Lighting consumes one-fifth of the electricity generated in the United States. Solid-state lighting offers tremendous potential to improve the situation – once major research challenges are overcome.
The most promising technology is the organic light-emitting diode, or OLED. These multi-layered devices produce light by running an electrical current through a specially engineered host material into which light-producing phosphorescent molecules are embedded or "doped." The white light envisioned for large-scale applications, such as rooms and buildings, consists of red, green and blue light.
Undergraduates are getting another free pass, ethically, and blame is being shifted to educators because apparently confusion about what constitutes plagiarism, not malicious intent, is the leading cause of plagiarism at the graduate school level, according to George M. Bodner, a chemistry professor at Purdue University who serves on the Ethics Committee of the ACS, at their meeting in Salt Lake City. His presentation was part of an ACS initiative to educate the larger scientific community about ethics in chemistry.
Researchers are describing a long-awaited advance toward applying the marvels of nanotechnology in the battle against cancer. They have developed the first hollow gold nanospheres — smaller than the finest flecks of dust — that search out and "cook" cancer cells. The cancer-destroying nanospheres show particular promise as a minimally invasive future treatment for malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, the researchers say. Melanoma now causes more than 8,000 deaths annually in the United States alone and is on the increase globally.
Researchers in Canada are reporting that proteins found in a common garden pea show promise as a natural food additive or new dietary supplement for fighting high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Those potentially life-threatening conditions affect millions of people worldwide.
The study was presented at the ACS meeting in Salt Lake City and says that peas can relieve symptoms of CKD naturally.
Peas long have been recognized as nutritional superstars, with healthful amounts of protein, dietary fiber, and vitamins wrapped in a low-fat, cholesterol-free package. The new research focuses on the yellow garden pea, a mainstay pea variety enjoyed as a veggie side-dish and used as an ingredient in dozens of recipes around the world.
Carbohydrates are tough molecules to build because of their complicated, branched structure. So instead of trying to build carbohydrates from scratch, scientists today use molecules isolated from nature, a painstaking process that could take months.
Speaking at the ACS meeting in Salt Lake City, Peter H. Seeberger, Ph.D., described development of an automated carbohydrate synthesizer, a device that builds these intricate molecules in a few hours — rather than the months or years required with existing technology.
People have always been fascinated by bats, but mostly in their erratic flying and their bizarre habit of sleeping upside down. But landing with bad eyesight is not so easy either and a research team is the first to document the landing approaches of three species of bats — two that live in caves and one that roosts in trees. What they found was that bats landing are like people parallel parking their cars; we recognize it, but they don't all do it the same way.