Tropical biodiversity: has it been a potential source of secondary metabolites useful for medicinal chemistry?

The use of natural products has definitely been the most successful strategy in the discovery of novel medicines. Secondary metabolites from terrestrial and marine organisms have found considerable use in the treatment of numerous diseases and have been considered lead molecules both in their natural form and as templates for medicinal chemistry. This paper seeks to show the great value of secondary metabolites and emphasize the rich chemical diversity of Brazilian biodiversity. This natural chemical library remains understudied, but can be a useful source of new secondary metabolites with potential application as templates for drug discovery.

Sustentabilidade ambiental: um estudo com pesquisadores químicos no Brasil

A study evaluating Brazilian chemical researchers understanding of the scope of the terms Environmental Sustainability and Sustainable Development, and their assessment of how to deal with environmental fragility and limits, is reported. Results showed a certain degree of acknowledgement of the need for a more sustainable development, but little agreement on the magnitude of the environmental limits. The researchers recognized the limitations of the classical paradigms "of dilution" and "of risk", but showed no agreement on the requirements of the new "ecological paradigm" based on Environmental Sustainability and the 12 principles of Green Chemistry, important to assess the role of Green Chemistry for Sustainability.

Inovação & propriedade industrial & indústria química

ABSTRACT The main aim of this paper was to contribute to reflections in Brazil on the need to transfer knowledge held at universities and R&D institutions over to companies, i.e. to transfer scientific knowledge of chemistry to technology. It discusses how the competitiveness of countries is increasingly dependent on their technological capacity. The chemicals industry is a fundamental driver of social, environmental, economic and industrial indicators of sustainable development. In Brazil, the chemicals industry's deficit has grown over the last three decades. Patents are important sources of information because patent documents contain 75% of all technological information available. The National Institute of Industrial Property in Brazil has created a Technology Observatory with the purpose of identifying and analyzing technological information contained in patent documents within the ambit of partnerships with government entities or business associations, in order to support their technology-related decision-making processes. The paper gives examples of ethanol and biotechnology patent documents, including pharmaceuticals, of which there are very few in Brazil. However, a few of the patent applications identified are filed in Brazil, giving the country the opportunity to transform this scientific knowledge into technology by means of partnership agreements with companies. Finally, the paper presents information on the patent applications filed by the world's leading chemicals companies as measured by their revenues, and the respective numbers of patent applications in the last five years in organic chemistry and polymers, sectors in which Brazil is currently dependent on imports for over 50% of its needs. The patent assignees in these sectors in Brazil are also identified, and the paper concludes that Brazil needs to invest in the development of professionals, providing clearly-defined career paths in technology innovation teams at R&D institutions, and to foster more initiatives such as the creation of a new research and innovation entity, EMBRAPII, since investing in science and technology is a prerequisite for knowledge production, industrial property, economic development and, consequently, the competitiveness of the country.

A Química na agricultura: perspectivas para o desenvolvimento de tecnologias sustentáveis

Food production and preservation of the environment are among the challenges faced by contemporary society. In Brazil, as in most parts of the world, the possibility of increasing the agricultural area is limited by several factors. Thus, an increase in productivity through the application of innovative technologies is regarded as the best solution to overcome such a problem. For long, chemistry has contributed to agricultural innovations such as synthetic pesticides for pest management. However, due to the well-known adverse effects of these compounds, new "greener" strategies are being explored. Research in chemical ecology, in combination with other emerging sciences, is leading to the development of new technologies such as plant-based pesticides (biopesticides); synthetic pheromones and plant volatile organic compounds, both of them to manipulate insect behavior; chemical elicitors to boost plant resistance; and genetic engineering of plant varieties. In these, chemistry plays an important role in the identification and synthesis of functional compounds. These techniques may be incorporated in integrated pest management programs and may contribute to a sustainable agriculture in the future.

