I just got back from my holiday in Thailand, which was very nice apart from an unfortunate bout of food poisoning. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in seeing this article from the Bangkok Post, which highlights just how crucial chemicals are in the real world (not that you’ll need much convincing). In particular, it demonstrates the importance of fertilizers.

Thailand is the world’s leading exporter of rubber, but crop yields are expected to be lower this year. The reason? It seems that a lot of the fertilizers being supplied to Thai rubber plantations are fake or sub-standard, despite the fact that the costs of fertilizers have doubled over the past year. This is causing much hardship for Thai rubber farmers, and presumably could have a knock-on effect for global rubber supplies and prices.

Everyone is aware of the consequences of fake drugs flooding the pharmaceutical market, but I hadn’t realized that a similar situation existed for fertilizers. The implications for the rubber industry and for farmers in particular are made clear in the Bangkok Post article, but if the problem extends to food-crop farming in developing countries, then the effects could be even more dire. Has anyone else heard of this problem?

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 06:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The London offices of Nature are blighted by viruses at the moment – I’ve currently got the worst cold that I’ve had in years, and several other scourges are also rampant, including the notorious norovirus (otherwise known as the ‘winter vomiting bug’). With the recent news that avian flu has apparently now been brought to the UK by migrating birds, I decided to see how chemists have been dabbling in the world of viruses.

So let’s start with avian flu. A fascinating paper in Nature Biotechnology uncovers what would need to happen at a molecular level for the virus to become transmissible between humans (subscribers can see the paper here, but there's also a C & EN article about it here). Infection is mediated by the binding of hemagglutinin (HA) proteins on the virus to sugars on HA receptors in the host. Ram Sasisekharan and his team have found that the shape formed by the carbohydrates is all important: the sugars on avian HA receptors form a cone-shape, but human sugars are arranged more like umbrellas. So, if the virus can mutate to bind to our ‘umbrellas’, we could be in trouble. Sasisekharan’s discovery might provide a way of checking whether new mutants of the virus could cause a human pandemic. None of this research would have been possible without recent advances in carbohydrate synthesis and mass spectrometry.

Those of you interested in nanotechnology may be interested to hear of a report in ACS Nano, which describes how quantum dots can be attached to cowpea mosaic virus to construct a minuscule memory device (click here for the paper). Mihri Ozkan and her group show that the resulting hybrid particles demonstrate reversible, bistable electrical behaviour, suitable for repeated write-read-erase cycles. Mind boggling stuff. I like the idea of making cyborg viruses, as long as they don’t give me a cold.

Meanwhile, John Robinson and his group report in Angewandte Chemie on the use of synthetic virus-like particles (subcribers can read the paper here). These star-like structures self-assemble from lipopeptides, and the authors have attached synthetic antigens to them. When injected into rabbits, the antigen-carrying particles trigger an immune response – the rabbits generate antibodies to the antigens. The authors hope that their particles have a bright future in the design of synthetic vaccines. I hope so too. Perhaps they can find a vaccine for the common cold. For now, I’ll just have to keep taking the paracetamol.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 05:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As regular readers may know, I occasionally come across chemistry-related newspaper articles on my commute to and from work - and this morning I found another one that I wanted to share.

Flipping through yesterday's edition of The Times on the way in today, I found an interesting little story about how one section of the population is perhaps not doing all they can in the war on climate change (if we can have a war on terror, surely we can have one on climate change?). Anyway, it turns out that the deceased could be doing more to reduce their carbon footprint...

In the article, 'Dearly departed encouraged to do their bit on global warming', a local council in Greater Manchester has suggested that the heat generated when those who have recently shuffled off this mortal coil are cremated, should be used to power the boilers and lights of crematoria. The council officials are treading carefully, however, with one of them admitting that, "If you look at it in black and white, some people might sit there thinking 'my relative is being cremated to heat the chapel'."

Much consultation is planned, however, and one local vicar has already given the plan his blessing, "As a final act of generosity, it's a lovely way for the dead to provide comfort for the living at a difficult time. I think it's a great idea," said Reverend Vernon Marshall.

Perhaps the most interesting fact I discovered as I read the article with a certain amount of morbid fascination, however, is that by the year 2020, it is expected that the biggest source of mercury emissions in Britain will be from crematoria. Mercury in tooth fillings vaporises during the process and is released into the atmosphere. Possible solutions include installing filters in crematorium chimneys... or perhaps a little post mortem dentistry, removing the dearly-departed's teeth before cremation (see this article from the LA Times).

One of my colleagues this morning asked if burial was any better - does the mercury eventually leech back into the soil and water, it may not be returned to the environment as quickly, but does anyone know if that is a potential problem?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy new year to everyone! I hope you were all able to take off a few days from lab-work/school-work/work and catch up on sleep, read a few good books, and decompress a bit...

It's been a long time since I've blogged, but I just wanted to tell you some great news - I'm very happy to announce that Stuart Cantrill will be the chief editor of Nature Chemistry (set to launch in early 2009)...

Some of you may have noticed that NPG is now searching for editors to join Stuart at Nature Chemistry, as well as a chemistry editor to take his place at Nature Nanotechnology...

If you have any questions about what life is like as an editor, please feel free to post it here and one (or more) of us will let you know our thoughts...

Hope you all had a great break!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Just every now and then, my train ride home in the evening is brightened up by some story I find in the (generally inane) free newspaper that I pick up from King's Cross.

Today it was a brief note about a story printed earlier in the day by another newspaper (one you actually have to pay for - in fact, most things in the free papers can be considered to be recycled news, however, I digress) - something along the lines of 'negative ions improve the performance of footballers'...!

So, I duly follow up when I get home and check out the original story, that can be found here.

It basically goes like this: negatively charged ions in the football shirts kick off a sequence of events in the body that ultimately leads to increased blood flow and speedier removal of lactic acid and an overall 2.7% increase in 'mean power'... and that means you could score more goals, perhaps.

On this matter I'm somewhat of a skeptical chemist - what about you?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Time to put your fancy new iPod/iPhone through its paces and download the new chemistry podcast from Nature, which can be found here.

In this show, find out about an exciting new approach to mass spectrometry, how tiny graphite particles replace biological membranes to couple redox enzymes and we speak to Nobel prize winner Richard Schrock about metathesis.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Best house-warming gift.

Ever.

Period.

Well, periodic, really...

Along with the fantastic wine, flowers and chocolates, we now have a fabulous periodic table shower curtain (Thanks Tom)! OK, we've all seen periodic table mugs and T-shirts, but a shower curtain of the elements - I didn't know such things existed...

What other periodic table paraphernalia have you come across - and can anybody beat a shower curtain!?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As you may have noticed (and some of you have commented on), The Sceptical Chymist has recruited a range of guest bloggers. Although NPG editors will continue to contribute, we wanted to add some new voices that can offer different perspectives on chemistry and describe their experiences from within (or beyond) the chemistry community. The team is as follows:

Materials Girl: In her own words, 'a wide-eyed undergraduate student who rambles on about anything university and [ultimately] chemistry-related that strikes her fancy'.

Sugar Daddy: A fourth year graduate student working in a chemical biology lab doing research that involves a 'little bit of synthesis, little bit of biology'.

Prospective Professor: A postdoc on the hunt for an academic position.

Rookie Rocky: Hubert is a brand new assistant professor facing up to the challenges of the job, including what it means to sit in the front row at seminars!

10 Miles from Academia: Jeff Johannes - a medicinal chemist at a major pharmaceutical company in the Boston area - offers us a different perspective on breakthroughs in chemistry.

Confessions of a former chemist: Even further away from academia, Mushy is a PhD-chemist who left it all behind to go and work in IT in the City of London, but still has a soft spot for all things chemistry.

So, there you go, an undergrad, a grad, a postdoc, an assistant prof, an industrial chemist and an ex-chemist - we hope you enjoy reading.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I only have time for a quick post, as I'm about to run off to a meeting - but I was in a baby gear/toy store yesterday, and I'm sorry to report that the children's chemistry sets were in the "Science & Magic" section.

That pairing really threw me for a loop - I guess any sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Are chemists anally retentive when it comes to chemical structures? Making sure that structures are error-free is certainly vital for a chemistry paper (and for an editor, one of the biggest headaches of the job). Just one wedge bond displayed as a hash could completely confuse the take-home message of a paper.

So imagine how annoying it would be if you saw a structure being repeatedly published with errors in it, and in lots of different places. This is just what has happened to Ian Fleming.

Back in 1967, he published a paper in Nature that finally nailed the absolute configuration of the structure of chlorophyll (Nature subscribers can see the paper here – it’s well worth a look). Yet he reckons that since then, whenever he has seen the structure reproduced, there is a 50:50 chance that the stereochemistry will be wrong.

Over the years, he’s tried to correct this where possible, including, on one occasion, an incorrect structure on a book cover. But it still happens. Out of curiosity, I had a look at the structure on Wikipedia - and sure enough, it was wrong (see for yourself, but be quick; I’ll contact them shortly to get it corrected). The actual structure can be found here at PubChem.

Who knows how often this happens? But then again, if a structure appears somewhere that isn’t necessarily directed at chemists (such as in the Wikipedia entry), does it really matter? Is it just the chemist’s equivalent of getting upset about the incorrect use of an apostrophe? I think it does matter - especially in sources on the web, which are increasingly being mined for technical information. But if you think I should just take a cold shower and calm down, by all means let me know.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate editor, Nature).

Posted by amitchinson at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

As they do every year, Thomson ISI have made their predictions about who will win this year's Nobel Prizes - chemistry included.

They seem to think that the Chemistry Prize will have an organic flavour this year... Do you think they're on to something? Will Trost, Danishefsky or Seebach be walking off with the big one any time soon - or indeed ever?

Another point of note is that Sumio Iijima is listed amongst the potential winners of the Physics Prize for his discovery of carbon nanotubes - this comes hot on the heels of being awarded the 2007 Balzan Prize for his nanoscience research.

Also, the one-million-dollar Kavli Prizes have recently been announced as well, the first batch of which will be given out in 2008. There are three of these, covering the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience and, last but not least, nanoscience - it could be quite a 12 months for Iijima.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Which chemical sends a shiver down your spine? Every chemist has their own personal least-favourite - in fact, I know some chemists that flatly refuse to use certain chemicals.

Much of this comes from personal experience – for example, I’ve seen two cases of diazonium salts blowing up, which was enough to put me off them. And I’m not keen on anything pyrophoric; one of my most stressful days in the lab involved 100 grams of diethyl zinc, which instantly ignites into bright blue flames upon contact with air.

Other compounds intimidate by reputation alone. Cyanide is a good example, although toxic chemicals never scared me much. I was surprised when an industrial student working for me didn’t want to use carbon monoxide, but this was because she’d heard tales of people dying after inhaling fumes from defective gas fires.

So what’s my all time worst fear? Hydrofluoric acid – the zombie flesh-eater of the chemical world. I only ever had to use this once, but without a doubt it was the experiment that brought me out in the coldest sweat. But with the recent news that the US Environmental Protection Agency are being presented with evidence that tetrahydrofuran may be carcinogenic (C&E News subscribers can click here for a brief report), perhaps the chemicals we should really be scared of are the solvents.

So what are your least-favourite reagents?

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 05:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Like Catherine, I'm a bit behind on scientific posts - so here's a quick recap of some of the talks I attended earlier in the week.

My Sunday morning started with an excellent session on malaria/anti-malarials - Solomon Nwaka from the World Health Organization's Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases 'kicked off' the session with a broad overview that really drove home why malaria is (still) such an important disease: every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria, and the disease is responsible for more that one million deaths each year. Anti-malarial drug resistance is a huge problem (and there aren't that many new drug candidates in the pipeline), so the session focused on several academic scientists who are searching for new drug candidates. This is often done as a collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture, a non-profit organization created to “discover, develop and deliver new antimalarial drugs through public-private partnerships.” (For more information on public-private partnerships, click here and here).

I was only able to stay for the first half of the session, but I heard Jonathan Vennerstrom talk about synthetic peroxide anti-malarials (including this simplified analog of artemisinin) and Paul O'Neill talk about analogs of amodiaquine that were active against drug-resistant strains of malaria (click here for a recent review on 4-aminoquinoline anti-malarials).

The debate about whether or not academic scientists should try to get involved in drug discovery can get quite heated (see Derek Lowe's take on it here; you might also be interested in this NRDD 'Outlook'). Though I understand why some scientists think that academics should avoid this area of research, many pharmaceutical companies aren't willing (or able) to pursue a drug discovery program that focuses on malaria or other important, yet neglected, infectious diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries. (NITD and GSK are important exceptions to this general rule...)

So my question is if many pharmaceutical companies aren't willing/able to tackle these problems, why shouldn't academic groups give it a try?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I only have time for a quick post, but I wanted to mention a few other blogs/bloggers that are at the fall ACS meeting - most of you know that Paul and Kyle are here, but it looks like journalists from C&EN and Chemistry World are blogging from the meeting (including Carmen Drahl, who used to post at She Blinded Me with Science/who now works for C&EN...)

It also looks like Mitch (from Chemical Forums) and Eric (from Homebrew and Chemistry) are here too... Have I missed anyone? If so, please add a link to their (or your) blog in the 'comments' section of this post...

It sounds like some of these bloggers will be at John Harvard’s Brew House in Harvard Square tomorrow night. I'll try to swing by for a round (and will see if I can convince any of the other NPG editors to join me) - hope to see you there...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

This Douglas Adams quote was one of the first things that popped into my head when I entered the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Simply put, the building is huge: "516,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space" with "3 exhibition halls each ranging in size from 162,000 to 184,000 square feet."

After looking at the floorplan, I realized that it would be pretty tough to rapidly hop from session to session - the convention center has two skybridges that you need to use if you're moving from the west side of the building to the east side of the building, so it can take 10 to 15 minutes to get from one session to another. This must be why the refrigerator in the press office was packed full of bottles of Gatorade/Powerade...

