Design of a Master of Science Sustainable Chemistry

Chemistry is the central science for value creation by physical products in the socio-economic system. Unsustainable processes over many decades have led to pressure on the planet and an urgent need for prioritizing sustainable development on a global level. Due to the central role of chemistry, the chemistry profession is an important stakeholder group to shape the transformation towards sustainable development. In order to provide relevant skills, higher education in chemistry requires a view of chemistry in the context of the framework of sustainability and the uptake of new content that is not covered in conventional teaching of chemistry. Such content includes environmental chemistry and toxicology, benign design of chemicals (teaching of chemistry), but also a broader context such as alternative business models and overarching knowledge of international policies and strategies to implement change with respect to chemical industry, chemical products and business (teaching about chemistry) in favor of sustainable development. In this paper, we describe a first of its kind program following this approach: An M.Sc. Sustainable Chemistry. It addresses the above mentioned topics and aims for international professionals of the chemical sector.     

Shifting the paradigm of chemistry education by Greening the high school laboratory

This article reports on teaching and learning methods for introducing green chemistry principles to high school students, through a student-directed, inquiry-based critical analysis of how experimental “success” is measured. Students design a precipitation experiment and develop success criteria for it, without prior knowledge of yield calculations or green chemistry metrics. Subsequently, they perform a green chemistry experiment and critically assess reaction yield against green metrics. Specific learning objectives, evidence of their achievement, and evidence of student learning are presented. Justification for teaching green chemistry metrics (specifically process mass intensity) is provided and recommendations for curricular reform are proposed.     

医药企业可持续发展概述

随着社会知识化、科技信息化和经济全球化的不断推进,人类世界已进入可持续发展激烈竞争的时代。谁在可持续发展上占据优势,谁便能为自身的生存与发展奠定更为牢靠的基础与保障,创造更大的机遇。在这样的重要历史时刻,我们需要把握决定可持续发展企业竞争的关键,需要清楚自身的地位和处境、优势和不足,需要已有的同时制定新的竞争和发展战略,以实现企业可持续发展的迅速提升的总体战略目标。     

论网络环境下医院图书馆的可持续发展

网络环境下医院图书馆的可持续发展是时代发展和图书馆自身发展的要求。本文从网络、创新、人才三个方面,论述了医院图书馆可持续发展的必要性。     

Driving safer products through collaborative innovation Lessons learned from the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council’s collaborative innovation challenge for safe and effective preservatives for consumer products

Whether responding to retailer, government, consumer, or advocacy pressures to eliminate chemicals of concern from their products or position themselves in the growing sustainable products space, many brands are on the constant lookout for new safe, effective chemical ingredients for their products. Increasingly brands are willing to set aside their competitive instincts to collaboratively search for, develop, evaluate, and push to market new green chemicals for which they share a common need. This article analyzes “collaborative innovation” initiatives of the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council (GC3), a business organization focused on accelerating the commercialization of green chemistry solutions. In particular, the article explores in detail lessons learned from the GC3's Collaborative Innovation Challenge on Safe and Effective Preservatives, which convened two retailers, eleven brands, and six chemical suppliers to identify new, sustainable preservative options for consumer products. These efforts have found that collaborative innovation is most effective when there are strong market or policy signals to act and solutions do not confer any particular competitive advantage. They have shown that companies see benefit in collaboration to solve chemistry challenges as such collaboration can accelerate innovation by providing a strong demand signal, sharing knowledge to overcome development challenges, de-risking investment and ultimately lowering costs.     

Using the chemistry of pharmaceuticals to introduce sustainable chemistry and systems thinking in general chemistry

Introductory college chemistry courses are required by a wide range of science curricula. This fact has tended to frame the courses as places where core, fundamental ideas are taught, so that a foundation of knowledge might be called upon by students when they are in subsequent courses. Unfortunately, the preponderance of compartmentalized fundamental topics bolsters learning that has challenges in terms of transfer of knowledge to other science settings. One method that has been proposed to help alleviate this concern is to incorporate systems thinking and rich contexts that directly connect foundational chemistry ideas to larger systems. One area that shows strong potential for such efforts is the science of pharmaceuticals. Adding examples related to the chemistry of drugs, both within the large lecture setting of general chemistry and within smaller discussion groups. The role of example problems, student writing projects and group construction of systems thinking related visualizations of the context of pharmaceutical chemistry are reported.     

