ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: Aug 16, 2006

• Cooling towers may host new pathogens
• Toward a drug to reduce the toll from measles
• Tapping the power of lightsticks
• Wine’s disastrous M-word: zeroing in on the source
• The Periodic Table of Nanoparticles?

Cooling towers may be hot spots where new forms of disease-causing bacteria emerge, scientists report. Sharon G. Berk and colleagues set out to determine whether cooling towers — fixtures that extract waste heat and provide cooled water for air-conditioning, manufacturing and electric power generation — encourage a worrisome relationship between amoebae and bacterial pathogens of amoebae (single-celled organisms that dwell in water).

Numerous human pathogens have been detected in amoebae, and evidence suggests that amoebae act as incubators in which certain human pathogens multiply profusely. The microbe responsible for Legionnaires’ disease is among the bacteria that reproduce in amoebae. Infected amoebae swell like a balloon, burst and release bacteria that then can infect other hosts.

In the new study, Berk’s group sampled 40 cooling towers and 40 natural aquatic environments. Infected amoebae were 16 times more likely to be in cooling towers than in rivers, lakes and ponds.

“Such pathogens of amoebae may spread to the environment via aerosols from the cooling towers,” the researchers state in a report published online in advance of a special issue on infectious disease, scheduled to be published in the Jan. 1, 2008, issue of the ACS journal, Environmental Science & Technology. ”Studies of emerging infectious diseases should strongly consider cooling towers as a source of amoeba-associated pathogens.”

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Scientists have applied the principle behind lightsticks — those snap-to-glow devices that light up without electricity — to produce remote photopolymerization, a long-sought process for sealing inaccessible cracks and numerous other potential practical uses.

Douglas C. Neckers, Andrei V. Fedorov and Andrei A. Ermoskin report a demonstration of remote polymerization, or "remote cure," in a study scheduled for publication in the Aug. 22 issue of the ACS journal, Macromolecules. Photopolymers are the basis of multi-billion-dollar industries, with uses that include clear coatings, paints, varnishes, adhesives and sealants. These liquids change or "cure" into solids when exposed to light. Chemists have speculated for years about an apparent contradiction in terms — the possibility of having photopolymerization happen without light or heat.

Neckers, Fedorov and Ermoskin have demonstrated that photopolymers will harden in the presence of the chemical reactions that make lightsticks glow. They propose “remote cure” as a name for the process and cite several possible applications. Among them are sealing joints, cracks or holes inside pipes, tubes or containers where light cannot reach. “Another utilization of remote cure might be to cause the formation of a coating behind a pipe or in a room that could not be entered because of contamination.”

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Could the famous Periodic Table of the Elements, a fixture on the walls of science classrooms and laboratories around the world, eventually get a companion … perhaps the Periodic Table of Nanoparticles?

A report scheduled for the Aug. 21 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society’s weekly newsmagazine, raises that possibility. Written by senior editor Ivan Amato, the article describes how some nanoscience researchers liken the minuscule particles they are making — and mixing and matching like atoms — to the elements of a new periodic table.

Of course, the traditional periodic table is far more than a listing of all the known chemical elements and their properties. It is a powerful tool for systematizing, comparing and predicting many different forms of chemical behavior. “Even if this nascent nanoparticle table contains only a smidgen of the explanatory and predictive power of the traditional element table, it could prove to be invaluable,” Amato writes. Such a table could help scientists recognize yet-to-be-discovered purposes of nanoparticles, and identify and exploit the rules by which nanoparticles assemble into a large and ever-growing menagerie of nanostructures, according to the article.

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Register Now for the Nanotechnology Media Tour
Many reporters who cover chemistry, materials science, medicine, health, environment and business closely follow the rapid-pace innovation in nanotechnology.

• The American Chemical Society Office of Communications is offering a special event for news media who attend the American Chemical Society national meeting in San Francisco or who work in the Bay Area.
• On Sept. 12 we’ll join nanotechnology pioneer, Paul Alivisatos, University of California, Berkeley, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s new Molecular Foundry. Alivisatos is a renowned nanotech pioneer who edits the premier scientific journal in the field, Nano Letters, published by the American Chemical Society. We’ll tour the Foundry, a toolshop with instrumentation for nanotech research, and hear presentations by scientists.
• After a Q&A session, we’ll adjourn for a reception and a chance to chat informally about this exciting field of science.
• An e-mail to Michael Woods or phone call (202-872-6293) will put your name on the sign-up sheet.

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• Science, September & San Francisco
  The approach of autumn stirs thoughts of Major League Baseball’s World Series and a world-series-class event in science. Visit the ACS News Service’s newest weblog for insights into preparations for an event expected to attract more than 17,000 scientists and other attendees.
• 10th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference
  If you’re writing on green chemistry, our weblog from the 10th annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference can be a valuable resource.

September 10-14 is one of the year’s biggest and most influential scientific conferences – the 232nd ACS national meeting in beautiful San Francisco.

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