Chemistry of Wine

Why do you drink wine? For pleasure, health, sociality or no wine? My guess is most of you drink wine for pleasure.


This video was produced by ACS (American Chemical Society) as a webinar presented by Ariel Fenster of McGill University. He uncorks everything you need to know about wine (the history of wine as well as the chemical aspects of fermentation and of aging). Watch this video, it is ~1 hr long.

Some Facts:


- Wine is not the number one in alcoholic beverage, this title goes to Beer. When you talk about wine, France comes first. In France wine consumption is 55 liters/year/person.  This means roughly 5 liters in a month and ~166 mL per day.


- On Canary Island, a child has to take wine bath believing to get some health benefit. 


- 100 Calories/glass of wine, mostly coming from ethanol, small amounts of vitamins (Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, Pyridoxine) 


- Alcohol is converted into acetaldehyde and is responsible for hangover, when you drink too much acetaldehyde doesn't have enough time to get converted into acetic acid. Build up of acetaldehyde is responsible for unpleasant effect of hangover.


- There is belief that wine reduces heart attack, Alzheimer disease.

An argue with CalTech. Chemistry Grad.

Anant Babu Marahatta
Ph.D. student, Tohoku University
(ananta037@gmail.com)

Theme of this article is: “Knowing English is not enough to present Chemistry but one must know Chemistry in English.” (some thing about Amphidynamic Crystal)

In order to strengthen and enhance the education and research functions of graduate schools of Japanese universities, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) introduced the “Global COE (Centers of Excellence) Program in some of the top universities of Japan on 2002. Another main objective is to foster highly creative young researchers who will become world’s leaders in their respective fields through experiencing and practicing research of the highest world standard. Molecular complex Chemistry is one of the fields covered by the GCOE.

Being one of the Chemistry doctoral students of the nation’s high tech. university [Tohoku University] with the nation’s largest chemistry department, I also belong to the network of GCOE program. One of the annual events of the Tohoku Univ. sponsored by this program is to provide a chance for the doctoral students to lead a week long Int’l conference. Including the key speakers and the chairpersons of each section, every participant must be the Ph.D. candidate of Chemistry. The professors only act as a facilitator. He/she never interferes the students’ leadership.

One of the key speakers of the program was from California institute of Technology (CalTech). He was presenting his research work related to coordination chemistry and was chanting the effects of ligands to synthesize the Supramolecules with the metal ions. He was also claiming that his research output is fabulous and praiseworthy. One of the major parts of that molecule was the phenylene ring encapsulated into the cage that can create enough free space for undergoing smooth rotation. He was calling this ring as a “spacer” because the surrounding spokes can control the space around the phenylene. Any way, we around 200 students were listening his interesting speech. Being a chair person of this section, I was feeling that he was pretending some hidden facts behind his research area even though he was very bold and smart guy. He presented well and wrapped his talk by thanking his collaborators.

Then, it’s my time to open the floor for the discussion. I asked the participants for the comments and the queries. Some students asked about the effects of the coordinating efficiency of ligands’ and some other related stuffs. A Tohoku professor was suggesting him about the possibility of changing properties of that supramolecule by changing central metal ions. 

Before announcing the next speaker, I raised my query about that spacer so called phenylene ring. I am/ was very much familiar with such molecules having central rotating part encased into the static part. I also knew that such type of molecular crystals with rotating part and static part in a same molecule are called Amphidynamic crystal, but this is a very new type which I encountered while reading a paper published on 2002. My question was “does your molecular crystal belong to Amphidynamic crystal?” But that guy did not understand the last term and instead asked me for the clarification. I just clarified him by reminding the term “Amphibia” and then called the next speaker. 

Immediately after this session, the same guy approached and said to me “Knowing English is not enough to present chemistry but one must know chemistry in English.” Excellent understanding!!!! isn’t it?

Small Science vs. Large Science

Anant　Babu Marahatta
Ph.D. student in chemistry
Tohoku University, Japan

Science carried out by individuals or small teams of investigators is said to be “small science” and the science carried out for large scientific data gathering programs is said to be “large science”.

Research done by individuals or small teams of investigators has been crucial for many of the important discoveries made in all branches of science. The individual or small group research work has been the first step for bringing up the revolutionary changes in the world. Such type of research facilitates the researcher to concentrate in the particular problem and hence increases the thinking level of the researchers as well. It has been found that the research work performed by the individuals or by the small teams is more accurate and reproducible. Since every branch of science needs accuracy which in fact catalyses the rate of tailoring and building up the new inventions and discoveries. These discoveries provide the fundamental basis for the application of scientific knowledge to national economic and societal goals.

Small science helps to define the goals and directions of large scientific data gathering projects [so called large science]. In turn, these data feed and are often best synthesized and interpreted by the long-term efforts of the small science community. In small science, the rate of manipulation of data is almost nil due to the accuracy which perfectly orients into the solutions of the problems.

In addition, because small science is typically done at universities, it provides students with an integral involvement in defining and solving scientific problems. Such well prepared manpower will be the pillar of the large science and finally of the nation. Any erosion in small science due to some parameters would therefore weaken not only the entire scientific enterprise, but also our future ability to utilize scientific information for the national good.

Let us imagine that if the experimental problems are carried out haphazardly due to the negligence of the members of the large teams and if the scientific society follows the same result for developing more advanced technology, the conditions will be pathetic not only in terms of wastage of time but also due to the wastage of money and prestige of the country. Thus for bringing up the new technology, the result and research work performed by the small teams [members of small science] are strongly recommended.