The first day of the ACS was great (more about the science in my next post), but I've yet to find a good place to grab coffee that doesn't have a huge line at all hours of the day - on my way to the afternoon session I saw people crowded around a table containing snacks and coffee. Alas, the giant drum of coffee was decaf! I saw another table further down the corridor, but it too contained only decaf coffee. Oh cruel world, why must you mock me so?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the fall ACS meeting is nearly here - a few NPG editors will be attending the meeting (including myself), so don't forget to check back for daily updates...

I also wanted to mention that we've put together another special issue of Nature that will be distributed at the meeting - in this week's issue, there's a News Feature on metal-organic frameworks and several papers:

- Structure-based activity prediction for an enzyme of unknown function by Hermann et al. (click here for the News & Views)
- Vitrification of a monatomic metallic liquid by Bhat et al. (click here for the News & Views)
- A transglutaminase homologue as a condensation catalyst in antibiotic assembly lines by Fortin et al. (click here for the News & Views)
- Selection and evolution of enzymes from a partially randomized non-catalytic scaffold by Seelig & Szostak (click here for the News & Views)

If you're going to be at the meeting, don't forget to swing by the NPG booth (booth #434) to pick up free issues of Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

And last (but certainly not least), Paul thinks we should meet for "[d]rinks or dinner at a neutral location" - depending on where and when it is, I'll try to swing by (and bring along a few of the other editors...) Hope to see you there!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although it could be argued that the most controversial summer signing is that of a certain Argentine footballer - who moved north from a smallish team in east London to the greatest football club on the planet – it may not be the most significant.

Northwestern University, recently dubbed ‘Nano U’, has also been dabbling in the transfer market this summer (not for footballers, however) and has recruited Fraser Stoddart, currently a professor of chemistry at UCLA and the director of the California NanoSystems Institute.

Obviously, Chicago is his kind of town...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It's now official.

As Josh mentioned a couple of days ago, Nature Chemistry is coming...

The press release can be found here.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been ages since I've posted, but I saw this news this morning and thought it'd be worth mentioning on the blog - the board of directors recently decided to continue Nature Publishing Group's foray into the chemical sciences, and has just announced that it is searching for a Chief Editor to launch Nature Chemistry:

Alongside the highest-quality original research, Nature Chemistry will cover news, commentary and analysis from and for the chemistry community, as well as striving to develop a voice that chemists care about. We require a dynamic Chief Editor who is able to develop, launch and establish Nature Chemistry as the essential publication for the chemistry community. The role will be based in NPG's Boston office.

Applicants must have a strong track record of research in a related discipline, as well as significant editorial and/or senior research experience. They must demonstrate a good understanding of the challenges faced by researchers in both academia and industry. This is a demanding and extremely stimulating role, which calls for a keen interest in the practice and communication of science. The successful candidate will therefore be dynamic, motivated and outgoing, and must possess excellent interpersonal skills. Applicants should include a covering letter stating their suitability for this post, as well as their salary expectations, a current CV and a statement (maximum 1500 words) that encapsulates their vision for the content, competitive position and longer-term development of Nature Chemistry.

Applications are due in a few weeks, so don't forget to mark your calendars if you're interested in this position... And best of luck to you if you decide to apply!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One thing that really irritates me is badly drawn ChemDraw structures (maybe I should get out more...).

Anyway, there is no excuse for a benzene ring not being a perfect hexagon - unless of course you’re showing perspective or drawing a fullerene or nanotube. Double and triple bonds should be well separated so that they don’t just look like thick bonds. And as for angles... unless there’s a really good reason for it not to be 120 or 180 degrees (depending on the hybridisation flavour of your [carbon] atoms), then there is likely something wrong; in flatland, even your sp3 centres should be 120 degrees unless you're showing the stereochemistry and need to draw all four bonds. Atom labels should be in a consistent font (preferably Helvetica) and should be of a size that does not require one to use some kind of electron microscope to read them.

Simple really... so why do a lot of ChemDraw structures that appear in papers or on slides at conferences look like a six-year old has drawn them with a crayon (and I mean a particularly untalented six-year old at that - one that probably wouldn't even win a Blue Peter drawing competition)? I think it’s just people being lazy...

I’ve been to a couple of conferences in the last month and gasped in horror (that may be a slight exaggeration) at some of the representations of C60 I’ve seen. Somewhat annoying is when the double bonds are drawn inside the pentagonal rings - please, can everyone just agree from now on to put them in the six-membered rings (surely it makes more sense that way?) . When I confronted one speaker about the ChemDraw crimes they had perpetrated, I was told that they’d just used the template... - and yes, it turns out that some of the C60 structures in the template library have dubious patterns of bonding...

Even worse, I see the occasional 5- and 6-bonded carbon atoms in fullerenes (and pyrene seems to fall into that trap as well). Maybe it shouldn’t get under my skin as much as it does, but this is how organic chemists communicate - and wrong is wrong. You wouldn’t use ‘2’ in an equation if it called for the square root of 2, so let’s be a bit more careful about our structures.

Right, soap-box carefully stowed away now for another day...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

On Wednesday night (June 27th), Nature Network Boston will be hosting their first 'pub night' at Tavern in the Square (in Central Square, Cambridge). Corie Lok, the editor of Nature Network Boston, recently blogged about this event, which will be "your chance to meet other scientists from the Boston area, including other members of and bloggers on Nature Network Boston and a few people from Nature’s Cambridge office..."

The pub night officially starts at 6:30 PM, and I'll be there for an hour or so; I think Catherine said that she's planning on being there for a little while too. So if you're in Cambridge that night, please swing by and say 'hello.' Make sure you come early, as Corie's buying the first 30 people a free drink...

Hope to see you on Wednesday night!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Apologies to our international readers for the U.S.-centric post, but the National Institutes of Health announced earlier today that PAR-07-353, a grant involving Cheminformatics Research Centers, has been canceled for "programmatic reasons." For those of you who haven't heard of the Cheminformatics Research Centers, they are part of the Molecular Libraries Roadmap Program (MLP), which is

an integrated set of initiatives aimed at developing and using selective and potent chemical probes for basic research ... [The MLP] was proposed to introduce high-throughput screening approaches to small molecule discovery, formerly limited to the pharmaceutical research industry, into the public sector... [and] is made up of the following major components: (1) access to a library of compounds (Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository); (2) access to bioassays provided by the larger research community; (3) support for the development of breakthrough instrumentation technologies; (4) access to a network of screening and chemical probe generation centers (MLPCN) where assays are screened and probe development is undertaken; (5) Pubchem, the primary portal through which the screening results of the MLPCN are made public and (6) the Cheminformatics Research Centers (CRCs) with multiple roles focused on high-level data analysis and dissemination with a focus on developing new understanding of the cellular processes (genes and pathways).

One reason why this is so surprising is because the grants were due next week (June 28th). I imagine the timing of this decision (and the decision itself) is bound to upset a number of people in this community, especially since many applicants were probably working around the clock to get their grant submitted before the (now non-existent) deadline...

Does anyone know more about this story or why the grant was canceled?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

[Editor's note: over the next few months we will feature guest bloggers from a range of backgrounds and hopefully some of these posts will turn into regular series... first up is Mushy, a former chemist who has left it all behind for the bright lights of the City!]

-------------

Posted on behalf of Mushy:

My name is Mushy, and I am a recovering chemist - it's been over 6 years since I ran my last chromatography column. I have been asked to write on the Sceptical Chymist every now and then to give the views of an ex-chemist.

After completing a PhD in supramolecular chemistry in the US, and following a rather meandering job path, the undisputed highlight of which was months of unemployment, I now work in IT in the City of London.

After finishing Uni, I was certain that I didn't want to work in chemistry. I had something of a long job search, most of which was spent mired in a Catch-22 where I was not qualified for the jobs which I wanted, and the only jobs for which I was qualified, I didn't want. In spite of a few negative experiences with - sour grapes notwithstanding - short-sighted companies which only wanted people with very specific degrees, nothing could be further from the truth. The skills I learned as a chemist - the methodical approach, the empiricism, the confidence, the flawless proff-reading - have served me well in an industry in which I had no experience at the outset.

I suppose that that's where I'll start summing up my inaugural post.

At work, I've never been asked to explain a [4+2] cycloaddition. The astrophysicists have never been asked their opinions on the Hubble constant. The chemical engineers have never become embroiled in heated debates about theoretical plates. The molecular biologists have never orated on the pros and cons of gel electrophoresis. The people who studied golf course management - well - they didn't get the job. What we all do use every day of our working lives, though, is the thought process that got us into science in the first place, and the excitement of finding out new facts and methods. That's the most transferable of all skills.

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Love 'em, hate 'em? It's hard to ignore them - 2006 journal impact factors were released by Thomson yesterday.

Expect to be bombarded with publishers telling you how much better their journals are than in previous years. I feel a little left out, Nature Nanotechnology won't get it's first impact factor until this time next year, until then you'll just have to take my word that we're good!

If you care (and have access), check out your favourite journals and how they did at Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge, under Journal Citation Reports...

More generally - how important is a journal's impact factor to you (or your advisor)? Does it influence where you publish, or do only publishers care about these metrics?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I was privileged to find myself having dinner with chemistry's newest Knight Bachelor (Sir Fraser Stoddart) at the Ritz Hotel last night, where we chatted about his visit to Buckingham Palace the day before - the bit where Her Majesty the Queen taps him on the shoulders with a sword. He recalled the sequence of events and the brief conversation he had with Her Majesty and has kindly agreed to share them with the readers of the Sceptical Chymist:

It all begins with Fraser being presented to Her Majesty by the Lord Chamberlain:

Lord Chamberlain: "May I present to Your Majesty, Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart, for services to chemistry and nanotology" (No, that last word is not misspelled!)

THE CEREMONY (the kneeling and sword bit)

Her Majesty: "He got that wrong, didn't he?"

Sir Fraser: "He certainly did, Your Majesty."

Her Majesty: "What should it be then, nanotechnology?"

Sir Fraser: "You've got it right, Ma'am"

Her Majesty: "It's about very small things, isn't it?

Sir Fraser: "Indeed, it's about tiny things that are 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, Ma'am"

Her Majesty: "That's exceedingly small. You work in America now, I'm told."

Sir Fraser: "That's so, Ma'am"

After approximately 18 seconds, apparently the average amount of time each person receiving an honour spends with Her Majesty, Fraser recalled that, "At this point, she extends her right hand, and I mine for she leaves me with no choice. A strong handshake is followed by a big approving smile from Her Majesty, and I am on my merry way."

I normally try to end these posts with a witty comment, but this one speaks for itself..!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here I am having a whale of a time at the Fraser Stoddart 65th birthday celebrations. Celebrating a birthday with science; I like it. I like it a lot. The line up of speakers is incredibly impressive. These are all people I would want to hear talk at, say, a huge meeting like the ACS. But the beauty of this conference is that you don't have to wade through 15000 abstracts to find the best speakers. They're all here, undiluted.

I wrote a news story about the festivities, but was just too late to include one of the highlights of the conference - Chad Mirkin has used his dip-pen nanolithography technique to draw Fraser's portrait in a one-molecule high layer of 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid on a gold surface. Unfortunately I can't post pictures here, but I will update later with a link to the pic. It's well worth seeing.

UPDATE: The portrait is here

Posted by Katharine Sanderson at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

There's an interesting news piece over at news@nature.com that caught my eye - a team led by Helge Riemann at the Institute of Crystal Growth is trying to generate a 'pure' sample of crystalline silicon-28:

The new barbell-shaped crystal, which weighs 5 kilograms and was completed on 23 May by Riemann's team ... is nearly isotopically pure. It was made from Russian source material, whose silicon was 99.994% pure silicon-28.

A standard kilogram is currently calibrated using the "international prototype," which "was manufactured in the 1880s [from] an alloy of 90% platinum-10% iridium" and is housed in the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in France. Over time, the loss and/or gain of atoms from the international prototype may have altered its weight - the news story suggests that it might be off by 0.1 milligrams/0.01% (but I couldn't find any additional information to verify that statement...)

Making this (two-million euro/2.7-million USD) piece of silicon was no easy task:

The researchers spent six months eliminating contaminating elements by repeatedly melting the silicon in an apparatus that does not touch the material. The resulting crystal is thought to contain one foreign atom to every 10 million atoms of silicon.

Talk about a pure sample...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In a couple of weeks I'm off to The Young(-ish!) Giants of Chemistry, a conference - and related fancy dinners - to celebrate the 65th birthday of Sir Fraser Stoddart. There's a pretty good line up of speakers - it's a combination of former students and postdocs, colleagues both past and present, as well as a selection of prominent researchers who are at least a generation younger than Fraser. There will also be a couple of poster sessions.

It's short notice, but Edinburgh in June is quite nice (so I am told), and there is some space left, so if you would like to come, check out the contact page on the conference website. For those of you who won't be able to make it, I'll probably find some time to blog from the meeting - with perhaps a few guest entries, and our next chemistry podcast will also include some content from the event.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to one of my colleagues for bringing to my attention an article in the education supplement of today's Guardian in which chemistry Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto expresses grave concerns about the future of British science. The piece contains some strong stuff, and here are some quotes I wanted to share with you:

About how the numbers of young people choosing a scientific training are in decline across the developed world, not just the UK, but some countries find other ways to cope:

"...over decades, the US has been spectacularly successful in making up its own homegrown science and technology shortfall by draining first western European scientists, and now eastern European and Asian scientists."

About the consequences of university vice chancellors - "who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing" - dispensing with science departments in favour of other courses:

"Just as cheap fast food has resulted in unprecedented levels of obesity, so this McDonald's approach to cheap, trendy, seductively soft courses designed for mass consumption in tertiary education has resulted in a plethora of students trained for non-existent jobs."

About the teaching of 'intelligent design' in some British schools:

"State funds are also being used to support some schools that abuse impressionable young people by brainwashing them into believing that non-believers will burn for all eternity in the fires of hell."

About the future of British science:

"Do panic!"

So, what do you think - is he right?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I was just browsing through The Times over lunch and found this story about students trying to cheat in an economics exam at the University of York.

