ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: Nov. 29, 2006

• Unprecedented efficiency in producing hydrogen from water
• New biosensors from the blood of llamas
• More accurate estimates of community-wide illicit drug use
• Carbon nanomaterials may disperse more widely in waterways
• Toward tracing the source of anthrax in the 2001 terrorism attacks

Scientists are reporting a major advance in technology for water photooxidation —using sunlight to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel from ordinary water. Michael Gratzel and colleagues in Switzerland note that nature found this Holy Grail of modern energy independence 3 billion years ago, with the evolution of blue-green algae that use photosynthesis to split water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen.

Gratzel is namesake for the Gratzel Cell, a more-efficient solar cell that his group developed years ago. Solar cells produce electricity directly from sunlight. Their new research, scheduled for publication in the Dec. 13 issue of the weekly Journal of the American Chemical Society, reports development of a device that sets a new benchmark for efficiency in splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using visible light, which is ordinary sunlight.

Previously, the best water photooxidation technology had an external quantum efficiency of about 37 percent. The new technology's efficiency is 42 percent, which the researchers term “unprecedented.” The efficiency is due to an improved positive electrode and other innovations in the water-splitting device, researchers said.

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Scientists in Italy are reporting development of a method for more accurate estimates of the amount of illicit drug use in a community. Sara Castiglioni and colleagues note that current estimates of community-wide illicit drug use are based on indirect methods—such as population surveys, crime statistics and interviews—that tend to be unreliable.

In a report scheduled for the Dec. 15 issue of ACS’s Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal, they describe the first application of an analytical technique that directly determines the amounts of a wide variety of illicit drugs in wastewater collected at sewage treatment plants. Termed high pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, the tool can detect amphetamines, cocaine, THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) and other drugs.

The test identifies drugs and drug byproducts that illicit drug users excrete in their urine. Those compounds pass through sewage treatment plants and may appear in rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water. In addition to making better estimates of population-wide drug use, the technique also could provide a way to monitor drug use and changing patterns of drug use in real time, the researchers state. They previously developed a similar test for cocaine, and used it to suggest that cocaine use was more prevalent than once believed.

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New technology for analyzing water may have narrowed the possible source of anthrax used in the 2001 terrorist attacks to a handful of institutions, according to an article scheduled for the Dec. 4 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the ACS’s weekly newsmagazine.

In the article, C&EN Senior Correspondent Lois R. Ember describes how science is aiding an extraordinarily difficult FBI criminal probe of the first major act of bioterrorism on United States soil. It occurred a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when anthrax-laced letters sent through the mail killed five people and raised the fear level nationwide. Despite 9,100 FBI interviews, 67 searches, and 6,000 grand jury subpoenas, the case remains unsolved.

Ember surveys new developments in the case, including an August scientific article with a paragraph that “set the scientific and arms control communities abuzz.” Another development involves the reported application of technology for tracing the source of water used to process the anthrax spores to the northeastern United States. If true, one source told C&EN, it would narrow the likely source of the anthrax to “two or three” institutions in the region that had access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks.

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National Historic Chemical Landmarks
America came of age as a nation in the late 1700s — the same time chemistry came of age as a science. Since then, chemists have played key roles in expanding the frontiers of knowledge, advancing medicine and industry, and creating products from aspirin to zippers. The ACS’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks program recognizes these outstanding accomplishments and tells the stories behind the research. The most recent landmark was designated on Oct. 25, when ACS designated Procter & Gamble’s development of Tide® — "the washing miracle" synthetic detergent — a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a special ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Landmarks web site has valuable resources for feature stories and background.

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Chemistry has an increasingly important role in research on cancer diagnosis, prevention and treatment. To spotlight that role, the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will cosponsor a special conference entitled, “Chemistry in Cancer Research: A Vital Partnership,” Feb. 4-7 in San Diego, Calif. The program will feature presentations by prominent scientists on drug discovery, proteomics, the chemical biology of carcinogenesis, biomarkers and analytical chemistry, modeling and bioinformatics, and structural biology.

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