also developed in the other direction and is also exhibiting the SF+ Battery in Seoul: This achieves a charging time of just 15 minutes, but there is no statement on energy density in the announcement.

To achieve a shorter charging time, the transport distance for the lithium ions in the SF+ Battery has been reduced and their movement speed increased at the same time, as the Koreans explain. This was achieved by applying high-capacity silicon with low-resistance graphite to the double-layer structure developed in-house.

In addition to the two new variants of the SF cell, the Winter Pro LFP cell was also presented at InterBattery. Generally, a LFP battery suffers 50~70 per cent drop in driving range it can offer at a low temperature (-20). However, compared to the existing conventional LFP, the Winter Pro LFP Battery extends the charging and discharging capacity by 16 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, while increasing the energy density by 19 per cent, writes SK On about the new development. However, no further details were given.

At the battery trade fair, South Korean competitor Samsung SDI had also announced its intention to mass-produce solid-state batteries in 2027. Samsung SDI has been producing prototype cells with solid electrolyte since 2023, but had previously avoided making a statement on the start of mass production.

skinnonews.com

Read the original here:
SK On presents improved fast-charging battery and cold-proof LFP chemistry - http://www.electrive.com

Rechargeable batteries are great for storing energy and powering electronics from smartphones to electric vehicles. In cold environments, however, they can be more difficult to charge and may even catch on fire.

Im a mechanical engineering professor whos been interested in batteries since college. I now lead a battery research group at Drexel University.

In just this past decade, I have watched the price of lithium-ion batteries drop as the production market has grown much larger. Future projections predict the market could reach thousands of GWh per year by 2030, a significant increase.

But, lithium-ion batteries arent perfect this rise comes with risks, such as their tendency to slow down during cold weather and even catch on fire.

The electrochemical energy storage within batteries works by storing electricity in the form of ions. Ions are atoms that have a nonzero charge because they have either too many or not enough electrons.

When you plug in your electric car or phone, the electricity provided by the outlet drives these ions from the batterys positive electrode into its negative electrode. The electrodes are solid materials in a battery that can store ions, and all batteries have both a positive and a negative electrode.

Electrons pass through the battery as electricity. With each electron that passes to one electrode, a lithium ion also passes into the same electrode. This ensures the balance of charges in the battery. As you drive your car, the stored ions in the negative electrode move back to the positive electrode, and the resulting flow of electricity powers the motor.

While AA or AAA batteries can power small electronics, they can be used only once and cannot be charged. Rechargeable Li-ion batteries can operate for thousands of cycles of full charge and discharge. For each cycle, they can also store a much higher amount of charge than an AA or AAA battery.

Since lithium is the lightest metal, it has a high specific capacity, meaning it can store a huge amount of charge per weight. This is why lithium-ion batteries are useful not just for portable electronics but for powering modes of transportation with limited weight or volume, such as electric cars.

However, lithium-ion batteries have risks that AA or AAA batteries dont. For one, theyre more likely to catch on fire. For example, the number of electric bike battery fires reported in New York City has increased from 30 to nearly 300 in the past five years.

Lots of different issues can cause a battery fire. Poorly manufactured cells could contain defects, such as trace impurities or particles left behind from the manufacturing process, that increase the risk of an internal failure.

Climate can also affect battery operation. Electric vehicle sales have increased across the U.S., particularly in cold regions such as the Northeast and Midwest, where the frigid temperatures can hinder battery performance.

Batteries contain fluids called electrolytes, and cold temperatures cause fluids to flow more slowly. So, the electrolytes in batteries slow and thicken in the cold, causing the lithium ions inside to move slower. This slowdown can prevent the lithium ions from properly inserting into the electrodes. Instead, they may deposit on the electrode surface and form lithium metal.

If too much lithium deposits on the electrodes surface during charging, it may cause an internal short circuit. This process can start a battery fire.

My research group, along with many others, is studying how to make batteries that operate more efficiently in the cold.

For example, researchers are exploring swapping out the usual battery electrolyte and replacing it with an alternative electrolyte that doesnt thicken at cold temperatures. Another potential option is heating up the battery pack before charging so that the charging process occurs at a warmer temperature.

My group is also investigating new types of batteries beyond lithium ion. These could be battery types that are more stable at wider temperature ranges, types that dont even use liquid electrolytes at all, or batteries that use sodium instead of lithium. Sodium-ion batteries could work well and cost less, as sodium is a very abundant resource.

