This year ACS hosted a two-day symposium on the National Ignition Facility and a couple of the other big nuclear fusion efforts. Given the audience, most of the talks focused on the role chemists could play in diagnostics, i.e. detecting whether fusion actually occurs, and on the different sorts of experiments chemists might be interested in, like nucleosynthesis and stellar burning processes.

NIF has had its share of delays, dilemmas and scandals, but finished construction in late March and looks to make its first attempts at ignition next year. At the conference, NIF science director Richard Boyd said they're currently running experimental implosions — up to two a day — to optimize all the parameters, and using “a bunch of tricks to make the process as efficient as possible”. For example, right now none of the experimental implosions are using deuterium-tritium targets, but Boyd notes that “with just a tiny bit of deuterium, we can actually go through most of the optimization procedures without producing neutrons, which are problematic because they activate things”.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Energy of the nearer future?" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 20, 2009
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It's the second to last day of the conference and the chemists are starting to head home. The hallways are quieter, the rooms less full, the Metro less forested by rolled up posters, the Power Bar options in the press room more limited. So I decided to give myself a little treat today: biological chemistry. As a life scientist by training, I've been rather out of my element the past week.

First Justin Gallivan from Emory in Georgia gave an entertaining talk about programming bacteria “to seek and destroy small molecules”. To control the cells, he's using riboswitches — fragments of RNA which, when bound to certain small molecules, will bind to DNA and control gene expression. He's now engineered riboswitches to respond to the molecules and regulate the genes of his choosing.

To do this, he scrambled portions of a well-studied riboswitch and screened for mutants that would 1) reliably bind DNA when not bound to the small molecule (real riboswitches are leaky), 2) recognize the herbicide atrazine but not its degradation product hydroxyatrazine, and 3) move toward atrazine.

The "movement" part was my favorite (and made for some cute videos of scurrying E. coli). E. coli naturally explore their environment via a "random walk", where they alternate between swimming in more or less a straight line and "tumbling" before changing directions, steering towards tasty chemicals when they sense them. But E. coli lacking the gene cheZ just tumble around the whole time. Gallivan engineered his riboswitch to bind to cheZ, blocking its transcription and leaving the poor little bacteria spinning around aimlessly. But when atrazine was around, it would bind the riboswitch, permit transcription of cheZ, and the bacteria would swim right for it. When engineered with an enzyme that breaks down atrazine, the bugs could both seek and destroy.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Living things!" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 19, 2009
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Today I started with a talk by Jack Szostak from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard. I'd originally heard of Szostak because he co-discovered telomerase, but discovered he was no one-trick pony when he was name-dropped all over last week's NSF Minimal Life workshop for his work on artificial cells. He's trying to figure out the most basal brew of molecules capable of growing and dividing and even evolving.

He spent most of his time talking about a very pretty paper he published a year ago, where he created a super-stripped-down version of a cell that consisted of nothing but a self-assembling membrane and genetic material. His impressive protocells cells could grow and divide, and when he modified the nucleic acids he was able to get them to self-replicate within the membrane. Great stuff, but unfortunately he didn't present much of anything new.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Fabrication" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 19, 2009
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In the spirit of this year's theme at ACS, "Chemistry and Global Security", I decided to stop by the symposium "Sensing and Destroying Chemical Warfare Agents and Pesticides", where Kim Janda from Scripps was giving a talk about simple solutions to detecting weapons.

It's a pretty cool and important topic, and Janda's a big name, so I was pretty excited — but my excitement dropped when Janda began his talk with a disclaimer:

"The coolest stuff I've got I'm not allowed to talk about, and the really interesting stuff I'm doing with therapeutics doesn't fit with this symposium."

So it goes at big conferences. Janda ended up giving a review some of his work in this area, which was fine for me because I didn't know much about it.

Janda's developing antibodies to detect some of the nastier chemicals that could be turned into weapons: sarin, soman and vx. It turns out these all have the same "chemical signature", in that they all naturally degrade to methylphosphonic acid (MPA). The idea is this might translate into lab-based or even portable assays for detecting minuscule quantities of toxin.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Antibodies for weapons" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 18, 2009
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This morning at the conference, Charles Arntzen from Arizona State University talked about transforming plants into little green vaccine-manufacturing machines using engineered viruses. He helped pioneer the technique a few years ago when he made a vaccine against plague, and now he's taken aim at norovirus, aka the “dreaded cruise ship virus”, which can hamstring people for a day or two with diarrhea and vomiting.

The disease may not seem like the worthiest target of vaccination efforts — especially compared with the last big vaccine produced by this technology, which targeted cancer. But in a way, that's the point. Pharmaceutical companies aren't going to waste their time with something that's elective and only lasts a couple days, and cruise-goers don't inspire much sympathy in disease-fighting philanthropists, so this technique provides a cheap and easy way to fill in the gap. And to be fair, “cruise ship virus” can also cause outbreaks in more heartrending locations, like hospitals, day care centers, homes for the elderly and, allegedly, football teams.

To get the tobacco plants to produce the vaccine, researchers insert genes coding for virus structural proteins into the tobacco mosaic virus, and infect plants with the engineered strain. The virus replicates and spreads through the plants, making the plant cells churn out the encoded particles, which can be used in vaccines.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Quick-n-clean vaccines" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 18, 2009
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ACS is spread out across hotels and centers over at least a nine block-by-nine block chunk of downtown DC. There are shuttles rolling around but they rarely beat walking, so when you venture to a new location it's best to be sure you want to stay for at least a few talks. I ended up grabbing lunch at one end of the stretch, so I thought I'd at least take a walk through the nearest ACS venue. Luckily I happened upon some fairly interesting talks about polymers — no huge breakthroughs, but certainly educational.

Richard Gross at the Polytechnic University at NYU presented some interesting work on sophorolipids — surfactants that are oozed out by yeast. Sophorolipids have been generating some interest with the increasingly eco-conscious pharmaceutical industry because they're biodegradable, naturally and renewably produced and non-toxic, or at least low-toxic.

Gross has been hooking these glycolipids into polymers for a few years now using ring-opening metathesis polymerization, and here he showed how versatile the process was, not just producing high molecular weight polymers but also giving him the power to vary the polymer's structure and "tune" its physical properties. He found that the polymers have similar physical properties to polylactic acid, an increasingly popular "green" plastic, but sphorolipids have unique potential because he can make them in funkier shapes.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Pretty polymers" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 17, 2009
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This cute little worm has constructed a tube around itself from beads of zirconium oxide. It's a pretty impressive feat by human engineering standards, as the animals have to stick together all the little bits (normally sand and pieces of seashell) while submerged in flowing water — not the best conditions for your average adhesive.

Russel Stewart at the University of Utah is looking to these innovative little carpenters for tips on synthesizing a glue with similar advantages. Gluing in wet conditions would be great for a number of reasons, especially for sticking together bloody human body parts like broken bones. Currently, Stewart says, there aren't any clinical adhesives for bone, only for superficial wounds.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Worm-inspired glue" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 17, 2009
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Today DC is much more alive and crazy with chemists than yesterday, and the chaos was exacerbated by a mid-morning fire alarm that evacuated the convention center. Chemists (and journalists) spilled out onto the sidewalks and milled about aimlessly; some took it as a smoke break, a few awkwardly typed on the laptops that were teetering on their palms. Carmen Drahl at the C&EN blog captured the mayhem on video. Alas, it was a false alarm (apparently the second one of the conference — maybe some expo exhibits getting out of hand?) and five minutes later the chem fest continued.

I started the day learning about carbon dioxide reforming — converting CO2 and hydrocarbons into something useful, rather than stowing it away under the ground or ocean.

