Letters from Chemistry World readers – Page 11
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Opinion
Letters: February 2009
From Carl Djerassi In your December editorial (Chemistry World, December 2008, p2), you claim that it is rare for chemistry and its ideas to star in fiction, and rarer still to find a story with a character who is a real-life scientist. Perhaps you are too busy editing a journal ...
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Opinion
Letters: January 2009
By the time I read your feature on whisky (Chemistry World, December 2008, p40) the magazine’s packaging had been binned. So I could not sample the whisky miniature that must have accompanied this excellent article. CW is, after all, the official organ of a professional body still associated with ...
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Opinion
Letters: December 2008
There is a great deal of interest in the dissolution of cellulose in ionic liquids at the moment (Chemistry World, November 2008, p24). It is a commonly held view that this is new science, and the use of imidazolium based ionic liquids for this purpose is certainly new. ...
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Opinion
Letters: November 2008
From Alan Dronsfield Norman Nicholson asks about the introduction of uranium as the catalyst for the Haber process (Chemistry World, September 2008, p42). In 1908, Haber and Le Rossignol realised that it would be possible to synthesise ammonia in an 8 per cent yield at about 600°C and 200 atmospheres ...
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Opinion
Letters: October 2008
With reference to your interview with the new head of the ACC, Cal Dooley (Chemistry World , September 2008, p9), bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates are just two of several hundred chemicals that exhibit oestrogenic activity (EA) in plastics. These chemicals leach from almost all plastics sold today, including polyethylene, ...
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Opinion
Letters: September 2008
I would suggest that many of the issues cited as influencing women’s decisions to stay in academic science ( Chemistry World , August 2008, p8) are equally relevant to men’s decisions: the extreme competition for lectureships; fighting for funding; and long antisocial hours. These affect all new academics equally. ...
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Opinion
Letters: July 2008
From Randal Richard I was interested to read the article by Sean McWhinnie ’Science funding in crisis’ (Chemistry World, June 2008, p40). The article had a broad sweep encompassing changes in the research assessment exercise (RAE) to research exercise framework (REF); the recent enquiry of the Innovation, universities and skills ...
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Opinion
Letters: June 2008
From Peter Bentley Your article, ’The Trouble with Antibiotics’ (Chemistry World, March 2008, p16) was unremarkable in containing nothing new, but it did omit a few aspects. The timeline failed to show dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) or isoleucyl tRNA synthetase inhibitors, exemplified by trimethoprim and pseudomonic acid respectively. That takes ...
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Opinion
Letters: April 2008
From Jeremy Tomkinson, Adrian Higson and Geraint Evans We found the article ’Flawed policies encourage damaging biofuels’ (Chemistry World, February 2008, p6) to be disappointingly unbalanced. The provocative titles used for the piece do little to stimulate a reasoned and scientific debate in this immensely complex subject. The RSC has ...
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Opinion
Letters: March 2008
From Martin Humphrey A group of scientists in New Zealand recently announced that they had genetically modified onions in such a way as to eliminate the lachrymator. Having spent many years studying the chemistry of this phenomenon, I would like to assure them that they will also have removed the ...
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Opinion
Letters: February 2008
From Chris Ewels The British Carbon Group (a special interest group of the RSC, the Institute of Physics and the Society of Chemical Industry) is organising an image competition, including a category for under-18s. There is a ?150 prize in each category and there will be a prize-giving ...
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Opinion
Letters: January 2008
From Bernard Langley May I congratulate you and your colleagues on your splendid November issue of Chemistry World. The balance of topics, the quality of the writing, the enthusiastic spirit of the whole thing - from your editorial right through to that magnificent killer review of the green chemistry book ...
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Opinion
Letters: December 2007
From David Feakins Congratulations on the splendid October issue of Chemistry World. I found all the articles on the topic of energy absolutely riveting. For example, I have always been a supporter of nuclear fission as a medium-term answer to the supply of energy, but had not realised until I ...
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Opinion
Letters: November 2007
From Alfred Bader Why do chemists refer to Avogadro’s number (Chemistry World, August 2007, p11) when, correctly, it should be called Loschmidt’s number? Amedeo Avogadro predicted in 1811 that someone, some day, would be able to calculate that number. The calculation of the number was first done by Joseph Loschmidt ...
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Opinion
Letters: October 2007
From Geoff Cloke, Andrew Smith and Bob Allison We were astonished to read the remarks made about chemistry at the University of Sussex by Professor Sir Richard Sykes (Chemistry World, September 2007). In particular, the statement: ’If chemistry is a drain, vice-chancellors have no choice but to deal with ...
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Opinion
Letters: September 2007
From Allan N Smith All those involved in the writing, editing and production of Chemistry World are to be congratulated. It is interesting, accurate and comprehensive; I look forward to reading it every month when it gives me a good few hours of informative pleasure. A N Smith CChem ...
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Opinion
Letters: August 2007
From John Holman Your editorial ’Dear Gordon’ (Chemistry World, June 2007) points to the skills that chemistry graduates can contribute to the economy. Chemistry is a quantitative subject that teaches the scientific use of evidence, and that is one reason why chemistry graduates are so employable. However, Peter Cotgreave’s ...
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Opinion
Letters: July 2007
From Ronald Bentley In his ’Bench Monkey’ column (Chemistry World, April 2007, p40) Dylan Stiles notes that the odour of benzylmercaptan, used by a colleague, stays with him long after he leaves the lab. In 1989, I worked with the many reports describing the war-time research on the chemistry of ...
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Opinion
Letters: June 2007
From Peter Plesch When in 1989 I was writing the paper entitled The relation between reduction potential and solvation energy for some aryl-methylium ions, (J. Chem. Soc. Perkin Trans. 2, 1989, 1139), I needed the ionisation potentials of the tri-4-X-phenylmethyl radicals, where X = Cl, H, and MeO, as these ...