Solid-state batteries use solid electrolytes that arent flammable, which reduces the risk of fire. But these batteries dont work quite as well as Li-ion batteries, so itll take more research to tell whether these are a good option.

Lithium-ion batteries power technologies that people across the country use every day, and research in these areas aims to find solutions that will make this technology even safer for the consumer.

More here:
Lithium-ion batteries don't work well in the cold a battery researcher explains the chemistry at low temperatures - The Conversation

image:

From the left: the organizers of the competition Prof. Pavel Jungwirth (IOCB Prague) and Prof. Robert Hoyst (IChF PAS) and the winner of the 2023 Dream Chemistry Award Dr. Mark Levin (University of Chicago)

Credit: Photo: Tom Bello / IOCB Prague

The Dream Chemistry Award, a unique competition that does not count scientific articles in prestigious journals or affiliations with renowned universities, knows its winner for this year. Its contestants are young scientists within seven years of having received their doctorate. To be true to its name, it rewards ideas so novel that their realization is akin to fulfilling a bold human dream. The 2023 award has been given to Mark Levin from the University of Chicago, whose aim is to simplify the design of pharmaceutically active substances.

Co-organized by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Dream Chemistry Award reaches out to researchers that are at the beginning of their careers and are trying to solve fundamental problems in chemistry or related fields. To achieve this goal, they propose innovative solutions to problems with a global impact. It is the general benefit that can come from these projects which is crucial for success in this competition.

This year, the challenge was tackled the best by Dr Mark Levin with his dream about the targeted editing of the skeletons of aromatic molecules. His vision is that molecular designers will be better able to synthesize new functional molecules directly, preferably avoiding dead ends. This would give the world substances with properties that are perfectly suited to specific roles, which is especially important for modern medicinal chemistry. The reason is that this field is currently facing a multitude of problems, for example concerning the effectiveness of medicines.

It is a real breakthrough that can fundamentally transform the way new molecules are discovered, even though this will require a collaborative effort from many research groups around the world, says Mark Levin, adding that It can revolutionize the science of synthesis.

Contestants are nominated for the competition by their reputable senior colleagues from scientific institutions around the world. Young researchers that accept the nomination and prepare a competition submission get evaluated by an international scientific committee. One of its members as well as organizer of the Czech branch of the competition, Prof.Pavel Jungwirth from IOCB Prague, describes: This year's Dream Chemistry Award event presented five scientifically strong finalists, and the jury and audience heard five great lectures. It is difficult to choose a winner from among such brilliant candidates, but this is what the jury is for.

I enjoyed all the lectures. They were of really high quality, agrees the representative of the Polish side, Prof.Robert Hoyst, adding: These people are exceptional, and it is a great honour to be part of such a competition. Although, come to think of it, for us this is not a mere competition; we are talking about the Dream Chemistry Award a festival of science.

Also visiting Prague this year are young recipients of the award from previous years: Karl Brozek, Jessica Kramer and Yujia Qing, who shone in the competition four years ago. Since then, the postdoctoral researcher and then youngest finalist has become an associate professor in organic chemistry at Oxford (UK) and leader of her own research group. How did her success in the Dream Chemistry Award help her? Yujia answers: Receiving this award in the field of chemical biology helped me start my own research programme. I was particularly inspired by the scientific discussion that accompanied the competition. I received a lot of feedback. I also really appreciate the support given by the Dream Chemistry Awards committee. A letter of recommendation from one of its members undoubtedly helped me land my current faculty position.

She is not giving up on her dream of sequencing all life, molecule by molecule, with which she impressed the evaluators in 2019, although she admits that she will have to take a different path than she originally envisaged. I will celebrate every step forward and stay open to all the surprises that science can bring to me, Yujia Qing looks to the future.

The main accolade, the Dream Chemistry Award, comes with an original glass statuette and a prize of 10,000. The remaining finalists have received the TOP5 Prize and a financial reward of 1,000. The top five include: Aisha Bismillah from the University of York in the UK (accelerating the development of shape-shifting molecules and their use in medicine), Moran Frenkel-Pinter from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (studying primordial peptides as mixtures to find connections between today's biochemistry and the chemical principles from prebiotic times that led to the origin of life on Earth), Francesca Grisoni from the Eindhoven University of Technology (revolutionizing the next generation of artificial intelligence based on principles of chemical intuition) and Barak Hirshberg from Tel Aviv University (designing molecular crystals with customized properties using machine learning algorithms).