Chang-jun Liu from Tianjin University in China focused on CO2 reforming of methane, which produces synthesis gas or syngas, a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This can then be used like natural gas to power turbines, converted into liquid fuel or as a hydrogen source for fuel cells.

Liu's trying to make the process more efficient by improving upon nickel catalysts. These are cheaper than the more popular noble metal catalysts and are quite active, but the problem is they're easily deactivated by carbon deposits that choke up the reaction.

To make nickel less vulnerable to carbon deposits, Liu described a room temp plasma treatment that created super small particles — less than 10 nanometers. Due to their new size and structure, these catalysts resisted deposit formation and remained reactive, giving this cheaper alternative a possible future in CO2 reforming.

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 17, 2009
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This afternoon I went to the Presidential Plenary Symposium, hoping to get a nice overview of what chemistry really has to do with global security. The symposium was in a huge ballroom, which looked all the bigger because only about 5 percent of the seats were occupied.

I was a little disappointed in these talks, in part because they didn't have much chemistry in them. But there was certainly an interesting cast of speakers with impressive resumes. The talks started with Vahid Majidi, who's the assistant director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate at the FBI. He's also been chief scientific officer of the Department of Justice and the leader of the chemistry division at Los Alamos.

Majidi started out trying to relate global security to chemistry: while chemists work with moles per liter, he works with humans per area of land; chemists think about the nature of the analyte, he thinks about intent. “We both suffer from heterogeneous analyte distribution,” he says, along with “interfering species”— good people who look like bad people. I appreciated the attempted empathy but was still waiting for the connection to actual chemistry.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: Presidential Symposium" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 16, 2009
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I thought I'd ease my way into the conference in as macabre a way as possible — with the smell of decaying flesh.

Grad student Sarah Jones and her advisor Dan Sykes at Pennsylvania State University presented their work on the volatile chemicals that waft from dead pigs' bodies during the earliest stages of decay. The idea is to determine the chemical profiles of a body's aroma at different time points after death, which might help crime scene investigator-types accurately determine the time of death.

Jones kicked off the show with some gnarly descriptions of the various stages of decomposition, starting with “fresh” and ending with “dry decay”, during with the bones finally turn to dust, as it were. My personal favorite was called the “black putrefaction” stage, at which point the body cavity — bloated from the gases and fluids produced by invading bacteria — ruptures, transforming the carcass into a wide open rotting flesh-fest for hungry insects and microbial scavengers. I should note that during Jones's descriptions, a smiling Sykes held up large color images of decaying pigs in each respective stage.

Continue reading "ACS Washington 2009: What you smell like when you die" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 16, 2009
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Aloha, chemistry! This weekend, more than 10,000 chemistry-philes descended upon the nation's capital for the American Chemical Society's 238th semi-annual meeting. The location is perfect because a) this year's theme links chemistry to global security, a subject near and dear to Washington's heart, and b) it's about half a mile from Nature's DC office.

Presentations have been going since 8 this morning, but at early afternoon the conference center's still at a pretty low buzz. I expect it to pick up over the course of the day or by tomorrow.

I'll try to blog the goods as best I can, but also check out The Sceptical Chymist, Chemical and Engineering News and #ACS_DC on Twitter for more ACS news.

Image: DOE.in.gov

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 16, 2009
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I haven't spent much time outside the confines of the conference - apart from the sun-drenched stroll between the convention centre and another venue, the Sheraton, about a mile away.
So yesterday I thought, enough is enough. I went for a run over the Benjamin Franklin bridge with Neil Gussman, PR guy for the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and US army sergeant.

The run was amazing, the pedestrian bridge is much higher than the cars and the cars are much, much, much higher than the Delaware river. If you need to escape the city, you could do a lot worse than this towering piece of metal engineering.

Today I took another trip to CHF, to check out their new, and very impressive, gallery. It's still under construction, but the floor-to-ceiling interactive periodic table installment (made in part by he of the Periodic Table Table fame, Theo Gray) is already in place. It is awesome. Videos run for each element, and the whole thing cascades from the huge 2-storey ceiling to the floor on a massive array of TV screens.

The new galleries are also hosting a travelling art exhibit, molecules that matter. This is a collection of artists representations of 10 selected molecules that have influenced society in the past 100 years. Apparently the choice of molecules upset some staunch organic chemists. I can't see why. You should pop over and see if you're getting cabin fever in the conference.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 20, 2008
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The answer to the question posed above isn't clear. I went to a session about plastic devices that could be used as solar cells instead of expensive silicon, hoping to hear a breathrough was nigh. Sadly i was wrong. Advances in plastics that can capture light over a useful wavelength, that can separate the charge into electrons and holes, that can carry that charge and finally, do something useful with it are being made. But slowly.

Talking in the session was Fred Wudl, who was first to develop fullerene/polymer systems as photovoltaic cells. It seems that the system he hit upon first up has been hard to beat, at least according to Mats Andersson, from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, who was also speaking in the session.

Percentage power conversion efficiencies remain low. The very best results are around 5%, and these tend to be from a single, meticulously prepared sample - a long way from a manfacturable, large scale printing porcess that is hoped for. To be really viable, a system that is 10% efficient is needed, or a slightly less efficient, but very cheap plastic material that can be made to cover a large area. But still, despite lots of tinkering with the polymers in the systems, the best that Andersson presented was 2.8% efficiency. Manpreet Kaur, from Virginia polytechnic presented a system with an efficiency of 1%.

The systems rely on the electron-transporting porperties of a polymer, and the hole (absence of electron) transporting properties of the fullerene groups. The main way to change these systems is altering the polymer groups.

The field is gaining strength, however. One company, Konarka, is claiming that it will have a flexible, efficient, solar cell plastic available by the end of the year. We shall have to wait and see.

The session certainly generated interest, but i can't help think that the efficiencies are going to remain low for a while yet. Perhaps next year, if Konarka has delivered, academics will have joined them in finding a more efficient system.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 20, 2008
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At the general poster session the other night I was delighted to see the two candidates campaigning for the job everyone is talking about. No, not McCain and Obama, but the two candidates for the president-elect of the ACS. As the biggest scientific society in the world, this is a big job.

As I approached one of the candidates, Josef Michl, I noticed he was chattering to Bob Grubbs (see earlier post). Michl was very keen on sustainabilty. And this is a broad recurring theme of this meeting. Chemists realise the opportunites they have to help the planet. Of course, chemistry is the underpinning science to the techologies that are being investigated to replace fossil fuels. I can only imagine that in future this theme is going to engulf these meetings even more.

The other presidential-elect candidate had a very firm handshake and free colour-changing pencils. Another Joseph, from Purdue, Joseph Francisco told me about his plans to unite retired chemists and young, keen postdocs to create an ACS-centred bank of expertise. is focus was much more on the business side of chemistry, and in particular small businesses.

Two very differnent candidates with very different agendas. It will be interesting to see who wins. At the moment I wouldn't like to call it, but the trend towards sustainability gives me the feeling that Michl might just steal it.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 20, 2008
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I wrote a story yesterday about a clever way to make tiny batteries using a rubber stamp and a virus. It was actually from a paper that came out in PNAS, but one of the authors, Paula Hammond is here at the meeting. She is working with Angela Belcher on some very cool viruses.

The paper outlines a simple way to build up a polyelectrolyte system, and coat a virus onto it, then let cobalt oxide nanoparticles grow on that. Stamp all this cobalt-side down on to a platinum strip, add a thin piece of lithium to the other side and hey-presto! A teeny tiny battery.

