A pair of mineral clues recently found in a fossil seafloor may be signs that ancient bacteria helped create banded iron formations — Precambrian-aged sedimentary rocks known for their vibrant, reddish- brown-colored thin layers — that researchers use to reconstruct ancient interactions between the atmosphere, the ocean and the seafloor.
Tag Archives: Chemistry
Sewer Sampling Reveals Patterns Of Drug Use
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 and in other cities, including London and San Diego, to observe the effects of drug control policies.
However, current analytical methods require expensive equipment to collect water samples and don’t allow for continuous sampling of wastewater. Now researchers demonstrate that so-called passive filters provide an efficient and inexpensive means to measure drug use over weeks in municipal wastewater. With the samplers, they studied the ebbs and flows of 11 drugs in Oslo’s sewers for a year, including during the Russ celebrations (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es201124j).
Read the rest of this news item at Chemical & Engineering News [html] or here [pdf]
Fatty Acids In Red Wine Make It Taste Fruity
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 & Engineering News [html] or here [pdf]