Lots of good stuff in this week's C&EN:
- I did not expect to be as interested as I am in this Michael McCoy article about cleaning solvents. Really interesting stuff there.
- (Say, is 7000 tons of agricultural waste a lot? Something tells me "no, not at all.")
- Interesting to see less-than-lightning-fast uptake of hydraulic fracturing in China. (article by Bree Fang)
- Lisa Jarvis reports from the J.P. Morgan biotech conference; interesting to hear the classic "are we in a bubble?" talk at the end of the article.
- I didn't know about a composites research hub being set up with federal dollars in Knoxville, TN. Will be interesting to see how much hiring gets done there. Article by Marc Reisch.
- Also interesting to see how specific (and how chemistry-oriented) some of these other advanced manufacturing research institutes are...
- Is this something worth wasting money on? (i.e. you know some R&D is just fruitless, and scientists just accept that.) Specifically, is 3D printing really something that justifies tax dollars? I dunno.
- A chemistry lecturer shows off her chemistry-oriented body art. (by Craig Bettenhausen)
- Cute puppy pic in this week's Newscripts by Mitch Garcia (yes! our Mitch)
- This letter to the editor telling professors to get upset at their granting agencies is bizarre.
I am curious if anyone with knowledge of fracking chemistry knows how much Me4N+Cl- is being added into the fracking mixtures? Tetramethylammonium chloride is listed as anti-settling fracking additive. The estimated human lethal dose of this innocuous-looking quaternary ammonium is about 5 mg/kg (acetylcholine agonist) - which is almost as bad as cyanide...
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