Kathleen Too, Deputy Editor – RSC Advances Blog

Author Archive

Celebrate with RSC Advances

07 Aug 2012

RSC Advances is one year old. You can join our first anniversary celebrations at the EuCheMs meeting in Prague, on Tuesday 28th August 2012, at 17.00-18.30. Please contact the RSC Advances Editorial Office if you wish to attend.

In the last 12 months, the journal has published 27 issues containing over 1200 articles across all of the chemical sciences, including: analytical, biological, catalysis, chemical biology and medicinal, energy, environmental, food, inorganic, materials, nanoscience, organic, physical. Our innovative and sophisticated classification system ensures that all the articles are visibible within and/or between one or more of the above twelve subject categories featured on the RSC Advances website. All articles published in 2011 and 2012 are free to download*.

By publishing with RSC Advances, authors are benefiting from:

Rapid publication times
High visibility
Open-access options via RSC Open Science
Free electronic reprints (pdf) of own paper
Free use of colour
No page charges
No page limits

Some of the most cited and/or downloaded articles are:

Electrochemistry of graphene: not such a beneficial electrode material?
Brownson, Dale A. C.; Munro, Lindsey J.; Kampouris, Dimitrios K.; et al.
RSC ADVANCES 2011 Pages: 978-988 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00393c

Homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for multicomponent reactions
Maria José Climent, Avelino Corma and Sara Iborra
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 16-58 DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00807B

CO2 chemistry: task-specific ionic liquids for CO2 capture/activation and subsequent conversion
Yang, Zhen-Zhen; Zhao, Ya-Nan; He, Liang-Nian
RSC ADVANCES 2011 Pages: 545-567 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00307k

Glutathione: mechanism and kinetics of its non-enzymatic defense action against free radicals
Galano, Annia; Raul Alvarez-Idaboy, J.
RSC ADVANCES 2011 Pages: 1763-1771 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00474c

Graphene-based photocatalytic composites
An, Xiaoqiang; Yu, Jimmy C.
RSC ADVANCES 2011 Pages: 1426-1434 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00382h

A novel application of porphyrin nanoparticles as an effective fluorescent assay platform for nucleic acid detection
Author(s): Zhai, Junfeng; Li, Hailong; Sun, Xuping
Source: RSC ADVANCES 2011 Pages: 36-39 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00026h

Recent developments in solvent-free multicomponent reactions: a perfect synergy for eco-compatible organic synthesis
Maya Shankar Singh and Sushobhan Chowdhury
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 4547-4592 DOI: 10.1039/C2RA01056A

Long term cycling studies of electrospun TiO2 nanostructures and their composites with MWCNTs for rechargeable Li-ion batteries
Zhu, Peining; Wu, Yongzhi; Reddy, M. V.; et al.
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 531-537 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00514f

Transition metal complexes with strong absorption of visible light and long-lived triplet excited states: from molecular design to applications
Zhao, Jianzhang; Ji, Shaomin; Wu, Wanhua; et al.
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 1712-1728 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00665g

Cucurbituril chemistry: a tale of supramolecular success
Masson, Eric; Ling, Xiaoxi; Joseph, Roymon; et al.
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 1213-1247 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00768h

Graphene-inorganic nanocomposites
Bai, Song; Shen, Xiaoping
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 64-98 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00260k

Bioaugmentation of an electrochemically active strain to enhance the electron discharge of mixed culture: process evaluation through electro-kinetic analysis
Raghavulu, S. Veer; Babu, P. Suresh; Goud, R. Kannaiah; et al.
RSC ADVANCES 2012 Pages: 677-688 DOI: 10.1039/c1ra00540e

*All articles published in 2011-2012 are free to download after a simple login/registration process.

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Silver is just as toxic to human cells as it is to bacteria

06 Aug 2012

Silver is commonly used both in ionic form and in nanoparticulate form as a bactericidal agent. This is generally ascribed to a higher toxicity towards prokaryotic cells than towards mammalian cells.

Scientists in Germany have carried out studies to compare silver ions (such as silver acetate) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-stabilised silver nanoparticles (70 nm). They found that silver’s toxic effect occurs in a similar concentration range for Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, human mesenchymal stem cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (0.5 to 5ppm for silver ions and 12.5 to 50ppm for silver nanoparticles).

For a better comparison, the team cultivated bacteria in Lysogeny broth medium and in Roswell Park Memorial Institute medium/10% fetal calf serum medium, as the state of silver ions and silver nanoparticles may be different owing to the presence of salts and biomolecules such as proteins. They found that the effective toxic concentration of silver towards bacteria and human cells is almost the same.

