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Highlights in Chemical Science

News from across RSC Publishing.



Instant insights

Highlights in Chemical Science's whirlwind tours of exciting research areas.

Singlet oxygen

Instant insight: Something new under the sun

02 August 2010

Peter Ogilby discusses how the age-old molecule singlet oxygen still plays a vital role in modern science


Dust grains in space

Instant insight: Cosmic dust as chemical factories

01 June 2010

Daren Caruana and Katherine Holt discuss how electrochemistry could be the missing link to understanding chemistry in space


Searching for ionic liquids

Instant insight: Searching for greener ionic liquids

06 April 2010

Nicola Wood and Gill Stephens discuss the methods available for testing and predicting toxicity in ionic liquids.


Optical tweezers

Instant insight: Sensing the biological world

17 November 2009

Jonathan Cooper and Manilo Tassieri explain how mechanical phenomena in biological systems can be studied at very small scales


food

Instant insight: Understanding our food

04 September 2009

Monika Pischetsrieder and Rainer Baeuerlein look at how the safety of GM food can be assured


hand holding cards

Instant insight: The organic chemist's toolbox

17 July 2009

Karl Anker Jřrgensen and Sřren Bertelsen from Aarhus University, Denmark, talk about impressive achievements in organocatalysis


lightning storm wormhole

Instant insight: Harnessing nano power

11 June 2009

US scientists Andrei Fedorov and Mildred Dresselhaus and their colleagues explain how nanotechnology might solve our energy crisis


MRSA bacteria

Instant insight: Agents of destruction

20 May 2009

Ivan Parkin and Michael Wilson from University College London, UK, look at how to make hospital-acquired infections a thing of the past


Neurotoxicology

Instant insight: Living longer, disease-free

17 April 2009

Bernhard Michalke and colleagues at the Institute of Ecological Chemistry in Germany discuss our need for better methods to detect age-related diseases


nanoparticles

Instant insight: The growth of nanotoxicology

20 March 2009

Christy Haynes and colleagues from the University of Minnesota, US, look at analytical techniques used to assess nanotechnology's effects on health


crude oil

Instant insight: Metal detectors for clean fuel

09 February 2009

Guilhem Caumette, University of Pau - IFP, France, outlines the techniques used to find metal contaminants in petroleum and how they will lead to superior fuels


contracted chitosan hydrogel particle

Instant insight: Polymers move smartly

04 December 2008

Hans-Jörg Schneider and Kazuaki Kato introduce polymers that respond to chemical and biological stimuli through movement


a catenane

Instant insight: Porphyrins get energetic

27 November 2008

Jean-Pierre Sauvage outlines recent advances in the construction of interlocked molecules inspired by photosynthesis


activity based sampling

Instant insight: Asbestos comes naturally

08 October 2008

Martin Harper, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, US, points out a hazard in the natural environment


mouldy corn

Instant insight: Is your food safe to eat?

29 September 2008

Gordon Shephard highlights the analytical methods used to ensure our food is free from the natural toxins produced by fungi


glass of champagne poured from a bottle

Instant insight: Lovely bubbly

05 September 2008

Gérard Liger-Belair, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France, celebrates what gives champagne its sparkle


man sniffing a glass of red wine

Instant insight: Tasting the chemistry

12 August 2008

Susan Ebeler, University of California, Davis, US, reveals the science behind the flavour in everyone's favourite tipple


probe holding a protein

Instant insight: Disease snapshots

24 July 2008

Hye Jin Lee and Robert Corn look at the latest breakthroughs in the use of microarray technology for the fast detection of cancer


colourless solution in test tube

Instant insight: Reducing the waste

24 June 2008

Tomislav Pintauer and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski reveal the magic ingredient that turns radical reactions 'green'


protein secondary structures

Instant insight: Cooperating catalysts

09 May 2008

Mark Davis explains why catalysts need to learn to cooperate in order to compete with nature


intervertebral disc

Instant insight: Swellable gels fix bad backs

16 April 2008

Brian Saunders and Tony Freemont discuss a new approach for treating back pain using injectable microgel implants


