ACS Press Blog

Berry good advice

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:53:00 -0400

My wife has been kidding me about my memory for as long as I can remember. This could go back more than 17 years, but I can’t be sure. The good news is that I have never had a photographic memory. Not even close. She, on the other hand, remembers things. She always has, always will.

So it is with a great deal of trepidation that I call to everyone’s attention a certain study that we featured at the recent ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Boston. I actually considered not telling my wife about it, but that’s not fair. Before I share the results, though, you need to know this: She eats large quantities of blueberries and strawberries every morning. In fact, she consumes more of these fruits in one breakfast sitting than I consume in six months. This may change for me… Now to the study:

Scientists have reported the first evidence that eating blueberries, strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain stay healthy in a crucial but previously unrecognized way. Their study, presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, concluded that berries, and possibly walnuts, activate the brain’s natural “housekeeper” mechanism, which cleans up and recycles toxic proteins linked to age-related memory loss and other mental decline.

Shibu Poulose, Ph.D., who presented the report, said previous research suggested that one factor involved in aging is a steady decline in the body’s ability to protect itself against inflammation and oxidative damage. This leaves people vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases, heart disease, cancer, and other age-related disorders.

“The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenolics found in fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect that may protect against age-associated decline,” said Poulose, who is with the U. S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston. Poulose did the research with James Joseph, Ph.D., who died June 1. Joseph, who headed the laboratory, pioneered research on the role of antioxidants in fruits and nuts in preventing age-related cognitive decline.

Their past studies, for instance, showed that old laboratory rats fed for two months on diets containing 2 percent high-antioxidant strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry extract showed a reversal of age-related deficits in nerve function and behavior that involves learning and remembering.

To read more, go to berries and the brain.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

ACS puts its green on top

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:48:00 -0400

It’s been an egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk kind of summer here even for the nation’s capital, but the other day, we got a refreshing break as the temperature mercifully stayed in the 80s. But when I got out of the car and hit the black asphalt in the parking lot of a local shopping center, I swear the temperature jumped 10 degrees.

I’ve often thought we could make a major dent in global warming if someone invented a kind of paving that would actually reflect the sun rather than invite it in to roast us even more. Those sunscreens for the car and truck windshields really do a fine job, so this reflecting principle can work. Trees and the shade they give also help cool things down in some places, too, and I enjoy the neighborhood park near our house for this reason.

Another way is to build roofs covered with plants. And I am very proud to say that I work for a society that is so concerned about the environment that it has just begun construction of this kind of roof. ACS this week took another major step in transforming its headquarters into one of the most energy-efficient and sustainable structures possible with existing technology by starting construction of a meadow on the roof -- a “green roof” for its headquarters building.

Only 1 in 10 office buildings in the Washington, D.C., area have these innovative surfaces, according to Joanna Brosnan, director of ACS’s Facilities Department, who initiated the project. Green roofs use green plants growing on a specially engineered surface to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, save energy on heating and cooling, promote cleaner air, and reduce stormwater runoff that can overburden city sewers.

When completed in the autumn, the ACS’ Clifford & Kathryn Hach Building, 1155 16th Street NW, will sprout a garden consisting of a specialized mix of plants that thrive in the harsh, dry, hot conditions that exist at roof level. Employees will be able to enjoy lunch or breaks in an observation area and enjoy the wildflowers, grasses, and water-storing, drought-resistant flowering sedums in the meadow-on-the-roof.

“We are delighted to be able to transform our headquarters building into an even-more environmentally friendly and sustainable structure,” said Madeleine Jacobs, ACS Executive Director and CEO. “This project is consistent with the core values of ACS, the world’s largest scientific society -- to work for a more sustainable city, country, and world.”

To read more, go to green roof.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Hot news on chili peppers

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:19:00 -0400

What exactly is the deal with green chili peppers? They totally confuse me. I like Mexican food very much, but I have a problem with those green chilies. One time I eat them and they are red hot. Another time they are not. I never like super-hot foods because to me the heat masks the flavor. So I have a need-to-know rule when I order food in general.

