Fire fighting

Fire gobbles its way through trees and buildings like a hungry animal—and in a sense that's exactly what it is: a living, breathing animal. Fire is a chemical reaction that feeds on fuel and oxygen. Give it plenty of both and it'll keep on burning indefinitely. Thank goodness, then, for firefighters, those brave men and women who set themselves the job of stopping fire in its tracks. Fire fighting is one of the toughest jobs there is and it calls for some equally tough equipment. Let's take a closer look at how to tackle those flames!

Chemical reaction - an energy-intensive industry finds the solution in CHP

Rising living standards in many parts of the world mean rising energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Having long-term secure supplies of energy and raw materials is essential for the success of manufacturers and industries. However, fossil fuel reserves are limited. A leading chemicals company in an energy-intensive industry, BASF recognizes and is addressing the challenges this presents in ensuring a sustainable future.

Power plants are the key to securing competitiveness in energy-intensive production. In the chemicals industry, energy costs account for on average 10%-15% of manufacturing costs, and sometimes as much as 50%, as in the case of electrolysis. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a highly efficient technology for the chemicals industry due to its economic and emissions savings. BASF’s CHP plants produce both electricity and steam, raising net fuel utilization to around 90%. They make a major contribution to achieving the company’s goal of reducing specific CO2 emissions per tonne of product sold by 10% by the year 2012 from 2002 levels

Chemical Processing

A catalyst is a substance or material that accelerates the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being consumed by the reaction. Catalysts are an essential component of many different industrial processes used to produce chemicals, foodstuffs and other materials. Gold had been overlooked by most researchers as a possible industrial catalyst until very recently. However, there is now a growing excitement about the potential gold may hold for catalysing industrial reactions, stimulated by the early work of Graham Hutchings at Cardiff University and researcher Masatake Haruta from AIST in Japan.
Examples of applications where a gold based catalyst is being used, developed or considered for use include the following :

titration [(teye-tray-shuhn)

The process, operation, or method of determining the concentration of a substance in solution by adding to it a standard reagent of known concentration in carefully measured amounts until a reaction of definite and known proportion is completed, as shown by a color change or by electrical measurement, and then calculating the unknown concentrationIn chemstry, the determination of what materials are present in a sample by adding precise amounts of known chemicals and observing the chemical reaction.

It's a Chemicals reaction

The Beck's Fusions project, which took over Trafalgar Square last night, promised to unite music with visual art. They picked the perfect headliners in dance duo the Chemical Brothers, musicians in severe need of something large and sparkly to distract spectators from the lack of goings-on onstage

Dressed in jeans and black T-shirts for their biggest London show ever in front of 9,000 competition winners, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons huddled behind banks of esoteric equipment and let the huge screen behind them do the work.
Victims of the age-old problem for dance producers who want to perform live - how to look busy once you've pressed play - the non-stop synchronised videos provided more than enough diversion. Material was specially created by Adam Smith, who has directed episodes of Channel 4's Skins and videos for the Streets and Jamie T as Flat Nose George. United Visual Artists, creators of tour lightshows for Massive Attack and U2, took over for the hit-packed encore.

Types of Chemical Reactions

During any chemical reaction, there is a conversion of the reactants into a single or many products. A reactant means a substance or substances that are involved in a chemical reaction. The chemical reactions occur under the appropriate conditions of pressure and temperature in the presence of a catalyst. The catalyst plays a significant role in increasing the rate of a chemical reaction without actually getting involved in that reaction.

Types of chemical reactions are characterized by the type of chemical changes. Any chemical reaction yields a single or more products, which are quite different from the reactants. The chemical reactions include some changes that involve the motion of electrons during the formation and breakage of chemical bonds. The chemical reactions could be written in a symbolic form. Chemical equations are used to describe a chemical transformation of elementary particles, which takes place during the reaction. The chemical reactions involve a change in energy; either released or absorbed. Chemical reactions are described as exothermic reactions (in which energy is released) or endothermic reactions (in which energy is absorbed).

the term ‘macrofauna’ doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.

It sure got my attention. Examples of macrofauna would include giant squid, sharks, and whales. The latter would be impossible to find swimming the Europan ocean (whales evolved from land animals) but animals the size of these creatures would have no lack of oxygen or energy to live on this moon. And depending on the mineral content, possibly without environmental suits.
Another interesting point: there might be far more extra-terrestrial environments hospitable for dolphins and whales than for humans.