The Dream Chemistry Award (www.dreamchemistryaward.org) was founded ten years ago by Prof.Robert Hoyst from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (IChF PAS). In 2017, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) joined as the second organizing institution, and since then the competition has been held annually, alternating between Prague and Warsaw.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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This year's winner of the Dream Chemistry Award competition is organic chemist Mark Levin with his vision for ... - EurekAlert

image:

Rhodamine-based flourescent dyes developed at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus.

Credit: Jonathan Grimm/HHMI Janelia Research Campus

WhenSenior Scientist Jonathan Grimm came to Janelia 13 years ago, he didnt know much about fluorescence or fluorescent dyes. But as an organic chemist who had been working in drug discovery at Merck, he certainly knew a thing or two about medicinal chemistry.

On a whim, Grimm and Janelia Senior Group Leader Luke Lavis decided to try using a mainstay medicinal chemistry reaction Grimm had picked up in the pharmaceutical industry to improve centuries-old dye chemistry. They thought this approach could allow access to completely new, previously inaccessible rhodamines molecules Lavis had been working to make brighter and longer-lasting so they could be used to better image cells under powerful microscopes.

The result was the start of what would become the now ubiquitous and indispensable Janelia Fluor dyes, bright, photostable, cell-permeable fluorescent probes that allow biologists to see the molecules inside cells. More than a decade after they were first unveiled, these fluorescent dyes that span the color spectrum have become a staple of biology labs worldwide.

Using a similar approach, Grimm, Lavis, and their collaborators have now released the culmination of their years of work: a comprehensive collection of additional rhodamine-based fluorescent dyes a whole new set of far-red shifted dyes that can penetrate deeper into tissue and are good for in vivo imaging, making them vitally important for biologists. The team also shared their approach -- the novel chemistry they developed to synthesize the dyes and insights that provide a roadmap for designing future probes.

Along the way we applied or modified or came up with totally new ways to make rhodamines that have pretty broad scope and that enabled us to make so many dyes relatively quickly, Grimm says. This is probably the most comprehensive work weve done with rhodamines so far.

Creating a comprehensive collection

The latest project started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The team had just released research detailing the novel chemistry they used to expand the Janelia Fluor dye palette. Next, they wanted to see if they could apply what they learned about optimizing the Janelia Fluor dyes to other types of rhodamine-based dyes, while also further improving the chemistry used to synthesize them.

As the world shut down, Grimm and Lavis planned new chemistryincluding completely novel chemical reactionsthat sought to rationally incorporate the lessons learned from the Janelia Fluor dyes into other classic but suboptimal rhodamines. A few months later, Grimm got back into the lab and began seeing if their work on paper could translate to the real and sometimes unpredictable world of organic chemistry. With COVID precautions in place, Grimm worked alone in the lab optimizing the chemistry and creating the first new dyes.

It probably would have happened anyway, but for better or for worse, when there is nothing else to focus on, or the things to focus on were badas 2020 was for everybodychemistry was a nice distraction, Grimm says.

The new research lays out the culmination of the teams work over the past three-plus years. Unlike the traditional Janelia Fluor dyes, which are characterized by an appendage called an azetidine ring, the other rhodamine-based dyes have different substituents protruding from other parts of their molecular structures. Armed with knowledge from optimizing the JF dyes, the team modified these other areas on the older rhodamine dyes to alter their color, brightness, photostability, cell permeability, and other characteristics.

The result is a whole new set of rhodamine-based dyes for imaging. The team was also able to devise several new ways to make classic rhodamine dyes, enabling them to create dozens of functional versions relatively quickly.

We had known for a long time how changing the functionality on the top of the molecule affects the colors of the fluorophores, but we also figured out that this strongly affects the chemical properties of the dye, Lavis says. We exploited that in different ways to make bright, red-shifted imaging agents.

The final chapter

While this isnt the end of the story for rhodamine dyes, the work is likely moving in a different direction. Now the team is focused on designing reagents that are specifically tailored for use by their biologist collaborators, working to build the very best tools they can with the knowledge theyve gained.

We can make any rhodamine dye we would ever want with this chemistry, and so the big question is what do we make next, Lavis says. Its not what can we make but what should we make.

