Remove that lab coat! Supercomputers work like test tubes
The development of new drugs has been given a high-tech speed boost by chemists at the Australian National University using a supercomputer.
The ability for drug molecules to donate or accept electrons, their redox potential, is a significant indicator of how powerfully they work in our bodies. Through improving the calculations of redox potentials chemists can make better predictions for drug development.
“We have shown that the supercomputer results are as accurate as those obtained from the laboratory ,” said Dr Mansoor Namazian of the Australian National University and member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology.
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Chemist Dr Mansoor Namazian at work with his computer. (Photo credit: Norman Plant, ARC)
“This method saves lots of time and resources”, he added, “as we can take many potential drugs and feed their chemical structures into a computer and calculate which of those has the desired redox potential without having to do all the time consuming experiments on all of them.”
The group used vitamin P, also known as Rutin, to successfully demonstrate their method. It is a large compound with many known bioactivities.
“The ability to get such excellent agreement between theoretical and experimental results using vitamin P demonstrates the power of this new method and also the potential for making drug discovery more targeted,”
said the researcher leader Dr Michelle Coote of the ANU and member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology.
The results for Rutin as well as for anti-cancer agents such as Chlorogenic acid, Quercetin, and Coumestan have recently been published in international journals such as Biophysical Chemistry.
More information: www.freeradical.org.au ; Felicity Jensz, felicity@freeradical.org.au, 0404 804384.
Story supplied by Glen Moore, Director Wollongong Science Centre and Planetarium (http://sciencecentre.uow.edu.au/welcome.html) Hyder says: Recycling is worth billions
Australia’s recycling industry contributed $55 billion to the national economy in 2006, according to a Hyder Consulting report that also looked at the social and environmental benefits of recycling. The lion’s share of benefits came through the commercial and industrial recycling sector.
In terms of environmental benefits, recycling reduced the nation’s annual greenhouse emission liability by over 8.8 million tonnes CO2e, with aluminium recycling the biggest contributor (4.9Mt CO2 equivalent), followed by ferrous metals (2.1Mt CO2e) and paper/cardboard (1.2Mt CO2e).
Recycling also provided major energy savings, to the tune of 202 terajoules – equivalent to the demand of 2.1 million households. Aluminium and ferrous metal recycling was responsible for the bulk of the savings.
Water saving benefits were harder to estimate than energy savings due to differences between usage at different plants. Conceding a 20 per cent margin of error, Hyder estimated total water savings to be 134GL, with aluminium again the star performer (73GL). Recycling PET and HDPE plastics slightly offset the benefits, adding around 1.9GL to national demand.
The use of recycled materials also reduces demand for virgin materials. Hyder calculates reprocessing post consumer paper/cardboard is equivalent to saving three million trees. In the order of 365,000 tonnes of sand, over 4Mt of iron ore and 1.6Mt of bauxite is also being saved through reprocessing activities.
For plastics, resource savings are measured as tonne of oil equivalent (toe), with the 60,000 and 90,000 toe savings of PET and HDPE equating to 430,000 and 650,000 barrel of oil equivalents.
From www.environmentalManagementNews.net From landfill to full tank of gas
The remains of plants processed for human purposes decompose in landfills across the world. Whether waste paper or raked leaves, the plant remnants still contain cellulose, a sugar in greenery that bonds with the chemical compound lignin to furnish a plant's structure.
As many of you would know, microbes living in the landfills break down this cellulose into methane, which slowly seeps to the surface and into the atmosphere, where it is a potent greenhouse gas. BlueFire Ethanol (USA) would rather harvest that energy for use as cellulosic ethanol fuel.
"We produce 70 gallons of ethanol per ton of waste," said engineer Arnold Klann, BlueFire's president and CEO. "The trick is unlocking the sugar molecule from the lignin, which is the glue that holds it together."
BlueFire estimates 40 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol could be produced from plant waste destined for the landfill, providing as much as one third of all US transportation fuel needs. And, if other forms of waste, such as the stalks of corn plants (corn stover) or the remnants of timber harvest are included, Klann said, "we have enough feedstock in the US to offset 70 per cent of the oil import."
Klan said BlueFire is set to open its first plant at a landfill in Lancaster, California, later this year and hopes to use US Department of Energy (DOE) funding to open a second by the end of 2008. Together the two plants would produce, at best, 22 million gallons of ethanol a year by using sulfuric acid to break the lignocellulose bonds and then burning the leftover lignin to power fermentation of the cellulose into ethanol.
"The lignin we recover makes up 70 per cent of the steam and electricity we need," Klann noted. "The other advantage of siting at a landfill is that they have methane gas. We can burn that in our boiler and generate huge carbon credits."
(From www.resourcesnotwaste.org)
I&I comment: If this comes off then it seems food producing agriculture areas won’t need to be sacrificed to produce crops for ethanol production. Achieving in a male world - women in manufacturing’s creative lunch
Keynote Speaker: Ms Lynn Scott, Managing Director of Creative by Design
Lynn and her husband founded Creative by Design, a company specialising in innovative designs and storage solutions for the home or office. Starting out creating wardrobes, Lynn has been recognised for her achievements with the 1997 Telstra Business Owner of the Year Award. Until recently, Lynn was the chair of the government advisory body, Small Business Development Corporation.
Lynn will share her experience in overcoming the many challenges in the male-dominated manufacturing world, including how to keep her business innovative and internationally competitive.
Details: Thursday May 15 from 11.45am – 2.00pm, followed by mini Expo at Greenview Room, Mount Druitt TAFE, Corner Mount St and North Parade, Mount Druitt.
This year for the first time, guests at the lunch will be invited to meet the manufacturers and sample their wares at the Women in Manufacturing Mini Expo, to be held at the TAFE immediately following the lunch.
Women manufacturers, irrespective of whether they attend the lunch or not, are invited to showcase their businesses to other women manufacturers and the public.
This is a valuable opportunity to network and share your experiences.
To find out more or to register, contact Lindsay Cohen at lindsay.cohen@business.nsw.gov.au or call Lindsay on 8843 1102. PLACES ARE STRICTLY LIMITED. Learning from your mistakes
Take your business and work history and use it to your advantage. Romanus Wolter, in a brief article found on usnews.com, suggests the following will help you improve your business.
• Make hindsight your mentor
• Trust your "sixth sense"
• Integrate hindsight with foresight
• Let yourself make mistakes
Business tip from www.asq.org Your Ideas, Innovations or Events?
If you want publicity for an idea, innovation or technically related event, contact the I&I editor, Colin Seaborn on 4254 0200 or 0419 841829 or click here->
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