Loose grip
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is contained in the air we exhale, and is also always formed when carbon-containing substances such as oil, gas, wood, and plastics are burned - it is omnipres-ent. Chemists have long been trying to convert this gas to something useful, and Koji Tanaka and coworkers from the Institute for Molecular Science in Myodaiji, Japan, have now taken an interesting step in this direction. They have developed a ruthenium compound that trans-forms the carbon dioxide into acetone, a solvent used as a paint stripper for oil and enamel paints, in the preparation of glue, and even as a starting material for further chemical synthe-ses. The problem faced by Tanaka's colleagues in their e