Substantially reducing corruption and bribery in all forms is a target of goal 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions). This blog reviews the rise of anti-foreign bribery legislation in the 20 years since the OECD's Anti-Bribery Convention was signed by 43 states and countries.

This article describes how a chemical company identified, developed and marketed a new solvent using EPA standards.

The replacement of the fossil resources historically employed for chemicals’ production is of major scientific interest the last decades, as a result of the environmental issues arisen and the price versatility of petroleum. Biotechnological routes present promising alternatives for the production of various platform chemicals such as succinic, lactic and muconic acids among others. The utilisation of agricultural and agro-industrial waste and by-product streams would not only reduce the overall production cost but also it would assist towards the direction of the bio-economy era.

Waste is an extremely valuable resource that we have been accumulating over a long period. Interesting and viable organic “waste-to-resource” opportunities include plastics and food supply chain wastes. Their use as chemical feedstocks will fit well with a circular economy model. Plastics is a major waste opportunity: worldwide we only recycle a few % of the plastic we use, yet plastic manufacturing consumes some 10% of all the oil we consume, and much of it causes serious environmental damage through negligent release.

Chemistry made once expensive leisure activities available to public by providing inexpensive materials for fishing rods, golf equipment etc. Nowadays, eco-minded costumers wish the impact of their leisure activities on environment as little as possible, and thus expect materials to be overall sustainable. Particularly, the hospitality sector has to fulfill the expectations of eco-minded tourists who prefer hotels engaged in activities for protecting natural resources and working against waste accumulation.

How to feed a population of 9bn in 2050? This was the question posed which provided the impetus for Elsevier to launch the bi-annual International Conference on Global Food Security Conference in 2013. Now in its 3rd year this highly regarded, research-led conference is focusing on five core conference themes to reflect an integrated approach to identifying solutions to the complex global challenge of food security: 1. Food creation 2. Food safety and bio security 3. Food loss and waste 4. Food in a changing society 5. Food utilization. Achieving global food security whilst reconciling demands on the environment is the greatest challenge faced by mankind. This directly supports SDG 2: to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Corrosion inhibition performance of an environmentally friendly compound, 8-hydroxyquinoline (8-HQ), on X60 steel was investigated in 15% hydrochloric acid (HCl), which simulate oil well acidizing environment. Efficacy of the inhibitor was examined utilizing weight loss, potentiodynamic polarization (PDP), electrochemical frequency modulation (EFM), linear polarization (LPR), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Results show increased inhibitor efficiency with increase in concentration of 8-HQ and was further enhanced when iodide ions were added.

Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials are porous materials with high surface area that offer enormous flexibility of design and tailoring of its surface properties to be used in diverse chemical processes. Most of the reported properties of MOF materials were evaluated in powder materials produced in small scale where the synthesis has been optimized to obtain crystalline powders. Ideally, the industrialization of these materials will also be associated to efficient scalable synthesis protocols.

The versatile use of droplet coagulation to recycle complex waste resources (fly ash FA, rice husk ash RHA and alum sludge AS) was investigated. Monodisperse microspheres were shaped, creating higher impact on the applicability of the waste resources. In order to obtain a suspension with appropriate rheological properties, pre-processing was required for the AS powder in contrast to the RHA and FA powders. Furthermore, the impact of the shaping process and waste stream properties on the calcination and sintering was determined and correlated to the microstructure of the sintered spheres.

This paper shows that despite progress in reducing extreme poverty, little progress has been made in reducing the number of people living on between $1.25 and $2 a day and it provides updated estimates of rural and urban poverty for regions throughout the developing world. It then shows the dramatic growth in recent decades in government expenditures on social protection, defined broadly. Next it shows that social assistance coverage is lowest and amounts transferred the smallest in parts of the world where poverty is most widespread.