The world's 50 largest chemical companies — with combined 2012 sales of almost $1 trillion and products that touch the lives of people everywhere — are the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. In C&EN's annual snapshot of the sales, profits, R&D spending and other indicators, Senior Correspondent Alexander Tullo points out that the Asian and Middle Eastern juggernauts that shot up the top 50 rankings during the past decade ...

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—July 31, 2013—Altruism is a strong motivating factor for clinical trial participation in the general population and even more so among several minority groups. A significant percentage of African-Americans (61%), Hispanics (57%) and Asians (50%) say it's very important to participate as a volunteer in a clinical trial to improve the health of others, compared to 47% of non-Hispanic whites, according to a new national public opinion poll commissioned by Research!America. These findings are tempered by the reality that participation remains disturbingly ...

This news release is available in German. Abdominal pain, fever, diarrhoea -- these symptoms could point to an infection with the bacterium Yersinia. The bacterium's pathogenic potential is based on a syringe-like injection apparatus called injectisome. For the first time, an international team of researchers including scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany, has unraveled this molecular syringe's spatial conformation. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the length of Yersinia's injectisome's basal body, which ...

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered, in theory, the possibility of creating large, hollow magnetic cage molecules that could one day be used in medicine as a drug delivery system to non-invasively treat tumors, and in other emerging technologies. Approximately 25 years ago, scientists first made the discovery of C60 fullerene – better known as the Buckminster Fullerene – a molecule composed of 60 carbon molecules that formed a hollow cage. Due to its unique hollow cage structure the molecule offers serious technological potential because it could ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Tiny silicon crystals caused no health problems in monkeys three months after large doses were injected, marking a step forward in the quest to bring such materials into clinics as biomedical imaging agents, according to a new study. The findings, published online July 10 in the journal ACS Nano, suggest that the silicon nanocrystals, known as quantum dots, may be a safe tool for diagnostic imaging in humans. The nanocrystals absorb and emit light in the near-infrared part of the spectrum, a quality that makes them ideal for seeing deeper into tissue ...

Brooklyn, N.Y.—The latest in a series of experiments testing the ability of robots to influence live animals shows that bio-inspired robots can not only elicit fear in zebrafish, but that this reaction can be modulated by alcohol. These findings may pave the way for new methodologies for understanding anxiety and other emotions, as well as substances that alter them. Maurizio Porfiri, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) and Simone Macrì, a collaborator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità ...

The Standard Model, which has given the most complete explanation up to now of the universe, has gaps, and is unable to explain phenomena like dark matter or gravitational interaction between particles. Physicists are therefore seeking a more fundamental theory that they call "New Physics", but up to now there has been no direct proof of its existence, only indirect observation of dark matter, as deduced, among other things, from the movement of the galaxies. A team of physicists formed by the professor of Physics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Joaquim Matias, ...

WASHINGTON D.C., July 31, 2013 -- What happens to a resonant wireless power transfer system in the presence of complex electromagnetic environments, such as metal plates? A team of researchers explored the influences at play in this type of situation, and they describe in the American Institute of Physics' journal AIP Advances how efficient wireless power transfer can indeed be achieved in the presence of metal plates. The team discovered that resonance frequency matching, alignment of the magnetic field, and impedance matching are the most important factors for efficient ...

Basic chemistry tells us that a bond between atoms can form if it is energetically more favorable for the atoms to stick together than staying apart. This fundamentally requires an attractive force between the atoms. However, new theoretical predictions show that the combination of a repelling force and controlled noise from an environment can also have the surprising effect of leading to a bound state, although one with quite exotic properties. The research team consisting of Harvard postdoc Mikhail Lemeshko and former Harvard postdoc Hendrik Weimer* report their results ...

In 1924, Science magazine reported on a fatal case of potato poisoning: James B. Matheney of Vandalia, Illinois, had gathered about one and a half bushels of tubers, which had turned green due to sunlight exposure. Two days after eating the potatoes, most of his family -- wife, two daughters and four sons -- showed symptoms of poisoning; the only exceptions were James himself, who didn't eat the potatoes, and a breast-fed baby boy. His wife, aged 45, died a week later, followed by their 16-year-old daughter. The other five members of the family recovered. Although such ...

One of life's most basic processes -- transcription of the genetic code -- resembles road traffic, including traffic jams, accidents and a police force that controls the flow of vehicles. This surprising finding, reported recently by Weizmann Institute researchers in Nature Communications, might facilitate the development of a new generation of drugs for a variety of disorders. Transcription indeed involves a step resembling the motion of a vehicle: Enzymes "ride" along gene "tracks," creating molecules that will later be translated into the various proteins involved ...

Researchers working with tiny components in nanoelectronics face a challenge similar to that of parents of small children: teaching them to manage on their own. The nano-components are so small that arranging them with external tools is impossible. The only solution is to create conditions in which they can be "trusted" to assemble themselves. Much effort has gone into facilitating the self-assembly of semiconductors, the basic building blocks of electronics, but until recently, success has been limited. Scientists had developed methods for growing semiconductor nanowires ...

From how secrets influence our emails to personality traits that increase the risk of obesity – a guide to some talks with new research in personality and social psychology at the APA Convention in Honolulu, July 31 – August 4, 2013 ... Linguistic Fingerprints of Secrets Keeping a secret not only burdens someone with the guilt of withholding information but also changes the way the person interacts with others, according to new research. In two studies, researchers looked at linguistic changes in the emails of people harboring secrets. They found that interactions with ...

