Mercury pollution threatens the environment and human health across the globe. This neurotoxic substance is encountered in artisanal gold mining, coal combustion, oil and gas refining, waste incineration, chloralkali plant operation, metallurgy, and areas of agriculture in which mercury‐rich fungicides are used. Thousands of tonnes of mercury are emitted annually through these activities. With the Minamata Convention on Mercury entering force this year, increasing regulation of mercury pollution is imminent. It is therefore critical to provide inexpensive and scalable mercury sorbents. The research herein addresses this need by introducing low‐cost mercury sorbents made solely from sulfur and unsaturated cooking oils. A porous version of the polymer was prepared by simply synthesising the polymer in the presence of a sodium chloride porogen. The resulting material is a rubber that captures liquid mercury metal, mercury vapour, inorganic mercury bound to organic matter, and highly toxic alkylmercury compounds. Mercury removal from air, water and soil was demonstrated. Because sulfur is a by‐product of petroleum refining and spent cooking oils from the food industry are suitable starting materials, these mercury‐capturing polymers can be synthesised entirely from waste and supplied on multi‐kilogram scales. This study is therefore an advance in waste valorisation and environmental chemistry.

A controlled-release fertiliser was prepared by the inverse vulcanisation of canola oil in the presence of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium nutrients.

The fluorescence excitation spectrum of the S₁–S₀(¹B₂–¹A₁) transition in jet‐cooled toluene has been measured up to 2000 cm⁻¹ above the origin band. Dispersed fluorescence spectra of the major features have been recorded and used to assign the levels observed in excitation. Collisional energy transfer experiments have been used to confirm assignments for some of the lower lying S₁ fundamentals that were not accessible via direct optical pumping. The number of known S₁ fundamentals has been extended to 13. The dispersed fluorescence spectra reveal the onset of intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution (IVR) at low S₁ vibrational energies. Fluorescence lifetimes of all of the major bands observed in the excitation spectrum have been measured. The lifetimes decrease from 86 ns for 0⁰ to 48 ns at an S₁ vibrational energy of 1900 cm⁻¹. To alleviate the confusion that exists over the mode numbering in toluene a new scheme is proposed which obviates this problem. This system is similar to that used for other substituted aromatics and should rationalize future work.

Our examination of over 230 worldwide opal samples shows that X-ray diffraction (XRD) remains the best primary method for delineation and classification of opal-A, opal-CT and opal-C, though we found that mid-range infra-red spectroscopy provides an acceptable alternative. Raman, infra-red and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy may also provide additional information to assist in classification and provenance. The corpus of results indicated that the opal-CT group covers a range of structural states and will benefit from further multi-technique analysis. At the one end are the opal-CTs that provide a simple XRD pattern (“simple” opal-CT) that includes Ethiopian play-of-colour samples, which are not opal-A. At the other end of the range are those opal-CTs that give a complex XRD pattern (“complex” opal-CT). The majority of opal-CT samples fall at this end of the range, though some show play-of-colour. Raman spectra provide some correlation. Specimens from new opal finds were examined. Those from Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Peru, Tanzania and Turkey all proved to be opal-CT. Of the three specimens examined from Indonesian localities, one proved to be opal-A, while a second sample and the play-of-colour opal from West Java was a “simple” Opal-CT. Evidence for two transitional types having characteristics of opal-A and opal-CT, and “simple” opal-CT and opal-C are presented.