Envisioning a Renewables-Based Chemical and Energy Industry: Strategies and Transformations for the Biomass Refinery EBI Seminar Speaker James "Ned" Jackson joined the chemistry faculty at Michigan State University in 1988, where he is now a professor. His research interests include experimental and computational studies of dihydrogen bonding, reactive intermediates, design of organic molecular magnetic materials, and development of renewables-based catalytic pathways to "petrochemicals" and fuels. His abstract: Chemical manufacturing is among the largest components of the global economy, providing fuels, polymers, coatings, lubricants, personal care goods, medicines, and many other products used across the world. Most of this production is based on fossil starting materials, mainly petroleum. Indeed, the very fields of organic chemistry and chemical engineering have grown up in a unique age of history—the century of the hydrocarbon. As a result, the way the majority of people live has hugely changed, mostly for the good. But fossil resources are growing rarer and more expensive, and the impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 levels are starkly emerging. It is thus critical to shift the world's chemical and energy industries to a renewable, carbon-neutral basis. This large-scale challenge is ultimately one of economies—of money, energy, and carbon—and the chemical pathways needed to practically enable the shift. ...

Allan H. Smith, Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Arsenic Health Effects Research Program http://asrg.berkeley.edu at the University of California Berkeley http://berkeley.edu/ Mortality from high exposure to arsenic in drinking water is greater than from any other environmental exposure. Cancer risk estimates for at the US drinking water standard are substantially higher than from any other regulated substance. Studies are now showing that early life exposure to arsenic contributes to increased risk of death in young adults aged 30-50. Risks of dying from lung cancer can be 5-10 times higher for those exposed in utero or as infants. Early life exposure also increases young adult deaths from heart attacks, kidney cancer, and bronchiectasis of the lungs. The magnitude of increased young adult mortality following early life exposure to arsenic is without precedent, and highlights the importance of giving priority to reducing exposure to mothers and young children.