Stefan Jaronoski, an insect pathologist at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory (Sidney, Mont.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-543) has discovered that a strain of the fungus Metarhizium anisoplia is effective in killing the sugar beet root maggot. Currently,…
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arlington, Va.) has awarded $5.7 million to a two-company consortium to develop an inexpensive and energy-efficient process for making titanium metal powder. Such powders can be used to make strong, lightweight objects, such…
Chemists at Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-546) have discovered a silylation catalyst that attaches a silicon atom to an alcohol group not only with high selectivity, but also in such a way that only one enantiomer is formed. Silyation…
On September 5, Linde AG (Wiesbaden, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-547) and the BOC Group plc. (Windlesham, U.K.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-548) merged to become one of the leading industrial gases and engineering companies. The new company is called The Linde Group (Munich, Germany), but the…
Last month, BOC Edwards (Wilmington, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-549) completed installations of its new ERIX wastewaster treatment system at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, of the University of Albany's Albany NanoTech complex (N.Y.). The installation is a development step towards…
Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW; Karlsruhe) and Siemens Power Generation (Erlangen, both Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-550) are joining forces to build a fuel-cell hybrid power plant with 70% efficiency (fuel to electricity) and a megawatt-scale power output. The 70% efficiency of this hybrid…
Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-551) have developed a catalyst that uses hydrogen to efficiently destroy harmful perchlorate in contaminated groundwater. The catalyst is composed of palladium and rhenium supported on activated carbon. The rhenium removes an…
Researchers from 34 institutions from around the world have completed the first DNA sequence for a tree, the black cottonwood or Populus trichocarpa (poplar). This poplar's rapid growth and relatively compact genome size (480 million nucleotide units, or 1/40th as…
Plant physiologist Cynthia Henson and colleagues at the ARS Cereal Crops Research Unit (Madison, Wisc.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-552) have designed three thermophilic barley enzymes, which perform exceptionally well at around 70°C. As a result, the enzymes can yield up to 30% more…
The need to maintain and increase safety is ever-present in the chemical process industries (CPI), but what exactly constitutes safety equipment? This roundup of products covers a broad range of equipment, from data buses to non-slip footwear, whose…