With Chinese food, you know up-front that if, by accident, you bite into one of those long red peppers, you’re in trouble. Big time. I like that. I like being fore-warned. With the Mexican food and the green chilies, it’s always a surprise to me. I don’t like that.

Speaking of peppers, an item on the subject in this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac caught my eye. First, the picture shows the red ones. If I’m not mistaken, those are consistently hot, so you know what you’re getting. That’s good. Even better, the item reports on a study concluding that an ingredient in the peppers fights fat.

Capsaicin, the stuff that gives chili peppers their kick, may cause weight loss and fight fat buildup by triggering certain beneficial protein changes in the body, according to this new study on the topic. The report, which could lead to new treatments for obesity, appears in ACS’ monthly Journal of Proteome Research.

Jong Won Yun and colleagues point out that obesity is a major public health threat worldwide, linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and other health problems. Laboratory studies have hinted that capsaicin may help fight obesity by decreasing calorie intake, shrinking fat tissue, and lowering fat levels in the blood. Nobody, however, knows exactly how capsaicin might trigger such beneficial effects.

In an effort to find out, the scientists fed high-fat diets with or without capsaicin to lab rats used to study obesity. The capsaicin-treated rats lost 8 percent of their body weight and showed changes in levels of at least 20 key proteins found in fat. The altered proteins work to break down fats. “These changes provide valuable new molecular insights into the mechanism of the antiobesity effects of capsaicin,” the scientists say.

To read more, go to peppers.

Image courtesy of iStock

This fish story is no fish story

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:33:00 -0400

I have a kind of funny relationship with fish. So far, I’ve never met one I didn’t like for dinner. On the other hand, I have never had much patience to spend the day on the water, trying to catch one. Until I was about 13, though, I tried. In the summer my uncle and my cousin and I would rent a small boat and set off for the ocean off Niantic, Conn. I caught a few fish –– mainly small flounder –– and had them for dinner, but I never was as into it as my two companions. Millions of people do enjoy the sport, of course, and I‘m happy I gave it a try.

Years later, my cousin got married and moved to San Francisco and, as it turns out, his father-in-law was a major fisherman, who not only caught tons of salmon, but smoked them. Nothing like smoked salmon. I’ve had his and they were good. He fished until he was 100, even driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito to fish the pier when he was 98.

He died a few years ago at 101, but if he were alive today I’m pretty sure he would read with interest what I’m about to write based on an item in this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac even though it doesn’t pertain to the waters near the City by the Bay.

Mercury levels in a popular species of game fish in Lake Erie are increasing after two decades of steady decline, scientists are reporting. The study, the most comprehensive to date on mercury levels in Great Lakes fish, is in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Satyendra Bhavsar and colleagues note that the Great Lakes is the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. The lakes are of significant economic importance to the United States and Canada due to the area’s $7 billion fishing industry. High levels of mercury in fish can potentially cause adverse health effects in people. Although government regulations and improved emissions control technologies have greatly reduced mercury emissions in the environment, their impact on mercury levels in Great Lakes fish is unclear.

The scientists studied mercury levels in 5,807 fish samples collected from the lakes between the 1970s and 2007. The samples included lake trout and walleye, two of the most common species of game fish caught in the region.

The researchers found that mercury levels in the fish steadily declined from the mid-1970s to 2007 in the upper Great Lakes (Superior and Huron). In recent years (between 1990 and 2007), however, the mercury concentrations leveled-off in Lake Ontario walleye but appear to be increasing in Lake Erie walleye. The mercury increases in Lake Erie walleye are likely caused by a combination of factors, including modifications in Lake Erie’s foodweb due to invasions of dreissenid mussels and round goby, the scientists suggest.

To read the study, go to this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac at mercury.

You probably have guessed the photo in this item is NOT Lake Erie. I took this shot while on vacation this month in Maine and it was such a peaceful scene I wanted to share it.

