Chemistry

Tech

Smokin’ entrees: Charcoal grilling tops the list

At the American Chemical Society meeting, earlier this week, I stayed at a hotel that fronted onto the kitchen door of a Burger King. This explained the source of the beefy scent that perfumed the air from mid-morning on – the restaurant’s exhaust of smoke and meat-derived aerosols. A study presented at the meeting confirmed what my nose observed: that commercial grilling can release relatively huge amounts of pollutants.

Earth

Alternative flame retardants leach into the environment

Supposedly safer chemicals are spotted in peregrine falcon eggs in California.

Chemistry

Building a cheaper catalyst

Using perovskite instead of platinum in catalytic converters could shave many hundreds of dollars off the cost of a diesel car.

Chemistry

The skinny on indoor ozone

Indoor concentrations of ozone tend to be far lower than those outside, largely because much gets destroyed as molecules of the respiratory irritant collide with surfaces and undergo transformative chemical reactions. New research identifies a hitherto ignored surface that apparently plays a major role in quashing indoor ozone: It’s human skin. And while removing ozone from indoor air should be good, what takes its place may not be, data indicate.

Chemistry

BPA found beached and at sea

Food chemists have been showing for years that bisphenol A, an estrogen-mimicking building block of polycarbonate plastics and food-can coatings, can leach into food and drinks. But other materials contain BPA – and leach it – such as certain resins used in nautical paint. And Katsuhiko Saido suspects those paints explain the high concentrations of BPA that he’s just found in beach sand and coastal seawater around the world.

Chemistry

Better sleuthing through chemistry

New fingerprinting method can pinpoint where, when or how a chemical warfare agent came to be.

Health & Medicine

Ingredient of dark roasted coffees may make them easier on the tummy

A compound generated in the roasting process appears to reduce acid production in the stomach.

Chemistry

Cool roof coating: Mechanism kept under wraps

The American Chemical Society held a news briefing March 21 to feature a new energy-saving technology. It’s an ostensibly “smart” coating for roofing materials that knows when to reflect heat, like in summer time, and when to instead let the sun’s rays help heat a structure.

Physics

Next on CSI: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

The modification of a powerful chemical analysis technique could make it the gold standard in detecting trace substances.

Chemistry

Methane-making microbes thrive under the ice

Antarctica’s ice sheets could hide vast quantities of the greenhouse gas, churned out by a buried ecosystem.

Plants

Chemists pin down poppy’s tricks for making morphine

Scientists have figured out two of the final key steps in the chain of chemical reactions that the opium poppy uses to synthesize morphine, suggesting possible signaling strategies for new ways of making the drug and its cousin painkillers.

Chemistry

Pit vipers’ night vision explained

A new study finds the protein responsible for snakes’ sense of heat.