Big oil cleans up its act
PETROCHEMISTRY
From the air, the landscape surrounding Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta is a patchwork of boreal green stitched...
Read More >>View the November/December 2013 Canadian Chemical News (ACCN) print issue as a PDF.
Culture shift
RESEARCH
Last May, the National Research Council (NRC) announced that it was “open for business” and would “work with Canadian industries to bridge...
Read More >>Weapons of microscopic destruction
BIOCHEMISTRY
A coral reef is a place of opulent wonder, with schools of iridescent, psychedelic fish as well as colourful sponges, sea urchins, anemones and coral polyps, awash in currents teeming...
Read More >>Phosphorus recovery plant opens in Saskatoon
INDUSTRY
This summer, Vancouver-based Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. opened its first Canadian commercial-scale nutrient recovery facility in Saskatoon. The plant will remove phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater, turning them into commercially valuable fertilizer. Ostara’s technology, licensed from the University of British Columbia in 2005, revolves around magnesium ammonium phosphate (NH4MgPO4•6H2O) also known as struvite. This...
Read More >>Human urine teeming with chemicals
BIOCHEMISTRY
A team at the University of Alberta has published the human urine metabolome, a list of more than 3,000 chemicals detectable in the urine of an average, healthy person. The database will help everyone from environmental toxicologists to doctors...
Read More >>Hydrophobic groups enable DNA nanocages to hold drugs
NANOTECHNOLOGY
A team of chemists from McGill University has developed a new method for incorporating hydrophobic groups into nano-sized cubical cages made of DNA.
Read More >>Chemists find 23 more reasons to drink red wine
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus have discovered 23 new stilbenoid compounds in red wine that had previously gone unnoticed and which could be exploited for potential beneficial health benefits.
Read More >>Adenosine monophosphate confirms ‘other double helix’ theory
BIOCHEMISTRY
A team including researchers from McGill University, Concordia University and the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron have used crystallography to confirm a 50-year-old hypothesis: chains...
Read More >>Manganese may reveal metal-breathing bacteria
GEOCHEMISTRY
An international team, including researchers at McGill University, has discovered that low-oxygen aquatic environments around the world contain dissolved manganese (III), which was previously thought to exist only in solid oxides. The finding...
Read More >>Zinc phosphide nanoparticles could advance solar cells
ENERGY
A University of Alberta team has developed a new way to synthesize uniform, well-characterized nanocrystals of inexpensive zinc phosphide (Zn3P2). These semiconducting ‘quantum dots’ could lead to cheap, printable photovoltaic cells...
Read More >>Our National Museum of Science and Technology deserves a new home
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
This past August, the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa welcomed its 20 millionth visitor. Quite a milestone and one made all the more remarkable considering that the museum is located in its original building — a former bakery warehouse in a retail and light industrial section of Ottawa about 12 kilometres from the...
Read More >>Patents must clearly identify the inventors
INTELLECTUAL MATTERS
Over the past year, I have attempted to explain some of the basics of patent law. I have regularly mentioned the three basic tenets for obtaining a patent for an invention: the invention must be new, inventive and useful. While these tenets accurately describe the requirements for patentability, this isn’t the full picture. The final...
Read More >>It’s a madder, madder, madder, madder world
CHEMFUSION
The Redcoats are coming, the Redcoats are coming!” Well, Paul Revere could hardly have missed them. And if he were observant, he could even have distinguished the officers from the privates. The privates’ coats were coloured red with a dye derived from the root of the madder plant. The officers’ jackets’ were a stunning red...
Read More >>Then and now
HISTORY
The growth of corporate giant Alcan in 20th century Canada was closely linked to two things: the evolution of the world’s most versatile metal — aluminum — and Quebec hydroelectricity, which provided cheap power for aluminum smelting. Alcan was born in 1902 as the Northern Aluminum Company Limited, a Canadian subsidiary of the United States-based...
Read More >>Blunt answers to lack of business innovation in Canada
BUSINESS
This past April and September a number of demonstrations were held across Canada under the banner of “Stand Up for Science.” These efforts generated a lot of media coverage with a call on the federal government “to make a strong commitment to science in the public interest.” While any media attention for science is welcome, this sound bite is clearly intended to get the public wondering and maybe worrying: What is...
Read More >>CIC advocates for student and research funding
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
As part of its ongoing commitment to advocacy, the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) has submitted a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA). The recommendations include increasing the number of fully funded PhD students and post-doctoral fellows in the natural sciences and engineering, as well as increasing funding to granting...
Read More >>Grapevine
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
After six years at Université de Sherbrooke, Eli Zysman-Colman was appointed this past July to a prestigious EaStCHEM Research fellowship at the University of St. Andrews at St. Andrews, Fife.
Read More >>Students enjoy lectures in the great outdoors
EDUCATION
This year’s Annual Symposium of Inorganic Chemistry of Quebec (SACIQ), held this past August, was the opportunity for chemistry students from Quebec and around the world to enjoy the great Canadian outdoors. The students gathered at La Mauricie National Park to listen to a lecture by Serge Gorelsky of the University of Ottawa while enjoying...
Read More >>Oil spill lesson
EDUCATION
The Chemical Institute of Canada Edmonton Section hosted an evening with Merv Fingas, whose lecture, “Ocean Oil-Spill: The Deepwater Horizon Blowout – Chemistry and Lessons” enlightened an audience of graduate students, academics and industrial fellows on Sept. 26. Fingas, the former Chief of the Emergencies Science Division of Environment Canada, discussed the $60-billion cleanup efforts...
Read More >>Two CIC board members elected to IUPAC
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Russell Boyd, FCIC, a Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) past chair and professor of chemistry at Dalhousie University in Halifax, has been elected to a two-year term on the board of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)...
Read More >>Chen wins Catalysis Lectureship Award
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Aicheng Chen, professor of chemistry at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. and a Canada Research Chair in Materials & Environmental Chemistry, is winner of the 2013 Canadian Catalysis Lectureship Award from the Canadian Catalysis Foundation. Chen has made significant...
Read More >>A magical 50th anniversary at Carleton U
EDUCATION
This past September, Carleton’s chemistry department hosted a chemical magic show to help celebrate the Faculty of Science’s 50th anniversary. Flashy demonstrations of nitrocellulose, thermite, acetylene combustion and the emission colours of metal ions awed the crowd of 250. Professors Bob Burk and Jeff Manthorpe, featured here with a flask of methylene blue dye, explained...
Read More >>Chemical ‘primer’ enables new molecular electronics
MATERIALS SCIENCE
A team from the University of Alberta has developed a new way of creating molecular junctions, which are ultra-thin layers of organic molecules sandwiched between two carbon electrodes. The discovery could lead to novel electrochemical sensors...
Read More >>EnviroAnalysis 2013 joins the CIC fold
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Hundreds of environmental chemists from across the country gathered in Toronto this past September for EnviroAnalysis 2013, North America’s premier conference in environmental analysis and monitoring. Held biennially since 1996, EnviroAnalysis was founded by research scientist Ray Clement (this year’s conference chair) and Bob Burk, FCIC, chair of the Department of Chemistry at Carleton University....
Read More >>