It reminds me of my teaching days at UCLA, where, in my experience, cheating was rife (in the Chemistry Department at least - but I suspect elsewhere too). Sure, we'd check IDs, but also I'd often have two versions of an exam and alternate them along the rows of students. For multiple choice quizzes, all of the questions were the same, but the possible A thru E answers (yes, five options, not four) were re-ordered in one of the scripts. It was amazing how many times an exam was handed in, in which every single letter answer was wrong, but corresponded 100% with the letter answers on the alternate quiz.

The fundamental flaw that most cheats do not appreciate (or understand) is that they cheat because they are generally less intelligent than other students, which makes them a lot easier to catch... (as pointed out in The Times article above).

Anyway, at UCLA, unless you had videotape evidence and a signed confession, most students (not all, but most) got off with a slap on the wrist. So, it was nice to see how it was dealt with in this incident at York, as reported in the last line of the article in The Times: Each was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay £35 costs.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I was out at the pub last night with a few other editors, and one of my colleagues mentioned that an editor from Nature Materials is leaving the company (and the country) - while she'll be definitely be missed by all, this means that Nature Materials is searching for a new associate editor to join their team:

We are particularly interested in applicants with expertise in bio-inspired, biomedical and biomolecular materials, but we would welcome applications from outstanding candidates in any area of materials science.

The ideal candidate should have a PhD and preferably postdoctoral experience with a strong research record. The successful candidate will play an important role in determining the representation of their field in the journal, and will work closely with the other editors on all aspects of the editorial process, including manuscript selection, commissioning and editing of Reviews and News & Views, and writing for the journal. A key aspect of the job is liaising with the scientific community through laboratory visits and international conferences.

If you're interested in the position (which will be based in the London office - with Stuart and Andy), you'll need to apply soon - applications need to be in by June 4th...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 06:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every six months or so, I pop over to England to catch up with my colleagues in our London office (NPG's largest office). I love visiting this city, and it's not just because I get to use words like 'skint' and eat fantastic Indian food every night...

But I was thinking about how difficult it must be for people who move to a new country to start their Ph.D.s/post-docs/jobs - in addition to adjusting to a new lab/co-workers (which can be difficult even if you're working in a familiar city/country), you have to learn how things are done/how things work in your new environment. As trite as it sounds, so many things can be so different.

For example, I lived in London for two months when I started at Nature, and I'm embarrassed to say that I had to dig out the manual for my combo washer/dryer to figure out how to operate it. (I thought I was doing something wrong because my clothes never came out 100% dry - it turns out that the machine in my apartment didn't use heat to dry the clothes, just an extended spin cycle...) Even going to the pub can be problematic: we had a German post-doc in our lab who frequently forgot to bring his passport when we went out for drinks. Despite the fact that he was in his mid-30s (and clearly looked old enough to drink in the U.S.), he had a difficult time convincing waiters/waitresses to serve him without ID...

For those of you who changed countries when starting your Ph.D./post-doc/job, I was wondering what little differences were the most frustrating for you? And for those of you who are living in a city/country you know well, how do you help your new co-workers adjust to their new environment? (For example, I've heard that some schools/labs distriubte packets that contain local information, FAQs, etc. - are these useful/helpful?)

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The office coffee machine broke down this morning, so I've been using Coca-Cola to fight off the postprandial dip. I rarely drink soda (aside from the occasional Cuba Libre), so I'm usually the last to know about (crazy) new kinds of soda. But there's a case of Diet Coke Plus in our office refrigerator - you might not have seen it in your local supermarket, but it's a new version of Diet Coke that contains several vitamins and minerals:

Each eight-ounce serving of Diet Coke Plus provides a good source of Niacin (vitamin B3), vitamins B6 and B12, zinc and magnesium (15% Daily Value [DV] for Niacin, B6 and B12, 10% DV for zinc and magnesium).

Great news, no? Now you don't have to take that pesky multi-vitamin every day. Just have a few cans of Diet Coke Plus and you'll be all set...

Not a fan of Diet Coke? Not a problem: PepsiCo is responding with the launch of Tava this fall, which will contain "vitamins B3, B6 and E, and chromium." (Chromium?)

I'm just waiting for them to combine soft drinks with OTC medication: "have a hangover and can't stay awake at your morning meeting? Try new Coke NSAID - it comes in two flavors: cherry aspirin and vanilla ibuprofen..." Yum...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My fellow Cambridge-London commuters; did you work it out? Once you know that it depicts a gene, it’s annoyingly obvious. But despite travelling past it by train about three days per week, I failed to identify the thousands of brightly coloured bars painted on the cycle path next to the rail track near Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s hospital as a nucleotide sequence. It should have been a clue that only four colours are used.

It probably comes from generally not being very biochemistry minded, as a straight-physics editor. Nevertheless, a friend of mine mentioned he had heard about the biology-inspired cycle path artwork and after some quick Googling, the rumour was confirmed; the colourful sequence stands for the BRCA2 gene, implicated in breast cancer and discovered in 1995.

What a good idea to combine scientific topics with railway scenery. After five years of commuting I would welcome more of these puzzles along the rail track to keep me entertained!

Liesbeth

Liesbeth Venema (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry thinks that the standard of mathematics amongst students heading off to university to pursue science degrees in the UK is poor in comparison to that in countries like China.

To back up his point, the RSC website has reproduced a question from a Chinese university entrance exam and is offering a fairly decent cash prize (500 GBP) to tempt people to send in their answers - the deadline is noon today (London time), so sorry for the short notice. The BBC has even covered this story, and for comparison, shows a question that is used in the first year at a UK university to test the mathematics ability of students.

Now, the UK question is something I was doing at school when I was about 10 (this is a rough guess, it could be plus or minus a few years). Admittedly that was a while ago, but the human race hasn't gotten that much more stupid since - has it?

As for the Chinese question... well, I spent a certain amount of time last night (I'm embarrassed to give exact details) with pencil and paper trying to figure out the answers. I've got some 'answers', but let's just say I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they are not altogether correct - I might confess when the real answers get posted.

Have a go - see how you do... and let me know!

***UPDATE - THE QUESTION IS NO LONGER ON THE RSC WEBSITE, BUT CAN BE FOUND HERE***

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

You may have already seen this news story in C&EN about a recent trial in Philadelphia: Merisant (the company that produces Equal and NutraSweet) has sued McNeil Nutritionals (the company that makes Splenda) because Merisant doesn't think it's fair that Splenda's marketing campaign includes the phrase "made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar."

This is the kind of advertising campaign that makes most chemists cringe, and - though this may sound like a petty dispute between two rival companies - I think we need to hold companies accountable for exploiting the general public's lack of scientific knowledge. Unfortunately many people will think: Splenda is not sugar, but it is made from sugar - so it must be safe, right? (Wasn't palytoxin made from sugar?) Though this sort of ad campaign wouldn't work on many scientists, it certainly worked on the general public: "sales of Splenda were weak in 2001, when McNeil launched an ad campaign saying the sweetener is made from sugar and including the phrase 'but it's not sugar.'" Since then, "Splenda has eclipsed Equal in the lucrative artificial sweeteners market" - and it's not like Merisant can counter with an ad campaign, saying that Aspartame's "made from phenylalanine, so it tastes like phenylalanine"...

It should be an interesting trial, as it's bound to have "phalanxes of neurobiologists and chemists as expert witnesses." (As an aside, I guess that the answer to Stuart's question is 'a phalanx of chemists'...) And the best part is that it's a jury trial, so anything can happen...

Do you think they'll use voir dire to exclude people who prefer natural sugar or are loyal to one of the two brands? Maybe I should offer my services, as I'm pretty indiscriminant when it comes to sweetening my coffee...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Kyle's blog entry on writing scientific papers got me thinking about an important - and underappreciated - part of submitting your work to a journal. So I thought I'd write down a few of my thoughts about cover letters. A caveat, of course, is that these are just my opinions - maybe other NPG editors can chime in and let me know if they agree/disagree with the items on this list...

1. You don't need to discuss much, but always submit a cover letter (unless the journal doesn't allow it) - I obviously can't speak for editors at other journals, but I always read the cover letter. It's often the first thing an editor reads, so don't miss out on a chance to make a good impression.

2. You don't need to be coy, Roy - the cover letter should contain a brief summary of the work, but be careful not to over- or underplay the discovery. If there are other key papers that have been recently published (i.e., this work refutes the model proposed in that paper), then point them out in the cover letter too - this part of the letter can be used to put your work into a broader context and highlight certain aspects that were unexpected/surprising.

3. Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation - it's fine to assume the reader is a Ph.D.-level scientist, but I think it's worth remembering that they may not be intimately familiar with every detail of your particular system. For this reason, I think it's worth taking the time to highlight the main points/the major implications of the work (see #2, though) without getting too bogged down in the technical details. If it's the first time anyone's shown X, then that's worth highlighting - just don't forget to explain why X is so important...

4. Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Microsoft Word's spell-check can be very helpful, but I think it's worth asking someone outside of your immediate field to read through your cover letter (and paper) to see if they notice any spelling/grammatical errors or confusing sentences/paragraphs. (But don't get too worried - you don't need to buy a Chicago Manual of Style to write a good cover letter...)

5. If you've talked with an editor about the work (at a meeting, for example), definitely mention this in your cover letter. This is less important if the team of editors is fairly small (but I think it's still worth doing) - at Nature, there's a fairly large editorial team and your paper may not be assigned to the person you talked with (this is especially true for multidisciplinary work). Though we circulate new submissions to editors who handle papers in related areas, it's always good to know if you've talked with someone else on the team, as this will ensure that they see the paper before any editorial decision is made.

6. Always suggest referees - most journals let you list a few potential referees that you feel are particularly qualified to review the work. But don't put down your old Ph.D./post-doc advisor or someone who you've recently published with (as many editors check PubMed or other databases before contacting referees) - even if there is no actual conflict of interest, many editors avoid a situation where there could be a perceived conflict of interest. These lists tend to be useful starting places when contacting referees (especially if there is a special technique involved or if the paper involves a discovery in a relatively small field).

7. Nature allows authors to submit a short list (usually two or three names) of people working on related work (or people who the authors feel may not be able to act as an impartial referee). This is very useful information, as (unfortunately) competition and bias exist, and it's best to know this before we start contacting referees. But please keep the list short - I've seen entire departments or schools listed in this section - or you may get an email from the editor asking you to revise your list.

Hmm - I think that's it. I guess I'm a few shy of 50 - any other NPG editors want to add their thoughts?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I was chatting with a pregnant co-worker yesterday about how many old wives' tales there are about 'predicting' the sex of a pregnant woman's fetus. For example, she mentioned that there's an old wives' tale in Greece that says that if you have a turtle in the house, and the turtle grows faster from neck-to-tail than from side-to-side, it's a girl. Otherwise, it's a boy. (Or maybe it's the other way around?)

I was thinking about this last night and realized that - though I'm generally quite skeptical and I don't believe in old wives' tales - I was fairly superstitious back in graduate school. I'm the proud owner of a 'lucky' calculator that came to almost every exam I've taken since 9th grade. And there were certain t-shirts I wore to lab on 'important' days (maybe when running a reaction for the first time or when I was performing a key biochemical/cellular assay...) I wasn't alone in this regard: other people in the lab had 'lucky' pens or certain rituals they performed before doing an important experiment...

How about you? Any superstitions or rituals that you do (or did) in the lab that don't make any scientific sense? Do you ever have trouble reconciling your scientific/logical side with the superstitious side?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

I came home today to find my copy of Chemical & Engineering News waiting for me... yes, I know, we can get it online, but I like flipping through the real thing. What is unusual about this picture? Well, the issue of C&EN in question is from March 5th, the one with the technical program for the ACS meeting in Chicago - the meeting I returned home from 4 days ago...

I had wondered where it was... I like to browse through the programme before the meeting and get an idea of what I want to see - and the online version is only slightly better than useless (yes, the search feature is great, but browsing is tortuous). Anyway, when the March 26th issue showed up a few days ago with George Whitesides smiling at me, I didn't think twice about it.

Sure, I live in the UK, so my copies of C&EN have to cross an ocean, but it's all a bit inconsistent... George shows up a few days before the issue that is three weeks older... I don't get it. To be fair, it wasn't much different when I was at UCLA, two or three issues would often show up at the same time and it seems as though I'm not the only one with this problem. If I thought it would make a difference, I'd think about paying my membership dues on time...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that ACS Chicago is finally behind us and we've all returned to a mountain of work, whether it be manuscripts or reactions, I just wanted to put up a quick post and point out that our blogroll has been updated... no more Tenderbutton or Endless Frontier, but a whole host of other fantastic chemistry related blogs for you to read. The blogosphere (surely this is not a real word yet, is it?) is constantly (and rapidly) evolving, so if we've missed any blogs or sites that you think we should be linking to, please let us know - and we'll consider them for the next update.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I made it in to Chicago late last night (only two hours late, which for isn't that bad for O'Hare...) There must have been a few chemists on my flight, as I wasn't the only person who chuckled when they announced that our pilot's name was Dave Evans...

I got up early this morning to check email, plan my day at the conference, and make a few last minute adjustments to an iPod playlist (it's a 20-25 minute bus ride from my hotel to the convention center). When traveling for work, I usually create a playlist to 'match' the location of the conference: Radiohead works well if you're heading off to an RSC conference, but a meeting in Chicago really calls for some Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters... (This isn't always easy - I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the 2009 ACS meeting in Salt Lake City. Any suggestions?)

Anyways, this morning I saw a great talk from Dennis Dougherty - most of the talk focused on cation-pi interactions in ligand-gated ion channels (for example, the Cys-loop superfamily) and how his laboratory has used unnatural amino acid mutagenesis to dissect how nicotinic acetylcholine receptors work (click here for his Nature paper from 2005 - I think it's a great demonstration of how organic/physical organic chemistry can be used to reveal how a biological system works...)

After grabbing a quick (and remarkably expensive) bite to eat, I went to Linda Hsieh-Wilson's and Jotham Coe's talks, both of which were great. Coe talked about Varenicline/Chantix, which looks like it'll really be able to help people who want to quit smoking.

