Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions show

Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions

Summary: Taking inspiration from trees, scientists have developed a battery made from a sliver of wood coated with tin that shows promise for becoming a tiny, long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly energy source. Their report on the device — 1,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper — appears in the journal Nano Letters.

Podcasts:

  Promoting Public Health: New, inexpensive paper-based diabetes test ideal for developing countries | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 diagnosis and monitoring of other conditions and the environment, appears in ACS’ journal Analytical Chemistry.

  Our Sustainable Future: Ancient effect harnessed to produce electricity from waste heat | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

A 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’ journal Nano Letters.

  New Fuels - Biofuels: Real-life scientific tail of the first “electrified snail” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 American Chemical Society.

 New Fuels - Biofuels: Meeting biofuel production targets could change agricultural landscape | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Almost 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 Technology, would be to convert 60 percent of existing rangeland to biofuels.

  Promoting Personal Safety and National Security: Killer silk - Making silk fibers that kill anthrax and other microbes in minutes | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

A 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 reporting in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

  Providing Nutritious Foods: Strong scientific evidence that eating berries benefits the brain | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Scientists 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, be collected, stored and used to power sensors, cameras, microphones and a variety of other microdevices attached to the insects in a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

  Promoting Personal Safety and National Security: New test could help track down and prosecute terrorists who use nerve gas and other agents | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 water, scientists report.

  Our Sustainable Future: Peatland carbon storage is stabilized against catastrophic release of carbon | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Concerns 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 in ACS’ journal Environmental Science and Technology.

  Combating Disease: Turning up the heat to kill cancer cells: “The Lance Armstrong effect” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

The “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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Today’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 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Bisphenol 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 products. The report, which could have special implications for cashiers and other people who routinely handle thermal paper receipts, appears in ACS’ journal Environmental Science and Technology.

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