New scientific research may close a major loophole in the RNA world hypothesis, the idea that ribonucleic acid -- not the fabled DNA that makes up genes in people and other animals -- was the key to life's emergence on Earth 4.6 billion years ago.

Professor Lewis Rothberg of the University of Rochester Chemistry Department received a NYSTAR grant in August 2006 to continue working on a recent discovery by Huixiang Li, a research associate in his group: how to rapidly test DNA to improve our health and make sure we're drinking clean water and eating uncontaminated food.

A team of American and French scientists has developed a method to determine the influence of past volcanic eruptions on climate and the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and significantly reduce uncertainty in models of future climate change.

They said it couldn't be done.
And that's what really motivated UD polymer chemist Chris Snively and Jochen Lauterbach, professor of chemical engineering at UD.

Wild birdseed contained higher levels of aflatoxins and other mycotoxins than any other kind of pet food analyzed in studies done around the world, a new review of those studies reports in an article scheduled for the Dec. 27 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In one of the season's first lists of top science stories of 2006, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) - the ACS' weekly newsmagazine - unveils its selections of the year's most important discoveries in chemistry. Chemistry is an interdisciplinary science that covers fields ranging from astronomy to zoology.

A pesticide with a new in-built sunscreen will help farmers beat the heat in crop protection. This means that the bug sprays last longer, as they are protected from the strong rays of sunshine, reports Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. This is becoming increasingly important as temperatures rise, with the Met Office announcing that several heat records were broken in the UK this year.

Chemists and biologists find gene which might - if defect - contribute to the development of Type II diabetes

A new five-year project headed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory is expected to lead to a more in-depth understanding of natural and other approaches to clean up contaminated sites around the nation.

Experiments designed to test discrepancies in theoretical computational chemistry have turned up a barely two-angstrom difference that may lead to a new approach to locate and remove dangerous toxins such as perchlorate and nitrates from the environment.

Physicists use supercomputers, disused PCs to catalog mineral designs

Appalachian hardwood forests may be getting a respite from acid rain but data from a long-term ecological study of stream chemistry suggests that the drop in acid rain may be changing biological activity in the ecosystem and hiking dissolved carbon dioxide in forest streams.