If you're blogging from the conference, please let us know/please feel free to mention it in the comments section - so far, I know that

Richard from Chemistry World

Egon from chem-bla-ics

Kyle from The Chem Blog

are here (I'm not sure if all of them are blogging, though...) As Katharine mentioned, her news@nature blog posts can be found here.

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

As you probably guessed, several editors will be attending the spring ACS meeting next week - you might remember that we created special conference websites for the spring and fall ACS meetings last year. This year there's been a major overhaul to our Chemistry Portal - in addition to the list of recent content from Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Protocols, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, and news@nature.com, there's a new section entitled "Looking Back."

The "Looking Back" page contains a list of Nature chemistry papers that 'caught our eye' for one reason or another and were published between 1950 and 2000 - there are a few 'classic' Nature papers (for example, Watson & Crick's Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid and Kroto et al.'s C60: Buckminsterfullerene) and a few you might recognize from courses you took in college or graduate school (for example, Jones et al.'s paper Stereochemistry of phosphoryl group transfer using a chiral [16O, 17O, 18O] stereochemical course of alkaline phosphatase and Nicolaou et al.'s Total synthesis of taxol). There's even a 1950 paper from RB Woodward (Structure of chlorodesoxypatulinic acid) and a 1969 paper from EJ Corey (Biological activity of synthetic prostaglandins)... Have a favorite? Think we missed a key paper? Please let us know...

As Katharine mentioned yesterday, we've also put together a special issue of Nature - the issue is packed full of chemistry, so if you're at the meeting, swing by the NPG booth and pick up a free copy...

There's a News & Views Q&A on C-H activation from Bob Bergman, a review article from David Gorin & Dean Toste on relativistic effects in homogeneous gold catalysis, a Careers and Recruitment piece in our Naturejobs section, and several primary research papers:

Total synthesis of marine natural products without using protecting groups by Phil Baran et al. (click here to read the N&V)

Biasing reaction pathways with mechanical force by Charles Hickenboth et al. (click here to read the N&V)

BluB cannibalizes flavin to form the lower ligand of vitamin B12 from Michiko Taga et al. (click here to read the N&V)

We'll be adding blog entries throughout the conference, so please check back frequently to see what we’re writing about...

See you at the meeting!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We’ve decided to create a chemistry eTOC (an "electronic Table of Contents") that will highlight recently published chemical & biochemical papers from Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, and Nature Protocols.

For now, the chemistry eTOC will include ‘back half’ content (primary research and review articles) from all eight journals and ‘front half’ content (editorials, news features, news & views, etc.) from Nature. (Our long-term goal is to include ‘front half’ content from the research journals as well…) In addition, the eTOC will contain recent blog posts from this blog, highlight several chemistry jobs from our NatureJobs website, let you know about other developments from NPG in chemistry, and will occasionally include content from other NPG titles (for example, the recent Nature Reviews Microbiology review entitled "Microfabrication meets microbiology" and the 2006 Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology review entitled "A chemical toolkit for proteins – an expanded genetic code").

We’re hoping that this eTOC will make it easier for chemists who only read one or two NPG journals find interesting papers/reviews/etc. that are published in other NPG journals (for example, ones that they rarely/never read from cover-to-cover).

The first eTOC will go out during next week's ACS meeting (on Monday, March 26th) and future eTOCs will be sent out twice a month - so please sign up today!

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)
Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A little while ago I read that the French firm J&M Plast, part of the European packaging group Sphere, was turning to potato starch to make a new biodegradable plastic material for bin bags (unsurprisingly called ‘Bioplast’). L’Usine Nouvelle reports on it here - the link is in French but you’ll find an English version on Matthieu Fossoux’s blog. Biodegradable polymers are now widely investigated – starch-based polymers, polylactic acids (PLA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), naturally produced by bacteria, being among the most promising.

Meanwhile, retailers are increasingly switching to a “pay per bag” policy. This has proved to be very effective in the past, with a reduction by 90% in plastic bag consumption in the Republic of Ireland, where customers have been charged per bag since 2002. The Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea has also adopted a similar policy in the UK, and is reporting a massive 95% drop since last June. Ikea is now extending this scheme to the US and all the profits (with a limit of $1,750,000 within 12 months) are to be donated to the non-profit organization American Forests to plant trees and offset carbon dioxide emissions.

While too many shops still routinely give out plastic bags, these reports are certainly encouraging – and the great news is: we can all contribute.

Anne

Anne Pichon (Intern, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery)

Posted by Anne Pichon at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I’m going to be moving house in a few days time, and the packing process is in full swing. Yesterday, as I was emptying my cupboards, I found some old notes for a talk that I gave at a local school. It was aimed at ten-year-olds, and was intended to fire them up about chemistry.

As I recall, the talk went quite well. I finished off with a few ‘kitchen chemistry’ experiments — indicators made from boiled red cabbage, acid-base reactions with vinegar and sodium bicarbonate, anything that was safe, colourful and went ‘pop’. The teachers asked the kids to write about what they’d seen, and showed me some of the reports about a week later.

I was shocked to see that almost every single report began with the words “When I found out it was a talk about science, I thought it was going to be really boring.” Fortunately, they always went on to say they actually really enjoyed it, and I was pleased to see how much they’d taken in.

Talking with the teachers, they said they weren’t surprised at the children’s initial response, as they often didn't have time to teach some of the more fun aspects of science. This struck me as quite worrying, given recent concerns in the UK that science has fallen out of favour with university students.

So is chemistry education, especially for younger students, too restrictive? Is the situation different in other countries? And did any of you get hooked on chemistry because of an inspirational teacher?

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn't make it to the essay about Mendeleev that I mentioned earlier today... got sidetracked by an interesting comment piece by Professor Raymond Tallis in today's Times about the public's perception of science. It's definitely worth a read and can be found here.

This led me to Sense about Science - a charity that provides a bridge between the front lines of science and the general public. The section on making sense of chemicals should be mandatory reading for everyone...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you ever considered how far chemistry has come in such a short space of time? As a News & Views editor, I get to look through the really old issues of Nature, searching for interesting snippets that can go into our ‘100 Years Ago’ section. It’s a real eye-opener to see how little we knew in 1907, and it sometimes makes me nostalgic for a more innocent age. So, I thought I might indulge myself (and hopefully you too) by picking out some choice chemistry from the February 21, 1907 issue of Nature.

In the ‘Letters’ section, there was the latest correspondence in a long running debate about the conditions required to rust iron. There seemed to be a consensus that oxygen and water were required, but more controversially some people thought that carbonic acid was also necessary. And how could it be explained that iron immersed in potassium dichromate solution doesn’t corrode?

Chemists were still very interested in explaining the properties of materials such as leather or wood, so it comes as no surprise to find a letter describing a chemical test for the strength of wheat flour. To be precise, the author was trying to find a physical parameter to explain why different flours give different sized loaves from the same quantity of flour. The answer depends on the amount of carbon dioxide liberated upon the addition of yeast; this in turn depends upon the amount of sugar in the flour — another mystery is solved!

Medicinal chemists and those of a pharmaceutical bent may be interested to hear that a plant growing on the plains around Kuala Lumpur had apparently been identified as a cure for ‘the opium habit’. Quite sensibly, however, the author comments that “it would be premature to express a definite opinion until a larger quantity of the material is available for chemical analysis”. It’s hard to imagine how they could have successfully analysed it in 1907, but you’ve got to give them full marks for enthusiasm.

So, what to conclude from all this? One thing that strikes me is that people back then seemed much more willing to debate issues in the open — the arguments about rust had been rumbling on for weeks, with many disagreements and new revelations appearing all the time. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to happen so much now. Have scientists become more secretive, or polite? Or is research nowadays more competitive, so that people are less inclined to disclose their results freely?

Posted by amitchinson at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Catherine’s entry on toys (here) reminded me of clothing and accessories items I had seen earlier. Kyle at Chem Blog has been selling T-shirts, mugs, wall clocks or postal stamps – which are legal in the US and everything. I didn’t even know that was possible, but I just checked and found out that, in several (all?) countries, you can indeed customize stamps.

The folks at YellowIbis also make T-shirts featuring chemical structures. They picked molecules particularly relevant / amusing – so you can let everybody know that you’re cool as *insert menthol structure*, wear a green jumper showing the structure of a “lucky” 18-crown-6-ether for Saint Patrick’s Day, or alternatively you might want to give this T-shirt to a labmate.

In particular, I’d come across the made with molecules jewellery line, representing the actual structure of certain molecules influencing our behaviour (such as neurotransmitters or hormones). In a less obvious way – except for the DNA ones – the design of these items at Sci Wear also refers to chemical substances, each piece containing the actual microscopic picture of a molecule.

Which molecule would you like to wear? Personally – and you might say I’m biased – I can’t decide between the caffeine necklace and the chocolate (theobromine) earrings...

Anne

Anne Pichon (Intern, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery)

Posted by Anne Pichon at 04:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This is my first post...it's all very exciting...so here goes! Has anyone been listening to crusading environmental chemist Jim Lovelock recently?

Bizarrely I fell asleep to his voice on Sunday night then woke up to it again in the morning (on Radio 4 of course). Lovelock strongly believes that nuclear is the only viable energy option for the future, because climate change is ‘past the point of no return’ and renewable energy is underdeveloped. Read a Times review of his latest (and rather pessimistic) book and find out why he says wind farms aren’t green.

Five ways to save the world on BBC2 Monday night presented high tech solutions to climate change. What do people think about these ideas, or about nuclear power for that matter?

Samia

Samia Mantoura (Intern, Nature Physical Sciences)

Posted by Samia Mantoura at 05:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi everyone, this is my first entry so I thought I’d blog about… well, blogging.

Last week I attended a talk by Tony Hey, from Microsoft. He was speaking about e-science and, among other things, talked about CombeChem, an EPSRC project based at the University of Southampton. A small part of the project (see this BBC news article last year) involves replacing the traditional notebook by a digital form. The degree of privacy of the digital lab book could be determined by the user (only themselves? their research group? their university?). Of course the ultimate openness in science is Jean-Claude Bradley’s Open Notebook Science initiative at Drexel University, where he and his group use a wiki as a lab notebook (UsefulChem) and make all their data publicly available. Bill Hooker at 3 Quarks Daily also refers to it in his trilogy about the future of open science, where his posts progress from Open Access to the research literature (here), to the “openness” of data (here), to a fully open practice of science (here).

Nobody can really predict what the future of science will look like. But for now, would you consider blogging about your unsuccessful experiments - those that will never make it into a paper or thesis - to make them available to everyone?

Anne

Anne Pichon (Intern, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery)

Posted by Anne Pichon at 05:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I was just talking with Catherine, and we can't remember if "a week in the library will save you a day in the lab" or if "a week in the lab will save you a day in the library"? I guess if you're starting a new project, maybe it's best to set up a whole bunch of experiments to see what works (steering clear of the dogma you’d find in published papers). But if you're nearing the end of a total synthesis, you probably want to play it safe with your milligram/sub-milligram quantities of your natural product and spend a bit more time in the library trouble-shooting problems...

What about other quotable quotes? Was RB Woodward right ("A scientist has to work very hard to get to the point where he can be lucky.") or was Ralph Waldo Emerson right (“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”)? (The Google fight results are closer than you'd think...) Is time on your side or does time pass more quickly as your Ph.D./post-doc progresses?

What do you think/what's your scientific philosophy? Does it match up with the prevailing philosophy of your lab? What other quotes (or song lyrics) come to mind when you think about the last six months of your scientific research?

Unfortunately, we aren't able to set up a poll on the blog, so we'll have to do it the old fashion way - please leave us a comment with your thoughts...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I must admit, I really enjoy riding the bus to work - it's not just because of the unusual people you tend to meet on public transportation (though that's half the fun), but because the rides are long enough for me to skim through various journals to see if there's anything I want to read later on in the day. Normally there are a few things that catch my eye, and I'll set them aside for a lunch break (or while I'm waiting for the bus at the end of the day). But my plan to quickly skim through this week's Science failed completely - it's jam-packed full of interesting articles, and I needed to set aside a few hours to read through them all.

It's a special issue focused on 'Sustainability and Energy,' two topics that are obviously important these days - it starts out with a few 'Profiles' of major players in the field (I especially enjoyed reading the ones on Dan Nocera, Jay Keasling, and James Dumesic) and then there's a number of 'Perspectives' (I'd recommend starting with the ones by Whitesides & Crabtree and Stephanopoulos).

Reading through this material made me feel like (somewhere along the way) I should have had a class or two that focused on the chemistry/biochemistry of energy research. Before I started working at Nature, I hadn't really been exposed to this topic in much detail, despite taking (what felt like) dozens of classes in my undergraduate days. Those classes tended to focus on 'pure' chemistry/shy away from applications, and the graduate classes I took were fairly specialized/on completely different topics...

One of my undergraduate physical chemistry classes had both chemists and civil engineers in it, and I remember that the questions asked by the civil engineers ("Is this why cement dries on the outside first?") generally annoyed the chemists - is this a clash of the two cultures (i.e., science vs. engineering), or were my experiences the exception and not the rule?

Do you think we are doing enough to make sure that future generations of chemists are prepared to tackle important problems in energy research? Sure - you could argue that applied chemistry is the domain of the chemical engineers and that chemists shouldn't learn this sort of stuff at the undergraduate level. But shouldn't we be doing more to expose undergraduate chemists to important topics involving applied chemical research (for example, by requiring chemistry majors to take a chemical engineering class or two)?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've spent the last few days in Boston in the company of many of the other self-confessed chemists who work for Nature Publishing Group. We've been thinking of ways to focus and improve our coverage of chemistry and some of the changes you will see relatively soon - here on the blog and also a rejuvenated chemistry portal on nature.com.

The reason I'm writing about this? - Well, my first title was going to be 'Brainstorming in Boston', but then I got to thinking about what the collective noun for chemists is? See the Wikipedia entry for a general list - one of my favourites has always been a 'murder' of crows.