A systematic review of the green and sustainable chemistry education research literature in mainland China

This paper describes state-of-the-art green and sustainable chemistry education (GSCE) research in mainland China based on a systematic review of the literature. The current situation in secondary and tertiary education is explored and compared. Our analysis found that research in GSCE for secondary education basically focuses on the introduction of teaching strategies and on ‘greening’ required chemistry experiments. Socio-scientific issues-based teaching is initially concerning. Secondary school students' and teachers' awareness of and behaviors surrounding green chemistry are generally weak; related teaching examples or models remain a rare occurrence. In tertiary education, multiple teaching methods are reported and changes in practical work are more elaborated. Overall, GSCE research literature in mainland China is in its preliminary stage, while the currently used chemistry curriculum standards highlight the importance of GSCE at the high school level, which brings a new chance for developing GSCE in Chinese chemistry education. Some suggestions for GSCE in mainland China are derived from the results.     

Evolution of green chemistry and its multidimensional impacts: A review

The growing process of industrialization was a milestone for world economic evolution. Since the 1940s, social movements have revolutionized green chemistry and provided shifts in industrial positions and sustainable processes with advances in environmental impact and awareness of companies and population. Paul Anastas and John Warner, in the 1990s, postulated the 12 principles of Green Chemistry, which are based on the minimization or non-use of toxic solvents in chemical processes and analyzes, as well as, the non-generation of residues from these processes. One of the most active areas of Research and Development in Green Chemistry is the development of analytical methodologies, giving rise to the so-called Green Analytical Chemistry. The impacts of green chemistry on pharmaceutical analyzes, environmental, population, analyst and company are described in this review and they are multidimensional. Every choice and analytical attitude has consequences both in the final product and in everything that surrounds it. The future of green chemistry as well as our future and the environment is also contemplated in this work.     

Green Chemistry: Some important forerunners and current issues

In this essay some important forerunners of green chemistry will be discussed and compared with the present state. The relationship to ethics will be considered. Starting from the new movement of green chemistry by Anastas, some important highlights will be presented. The new activities of IUPAC and other institutions on the concepts of metrics for green syntheses will be discussed. The prime importance of the inclusion of developing African countries into the concepts will also be covered. Green chemistry philosophy has become part of sustainable chemistry which emphasizes the implementation of the concept of sustainability in the production and use of chemicals and chemical products for sustainable development and, some sustainable development concepts are included under the section on Africa.     

Putting benign by design into practice-novel concepts for green and sustainable pharmacy: Designing green drug derivatives by non-targeted synthesis and screening for biodegradability

Pharmaceuticals in the environment are an increasing concern, since the improvement of analytical tools has enabled the detection of parent compounds, metabolites and transformation products of a wide range of pharmaceuticals. These micro-pollutants might compromise the water quality and therefore might become a risk for the environment in general and particularly for humans. Major concerns are for example antibiotics. Antibiotics are used to control infections with pathogenic bacteria. Excessive utilization of non-degradable antibiotics by human patients or in farm animals might lead to accumulation in the water compartment and subsequently to the promotion of resistance development when wide areas containing relevant bacteria have sufficient concentrations of active antibiotics leading to a constant selection pressure on the bacteria. Therefore, it would be attractive to develop a new generation of biodegradable antibiotics, which would rapidly disintegrate into innoxious and in the best case inorganic molecules such as water, carbonate, nitrate and alike in sewage treatment plants or surface water. The guiding principle is the “benign by design” concept.     

