Transparent Wood

 

The piece of glass in the photo was made from wood. (Photo: USDA Forest Service)

Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) researcher Junyong Zhu in co-collaboration with colleagues from the University of Maryland and University of Colorado have found a better way to make wood transparent. The conventional method involves a long process using chemicals to remove the lignin. In this new effort, the researchers are able to make wood transparent by changing the lignin rather than removing the lignin.

Wood’s lack of transparency comes from the combination of its two main components, cellulose and lignin. The researchers removed lignin molecules that are involved in producing wood color. First, they applied hydrogen peroxide to the wood surface and then exposed the treated wood to UV light (or natural sunlight). The wood was then soaked in ethanol to further clean it. Next, they filled in the pores with clear epoxy to make the wood smooth.

This method produces transparent wood that is 50 times stronger than the old method. The new method will be used to improve solar technology and window production. 

Transparent wood is one of the most promising new materials. The number of uses and benefits has yet to be fully realized. The production of transparent building materials will have an impact on the architecture of the future. It will be possible to live in a glass house made of wood!

 

Read more here and here.

Spinach Power!

 

"Eat your spinach," is a common refrain from many people's childhoods. Spinach, the hearty, green vegetable chock full of nutrients, doesn't just provide energy in humans. It also has potential to help power fuel cells, according to a new paper by researchers in AU's Department of Chemistry. Spinach, when converted from its leafy, edible form into carbon nanosheets, acts as a catalyst for an oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells and metal-air batteries.

An oxygen reduction reaction is one of two reactions in fuel cells and metal-air batteries and is usually the slower one that limits the energy output of these devices. Researchers have long known that certain carbon materials can catalyze the reaction. But those carbon-based catalysts don't always perform as good or better than the traditional platinum-based catalysts. The AU researchers wanted to find an inexpensive and less toxic preparation method for an efficient catalyst by using readily available natural resources. They tackled this challenge by using spinach.

Read it all here.

Moving Toward Artificial Photosynthetic Energy

Credit: Jan Kern and Isabel Bogacz/Berkeley Lab

Using a unique combination of nanoscale imaging and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has revealed a key step in the molecular mechanism behind the water splitting reaction of photosynthesis, a finding that could help inform the design of renewable energy technology.

Vittal K. Yachandra, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Berkeley Laboratory believes this is a step toward building artificial photosynthetic systems that can produce clean, renewable energy from sunlight.

Researchers from around the world have contributed to this potentially ground-breaking technology. The chemical process of Photosynthesis is now being captured in a “molecular movie” that shows the S2 to S3 transition step, where the first water (as shown in Ox) comes into the catalytic center after the photochemical reaction at the reaction center. 

Related Reading:  Showtime for Photosynthesis

Chemistry Crayons

There’s more than one way to memorize the elements on the Periodic table. You can turn them into a rousing game of Battleship or brighten up the pages of your favorite coloring book with Calcium, Potassium, and Titanium. Etsy shop Que Interesante adds some educational fun to art supplies by selling labels that match a chemical element with a wax crayon, turning your coloring tools into a labeled periodic table.

The pairing of chemical and color is done in a thoughtful and clever way–Que Interesante uses the “flame test” to determine group elements by hue. This scientific procedure detects the presence of certain elements based on the color of flame produced. When put under this test, Lithium, has a red flame, so it’s coupled with a crayon of the same color. Likewise, Barium emits a green blaze and is matched accordingly. The goal is to help expose children to names of the elements so that they passively learn about them as they color.

Read all about it here.

The Periodic Table at 150 Years

The "twin tower" periodic table.

Dmitri Mendeleev (MEN-duh-LAY-ev), a Russian scientist working in St. Petersburg, came up with an early version of the Periodic Table 150 years ago. Now the ‘table’ can take many forms, from block charts to spiral trees.

Elements are the building blocks of all matter. Their atoms knit together to form literally everything — us, the air we breathe, the organisms that share our world and every other molecule of gas or bit of mass found throughout our universe.

The rows and columns on the periodic table map the so-called periodic law. It holds that shared traits among chemical elements repeat in regular patterns as elements get larger. These patterns link elements with similar chemical behaviors and help to tell chemists how atoms react to form molecules. How the rows and columns on this table line up points to shared traits between groups of related elements. Understanding those relationships helps chemists create new compounds. It also helps them understand how life works. It even helps them predict how new materials will behave.

Read it all here.

2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Three scientists (from left) John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino have won the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on lithium-ion batteries.

John B. Goodenough
The University of Texas at Austin, USA

M. Stanley Whittingham
Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA

Akira Yoshino
Asahi Kasei Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised our lives since they first entered the market in 1991. They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind.