So, chemists of the world, how best to describe us collectively? A quick search on Google found suggestions such as 'solution' or 'aliquot' - but surely we can do better?! We could even break it down by field... what do you call a group of organic chemists, or physical chemists? (I'm talking collective nouns here - not collective insults...!!).

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking for something to read while you're waiting for the rotovap to free up or the PAGE gel to finish running? You might want to take a look at yesterday's issue of Nature, which has a number of chemistry/chemical papers. In addition to the paper by Serreli et al. that Katharine and Stuart mentioned, there's a News & Views piece from Steven Nolan on Craig Forsyth's recent ACIE paper and a paper from Stern et al. that describes miniature, ultra-sensitive sensors that can detect unlabeled antibodies at concentrations below 100 femtomolar (and can monitor the cellular immune response in 'real-time').

There's also a cool paper involving the TRPA1 channel - TRP channels respond to "temperature, touch, pain, osmolarity, pheromones, taste, and other stimuli," and the TRPA1 channel specifically responds to a range of structurally-diverse compounds, including mustard oil, acrolein, and icilin.

In Macpherson et al., the authors used 'click chemistry' to show that derivatives of mustard oil and cinnamaldehyde covalently bound to the TRPA1 channel. They used mass spectrometry to identify fourteen TRPA1 cysteine residues that reacted with iodoacetamide, three of which were required for normal channel function. From a chemical standpoint, this might not seem all that surprising, but this is apparently the first ion channel known to be activated by this mechanism, and I think it's interesting to see how "tuning TRPA1 to respond to covalent modification by reactive compounds ... [enables the nervous system to] directly assess the noxious environment of sensory neurons." For those of you teaching biological/bio-organic chemistry courses, this might make a good test question - it's a nice 'real world' example of how understanding basic organic chemistry can be used to explore how an enzyme works...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw an amazing BBC documentary a few years ago called "Bad Medicine" - the documentary focused on Dora Akunyili, the Director General of Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), and her efforts to eradicate fake pharmaceuticals/counterfeit drugs in Nigeria.

Before Akunyili took over her post in 2001, a staggering 80% of the medications sold there were deficient in one way or another. Some contained less of the active ingredient than was specified on the label. Others were past their expiration date. Some were filled with inert lactose or powdered chalk.

The stories she told were astonishing: after cracking down on the counterfeiters, they "fought back ... [burning] down Nafdac's offices and threaten[ing] to kill her and her children"; "snipers opened fire on her car ... [and] a bullet pierced through [her] head scarf and grazed [her] scalp"; when the International Children's Heart Foundation visited Nigeria to perform heart surgery on children, four died because someone had replaced the adrenaline with water. It was a heart-wrenching documentary about how far some people will go to make money, and how hard it is to stop them: the World Health Organization "estimates up to 25% of medicines consumed in developing nations are counterfeit or substandard" and this problem isn't restricted to countries in the developing world.

So I was excited to read a recent news@nature.com story by Katharine Sanderson about a paper that just came out on Analytical Chemistry's ASAP. The authors used spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) to examine ibuprofen and paracetamol (acetaminophen), without removing them from their blister packs/bottles - the hope is that existing handheld Raman spectrometers could be turned into portable SORS detectors and that these devices could be used by people like Dora Akunyili to quickly determine whether or not a drug is counterfeit...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi everyone - sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted. December and January are pretty crazy months around here... (There's usually a huge spike in submissions at the end of each year and it often takes a few weeks to work our way through the long backlog... Now that things have quieted down a bit, I hope to post more regularly...)

Anyways, a comment from yesterday's In the Pipeline caught my eye:

You never seem to discuss the current absymal [sic] state of employment for chemists. What reality are you living in? Maybe you should stick to the 'chemistry is fun talk'? You do your field a disservice by constantly ignoring reality.

Now I certainly don't want to trivialize how difficult it can be to find a job in the pharma/biotech sector, but those of you who aren't happy with your current position/are looking for another job might want to read this 'Careers and Recruitment' piece that was recently published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. The article focuses on two "biopharma company founders" - Alice Huxley (President and Chief Executive Officer, Speedel) and Dominic Behan (Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President, Arena Pharmaceuticals) - who "discuss their experiences and highlight factors that have been important for success."

Huxley was a global project manager working on renin inhibitors, and after the merger of Sandoz and Ciba–Geigy (to create Novartis) it looked like that project was in jeopardy - Huxley "believed strongly in the potential" of the lead renin inhibitor in the program and was able to convince the management to "let me take on the project within Speedel and prove that it would work." The outcome? That compound - Aliskiren - is now in Phase III clinical trials. Behan founded Arena Pharmaceuticals with two colleagues in 1997 and has helped it grow to 300 employees. They now have a drug candidate - Lorcaserin - in Phase III trials for obesity and several other compounds in clinical and preclinical development.

So let's say you have a great idea and want to start your own company - what's the next step? How do you turn those late-night conversations at the pub with your coworkers into a real company? (And I don't mean a garden in your backyard that you call a 'massive pharmaceutical factory.') Though I know a few people who have started their own biotech companies (and though there's lots of information about venture capital companies on the web), I don't have any personal experience in this area... Maybe some of our readers have been through this process and know what to do next/who to approach with your ideas?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's that time of year when people tend to reflect on the best (and worst) of the last 12 months - and the topic of chemistry is no exception.

As usual, Chemical & Engineering News has released its highlights of the year.

If, however, you feel that a particularly outstanding piece of work has been left off the list, don't worry, you can nominate it for a Chemmy Award over at ChemBark - go have a look at the categories and decide who is deserving of such an honour.

There is no doubt that chemical blogging has become very popular over the year, so with that in mind, go and vote for your favourite chemistry blog of the year at Chemical Forums. Although it is no longer with us, my vote goes to Tenderbutton.

Seasons' greetings to all - and happy new year.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(UPDATE: apparently Thomson ISI have already thought of this - you can calculate an h-index for any search - journal, author, keywords, etc... - you do on Web of Science)

I’ve been mulling this one over for a while. It may mean nothing, it may mean something, I’ll let you decide.

You may have heard of the h-index, it is the highest number of papers a scientist has published that have each received at least that number of citations, i.e., if 20 of your publications each have at least 20 citations, your h-index is 20 (to get up to an h-index of 21, not only does your 21st paper need to receive 21 citations, but all of those other 20 papers - each with at least 20 citations - need to reach 21 cites as well). So, as you can see, increasing your h-index just one point is not necessarily an easy thing to do, and the bigger the number, the harder it is to increase (at least that’s how I see it).

All in all, it seems to be a measure of consistency – rather than just considering the number of papers someone has published – which may include many mediocre ones that are rarely cited – the h-index takes into account how much impact a body of work has made in the community, based on citations.

It got me thinking. How about doing this for journals? Yes, we have the impact factor and associated numerical wizardry, but does that measure consistency (it may well do, I’m just asking...). As you probably know, the impact factor for a journal for any given year, let’s say 2004, is calculated by dividing the total number of citations received in 2004 for all papers published in that journal for the preceding 2 years (i.e., 2002 and 2003) by the total number of papers from that period. So, if The Journal of Marvellous Research published a total of 100 papers in the period 2002-2003, and in 2004 those papers are cited a total of 1500 times, its impact factor is 15.

Here’s my problem with that – what if most of those 1500 citations come from two or three review articles? Or five or six really good primary research papers? In other words, perhaps The Journal of Marvellous Research has published a few gems, but the rest is not quite up to scratch? So, how about an h-index for journals – the J-factor?

So, I thought I’d do a little bit of number crunching. Let’s look at three journals as a comparison. JACS from the ACS, Angewandte from Wiley and ChemComm from the RSC.

Let’s look at the five-year period from 2000-2004 and calculate a J-factor, i.e., the highest number of articles the journal has published during that time which each have at least J citations.

Here are the results:

JACS 133 (papers published 13,606)
Angewantde 114 (papers published 5,423)
ChemComm 75 (papers published 6,655)

Here are the impact factors for 2005 by comparison:

JACS 7.419
Angewantde 9.596
ChemComm 4.426

So, JACS has a lower impact factor than Angewandte, but a higher J-factor... does this mean anything? I’m not sure. Obviously JACS published far more papers, but that is not necessarily a measure of quality – after all, ChemComm published more papers than Angewandte in that five-year span, but has a significantly lower J-factor than Angewandte.

Just to be cheeky, here are the 2000-2004 J-factors for two other journals:

Nature 301 (papers published 13,679)
Science 287 (papers published 13,433)

...and compare this to the 2005 impact factors:

Nature 29.273
Science 30.927

So, I’m not really sure what this all means, if anything. The J-factor is a constantly shifting metric, the 2000-2004 J-factors for all of these journals may be different tomorrow, likely different next week, and certainly different next year. Will they change in proportion to one another? That’s something else to watch.

And remember, you can prove anything with statistics...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

If you live in the Boston area and you're an organic chemist, you've probably heard about the upcoming Novartis Symposium on Advances in Organic Synthesis to honor Professor Dave Evans. (Thanks to Paul Bracher for this info.) It's on Tuesday (December 5th) at MIT's Kresge Auditorium and there's an excellent lineup of speakers. I think you can still sign up (and it's free...)

Kresge Auditorium is a stone's throw away from the Miracle of Science Bar & Grill, so if I don't bump into you during one of the breaks, keep an eye out for me at the end of the day - maybe we can grab a post-symposium pint...

Hope to see you there,

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving, I hope you had a relaxing holiday and an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner (raise your hand if someone tried to convince you that the tryptophan in turkey makes you tired...) My wife and I had a small gathering at our apartment, where we consumed the Roast Ox potato chips and I learned that Lay's makes turkey-flavored potato chips ("They really do taste like turkey with gravy ... It's like combining the best parts of Thanksgiving dinner, all in one bag.")

Anyways, when I was in London a few weeks ago, I had my yearly appraisal - these appraisals always take place in November or December, so we often talk about our plans for the following year... We already have a few things planned for 2007 (and 2008), but I'd be curious to hear what you'd like to see more of (or less of) next year. I'm not just referring to primary research; we try to make sure chemistry appears throughout the journal - for example, in editorials, News Features, News & Views articles (on papers published in Nature and in other journals), Insights and review articles, essays, etc.

We often get feedback from the community when we're at meetings (positive and negative feedback - both can be quite helpful), but since there aren't many chemistry meetings coming up in the next few months, I thought this might be an easy way to find out what you think (anonymously if you'd prefer...)

Thanks in advance for your comments!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As Stuart mentioned in his last post, I’ve been in the London office all week. I always have a great time when I’m in London (where else can you see Patrick Swayze in ‘Guys and Dolls’?) and wish I could travel here more frequently…

There’s a large selection of flavored potato chips/crisps here – my sister is a vegetarian, so I always try to bring her back the meatiest or fishiest flavor I can find (I’ve given her ‘Roast Minted Lamb’ and ‘Prawn Cocktail’ in the past). But this time I think I’ve outdone myself: I noticed a bag of ‘Roast Ox’ flavored crisps in the building's vending machine…

A few minutes and 50 pence later, I went over to Stuart’s desk to show him my prize - but a closer look at the packaging revealed that the crisps were vegetarian-friendly. How could this happen? What vegetable products could be used to re-create the complex flavors (or flavours) that one would normally associate with a roasted ox?

Stuart and I scanned the ingredients for more information:

Potatoes, Sunflower Oil, Roast Ox Flavour (Salt, Hydrolysed Soya Protein, Sugar, Lactose (from milk), Yeast Extract Powder, Wheat Flour, Flavour Enhancer: Monosodium Glutamate, Dried Yeast Powder, Onion Powder, Flavourings, Acidity Regulator: Sodium Diacetate, Spice Extracts, Anti-caking Agents: Silicon Dioxide & Calcium Phosphates, Herb Extracts, Garlic Powder, Colour: Paprika Extract)

So which chemical (or combination of chemicals) tastes/taste like ox? Are there any food and flavor chemists out there who can tell us more?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

File this one under 'silly', but here it is for what it's worth...

In the office today, Josh and I were discussing the weird and wonderful range of chemicals listed as ingredients on the back of a packet of crisps (UK)/chips (US) - roast Ox flavour as it turns out, but that's another story, and I leave Josh to tell that one. Anyway, yes, we really get into cutting-edge stuff here in the Nature offices.

Well, on the way home on the train tonight, I thought I'd have a look at just what was in the mineral water I'd just paid far too much for. And there it was, a memory from my high school chemistry days - flouride - that not-so-well-known halide. Those of you who have just read that last sentence and are thinking, 'huh, what on earth is he talking about?' - shame on you, you would not have done well in my class...

Spelling fluorine with the 'o' and the 'u' transposed would send our teacher into fits of rage, well, maybe not, but she wasn't happy about it. We would lose points in homework assignments or on tests should we make this mistake - needless to say, I was scared into spelling fluorine correctly and have done so for some time now.

So, pureblue water, get your act together, make my chemistry teacher proud and start labelling your bottles correctly. Now, can someone tell me what sodium diacetate is, but more importantly, does it taste like roast Ox..?

(PS: Issue 2 of Nature Nanotechnology is out now - there's even some chemistry in it...)

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A few of my colleagues are at the 2006 Society for Neuroscience meeting this week, and I think it's really interesting that the SfN invited architect Frank Gehry to speak at their meeting (in the "Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society" lecture/section). This isn't the first time they've invited a famous non-scientist to speak at the annual meeting - the Dalai Lama of Tibet spoke last year - and it's not entirely clear if the lecture was a success: one neuro-blogger wrote that she "throuroughly [sic] enjoyed seeing the pictures of his work ... [though he did not] attempt to draw his narrative into the realm of neuroscience."

This got me thinking - who could a large chemical society (like the ACS) invite to speak in a "Dialogues between Chemistry and Society" seminar? The late R. Buckminster Fuller would have been an obvious choice for chemists interested in nanotechnology, and the late Rachel Carson could have spoken in front of the Environmental Chemistry division... As for living non-scientists, maybe Tracy Kidder could speak in the Computers in Chemistry division?