Thanks to a new device that is the size of a human hair, it is now possible to detect molecules in a liquid solution and observe their interactions. This is of major interest for the scientific community, as there is currently no reliable way of examining both the behavior and the chemical structure of molecules in a liquid in real time. Developed at Boston University by Hatice Altug and her student Ronen Adato, the process brings together infrared detection techniques and gold nanoparticles. It could potentially make a whole new class of measurements possible, which ...

Shocking as it may seem, wastewater flushed down toilets and sinks is getting a new life thanks to special fuel cells that use it to produce electricity, according to the latest video in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') Bytesize Science series. Produced by the world's largest scientific society, the video is at http://www.BytesizeScience.com. Bruce E. Logan, Ph.D., featured in the video, points out that sewage treatment traditionally has been a big consumer of electricity. With the new fuel cells, that situation could be reversed, with sewage becoming the raw material ...

ST. LOUIS -- In a retrospective study, Saint Louis University researchers have found that patients with melanoma brain metastases can be treated with large doses of interleukin-2 (HD IL-2), a therapy that triggers the body's own immune system to destroy the cancer cells. The study that was recently published in Chemotherapy Research and Practice, reviews cases of eight patients who underwent this therapy at Saint Louis University. John Richart, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at SLU and principal investigator of the study, first treated a patient with ...

Eight years ago, two former Stanford University postdoctoral fellows, one of them still in California and the other at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) in Cambridge, began exchanging theories about why patients with leukemia stop producing healthy blood cells. What was it, they asked, that caused bone marrow to stop producing normal blood-producing cells? And after almost a decade of bicoastal collaboration, Emmanuelle Passegué, now a professor in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San ...

A brain imaging research team led by Simon Fraser University neuroscientist Dr. Ryan D'Arcy has found a new way to help surgeons more accurately plan for surgical treatment in epilepsy. The results of a recent study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have been published in the field's highest impact journal, Human Brain Mapping. To showcase the study, the journal highlighted the novel images of MEG activity on the August 2013 cover. D'Arcy and his team used MEG technology to produce detailed spatial maps of critical language functions in order to better enable pre-operative ...

CHICAGO --- New Northwestern Medicine® research on the genetics of diabetes could one day help women know their risk for developing gestational diabetes before they become pregnant -- and lead to preventive measures to protect the health of offspring. Gestational diabetes affects 18 percent of pregnancies but usually disappears when a pregnancy is over. Babies born to women with gestational diabetes are typically larger at birth, which can lead to complications during delivery. They are at an increased risk of developing metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, in childhood ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon chemist David C. Johnson likens his lab's newly published accomplishments to combining two flavors of ice cream -- vanilla and chocolate -- and churning out thousands of flavors to appeal to any taste bud. In reality, though, he is referring to his game-changing approach to synthesize thousands of new compounds with ultra low thermal conductivity and other unusual properties quickly instead of the traditional and time-consuming preparative approach that is limited to just a few thermodynamically stable compounds. In a paper placed ...

The Food and Drug Administration's approval last year of the drug Truvada for prevention of HIV infection was a milestone in the fight against HIV/AIDS, but experts are cautioning that it is only the beginning of new ethical concerns for health care professionals, policy makers, researchers and those taking Truvada to prevent HIV infection. "For the first time, we will have a large number of individuals who are not infected with HIV taking medication for HIV, which introduces ethical concerns of well-being and justice," says Jeremy Sugarman, Deputy Director for Medicine ...

From solar cells to optoelectronic sensors to lasers and imaging devices, many of today's semiconductor technologies hinge upon the absorption of light. Absorption is especially critical for nano-sized structures at the interface between two energy barriers called quantum wells, in which the movement of charge carriers is confined to two-dimensions. Now, for the first time, a simple law of light absorption for 2D semiconductors has been demonstrated. Working with ultrathin membranes of the semiconductor indium arsenide, a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of ...

ARLINGTON, Va.—Scientists recently launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from a research vessel in a significant experiment that could help boost the Navy's radar and communications performance at sea. Sailing off Virginia Beach, Va., from July 13 to 18, the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Research Vessel (R/V) Knorr explored ocean and atmospheric weather variations that can change the angle that radar and radio waves bend, making it more difficult for ships to remain undetected and hindering their ability to communicate or locate adversaries. Sponsored by ONR's ...

A new study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers involves a classic case of evolution's fickle nature: a genetic mutation that protects against a potentially fatal infectious disease also appears to increase the risk of developing a chronic, debilitating condition. Such a relationship exists between malaria and sickle cell anemia. Individuals who carry a gene to resist the former are carriers for the latter. And recently scientific evidence has suggested that individuals who are resistant to human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, are predisposed ...

A new study shows what many middle-aged Californians privately suspect: They are the first to lose their jobs and the health benefits that come with those jobs when hard times hit. The analysis by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research looked at California data on the uninsured between 2007 and 2009 and found that of the approximately 700,000 Californians to lose health insurance during this time, the greatest increase was among residents between the ages of 45 and 64. "Whether because mid-career workers are viewed as too expensive or because there is a deeper ...