Grimm says developing this expansive set of rhodamines, which took over a decade, is a testament to HHMI Janelias support of long-term efforts that are beneficial to the wider scientific community. Having permanent staff scientist positions at Janelia also enables Grimm and other senior scientists to provide continuity to a large project like the Janelia Fluor dyes. Four of the researchers on the most current publication were also on the very first rhodamine dye paper the lab published, in 2011.

For Grimm, it also means he gets to do what he loves be in the lab, do chemistry, and create tools that are useful to biologists. And, more than 13 years later, hes also learned a thing or two about fluorescent dyes.

It is very satisfying to have this timeline of papers that show all that weve done over the years, and it all started with just one random reaction based on a little calculation that Luke did, which itself was enabled by a synthetic method that we just happened to pursue, on a whim, simply to make dye synthesis a little easier, Grimm says. Even if a calculation looks great, it doesnt always pan out that way. In this case, it was dead on, and it certainly paid off.

Journal of the American Chemical Society

Optimized Red-Absorbing Dyes for Imaging and Sensing

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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A fork in the rhod: Janelia researchers unveil comprehensive collection of rhodamine-based fluorescent dyes - EurekAlert

From the moment Carolyn Bertozzi learned she had won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, it was a whirlwind, she said. Its a lot of attention that scientists are not generally accustomed to.

The Herald spoke with Bertozzi ahead of her Wednesday evening talk for the Lemley Family Leadership Lecture Series about her time in research and life experiences.

Working in a male-dominated field, Bertozzi was the eighth woman to earn a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the only woman awarded in the sciences in 2022.

That year, Bertozzi and another researcher became the first openly LGBTQ+ people to earn a Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before 2022, only six other openly LGBTQ+ people had ever been awarded a Nobel Prize all in literature.

When reflecting on how her identity has impacted her life experiences, she said it has in ways I wouldnt even necessarily be aware of.

Bertozzi attended Harvard as an undergraduate, switching her degree from biology to chemistry after finding a passion for the field in her organic chemistry course. During this time, she worked for a physical chemist, despite her love for organic chemistry, since a woman couldnt get a job in an organic synthesis lab, she said.

After repeatedly trying to land a position in an organic lab, she was recruited by an assistant professor who was probably going to get denied tenure. But Bertozzi quickly found that she had to take on a lot more responsibility than she would have had in a more established lab.

I was the only person on a new project and he treated me like a postdoc, she explained. This informative experience convinced Bertozzi that she wanted to attend graduate school, leading her to the West Coast, where she earned a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.

She arrived at Berkeley as a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, but this was unusual: In the 80s, people were afraid to be out, Bertozzi said, citing a fear associated with the AIDS epidemic and the lack of legal protections against discrimination.

Women (also) weren't taken seriously as scientists because men saw them as a dating prospect, Bertozzi added. But being queer, all these men didnt really know how to interact with me. They honestly interacted with me like I was one of the guys.

As the pioneer of bioorthogonal chemistry the study of rapid chemical reactions that can take place inside the body without disrupting biological processes Bertozzis work has been instrumental in designing therapeutics, observing living systems and creating diagnostic tools.

While introducing her at Wednesdays event, Provost Francis Doyle said that Bertozzi was integral in training the next generation of scientists in both chemistry and biology.

After graduation, Bertozzi took an interest in glycans sugars that sit on the surfaces of cells. Bertozzi hoped to uncover a way to track the movement of these sugars without interfering with the natural chemistry occurring in an organisms body.

Around that same time, the field of click chemistry which involved optimizing chemical reactions for speed and efficiency was exploding. Bertozzi applied the fields findings in bioorthogonal chemistry via attachable fluorescent alkynes, using fluorescent alkyne-glycan complexes to visualize and track glycans.

Since this pivotal moment, the research has exploded in applicability. Taking root in diagnostic strategies and new medicines, Bertozzis work has assisted in the creation of new cancer treatment drugs, vaccines and degraders of extracellular waste.

With the constant revision and progression of Bertozzis research, Doyle asked her how she deals with failure and maintains patience. Her advice: Live in the moment.

If your goal every day is to try and contribute something and try to learn something new, your chances of feeling successful are high because on any given day youll learn something, she said.

In the audience question-and-answer session, Tasawwar Rahman 26, a current Herald columnist, asked what current undergraduate students should be thinking about when finding a specific niche in research.

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Bertozzi said that the mere participation in research, regardless of the field, is beneficial for undergraduates as every research experience you have helps build your cognitive muscles.