Small science, much of which is carried out at universities, is especially well suited to student training. Small science provides the "hands-on" experience that both excites students and teachers them how to attack scientific and technological problems creatively. They also learn the different steps of the research work intensively like from inception of the research idea to presentation of the final results. Research on a small scale is also the primary way that young scientists can establish a record of personal achievement, thus providing the best students with a powerful incentive for pursuing a scientific career.

Enormous superconducting synchrotron particle accelerator
 with circumferences of many kilometers are the examples of
Big Science. Shown above is the Fermi labTevatron
(source Wiki)

On the other hand, with out any work of the large scientific data gathering programs, no country can accept any sort of inventions. Even though the results from small science have been taken for developing the strong foundation of the large science, the work remaining on this stage and is to be completed is highly appreciable. So, on that front, large science is highly applicable. Similarly, small science is only for building up the knowledge but in order to apply this knowledge practically for inventing any sorts of scientific devices, the large scientific data gathering programs must be inserted and utilized.

Some elements for conducting biological, environmental, statistical, geographical, medical, astronomical etc research can only be addressed by large research groups or industry. Then only the impacts of these projects can be implemented to transform the process of research into small laboratories or into small science. In such front, large science dominates over small science.

In large science, the knowledge of the several members can be used and shared which might initiates the new innovative idea that results into the invention of the new technology. If we consider the several macro technologies available to us, we should not forget the large science. Now a day, development of the ideas and creation of global networks and collaborating with different countries is also an emerging example of large science.

On 8th and 10th November of 2007, two very hot scientific results had been published at “Japan Times”, the daily English newspaper of Japan, which were the result of the large science. One is, several scientists have used the antennae of the Moths to construct the most active Robert. Another work was that teams of researchers have studied the patterns of genes of mice and injected new gene which results the creation of new mice having great smelling capacity to detect kittens easily. Thus from these simple and innovative works, every one must understand the contribution of large science. So the correct implementation and computation of the research works is only possible in large science, which are the required issues in the world of this stage.

Thus, the small science and large science are strongly correlated with each other in which due to the absence of either one, the expectation of the world will be nil. The emerging issues on different disciplines of sciences can not be explained by excluding either of them. From a strategic perspective, any erosion of government support for small science is unwise because it reduces the diversity of scientific inquiry. Diversity in scope, which is one of the essential elements of scientific enterprise, is created by the large science. Hence from the national side, both should be treated equally.

Two New Elements Confirmed by IUPAC: Elements 114 and 116

A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protonsin its nucleus. There are 94 elements believed to occur naturally on Earth and rest of the elements are synthesized in laboratories.

Are Carbon Nanotubes the Future of VLSI Interconnections?

Original paper is published by-
K. Banerjee and N. Srivastava, University of California


Summarised by Anant B. Marahatta

What is VLSI?
• Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip.
• VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.


New wiring solutions…!
• Metallic carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising candidates that can potentially address the challenges faced by copper and thereby extend the lifetime of electrical interconnects.
• carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have aroused a tremendous amount of interest in their use as building blocks of future integrated circuits due to their outstanding electrical properties

CNT based interconnects can potentially offer significant advantages over copper.
• CNTs exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties are efficient conductors of heat and are metallic in nature.
•SWCNTs are a very important variety of CNT because they exhibit important electric properties that are not shared by MWCNTs. The remarkable properties of SWCNTs stem from the symmetry and unusual electronic structure of grapheme [one atom thick sheet of graphite].

∙An isolated CNT can carry current densities in excess of 1010 A/cm2 without any signs of damage even at an elevated temperature of 250 0C. However, the high resistance associated with an isolated CNT (greater than 6.45 KΩ) necessitates the use of a bundle (rope) of CNTs conducting current in parallel to form an interconnection. CNT bundle interconnects have superior performance compared to Cu.

∙For short CNT bundle with small length (L), [especially for L < λCNT], resistance is higher than that of a Cu interconnect because the large contact resistance dominates the overall CNT resistance. However, for long interconnect lengths; i.e. long CNT bundle interconnects have smaller resistance than their Cu counterparts [ L>λCNT].

∙The interconnect delay can be reduced considerably by using densely packed CNT bundle interconnects, so that large power savings can be achieved. CNT bundle interconnects can reduce intermediate level interconnect delay by more than 60% due to their lower resistance.

Reliability and Thermal Analysis

∙Due to strong sp2 bonding, carbon nanotubes are much less susceptible to electro-migration (EM) problems [that plague copper interconnects] and can carry very high current densities. Metallic single-walled CNT bundles have been shown to be able to carry extremely high current densities of the order of 109 A/cm2. Cu interconnects = 106 A/cm2 due to EM.

∙A 100 x 50 nm2 cross-section Cu interconnect can carry current up to 50 μA, whereas a 1 nm diameter CNT can carry upto 20-25 uA current. Hence, from a reliability perspective, a few CNTs are enough to match the current carrying capacity of a typical Cu interconnect.

However, the need to reduce interconnect resistance (and hence delay) makes it necessary to pack several thousands of CNTs in a bundle.

Conclusion

∙There is no any experimental work or theoretical analysis yet about the nature of electromagnetic interactions between non-isolated (or tangled) nanotubes. So the authors have not considered their mutual effect during conduction, however they highlighted that this challengeable investigation should be done before using them in a circuit though these challenges are not expected to cause any fundamental problems.