Libsyn Directory

Chemistry World Book Club podcast – Why does asparagus make your wee smell?

Release Date: 12/04/2015

Atomic radii & synthetic food dyes | The chemical breakdown podcast

Chemistry World Podcast

This week, we discuss team discuss the boundaries of the atom and breakdown the US’s plan to eliminate synthetic food dyes with Jennifer Newton and Phillip Broadwith. The atomic radius of an atom is a concept we are taught from early in our chemistry careers, but for such an important value its definition remains ambiguous. Why is there no single answer to the size of an atom? And, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announced last year that the US will phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes in foods. But what are these chemicals, and what concerns exist around their consumption?...

AAAS annual meeting & plasma chemistry | The chemical breakdown podcast

Chemistry World Podcast

This week, we discuss reflections from this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting and the latest advances in plasma chemistry with Rebecca Trager and Mason Wakley. The annual meeting of the AAAS kicked off in Phoenix, on the heels of the recent minibus spending package announcement, as well as the rescinding of the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding. We'll fill you in on some of the conversations that took place that weekend. And, plasma is often described as the fourth state of matter, but what exactly is it made of? We’ll...

AlphaGenome & the RNA world hypothesis | The chemical breakdown podcast

Chemistry World Podcast

This week, we discuss the new deep learning model AlphaGenome and visit the very beginning of life on Earth with Mason Wakley and Neil Withers. Google DeepMind has released a new deep learning model that can predict the effect of small changes to DNA sequences up to one million base pairs in length. What does this new tech mean for our understanding of the human genome? And, how did life start on Earth, before the first cell came to be? We discuss the RNA world hypothesis and breakdown the chemistry it’s built on.

Bench-stable butyllithium & secrets of Pompeii’s limescale | The chemical breakdown podcast

Chemistry World Podcast

This week, we discuss new butyllithium formulations and ancient limescale chemistry with Emma Pewsey and Phillip Broadwith. New bench-stable tert- and n-butyllithium formulations developed by Merck KGaA, should make organometallic chemistry safer and more accessible. What’s different about these formulations and how do they work? And a team based in Germany have managed to reconstruct the history of water sources used in Pompeii from an unlikely source: limescale. We discuss the findings and what chemistry can tell us about our past.

Halogen-bond catalysis & the future of total synthesis | The chemical breakdown podcast

Chemistry World Podcast

Welcome to the first episode of our latest podcast series, The chemical breakdown. Each week, we’ll dive deeper into two stories we've covered here at Chemistry World. We’ll provide insight into the facts, why you should care, and what it means for the chemistry community. We’ll also give you that week’s headlines to keep you up to date on what’s happening in the chemistry community. And finally, we’ll end each episode with a brief section on what was happening this week in chemistry history. This week, we discuss total synthesis and halogen-bond catalysis with Jennifer...

Chemistry World podcast – January 2017

Chemistry World Podcast

This month we introduce our new puzzles page, discuss the implications of Trump for science and meet Yuri Oganessian, the only living person with an element named after him