Chlorophyll, the Sheppard of Light in BAC

Energy from light is received somewhat directly as sunlight, but it is received in much greater amounts from our food. The chemical energy stored by photosynthesis in carbohydrates drives biochemical reactions in nearly all living organisms. Releasing the forces of light from food requires a balance disassembly of starches, sugars, and fats that are the bearers of light. Chlorophyll is the shepherd of light energy – in the central atom of the chlorophyll molecule is magnesium where the sun’s light is gathered for releasing the sugars, starches, and fats from which we will eventually get our energy. Magnesium is omnipresent in the catabolic steps in which we disassemble sugars and fats in our metabolic fire : the Krebs (citric acid) cycle. In this photosynthetic reaction (Krebs cycle), carbon dioxide is reduced by water; in other words, electrons are transferred from water to carbon dioxide. Chlorophyll assists this transfer. When chlorophyll absorbs light energy, an electron in chlorophyll is excited from a lower energy state to a higher energy state. In this higher energy state, this electron is more readily transferred to another molecule. This starts a chain of electron-transfer steps, which ends with an electron transferred to carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, the chlorophyll which gave up an electron can accept an electron from another molecule. This is the end of a process which starts with the removal of an electron from water. Thus, chlorophyll is at the center of the photosynthetic oxidation-reduction reaction between carbon dioxide and water.

Navy Wants to Militarize Bioluminescence

Down in the ocean’s depths, nearly every creature turns into a living glowstick, by converting chemical energy into light. So many things — even the energy of passing ships and subs — can cause single-celled organisms to light up. The Navy would like to turn that bioluminescence into a military tool. The service is looking to"develop a navigation aid for underwater vehicles that will sense [any] bioluminescence triggered" and report whether an adversary might be able to see the light — and detect the vehicle, as a result.
According to a Navy request for research proposals, "covert, underwater navigation in coastal and estuarine waters is often compromised by bioluminescence from marine phyto- and zooplankton, triggered by turbulence generated by the underwater vehicle. If the vehicle it close enough to the surface and if the bioluminescence is bright enough, the stimulated light can be observed above water."

Metalloporphyrins

Metalloporphyrins catalyze a variety of biological reactions, including electron and energy transfer, O2 transport and storage, oxidation reactions, and the conversion of light energy to chemical energy. Technological applications also increasingly exploit the useful properties of porphyrins. These molecules are becoming prevalent as active materials in fuel cells, alkane oxidation processes, chiral synthesis and separation methods, and as the binary switch elements in sensors and molecular memory devices. The structural variability inherent in porphyrin systems allows catalyst specificity, efficiency, and stability to be tuned. These properties give porphyrins the potential to play pivotal roles as future catalysts designed to perform selected tasks.
Vibrational energy dynamics in metalloporphyrins are not well understood. However, nonthermal vibrational energy distributions have been observed in these molecules. Some modes couple quite poorly to the other modes and to the solvent. The energy flow through these degrees of freedom is retarded. Such bottleneck modes can be used to funnel energy into desired reaction coordinates and away from those leading to unwanted products. An understanding of the vibrational behavior in metalloporphyrins will lend insight into the detailed mechanisms that determine catalytic efficiency and specificity in natural systems, and will allow the rational design of porphyrin-based catalysts to carry out particular functions. Selected Publications

"Heme-CO Religation in Photolyzed Hemoglobin: A Time-Resolved Raman
Study of the Fe-CO Stretching Mode," 1993, Biochem., 32, 1318.

"Mode Specific Heme Photodynamics in Deoxyhemoglobin," J. Raman
Spec., 23, 1993, 569.
"Mode Selective Energy Localization in Photoexcited Deoxyhemoglobin
and Heme Model Complexes," Chem. Phys. Lett., 215, 1993, 251.

"Time-Resolved Resonance Raman Spectroscopy," 1994, in Raman
Spectroscopy (J. Laserna, ed.), John Wiley & Sons.
"Transient Resonance Raman Evidence for Structural Reorganizational
Dynamics during Electron Transfer in Ruthenated Yeast Cytochrome c"
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 117, 1995, 3296.
"Ruffling in a Series of Nickel(II) Meso-Tetrasubstituted Porphyrins
as a Model for the Conserved Ruffling of the Heme of Cytochromes c",
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 117, 1995, 11085.
"Transient Raman Observations of Heme Electronic and Vibrational
Photodynamics in DeoxyHemoglobin" J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1996,
(submitted).