Jell-O®, everybody, Jell-O®…

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:46:00 -0400

I have very strong feelings about Jell-O®. I have had them since I was a child. I like virtually all of the flavors but one: green. I find artificial green flavor in just about any food or candy is, well, too artificial. To me, it just doesn’t come close to emulating the taste of lime. Yellow, red or orange Jell-O®, on the other hand, is flavorful.

There is one exception. And I have to go back to my college days to find it. My girlfriend’s mother used to make one heck of a Jell-O® mold and she actually used the green flavor. As I remember it, she added shredded carrots, green olives with pimentos in them, walnuts and sour cream to that green Jell-O®. Somehow the combination worked for me and I always had seconds and even thirds.

I haven’t thought about the green Jell-O® mold for a long time, but when I sent out a recent ACS PressPac with a very unique use for Jell-O® in it, it came to mind.

With “hands-on” experiences in childhood and adolescence having sparked so many science careers, scientists in Canada are describing a quick, simple, safe, and inexpensive way for kids to participate in making microfluidic devices. Those devices are at the heart of lab-on-a chip, inkjet printing, DNA chip, and other technologies. The scientists’ instructions for making microfluidic devices from Jell-O® type dessert mixes and Popsicle-type sticks, and using them to demonstrate the basics of microfluidics, appear in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal.

In the report, Eric Lagally and colleagues note that most scientists remember a defining moment in youth that sparked a life-long interest in science. It may have been building an electronic circuit, for instance, or watching cells divide under a microscope. Microfluidics, they note, has the potential to revolutionize medicine and biology, reducing an entire laboratory of instruments for analyzing blood, urine, and other materials to the size of a postage stamp. Until now, however, hands-on experience with microfluidics has been impossible because of the expense and potentially toxic chemicals involved in making microfluidic devices.

The article describes using Popsicle-type craft sticks taped to the bottom of a Styrofoam plate to form large-scale versions of the minute channels in actual microfluidic devices. Once the sticks are in place, students pour in liquid Jell-O® and let it solidify in a refrigerator. After the devices have firmed up, students poke small holes into the tiny channels. Using small straws, they can feed liquid into the channels. In one experiment, the scientists put tiny strips of pH paper into the channels, and added different liquids. Since Jell-O is translucent, the researchers could watch the color of those test strips change as the liquids hit them. Since then, they have been working to build more complicated devices from the classic dessert

To read more about the study, go to Jell-O®.

Image courtesy of the American Chemical Society.

Free-range eggs: A good thing?

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:20:00 -0400

My first memory of eating eggs as a child is not a happy one: I clearly remember gagging on them. To persuade me to eat soft-boiled eggs, my parents would add some pieces of toast and serve the mixture to me in a brightly-colored egg cup. I don’t know if they sell these cups today, but we still have one at home, though we never use it. I forced myself to eat some of this concoction, but it was never a favorite of mine.

Fortunately, as I tried more foods as a teen, I found better scrambled eggs and Western omelets and quiches and, my favorite –– egg salad sandwiches. Here’s a tip: put some of that sweet, yellow Jamaican curry in the egg salad. Yum.

But now comes a new finding from a group of scientists in Asia that raises a question about the newest kind of eggs.…

Contrary to popular belief, paying a premium price for free-range eggs may not be healthier than eating regular eggs, a new study reports. Scientists found that free-range eggs in Taiwan contain at least five times higher levels of certain pollutants than regular eggs. Their findings appear in ACS’ bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In the new study, Pao-Chi Liao and colleagues note that free-range chickens are those that have continuous access to fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, in contrast to chickens that are confined to cages. Demand for eggs from free-range chickens has increased steadily due to their supposed better nutrition qualities, including higher levels of certain healthy fats. But scientists suspect that free-range chickens may risk getting higher levels of exposure to environmental pollutants, particularly PCDDs and PCDFs, potentially toxic substances that are produced as by-products of burning waste. Also known as dioxins, these substances may cause a wide range of health problems in humans, including reproductive and developmental problems and cancer.