Just the whole process of starting a project from scratch transcends any specific research problem, Bertozzi added. Over time, your specific individual interests will start to crystallize.

Owen Dahlkamp is a Senior Staff Writer covering admissions, financial Aid and science & research. Hailing from San Diego, CA he is concentrating in political science and cognitive neuroscience with an interest in data analytics. In his free time, you can find him making spreadsheets at Daves Coffee.

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Nobel Prize-winning chemist Carolyn Bertozzi talks research, identity as LGBTQ+ woman - The Brown Daily Herald

Fans have been going crazy over Ahsokas Sabine Wren and Shin Hatis chemistry. Played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Ivanna Sakhno, the rival characters have started to form a connection that viewers have begun to speculate could be something more.

Ahsoka premiered on Disney Plus this summer, with Rosario Dawson reprising her role as Ahsoka Tano. Bordizzo and Sakhno are franchise newcomers whose characters have now earned the ship nickname WolfWren.

RELATED: Galen Marek aka Starkiller Joining Ahsoka to Save Rosario Dawsons Star Wars Show after Fans Labeled it a Snore-fest? Sam Witwer Says: I cant say anything

During a panel interview at the Los Angeles Comic Con 2023, Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Ivanna Sakhno addressed the dynamics between Sabine Wren and Shin Hati. In a video captured via See Rad, Bordizzo stated:

So much left unsaid here. I think Shin and Sabine, as the fans have reacted to the shall I call it chemistry? its a good word. We felt these characters have this crazy magnetic connection to each other, and sometimes not in the best way, but it was really special, and we felt it on set, and it was just something that Dave I dont think hes even aware of what hes created.

Sakhno chimed in and noted that creator Dave Filoni, who was recently promoted to chief creative officer at Lucasfilm, probably had no intention of creating this certain chemistry, but it just sort of happened along the way. Bordizzo further explained:

I think theyre such great opponents for so many reasons, and its interesting because it isnt that feeling of, like, good versus evil or anything predictable like that. Sabines got some darkness in her, and Shin has some other interesting elements.

Sakhno added that there are a lot of lessons that both characters can learn from each other, and they are indeed a great combination.

RELATED: Craziest discovery in Star Wars history: Ahsokas Marrok is None Other Than Jedi: Survivors Cal Kestis Internet Goes Nuclear With Viral New Theory

There is no official release date for Ahsoka Season 2, and it is worth noting that the sequel is not yet confirmed. Production delays and the recent WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have impeded the progress, but, as per actress Rosario Dawson, Dave Filoni is currently outlining ideas for the second installment via Vanity Fair:

I mean, theyve not said anything officially, but I remember when we were at Star Wars Celebration in London, and they were like, Were giving Dave a movie! And I was like, I kind of feel like that means were probably going to get a second season. For a while now, and especially now with the strike and everything, no one can say anything. But he did say he was working on an outline. So, well see.

If the second season gets the green light, it opens more opportunities to explore Sabine Wren and Shin Hatis relationship. Considering Filonis new position at Lucasfilm, he has more creative control over Star Wars projects. Ahsokas success is also a promising sign that fans could hold on to.

The cliffhanger ending saw Ahsoka, Sabine, Shin, Huyang (David Tennant), and Baylon (Ray Stevenson) stranded on Peridea. Surely, there are a lot of questions that will hopefully be answered in Ahsoka Season 2.

RELATED: Ahsoka: Sabine Wren Actor Natasha Liu Bordizzo Wants To Do Justice to the Character in Season 2: Dont want it to not be anything but awesome

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It was really special: Ahsoka Star Opens Up About Fan-Favorite Chemistry Between Sabine and Shin - FandomWire

Barbara Wadsworth, center, presents a $2 million check representing a gift from the William Henry McMullen III Trust to Dr. Charles Karr, president of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). Also pictured are, left to right, Dr. David Puleo, UAH provost; D. Ashley Jones, a UAH alumnus serving on the Planned Giving Advisory Board; Dr. Bernhard Vogler, chair, Department of Chemistry; Dr. Rainer Steinwandt, dean, College of Science; Mallie Hale, vice president for university advancement, and Tammy Eskridge, senior planned giving officer. The portrait in the center is of William H. McMullen III, Mrs. Wadsworths father. Photo Credit: http://www.uah.edu

On Friday, theUniversity of Alabama in Huntsville(UAH) College of Science announced that it has received a $2 million gift from theWilliam Henry McMullen III Trustto fund three initiatives in the Department of Chemistry. Barbara Wadsworth, McMullens daughter, selected UAH for the donation to honor the memory of her father, an analytical chemist.

