(Press-News.org) The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes the first mobile application to foster wider use of the environmentally friendly and sustainable principles of green chemistry.
Based on a report by Sean Ekins, Ph.D., D.Sc., and colleagues in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from http://www.acs.org/globalchallenges.
Mention mobile applications, or mobile apps, and people think of games, email, news, weather, productivity and other software for Apple, Android and other smart phones and tablet computers. But an app with broader impact could help more people use green chemistry principles.
Ekins points out that the companies that manufacture medicines, electronics components and hundreds of other consumer products have a commitment to work in a sustainable fashion — without damaging the environment. That's the heart of "green chemistry." It is often defined as "the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products."
The podcast describes a guide on doing so for solvents, which are key ingredients in making medicines. Some traditional processes generate 25-100 times more waste than the chemical they are making in the first place.
That's why the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's Pharmaceutical Roundtable, a group of 14 pharmaceutical companies, developed the app. The Green Solvents mobile app version of the guide for Apple devices covers 60 different solvents and is available online at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/green-solvents/id446670983?mt=8, and the Lab Solvents app for Android devices is available online at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mmi.android.labsolvents.
###
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st century's most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Global Challenges is a sweeping panorama of global challenges that includes dilemmas such as providing a hungry and thirsty world with ample supplies of safe food and clean water, developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society, preserving the environment and ensuring a sustainable future for our children and improving human health.
For more entertaining, informative science videos and podcasts from the ACS Office of Public Affairs, view Prized Science, Spellbound, Science Elements and Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Follow us: Twitter Facebook END
American Chemical Society podcast: Green chemistry mobile app
2013-05-14
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Primary care physicians vital to complete care of prostate cancer patients
2013-05-14
Androgen deprivation therapy is a common and effective treatment for advanced prostate cancer. However, among other side-effects, it can cause significant bone thinning in men on long-term treatment. A new study¹ by Vahakn Shahinian and Yong-Fang Kuo from the Universities of Michigan and Texas respectively, finds that although bone mineral density testing is carried out on some men receiving this therapy, it is not routine. They did note, however, that men were significantly more likely to be tested when they were being cared for by both a urologist and a primary care ...
Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region
2013-05-14
Cancún, Mexico -- Researchers taking a new look at the snow
and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that
surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world's tallest
peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been
studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and
found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall
has been declining since the early 1990s.
Members of the team conducting these studies will present their
findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun,
Mexico - a scientific ...
New program successful in reducing service and substance use among frequent health care users
2013-05-14
TORONTO, May 14, 2013—A program co-led by St. Michael's Hospital could be the next widely used model to treat patients who are frequent users of the health care system and have severe addictions, often complicated by homelessness and mental health problems.
The Toronto Community Addiction Team (TCAT) was developed to improve health and social outcomes for people with addictions who are frequent users of health services by providing one-on-one intensive case management from a harm reduction approach. The team works with clients to provide services such as individual therapy, ...
First precise MEMS output measurement technique unveiled
2013-05-14
Tuesday 14th May, Washington DC - The commercial application of MEMS, or micro-electro-mechanical systems, will receive a major boost today following the presentation of a brand new way to accurately measure the power requirements and outputs of all existing and future devices. The cheap and easy to apply technique will be presented for the first time today at the TechConnect World Conference 2013 by a research team from Laboratoire national de métrologie et d'essais (LNE) in France. The researchers believe it will help manufacturers improve product performance, develop ...
Wayne State researcher's technique helps robotic vehicles find their way
2013-05-14
DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher understands that the three most important things about real estate also apply to small ground robotic vehicles: location, location, location.
In a paper recently published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Weisong Shi, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, describes his development of a technique called LOBOT that provides accurate, real-time, 3-D positions in both indoor and outdoor environments. The project was supported in part by the Wayne State ...
Alzheimer's markers predict start of mental decline
2013-05-14
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have helped identify many of the biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease that could potentially predict which patients will develop the disorder later in life. Now, studying spinal fluid samples and health data from 201 research participants at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, the researchers have shown the markers are accurate predictors of Alzheimer's years before symptoms develop.
"We wanted to see if one marker was better than the other in predicting which of our participants ...
Engineered biomaterial could improve success of medical implants
2013-05-14
It's a familiar scenario – a patient receives a medical implant and days later, the body attacks the artificial valve or device, causing complications to an already compromised system.
Expensive, state-of-the-art medical devices and surgeries often are thwarted by the body's natural response to attack something in the tissue that appears foreign. Now, University of Washington engineers have demonstrated in mice a way to prevent this sort of response. Their findings were published online this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
The UW researchers created a synthetic ...
Pitt chemists demonstrate nanoscale alloys so bright they could have potential medical applications
2013-05-14
PITTSBURGH—Alloys like bronze and steel have been transformational for centuries, yielding top-of-the-line machines necessary for industry. As scientists move toward nanotechnology, however, the focus has shifted toward creating alloys at the nanometer scale—producing materials with properties unlike their predecessors.
Now, research at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrates that nanometer-scale alloys possess the ability to emit light so bright they could have potential applications in medicine. The findings have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical ...
Human disease leptospirosis identified in new species, the banded mongoose, in Africa
2013-05-14
The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose.
Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it.
Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death.
"The problem in Botswana and much of Africa is that leptospirosis may remain unidentified in animal populations but contribute ...
Mining the botulinum genome
2013-05-14
The toxin that causes botulism is the most potent that we know of. Eating an amount of toxin just 1000th the weight of a grain of salt can be fatal, which is why so much effort has been put into keeping Clostridium botulinum, which produces the toxin, out of our food.
The Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park has been part of that effort through studying the bacteria and the way they survive, multiply and cause such harm. In new research, IFR scientists have been mining the genome of C. botulinum to uncover new information about the toxin genes.
There ...