The scientists collected six free-range eggs and 12 regular eggs from farms and markets in Taiwan and analyzed the eggs for their content of dioxins. Taiwan, they note, is a heavily populated, industrialized island with many of the municipal incinerators that release PCDDs and PCDFs. They found that the free-range eggs contained 5.7 times higher levels of PCDDs and PCDFs than the regular eggs. The scientists suggest that the findings raise concern about the safety of eating free-range chicken eggs.

To read more about the study, go to this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac, eggs.

Image courtesy of iStock

Loving the ACS updated Web site

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:02:00 -0400

Know this: I’m no computer geek. Oh, I love checking the Web for ACS news stories, I’m on Facebook and some other social networking sites, and I can be found busily typing on my keyboard most of the day during working hours. The Net is a Godsend when I need information for a reporter.

I love the technology; I just have no clue how it works. I can follow the directions they give you when I’m in our den at home and I want to buy a case of sugar-free strawberry jam online. And I appreciate being able to set up a good e-mail press list in Excel. But when something goes wrong with my office laptop, I give up almost immediately and make a call to the ACS IT Department. Only on rare occasions do I figure out how to solve the problem without help. So when I come across a program or a Web site that carries me along smoothly, I am ecstatic.

The new, improved, lively, lovely ACS Web site that has recently been unveiled is just such a site. It sings. It really does make things easy. If you doubt me, please check out the improved version after you finish my blog item.

So what have the IT people at ACS done here to improve things?

They added innovative search and navigation tools to make the site even more useful and accessible to the public and enhanced the appearance of the site with more digital content, such as Flash, and made it easier for users to publish their content and information. New features include the Google navigation tool and more navigation cues, including the left hand menus and the Content Carousel, a media-rich area on the homepage that showcases the Society’s top news and research, as well as promoting top ACS programs and services.

ACS launched a new Web site in October 2007 to provide a global hub for chemistry and other scientific disciplines that involve chemistry and chemical engineering. The site offers ACS members, policy makers, and the public more intuitive access to information from the world’s largest scientific society. This includes cutting-edge science news, subscriber access to ACS’ suite of 38 peer-reviewed scientific journals, job listings and career services, podcasts and other resources.

OK, now you can check out www.acs.org.

It’s a bird; it’s a plane; it’s…a new factor in the growth of global warming?

Fri, 28 May 2010 15:16:00 -0400

The nation’s commercial airlines deserve a little credit for consistently carrying out their jobs. Rain or shine, their 35,000 daily flights ferry people of all kinds — the college graduate, the business executive, the vacationer — throughout the country and around the world.

Of late, the major carriers have had a few bumps in the road: plunging revenues, an unpredictable and seemingly never-ending volcano eruption, heightened security and regulation due to terrorism, disastrously long ticket lines, flight delays and even cancellations.

A new study in a recent issue of ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology is piling on to the worries for general aviation by predicting increased emissions from aircrafts over the next few decades.

Despite the non-stop activity in the skies, transport on the ground has gotten a fair share of scrutiny regarding its role in climate change, and few scientists have ventured to address how aircraft might be influencing global warming.

For the first time in a decade, new projections of future aircraft emissions says that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases from air traffic will become a significant source of global warming as they double or triple by 2050, according to Bethan Owen, Ph.D., of the Dalton Research Institute.

The prediction of aviation emissions could paint a clearer picture of the collective forces that cause climate change. In 2008, total U.S. CO2 emissions were on the decline but were measured at 5,921 million tons. Overall, total U.S. emissions have risen by about 14 percent from 1990 to 2008.

In ES&T, the researchers point out that aviation has grown strongly over recent decades but currently isn’t one of the main drivers of global warming. International aviation — the source of 60 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft — isn’t included in the Kyoto Protocol. Global air traffic currently contributes about 2 to 3 percent of CO2 emissions — the main greenhouse gas linked to global warming.

