Showing posts with label chemistry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemistry. Show all posts

No More Poppies Needed to Produce Narcotics

Scientists have found a way of transforming ordinary sugar into hydrocodone. This will lead to a cheaper way of manufacturing opiates. Unfortunately, it will also make things easier for drug traffickers selling a cheaper product,
Hydrocodone made with yeast as catalyst
Yeast changes sugar into pain killer. This takes out the entire one year growing season for poppies and the factory process itself. At present, 4,400 gallons of yeast is needed to produce a small amount of hydrocodone. Work will proceed to improve this.

With yeast as the catalyst, it looks like plant-based medication manufacturing is under threat. Yeast has snippets of DNA added to reprogram cells into target compounds. Notably, a third of the world's supply of the medication artemisinin is already produced from modified yeast. Artemisinin needs six genes while hydrocodone requires 23. Some genes from rats arehydrocodone.
put into the yeast to make

A "halfway-house" way of manufacturing pain killers is possible. A strain of yeast to make thebaine is available. It has to be processed in a factory to create the thebaine opiate, but it is cheaper than using poppies and is quicker.
◆Chemistry by Ty Buchanan ◆
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Bedbugs Victorious Over Humanity

Bedbugs are the bane of humanity. Not only do they bite, but people are ashamed to say they suffer from the insects presence. Yet this is normal for any animal, and humans are no different from other creatures.
bedbugs humans live alongside coexist
Note how her face is obscured because of the shame
Humans like to think that they are special and are somehow unique in nature. We evolved like other species alongside bugs who did well out of it. Indeed, humans even benefited while some bugs eat others. There are many of them: bedbugs, fleas, lice, ticks, scabies and so on.

We have tried and failed to eradicate bedbugs. Humans must accept their presence. Dead bedbugs are found on the earliest mummies. Ancient Romans and Greeks wrote about them. Everything has been tried against them from dangerous chemicals to plants and potions. Even smoke has been tried to no avail.

The only thing that worked was DDT. An entire generation enjoyed life for the first time without bedbugs. This was not to last, however, as the dangers of the toxic substance became known. Furthermore, resistant bugs survived and became the hardy bunch breeding today. So prominent have they become that 2010 was named the Year of the Bedbug.
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◆ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan ◆

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New Compunds in a Database to Fight Infection

When things get tough people will try anything. Antibiotics are no longer working, so researchers are asking for newly mixed compounds by chemists to be sent along to them. This a new project set up by the University of Queensland.
Superbugs in a petri dish
The belief is that scientists are working on the same middle of the road compounds. It is in new compounds where hope lies. Every day new compounds are made and just discarded. They are never screened to see what they can do against pathogens.

Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD researchers located at UQ are ready to test the compounds against fungi and bacteria, especially superbugs. This will work because rights remain with the chemists who provide the samples.

Funding has been been gained from sources in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., France and India. The project began in February and will be ongoing. Prevalent diseases like malaria an dengue fever will be included in the target list. The database will be open to the public.
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Organic sem-conductors

The path to develop better solar energy products from silicon are exhausted. Other materials need to be examined to provide more efficient solar panel operation. Scientists are analyzing a wide spectrum of materials.
Solar panels
Plastics show a great deal of promise, particularly at the molecular level. Organic sem-conductors appear to be the key to future developments. This is a type of plastic that conducts electricity.  More effective conductivity seems to be the key not so much heat generation.

It is expensive to make silicon conductors for solar cells. OSCs can be manipulated at the molecular level to reduce energy loss, thus more energy is accumulated. Improved efficiency will see the whole production method change for solar cells.
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Vaccine for Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a widespread complaint. It is usually a malady of the elderly, but the young can succumb to it too. About the only treatment available is replacement of joints with artificial ones and analgesics.
Rheumatoid arthritis treatment vaccine
A team at the University of Queensland has taken a new approach. They have developed a vaccine. Many diseases are caused by the body attacking its own tissue. Arthritis is one of these. If the immune response is suppressed, inflammation decreases. This is how the new vaccine works.