Química Sem Fronteiras: o desafio da energia

Coal, natural gas and petroleum-based liquid fuels are still the most widely used energy sources in modern society. The current scenario contrasts with the foreseen shortage of petroleum that was spread out in the beginning of the XXI century, when the concept of "energy security" emerged as an urgent agenda to ensure a good balance between energy supply and demand. Much beyond protecting refineries and oil ducts from terrorist attacks, these issues soon developed to a portfolio of measures related to process sustainability, involving at least three fundamental dimensions: (a) the need for technological breakthroughs to improve energy production worldwide; (b) the improvement of energy efficiency in all sectors of modern society; and (c) the increase of the social perception that education is a key-word towards a better use of our energy resources. Together with these technological, economic or social issues, "energy security" is also strongly influenced by environmental issues involving greenhouse gas emissions, loss of biodiversity in environmentally sensitive areas, pollution and poor solid waste management. For these and other reasons, the implementation of more sustainable practices in our currently available industrial facilities and the search for alternative energy sources that could partly replace the fossil fuels became a major priority throughout the world. Regarding fossil fuels, the main technological bottlenecks are related to the exploitation of less accessible petroleum resources such as those in the pre-salt layer, ranging from the proper characterization of these deep-water oil reservoirs, the development of lighter and more efficient equipment for both exploration and exploitation, the optimization of the drilling techniques, the achievement of further improvements in production yields and the establishment of specialized training programs for the technical staff. The production of natural gas from shale is also emerging in several countries but its production in large scale has several problems ranging from the unavoidable environmental impact of shale mining as well as to the bad consequences of its large scale exploitation in the past. The large scale use of coal has similar environmental problems, which are aggravated by difficulties in its proper characterization. Also, the mitigation of harmful gases and particulate matter that are released as a result of combustion is still depending on the development of new gas cleaning technologies including more efficient catalysts to improve its emission profile. On the other hand, biofuels are still struggling to fulfill their role in reducing our high dependence on fossil fuels. Fatty acid alkyl esters (biodiesel) from vegetable oils and ethanol from cane sucrose and corn starch are mature technologies whose market share is partially limited by the availability of their raw materials. For this reason, there has been a great effort to develop "second-generation" technologies to produce methanol, ethanol, butanol, biodiesel, biogas (methane), bio-oils, syngas and synthetic fuels from lower grade renewable feedstocks such as lignocellulosic materials whose consumption would not interfere with the rather sensitive issues of food security. Advanced fermentation processes are envisaged as "third generation" technologies and these are primarily linked to the use of algae feedstocks as well as other organisms that could produce biofuels or simply provide microbial biomass for the processes listed above. Due to the complexity and cost of their production chain, "third generation" technologies usually aim at high value added biofuels such as biojet fuel, biohydrogen and hydrocarbons with a fuel performance similar to diesel or gasoline, situations in which the use of genetically modified organisms is usually required. In general, the main challenges in this field could be summarized as follows: (a) the need for prospecting alternative sources of biomass that are not linked to the food chain; (b) the intensive use of green chemistry principles in our current industrial activities; (c) the development of mature technologies for the production of second and third generation biofuels; (d) the development of safe bioprocesses that are based on environmentally benign microorganisms; (e) the scale-up of potential technologies to a suitable demonstration scale; and (f) the full understanding of the technological and environmental implications of the food vs. fuel debate. On the basis of these, the main objective of this article is to stimulate the discussion and help the decision making regarding "energy security" issues and their challenges for modern society, in such a way to encourage the participation of the Brazilian Chemistry community in the design of a road map for a safer, sustainable and prosper future for our nation.

Fatos e tendências da biocatálise

Brazil is renowned for its biodiversity; however, its economy is based on exotic plants, extraction and unsustainable use of natural resources. This issue was addressed in a recent QN review entitled "Chemistry without Borders." In order to explore the potential of Brazilian biodiversity fully, sustainable development is required in key technological areas, such as biotechnology. This research field is consistent with the green chemistry and white technology principles. Therefore, biotechnology is a sustainable alternative to conventional technologies and is expected to account for 20% of global chemicals by 2020. Brazil is the second largest grower of biotech crops and biodiesel, but its main activities rely on the fermentative process. In order to stimulate the national biotechnology development, the Brazilian Federal Government launched a national policy for biotechnology in 2007 and the National Committee of Biotechnology was created. Among the outstanding biotechnological processes, biocatalysis is one of the most important alternatives to conventional processing, and this field has changed dramatically with the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s, when large quantities of enzymes were accessible. The direct evolution methodology in the 1990s was a breakthrough and allowed tailoring of enzymes possessing high stability and stereoselectivity. However, about 60 years after the first industrial enzymatic biotransformation of steroids, the full potential of biocatalysis is far from being achieved. Future challenges in this field concern the multienzyme cascade reactions associated with optimized chemoenzymatic processes, and some recent industrial application of biocatalysts are also highlighted in this perspective.