The scientists’ computer model forecast that emissions of carbon dioxide will likely double or triple within the next 50 years and could increase by seven times the current levels by 2100. They say that while there has been progress in increasing fuel efficiency through new technology and better operational management, it hasn’t counteracted the increase in air traffic.

Image courtesy of iStock

I don’t know beans about coffee, but someone else does

Thu, 20 May 2010 16:59:00 -0400

Some years ago, goaded on by some of my high school buddies, I wrote a letter to the editor at the National Enquirer in response to a story about a clothing store owner in Canada named Stanley Plomish, who claimed he was from the planet Venus. In a nutshell, my letter said this man was a fraud because I was from Venus and, to quote myself, “I never heard of any Plomish family.” Well, they printed my letter and when you read the next sentence you probably will be convinced I knew what I was talking about. I can live without coffee.

With the number of coffee corners around this country in particular, I have the feeling I must be one of five people on the planet who can take or leave this ubiquitous beverage. Now, I do appreciate a good cup of Joe, but I have never craved it or needed it to wake up in the morning as so many people do. Not that there’s anything wrong with a wake-up jolt. It’s just that I can’t really identify with coffee-lovers in general. I can, however, appreciate what yesterday’s ACS Weekly PressPac had to say about what some imaginative chemists in Brazil have been doing with unroasted coffee beans.

The scientists are reporting for the first time that these beans contain proteins that can kill insects and might be developed into new insecticides for protecting food crops against destructive pests. Their study, which suggests a new use for one of the most important tropical crops in the world, appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Peas, beans and some other plant seeds contain proteins, called globulins, which ward off insects. Coffee beans contain large amounts of globulins, and Paulo Mazzafera and colleagues wondered whether those coffee proteins might also have an insecticidal effect. The high heat of roasting destroys globulins, so that they do not appear in brewed coffee.

Their tests against cowpea weevil larva, insects used as models for studying the insecticidal activity of proteins, showed that tiny amounts of the coffee proteins quickly killed up to half of the insects. In the future, scientists could insert genes for these insect-killing proteins into important food crops, such as grains, so that plants produce their own insecticides, the researchers suggest. The proteins appear harmless to people.

To read more about this innovation, go to beans.

Image courtesy of Fernando Rebelo, Wikimedia Commons

If used correctly, remains of cigarettes can fight corrosion

Mon, 17 May 2010 13:57:00 -0400

It’s uncommon for research to emerge that instantly connects to everyday people while also challenging conventional wisdom. A new study in ACS’ bi-weekly Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research has a surprising use for cigarette butts: they could prevent steel corrosion that costs oil producers millions of dollars each year.

The find touches on both green chemistry and industrial chemistry applications. Toxins from the remains of cigarettes not only kill fish (previous studies have shown the toxic substances in one cigarette butt can kill half of the fish in a single liter of water every 96 hours), they also litter parks, waterways, nature trails and other precious landmarks. One estimate says as many as 4.5 trillion cigarette butts pollute the environment each year.

Recycling spent cigarettes can clean up cities, but it’s also a lucrative concept. Led by Jun Zhao, Ph.D., of Xi’an Jiaotong University, the scientists showed that extracts of cigarette butts in water could protect steel from rusting even under harsh conditions.

They identified nine chemicals in the extracts, including nicotine, which appear to be responsible for this anti-corrosion effect. The chemicals could prevent costly damage and interruptions in oil production.

Image courtesy of iStock.

A painless plea from me

Fri, 14 May 2010 12:01:00 -0400

Please hurry! Please hurry! Time is running out. In about two weeks I will once again become a human pincushion and I would love to avoid the needle. You are my only hope, you scientists at the University of Minnesota. Without you, on June 2 I will settle into the dentist’s chair and get my full dose of topical anesthesia –– right in the cheek and gums when I have my first tooth pulled to make way for a dental implant.