It was auspicious that we had come up with this at the same time that UAH had just started to develop the Ph.D. in chemistry, Wadsworth said. That was the deciding factor on my part because then it would make a difference.

The first of the three initiatives is the William Henry McMullen III Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. Its goal is to attract and retain exceptional chemistry students and internationally recognized chemistry researchers.

UAH PresidentDr. Charles Karrsaid that acquiring outstanding graduate students to invigorate and attract faculty members is essential in the initial phase of building the Ph.D. program.

Barbara Wadsworths remarkable generosity will allow us to jump-start an area of great need at UAH, namely an increase in the production of Ph.D. graduates, Karr said. As a consequence of this gift, the Department of Chemistry will be able to immediately recruit high-quality Ph.D. students for their program, something that will accelerate the development of the program. Being able to do this while honoring the incredible life of her father, William Henry McMullen III, is a blessing for all of us involved. We are extremely grateful and tremendously proud to be able to utilize this gift in order to advance our university and to benefit our community.

Dr.Rainer Steinwandtis the dean of the College of Science.

This generous way of honoring the legacy of William Henry McMullen III is transformative for our Department of Chemistry, Steinwandt said. Such impactful support enables us to strengthen our graduate program well beyond our traditional abilities, and it allows us to equip our faculty and students with the chemistry laboratories they need to excel.

The fellowship will be created with a $1 million endowment. The Department of Chemistry will nominate current and prospective UAH students for this award of $40,000 to cover their tuition, single coverage health insurance, and a stipend for the academic year.

The other two initiatives will support the laboratories that are vital to the work of these students and faculty members.

The William Henry McMullen III Laboratories Fund is an endowment of $750,000, which will be used to maintain and replace instrumentation in UAHs chemistry laboratories. This will ensure continued access to state-of-the-art equipment for faculty and students.

The William Henry McMullen III Chemistry Teaching Laboratory will be funded with a $250,000 gift. It will be located in the Shelby Center for Science and Technology. This space is home to the laboratory components of the departments introduction to chemistry course as well as some general chemistry labs.

McMullen passed away in 2006 at 81 in Raleigh, N.C., where he had worked with Pfizer for much of his career. He also played a role in the creation of high-fructose corn syrup.

He worked for a company at the time called Novo Industries AS, nowNovo Nordisk AS, from Denmark, Wadsworth says. They made enzymes. The Cuban crisis was going on, which made sugar so expensive. He designed a batch system that took the most available starch, which at the time was corn, and added enzymes to it, and it made fructose. It allowed them to industrially substitute it for sugar.

High fructose corn syrup today is an ingredient in numerous foods in grocery stores today.

McMullen was a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a member of one of that citys founding families. After serving in theU.S. Armyin World War II, he returned to New York to study chemistry and start a family. He had three children: Wadsworth, a daughter- Margaret McMullen, and a son Richard McMullen.

Wadsworth came to Huntsville when her husband, E.J. Butch Wadsworth, a Birmingham native, went to work for Boeing as a defense contractor. She worked as a retail store manager and training store manager with the furniture company This End Up for 19 years. After that store closed, she worked for the Bombay Company.

This was a small market, but I managed to sell a lot of furniture, Wadsworth said. A lot of it was through relationship selling. If you sold somebody a piece of furniture for their kid to get out of the crib and into the bed, eventually, you would sell them the whole bedroom and hopefully their whole house. We had some great people that you knew from the time their kids were born until their kids went off to college.

He loved being in the lab, Wadsworth said of her father. Of course, you have to have the ability to interface with others, and you have to grow in your business, so he couldnt stay in the lab. But he would have stayed there for the rest of his life if he could have.

She recalls her father taking his grandsons to his lab.

He taught them chemical experiments that completely overwhelmed them, Wadsworth reminisced. Hed turn water blue, or hed make something smoke, or hed freeze something, and it would break. He really enjoyed making an impression on young people.

UAH is a part of the University of Alabama System.

To connect with the author of this story or to comment, emailbrandonmreporter@gmail.com.

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William Henry McMullen II Trust donates $2 million to UAH College of Science to fund chemistry initiatives - Alabama Today