NASA Scientists Find Clues to a Secret of Life

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins. Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Although life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, "you can't mix them," says Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard, co-author of the study. "If you do, life turns to something resembling scrambled eggs -- it's a mess. Since life doesn't work with a mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, the mystery is: how did life decide -- what made life choose left-handed amino acids over right-handed ones?" Over the last four years, the team carefully analyzed samples of meteorites with an abundance of carbon, called carbonaceous chondrites. The researchers looked for the amino acid isovaline and discovered that three types of carbonaceous meteorites had more of the left-handed version than the right-handed variety – as much as a record 18 percent more in the often-studied Murchison meteorite. "Finding more left-handed isovaline in a variety of meteorites supports the theory that amino acids brought to the early Earth by asteroids and comets contributed to the origin of only left-handed based protein life on Earth," said Glavin. All amino acids can switch from left-handed to right, or the reverse, by chemical reactions energized with radiation or temperature, according to the team. The scientists looked for isovaline because it has the ability to preserve its handedness for billions of years, and it is extremely rarely used by life, so its presence in meteorites is unlikely to be from contamination by terrestrial life. "The meteorites we studied are from before Earth formed, over 4.5 billion years ago," said Glavin. "We believe the same process that created extra left-handed isovaline would have created more left-handed versions of the other amino acids found in these meteorites, but the bias toward left-handed versions has been mostly erased after all this time." The team's discovery validates and extends the research first reported a decade ago by Drs. John Cronin and Sandra Pizzarello of Arizona State University, who were first to discover excess isovaline in the Murchison meteorite, believed to be a piece of an asteroid. "We used a different technique to find the excess, and discovered it for the first time in the Orgueil meteorite, which belongs to another meteorite group believed to be from an extinct comet," said Glavin

Origin of Life

The three ingredients needed for life: Scientist all agree that liquid water is essential for life to evolve and survive. This is because water allows simple molecules to mix together and react to form more complex stuff. The chemical building blocks that are needed are: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. And in order to drive the chemical reactions an energy source is needed
Figure: Amino acids, the 'building blocks' of life, may form in dust grains in the space between the stars. (c) ESA 2002.
The simple molecules mixed to form more complex molecules (amino acids) in the seas of the early Earth, often called the 'primordial soup'. The energy that was needed, might have come from lightning storms or from hot springs underwater. Amino acids came together end-to-end and formed proteins, larger chain-like carbon based molecules. DNA consists of purine or pyrimidine. DNA has the unique capability that it can reproduce itself. It carries code to make a living creature.
Not all scientists agree that life evolved from the primordial soup. Some think that life might have been delivered to Earth by a comet from space. This of course needs to be researched in the following way....

UNEXPLAINED ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY DETECTED

Unidentified chemical reactions taking place in some polluted air may be a source of hydroxyl radicals, data from a new field study suggest.
Hydroxyl (OH) radicals result from a series of sunlight-stimulated reactions in the atmosphere involving ozone, nitrous acid and hydrogen peroxide. The highly reactive hydroxyl radicals, which typically persist in the air no more than one second before they combine with volatile organic chemicals and other gases, help the atmosphere cleanse itself, says Franz Rohrer, an atmospheric chemist at the Jülich Research Center’s Institute for Tropospheric Chemistry in Germany.

Field data gathered in China’s Pearl River delta during the summer of 2006 hint that unknown reactions taking place in some polluted air can generate substantial — and unexpectedly large — amounts of hydroxyl radicals, Rohrer and his colleagues report online June 4 in Science.
The team took round-the-clock measurements of various atmospheric constituents in a rural yet heavily populated area about 60 kilometers northwest of Guangzhou. In that area, pollutants wafting from nearby cities mix with volatile organic chemicals produced by local trees and other vegetation, says Rohrer. Atmospheric concentrations of unburned hydrocarbons are high, but levels of various nitrogen oxides (NOx) are low.

Chemical Reactions Spark Interest in Halloween Show

Eberhard Zwergel presents his popular Halloween chemistry show
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-->EVANSTON, Ill. --- Luminescent liquid -- much like that of a witch’s cauldron -- will flow down a glass hill while changing from red to blue when Northwestern University’s Eberhard Zwergel presents his popular Halloween chemistry show.Full of bangs, pops, flames, hisses and color changes, “Phantom of Northwestern” will be held at 9, 10 and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, in LR3 (lecture room 3, first floor) of the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston campus. The show is free and open to the public.