Simply register to download the full article here:

The toxic effect of silver ions and silver nanoparticles towards bacteria and human cells occurs in the same concentration range

Christina Greulich, Dieter Braun, Alexander Peetsch, Jörg Diendorf, Bettina Siebers, Matthias Epple and Manfred Köller
RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 6981-6987

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Incredible ionic liquids: an article collection

17 Jul 2012

Ionic liquids are pretty self explanatory; they are ionic materials in a liquid state. In a ‘normal’ liquid, interactions are usually governed by Van de Waals or H-bonding forces. In ionic liquids it is ionic bonding interactions which dominate, meaning ionic liquids possess some interesting and unique properties.

The field of ionic liquids grew after Paul Walden’s observations of ethylammonium nitrate in 1914,¹ since then the study and use of ionic liquids has grown phenomenally, with applications in analytics, biology, electrochemistry, physical chemistry, engineering, solvents and catalysis.

The academic and industrial interest in ionic liquids has thrown up some remarkable discoveries, particularly in recent years, so to keep you up to date with latest break-through research in the field we have collected these high quality articles which are free to access!* Click here for the full list of free articles

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RSC Advances is going weekly

11 Jul 2012

With over 1000 articles published since the launch of RSC Advances in August 2011, the Journal is going from strength to strength. So much so that, just less than a year after the publication of the first issue, the journal is now published on a weekly basis.

Why have we taken this decision?
With our authors and readers in mind, we wanted to further improve the service we are currently offering. More issues means:

as an author, you will have page numbers assigned to your articles more quickly
more frequent Table of Contents alerts, helping you to keep up-to-date with the latest research

To keep abreast of the latest articles published in RSC Advances, please sign up to receive our content e-mail alerts.

All of our articles published in 2011 and 2012 are FREE to access subject to a simple registration process.

Thank you to all the authors, editors and referees who have given us their support thus far.

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Detecting cocaine with the naked eye

26 Jun 2012

Schematic drawings of (A) different designs of assay probes for cocaine detection: (left) monolithic aptamer (MA), (middle) double-fragment aptamer (DFA), and (right) triple-fragment aptamer (TFA); (B) gold nanoparticle based optical cocaine detection using TFA. The same oligonucletide sequences were drawn in the same colors.

Chinese scientists have developed a colorimetric sensor consisting of a triple-fragment aptamer (TFA) that is able to assemble in the presence of cocaine. Xinhui Lou and Yueying Liu and co-workers at the Capital Normal University in Beijing, showed that the aptasensor was specific for cocaine and worked equally well in complex urine samples containing 100 μM cocaine or filtered serum containing cocaine.

This new type of aptamer probe design showed a gradual colour change from red to blue when the concentrations of cocaine was increased from 0 to 200 μM . “TFA broadens the repertoire of probe designs and provides good opportunities for the future development of novel detection approaches and for nanostructure constructions,” says Liu et al.

Even though the assays need to be conducted at low temperature (4 °C), the authors believe that the detection method can be further improved by increasing the stem length.

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Highly specific triple-fragment aptamer for optical detection of cocaine
Ruxing Zou , Xinhui Lou , Huichao Ou , Ying Zhang , Wenjie Wang , Min Yuan , Ming Guan , Zhaofeng Luo and Yueying Liu

RSC Adv., 2012,2, 4636-4638
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20307C

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Mesoscopic Gold Bowls

15 Jun 2012

SEM image of an ordered array of MnSO4 bowls obtained after calcination of the MnSO4–PVP composite film at 550 °C for 5 h.

Scientists at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, in Bangalore, India, report a simple method for the “spontaneous formation of ordered, mesoscale structures made up of inorganic salt bowls”. These tiny bowls are said to be generating a lot of interest due to their unique application as ‘containers’ to hold ultra-low volumes.

The team led by Eswaramoorthy showed that when manganese sulfate is heated with the water soluble polymer PVP, the mix spontaneously forms arrays of tiny water-soluble bowls of the manganese sulfate salt. The beautiful structures are the result of the salt crystallising around the PVP as it bubbles and evaporates. The salt bowl were coated in gold, before the salt is washed away leaving some of the tiniest gold bowls ever made.

Scheme showing formation process of different MnSO4 morphologies through gas-bubble template method, Scheme A: Bowls, Scheme B: Ball-in-bowl shaped structures, Scheme C: Ring shaped structures (for convenience, all morphologies are shown to be evolved from the same film).

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Shaping up: spontaneous formation of ordered mesoscopic salt bowls

Katla Sai Krishna, Bosukonda V. V. S. Pavan Kumar and Muthusamy Eswaramoorthy
RSC Adv., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20596C, Communication

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RSC Advances is now indexed in Scopus

14 May 2012

We are very pleased to announce that RSC Advances is now fully indexed in Scopus.

SciVerse Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. By featuring in Scopus, RSC Advances articles become even more discoverable and visible to scientists. All our 2011-2012 content are completely free to access subject to a simple registration process.

