Latest American chemical society Podcast Episodes
Our Sustainable Future: Rivers flowing into the sea offer vast potential as electricity source
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - July 23, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution is a new genre of electric power-generating stations that could supply electricity for more than a half billion people by tapping just one-tenth of the global potential of a little-known energy source that exists where rivers flow into the ocean.
Promoting Public Health: New, inexpensive paper-based diabetes test ideal for developing countries
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - July 09, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s development is an inexpensive and easy-to-use urine test for Type 2 diabetes ideally suited for rural India, China and other areas of the world where poverty limits the availability of health care. The report describing the paper-based device, which also could be adapted for the diagnosi...
Our Sustainable Future: Ancient effect harnessed to produce electricity from waste heat
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - June 25, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsA phenomenon first observed by an ancient Greek philosopher 2,300 years ago has become the basis for a new device designed to harvest the enormous amounts of energy wasted as heat each year to produce electricity. The first-of-its-kind “pyroelectric nanogenerator” is the topic of a report in ACS...
New Fuels - Biofuels: Real-life scientific tail of the first “electrified snail”
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - June 11, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s episode announces that the world’s first “electrified snail” implanted with biofuel cells that generate electricity from natural sugar in their bodies. Scientists are describing how these biofuel cells could someday serve as energy for many electronics devices in the Journal of the Ameri...
New Fuels - Biofuels: Meeting biofuel production targets could change agricultural landscape
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - May 29, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsAlmost 80 percent of current farmland in the U.S. would have to be devoted to raising corn for ethanol production in order to meet current biofuel production targets with existing technology, a new study has found. An alternative, according to a study in ACS’ journal Environmental Science and Te...
Promoting Personal Safety and National Security: Killer silk - Making silk fibers that kill anthrax and other microbes in minutes
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - May 21, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsA simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minutes, protect homes and other buildings in the event of a terrorist attack with anthrax, scientists are reportin...
Providing Nutritious Foods: Strong scientific evidence that eating berries benefits the brain
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - May 07, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s finding suggests that eating blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other berry fruits has beneficial effects on the brain and may help prevent age-related memory loss and other changes.
Combating Disease: Adapting personal glucose monitors to detect DNA
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - April 30, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution addresses the development of an inexpensive device used by millions of people with diabetes that could be adapted into a home detector for many diseases.
Providing Safe Food: Children may have highest exposure to titanium dioxide nanoparticles
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - April 16, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s finding warns that children may be receiving the highest exposure to nanoparticles of titanium dioxide in candy, which they eat in amounts much larger than adults.
New Fuels: Biofuels - Biofuel cell generates electricity when implanted in False Death’s Head Cockroach
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - March 22, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsScientists have developed and implanted into a living insect — the False Death's Head Cockroach — a miniature fuel cell that converts naturally occurring sugar in the insect and oxygen from the air into electricity. They term it an advance toward a source of electricity that could, in principle,...
Promoting Personal Safety and National Security: New test could help track down and prosecute terrorists who use nerve gas and other agents
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - March 12, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution addresses the development of a new test that could help track down and prosecute terrorists who use chemical agents.
Supplying Safe Drinking Water: “Miracle tree” substance produces clean drinking water inexpensively and sustainably
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - February 27, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution uses the seeds of the miracle tree to produce clean drinking water. The water-treatment process requiring only tree seeds and sand could purify and clarify water inexpensively and sustainably in the developing world, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking...
Our Sustainable Future: Peatland carbon storage is stabilized against catastrophic release of carbon
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - January 30, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsConcerns that global warming may have a domino effect —unleashing 600 billion tons of carbon in vast expanses of peat in the Northern hemisphere and accelerating warming to disastrous proportions — may be less justified than previously thought. That’s the conclusion of a new study on the topic i...
Combating Disease: Turning up the heat to kill cancer cells: “The Lance Armstrong effect”
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - January 17, 2012 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe “Lance Armstrong effect” could become a powerful new weapon to fight cancer cells that develop resistance to chemotherapy, radiation and other treatments, scientists say in a report in the ACS journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.