The foundation of the lithium-ion battery was laid during the oil crisis in the 1970s. Stanley Whittingham worked on developing methods that could lead to fossil fuel-free energy technologies. He started to research superconductors and discovered an extremely energy-rich material, which he used to create an innovative cathode in a lithium battery. This was made from titanium disulphide which, at a molecular level, has spaces that can house – intercalate – lithium ions.

The battery’s anode was partially made from metallic lithium, which has a strong drive to release electrons. This resulted in a battery that literally had great potential, just over two volts. However, metallic lithium is reactive and the battery was too explosive to be viable.

John Goodenough predicted that the cathode would have even greater potential if it was made using a metal oxide instead of a metal sulphide. After a systematic search, in 1980 he demonstrated that cobalt oxide with intercalated lithium ions can produce as much as four volts. This was an important breakthrough and would lead to much more powerful batteries.

With Goodenough’s cathode as a basis, Akira Yoshino created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985. Rather than using reactive lithium in the anode, he used petroleum coke, a carbon material that, like the cathode’s cobalt oxide, can intercalate lithium ions.

The result was a lightweight battery that could be charged hundreds of times before its performance deteriorated. The advantage of lithium-ion batteries is that they are not based upon chemical reactions that break down the electrodes, but upon lithium ions flowing back and forth between the anode and cathode.

Source: The Nobel Prize Press Release

Enevoldsen's Periodic Table Highlights Uses

In high school chemistry we learn the periodic table, but rarely do we learn how these elements are used. Keith Enevoldsen from elements.wlonk.com has come up with this awesome periodic table that gives you an example for every element except for the superheavy elements that do not occur in nature and can only be produced in the laboratory. Such elements are discovered by smashing together light nuclei and tracking the decay of the resulting superheavy elements.

Uranium was used to create "vaseline" glass and is moderately radioactive. This green-yellow glass is a popular collectable. Thulium is used for laser eye surgery, krypton for flashlights, strontium for fireworks, and xenon for lighthouse lamps. Samarium is used with cobalt to make magnets.

Discover more uses here.

Related reading: Element 117 Named; Four Newly Named Elements

Roger John Williams

Roger John Williams

Roger John Williams (1893-1988) was an American biochemist who spent his academic career at the University of Texas at Austin. He is known for concentrating and naming folic acid and for his roles in discovering pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, lipoic acid, and avidin. Other work in chemistry involved folinic acid, synthesis of vitamin B12, and pioneering work on inositol.

Roger Williams became well known for his popular works on nutrition. He was deeply concerned that many children, even in developed countries, receive poor nutrition and "are unaware that good nutrition could make a vast difference in their lives." (Dr. Roger J. Williams, The Wonderful World Within You, p. 51)

Williams was a prolific writer. He produced hundreds of scientific papers and a number of textbooks. He was especially interested in the genetic and metabolic uniqueness of the individual, and the possibility of treating health problems and alcoholism with diet. This is all the more remarkable when taking in account Roger's chronic eye problems. For most of his life he suffered from eyestrain caused by aniseikonia, a condition that was unknown until about 1930. In 1941 he began to wear special glasses to treat the condition. He was then 50 years old.

Williams was a well-rounded individual who enjoyed golf and trout-fishing. He spoke fondly of wading in clear mountain streams in Oregon, even if there were no fish to catch. He was an accomplished musician who played the violin and the piano.

Roger was born in India where his American parents served as pioneer missionaries. His parents were Robert Runnels Williams (1839 - 1916) and Alice Evelyn Mills Williams (1857 - 1921). When Roger was two years old, his family returned to the United States and Roger grew up on an 800-acre ranch in Greenwood County, Kansas (near Eureka), and later lived in Redlands, California.

The Rev and Mrs. Williams with their children in Redlands, California in 1915

From left to right: Robert, Henry, Paul, Alice [Linsley] and Roger

His father designed and supervised the building of the Baptist church and seminary in Ramapatnam, Tamil Nadu (Ramayapatnam, Andhra Pradesh) in India. It was built by his seminary students, most of whom had never seen a two-story building or an architectural plan.

The photograph below was evidently pressed at some time against a book or document that partially imprinted itself onto the photo.The seminary building is still in use today and is visible in Google Earth at coordinates 15.03827N, 80.03919E.

Williams attributed his early interest in chemistry to the influence of his brother Robert R. Williams, eight years his senior, also a distinguished chemist. Robert is known for the discovery and synthesis of thiamine (vitamin B1).

Roger received his bachelor's degree from the University of Redlands in 1914. He earned a teaching certificate from the University of California, Berkeley and worked as a science teacher for a year in Hollister, California. He taught chemistry, physics and general science. Roger later referred to this as “the hardest work I ever did.”

