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When it comes to handling radioactive waste the Hanford site in western Washington state is the opposite of a role model. Ever since its reactors started producing the plutonium which was used in the Nagasaki bomb, Hanford has been generating waste with little foresight and responsibility. It has the dubious honor of being the most contaminated radioactive site in the country.
Scientific American has an article which gives an idea of how truly awful the problem is. It's not just that there's
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Chemists need to move from designing structure - exemplified by this synthetic receptor - to designing function (Image: Max Planck Institute).
Yesterday I wrote a post about a perspective by multifaceted chemist George Whitesides in which he urged chemists to broaden the boundaries of their discipline and think of big picture problems. But the article spurred me to think a bit more about a question which I (and I am sure other chemists) have often thought about; what’s
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Catching up on a few articles I had missed, I came across a characteristically deep and wide-ranging essay called "Assumptions" by George Whitesides about science, its future and our responsibility as scientists. It's a very general and kaleidoscopic essay not restricted to chemistry, but the bits about chemistry, its role in understanding the major problems confronting humanity and chemists' responsibility in extending the scope of chemical science are quite
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Just when you think the perpetrators of chemophobia (actually this particular case makes chemophobia look like a knight in shining armor) cannot outdo themselves, someone seems to hit a new high.
This time it's "alternative" "medicine" "physician" Joseph Mercola. In a diatribe against Splenda he tosses out this gem:
"Splenda—"Made from Sugar" But More Similar to DDT...
That's right.
The catchy slogan "Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar" has fooled many, but chemically, Splenda is
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Charles Joseph Minard's famous graph showing the decreasing size of Napoleon's Grande Armée as it marches to Moscow; a classic in data visualization (Image: Wikipedia Commons)
As the economy continues to chart its own tortuous, uncertain course, there seems to have been a fair amount of much-needed discussion on the kinds of skills new grads should possess. These skills of course have to be driven by market demand. As chemist George Whitesides asks for instance, what's the
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