If you were in charge of a "Dialogues between Chemistry and Society" seminar, who would you invite and why?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I was skimming through the October 7th issue of The Economist this morning, and after my jaunt through the letters page and the leaders, I skipped to the science and technology section as I usually do. There's an article in there about the recent Nobel Prizes and I'd like to share this quote with you:

The chemistry prize is for a piece of X-ray crystallography, a favourite subject of the academy's prize committees over the decades, and a way of awarding an extra physiology prize (since x-ray crystallography is used mainly to examine large biological molecules) without confessing that much of the intellectual oomph has gone out of chemistry in the century since Alfred Nobel, himself a chemist, drew up his will.

The piece doesn't have a name to it, but it was obviously written by someone who has little or no background in chemistry. If you ask me, the parenthetical statement about what x-ray crystallography is mainly used for is utter nonsense. Not only that, but later in the article we are told that the chemical difference between DNA and RNA is that one of the bases is different... now, remind me, why does one have a 'D' at the front and the other an 'R' - hmm, I wonder?

If someone is going to tell me that chemistry is losing its intellectual oomph, they should know a little bit about it first...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Roger D. Kornberg from Stanford,

"for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription".

I don't remember seeing that pick made in any of the recent blog entries on the subject.

And at least one blogger out there is upset about how "the shoe-horning of biology into the chemistry prize continues".

***UPDATE***

Thanks to Bethany at Chemical & Engineering News for letting me know about this story she wrote a couple of years ago about the fuzzy boundaries of the Chemistry Nobel.

Discuss...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just wanted to write a quick post to let you all know that we've (finally) added a blogroll - it's under 'Related Links' on the left-hand side of the webpage:

Chemistry World Blog
Everyday Scientist
Interfacial Science
In The Pipeline
Molecule Of The Day
Post Doc Ergo Propter Doc
Peter Murray-Rust's Blog
She Blinded Me with Science
Tenderbutton (though Dylan's going to 'turn off the lights' on October 1st)
Totally Synthetic
The Chem Blog
The Endless Frontier
Whistling in the Wind

This is certainly not a complete list of blogs about chemistry/by chemists, so please let us know if there are any excited/interesting chemistry blogs we've missed...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, it's that time of year again. In less than a month's time, we'll have a few more Nobel prize winners on our hands - and so the speculation begins...

For the last few years, Thomson Scientific has been predicting who will win the Nobel prize in each of four subjects (Chemistry, Physics, Medicine and Economics*) based upon citations (amongst other things) to their work. Last year, was the first time they correctly predicted the Chemistry prize by naming Grubbs - although, to be honest, the guy from the taco truck in old town Pasadena could have made that pick...

This year, it's out with the old and in with the new. Gone are the usual picks such as Whitesides, Stoddart and Shinkai (also Nicolaou is missing), and we are presented with three possible winning combinations.

1. Tobin Marks (Northwestern) for a mixture of all things organometallicky** and some materials work

2. Dave Evans and Steve Ley (Cambridge, over there and over here) for synthetic organic chemistry

3. Gerald Crabtree (Stanford) and Stuart Schreiber (Harvard) for chemical biology

Let's just say that I would be a little surprised if any of these worthy candidates came out on top this year. And as for pick 2, there's probably a few other synthetic people out there feeling a little left out right about now.

So, who will win. Paul at The Endless Frontier has something to say on the matter - what about you?

* Yes, I know, the Economics prize isn't really a Nobel prize.

** I'm not going to go hunting for it, but I believe this word (or similar) was first used by Dylan at his Tenderbutton blog - or at least by someone posting there. Tenderbutton - RIP - we'll miss you.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After the morning session, I jumped in a cab and went to UCSF's Mission Bay campus - it's a 43-acre campus that was acquired at no cost to the university and contains a number of laboratories, centers, and research institutes. It's quite large and is getting bigger: "[a]bout 1,700 faculty, students, scholars and staff already work in the new UCSF Mission Bay campus community. At full build-out, 9,100 people are expected to work and study at the new campus."

I had a meeting with a professor in Genentech Hall, a 434,000 square foot building where many of the chemical biologists work (there are also a number of structural, molecular, and developmental biologists in the building).

It truly is a beautiful building, and the entire campus looks like it'd be a great place to work - none of the grey/dirty walls and strange odors found in older chemistry/biochemistry bulidings... I'd highly recommend checking out the campus next time you're in San Francisco - but security is pretty tight, so you might want to sign up for the tour. In the meantime, click here for the virtual tour...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-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 at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

David Schwartz gave a great talk this afternoon - he's the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which recently created the 'Genes and Environment Initiative,' a five-year research effort that hopes to identify the genetic and environmental causes of asthma, arthritis, and other common diseases.

The initiative has two components: the first involves "efficiently analyzing genetic variation in groups of patients with specific illnesses," and the second involves the development of new devices that can monitor "personal environmental exposures that interact with genetic variations and result in human diseases."

Why - you might ask - is the NIH spending approximately 192 million dollars on this new initiative? Well, we know that "[g]enetic and environmental factors, including diet and life-style, both contribute to cardiovascular disease, cancers, and other major causes of mortality," and there's a growing body of evidence that suggests that environmental factors are responsible for a large percentage of these diseases.

The NIEHS will use a portion of this money to fund grants that involve "innovative new technologies to measure environmental toxins, dietary intake and physical activity, and to determine an individual's biological response to those influences, using new tools of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics," so this looks like an excellent opportunity for chemists interested in complex diseases and human health.

For more information on the NIEHS 2006–2011 Strategic Plan, see "New Frontiers in Environmental Sciences and Human Health."

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I only have time for a quick post before I run off to David Schwartz's talk on 'Environmental genomics and human health.' I just left the H.C. Brown Legacy Symposium, where Professor Sharpless talked about 'click' chemistry, azido-phobia, pandas, and Kevin Kelly's Out of Control (which he highly recommended). Needless to say, it was a great talk and I learned a few new things about 'click' chemistry: it turns out that the Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition works pretty well in Jack Daniel's whiskey and in human plasma...

I also bumped into Mark Peplow, who used to work at Nature and is now the editor of Chemistry World. He's blogging about the conference, and he's not alone: the ACS, Tenderblog, the Chem Blog, and Chemical Forums are here too... Update: C&EN and Peter Murray-Rust are also blogging from the conference.

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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 at 09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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, below, 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 at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be attending the ACS meeting next week... You might remember that we created a special conference website for the Spring ACS meeting - well, we've updated the conference website for this ACS meeting:

- once again, there is a list of some of the sessions the editors will be attending.

- there is a special edition of the Nature Podcast, in which Dr. Simon Frantz talks with the authors of several recent chemistry papers from Nature, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, and Nature Methods. The five papers featured on this podcast are:

Enantioselective silyl protection of alcohols catalysed by an amino-acid-based small molecule by Zhao et al. (Nature)
Targeting proteases: successes, failures and future prospects by Turk (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery)
Small-molecule activation of procaspase-3 to caspase-3 as a personalized anticancer strategy by Putt et al. (Nature Chemical Biology)
Molecular computational elements encode large populations of small objects by de Silva et al. (Nature Materials)
An unnatural hydrophobic base pair system: site-specific incorporation of nucleotide analogs into DNA and RNA by Hirao et al. (Nature Methods)

We've also added a few recently published papers to the list of exciting chemistry papers from Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, and Nature Methods - some of these papers can be downloaded for free during the ACS meeting. We hope you enjoy reading these papers as much as we did, and would love to hear what you think about them...

And finally, I'd like to mention that this happens to be our 100th blog entry - on behalf of all of us, I'd like to thank you for coming back here week after week...

We'll be adding blog entries throughout the conference, so please check back frequently to see what we’re writing about...

See you at the meeting!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason, many non-scientists (and even some scientists) see chemists as "nefarious creators of toxic pollutants ... [or] mad scientists brewing up Love Potion #9 in ... [a] cluttered and archaic laboratory." Or worse yet, they think chemistry is boring and/or useless...

The editorial in the September 7th issue of Nature tries to capture why organic chemistry is interesting and attempts to explain some of the things that excite the 'average' organic chemist. (Though the editorial is mainly about organic chemistry, I think many of the statements in the editorial are true for other areas of chemistry...)

Many organic chemists spend their days searching for creative solutions to real-world problems, yet the media pays them just a fraction of the attention devoted to physicists or biologists. Even fellow scientists think organic chemistry is esoteric ... [But a]sk a group of organic chemists why they love their work ... and most will tell you that it enables them to make things that no one else has made before ... [C]hemists are frequently drawn to the field because there is not just one way to solve the problem, and the search can reveal a bit more about how the world works.

When people ask me why I like being an editor, I often tell them that it's like being a first year graduate student again: every day I get to read exciting chemistry papers and often feel like that "child in a sweetshop" - there are so many interesting discoveries out there, and countless problems that still need to be solved. The excitement peaks when I'm at a meeting - I love going to sessions and hearing people talk about their unpublished/newly published work, meeting students and post-docs at the poster sessions, and chatting with speakers after the talks about their future plans...

With that in mind, I hope to bump into you at the ACS meeting next week - keep an eye out for Catherine Goodman (from Nature Chemical Biology), Mirella Bucci (from Nature Chemical Biology), and Emma Marris (from the Nature news team) who are also in town for the meeting. And don't forget to check back here regularly, as we'll be blogging throughout the meeting...

Hope to see you there,

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In this month's issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Monya Baker wrote a 'News & Analysis' piece about open access chemistry databases: though there are a number of free chemical databases (including PubChem, which I blogged about last spring), "the chemical data [in these open access databases] still pale in comparison to what already exists in other databases and the published literature."

One problem is that it takes a great deal of time to collect data for these large databases: "PubChem's director, Stephen Bryant, says he lacks the staff and mandate to collect data from published literature and patents." So it's not surprising that the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) database contains more chemical information than PubChem: whereas PubChem has about eight million unique structures, CAS contains nearly 30 million organic and inorganic substances.

In addition, there are some concerns about quality control in these open access databases: "[t]he screening data [in PubChem] are less rigorous than those in peer-reviewed articles, and contain many false positives. Deposited data aren't curated, and so mistakes in structures, units and other characteristics can and do occur." I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to synthesize a molecule that was listed as a 'hit' in one of those databases just to find out that it was inactive because someone mixed up the stereochemistry (or omitted a double bond)...

What are your experiences with these databases? Have you used them in your own work? If so, were they useful? What would you do to make them better? Do you think that the problems with these open access databases are the sort of 'growing pains' that happen for any new technology/database, or is there something special/unique about developing open access chemistry databases?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're an oenophile and you're looking for a job in the near future, you might want to read Corinne Marasco's piece in today's Chemical & Engineering News. As long as you have "strong analytical skills, a good understanding of organic chemistry, and an interest in wine," there might be a job for you in the wine industry.

Lund & Bohlmann wrote a perspective in Science earlier this year, in which they argued that the "art [of making wine] is increasingly guided by science for many wine producers, and this trend will continue with a growing contribution from molecular-based technologies and knowledge." So it might be a good time to (go back to school and) get a graduate degree in Viticulture and Enology.

If you're attending the fall ACS meeting and you want to learn more about the field, you might want to swing by the "Chemistry of Wine" session. Hopefully the speakers will bring along a few bottles for the audience to taste-test...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the September issue of Nature Chemical Biology, John Silvius wrote about McGill University's interdepartmental graduate program in chemical biology, which was established in 2002 and now has "roughly 30 graduate students, 10 postdoctoral fellows and 30 faculty mentors."

The program involves scientists from the Department of Biochemistry, the Department of Chemistry, and the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and a "key objective of the program is to maximize opportunities for students with chemistry and life science backgrounds to share and appreciate their sometimes distinct perspectives on the field of chemical biology." Silvius wrote that this is accomplished via seminar discussion meetings, workshops, and an "annual research symposium at which students present their work to other students and faculty mentors."

There are other interdepartmental and multi-institutional graduate programs in chemical biology: for example, there is the Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional Training Program in Chemical Biology in New York City (which involves Cornell University, The Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the Weill Medical College of Cornell). Graduate students in the Tri-Institutional Training Program can rotate in (and join) laboratories at any of the institutions and they do not have to teach classes, "enabling them to take an accelerated course schedule (four courses per semester during the first year)." (Although I understand that the program was designed so the students could take a large number of classes, I really enjoyed teaching during graduate school and think it's an important experience for all graduate students. But I'll save that topic for another blog post...)

There's obviously more than one way to train the next generation of chemical biologists, but Silvius believes that

An effective training program in chemical biology must produce graduates who have a distinct sense of intellectual identity yet can work effectively with researchers that are more conventionally trained either in chemistry or in the life sciences alone... Moreover, by promoting constant intermixing of individuals trained in the cultures of chemistry and biology, such a program allows students to be participants in the very type of stimulating, creative ferment that drives the field of chemical biology itself.

If you are a graduate student in (or a recent graduate of) an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program in chemical biology, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about your program/your experiences. Why did you choose an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program, instead of a Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology? (And for those of you who did their graduate work in a Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, why didn't you choose an interdepartmental or multi-institutional graduate program?) For those of you working on the interface of other disciplines (for example, biophysics, chemical physics, bionanotechnology, etc.) did your graduate program meet your (scientific) needs/expectations? If not, what could they have done to make it easier for you to pursue interdisciplinary research?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

On the train home last night I was directed to an article in The Guardian about the state of chemistry and physics education in the UK. (It's a shame that the picture accompanying the online version is nowhere near as amusing as the one in the actual newspaper - it was your stereotypical wild-hair crazy-professor type, complete with labcoat, standing in front of a blackboard covered with chemical structures and even the mechanism of ester hydrolysis... base-catalysed just in case you were wondering).

One of my favourite passages is the following:

Add to the old stereotypes new ones about shortening attention spans and a rise in the need for instant gratification and it starts to look as if, while sticking a splint in a bunsen burner or watching magnesium combust might have swung things in the old days, these days it just won't do.

I wonder if I'd had an XBOX whether I would have been so excited about a bit of sodium whizzing around in a beaker of water; all those flame tests with different colours probably wouldn't have been all that captivating either...

