Movers and Shakers
The movers and shakers in the chemicals industry for December 2021 - Read in C&I Magazine.
1.5°C, 1.8°C or even 2.8°C
The ambition of the recent COP26 event in Glasgow was to set in place measures that the whole world could agree upon to restrict global warming to 1.5°C. One key to this aim was to halve carbon emissions by 2030. So has this been achieved and is the world going to survive?
Accidents happen
Accidents happen, cynics might say, but safety experts insist that accidents don’t happen by themselves. More likely, they are caused by somebody who could have acted differently and thus averted the accident. Even if they are the result of an unlikely coincidence of several inconspicuous contributing factors, there are likely to be several switches that could have been flicked the other way and stopped disaster from happening. Read the book review of the Ethics of Chemistry by Michael Gross.
Of bats and vampires
The myth of the vampire is centuries old. This creature was variously described as a blood-sucking fairy, snake-like with the head and torso of a woman or more often as a shape-changing humanoid creature. Most important and terrifying was its predilection for human blood and the fact that it was un-dead. Read John Mann's book review of Vampirology.
Our survey said
SCI CEO Sharon Todd describes the SCI Next Gen debate at COP26 which show-cased young scientists shaping the green revolution
Memory loss
An academic-industrial collaboration of researchers has described how they designed a new molecule to target a specific receptor protein in the brain, which plays a central role in memory and cognition.
Safer to eat
Plastic food wraps and chopping boards embedded with antimicrobial technology are just some of the inventions in development that could make our food safer to eat, Jasmin Fox-Skelly reports
Methane reduction
An EU panel of scientists has given the thumbs-up to a feed additive that reduces methane emissions from cows. It could significantly lower the environmental footprint of meat, milk and dairy products, its developers claim.
Hydrogel bonanza
Soft contact lenses are a multi-billion-dollar industry, however, more novel applications for hydrogels could help burns patients, lower surgical risk and even reduce numbers of drug injections, XiaoZhi Lim reports
Editing out males
Crispr-Cas9 gene editing has been harnessed for yet another novel application – to create female-only and male-only mice litters with 100% efficiency. The development could significantly improve animal welfare in scientific research and agriculture (Nature Commun., doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27227-2).