Dr. Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at the MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) Center for International Studies states that limited supplies of uranium fuel for nuclear power plants may thwart the renewed and growing interest in nuclear energy in the United States and other nations.

In the latest issue of the Reactive Reports chemistry webzine, science writer David Bradley interviews NMR expert Gary Martin about his experiences with this powerful analytical technique and his views on the future of the technology and novel applications.

Martin spent the first 14 years of his career at the University of Houston before moving to Burroughs Wellcome, Co., in 1989, and then to Upjohn in 1996, which, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, left him working for Pfizer a few years ago. He has spent much of his career focused on the identification of natural product structures and subsequently synthetic compounds originating in drug discovery, and more recently the identification of impurity and degradant structures of drug molecules. In the Spring, he takes up a new position at Schering-Plough's facility in Summit, New Jersey, where he will no doubt use his pioneering NMR techniques to the full once more.

That old truism about mixing oil and water can apply to water and water, according to researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State.

Read about his and more in the latest issue of Reactive Reports chemistry news

Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, the Rice University professor who helped discover buckyballs (buckminsterfullerene, C₆₀, the football (soccer) ball shaped form of carbon, died at the age of 62. Richard Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Sir Harold Kroto (Sussex) and Robert Curl (also Rice) for the identification of the new form of carbon known as buckminsterfullerene because of its similarity to Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. Further information: Nanotubes and Buckyballs and Smalley Research Group.

Cooking with highly unsaturated oils and especially re-using oils can lead to high levels of a toxic compound hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE) in the food, according to US researchers. David Bradley reports on this and more in the latest issue of the chemistry webzine Reactive Reports.

Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston have shipped pieces of the Genesis polished aluminum collector to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, marking the first distribution of a Genesis scientific sample from JSC since the science canister arrived there Oct. 4, 2004. Read all about it at NASA.

While much of the solar wind is hydrogen, it is hoped that Genesis captured samples of many elements in the periodic table. An analysis of these elements will help to determine the sun's composition in detail.

The Science Blog report here that Virginia Tech (USA) researchers found that calcium intake among US adolescents has remained constant, if inadequate, since the 1970s and does not appear to be linked to soft drink consumption. Milk consumption among adolescent girls is low, with this group falling far below recommended dietary levels of calcium consumption. So drink some milk!

The Science Blog reports here that researchers at Penn State in the USA are developing self-cleaning titania nanotube hydrogen sensors. The hydrogen sensors are titania nanotubes coated with a discontinuous layer of palladium.

"The photocatalytic properties of titania nanotubes are so large - a factor of 100 times greater than any other form of titania - that sensor contaminants are efficiently removed with exposure to ultraviolet light, so that the sensors effectively recover or retain their original hydrogen sensitivity in real world application"

"The photocatalytic properties of titania nanotubes are so large - a factor of 100 times greater than any other form of titania - that sensor contaminants are efficiently removed with exposure to ultraviolet light, so that the sensors effectively recover or retain their original hydrogen sensitivity in real world application"

"By doping the titania nanotubes with trace amounts of different metals such as tin, gold, silver, copper, niobium and others, a wide variety of chemical sensors can be made.

A NASA press release claims that the Opportunity rover "has demonstrated some rocks on Mars probably formed as deposits at the bottom of a body of gently flowing saltwater." "Bedding patterns in some finely layered rocks indicate the sand-sized grains of sediment that eventually bonded together were shaped into ripples by water at least five centimeters (two inches) deep, possibly much deeper, and flowing at a speed of 10 to 50 centimeters (four to 20 inches) per second," said Dr. John Grotzinger, rover science-team member from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

This is interesting. NASA scientists are examining a seemingly magical way to produce high-quality crystals.

Perhaps a NASA laboratory is an unlikely setting for a magic show. Nevertheless, this is where Frank Szofran and colleagues are growing high-quality crystals using a method as amazing as any conjuring trick.

By carefully cooling a molten germanium-silicon mixture inside a cylindrical container, they coax it into forming a single large and extraordinarily well-ordered crystal. Such crystals have very few defects because, remarkably, they never touched the walls of the very container in which they grew.

You can read more about this on the NASA site.