If you have a few minutes to spare, go and have a read and ponder on who should be the Jamie Oliver (link included for the last few people on Earth who don't know who this is) of chemistry?!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I took a look at Wikipedia's 'List of Chemists': all the Nobel laureates have entries (for example, EJ Corey, Barry Sharpless, Ahmed Zewail, etc.) and though the top of the page boldly claims 'This is a list of famous chemists: (alphabetcal [sic] order),' this is by no means a fleshed out list of 'important' chemists: Margaret Thatcher is on the list, but George Whitesides didn't make the cut for some reason. (I don't mean any disrespect to the former Prime Minister, but I don't think many scientists think 'oh yeah, she's a chemist' when they hear her name...)

Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia has become the first place many people look to find information (online). But the information on chemists isn't up to snuff: as I mentioned, George Whitesides has an entry, but a number of other respected chemists in the same chemistry department don't appear in Wikipedia (for example, Eric Jacobsen, Andrew Myers, Eugene Shakhnovich, and David Liu, just to name a few...)

So I had a thought - let's flesh these Wikipedia entries out...

If you have time in the next week, add an entry for your Ph.D./post-doc supervisor, one of your co-workers (if you're a professor), or someone whose work you've enjoyed reading for years. If they already have an entry, add some (truthful) information to it... And if you add their names to the 'List of Chemists,' don't forget to put them in 'alphabetcal' order...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

A few nights ago I was talking with my wife about fame (i.e., what makes someone a 'superstar') - it's pretty easy to understand why so many actors/actresses, musicians, and writers are household names (whether or not you like Ben Affleck or Shakira, many people know who they are...) The average person might not be able to name a living artist or dancer, though I bet a number of people would say "Christo and Jeanne-Claude" and "Baryshnikov"...

But if you asked the average person to name a famous living chemist, I wonder if they could name anyone... (This is probably not true in Japan, since Nobel laureates have a unique "celebrity status," but in most other countries I wonder what the average person would say...)

So the million dollar question is can anything be done about this? (A related question is should anything be done about this, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that something should be done about this...) Movies are certainly the easiest way to inform the general public: Awakenings, A Beautiful Mind, and Kinsey helped popularize the names "Oliver Sacks," "John Nash," and "Alfred Kinsey."

So do we need a movie about Barry Sharpless? Or, as someone suggested on "In the Pipeline," should The Billion Dollar Molecule be made into a movie? I don't know about you, but I'd watch a movie about RB Woodward - from all the stories I've heard, he sounded like an interesting guy...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The 'front half' of this week's Nature is packed full of chemistry - there's a News & Views by Tom Muir on a recent JACS paper from David Liu's group, Emma Marris wrote a short News piece on the controversy surrounding two recent syntheses of hexacyclinol, and Phil Ball wrote a News Feature on the big questions facing chemistry (or in his own words: "are there still major chemical questions to crack?")

In 2005, Science published a special issue that featured 125 'big questions' that scientists hope to solve in the next 25 years - some of the chemical questions included 'How far can we push chemical self-assembly?,' 'What is the structure of water?,' and 'Are there limits to rational chemical synthesis?'. Phil adds a few more questions to the list, including 'How do we design molecules with specific functions and dynamics?' and 'What is the chemical basis of thought and memory?'.

Let's say you had a lab of 20 highly competent graduate students and post-docs and was just awarded a large grant (how about one million dollars per year for five years - wouldn't that be nice...) What problem(s) would you work on? Would you tackle a basic/fundamental problem or use chemistry to explore an interesting biological system, make new materials/devices, develop new therapeutic agents, or something other application?

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a pretty funny article on CNN.com today - it turns out that the cost of the United States one-cent coin (a.k.a. the 'penny') has been rising for the last few years. It is currently 97.6% zinc & 2.4% copper, and since the price of "zinc is up 76% this year [and the price of] copper is up 68%," the penny currently costs 1.4 cents to make.

So Representative Jim Kolbe wants to implement the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation Act [COIN Act - clever, no?]. If passed, all "cash transactions ending in 1, 2, 6, or 7 cents [would] be rounded down to the nearest 5 cents, while transactions ending in 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents would round up. Credit and debit card transactions could still be valued to the nearest cent."

Two potential problems with this act? "Americans overwhelmingly want the penny ... They also hate rounding."

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Each month, Nature Chemical Biology includes an editorial; these typically center around an issue of general importance to chemical biologists and seek to raise questions that will be significant in the further development of the field. In the July issue, we talk about how universities and departments may support the development of chemical biologists . As science has expanded from the strict disciplines of chemistry, biology, and physics, certain challenges of redefining scientific borders and academic structure have been met. Yet the experience of researchers working in chemical biology suggests that they face a uniquely difficult task in finding a home for themselves and their work. Everyone involved would benefit from brainstorming on how the integration of chemical biology can be improved or made easier. As such, we would like to initiate conversation among our readers as well as those who have gone through similar fundamental shifts in scientific organization.

Some of the thoughts on our mind:

What is your experience in starting a lab/changing fields/getting funding for chemical biology research?

Are there specific changes that your university has made or could make to support you?

Do you think chemical biologists can continue to work within the confines of diverse (other) disciplines, or do you support the move toward chemical biology departments?

How can we find common ground when self-identified chemical biologists work on extremely disparate topics or use widely varying techniques?

It is our hope that, by sharing ideas and concerns, we can improve the overall understanding of and support for our growing community.

Posted by Catherine Goodman at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're free in early November, you might want to attend the 2006 Nature Chemical Biology Symposium, which will be on November 10th & 11th at the Museum of Science in Boston.

The meeting's focus is the "frontier of in vivo chemical biology" and there are five sessions:

The nucleus and cell division
Metal ions and metabolites
Cytoplasmic processes
Membranes
Cell and chemical biology moving forward

Carolyn Bertozzi and James Rothman are the Keynote Speakers, and the rest of the program really looks fantastic...

Hope to see you there...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's been quite a bit of buzz about a recent Nature Chemical Biology paper from Chong et al. (the work was featured in CE&N, Chemistry World, and Reuters.com). The authors created a library of 2,687 existing drugs and screened them for inhibitors of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. ("The [Johns Hopkins Clinical Compound Library] contains 1937 drugs that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with 750 drugs that have either been approved for use in other countries or are undergoing Phase II clinical trials.")

The main idea is that if the authors could find a relatively potent inhibitor of multidrug-resistant parasites, the compounds could be put into human clinical trials very quickly (since many of the compounds are already FDA-approved for human use). In fact, you may have already taken astemizole, which was "introduced in 1983 under the brand name Hismanal as a nonsedating selective H1-histamine receptor antagonist for treating allergic rhinitis and was sold in 106 countries [over the counter]."

Chong talked about this work at the ASBMB meeting a few months ago - Jennifer Kohler wrote a Meeting Report in the June issue of Nature Chemical Biology, in which she said:

The goal of the initiative is to facilitate the rapid discovery of new treatments for urgent unmet needs and to do so at a reduced cost ... By focusing on approved compounds, they hope to avoid much of the time and expense associated with developing a new chemical entity into a drug ... Chong is optimistic that use of this library may provide a facile route to desperately needed treatment options for malaria and other diseases of the developing world.

I think that most people would agree that new drugs are desperately needed to combat malaria (and many other diseases that disproportionately affect people living in the developing world). But the "appropriate" relationship between academic research and drug discovery/development is hotly debated - some people think that it is possible for academic scientists and drug companies to work together to develop new drugs. For example, Sanchez-Serrano recently wrote that "[t]he success of [the cancer drug] bortezomib was ultimately due to the tenacity of the people involved and the close collaboration ... between academia, the private sector, private investors, public institutions and advocacy groups." And Lunn & Stockwell wrote that (with respect to orphan genetic diseases) "academics, nonprofit organizations, and industrial groups can work together to develop the equipment, technologies, and assays needed for investigating these devastating and neglected human diseases." But other scientists feel that academics should focus on "pure" research problems and leave the discovery and development of drugs to the professionals...

What do you think about this debate? Should NIH (or other government) funds be spent trying to discover/develop new drugs? Do you think that academic scientists can help pharmaceutical companies discover new drugs? (If so, what do you think academics can bring "to the table"?)

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

On Monday morning the Nature offices in the King's Cross area of London were evacuated.

The problem? - Gas.

Following a fire on a nearby building site, there was a danger that four gas cylinders would explode (BBC coverage here). The standard procedure apparently involves cooling down the cylinders with water and then waiting 24 hours before removing them. I remember last year when a similar thing happened in the back of a van on the M25, someone suggested deliberately blowing up the cylinder by firing an armour-piercing bullet at it - a much more instant, and obviously spectacular, solution! (Unsurprisingly, the authorities went for the watch-and-wait approach).

I worked in chemistry labs for quite a few years and never had trouble with gas cylinders - it seems ironic that only now they cause me problems...

Anyway, two days later, we've been allowed back in to our offices - without a single shot being fired.

Sometimes gas is not a laughing matter.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you not afflicted by World Cup fever, turn away now.

For the rest of us addicts, it’s finally here...

Despite England’s tepid performances we are through to the second round and now that Rooney’s back, we’re obviously going all the way to the final. Of course we are. Seriously. Come on now, stop laughing.

I’ve noticed that one or two chem blogs out there have also turned their attention to Germany 2006, including Paul at The Endless Frontier who is spurring on Team USA (who won’t be going to the final, or even the second round – sorry Paul). Also check out the special feature at nature.com.

Just how distracting/addictive/consuming is the World Cup?

A recent story reports that the World Cup may cost the British economy a staggering £4 billion in lost productivity – although not as many people may stay away from work as they did four years ago, the broadcast of the games live on the web by the BBC is likely to have a significant impact (I was going to put the link in here, but then I would feel partially responsible for that £4 billion - and of course, I have no idea what the link is and have no intention of going there...). Another study, however, claims that the influence of the World Cup may be just the opposite and that it may lead to increased motivation and foster greater team spirit.

This all reminded me of a review article published by K C Nicolaou back in 1996 concerning the total synthesis of brevetoxin B. In the final stages of the synthesis, there was an unexpected delay, which is best described in Nicolaou’s own words:

Projections were made that by the end of August 1994 we would reach our destination and submit the papers for publication early in September. I was convinced that these five men would carry out their mission as planned, for by then I was well aware of their talents and commitment. As it happened, one more August would come and go before we would arrive at "Ithaca". In my calculations, I had neglected a small detail, a detail that became an important factor, and one that "Poseidon" would exploit at our expense and inflict one more delay before the final success...

During the summer of 1994, when the final campaign towards brevetoxin B was taking place, the World Cup in Soccer was hosted in the U. S., and all the members of the brevetoxin B team were either European or Japanese! Placing such soccer fanatics on the team for this highly demanding operation was rather unfortunate. Well, you can never think of everything in total synthesis! Brevetoxin B could not, however, escape for much longer, and before the end of the fall in that year it was destined to yield to the enthusiasm and pressure of these relentless professionals. Needless to say, this victory was to serve well as a consolation to each one of them for their countries’ not winning the World Cup!

So there you have it, World Cup fever may or may not be bad for business, but it certainly gets in the way of lab work. Now, which games are on today...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 05:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm sure many of you know that Bruce Merrifield passed away a few weeks ago. In today's issue of Nature, Stephen Kent wrote an obituary describing Merrifield and his accomplishments.

If your institution subscribes to the ACS archives, you can download "Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis. I. The Synthesis of a Tetrapeptide" (you should be able to download the first page for free). According to C&EN, this was the "fifth most cited paper in the journal’s 125-year history."

You may also want to take a look at Gutte's & Merrifield's classic 1971 JACS paper, in which they reported the synthesis of ribonuclease A (124 amino acids long: this "required 369 chemical reactions and 11,931 steps of the automated peptide synthesis machine without any intermediate isolation steps.")

Merrifield also wrote two reviews in Science (in 1965 and 1986) - they're both pretty interesting reviews (and it's amazing to see how much changed in those 21 years...)

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, the beta site of Nature Network Boston went 'live':

Nature Network Boston is the online meeting place for you and fellow Boston scientists to gather, talk and find out about the latest local scientific news and events ... We believe that science benefits from local interactions and collaborations ... [b]ut do you really know what that lab down the street is actually doing? Nature Network Boston will help you find that out. We aim to foster new ways for you to meet and get to know your neighbors.

The website has local (scientific) news, a list of events and scientific talks in the Boston area, and blogs from local scientists. It's free to join NNB - though you'll need to register to create your own personal profile page, post comments on the blogs, or form or join groups to network with other scientists. If you're feeling creative, you can apply to write a blog yourself...

They're going to add a number of new features in the coming months, so if you have any suggestions you can contact Corie Lok, the editor of the site...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought some of you might want to know about a new source of funding for scientists who plan on attending a Gordon Research Conference in 2006:

The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) supports the broadest possible participation of qualified scientists in scientific conferences. To forward this goal NPG has established the NPG Awards to help assuage one of the factors that prevents conferees from various countries with developing economies from attending the renowned Gordon Research Conferences. NPG has provided limited funds for individuals from developing nations to attend Gordon Research Conferences in 2006. Applicants from all nations/regions are eligible, except those nations/regions listed below. [click here to see the list of non-eligible countries]

You need to be accepted to a 2006 GRC in order to apply for funding, and you could get up to $1,500...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's about 85 degrees in Boston and I got a sunburn walking into work - this means that the summer is officially here. OK - I know the first day of summer is still a few weeks away, but the sun is shining and it's time for me to start thinking about summer conferences.

If you say the words 'summer conference' to a group of scientists, I bet many of them think of the Gordon Research Conferences: you are whisked away with 100-150 other scientists to hear about exciting (and often unpublished) research for several days. Many of these conferences are in high schools or small colleges in New England, but don't let the Spartan accommodations or the cafeteria food deter you from coming - I've only been to a few GRCs, but I've had a fantastic time at every one...

This summer I'm 99% sure I'll be attending the Natural Products GRC and the Bioorganic GRC - I'd love to go to the Enzymes, Coenzymes & Metabolic Pathways GRC and the Organometallic GRC, but I'd be out of the office for the month of July, and I don't think our authors (or my wife) would really like it if I was gone that long. Maybe next year the conference organizers will spread them out a bit...