Full of bangs, pops, flames, hisses and color changes, “Phantom of Northwestern” will be held at 9, 10 and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, in LR3 (lecture room 3, first floor) of the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston campus. The show is free and open to the public.Hundreds of captivated students, faculty, staff and community members crowd into Zwergel’s chemistry demonstrations every Halloween. Zwergel is known for his annual Halloween show, consisting of more than 20 experiments in a 50-minute time frame. He will lead a team of student chemists in a fast-moving show demonstrating the wonders of chemistry, as well as some physics and biology. A section of the Northwestern University Marching Band, a rock band and dance groups will perform during the show to complement the chemical reactions

Organic Biomolecular Chemistry

Building on the success achieved in its first five years of publication, 2008 was another superb year for Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry (OBC). Find out more about our successes and plans for the future in this issue's Editorial
This issue features a Perspective by OBC Lecture Award 2008 winner Akimitsu Okamoto (RIKEN, Wako, Japan), also featured on the outside front cover. Dr Okamoto introduces and discusses several newly designed chemical assays for detecting the presence or absence of methyl groups in long DNA strands

Body Matters - Chemical Reactions

We are often led to think that body and soul are seperate. Spare me the cosmetics and fashion companies. They claim soul = body and nothing more, they need the money. But they do have a point. Trained to advance our left side of the brain (logic, reasoning and details) we often shot off our right side of the brain (spatial perception, and holistic thinking). Thus we fail to feel our body, which creates a large black hole in our soul.

When trying to understand human mind dynamics, I have often encountered life regulation sessions such as sports, religious practices and therapies. They all contain an earthly part where we "actively feel" our body from head to toe. A part where we become a whole organism capable of comprehending itself.
Small practice: lay down and try to relax every single tiny muscle you have. (after a slow and deep breath) start with facial muscles, ease them, avoid any contraction. Then the neck, then the shoulders. Let gravity do its work. When was the last time you were aware that you had a toe? Go on and feel it. Your finger is a part of your being. It is much more important than your daily troubles that only help you get an identity which is only a representation of your being.
That helps, but is awareness of our form essential?
It is. Because our feelings (which we believe to have little common ground with the body) are mere chemical reactions. These chemical reactions can be felt & experienced in different organs. What kinds of experiences? Depends on the person. Your stomach may react when you are disgusted by one's actions. You might be left short of breath when you are excited. You might gulp out of tension when someone is trying to get your attention... The list is long.
I'm not claiming that everything is physical and that there is no sense of spritituality etc. My claim is that much more than what we perceive as spritiual is actually physical and/or can be tracked by physical signs.
Actions are followed by bodily reactions whether they are visible or not from the outside. The trick is recognizing your bodily reactions, which lets you recognize your feelings, most of them suprassed or unseen otherwise. It is no surprise that the right brain which is able to grasp the moment we are in "is able to sneak into our consciousness". So "Carpe Diem" is not a lie. Our memories may stem from the past, our hopes may be about the future, but all these memories and hopes are present and live only now, and are based on our current bodily reactions.

Types of Chemical Reactions.

It’d just be wrong to not have a couple labs when learning about chemical reactions. This section included two labs.
Exothermic and Endothermic Reactions. Students create two chemical reactions; one exothermic (adding yeast to hydrogen peroxide) and one endothermic (dissolving ammonium nitrate into water- it’s not really a chemical reaction but it does get very cold).
Types of Chemical Reactions. Five reactions that demonstrate the five basic types of chemical reactions. Clicking the following links takes to you photos taken of the reactions as students performed them:

Barium chloride + sodium sulfate (double replacement reaction, forms a precipitate)
Burning magnesium (combustion and synthesis reactions, exothermic)
Zinc in acid (single replacement reaction)
includes testing for hydrogen gas with a burning splint (combustion and synthesis reactions)
Decomposition of sodium bicarbonate (a.k.a baking soda)
includes testing for carbon dioxide with a burning splint
Copper (II) chloride + aluminum foil (single replacement reaction, exothermic)

Catalytic reactions: Single particle spectroscopy

Solid catalysts govern many industrial chemistry reactions, especially electron transfer processes such as the formation of hydrogen from water. However, there is still a lack of a deep understanding of catalytic reactions at the nanometer scale because solid catalysts consist of countless crystals of varying sizes and shapes, leading to heterogeneous reaction rates.
Now, Paul Mulvaney and colleagues1 from the University of Melbourne in Australia have developed a new method that enables the direct observation of chemical reactions on the surfaces of individual gold nanocrystals.
The researchers achieved this breakthrough by exploiting a ten-year old spectroscopy technique—used to correlate the shape and size of metal nanocrystals with their optical properties—for measuring the kinetics of reactions of nanoparticles. In their procedure, the researchers first precisely located and marked individual nanocrystals using a focussed ion beam, and then monitored minute transformations of crystals due to ongoing chemical reactions.