After a year of teaching, Roger began graduate work at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in 1919. While at the University of Chicago, Roger met Julius Stieglitz. Stieglitz further inspired Roger's interest in organic chemistry.

Williams taught at the University of Oregon from 1920 to 1932. There he began serious research as a chemist and discovered pantothenic acid. He taught at Oregon State College from 1932 to 1939. In 1939 he moved to the University of Texas at Austin. In 1940 he founded and became the founding director of the Biochemical Institute. With funding from Benjamin Clayton, the Institute later became known as the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute. Williams was the director of the Clayton Foundation from 1941 to 1963. 

In 1946, Roger Williams was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He also served as the president of the American Chemical Society in 1957.

Roger married Hazel Elizabeth Wood on August 1, 1916. The couple had three children: Roger J Williams, Janet Wilcox, and Arnold Williams. Hazel died in 1952.

Roger remarried Mabel Phyllis Hobson and became the stepfather to her son, John W. Hobson. Roger Williams died on February 20, 1988. Mabel died in 2004.

Roger John Williams is buried in Austin Memorial Park Cemetery in Travis County, Texas. Besides his professional accomplishments, Williams left a legacy through his family, his friendships, his students, his writings, and his Christian faith.

Related reading: Robert Runnels Williams; A Biographical Memoir; The Life and Work of Roger Williams

Element 117 Named

Element 117 has been given the official name "tennessine" and is named after the US State of Tennessee, the location of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where it was originally brought into being. 

The new element will take the chemical symbol Ts. Ts is a halogen, an element like chlorine and fluorine. 

Ts does not occur in nature and can only be produced in the laboratory. Such elements are discovered by smashing together light nuclei and tracking the decay of the resulting superheavy elements.

Ts is a superheavy and very unstable element that only exists for fractions of a second. It was discovered by exposing one particular isotope – a variant of another element that has the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. The researchers found that on very rare occasions, two heavy nuclei combined to form Ts. In this case, calcium-48 and berkeleium-249 were used to produce tennessine. 

In a statement, Tennessee Govenor Bill Haslam said, “The historic discovery of tennessine is emblematic of the contributions Tennessee institutions like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University make toward a better world.” 

In addition to Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee, research contributions came from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Russia’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is responsible for validating the existence of new elements and confirming their names. Tennessine was originally discovered in 2010, but it was only officially confirmed as being physically real in 2015.

Related reading: Four Newly Discovered Elements

Robert Runnels Williams

Chase Carrier, Grade 8

Robert Runnels Williams
1886 – 1965

Robert Runnels Williams was an American chemist who was born in India, the son of Baptist missionaries. His father designed and supervised the building of the Baptist church and seminary in Ramapatnam, Tamil Nadu (now called Ramayapatnam, Andhra Pradesh) in India. It was built by many of his pupils, who had never seen a two-story building or an architectural plan. The photograph below was evidently pressed at some time against a book or document that partially imprinted itself onto the photo. This building is still in use today and is visible in Google Earth at coordinates 15.03827N, 80.03919E.

Robert's main contribution to science was his effort to synthesize thiamine (vitamin B1), which he did in 1936. Among his awards were the Willard Gibbs Award in 1938, the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1940, and the Perkin Medal in 1947. His brother, Roger J. Williams, also was a chemist who discovered Vitamin B5.

Robert was ten years old when he left India with his family and returned to the United States. He studied at Ottawa University in Kansas and procured a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1908. He taught for a time at the Bureau of Science in Manila. In the Philippines, Robert met U.S. Army Capt. E. B. Vedder, who went on to isolate Vitamin C in 1932. Vedder was concerned about a wasting disease among the Philippine Scouts, a group of soldiers who did police work with American officers. The American soldiers did not develop Beriberi, but the number of deaths and discharges due to disability were high among the Filipino soldiers.  Among the civilian population in Manila, about 220,000 deaths occurred each year from Beriberi.

Capt. Vedder had been experimenting with chickens and showed Robert Williams a quart of brown liquid, an extract of rice polish. Vedder note that when 1 milliliter of the extract was given to the chickens daily they did not develop the paralysis known today as polyneuritis gallinarum, a condition that caused the birds to die in three to six weeks. Vedder suspected that the polyneuritis of chickens was a clue to understanding the cause of Beriberi in humans. Soldiers with Beriberi developed swelling in the feet and hands, atrophy of the muscles, beginning in the legs, and severe neurological problems. Death usually occurred by heart failure, often very suddenly.

Robert's early efforts to discover the cause of Beriberi failed. He was so troubled by the ravages of the disease that he witnessed that he began to pray about the problem. 