Hydrotalcite catalyzed N-alkylation: A practical greener approach towards Carbon-Nitrogen bond formation

Main driving force of this research work is to focus 9th principle (Catalysis) out of 12 principles of green chemistry so as to protect environment concerned with the reduction in generation of carbon dioxide, one of the green house gas. An innovative development of chemical pathway regarding N-alkylation reaction carried out by adding and recycling only catalytic amount of Hydrotalcite as solid base instead of stoichiometric amount, as per prior art techniques, has attempted. Synthesis of 3° amines, important Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and their intermediates, maintaining the same quality attributes resulting in to minimum generation of carbon dioxide are described. These concept is designed, synthesized, characterized, quantified and compared using “Carbon Efficiency”, a Green Chemistry Metrics, with already reported work to prove its sustainability. It is industrially advantageous by getting improvement in carbon efficiency and yield as outcome. Here we show a practical greener approach towards Carbon – Nitrogen bond formation with the help of calculation of Carbon efficiency and rate of reaction for first time.     

绿色化学在实验教学中的应用研究

通过对绿色化学理论知识的研究,使教师和学生掌握相关知识,并将绿色化学应用到实验教学中。实验中通过不同方法、多种途径实施绿色化学教育,可以增强学生的环保意识,减少环境的污染,节省资源,对化学学科的发展和人类生活的可持续发展具有重要意义。     

Incense stick ash as a novel and sustainable adsorbent for sequestration of Victoria Blue from aqueous phase

The present investigation assessed the applicability of incense stick ash, a novel and sustainable adsorbent for remediation of Victoria Blue dye from wastewater. Incense stick ash, without any physical and chemical treatment has been applied to investigate the influence of various experimental parameters as pH, loading of adsorbent, concentration, shaking time, temperature and ionic strength on Victoria Blue remediation in a batch operation. Incense stick ash was characterized using BET, DLS, SEM-EDS, FTIR and XRD techniques. BET surface area, pore volume and pore diameter of incense stick ash are obtained as 2.245 m² g^?1, 0.0118 cm³ g^?1 and 21.02 nm, respectively. Average particle size of the adsorbent is obtained as 293.2 nm. Goodness of the fit of isotherm and kinetic model to the reported data was identified based on chi squared and coefficient of determination values. Isotherm and kinetic behavior was best represented by Freundlich and pseudo 2nd order equation, respectively. Boyd model confirmed involvement of film diffusion mechanism along with intra-particle for adsorption of Victoria Blue on incense stick ash. Maximum dye uptake was reported as 105.57 mg g^?1. Thermodynamic study revealed spontaneous and favorable adsorption of Victoria Blue on incense stick ash at higher temperature. The performed elution and subsequent regeneration study implied desorption capability of incense stick ash and its applicability as a fresh adsorbent for further cycle of adsorption. The overall study implied scavenging potential of incense stick ash, a novel and sustainable adsorbent available at zero cost towards Victoria Blue removal.     

Evaluation of an instructional model to teach clinically relevant medicinal chemistry in a campus and a distance pathway

Objectives

To evaluate an instructional model for teaching clinically relevant medicinal chemistry.

Methods

An instructional model that uses Bloom''s cognitive and Krathwohl''s affective taxonomy, published and tested concepts in teaching medicinal chemistry, and active learning strategies, was introduced in the medicinal chemistry courses for second-professional year (P2) doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students (campus and distance) in the 2005-2006 academic year. Student learning and the overall effectiveness of the instructional model were assessed. Student performance after introducing the instructional model was compared to that in prior years.

Results

Student performance on course examinations improved compared to previous years. Students expressed overall enthusiasm about the course and better understood the value of medicinal chemistry to clinical practice.

Conclusion

The explicit integration of the cognitive and affective learning objectives improved student performance, student ability to apply medicinal chemistry to clinical practice, and student attitude towards the discipline. Testing this instructional model provided validation to this theoretical framework. The model is effective for both our campus and distance-students. This instructional model may also have broad-based applications to other science courses.     

Good real world example of wood-based sustainable chemistry

One of the principles of Green chemistry is the usage of biomass instead of crude oil for the production of chemicals and chemical goods. Wood refers to the term biomass along with agricultural residues, energy crops, and the biogenic part of waste such as solid municipal waste, landfill, sewage gas and farming waste. Wood is mainly composed of cellulose, lignin and hemicelluloses. Cellulose is the main component of wood and lignin is the main by-product of cellulose extraction. Our green approach to both of these polymers resulted in creating a new process for hydrocellulose fiber production and a new sorbent for oil spills removal based on hydrolysis lignin. It is worth pointing out that our approach provides the use of two main wood components in the frame of “cradle to cradle” cycle (Fig. 1) that supports the circular economy concept for research and process development (Clark et al., 2016).     