How can these scientists help me? They have just announced a breakthrough: An anesthesia inhaler that could one day replace that needle.

I know it’s impossible that the device could miraculously make it into the health care delivery system, in the next two weeks, but you can’t blame me for dreaming…

Scientists are reporting evidence that a common local anesthetic, when administered to the nose as nose drops or a nasal spray, travels through the main nerve in the face and collects in high concentrations in the teeth, jaw, and structures of the mouth.

The discovery could lead to a new generation of intranasal drugs for noninvasive treatment for dental pain, migraine, and other conditions, the scientists suggest in American Chemical Society’s bi-monthly journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The article is scheduled for the journal’s May-June issue.

William H. Frey II, Ph.D., and colleagues note that drugs administered to the nose travel along nerves and go directly to the brain. One of those nerves is the trigeminal nerve, which brings feelings to the face, nose and mouth. Until now, however, scientists never checked to see whether intranasal drugs passing along that nerve might reach the teeth, gums and other areas of the face and mouth to reduce pain sensations in the face and mouth.

Neil Johnson, working in the labs of Frey and Leah R. Hanson, Ph.D., at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., found that lidocaine or Xylocaine, sprayed into the noses of laboratory rats, quickly traveled down the trigeminal nerve and collected in their teeth, jaws, and mouths at levels 20 times higher than in the blood or brain. The approach could provide a more effective and targeted method for treating dental pain/anxiety, trigeminal neuralgia (severe facial pain), migraine, and other conditions, the scientists say.

To read more about this innovation, go to painless.

Image courtesy of iStock

“Communication breakdown” to silence bacterial infections?

Thu, 13 May 2010 14:42:00 -0400

Few classes of disease over the course of history can match the uncanny persistence and destruction of bacterial infections.

During the middle ages, poor sanitation and overcrowded living conditions of European cities were responsible for a number of epidemics — bubonic plague, cholera, leprosy and tuberculosis. Fast forward a few centuries. Despite the wealth of knowledge on various types of bacterial disease, they still pose a grave danger to people and have also managed to thrive in unlikely conditions. Cholera, for instance, was eradicated for a century but emerged again in Africa and Latin America; and cases of tuberculosis — a lethal infectious disease affecting humanity for thousands of years — are on the rise.

Scientists aren’t backing down from the problem. They are devising new strategies to fight disease-causing bacteria that have, through the course of history, caused millions of deaths.

Elena Piletska and colleagues are reporting the first attempt to silence biochemical conversations that bacteria use to marshal forces and cause infections. They describe use of specially designed plastic-like materials to block substances that bacteria produce and pass to one another — a signaling process called “quorum sensing.” These messages passed to and from disease-causing microbes are essential to causing infections, which could range from mild illnesses to death.

The special plastics, similar to those dentists use to repair damaged teeth, have captured signaling molecules in lab experiments. This bacterial “communication breakdown” using easy-to-make, chemically inert polymers could provide a new concept for the development of pharmaceuticals and susceptible device coatings such as catheters, Piletska says. The plastics also reduced the ability of the bacteria to form biofilms, which bacteria use as a refuge to multiply. The study appears in ACS’ monthly journal, Biomacromolecules.

Wash your hands: Motherly advice supported by science

Fri, 07 May 2010 12:41:00 -0400

When I was a child, my mother used to frequently remind me to wash my hands before eating dinner. Sometimes I ignored her advice. It seemed hard for me to believe at the time that there were “invisible” germs that lived on my hands that could potentially make me sick. My mother was a school nurse and was always giving me advice about my health that bordered on nagging. Today, I know that Mother was not only right about handwashing, but that her advice may have saved my life.

A recent article in the American Chemical Society’s PressPac reinforced this motherly advice. It describes a new scientific study showing a connection between fecal bacteria contamination on hands, fecal contamination of stored drinking water, and health in households in a developing country in Africa. The bottom line of the article is that handwashing can prevent the spread of waterborne diseases. That’s big news for the almost half of the world’s population — over three billion people — who have no access to municipal drinking water supply systems. They obtain drinking water from wells, springs, and other sources, and store it in jugs and other containers in their homes. Past research showed that this stored water can have higher levels of bacterial contamination than its source.

