In 2008, coal-fired power plants generated 49 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S., more than twice that of any other energy resource. Coal is an important fossil fuel because world coal r...
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Beyond its fuel potential, biomass is poised to supplant nonrenewable sources in the production of important building block chemicals. One such intermediary is 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a primary...
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Attention and investment increasingly look to renewable resources like sugars as foundations for the practical, chemical needs of industry. Diones are such compounds, vital to many processes includin...
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Sorbic acid has been used extensively as a preservative in a vast array of food. The benefits of sorbates as food preservatives are two-fold: sorbates inhibit a wide spectrum of bacteria, yeasts and m...
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A nanocomposite is a reinforcing material that can be added to conventional materials to make them lightweight and ductile while also increasing their strength. Nanocomposites having high strength-to-...
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A nanocomposite includes a matrix material to which nanoparticles (with a size of about 1.0 nm to a few hundreds of nanometers) have been added to improve a particular property of the material. For ex...
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The reduction of small molecules such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide is extremely difficult because one-electron reduction processes often involve high-energy intermediates. Nitrogen reduction usually...
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Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs), SiC-based ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) and cermets are all materials that can be used in high temperature environments; however, these materials need prote...
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Phosphines have many commercial and industrial uses as attachments to rare earth metal catalysts, including specialized uses in asymmetric hydrogenation and other catalytic transformations. Asymmetric...
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Conventional antibacterial agents, including solid, liquid and gaseous disinfectants, exhibit residual toxicity that could lead to medical and environmental problems. Covalently implanting antibacteri...
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Responsive hydrogels can respond to external stimuli such as temperature, pH, photons and antigens, which makes them applicable as functional materials in drug/gene delivery devices, microlenses and s...
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Block copolymer materials self-assemble at the nanometer scale. A chemically patterned substrate can direct the self-assembly, replicating the two-dimensional pattern upwards into the block copolymer ...
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Certain bacteria can exist both in the vegetative state and as spores. Spores are dormant states that bacteria assume during nutritionally unfavorable conditions. In the dormant state, spores undergo ...
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A hydrogel polymer is a naturally occurring or synthetic material which swells in water or some liquid, retaining a large amount without dissolving. Hydrogels find high volume use as industrial, consu...
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Endoperoxides are prominent structural features of several natural products with potent activity against malaria and various cancer cell lines. However, they are difficult to synthesize. The most stra...
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Oligomycin is a highly stable macrolide antibiotic isolated from the fungus Streptomyces diastochromogenes. It is a potent inhibitor of mitochondrial ATPase and phosphoryl group transfer.
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Unnatural polymers that contain β- and γ-amino acids are known as "foldamers." These foldamers form long-lasting, predictable structures that are very stable and resistant to prot...
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The lack of methods to easily synthesize sufficient quantities of selectively modified peptides and proteins has hindered research on the biological functions and molecular interactions of side-chain ...
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Wound healing is a complex and dynamic process of rebuilding skin and tissue. Chronic or impaired wounds result when tissues fail to progress through the necessary stages of healing. This is a signifi...
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Asymmetric synthesis is important in the pharmaceutical industry because frequently only one optically active isomer, or enantiomer, is therapeutically active. Therefore, it is often desirable to sele...
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Methods that allow reactive polymer films to be deposited or assembled on topologically complex substrates are useful for the patterning or chemical modification of surfaces in a broad range of applic...
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Diazo compounds, which have the general formula R2C=N2, are versatile intermediates in organic synthesis.  They participate in a variety of thermal, photochemical and metal-catalyzed reactions. M...
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UW–Madison researchers previously developed a method of using traceless Staudinger ligation to chemically synthesize proteins (see WARF reference number P00315US).  This method is based on ...
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Beta amino acids are the basic building blocks of beta peptides, which have physiological applications, such as blocking human cytomegalovirus infection. Although some types of beta amino acids are re...
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Phosphines have many commercial and industrial uses as attachments to rare earth metal catalysts, including specialized uses in asymmetric hydrogenation and other catalytic transformations. However, c...
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