Mapas conceptuales como herramienta pedagógica en la enseñanza de la química orgánica

Organic Chemistry is a branch of Chemistry involving the study of the carbon atom, its compounds and reactions. Numerous investigations carried out in the field of teaching and learning processes indicate that knowledge of a conceptual and explanatory type is not conveyed in a conventional manner, but rather each individual is constructed. Therefore, the proposal for this study was devised to help students achieve significant sustainable learning in the area of reactivity in organic chemistry, using the Concept Maps described by Novak (1998) as a teaching tool.

Automatic evaluation and data generation for analytical chemistry instrumental analysis exercises

In general, laboratory activities are costly in terms of time, space, and money. As such, the ability to provide realistically simulated laboratory data that enables students to practice data analysis techniques as a complementary activity would be expected to reduce these costs while opening up very interesting possibilities. In the present work, a novel methodology is presented for design of analytical chemistry instrumental analysis exercises that can be automatically personalized for each student and the results evaluated immediately. The proposed system provides each student with a different set of experimental data generated randomly while satisfying a set of constraints, rather than using data obtained from actual laboratory work. This allows the instructor to provide students with a set of practical problems to complement their regular laboratory work along with the corresponding feedback provided by the system's automatic evaluation process. To this end, the Goodle Grading Management System (GMS), an innovative web-based educational tool for automating the collection and assessment of practical exercises for engineering and scientific courses, was developed. The proposed methodology takes full advantage of the Goodle GMS fusion code architecture. The design of a particular exercise is provided ad hoc by the instructor and requires basic Matlab knowledge. The system has been employed with satisfactory results in several university courses. To demonstrate the automatic evaluation process, three exercises are presented in detail. The first exercise involves a linear regression analysis of data and the calculation of the quality parameters of an instrumental analysis method. The second and third exercises address two different comparison tests, a comparison test of the mean and a t-paired test.

AVOIDING FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY CHEMISTRY TEXTBOOKS’ MISREPRESENTATIONS IN THE TEACHING OF SPONTANEOUS REACTIONS

This paper summarizes the misrepresentations related to Gibbs energy in general chemistry textbooks. These misrepresentations arise from a problem in the terminology textbooks use. Thus, after reviewing the proper definition of each of the terms analyzed, we present two problems to exemplify the correct treatment of the quantities involved, which may help in the discussion and clarification of the misleading conventions and assumptions reported in this study.

INNOVATIVE USE OF A TABLET DEVICE TO DELIVER INSTRUCTION IN UNDERGRADUATE CHEMISTRY LECTURES

This report describes a simple, inexpensive and highly effective instructional model based on the use of a tablet device to enable the real-time projection of the instructor's digitally handwritten annotations to teach chemistry in undergraduate courses. The projection of digital handwriting allows the instructor to build, present and adapt the class contents in a dynamic fashion and to save anything that is annotated or displayed on the screen for subsequent sharing with students after each session. This method avoids the loss of continuity and information that often occurs when instructors switch between electronic slides and white/chalk board during lessons. Students acknowledged that this methodology allows them to follow the instructor's cognitive process and the progressive development of contents during lectures as the most valuable aspect of the implemented instructional model.

WOMAN IN CHEMISTRY. JANE MARCET, A RELEVANT FIGURE IN CHEMISTRY EDUCATION

A historiographical study of Jane Marcet’s role in spreading chemistry knowledge to a wider audience in the 19th century is presented here. Her efforts to spread scientific knowledge were crucial to sharing the most important theories of chemistry among different audiences, particularly women and young people. Through her book, “Conversations on Chemistry,” which was published in several editions from 1806 to 1853, she contributed significantly to chemistry education. Despite controversy over the large number of editions, this text is a strong witness to the active participation of women in science. Her scientific rigor and contribution to narrative strategies in chemistry pedagogy have given Jane Marcet consideration not only as an important woman in the scientific community of England during the first half of the 19th century but also as a central figure in the early development of chemistry diffusion and education.

Sustainable animal production : "suosittelen tuotantoeläinten parissa toimiville"

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