All Westerners have high inflammation levels. This may be a good thing to fight injuries. However, continued long term inflammation does damage to the body. Once switched on and the immediate danger solved it needs to be turned off.

The new method involves taking a sample of the patient's immune cells which are then modified in the lab. This is injected back into the patient. The immune system no longer sees the modified peptide as foreign.

Other problematic diseases due to a lingering immune response would seem to be future candidates for similar vaccines.
✴ Health by Ty Buchanan ✴
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Antimalarial Drug Artemisinin Made in Green Process

There is a new drug for malaria called artemisinin. It will be synthesized in a chemical process and the procedure is "green". The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi  produces a third of the world's demand annually. Unfortunately, the synthetic drug is expensive.
Sanofi company new chemical process produces antimalarial artemisinin
Click to enlarge.
Most of artemisinin is extracted from sweet wormwood. This is simple but the synthetic version involves the conversion of glucose into artemisinic acid: then three oxygen atoms are bonded on to produce artimsinin. It is complex.

The use of toxic dichloromethane is not used in the new process. It was discovered, ironically, that water greatly assists the synthesis. It packs molecules together. Water-soluble photocatalyst is indeed clean and green. The result is a product that is purer than artemisinin taken directly from wormwood.
✴ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan ✴
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Sweet Versus White Potatoes

You don't know which is better for you - standard or sweet potatoes? Well read on. While many people rant on about the benefits of sweet potatoes, ordinary potatoes are good for you too. There is a drive to reduce the consumption of starch. But be careful about this. Human beings have been eating tubers for hundreds of thousands of years. It is starch from wheat that is new to us - only ten thousand years. Our bodies have evolved to be able to digest tubers.
Processed food like flour is unnatural. Tubers have starch balanced with other elements. This slows down digestion and releases sugar very slowly into the body. Bread is digested quickly. You are hungry again in no time.

Sweet potatoes are not the best low GI (slow sugar release) in an absolute comparison of standard potatoes. Some varieties of potatoes are floury while others are waxy. They differ in GI qualities.

Cooking methods change the GI index. Boiling is best because water binds with the starch. Baking concentrates the sugar. Cutting up before cooking preserves the starch. Cooking potatoes whole raises sugariness. These methods can make sweet potatoes have a higher GI than standard boiled potatoes.

The thing about antioxidants can be ignored. In tests with mice it was found the long-living mice had more oxidants in their bodies than shorter-living ones. All vegetables are high in minerals, vitamins and trace elements. Sweet potatoes compare to Brussels sprouts and spinach, but white potatoes are sufficiently high. Note that we eat potatoes with other things. The "other things" provide missing elements that potatoes lack.
✴ Chemistry by Ty Buchanan ✴
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Australia Should Develop a Bionic Brain - Nonesense!

One of the most difficult things to do is to develop a computer brain that operates like a human brain. Intelligence that evolved by nature is very complex. A computer "thinks" linearly with one activity followed by another. The human brain works outward from a central point, spreading out to different areas depending on the particular task.

To say that Australia should concentrate on making the world's first bionic brain is a leap too far. Saying that $250m over ten years will get the job done is way off the mark. There are many scientists already working with much more money than that and they haven't achieved much.

Pioneering the healthbionic ear and eye is kid stuff compared to replicating the brain. Using nerve activity to make artificial limbs move is also far from understanding human intelligence. Even after all these years measuring intelligence is beyond us. The IQ test only gives a score for rating cultural knowledge. It is misused by so many people.

We need to start at the real beginning and understand genetics first. Genes build the brain. Consciousness is another thing. Is it the outcome of the overall activity of the brain or is it something separate, like a soul? Saying humans are the only animal to have a soul is nonsense. When you get to Heaven expect to find some Neanderthal there!
Science by Ty Buchanan
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