DREAMS Weaver
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Dalhousie University chemistry and physics professor Mary Anne White likes to talk. She’s good at it. She’s good at materials science too — renowned...
Read More >>Pure pursuit
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY
If it’s unfair to judge a book by its cover, it’s equally unfair to judge a promising new technology by the ho-hum building housing it. When first arriving at Xogen Technologies’ wastewater...
Read More >>Grinding chemistry
TECHNIQUES
Basic chemistry has seldom been better captured by Hollywood than when Tom Hanks built a fire in Castaway. Stranded alone on a desert island...
Read More >>Navigating a competitive advantage for science and business
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
In 1990, the University of Waterloo’s Janusz Pawliszyn developed a new method of collecting and analyzing water samples, a common practice that had scarcely changed since the 1980s. Pawliszyn’s method, called solid phase microextraction (SPME), allows some contaminants to be extracted on-site without the use of organic solvents while making sampling faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly. It was inevitable that industry would take note. Indeed, when one of Pawliszyn’s former students went to work for Maxxam Analytics in Toronto, she took the idea with her and a great partnership began.
Read More >>Conference will showcase advances in chemistry education
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
This July, about 500 scientists from around the globe will gather in Toronto to share and celebrate advances in the pedagogy and practice of chemistry education. The 23 rd International...
Read More >>Alfred and Isabel Bader to receive Queen’s Alumni Achievement Award
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
The highest honour that can be bestowed upon Queen’s University grads — the Alumni Achievement Award — will be presented to philanthropist couple, chemist Alfred Bader, HFCIC, and his wife....
Read More >>Visiting McGill University professor lectures on silk
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Mark Cronin-Golomb, a visiting professor at McGill University’s Fonds de recherché Nature et technologies (FQRNT) Centre for Self-Assembled Chemical Structures (CSACS)...
Read More >>When it comes to contracts, know what you’re signing
INTELLECTUAL MATTERS
In my previous column, I discussed how intellectual property, like any other form of property, can be assigned, licensed, bequeathed, etc. When a patent application is filed, the inventors listed...
Read More >>Grapevine
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Geoff Rayner-Canham, FCIC, of Memorial University and Tina Overton of the University of Hull, United Kingdom, authored the newly published Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, 6th edition. The textbook includes a correlation of...
Read More >>Students sparkle at crystal awards
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Canadian high school students and teachers, including some international entries, competed last fall in the Chemical Institute of Canada’s annual National Crystal Growing Competition to create the best quality, largest...
Read More >>2013 It’s Chemistry, Eh?! contest winners announced
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
The 2013 It’s Chemistry Eh?! YouTube contest was an overwhelming success with 22 entries from high school students across Canada. The videos embraced such chemistry topics as the benefits of chemistry...
Read More >>Canadian Journal of Chemistry announces new Best Paper Award
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
The monthly Canadian Journal of Chemistry (CJC) is announcing a new Best Paper Award to recognize the top submission published by a scientist residing in Canada.
Read More >>Urine — a miracle substance through the ages
CHEMFUSION
The ancient Romans, of course, didn’t have washing machines. But they had the next best thing. They had fullonicae, laundries where servants called fullones washed clothes. Don’t picture some sort...
Read More >>Prix du Québec for chemistry professor
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
James Wuest (left) of the Université de Montréal Department of Chemistry received the Prix du Québec Marie-Victorin Award from...
Read More >>Then and Now
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
On going concerns about Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own civilians and Canada’s role in detecting and destroying the vast arsenal have renewed public interest...
Read More >>Glass toughens up with lessons from mother nature
MATERIALS SCIENCE
Mollusc shells consist largely of chalk, the same soft stuff that comes apart so easily on blackboards. Yet this material provides aquatic life with protection tougher than advanced engineering ceramics. The difference can be seen at the microscopic level, where the shell is revealed as an interlocking series of small tablets, intricately connected to provide remarkable resilience.
Read More >>Superconductors hang 10 riding the charge waves
FUNDAMENTALS
The extraordinary properties of superconductivity have regularly frustrated researchers, who have successfully identified it in many different materials, but always at temperatures too low for a widespread technological impact. The search for superconducting materials — which lack any resistance to electrical flow — has regularly frustrated researchers; while many such materials have been discovered, they only work at temperatures too low for widespread application.
Read More >>Nanoparticles deliver the goods against cancer, then go
HEALTH
The best way of applying medicines powerful enough to kill cancerous tumours is to ensure that they wind up in those tumours and nowhere else in the body. In a recent Nature Nanotechnology paper, researchers at the University of Toronto point the way to just this kind of targeted delivery, which takes advantage of the properties of gold nanoparticles.
Read More >>Water testing for E. coli gets smart treatment
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY
A handheld system developed through an India-Canada research network promises to provide on-the-spot testing of drinking water sources in more remote locations, immediately confirming the absence or presence of harmful E. coli bacteria and transmitting the results electronically to all interested parties. This approach represents a significant improvement over standard...
Read More >>Sourcing new chemicals from pulp and paper mill waste
NATURAL RESOURCES
Thunder Bay, Ont. is home to the Resolute Forest Products laboratory and demonstration plant, where researchers can explore possible uses of lignin — along with cellulose and hemicellulose, the key biopolymers that make up wood — which is typically burned for want of any other use.
Read More >>Shedding light on the secrets of plant photosynthesis
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
While untold numbers of plants have carried out photosynthesis for hundreds of millions of years, the nature of this subtle process continues to elude us. Scientists are, however, focusing increasingly sophisticated tools on this problem, raising hopes that this fundamental biological activity will eventually reveal its secrets.
Read More >>Small publication means big exposure for collaborators
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Three researchers at Polytechnique Montréal have published a paper that was featured as the cover story for the Wiley publication Small, which has an impact factor that puts it among the world’s leading publications covering topics in nano-scale and micro-scale chemistry, physics, materials science, engineering, medicine and biology.
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