Estimands and Their Role in Clinical Trials

The National Research Council (NRC) highlighted the need to more clearly distinguish between the target of estimation (“estimand”) and the method of estimation (“estimator”) in clinical trials. While the NRC report on “The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials” focuses on issues arising due to missing data, a framework to coherently align trial objectives and corresponding estimands is valuable in a broader sense. The International Council for Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) has reinforced this by tasking a working group to develop an addendum to the ICH-E9 guideline “Statistical Principles for Clinical Trials.” In this article, we motivate the need for change, propose a structured framework to bridge trial objectives with proper inference tools, and discuss how it may impact the role of statisticians involved in clinical trial design and analysis.     

Technological tools for sustainable development in developing countries: The example of Africa,a review

The development of Africa including industrialization such as chemical production, urbanization, agriculture, waste disposal, and electric power generation has a direct and diverse effect on the environment. These activities require effective planning, consultation, evaluation, risk assessment and monitoring techniques. Diverse environmental impacts can arise out of planning, construction, operation, and end-life of such activities. Impacts of global climate change, photochemical smog, and radioactive emissions have a direct link to development projects. Nevertheless, there is intensive research and innovation geared towards integrating development activities and the environment so as to achieve sustainable development. Herein, we review some of the technological innovation breakthroughs in various fields that include the built environment, chemical production, toxicants, municipal wastes, and electricity. The concept of sustainable chemistry is also discussed. It is found that Africa is at an advantage towards achieving sustainable development as it can easily adopt refined technological tools from developed countries. For instance, the use of comprehensive strategic environmental assessment tools for proposed policies plans and programs and environmental impact assessment for projects can see Africa achieve sustainable development. Mitigation measures for problems such as hazardous waste from chemical industries can be minimized using technological tools such as incineration of solid wastes, biological treatment of wastewater, batch and semi-batch conventional distillation, entrainer-based distillation, physical adsorption, and extraction etc. However, it is noted that although Africa should adopt some of these technological tools to help accelerate its sustainable development agenda, regional and cultural differences must be incorporated in the adoption process.     

Exploring the potential of novel R. kratochvilovae red yeasts towards the sustainable synthesis of natural carotenoids

The development of microbial cell factories is nowadays a main route for the production of safe and environmentally friendly bioactive compounds. Rhodosporidium kratochvilovae yeasts constitute an unexplored source for the production of natural carotenoids, thus further insights on their metabolism and fermentative behavior would contribute towards the sustainable synthesis of bioactive compounds. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of two R. kratochvilovae isolates (FMCC Y-42 and Y-43) to produce carotenoids under different experimental conditions. Cell growth, carotenoid synthesis and lipid accumulation were evaluated using synthetic media containing either glucose or mixtures of glucose:galactose (1:1), under different carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratios. Carotenogenesis was highly affected by C/N ratio in both strains, while a competitive trend with lipid accumulation was also observed. Yeast strain Y-42 reached the highest concentration of total carotenoids (2.59 mg/L) when grown on glucose-based medium at a C/N ratio of 80 after 39 h of fermentation. Likewise, the strain Y-43 produced approximately 2 mg/L of total carotenoids from both glucose (C/N of 80) and its mixture with galactose (C/N 80 and 120), with similar biomass concentration (9.3, 10.3 and 10.9 g/L, respectively). HPLC-DAD analysis of carotenoid extracts indicated that the main carotenoid was β-carotene (60–75%) followed by γ-carotene (9–18%), torulene (6–13%) and torularhodin (5–17%), regardless the fermentation conditions or the strain-employed. This is the first study to reveal γ-carotene synthesis by R. kratochvilovae strains. The obtained results provided new knowledge on the production of natural carotenoids by novel red yeast strains and could pave the way towards their application in sustainable functional food products and nutraceuticals.