In my discussions with others about the work, it seems that people have been playing around with viruses for a while now, but we should start to see a lot more practical applications coming out of this tinkering in the next few years.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 19, 2008
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Last night was the poster session. It was late, I was jet-lagged, tired and emotional, but I dutifully showed up, if only to get my free beer. As ever this was a really well-attended event. It's impossible to see everything so I decided to pick some of my favourite titles for you to muse over. They show the amazing breadth of this meeting, and some of them actually make chemistry sound, well, really interesting.**

Impact of thermal and nonthermal processing techologies on quality of apple cider (one close to my heart)

Lanthanide pyrone and pyridone complexes for the treatment of bone density disorders

Reinvigorating the chemistry curriculum with Fourier-Transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (FT-NMR) spectroscopy

Measurement of the contact angle of a water droplet on a flat surface

Heavy metal accumulation by common garden plants: A chemical and spectroscopic approach

** i'm not saying that chemistry isn't interesting, by the way. I love chemistry, but sometimes it is hard to persuade others not involved in the field

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 19, 2008
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Some people have all the bad luck. I was recommended to go this morning to a session on self-replication. Sounds cool, i thought. I bet it will be busy...

But I was very wrong. Where was everyone? The recommendation turned out to be right, and I really enjoyed Douglas Philp's talks about self-replicating systems, but the room must have had about 15 people in it. I didn't get it, so I asked Philp how come he had failed to pull in the punters. "I was up against Bob Grubbs," he said.

Ah, it all becomes clear. That's bad luck I said. Grubbs is a Nobel prize-winning chemist from Caltech who is a giant in the catalysis world. He even has his own catalyst.

Poor Doug, I thought. Still, better luck for his next talk this afternoon. Nope, it seems the Philp brand of chemistry will fail to reach the masses once more. This afternoon he is up against Barry Sharpless, also a Noble prize-winning chemist, from Scripps, who has more than one eponymous reaction.

Ouch.

The message to Doug Philp, and anyone else landed with these unfortunate timetable clashes is clear: you're going to have to get a reaction or a catalyst named ofter you. Or you're going to have to win the Nobel prize in chemistry. Preferrably both.

Better luck next year, eh?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 18, 2008
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A few weeks ago I wrote a news story about some work done by Dan Nocera at MIT. He's managed to make a very simple catalyst that can generate oxygen directly from water - so helping those people trying to mimic photosynthesis and save the world's energy crisis.

At the time Nocera wasn't sure what the mechanism was for the formation of the cobalt catalyst. In today's talk he confirmed what he had thought then - that the cobalt gets oxidised all the way to its +4 oxidation state. He was also very confident in the technology he is developing. "I guarantee in under five years you'll see this," he said. Companies are coming out of the woodwork, he says, to develop a functioning, practical system.

Other big claims he made were that in a system based on his catalyst cuold produce enough fuel to run a typical house for a day in just two and a half hours. This is big talk, Dan, I look forward to it becoming reality.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 18, 2008
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I had a slight deviation from the ACS yesterday while i finished up writing a story about trees that can absorb organic nitrates and turn them into amino acids. But seeing as in that single sentence I spotted at least four chemistry-relate words I thought this would be a good place to write about the research.

I shan't go into loads of details, because then you might not go and read the story (and i can't believe anyone would miss out on the chance to do that), but the news here is thus: trees, well known to gobble up inorganic nitrogen compounds, can also take up - and use, more importantly - organic nitrates that are the porducts of NOx emissions and the volatile organic compounds that trees spew out.

It's not yet clear whether this mechanism might actually help to alleviate NOx pollution, and at the same time increase photosynthesis thereby locking up more carbon. If that were the case that would be a very good news story indeed. It looks more likely that this effect is dependent on local conditions. And as the author Paul Shepson told me, even if the mechanism does help clean up the atmopshere a bit, the better solution is to stop the emissions in the first place.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 18, 2008
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The meeting is in full swing, and here in the city of brotherly love, beshorted chemists can be spotted all over the place. Quite a sight for the uninitiated, i can assure you.

I wandered into the ACS board meeting this morning, which also includes bigwigs from other international chemical societies today. It was an open meeting, I didn't gatecrash. I got there in time to hear a discussion about what the ACS can do to be more sustainable.

Continue reading "ACS Philadelphia 2008: Board" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 17, 2008
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Hello everybody! Welcome to sunny Philadelphia, where I will be updating you on all the gossip from the American Chemical Society meeting.

So far i can report blue skies, hot sunshine and a summery feeling in the air. Lovely. Can I also recommend jet lag for any of you who have to get up and go to work early. Although it's not so good if you actually need to concentrate.

BREAKING NEWS:
this year, i am pleased to report that following years of disappointment, members of the press have been given drinks tickets for the poster session. That's going to save my dignity for once.

Check back for regular updates and news. Apart from the usual bumper crop of recent chemical advances It's also time to reflect, being a centennial year for the organic chemistry, physical chemsitry, agriculture and food chemistry, and industrial and engineering chemistry divisions.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 17, 2008
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Here's one more story for you out of Justin Gallivan's laboratory at Emory University. Gallivan has been using bits of RNA called riboswitches to turn gene expression on and off. At the conference, he reported he could turn on E. coli's propeller in the presence of a pesticide, giving the bugs chemical-following properties that look a lot like what bacteria naturally do with external receptors on their front grille.

Gallivan says motility is a good way to find the best riboswitches, which could then be modified to turn on the gene of your choice. You can read more about it here.

Posted by Rachel Courtland on April 09, 2008
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Microscopic cogs and miniature turbines are fairly easy to make out of silicon, but getting them to move is another matter. Ordinary oil won't work at that scale, and solid coatings rub off in minutes. But now there might be a solution. Check out the story in Nature News.

Posted by Rachel Courtland on April 08, 2008
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There's no rule that says scientists can't be a bit superstitious, especially when it comes to sensitive laboratory equipment. Take, for example, students at Zhan Chen's laboratory at the University of Michigan, who have created a shrine to one of the lab’s two sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy lasers. Chen presented a picture of the shrine, replete with labels, at the introduction to his talk Sunday. I think my favorite part of the shrine is one student’s ponytail, although the inclusion of the thesis defense poster for a student who defied expectations and succeeded in graduating is a runner-up. Click on the image to enlarge.

Chen writes: “Even though our systems are commercial products, for my chemistry students, it takes some time for them to learn how to run experiments. Furthermore, it is not easy for my students to fix problems the SFG systems sometimes have. Therefore, they developed this ‘shrine to the lasers’ in hope that the SFG systems, including a pico-second laser, some nonlinear optical components, and a detection system, would be ‘happy’ to behave ‘normally’ all the time.”

Chen’s group uses SFG to study complicated surfaces and interfaces, including polymers and biological materials. They’re eyeing questions like biocompatibility, polymer adhesion, and anti-microbial peptide activities. The shrine continues to grow.

Posted by Rachel Courtland on April 07, 2008
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In the spirit of our swampy environs, the first press conference Sunday morning was on the special anti-microbial/fungal/viral properties of alligator blood. Biochemist and alligator rassler Mark Merchant of McNeese State University in southwestern Louisiana wasn't on hand to field questions, but two of his colleagues filled in, describing some progress on testing the blood's ability to kill microscopic invaders

Alligators aren’t the friendliest creatures around. They like to fight and sometimes sustain serious injuries; they also live in marches and swamps full of opportunistic microbes. But, the researchers say, alligators seldom get infected.

In 2006, the Sun-Sentinel in south Florida covered Merchant's work. By then, he had found alligator serum killed off all 16 strains of bacteria tested. Now, the number of bacterial fatalities has since gone up to 23, and includes the dreaded MRSA. Human serum is only effective in killing eight of those 23 strains.

