Dramatic increases in the price of crude oil, and consequently, transportation fuels, coupled with increased environmental concerns have resulted in rapid growth in biodiesel production, both in the United States and worldwide. As biodiesel production increases, so does production of the primary coproduct, glycerol. Since the existing glycerol supply and demand market was tight, recent increases in glycerol production from biodiesel refining has created a glut in the glycerol market. As a result, the price of glycerol has fallen significantly and biodiesel refiners are faced with limited options for managing the glycerol by‐product, which in the biodiesel industry, has essentially become a waste stream. This article is a review of promising options for both the catalytic and biological conversion of glycerol into various value‐added products, many of which are bio‐based alternatives to petroleum‐derived chemicals. © 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 26: 338–348, 2007

This review shows that adolescent depression increases the risk for subsequent depression later in life. Articles consistently found that adolescent depression increases the risk for anxiety disorders in adulthood, but evidence was mixed on whether or not a significant association existed between adolescent depression and suicidality in adulthood. Early intervention in adolescent depression may reduce long-term burden of disease.

Hyperthermia can be produced by near-infrared laser irradiation of gold nanoparticles present in tumors and thus induce tumor cell killing via a bystander effect. To be clinically relevant, however, several problems still need to be resolved. In particular, selective delivery and physical targeting of gold nanoparticles to tumor cells are necessary to improve therapeutic selectivity. Considerable progress has been made with respect to retargeting adenoviral vectors for cancer gene therapy. We therefore hypothesized that covalent coupling of gold nanoparticles to retargeted adenoviral vectors would allow selective delivery of the nanoparticles to tumor cells, thus feasibilizing hyperthermia and gene therapy as a combinatorial therapeutic approach. For this, sulfo-N-hydroxysuccinimide labeled gold nanoparticles were reacted to adenoviral vectors encoding a luciferase reporter gene driven by the cytomegalovirus promoter (AdCMVLuc). We herein demonstrate that covalent coupling could be achieved, while retaining virus infectivity and ability to retarget tumor-associated antigens. These results indicate the possibility of using adenoviral vectors as carriers for gold nanoparticles.

Tailoring the surface of nanoparticles is essential for biological applications of magnetic nanoparticles. FePt nanoparticles are interesting candidates owing to their high magnetic moment. Established procedures to make FePt nanoparticles use oleic acid and oleylamine as the surfactants, which make them dispersed in nonpolar solvents such as hexane. As a model study to demonstrate the modification of the surface chemistry, stable aqueous dispersions of FePt nanoparticles were synthesized after ligand exchange with mercaptoalkanoic acids. This report focuses on understanding the surface chemistry of FePt upon ligand exchange with mercapto compounds by conducting X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) studies. It was found that the mercapto end displaces oleylamine on the Pt atoms and the carboxylic acid end displaces the oleic acid on the Fe atoms, thus exposing carboxylate and thiolate groups on the surface that provide the necessary electrostatic repulsion to form stable aqueous dispersions of FePt nanoparticles.