A fullerene inside a larger fullerene

Instant insight: Nano-forms of carbon

03 April 2008

Juan Luis Delgado, María Ángeles Herranz and Nazario Martín explore the cutting-edge in nanostructures made from carbon


dental work

Instant insight: Smart dental implants

20 February 2008

Henning Schliephake discusses the state-of-the-art dental implants making their way to a dentist's surgery near you


many people in camp accommodation after a natural disaster

Instant insight: Beyond the catastrophe

20 February 2008

Angus Cook and Phil Weinstein consider the long term care needed by communities struck by earthquakes and other natural disasters


structure fighting cocaine

Instant insight: Speeding up cocaine

11 February 2008

Chang-Guo Zhan introduces the use of computational designs to develop promising therapeutics for treating cocaine addiction and overdoses


picture of matter trapped by laser

Instant insight: The light touch

31 January 2008

Kishan Dholakia, Peter Reece and Min Gu examine how light can move and sort biological objects


A complex system

Instant insight: Systems chemistry

19 December 2007

Sijbren Otto and Fred Ludlow call on chemists to embrace complexity and take up systems chemistry


coral reef

Instant insight: A changing climate for coral reefs

12 December 2007

Janice Lough wonders if the demise of the world's coral reefs may already be irreversible


Conical flasks

Instant insight: Mutants make more

13 November 2007

Andreas Kirschning explains how genetically modified microbes offer a short-cut to valuable derivatives of natural products


Molecular motor

Instant insight: Walking in a hurricane

23 October 2007

Dean Astumian from the University of Maine, Orono, US, uncovers the mysteries of Brownian molecular machines.


green leaves

Instant insight: A bright future

19 September 2007

Andy Benniston explains how photocatalysts could provide the answer to the planet's energy crisis.


A scanning electron microscope close-up of a lotus leaf

Instant insight: The rough with the smooth

10 August 2007

Xue-Mei Li and Mercedes Crego-Calama share their view on how roughness influences surface wettability.


Porous structure of a metal-organic framework

Instant insight: An adsorbing tale

11 July 2007

Hong-Cai (Joe) Zhou at Miami University, Ohio, US, describes how metal-organic frameworks could play their part in the hydrogen economy.


Ball-milling

Instant insight: Grinding is the new green

08 June 2007

Anne Pichon and Stuart James reveal some of the intriguing reactions that can be carried out without solvents.


Diving under ice

Instant insight: In from the cold

03 May 2007

Bill Baker extols the virtues of cold-water marine natural products and considers their future prospects.


Global UV levels

Instant insight: A protective layer

11 April 2007

David Levy explores thin-film coatings that drastically reduce UV damage to materials.


DNA block copolymer micelle

Instant insight: DNA Block Copolymers

16 March 2007

Fikri Alemdaroglu and Andreas Herrmann are making the most of a new class of bioorganic hybrid materials


Self-exploding microcapsules

Instant insight: Delivering the goods

09 February 2007

Stefaan De Smedt and Bruno De Geest of Ghent University, Belgium, weigh up the pros and cons of using polyelectrolyte capsules as drug delivery vehicles


Lock and key

Instant insight: A natural selection

23 January 2007

Jean-Marie Lehn of Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France, shares his view of a dynamic future for supramolecular chemistry.


Nuclear fuel

Instant insight: Cleaning up nuclear waste

13 December 2006

Willem Verboom considers some of the latest advances in separating highly radioactive components of nuclear waste.


Han Blue pigment

Instant insight: True blue chemistry

23 November 2006

Heinz Berke, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, looks at the use of manmade blue and purple pigments by ancient civilizations


Also of interest

Instant insights

Whirlwind tours of exciting research areas of chemical technology.

Instant insights

Exciting areas of chemical biology research in an instant