Abstract: | Two times each year, legions of chemists gather in North America for a massive meeting to discuss the state of the art in their science. The second of this year's get-togethers occurred 2 weeks ago, when the 206th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) drew about 13,000 chemists, scientists, and onlookers to Chicago. Researchers shared 4800 or so papers and posters on everything from making waste plastic into fuel oil to the chemical basis for the stench of ginkgo fruit to modeling the first instants of photosynthesis. |