Promoting Public Health: Household washing machines are a source of potentially harmful ocean “microplastic” pollution
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - December 19, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution warns that household washing machines seem to be a major source of so-called “microplastic” pollution — bits of polyester and acrylic smaller than the head of a pin — that scientists now have detected on shorelines worldwide.
Promoting Public Health: Recycling thermal cash register receipts contaminates paper products with BPA
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - December 05, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsBisphenol A (BPA) — a substance that may have harmful health effects — occurs in 94 percent of thermal cash register receipts, scientists are reporting. The recycling of those receipts, they add, is a source of BPA contamination of paper napkins, toilet paper, food packaging and other paper prod...
Developing New Sources of Energy: New type of solar cell retains high efficiency for long periods
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - November 28, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn this episode, we will addresses the development of a new type of solar cell retains high efficiency for long periods.
Combating Disease: Genetically-engineered spider silk for gene therapy
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - November 14, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsGenetically engineered spider silk could help overcome a major barrier to the use of gene therapy in everyday medicine, according to a new study that reported development and successful initial laboratory tests of such a material. It appears in ACS’ journal Bioconjugate Chemistry.
New Fuels Biofuels: Alligator fat as a new source of biodiesel fuel
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - October 24, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution addresses the development of a unique form of biodiesel fuel using alligator fat.
Providing Safe Foods: Flooding of farmland does not increase levels of potentially harmful flame retardants in milk
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - October 10, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution provides a reassuring message—although potentially harmful flame retardants build up in flooded rivers, that doesn’t translate to harmful levels in milk from cows that consume the grass in these flood-prone areas.
Confronting Climate Change: Using the energy in oil shale without releasing carbon dioxide in a greenhouse world
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - September 26, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsNew technology that combines production of electricity with capture of carbon dioxide could make billions of barrels of oil shale — now regarded as off-limits because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide released in its production — available as an energy source. That’s the conclusion of a repo...
Promoting Public health: Toward a vaccine for methamphetamine abuse
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - September 11, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution addresses the development of a potential vaccine to fight methamphetamine abuse. Methamphetamine abuse costs the United States more than 23 billion annually in medical expenses, law enforcement costs, and lost productivity.
Providing Safe Foods: Safety of nanoparticles in food crops is still unclear
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - August 22, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution sounds a warning bell about the much-anticipated new era of nanoagriculture — using nanotechnology to boost the productivity of plants for food, fuel, and other uses.
Developing New Materials: Using banana peels to purify water
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - August 08, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsA study in the American Chemical Society’s journal, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, reports that minced banana peel performs better than an array of other water purification materials and can do so in a sustainable way.
Our Sustainable Future: A “green grid” for delivering solar and wind-based electricity
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - July 25, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution addresses the development of a “green grid” to more efficiently deliver solar and wind-based electricity.
Promoting Public Health: Toward new medication for chronic brain diseases
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - July 11, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsA needle-in-the-haystack search through nearly 390,000 chemical compounds has led scientists to a substance that can sneak through the protective barrier surrounding the brain with effects promising for new drugs for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. They report on the substance, which block...
Developing New Sources of Energy: Self-powered nanogenerator uses body movements to generate electricity, transmit data wirelessly
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - June 27, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution is A first-of-its-kind nanogenerator that can produce electricity using energy from a gentle breeze, movements of a person walking and other sources and power wireless data transmissions.
Our Sustainable Future: “Green” cars made from pineapples and bananas
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - June 13, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution explains how manufacturers building hybrids that have excellent gas mileage, can create stronger, lighter, and more sustainable materials for cars and other products, made, in part, out of bananas or pineapples.
Combating Disease: New rapid diagnostic test for MRSA Superbugs
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - May 23, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution is a new blood test that can quickly tell whether patients are infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that’s become a global plague. This superbug is called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or simply MRSA.
Promoting Personal Safety and National Security: New nanomaterial detects and neutralizes explosives
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions - May 09, 2011 14:00 ★★★★ - 3 ratingsToday’s solution is a new nanomaterial that could make the world a little safer by detecting and neutralizing explosives.
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