A paper entitled “1-Propanol probing methodology: two-dimensional characterization of the effect of solute on H2O” has been highlighted and featured as the back cover artwork in a September issue of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The “perspective” authored by Yoshikata Koga, covers the research that he has been conducting for the last 10-15 years along with collaborators Peter Westh (Roskilde University, Denmark), Keiko Nishikawa (Chiba University, Japan) and Akira Inaba (Osaka University, Japan). This research provides a new thermodynamic methodology that enables one to characterize the effect of organic solutes and ions on the molecular organization of water by a pair of indices, hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity. Thus, their effects could be visualized in a two dimensional map. The results could be useful in understanding the function of biologically important solutes in aqueous media. The full paper on this topic can be found here.