According to Scopus, RSC Advances has published over 700 articles since our launch in August 2011. Why not join your peers and take this opportunity to submit your work today!

PS: We are also indexed in other major databases such as Thomson Reuters SCI-expanded databases including ISI Web of Science and CAS.

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Cheap gum removes oil from wastewater

10 May 2012

‘Flaxseed gum beads can be used to remove oil from wastewater systems,’ claim Chinese scientists.
Flaxseed gum is a mixture of proteins and polysaccharides such as arabinose, rhamnose, fucose, xylose and others. Yu-Jie Fu and co-workers, at the Ministry of Education, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China, explain that the flaxseed gum beads can remove 0.55 g of oil per gram of beads. They showed that flaxseed gum beads have better adsorption capacities than activated carbon.

The flaxseed gum content in the immobilised beads was 30 mg per gram and oil removal was carried out with 2mm diameter beads at room temperature and pH of 7.5.

When investigating the removal of 1.0 kg of oil from oil–water emulsions by immobilized flaxseed gum beads v/s activated carbon. 1.82kg of flaxseed gum beads was required to remove 1.0kg of oil, costing only 2.67 RMB (chinese currency) compared to 2.17 kg of powdered activated carbon costing 43.40 RMB. Furthermore, the flaxseed gum beads is resuable allowing lower processing costs than traditional oil removal methods. Flaxseed gum bead technology holds great promise as an alternative environmentally-friendly method for oil removal from wastewater.

Read the full paper published in RSC Advances for free:

Oil removal from oily water systems using immobilized flaxseed gum gel beads
Jing-jing Long, Yuan-gang Zu, Yu-jie Fu, Meng Luo, Pan-song Mu, Chun-jian Zhao, Chun-ying Li, Wei Wang and Ji Li
RSC Adv., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20375H, Paper

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RSC Advances at Eurasia 2012

30 Apr 2012

Dr Claudio Santi (left), poster prize winner, University of Perugia, Italy with Professor George Varvounis (right), Vice Chairman of Eurasia 2012

RSC Advances was proud to sponsor the poster prize at the recent Eurasia conference in Corfu, Greece. Held every 2 years since 1988, the meeting was the 12th of its kind and hosted for the first time in Europe. About 450 delegates from over 55 countries engaged in discussions about their latest findings on the chemical sciences. The meeting kicked off with a plenary lecture from the Nobel laureate, Professor Akira Suzuki, providing updates on the metal-catalysed Suzuki reaction.

The conference then proceeded with 6 daily parallel sessions covering the following topics:

Bioinorganic Chemistry
Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Diagnostics
Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Drugs Design
Environmental and Green Chemistry
Physical Chemistry and Spectroscopy
Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis
Coordination Chemistry and Inorganic Polymers
Analytical and Solution Chemistry
Organic Synthesis and Natural Products
Food Chemistry
Supramolecular Chemistry and Nanomaterials
Polymer Science
Chemical Education

The delegates were graced with over 200 posters on the above subjects. The poster winner in the Environmental and Green Chemistry category went to Dr Claudio Santi, University of Perugia, Italy. Claudio presented his work on “PhSeZn-Halides:Nucleophilic Reagents in on Water Conditions”. On behalf of RSC Advances, Professor George Varvounis, University of Ioannina, Greece, Vice Chairman of Eurasia 2012, presented Claudio with an RSC Book on Molecular Solar Fuels and a certificate (see photo above). Many congratulations to the winner!

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RSC US Roadshow 2012- Week 1: California

13 Apr 2012

RSC Advances Editor Sarah Ruthven will be visiting several Californian universities next week as part of the RSC US Roadshows 2012.

The Royal Society of Chemistry visits four universities in California:
April 16th – University of California Irvine
April 17th – University of California Los Angeles
April 18th – University of California Santa Barbara
April 20th – University of California Berkeley

Alternatively, you can also arrange a meeting with Sarah at the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego (April 21 – 25).

Read more about the US roadshows 2012:

Starting in mid April 2012, RSC Publishing will be touring the United States of America to share more than 170 years experience of publishing in the chemical sciences. Sixteen universities across the country will be hosting these one-day events, which are open to all members of the hosting institute.

Attendees will have the opportunity to explore RSC’s apps on mobile devices and meet informally with RSC editors. Lunchtime discussion groups will explore reading habits and opportunities in the 21st century and an afternoon seminar will give an insight into the world of scholarly publishing, with tips on how to get published in high impact journals. A demonstration of ChemSpider, and a guest lecture from an RSC associate editor or board member will also be available at many of the roadshows.

Follow the RSC Roadshows on Twitter – just look for #RSC2012. RSC Publishing will also be in Illinois, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York. You can view the planned visits here.

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