Top chemical advances and more from the year 2013

From stretchy electronics to Martian chemistry, the most notable advances in the chemical world in 2013 appear in the year-in-review issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. The issue also provides a look back at the business of chemistry and the politics affecting it, as well as an update on discoveries that a decade ago promised great things.

New way to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria: Target human cells instead

As more reports appear of a grim “post-antibiotic era” ushered in by the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, a new strategy for fighting infection is emerging that targets a patient’s cells rather than those of the invading pathogens. The technique interferes with the way that the pathogens take over a patient’s cells to cause infection. This approach, published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology, could help address the world’s growing problem of antibiotic-resistant “super bugs.”

Green space can make people happier for years

Nearly 10 years after the term “nature deficit disorder” entered the nation’s vocabulary, research is showing for the first time that green space does appear to improve mental health in a sustained way. The report, which appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, gives urban park advocates another argument in support of their cause.

Metal ink could ease the way toward flexible electronic books, displays

Scientists are reporting the development of a novel metal ink made of small sheets of copper that can be used to write a functioning, flexible electric circuit on regular printer paper. Their report on the conductive ink, which could pave the way for a wide range of new bendable gadgets, such as electronic books that look and feel more like traditional paperbacks, appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Laundering money — literally — could save billions of dollars

A dollar bill gets around, passing from hand to hand, falling on streets and sidewalks, eventually getting so grimy that a bank machine flags it and sends it to the shredder. Rather than destroying it, scientists have developed a new way to clean paper money to prolong its life. The research, which appears in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, could save billions and minimize the environmental impact of banknote disposal.

How to Fight Poverty -- and Win

When President Johnson launched the War on Poverty on Jan. 8, 1964, he pledged “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” Sadly, the half-century legacy of Johnson’s Great Society has not lived up to that noble goal.

A Jewish Avalon

It is only toward the very end of Avalon, the film capturing the disintegration of Jewish family life in America, that the movie gives the closest thing to a clear identification of a thing that it had withheld all along, their Jewish identity, by focusing momentarily on a Star of David on a tombstone.

Someone is Going to Die

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or as it is more popularly known by everyone except the White House and Congressional and Senatorial Democrats threatened by the midterm elections that are on the horizon, ObamaCare has forced the cancellation of health insurance policies that protect the access to health care for at least six million Americans. Since there are no accurate numbers available as to how many of these cancelled policies are family-type plans, the real number of people who have lost their coverage is unknown.

Al Sharpton standing in for Al Gore on convenient global warming lies

With multi-millionaire Al Gore in state-secret, Polar Vortex hiding, it’s left to race-baiter Al Sharpton to hold up the man-made global warming/climate change flag on national television.

Kerry's Looney Diplomatic Agenda

As far as Secretary of State John Kerry is concerned, the greatest threat to the Earth is “climate change.” That is his view as well of the Obama administration that, according to a CNS News article, wasted $7.45 billion taxpayer dollars over the last three years “to help developing countries cope with climate change in fiscal years 2010 through 2012, according to a federal government report submitted to the United Nations.”

Homosexual Lobby on the Attack Again

Having suffered a major setback when Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” got his job back, the gay lobby is now going for a softer target—a pro-family activist in Ohio whose book, Maybe He’s Not Gay, undercuts their recruitment efforts among kids.

Federal judge overturns Chicago's ban on gun sales

For years, Chicagoans have been forced to live with some of the nation's strictest gun control laws. As a result, there is virtually no gun violence in the city, and it's become a model of safety and restraint.

VIDEO: Dennis Rodman goes nuts on CNN

I know what you're going to say. "What do you mean goes nuts?" Fair question. But if this is the guy representing our country in "basketball diplomacy" or any other kind of diplomacy, particularly in dealing with a petulant lunatic who may possess nuclear weapons . . . OK, I'm still not totally convinced John Kerry is preferable, but see for yourself:

Space aliens walk among us, says Canada's former Minister of Defense

The microchip. The LED light. The Kevlar vest. You may be under the impression that these are all inventions coaxed into existence by humans, but you're wrong. We didn't build that - someone else did. To be more precise, the "someone else" in this case is actually "something else," since all of those achievements were given to us ...by aliens.

It's some people's intelligence that's in the deep freeze

The cold weather has caused common sense to freeze in Washington D.C. They can’t seem to change their ways. Maybe that’s why more than four-and-a-half years after the economic recovery began, seven out of 10 Americans consider the economy to be in poor shape. The average weekly new jobless claims in 2013 was 350,000, whereas new jobs were only 18,000, and 70 percent of those were part-time.

Searching For Wind Turbines that Don't Kill Birds and Bats

Wind turbines overall kill some 573,000 birds per year including 83,000 birds of prey. (1) Yet in December 2013, the Obama Administration announced an extension of the existing five-year eagle take permit. Effective immediately, the new rule issued by the Department of Interior will grant 30-year permits allowing wind farms to 'accidentally kill federally protected eagles,' The 'rule' is in direct violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act passed by Congress in 1940. As Marita Noon says, “once again, executive action trumps the law.” (2)

Hollow Rumblings about Georgia's 2014 US Senate Race

Georgia will have a contentious US Senate race in 2014, made more contentious by nonstop blogging.

Sex, all the same

Who would have thought it, them flowers did it 100 million years ago, just like today. A new study by Oregon State University scientists, George Poinar Jr. and colleagues, of a piece of amber from the mid-Cretaceous period found in Myanmar shows it. Amber fossil flower from the Cretaceous period

In 2014, Drink Something Old and Something New

January is the perfect time to reflect on the previous year and make resolutions for the new one. For those of us who take wine seriously, it's smart to include wine in our New Year's resolutions.

Burning Jews Not a Hate Crime in Canada

Toronto — Following a recent court ruling on the case of a school based assault, B'nai Brith Canada is urging the Attorney General to review its guidelines for imposing enhanced sentences in hate motivated crime cases. A Winnipeg high school student pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon. During the incident the student called out "Let's Burn the Jew" while holding on to a lighter which burned the hair of the female victim.