No one is quite sure what it is about the serum that works so well, although there was some speculation that lysine and arginine-rich peptides may be responsible. Merchant's colleagues are in the process of looking into this.

Still, I’m left wondering whether alligator blood will ever yield useful clinical treatments. At higher concentrations the serum is very effective at killing cells -- including healthy human ones. I wasn’t able to get a clear answer from the presenters as to what the toxicity is like for human cells. It could very well be that alligator blood is an indiscriminate killer.

Posted by Rachel Courtland on April 06, 2008
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Greetings from New Orleans, where an anticipated 15,000+ chemists have descended on the ever-resilient Morial Convention Center. Last month's American Physical Society meeting passed under the city's radar, but this meeting is so large, the welcome mat extended all the way to the airport, which boasted a "Welcome ACS" sign at the baggage claim area. I'll be covering the conference's first three days, from Sunday to Tuesday. Stay tuned for more dispatches as well as links to online news coverage.

Posted by Rachel Courtland on April 06, 2008
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It's almost time for the American Chemical Society's spring meeting. This year it is in New Orleans. I'll be there from April 6th to April 10th, blogging and looking out for chemical news and gossip.

Check out In The Field for regular updates from this the largest of chemistry conferences.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 27, 2008
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That's it, I'm off. I've had a great week, as ever the conference didn't fail to surprise, impress (and exasperate). All good ingredients for a productive few days. I assume the delegates were equally as productive. We'll find out in New Orleans in March, I suppose.

Hopefully I'll make it home on time - please British Airways... I am anticipating a huge welcoming committee.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 23, 2007
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It's the last day of the conference, a sleepy atmosphere pervades the air. Or at least my head, which has up until now been filled with worms - but you'll have to pick up a copy of Nature next week to find out why I might be investigating worms at a chemistry conference. The suspense is unbearable, I know...

I saw some talks on antibiotics today. Resistance to antibiotics has one good thing going for it, that's for sure - chemists and biochemists are always going to be in a job. Talking to Gerry Wright after his talk really brought this home - we might find a way to beat drug-resistant bacteria, but the bugs are constantly beavering away working out ways to beat us back in return.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 23, 2007
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There was a new session in the medicinal chemistry session today, called Hot topics in medicinal chemistry. I spoke to the session organiser, Jeff Zablocki, about the motivation for the session - he wanted to get industrial parties to come and talk about new results. This wasn't easy, he said, but he managed to pull together a session with five different companies come and talk about early results for five different drugs.

One of the talks was by Thais Sielecki, from Cytokine PharmaSciences. She was showing us new preclinical data for a type of molecule based on small molecule inhibitors of macrophage inhibitory factor, MIFs. Her impressive data showed that their orally-delivered drug could halt MS symptoms in mice, and actually show improvements in some symptoms. Sielecki told me that for a small company like Cytokine PharmSciences, a chance to present data like this is great for getting business partners. Of course there was a large chunk of data - such as the structure of the actual product - that she didn't show, but I noticed lots of furious scribbling going on in the room anyway.

It's always going to be hard to get pharma compnies to disclose information, but Jim McCarthy, programme chair for the Med Chem division is planning to encourage more openness - with the introduction of a session at the next meeting for companies to make first announcements about clinical compounds in medicinal chemistry. And take up has been good so far he says. But he knows that there will never be any disclosure of new target molecules. "This is industry" he says. Intellectual property rights will always keep peoples' mouths clamped tightly shut.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 23, 2007
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This week has driven me slightly insane, for a number of reasons. Included in those reasons is the vastness of the conference. We all say it, year in , year out and i've been trying to bite my lip. But really, ACS - can we have a conference that doesn't involve half-hour bus trips between venues?

Now that's off my chest let me tell you about ionic -liquid marbles. I saw some incredibly cool videos of droplets of ionic liquid being rolled in PTFE powder, and then forming marbles which are very hydrophobic and have amazing floaty properties on water surfaces. The work is being conducted by Tom McCarthy and Lichao Gao at the University of Massachusetts.

Some of the marbles they made were magnetic and could be dragged around - with potential for drug delivery. The coating of the marbles is held in place by magic. Well, actually, it is held in place by electrostatic forces (but i thought i'd inject a bit of children's storybook fantasy into this post), and this means that when an electrostatically-charged rod - rubbed on a pair of nylon trousers or something like that - is brought near the marbles they pop! And in drug delivery this could mean them being dragged to a target using the magnet, and then being allowed to release their bounty with the stroke of a charged wand...

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 22, 2007
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Yesterday, I popped along to hear Roald Hoffmann (again) talking at his own birthday symposium. Also there was author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who is not a chemist, but when i met him this morning was wearing a very natty periodic table t-shirt. It was in colour, much better than my white-on-red version. Note to self - update wardrobe.

Back to the facts. Roald Hoffmann got a Nobel prize for some very clever theoretical chemistry and some rules that explain, and can be used to predict ,why and how reactions proceed. But his first published paper was actually on the thermochemistry of cement. Fascinating.

Oliver Sacks has not only a periodic table t-shirt, but he told me that for the past 60 years has carried a periodic table in his wallet as well. I don't think it has been the same one all that time, because it was in very good condition. And haven't they added umpteen elements in the past 60 years?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 22, 2007
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here's a bit of gossip - Avogadro's constant, the one that lets you work out how much is in a mole of something, is under threat from a bunch of physicists who want to see it declassified as an absolute number, and instead tied to Planck's constant, which is altogether more complicated to explain but essentially is used in quantum mechanics to bunch things into packets, or quanta. Not very clearly explained, but i'm no physicist. Check out other definitions here and here.

The person who told me this shocking piece of news is a member of th ACS nomenclature committee. Before you all rush out and try to recaluclate the number of moles in your morning coffee - dont' panic. My source tells me that on a practical day to day basis, there will be no change, although explaining moles to a tenth-grader will be more difficult if the change ever makes it through.

The paper that started it all was apparently published in the journal Metrology, by Ian Mills, although i'm having trouble tracking down the paper.

From my brief conversation, it seems that the idea is to relate Avagadro's number to Planck's constant so that the number becomes a relationship between the two numbers rather than an exact number. The grandiose phrase i heard was that this would relate Avagadro's number to the invariants of nature. What would happen in your world if suddenly you had to redefine Avagadro's number? Anything? Nothing?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 22, 2007
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I have just worked out that, since saturday afternoon, all my meals have been sandwiches for one reason or another, although I almost ate a slice of cold pizza at one point, but didn't want cheese-related nightmares so declined. I have broken the cycle now thanks to a chocolate croissant in the press room.

My mind turns to food because a major thread of this conference is the genomics of obesity. In particular i was interested to learn that human adenovirus-36, known to be the "obesity virus", has now been shown to turn stem cells into fat cells. Magdalena Pasarica at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Nikhil Dhurandhar from Louisiana State university, took stem cells from the fatty tissue from a bunch of liposuction patients. Half of the batch of stem cells were exposed to Ad-36, and half not. The virus-infected stem cells developed into fat cells.

So does this mean, as long as i don't get the virus, that i can happily eat my chocoate croissants without worry of becoming obese? Or am i missing the point?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 21, 2007
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Ah, the poster session. I like these things; they have allowed me to perfect that useful social skill of marching up to strangers, thrusting a hand out in the hope it will be shaken, and saying "Hi, I'm Katharine. Who are you?" Once in a while the tactic pays off and you learn something incredibly interesting.

Tonight's session was slightly marred, not for the first time, by the realisation that members of the press had not been issued with drinks tickets. I had experienced this at the previous ACS meeting so should have anticipated it. Instead i had to charm one of the posterees into donating one of his tickets. In return i got to learn about rotaxanes that can be stacked up to make switchable liquid crystals, in a very elegant piece of chemistry. This is the first controlled, switchable liquid crystal to be made, and no surprise that the work, done by Ivan Aprahamian (thanks for the beer Ivan) comes out of the lab of Fraser Stoddart. The work was recently published.

The poster also had a molecular carousel - an incredibly complicated molecular machine with three "axes" joined at top and bottom each holding a ring that can move up and down, independently of the other rings. Hard to describe, but a carousel, where the rings represent the galloping horses, is a good analogy.

My favourite title of the evening has to be "highly absorbing superabsorbent polymers" by Thilini Mudiyanselage, from Bowling Green State University. These are hydrogels that can absorb thousands of times their own dry weight in liquid. The lightly cross-linked 3-D polymer nets expand a lot after soaking up all that water.

As usual, a huge mix of chemistry was showcased at the poster session - from a system that gets rid of bird poo, to a poster called "Girls in science" - bet you can't guess what that was about - and try saying it without using a Muppet-esque "Pigs in Space" voice...

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 21, 2007
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I recently wrote a feature about storing hydrogen gas in incredibly porous materials (shameless bit of self promotion there, but one needs to keep the fans happy). But now I'm wondering whether I got it all wrong - a talk today by Bob Crabtree raised an interesting point - the motoring industry has an infrastructure that is all set up to revolve around liquid fuels, so why go after hydrogen as a fuel if one keeps it in the gaseous state?

Crabtree has a strategy to store hydrogen as a liquid, by using organic liquids that have readily-releasable hydrogen. In this case he has studied, both experimentally and computationally, nitrogen-containing cyclic molecules. The amount of nitrogen present can be changed so that the temperature at which hydrogen can be released is also changeable. There is much to say on this topic, I feel... but for now I must run - the monster-sized poster session is happening this evening and I'm hoping for a bit of excitement.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 20, 2007
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I think I've just encountered the highlight of my visit - a poetry reading by Nobel prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann.

Coincidentally, I've been thinking a lot about poetry lately, and how a poet can convey their thoughts. I am not brave enough to attempt to write anything other than a jaunty limerick myself, so I have a good deal of admiration for anyone who can convey a complex thought in an abstract, but senseful way.

And Hoffmann just spent an hour in the middle of a busy, bustling exhibition hall, packed full of people trying to sell mass spectrometers and the like, with a crowd of people captivated by his poems that cross from hard-core science to his childhood experience growing up in Poland during the war, to more philosphical matters. Check out the next issue of Nature's chemistry podcast, when it hits your ears in a few weeks to hear more.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 20, 2007
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Slightly later than planned welcome to the American Chemical Society's Fall 2007 meeting. (Yes it is August, so calling it Fall, rather than Summer rather goes against the Trades Description Act, but this is the US so maybe that doesn't count over here).

I'll be blogging throughout the conference with news, gossip and observations from the meeting.

I am later than planned thanks to British Airways who decided on my behalf that I would much prefer another night in London rather than get on to the flight I was booked on - perhaps they thought I'd like the chance to do some sightseeing, a stroll through the park, across the Serpentine, or something. Still, I wasn't the only one stranded, and here I am eventually. Unfortunately the chances of going to any of the sessions today are very slim, but let's hope the rest of the meeting is a chemistry-fest that will make up for today's no-show.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 19, 2007
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I leave for the UK soon. It's been a great meeting, and it's actually still going on, but the last day is always a bit odd, everything seems to close - the expo has packed up, the press room is shut (i'm writing this at the general email point and I think am annoying everyone by taking so long and hogging the computer - oops).

So, until next time, farewell...

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 29, 2007
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Things are winding down here. I just went along to the session on cold fusion (read the story here), but my expert timing meant that i arrived just in time for the break. Never mind, I was treated to an advance showing of one of the talks yesterday. I have to admit, I was sceptical, but this is pretty cool stuff. As Frank Gordon, one of the cold fusion scientists said to me, "this actually looks like real science" - and he's right.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Cold fusion anyone?" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 29, 2007
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Chemistry meeting grants audience to low-energy nuclear work.

After an 18-year hiatus, the American Chemical Society (ACS) seems to be warming to cold fusion. Today that society is holding a symposium at their national meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on 'low-energy nuclear reactions', the official name for cold fusion.

Read the story here

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 29, 2007
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Hello y'all. Apologies for the lack of posts today, I've been imerssed in the world of cold fusion - more of which tomorrow. As such I haven't been to any sessions, which is disappointing, and the conference is almost over - it's certainly winding down. Apparently the ACS bigwigs are already back at home. Bt the conference still has one day to run. It's going to be quite eerie in the cavernous conference venue if the exodus continues at present rates. More tomorrow....

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 29, 2007
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There was a chance for us to "meet George Whitesides" today. It was great idea - like a book signing by some celebrity chef or something. Having never met the great man myself I pottered over to the exhibition room and was amused by the long line of people queuing to get their special issue of Chemical and Engineering News signed.

(For those of you who don't know who Whitesides is - he's a professor at Harvard who has the widest ranging research areas I know of - and is doing some interesting work in the chemistry of the origins of life. He's a hero to many young chemists)

I decided not to join the queue, as it didn't seem like i was going to get a chance to really meet the man hiself other than to say "Hello, I'm Katharine, from Nature". Still, I hope everyone else was happy. Whitesides himself seemed to be enjoying himself. I even saw one fan who'd had his shirt signed. Has chemistry just gone rock and roll? Yeehah.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 27, 2007
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Polymer technology could speed ships by stopping critters clinging on

Barnacles will no longer slow down ships if the latest polymer coatings being developed live up to expectations.

read the story here

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 27, 2007
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The Sci Mix poster session last night was hot, sweaty, and yet again underground with no natural light. I think I'm going to turn into a mole. And what's this? Free beer at the poster session? Hooray. But there was a catch - you needed tokens, and my humble press registration didn't include any. Thankfully the look of horror on my face when i realised this prompted the nice man standing behind me in the queue to donate one of his tokens. Thanks very much.

The session had some interesting posters - here's a brief run down of my faves.... (oh, and watch out for a news story on the news@nature site later on one of them)

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Chemists, chemists everywhere and not a drop to drink" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 27, 2007
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Using sunlight to split water is a monster job, but a team of chemists is striving to crack this problem in their attempt to save the world.

Daniel Nocera, at MIT, has taken the latest step in his part of the project, known as “Powering the planet”. His task is to find a catalyst to make oxygen molecules once the water has been split into its constituent parts (hydrogen and oxygen). Elsewhere, Harry Gray at Caltech is looking for a hydrogen catalyst, and the final part of the puzzle, the photovoltaic medium that will separate the two catalysts is being investigated by Nathan Lewis.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: splitting water" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 27, 2007
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I turned my back on academia a few years ago, but i still like to think i have a modicum of intelligence... So why, in my hotel does the non-dairy creamer have a note on it that says "contains milk"? huh?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 26, 2007
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"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, That's amore..."
So sang Dean Martin. What's a pizza pie? I often wondered. Now I know - cos I've just had some - it's just a pizza with a massive crust, and miraculously by the power of chemistry that very crust was pumping me full of antioxidants.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Dean Martin tribute" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 26, 2007
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I wouldn't normally go to the health and safety talks, but this one struck a personal chord with me. "Explosion in a refrigerator results in college laboratory fire". Hey, it could happen to anyone. Really, I didn't know that the fridge hadn't been made chemistry-safe. Really, IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE....

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Listen up kids, it could happen to you" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 26, 2007
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“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children are gone…”
Always one of my favourite nursery rhymes, possibly for the gruesome reason that I thought it suggested that all the baby bugs were dead. (And before I delve deeper into this subject of ladybirds I might have to clarify for non-brits that the ladybird is more commonly known in North America as the ladybug, and I will switch to that definition for the rest of this post).

Did you know that the cutest red and black spotted bug is the enemy of another of my favourite things – wine? “Ladybug taint” is responsible for a stench in wine that makes it unmarketable. Bad news, then.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: The rotten stink of ladybirds(bugs)" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 25, 2007
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Chemistry is great, and I'm not just saying that because I'm at the ACS meeting. Who'd have thought that, in my first hour here, in a crowd of 12,000 (predominately US-based) chemists I should bump into a familiar face - Victor Snieckus, a Canadian-based chemist, originally from the Baltic States, who enthusiastically organises a conference in the Baltic countries every couple of years.

Well, I didn't think it that odd, but according to Snieckus, it is unusual for Canadians to cross the border and venture south to this meeting. That really surprised me, so any Canadian chemists listening, can you let me know why?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 25, 2007
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I've just been to a great talk about making a fuel cell that can be powered by sugar. I liked this talk for a number of reasons, first because it's a great, simple idea that if developed could be a real commerical success. Second, it was work done by an undergraduate as a research project. What better way to be inspired to carry on in research than to do a tangible project. And one that could perhaps bag someone a lot of money one day.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Diet coke won't power my phone" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 25, 2007
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Hello from the American Chemical Society's 2007 spring meeting in Chicago. This is my final destination on a long trip across the pond, and it's great. Chicago is lovely and sunny, and I'm looking forward to a host of chemical revelations at this the most enormous chemistry meeting imaginable.

Continue reading "ACS 2007 Chicago: Contaminated moon dust" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 25, 2007
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Watch for our reporter’s blog from the 2007 spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, from Sunday 25 March - Thursday 29 March. Katharine Sanderson will be posting all her entries here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on March 21, 2007
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Blackbirds aiming to feast on rice crops could perhaps be kept off with a blast of caffeine, according to research presented here.

Redwing blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) are no friends to rice farmers. They soon grow blasé over scarecrows, and swoop in to devour rice seeds. In Asia, farmers typically hire a corps of workers with slingshots to keep them away. In the United States, people are looking for a more practical, chemical solution.

Continue reading "Birds to get the caffeine jitters" »

Posted by Nicola Jones on September 15, 2006
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Well, yet another ACS has come and gone. I leave you with a rainbow of chemistry talks.

"The formation of chromium rich particles by the dissolution of red clays in groundwater monitoring wells" Mysterious chromium in Oklahoma wells found out

"Identification and characterization of off-flavor aroma impact compounds in canned orange juice"
Canned orange juice's flavor attributes are " tropical fruit, grapefruit, cooked/caramel and medicine" Yum.

"Research on environmental fate of phenanthrene in Lanzhou Reach of Yellow River" Math says the pollutants will be stable in the river sediment in 70,000 hours.

"The Pennsylvania Green fluorophore: A hybrid of Oregon Green and Tokyo Green for the construction of hydrophobic and pH-insensitive molecular probes" The search for the next fluorescent marker. Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be a band called "Tokyo Green"

"Highly efficient fluorene-based UV-blue light-emitting polymers with controlled effective conjugation length" Ah, making things that glow.

" Purple: The dye of dyes" A history lesson with recent archeological findings thrown in. I wish I had seen it.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 15, 2006
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Polymers and biology, together in perfect harmony. This meeting has intrigued me with a number of sessions about bio-related polymers. Timothy Long's group had two: one about determining which physical properties of polymers make the best vectors for gene therapy, and one about using DNA base pairs to make a polymer with two sets of properties. Heat it to disassociate the base pairs, and you get a flowy substance, cool to clamp them together again, and you've got something strong enough to do something with. Plus, there's bio-inspired dental polymers from Temple University, enzymes in polymers for sensors from Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and polymers derived from soybean oil, feathers, and rice. Finally, there was a presentation on making better cigarette filters from Salmon sperm, from the Ogata Research Laboratory, Ltd.

The general crush on bio-related polymers seems to stem from their ability to acquire reactive, "smart" properties from their biological components, as well as from the environmental advantages of making stuff from things that aren’t petroleum. Now, can they produce the self-drying jacket from Back to the Future II?

Posted by Emma Marris on September 14, 2006
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J.J. La Clair, the controversial chemist (for background, see http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060731/full/442492c.html) in the mutton chop sideburns, gave a talk today to a packed room. It was hot, stuffy, and young in there, as he talked us, mic-less, through what he called "an approach used in a number of labs that I've developed, optimized and made easier to use." As far as I could tell as a layman, the approach had to do with designing synthesis of natural products with florescent labeling and biological tests in mind. I'll leave an evaluation of the technical content to others more synthesis (or biology)-savvy than I. I'll just mention that his first slide talked about his Xenobe Research Institute (which is pronounced "zen-OH-bee"). His slide said that the company was working on 80 studies with academe, industry and government. He must be a pretty busy man.

He acknowledged the contretemps over his claimed synthesis of hexacyclinol—and even included on his acknowledgement page a shot of the T-shirt being sold which memorializes the controversy, saying that he salutes creativity in all forms. And yes, that was my headline on the shirt, but I didn't write it. Reporters very rarely write our own headlines—but we do get to write our own blog post titles. So I decree that the title of this post shall be: "butternut squash soup", since that is what I am eating right now.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 14, 2006
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-Our gung-ho enthusiasm for antidepressants mean that there is a certain amount of Prozac in the water these days. Freshwater mussels are less than pleased, though, since Prozac is making them release their larvae before they are viable. Freshwater mussels are sensitive creatures, and 70 percent of the species native to North America are extinct.

-In an irresistible item, a peculiar bird called the Black-Bone Silky Fowl has been found to be packed with carnosine, which has a rep for anti-aging and other positive health effects. The bird is a staple of Chinese medicine, and has soft white feathers over black flesh and bones.

-Check out the brand new Chemical Structure Lookup Service, hosted at NIH,. http://cactus.nci.nih.gov/cgi-bin/lookup/search

-Fucoxanthin, from brown seaweed, is taken up by the fat. It seems to both reduce adipose tissue and turn the fat a bright orange. Anti-obesity clinical trials are in the works.

-Adrienne Kozlowski, retired chemist, and her husband, have taken up hot air ballooning as a hobby. They say it is a perfect diversion for chemists, because manipulating the balloon is all a matter of mastering the laminar flow of the air.

-Peter Murray Rust, of Cambridge, on the future of Chemical information: "We are going to start mashing, and it is going to amaze the world."

Posted by Emma Marris on September 13, 2006
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I went to a talk on by UCSB's Robert Vestberg, on "Synthesis of hydrogels with well defined network structure using Click chemistry", because I have been hearing this buzzword floating around – "click chemistry"—and I wanted to figure out what it was.

But first, hydrogels. Hydrogels are polymers all cross-linked together and stuffed with water. They can be useful in medicine, for example, as soft contact lenses. They are biocompatible, key molecules can diffuse through them, and they are tough. Often the crosslinks are induced by a blast of radiation—like UV light, for example.

Vestberg and his colleagues are using "click chemistry" to do their linking. The click concept was described quickly as a reaction catalyzed by copper (I) that seems to be a one-size-fits-all room temp process that organizes your molecules into a regular structure. Functional groups can be knitted right in.

At least that was the impression I got. The meeting room in the Marriot was next to some sort of noisy kitchen or workroom, and it was hard to concentrate. It sounded like they were banging the lumps out of large cookie sheets on the other side of the wall. The "backing up" beep of some kind of vehicle was also intermittently heard.

Anyway, the hydrogels are made in little Teflon molds. You can make them with other fluids besides water, too. "We've done it in crappy Australian wine that I got from my boss," says Vestberg, who is pleased with his gels, which can be stretched to 1500% their original length before they break, much more than UV crosslinked hydrogels.

After the talk, I did some reading on click chemistry, which was invented by Barry Sharpless. It seems like a kind of Lego chemistry to me. You may be interested to know that searching the program of abstracts for this meeting with the term "click" yields 42 hits.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 13, 2006
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This meeting has it all. Today I caught a wonderful presentation by Frank Lee of Nanchang University about efforts to introduce “Good Agriculture Practice” or GAP (See the FAO’s page on this approach here), on the growing of herbs for traditional medicines. The idea is to make sure the medicines are what they purport to be, are not chock-full of mercury or other toxins, and are being harvested in a sustainable way.

So, field labs have been set up in Inner Mongolia to work of the harvesting of licorice there—used as a medicine to “invigorate the heart, lungs, spleen and stomach,” among other thing. The most interesting challenge they face is supervising the transition from collecting wild plants to growing them as a crop. They are watching to make sure that the domestication process does not affect expression of the active component. Awesome.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 11, 2006
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The hype-heavy world of haute cuisine has recently been rolling its tongue over the phrase “molecular gastronomy”, said to be practiced by such chefs célèbres as Pierre Gagnaire and Ferran Adrià. The trend is for innovative foods, and new ingredients. Shrimp treated with protein-knitting enzymes, so it can be coaxed into noodle shape, glass-like spheres of isomalt, filled with the smoke from roasting mushrooms, flavored foam.

But On Food and Cooking author Harold McGee, in a session this morning, opined that the term should be ditched. He noted that most chefs labeled as molecular gastronomists rejected the label and say that their experiments rarely take place on the molecular level. Apparently, the phrase came from a workshop about the science of cooking, held in Sicilly in the early 1990s—but the workshop was, according to McGee, was all about the chemical underpinnings of traditional cuisine, and has nothing to do with the Julia Child-meets-Dale Chihuly creations of the new cooking.

These chefs aren’t looking into molecules, says McGee, “they are cooking with ingredients. They are artists, not chemists.”

That said, there are some firm links between the new daring cooks and chemistry. Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal questioned the age-old custom of removing the jelly and seeds from tomatoes before cooking with them. To his palate, they were tastier than the flesh. He worked with Don Mottram of the University of Reading to see why, and they found that the jelly has tons more glutamic acid—the source of the famous meaty, nummy umami flavor (See http://www.nature.com/news/2003/030707/full/030707-3.html)--than the flesh.

So, special note to my boyfriend: I now have scientific proof that de-seeding tomatoes is silly.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 11, 2006
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I bet $100 that this is the first ACS meeting where a session has featured a slide of Jesus Christ with an erection.

Yes, you guessed it, it is the presidential session celebrating Carl Djerassi: chemist, novelist, and playwright. He was a top chemist for many years, specializing in synthesis of marine natural products, and collecting awards like pogs. Then, late in his career, he turned to literature. Lately, plays have been his thing, and at the end of the laudatory session, there was a reading of selections from his play "Phallacy". He played the character Prof. Rex Stolzfuss. But it was in a scene where a young art historian chats with a young chemist about the representations of Christ's genitals in art that the image, an engraving from the 1520s called “Man of Sorrows”, according to the online text of the play, appeared. Alas, no amount of googling can summon up an image, but rest easy, Jesus is clothed…but showing.

I am no theater critic, so I won’t say anything more about the play. I will say, though, as a feminist, it is fun to see the man who first synthesized progesterone—which led to the birth control pill.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 11, 2006
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Went to some sessions on hydrogen storage (you know, so that cars can run around emitting just clean, pure water vapor, and so that we can enter the "hydrogen economy") today and was introduced to ammonia borate by Bill Tumas of Los Alamos. I liked him, because he kept telling us "the hard cold facts". I've heard people talk about the "cold hard facts," but somehow, the "hard cold facts" seem even more bitterly inevitable. One of these was that no one has found a solution to storing hydrogen. The other is that his favorite candidate—ammonia borate—is not going to slot neatly into the current infrastructure.

The stuff may be good at holding onto hydrogen until you want to go vroom, and then letting it go, and it has a glimmer of a hope of getting the hydrogen compact enough so that one can drive 300 miles on a full cell—the standard measure of success—but it isn't possible to just shoot more hydrogen into it when it's gone "dry". So in this version of the hydrogen economy, one would buy a fuel cell, drive until it was used up, then return it to the fuel station for a full one. The old one would have to go back to the plant for some more complex chemical treatments. For some reason, everyone seems to think that this makes the technology completely impractical, but I don't see why. Everyone used to return their empty milk bottles when they picked up a full one. Maybe we can even take a page from the golden age of dairy and hire fuelmen, who will take the empty fuel cells from your front porch and leave full ones. They can even wear those swell hats.

Well, I suppose we ought to work out whether ammonia borate will even work before we start designing uniforms. In the meantime, I suggest Tumas get his own show on cable news called "The Hard Cold Facts with Bill Tumas".

Posted by Emma Marris on September 11, 2006
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The conference gets underway even before my plane lands. A fellow from a microscopy concern is leaning across the aisle chatting to a chemist about his latest model. In the airport shuttle to downtown, chemists wedge inside the van, their poster tubes making the whole process seems like some complex protein folding problem. And today the streets of downtown San Francisco are alive with chemists--teeming with badged hordes looking for a cup of coffee between sessions.

The ACS meeting is big. It has strong points and weak points, but most of all, it is big. This year sees the innovation of satellite registration desks in hotels throughout downtown, and a mind-boggling number of papers—almost 10,000. And I am going to "cover" the meeting. Ha ha ha.

Catherine Goodman, the assistant editor of Nature Chemical Biology says she ends up more or less walking the poster sessions as her fancy takes her. This is perhaps the perfect way to approach a meeting of this size—both posters and talks. Why see all the talks in your own field, when half of it will be old news? Why not stab a pin into the program or just amble into any old session? I pledge to spin the wheel of fate at least once this time—stay tuned for some chemical Kismet.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 10, 2006
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Calling all chemists! Emma Marris traipses across the golden gate bridge to San Francisco, to blog the American Chemical Society's latest gargantuan meeting, September 10th – 14th. With bustling pharma and biotech, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Cal Tech (sort of) all nearby, expect a strong showing from the locals. But as ever, the meeting is a 7-ring circus, and anything could happen, including an earthquake.

Everything below this blog entry is from last time. Read it to remember. Everything above here is hot, sizzling new content: read it and weep.

Posted by Emma Marris on September 08, 2006
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Will Critical Mass woo students to the field?

You are deep underground in a lab that once housed some of the finest minds in chemistry. But robots directed by a crackbrained artificial intelligence have taken it over and plan to use its equipment to destroy the world! After freezing an evil robot with your handy wrist-mounted hot-and-cold gun, you reach the Haber-Bosch room. And now you must correctly synthesize ammonia or die.

Read this story.

Posted by Nicola Jones on March 31, 2006
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It is a beautiful morning in Atlanta. The mockingbirds are singing; the cherry trees are in bloom; small children are running around in the fountain in the park. Too bad there are so few chemists here to appreciate it.

As I checked my suitcase into rolly daycare this morning (the bag check that minds about 800 bags over the conference) I realized the atmosphere had changed. Most food outlets are closed. Those that are open are practically stockless, and superintended by bored-looking people flipping the pages of novels. The exposition is now a landscape of wooden crates. The conference center as a whole is filled with the voluminous hush of the Death Star on a government holiday. I do feel sorry for those who give their presentations today.

Just once, I would like to see an ACS conference end with a bang. Why not group the hotshot presentations together at the end and then throw a huge open-bar party with a cocktail recipe contest? I can only imagine what marvelous and strange drinks chemists could come up with.

Posted by Emma Marris on March 30, 2006
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Just to prove that I can handle a non-quirky session, here is a quick summary of a much more typical ACS presentation. The thing is, all these stories are interesting. Well, okay, nearly all of them.

In a session on natural products, I saw a talk by Craig Crews of Yale, which I admired for its clarity. He took the audience through what must have been several years of work on a compound called epoxomicin...

Click to read on.

Continue reading "ACS: Totally synthesis" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 30, 2006
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An exclusive interview with Dejie Johnson, concierge at the Georgia World Congress Center. Johnson has been giving ACS attendees tips on restaurants and attractions for three days now. I asked her how chemists compare to the average conference-goer.

Click to find out.

Continue reading "ACS: Chemists are needy?" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 29, 2006
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An exclusive interview with Dejie Johnson, concierge at the Georgia World Congress Center. Johnson has been giving ACS attendees tips on restaurants and attractions for three days now. I asked her how chemists compare to the average conference-goer.

Click to find out.

Continue reading "ACS: Chemists are needy?" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 29, 2006
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A roundup of the pleasant and the very un at the ACS, with an emphasis on facial hair.

Click below to get the skinny.

Continue reading "ACS: The good and the bad" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 29, 2006
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Remember acrylamide, that nasty substance (neurotoxin, probably carcinogenic) that was formed in the process of frying carb-rich foods to various golden crispy lovely tasty states? They found it in Sweden in 2002, and everyone went nuts.

Well, the world's food chemists are on the case—trying to reduce acrylimides in their products without sacrificing flavor compounds.

Click to read more.

Continue reading "ACS: Chemists saving fried food" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
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I was having a plastic cup of red wine with Bartow Culp at a Division of Chemical Information reception (always good fun, those). Culp is the head of the chemistry library at Purdue, and a co-author on a number of chemistry reviews. Having a librarian collaborate on a review strikes me as an excellent idea. Someone who has been in the field for a long time undoubtedly knows all about their topic, but everyone has lacunae. A good librarian can fill in those gaps.

And an eloquent librarian, like Culp, can answer my question about why he finds the working with chemical information so satisfying. "Just look at the periodic table," he said. "Chemistry is very concise and very visual. Chemists will always start to draw on tablecloths." And then, after a sip: "You can't draw a picture of a black hole."

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
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I was having a plastic cup of red wine with Bartow Culp at a Division of Chemical Information reception (always good fun, those). Culp is the head of the chemistry library at Purdue, and a co-author on a number of chemistry reviews. Having a librarian collaborate on a review strikes me as an excellent idea. Someone who has been in the field for a long time undoubtedly knows all about their topic, but everyone has lacunae. A good librarian can fill in those gaps.

And an eloquent librarian, like Culp, can answer my question about why he finds the working with chemical information so satisfying. "Just look at the periodic table," he said. "Chemistry is very concise and very visual. Chemists will always start to draw on tablecloths." And then, after a sip: "You can't draw a picture of a black hole."

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
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At a talk about polyurethane insulation (this meeting has everything), Mike Mautino from Bayer Material Science showed a slide of a system he had designed to evaluate the insulating properties of picnic coolers. He had this to say: "This is my contribution to humanity. I am keeping my fellow man's beer colder longer. What more noble cause is there?"

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
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Yesterday I tested my receptivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), by touching a paper with the substance with my tongue. According to researchers, about 25 percent of people can't taste PROP at all, 50 percent perceive it as somewhat bitter, and 25 percent find it horrifically bitter.

One tiny touch and I was running for Atlanta's favorite beverage, coca-cola, to quench the flavor. It tasted wretched! The taste lingered for hours, but it was worth it to know that I am in the elite club of the supertasters.

Click below to read more.

Continue reading "ACS: Are you a supertaster?" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
Categories: American Chemical Society, American Chemical Society | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I tested my receptivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), by touching a paper with the substance with my tongue. According to researchers, about 25 percent of people can't taste PROP at all, 50 percent perceive it as somewhat bitter, and 25 percent find it horrifically bitter.

One tiny touch and I was running for Atlanta's favorite beverage, coca-cola, to quench the flavor. It tasted wretched! The taste lingered for hours, but it was worth it to know that I am in the elite club of the supertasters.

Click below to read more.

Continue reading "ACS: Are you a supertaster?" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 28, 2006
Categories: American Chemical Society, American Chemical Society | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Copper chemistry helps researcher tap into Africa's past.

Ancient copper jewellery and ingots in sub-Saharan Africa have been found to bear the unique signature of copper ore from Morocco. This strongly suggests that trans-Saharan trade began hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.

Read the story in news@nature.com here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on March 27, 2006
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A new standard is being rolled out at the meeting today. ThermoML – "an XML-based approach for storage and exchange of experimental thermophysical and thermochemical property data" is a system was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Click below to read more...

Continue reading "ACS: A new data standard. It's thermo! It's dynamic!" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 27, 2006
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This conference is full of great stories. Take this one, from the fabulous four-day symposium on food color quality. Surimi is a seafood product made of white fish and additives that often stands in for crab—its most familiar incarnation is the "crabstick". The fish is headed, gutted, and mashed up into a paste, which is then poured out and cooked in thin sheets and rolled into tubes. The tubes, cut just so, simulate the flaky texture of crab meat. Somewhere along the line, a bit of red is added to make it look really crabby.

In the United States and Europe, one of the most common dyes used for this is carmine, which, as you may know, comes from the crushed bodies of tiny insects that live on cacti in Peru and thereabouts. The bug is called the cochineal, and the dye is, according to Jae Park, surimi expert at Oregon State University in Astoria, "stable to light, oxidation, and heat." It does bleed a little bit, but this can be fixed with a good emulsifier, like polyglycerol polyricinoleate.

Carmine is not just used in the seafood stuff that one finds in the ubiquitous California sushi roll, but in a number of consumer products, including cosmetics. As Park says, "Crabstick and lipstick: basically same color."

Posted by Emma Marris on March 27, 2006
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I just saw my first periodic table tie. The ACS is on!

Posted by Emma Marris on March 26, 2006
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At a talk on green nanotechnology this morning, Barbara Karn—currently on leave from the Environmental Protection Agency to work at the Woodrow Wilson Center—said that the model and inspiration for the eco-savvy nanotechnologist could be a living cell...

Continue reading "ACS: Cells as nanofactories" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 26, 2006
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It is chilly in Atlanta on this first day of the American Chemical Society (ACS) conference, but thousands of chemists are here, name-badged, lining up for coffee, and toting poster tubes. For the next five days, I'll be blogging the weird and wonderful from the Georgia World Congress Center.

Meanwhile, many of the chemistry editors at Nature Publishing Group will be doing the same over at the The Sceptical Chymist, which is at http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/

And NPG has put together a bunch of goodies, including top session picks, at a special page for the conference: http://www.nature.com/conferences/acs/index.html

Finally, I will be hanging out at the Nature booth for an hour on Tuesday, between 2 and 3 PM, for those of you at the conference.

Stay tuned...

Continue reading "ACS: It's cold in Atlanta!" »

Posted by Emma Marris on March 26, 2006
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