For more information about Updates, Click on the titles:
Chemistry news
Biodiesel is a promising future fuel, particularly because it can be made from a wide variety of renewable sources such as crude vegetable oils and waste fats produced by commercial kitchens. Conventional chemical processes for producing biodiesel, however, require pure and refined feedstock oils, thus negating any potential advantages. To get around this problem, Md. Mahabubur Rahman Talukder and co-workers at the A*STAR Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences have developed a two-step biocatalytic process that works well on all sorts of oils -- whether they are refined or not.
Engineering structures on the smallest possible scales -- using molecules and individual atoms as building blocks -- is both physically and conceptually challenging. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has now developed a method of computationally selecting the best of these blocks, drawing inspiration from the similar behavior of proteins in making biological structures.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