Other summer conferences that look good include the RSC Organocatalysis conference (in early July), EuroBIC (also in early July), and the annual Protein Society meeting (in early August).

What conferences are you going to this summer? We're always interested in hearing about exciting conferences, so if you've been to that conference in previous years, why do you like it? What keeps you coming back? (And please feel free to shamelessly promote a conference you're organizing...)

If you're at any of these conferences, keep an eye out for me - maybe we can chat about your research over a pint or two...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

- Derek Lowe's blog entries in the "Things I Won't Work With" category
- the explosion at the National Institution of Higher Learning in Chemistry at Mulhouse (which killed chemistry professor Dominique Burget)
- Karen Wetterhahn's tragic death in 1997

Chemistry just seems more dangerous than other scientific disciplines...

In the June 1st issue of Nature, Mark Peplow and Emma Marris investigated whether or not chemistry deserves its "reckless reputation." They talked with a number of safety officers from several universities, many of whom think that the dangers of chemistry are a bit exaggerated:

"A lot of it is reminiscence to 'the good old days' of chemistry," says Alan Kendall, safety officer at the University of Oxford, UK.

"There's a public perception that is years behind the reality," agrees Richard Firn, a biologist who chairs the laboratory safety committee at the University of York, UK. "Things have changed a lot in the past 10 to 15 years" ... "People's risk perception is skewed by the drama of an explosion" ...

But Mark and Emma acknowledged that it was "surprisingly difficult to get national statistics on scientific accidents ... [the UK Health and Safety Executive], for example, groups all its accident figures for schools, colleges and universities into a single number, making it difficult to discern safety trends or to tell if one type of lab is more risky than another."

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This month's issue of Wired magazine has two stories that have to do with chemistry - there's an article on the chemistry of cream cheese, which contains the following (choice) quote:

[John] Lucey is an associate professor of food science at the university and runs the cream cheese program. Born in Ireland, he came to Wisconsin for a professorship after making his name in yogurt research in Europe. [emphasis added]

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the field, you might want to check out a recent review article by Johnson & Lucey entitled "Major technological advances and trends in cheese."

There's also a story on the challenges of DIY chemistry in the post-9/11 world - it even has a few experiments to get you started (including how to make a stink bomb from wooden safety matches and household ammonia...) Though I'm not entirely sure the EPA would recommend this (after performing the "Lavalicious" experiment): "Transfer the chromium oxide to the widemouthed jar, seal, and discard."

This part of the article is a bit alarming/depressing:

More than half of the suggested experiments in a multimedia package for schools called “You Be the Chemist,” created in 2004 by the Chemical Educational Foundation, are to be performed by the teacher alone, leaving students to blow up balloons (with safety goggles in place) or answer questions like “How many pretzels can you eat in a minute?" ... “We want to give kids lessons that tie in to their real-world experiences without having them deal with a lot of strange chemicals in bottles that have big long names.”

This might explain why the number of B.Sc. chemists has been steadily decreasing since the mid-90s...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favorite scenes in Woody Allen's 1973 film Sleeper involves two doctors (for those of you who haven't seen this film, most of the movie takes place in the year 2173):

Dr. Melik: [puzzling over list of items sold at Miles' old health-food store] ... wheat germ, organic honey and ... tiger's milk.

Dr. Aragon: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or ... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Those were thought to be unhealthy ... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible!

I thought of this scene when I first heard about the possible beneficial properties of red wine (back in 1992, when Siemann & Creasy proposed that resveratrol might be responsible for the cardioprotective effects of red wine). Although I drink quite a bit of red wine, I hadn't really thought much about resveratrol until I read a new review article by Baur & Sinclair that's on the Nature Reviews Drug Discovery Advance Online Publication page.

Since that original report back in 1992, the number of papers exploring resveratrol's biological activity has skyrocketed: according to Baur & Sinclair resveratrol has been shown to "prevent or slow the progression of a wide variety of illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and ischaemic injuries, as well as enhance stress resistance and extend the lifespans of various organisms from yeast to vertebrates."

Not a big fan of red wine? No problem - there are many other natural sources of resveratrol, including grape juice, blueberries, and pistachios (although the concentration of resveratrol is much higher in red wine...)

We still need to learn more about the physiologically-relevant mechanism(s) of action, and the authors suggest that "blocking the metabolism of resveratrol, developing analogues with improved bioavailability, or finding new, more potent compounds that mimic its effects" will be important, as resveratrol is not cheap: "administering a daily dose to a human weighing 75 kg with 100 mg per kg (body weight) of resveratrol would require 2.7 kg of resveratrol a year, at a current cost of about US$6,800."

This blog entry has made me thirsty for some wine tonight - I think I'll stop off at the wine store on the way home and pick up a nice Syrah or maybe a bottle of French wine - anything red is fine, as long as it's not a Merlot...

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps I missed the memo? I am out of the office after all.

When did it become acceptable to take pictures during talks at a conference?

It’s day 2 at the European Materials Research Society Meeting in Nice, France and I’ve just left one session during which someone in the row in front of me took a picture of every single slide. At least they had the sense to turn off the flash on their camera – unlike the idiot standing at the back of the room. In a session yesterday, an announcement had to be made telling people to stop taking photographs. Ethical concerns notwithstanding (recording of unpublished results, preliminary data, etc...), it’s just downright rude and distracting, not only to the person presenting, but to the rest of the audience who are there to LISTEN to the talk.

To make matters worse, delegates at this conference have no idea how to turn off their mobile phones. In one talk, the speaker’s phone went off – at least it went unanswered. Every session, perhaps even every talk, has been punctuated with a series of ear-splitting beeps or some cute ring-tone or other – my personal favourite was a polyphonic rendition of the Macarena during a talk about organic field-effect transistors.

It’s quite ironic really – the devices responsible for my current torment are only possible because of advances in materials’ research. There’s no escaping the fact, it’s very much a material world.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature Chemical Biology is now one year old, and the editors have put together a special anniversary issue to celebrate: in addition to the usual selection of exciting primary research, this issue has a meeting report by Jennifer Kohler on the recent American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology meeting (which had a great series of talks in the "Chemical Genetics and Drug Discovery" section) and a review article by Jason Chin on synthetic biology. (If you're interested in synthetic biology, you might want to check out the Nature Newsblog for Oliver Morton's thoughts on the Second International Conference on Synthetic Biology.)

This special issue has a new section called "Elements," which "will feature interviews with key people in the chemical biology community and offer insights into places or events that are of general interest to chemists and biologists." In this issue, Joanne Kotz talks with Harvard Professor Jeremy Knowles.

Lastly, the editorial team at Nature Chemical Biology has put together a selection of papers from their first 12 issues, all of which are free for the month of June.

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature).

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Following hot on the heels of the h-index, we now have ‘m’, (I would have called it the ‘m-factor’), a measure of just how ‘hot’ a given research topic is. In this week’s issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on how this analysis has been applied to selected scientific topics and compounds in order to determine what’s hot and what’s not. (The blog entry at Nature News can be found here)

Burning brightly at the top spot are carbon nanotubes, closely followed by nanowires, quantum dots, fullerenes and giant magnetoresistance. So, it’s official, nanotechnology is hot – perhaps Nature should launch a journal devoted to this exciting and vibrant topic..!

The h-index has received a lot of attention and there is no reason why ‘m’ won’t follow suit. If someone has a week or so to spare and applies this kind of analysis to get the top five in chemistry, let me know...

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're an organic chemist, you've probably already seen this blog entry, but for those of you who don't read Tenderbutton regularly, you should check it out. Dylan Stiles is a graduate student in the Trost group at Stanford, and a few weeks ago, 'Ask Tenderbutton' was conceived: you can send in your chemistry question/problem and Dylan will try to answer it/give you some advice. In addition, you'll also get plenty of suggestions from his regular readers - 'Debenzylating in Despair' has already received 20 comments from Dylan's readers. The best part: Dylan's asked people to write their questions in the cheesy 'Dear Ann Landers' style (hence the letter from 'Debenzylating in Despair'...)

I think this is a fantastic idea - there are lots of universities where you can't swing by another lab and talk with someone who developed the catalyst you're using or someone who might be able to give you some quick advice that can save you a few weeks of trial and error. This is especially true for chemists who are in laboratories at medical schools - the chemistry department might be across town... And since there are all sorts of little tricks that mean the difference between 20 and 90% yield, blogs might be the best way to quickly tap into a broad range of experts...

For some reason Dylan's entry reminded me of the InnoCentive project that was started a few years ago - I hadn't checked that site for a few years (and didn't know if the project was still running), but there are still a number of 'Challenges' in the chemistry and biology categories. With the long weekend coming up, maybe it's worth sitting down and taking a crack at some of those problems: for many of the challenges, the prize money is between 10,000 and 50,000 dollars (and I'd love a 61'' HDTV...)

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

There seems to be a little bit of silliness in the air... It started last week when Paul over at The Endless Frontier posted about a recent paper in Nano Letters with a slightly unusual title... It carried on this week when Dylan at Tenderbutton posted about a graphic graphical abstract from an Inorganic Chemistry paper (also noted by Paul a little while back). A handy resource for such silliness can be found here... which directed me to this humorously titled chem paper - can anybody out there beat that?!

Apparently physicists have a childish sense of humour too...

(For those of you curious about the title of this entry, ‘Carry On’ films are part of British film-making legend and have been described as, ‘an energetic mix of parody, farce and double entendres’ and, to be filed away in your 'interesting/unusual fact of the day folder', were produced by Peter Rogers, a namesake (if not exactly the same spelling) of the Chief Editor of Nature Nanotechnology – Peter Rodgers!)

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

Posted by Stuart Cantrill at 04:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

The National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences have announced their new members: '72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 16 countries' for the NAS (including David Baker, Eric Heller, and Nobel Laureate Harold Kroto) and '175 new Fellows and 20 new Foreign Honorary Members' for the AAAS (including Dale Boger, Amos Smith III, and Timothy Swager).

This announcement comes only a few weeks after Howard Hughes Medical Institute released the names of their new 'million-dollar professors' (including Catherine Drennan, Scott Strobel, and Richard Zare).

On behalf of everyone at Nature, congratulations!

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I navigated the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center (yes, all three buildings!) on the first day of the ACS meeting, it was gratifying to see the large number of young faces in the crowd. Although I’m always impressed by senior scientists who share their youthful enthusiasm for chemistry, I am interested in what inspires the current generation of students to pursue careers in chemistry.

The people around us have a lot to do with our choices. I grew up in a family that included three generations of pharmacists. I recall fondly the science lore of the family--my great-grandfather mixing mentholated products in the basement of the house, my grandmother extracting compounds from garden plants right around the time quantum mechanics was making its debut, and my father’s adventures in chemistry lab in the era when NMR was the newest, greatest tool. Although chemistry was already part of my family, I was lucky to have excellent junior high and high school science teachers who nurtured my interests and challenged me scientifically and creatively.

A sense of wonder and curiosity seem equally important. I was fortunate to live in a place where I could enjoy the natural world by wandering off into a forest or sitting by a lake. In addition, when I was growing up, chemistry sets still contained interesting compounds, which allowed some reasonable level of experimentation. Although I was a big fan of crystalline cobalt (II) chloride, sulfur had to be my “go to” reagent bottle for basement experimentation. That easy-to-measure, placid yellow elemental powder made its way into many test reactions and provided hours of amusement for me, but not, I recall, for my parents.

Who or what inspired you to become a chemist? How can we continue to attract young people to chemistry? Tell us your story.

Terry L. Sheppard (Chief Editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted by Terry Sheppard at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello again,

I just wanted to let you know that a special issue of Nature came out today, in which there were a number of exciting chemistry and biochemistry papers:

"Photocatalyst releasing hydrogen from water" by Maeda et al.
"Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns" by Rothemund
"Stochastic protein expression in individual cells at the single molecule level" by Cai et al.
"The PerR transcription factor senses H2O2 by metal-catalysed histidine oxidation" by Lee & Helmann
"Crystal structure of the non-haem iron halogenase SyrB2 in syringomycin biosynthesis" by Blasiak et al.
"Structural basis for the spectral difference in luciferase bioluminescence" by Nakatsu et al.

Some of these papers are also featured on the 'Authors' page of this week's Nature, in our News & Views section (Rothemund and Nakatsu et al.), and on the March 16th edition of the Nature Podcast.

In addition, there's an interview with Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann on his work with young scientists in the Middle East by Alison Abbott. As some of you may know, Professor Hoffmann shared the 1981 Nobel prize with Kenichi Fukui "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions." This isn't the first news piece we've published on Hoffman - Alison also wrote an interesting story on the controversy that surfaced in 2004 between Professor (and Nobel laureate) EJ Corey and Hoffmann.

There's also a 'Journal Club' entry by Professor David MacMillan, a NatureJobs article on green chemistry by Virginia Gewin, and an obituary for the natural-products chemist Pierre Potier. Potier was a natural-products chemist who (with several colleagues) found a way to produce large amounts of the anti-cancer compound paclitaxel (Taxol).

And our website now includes a ‘Web focus’ (a collection of recently published Nature papers) on metalloproteins. These proteins contain transition metals and are involved in a wide range of biologically-important processes, including natural product and cofactor biosynthesis, histone demethylation, and methane oxidation. For this reason, many chemists and biologists are determined to understand the mechanisms and the cellular roles of these remarkable enzymes. In addition, this knowledge can inspire bio-inorganic chemists to synthesize small-molecule catalysts based on the metal-containing active sites of these proteins. To highlight this exciting field, we have selected a panel of recently published Nature papers that explored the structures, mechanisms, and biological activities of several unusual metalloproteins. We hope you enjoy reading these papers as much as we did!

We'd love to hear what you think about this special issue - please feel free to leave us a comment or send us an email to let us know your thoughts...

Chat with you soon,

Joshua

Joshua Finkelstein (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by Joshua Finkelstein at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)