Robert became aware of the research of Kanehiro Takaki, a Japanese medical officer whose perseverance in the face of considerable opposition, led the Japanese to issue rations to Japanese sailors that improved diet and greatly diminished the number of Beriberi cases. Takaki's 1906 lectures were published in Lancet (Volume 167, No. 4315, p1333, 12 May 1906)

Williams now was convinced that the disease was due to nutritional deficiency. He reviewed all the available research and began to think that the disease was most likely to appear in populations that consumed white rice as their main staple. He suspected that beriberi is due to a lack of some essential component in white rice.

Robert returned to the United States in 1911. He did additional graduate work at the University of Chicago. He married Augusta C. Parrish and returned with his bride to Manila in the summer of 1912.  He and Vedder continued feeding experiments with chickens for one year. During this time they attempted to treat a few cases of human Beriberi. 

Vedder left the Philippines in the spring of 1913 Robert continued to search for a better way to isolate the curative component of rice polishings. He used a colony of domesticated chickens that he set up at the Bureau of Science and he sought opportunities to test his preparations on people with Beriberi, especially infants who would otherwise die within a short time. He made excursions into the Tondo section of Manila, but often arrived too late, and was informed that the child had died. In his book Towards the Conquest of Beriberi (Harvard, 1961) Williams reports, "Sometimes I found the house in time and was then uniformly successful, sometimes dramatically..." (p. 102)

In 1916 Williams began trials of synthetic substance in the hope that he could identify a substance with antineuritic potency and could then proceed by modifications of the structure to improve on it. He was now collaborating with Atherton Seidell who worked at the Hygienic Laboratory, later the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C.

In 1930 Maurice I. Smith experimenting with rats showed that Beriberi resulted when rats were fed a diet that was deficient in one particular vitamin, the antineuritic vitamin B1, as it had come to be called.  He found that "the only reliable source" of vitamin B2 (essential for growth), nearly or completely free from vitamin B1, is an autoclaved yeast or yeast extract. Smith first suggested this in 1926. Both Smith and Williams also recognized that the autoclaving process destroys most of the vitamin B1 factor essential in the prevention of Beriberi. Another process was needed.

In 1934 Robert developed a way to isolate 1/3 ounce of thiamine from a ton of rice polishings. In 1936, he worked of the molecular structure of thiamine, and in 1936 he synthesized thiamine, making it possible for rice and other products to be fortified with vitamin B1, thus virtually eradicating Beriberi worldwide. In 1961, Williams wrote, "The great killing epidemics of beriberi are a thing of the past for all but the most ignorant know enough to prevent them when they start." (Toward the Conquest of Beriberi, p. 219)

Today vitamin B1 is also known as the Antiberiberi Factor, the Antiberiberi Vitamin, the Antineuritic Factor, and the Antineuritic Vitamin.

Reflecting on the "long history of failures and occasional successes in the struggle to isolate the vitamin in profitable amounts," Williams wrote, "It was really necessary for biochemistry to gain new insights and powers, to learn new ways of dealing with minute quantities of perishable substances in nature... Synthesis has produced a thousand tons of the once rare substance and much of it has been used to bring better health to millions in all parts of the world." (Toward the Conquest of Beriberi, p. 284)

The Rev and Mrs. Williams at home in Redlands, California in 1915 
with their children
From left to right: Robert, Henry, Paul, Alice and Roger

After returning to the United States, Robert Williams worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1915 to 1945. He resided in Summit, New Jersey, where he died at the age of 79 on October 2, 1965. On his grave stone it reads "He labored much in the Lord."

Related reading: The Rev. Robert Runnels Williams (father of R.R. Williams, the chemist); Alice Williams Linsley (beloved sister of Robert Runnels Williams)

International Congress of Quantum Chemistry President Apologizes

Bias against women in science reared its ugly head last week when the preeminent conference for theoretical chemistry posted a list of two dozen confirmed speakers without including a single woman.

A group of female scientists promptly called for a boycott, but faced backlash from a prominent chemist who dismissed their efforts as “nonsensical” and “trendy whining about supposed ‘gender inequality.’”

More on that in a bit, but first some background. The International Congress of Quantum Chemistry is held by the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences and scheduled for June in Beijing next year. When the conference revealed its initial speaker list (since taken down from the website), every one was male.

“It happened again — another major theoretical chemistry conference features an all-male program,” reads the boycott petition, which was written by theoretical chemists Anna Krylov, Emily A. Carter and Laura Gagliardi and received 835 signatures within a few days.

Read it all here.

An apology came from the President of The International Congress of Quantum Chemistry. Apologies should be follow by action to correct wrongs. Let's hope that happens.