Although most people in the United States are fortunate to have access to fresh, decontaminated drinking water, handwashing is an important practice for preventing the spread of dangerous germs. So science proves that Mother was right after all!

Image courtest of iStock

The electronic waste in my apartment

Fri, 07 May 2010 12:38:00 -0400

I recently began cleaning out the clutter in my small apartment in Alexandria, Va., where I have lived for the past decade. Over this time, I accumulated a lot of junk: Old magazines, clothes, and spare parts for my car. One of the things that surprised me was the number of unused computers and other discarded electronic equipment — also known as electronic waste (e-waste) — I had collected. I counted at least three computers that I was no longer using, a couple of cell phones, and various other items. My apartment had become a potential environmental hazard!

I am inspired to blog about this topic because of an article I read recently in the American Chemical Society’s weekly PressPac. The article indicates that the developing world will produce double the e-waste of developed countries, like the United States, by 2016. The article, based on a study published in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology, predicts that by 2030 developing countries will discard some 400 million – 700 million obsolete personal computers per year compared to 200 million – 300 million in developed countries. That’s bad news, considering that this e-waste contains potentially toxic substances. The study highlights the need to develop better ways of disposing of this waste.

I’m not anywhere close to accumulating that amount of e-waste. But I know that I need to do a lot more to help improve the planet. I pledge that when I get rid of all of my e-waste, I will do so in an environmentally-responsible manner. It won’t go to the trash bin. I will give my computers to someone else who can actually use them or send them to an e-waste collection program in my area. For more on this, visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site. I’ll be happy knowing that I’m contributing to a cleaner environment….and uncluttering my apartment in the process.

Image courtesy of iStock

Food for thought: tasty treats on the way

Thu, 06 May 2010 15:34:00 -0400

There’s something about institutional food and me that doesn’t work. I guess it started with those scrambled eggs immersed in a lake of brown grease at summer camp. Next, it was those Swedish meatballs in the high school cafeteria. What was in that gravy? Finally, it was a whole pile of different foods at basic training for my hitch with the Air National Guard. I can’t remember any of the specific delicacies now, but I do know one thing: I lost nearly 25 pounds that brutally hot summer in San Antonio and it wasn’t all due to the heat and humidity.

So, while I’ve been away from mass-produced foodstuffs for some time now, for those of you in school or on military maneuvers, I feel your heartburn.

But I am here today to give y’all some good news: thanks to chemistry, help is on the way for the military!

The portable packages of food called the Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) that sustain military personnel in combat or field conditions without regular food facilities are getting tastier and more sophisticated thanks to innovations in food technology. That’s the focus of an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS’ weekly newsmagazine.

C&EN Senior Editor Bethany Halford notes that the forerunners to today’s MREs, known as C Rations, consisted of simple ingredients like beans and franks or ham slices in little green cans. One former soldier described the meals as “big wads of grease.” By contrast, today’s MRE contains a main course like ravioli, bread, moist lemon poppy seed cake for dessert, a packet of instant coffee or other powdered beverage, and a flameless heater. Instead of cans, modern field rations come in tough pouches that can withstand heavy downpours and endure helicopter air-drops.

Scientists have devoted years to developing the modern MRE, which must meet a strict set of criteria, including a prolonged shelf life ranging from months to even years. MRE packaging now contains protective layers, composed of foil and other materials, which block out oxygen, water vapor, and light to keep food from spoiling. Scientists are currently testing improved packaging materials, advanced sterilization techniques, and better ways to heat foods. Who knows, military personnel of the future may even find that MRE with crab cakes in sweet pepper aioli and finish up with a lemon curd napoleon.

To read more about this innovation, go to good food.

Image courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense