Health

Dietitian suggests ways to prevent colorectal cancer

We may joke about the prep involved for a colonoscopy (an exam for abnormal changes in the large intestine). But cancers of the colon or rectum are no laughing matter. In fact, when you combine the cancer death rates of men ...

Health

Economic hard times make Swedes cut back on drinking

A slumping economy gave Swedes less to cheer about last year as alcohol consumption fell the most in nearly a decade in the Nordic country, excluding the 2020 pandemic, research showed Friday.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Surging nerve system disorders now top cause of illness: Study

Conditions affecting the nervous system—such as strokes, migraines and dementia—have surged past heart disease to become the leading cause of ill health worldwide, a major new analysis said on Friday.

Gastroenterology

Study shows how estrogen protects against fatty liver

New research from Karolinska Institutet shows how estrogen protects against MASLD, a fatty liver disease that has increased dramatically during the current obesity epidemic. The study, published in Molecular Systems Biology, ...

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Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is any organic compound in which a hydroxyl group (-OH) is bound to a carbon atom of an alkyl or substituted alkyl group. The general formula for a simple acyclic alcohol is CnH2n+1OH. In common terms, the word alcohol refers to ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages.

Ethanol is a colorless, volatile liquid with a mild odor which can be obtained by the fermentation of sugars. (Industrially, it is more commonly obtained by ethylene hydration—the reaction of ethylene with water in the presence of phosphoric acid.) Ethanol is the most widely used depressant in the world, and has been for thousands of years. This sense underlies the term alcoholism (addiction to alcohol).

Other alcohols are usually described with a clarifying adjective, as in isopropyl alcohol (propan-2-ol) or wood alcohol (methyl alcohol, or methanol). The suffix -ol appears in the IUPAC chemical name of all alcohols.[citation needed]

There are three major subsets of alcohols: primary (1°), secondary (2°) and tertiary (3°), based upon the number of carbon atoms the C-OH group's carbon (shown in red) is bonded to. Ethanol is a simple 'primary' alcohol. The simplest secondary alcohol is isopropyl alcohol (propan-2-ol), and a simple tertiary alcohol is tert-butyl alcohol (2-methylpropan-2-ol).

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