While scrubbers in smokestacks at coal plants can pull out toxic gases like sulfur dioxide, scientists haven’t yet developed a cost-effective technology to remove carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust. Now European researchers have tinkered with the chemical composition of limestone to produce a material that absorbs almost twice as much CO2 as the natural mineral [...]

My latest Concentrate for Chemical & Engineering News [html] [pdf]: The cement industry is one of the world’s largest producers of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The reason is that cement’s calcium carbonate releases the greenhouse gas. Now researchers have shown that they can replace up to 10% of the cement in mortar mixtures without harming the [...]

While high school graduates in Oslo, Norway, partied hard for two weeks last spring during the so-called Russ graduation festivities, levels of the drug ecstasy spiked about 10-fold in the city’s sewer system, according to new research. In the past few years, water quality specialists have monitored such illicit drug use through sewage sampling there [...]

The quality of a wine is still in the palate of the beholder, but tasters agree that fruitiness is an important contributor. Spanish researchers now report that chemicals responsible for a wine’s foul, sweaty smells also produce its fruity flavor (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf1048657). Read the rest of this news brief in Chemical [...]