Learn All About Chemical Reactions Together!

The weird world of science offers plenty of exciting concepts for you to share with your child. This month, read our article about chemical reactions, and learn all about the science of creating new compounds with your child. We've even provided some chemical reactions that will amaze your child, right in your own kitchen!

The Bubble Logic

MIT researchers created a microfluidic device in which tiny bubbles, while undergoing chemical reactions inside, function essentially like electrons in a microprocessor:

The team, based at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, reports that the bubbles in their microfluidic device can carry on-chip process control information, just like the electronic circuits of a traditional microprocessor, while also performing chemical reactions. The work will appear in the Feb. 9 issue of Science.
Bubble logic merges chemistry with computation, allowing a digital bit to carry a chemical payload. Until now, there was a clear distinction between the materials in a reaction and the mechanisms to control them," said co-author Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms.
Microfluidics allow scientists to create tiny chips where nanoliters of fluids flow from one part of the chip to another, undergoing controlled chemical reactions in different parts of the chip and replacing the conventional test tubes and glassware used for chemistry for centuries.
The technology has the potential to revolutionize large-scale chemical analysis and synthesis, environmental and medical testing and industrial production processes, but applications outside of the laboratory have been limited so far by the external control systems--valves and plumbing--required for its operation

ALL Aboard

Hydrogen tops the list of promising carbon-free fuels for cars, but one of the biggest obstacles to its use is the difficulty of storing enough fuel on board to avoid frequent stops at a "hydrogen station."
How best to achieve the benchmark of 300 miles of travel without refueling? It may be to use the lightweight compound ammonia-borane to carry the hydrogen. With hydrogen accounting for almost 20 percent of its weight, this stable, non-flammable compound is one of the highest-capacity materials for storing hydrogen. In a car, the introduction of a chemical catalyst would release the hydrogen as needed, thus avoiding on-board storage of large quantities of flammable hydrogen gas. When the ammonia-borane fuel is depleted of hydrogen, it would be regenerated at a hydrogen station through a reverse reaction.
Known hydrogen-releasing catalysts are typically metals or their complexes, but they may complicate the reverse reaction. In a recent discovery, Frances Stephens and Tom Baker of Los Alamos National Lab, in collaboration with computational chemists at the University of Alabama, have shown that non-metal acids can catalyze the release of hydrogen. Their analysis has also shown that a similar mechanism of acid-initiated hydrogen release likely applies to ammonia-borane in the solid state and in ionic liquid solvents, forms that could be useful for transportation.

General Chemistry II

is a deeper exploration of some of the topics discussed in General Chmeistry I. In this course, the most important thing you'll do is gain more experience with the mathematics associated with chemistry. You'll tackle calculations that allow you to predict whether chemical reactions will occur, and how changing the conditions of the reaction alters what happens. You'll also gain a better understanding of how we can use chemistry to produce energy -- definitely an important topic today.
You'll also learn about more of the most important concepts in chemistry: what makes some reactions happen so quickly (even explosively), while others are painfully slow? How can we get electricity out of a chemical reaction? How do nuclear reactions work?
In the General Chemistry lab, you'll gain more experience in some of the basic techniques used by chemists every day. You'll perform some labs on your own, gaining skill and building your confidence as an independent researcher - and you'll have a chance to conduct some experiments with your classmates, just as professionals collaborate with other scientists.
Just as in General Chemistry I , there's plenty of problem solving - and therefore plenty of math! The math is a bit more complex than it was in the first semester, but if you've had a course in Algebra, you won't find it too unfamiliar. If you're not too confident in math, General Chem II just might give you the experience you need to master it - if you're willing to work at it!

Energy changes and chemical kinetics

Chemical reactions are typically accompanied by energy changes. The equation for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements is N 2 + 3 H 2 → 2 NH 3 , but that reaction takes place only under very special conditions—namely at a high temperature and pressure and in the presence of a catalyst. Energy changes that occur during chemical reactions are the subject of a field of science known as thermodynamics.
In addition, chemical reactions are often a good deal more complex than a chemical equation might lead one to believe. For example, one can write the equation for the synthesis of hydrogen iodide from its elements, as follows: H 2 + I 2 → 2 HI. In fact, chemists know that this reaction does not take place in a single step. Instead, it occurs in a series of reactions in which hydrogen and iodine atoms react with each other one at a time. The final equation, H 2 + I 2 → 2 HI, is actually no more than a summary of the net result of all those reactions. The field of chemistry that deals with the details of chemical reactions is known as chemical kinetics. Read more: