I've spent the majority of my time in the organic sessions here at the ACS meeting, and the standout highlights have to be the Young Academic Investigators on Monday and the Arthur C. Cope award scholars symposium yesterday. In the first of these I particularly enjoyed talks by Richmond Sarpong and Chris Vanderwal who both spoke on uses of pyridines in natural product synthesis - although from very different perspectives.

Richmond described synthetic efforts towards a number of heterocyclic products from a common bromomethoxypicoline; readers with a JACS subscription can read about it here. While the structure of the original pyridine is fairly well intact in Richmond's final products, this could not be further from the truth for Chris who spends his time ripping pyridine rings open using the Zincke reaction, more details here.

Moving on to the Cope scholars, Paul Chirik's description of what he calls Modern Alchemy - essentially looking at how to use cheaper and abundant metals for catalysis was very entertaining. Apparently, if you need to explain to your mother why an iron catalyst might be better than a platinum one, then tell her that 'the price of stamps (self-adhesive) would increase by 5% per year because of the cost of platinum which can't be recovered from the glue.' Other highlights included Bill Jones dancing around the stage explaining the precession of a coordinated rhodium species around an aromatic ring, and Erik Sorensen's description of the rapid construction of complex molecules such as the natural product (+)-FR182877

While looking up the last link, I couldn't help noticing that Erik published this work with none other than Chris Vanderwal, and it leads me to this final thought: How many of the presenters in the young investigators session will appear in the Cope award scholars symposium at later ACS meetings and which future young investigators are they currently training?

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

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So, here I am in Washington DC for the fall 2009 meeting of the ACS. This is my first time in DC, so I arrived a day early to fit some touristy activities into my schedule - first stop a photo of The White House from as close as I could get (which in case you didn't know is a long way away...).

I then went to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the National Archives - and here's a chemistry fact for you - they're kept under pressurized helium. Now these are very important documents, and I'm not surprised to find that an inert atmosphere is used, but I did wonder about why helium was used instead of argon? Argon would probably be the synthetic chemist's choice for an inert gas, particularly as it's density makes it easier to work with, and as far as I know it's cheaper as well.

My final stop yesterday was the Smithsonian museum of American History. Being a bit of a science geek, I was surprised to find and immediately headed for the Science in American Life exhibit which is currently running - so if you have a gap in your schedule or, dare I say it, are sloping off from the sessions at the ACS, I can highly recommend it.

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

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There’s a huge amount of literature out there, and come April, we hope to be bringing some of the best of it directly to you in one neat little package called Nature Chemistry. Until the journal launches, we have to satisfy our cravings by bringing you a weekly dose of Research Highlights. Every week the Nature Chemistry team gets together to discuss our selections. We like to be as current as possible in terms of the work we select and to achieve this we are big fans of the RSS feed – it seems unlikely that anyone reading a blog would be unaware of this technology but for the uninitiated.

I don’t want this post to turn into a rant, so first let me say how much I like the new JACS homepage, especially the interactive pdfs. While the citation links have been available in HTML format for some time, I think I can safely say that a lot of people just like to read the pdf. However, at the same time, the RSS feeds for the ACS journals no longer include the table of contents images. In an ideal world, a title would tell you everything you need to know, but I do like a nice picture to whet the appetite.

Of course the ACS are not the only ones at fault, and I’d like to see the graphical contents in all journal RSS feeds – Angewandte Chemie also do not include images from their RSS feed and neither does Nature (although they don’t have a graphical TOC), but I guess you don’t miss what you never had!

Recently, we at Nature Chemistry were silently grateful to the creator of a pimped Angewandte RSS feed, so why not join me in my campaign – a plea to the ACS to reinstate the images in their RSS feed, or to our friend at the Organic Chemistry blog to work the magic again – either way it will make my week (it’s also possible that this is a relaunch bug…but just in case).

***Update - it does appear to be just a bug***

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Stephen Davey at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So, here I am in the Boston office of Nature Publishing Group....

My relocation, long foretold on our 'About the editors page', has finally happened. I've been looking forward to the move, but with some trepidation due to an anticipated large amount of form filling - complicated by the fact that I have to think carefully before writing a six-digit date!

As it turns out, the most difficult part was getting, not the visa, but the appointment for the visa application - ask me at a conference and I'll explain the details. My passage through US customs was also less time consuming than expected - taking no more than 20 min from landing at Logan airport to getting in a taxi to the office.

So down to the nitty-gritty of moving to a new country - in the last few days I've completed forms I-9 and W-4, signed up for 401(k) and several other things that also presumably have an alphanumeric code. In the spare time around the form filling, I managed to find a place to live - thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist.

Having got through what I believe to be the lion's share of the bureaucratic necessities, I can now work on the essentials. This morning, I looked up the values of nickels and dimes on Wikipedia - despite the many references to them in films, I was not sure of their actual value until today. The next thing on my list is to find somewhere to watch the football soccer - I don't understand american football yet, so any pointers will be welcome. Baseball is a little easier to follow, and as for hockey: "you mean ice hockey don't you?"

It's Thanksgiving soon, so I need to find a good recipe for pumpkin pie, or be nice enough to my new office mates to get an invite!

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Stephen Davey at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week both Neil and Gavin are away, although this time they are both working! Neil is attending the 6th International conference on Inorganic Materials in Dresden, and Gav is yet to return from China, having been at TACC 2008 (computational chemistry) and is combining his trip with some visits to labs close by.

So down to business with this weeks research highlights - Tim is first up writing about the an energy storage device that utilizes the special properties of graphene.

Gav writes about computational investigations into a catalyst that cleaves the immensely strong triple bond in dinitrogen - very topical given the conference he has been attending.

And...me, I'm covering a total synthesis that provides a tough test for no less than three pieces of synthetic methodology.

Finally a mention has to go to the cover of this week's Nature, with its special feature on the US election (see the story in The Times). To get the full benefit of this cover though you'll need a print copy (open it right out so you can see the front and back covers side by side - a truly fantastic accident).

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Stephen Davey at 05:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading my newspaper on the way to work this morning, I was surprised to discover that Jonny Wilkinson – England rugby hero for those that don’t know – likes a bit of quantum physics. Apparently, he was always full of self-doubt until he discovered Schrödinger’s cat!

I subscribe to the theory that if you claim to fully understand quantum physics then you’ve missed the point, so quite what he means by this you’ll have to find out in his new book, but it set me to thinking: does anyone take solace in chemistry? Personally, I like a good total synthesis, but it’s more likely to make me wonder if I could ever have come up with that particularly clever rearrangement or new methodology, than to solve any thoughts of inadequacy.

Do you have a favourite piece of chemistry to think about when you need a bit of reassurance? How about some chemical reaction dynamics (Gav?), or perhaps you enjoy a good crystallography table (Neil?). We’d love to hear from you.

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Posted by Stephen Davey at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Neil's away this week - enjoying Strasbourg - which means that I get the opportunity to introduce this week's research highlights (and myself) on TSC.

First up is Gav, covering a Nature Letter that explains how photoelectron spectroscopy can tell us more about why hydroxide ion transport in water is so fast.

Neil (the absent one), writes about a couple of papers which report water-free f-block ionic liquids. The luminescence properties are much improved when you can avoid water, and those based on dysprosium are magnetic as well.

And, the way gold catalysts are prepared can have a marked effect on their activity. Jane writes about some high resolution microscopy that shows that small clusters of 10 gold atoms are responsible for most of the catalytic activity.

Finally, some readers of TSC will be old enough to recall being allowed to use copper sulfate to grow some nice blue crystals at school. It's poisonous though, so you don't get it in chemistry sets anymore, which makes me wonder who supplies Roger Hiorns? He creates artwork by filling everday objects with copper sulfate solution and letting the crystals grow where they will - his latest creation 'Seizure' makes use of a derelict flat in London. Check out the video on YouTube.

Actually, I wonder if he also has a return agreement with his supplier? - after all those recrystallisations it ought to be worth selling back....

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

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