[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is January’s article]

Looking closely at pepper spray and an explosive mouthful.

People may think that blogs — even those about chemistry — only cover what the blogger had for breakfast and the occasional picture of cute kittens. Hopefully this column has dispelled some of those thoughts in the past few years, but if anyone still needs persuading, Deborah Blum’s post About Pepper Spray should do the trick. Written shortly after a “shocking incident involving peacefully protesting students at the University of California-Davis”, Blum took her readers through the chemistry behind the innocuously named weapon. For those familiar with the Scoville scale, pepper spray is about 1,000 times hotter than jalapeños and up to 25 times hotter than habaneros. But if you think that the effect is similar to the stinging eyes you may have experiences after not being careful in the kitchen, Blum warns “we’re not talking about cookery but a potent blast of chemistry”. Capsaicins, the compounds that confer heat on both chillies and pepper spray, “inflame the airways, causing swelling and restriction” making it particularly dangerous “to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions”. So dangerous, in fact, that it has been linked to around 75 deaths.

Blum’s post about such a newsworthy topic gathered so much attention it’s been re-posted in many venues, including Scientific American where it was the most popular item on the site for days. She even appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC to discuss pepper spray (the segment can be found via this link).

On a less controversial, although slightly more explosive, topic, Derek Lowe treated us to another thing he won’t work with, hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane. Hiding behind that mouthful are six nitrogen atoms, each bonded to one of six nitro groups. If you dare to even imagine making it, Lowe suggests that you “picture a bunch of guys wheeling around drums of fuming nitric acid while singing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore”.

[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is December’s article]

An oral history of pharma layoffs, the wonders of beer and some embarrassing artwork.

What do chemists do after they’ve just been laid off from their job in the pharmaceutical/chemical industry? Chemjobber is trying to gather useful information from people who have been through redundancy to “hear as much advice as possible for people who will be laid off”. Since the Layoff Project launch in mid-October, at the time of writing Chemjobber has been contacted by six people willing to tell their story. These have ranged from someone with 30 years’ experience to someone ‘freshly out of school’, and from someone clearly having an understandably tough time adjusting to life without “being able to discuss chemistry” to someone whose personal circumstances changed so drastically they could easily put the loss of work into perspective.

Wort. Mash. India pale ale. German wheat beer. You probably expect to see words like these in a blog post about beer, but how about gibberellic acid, enzyme inactivation, dextrin oligomers (with structures!) and isomerization? Regular Blogroll readers won’t be surprised to learn that the blogpost in question is by Martin Lersch, of Khymos. In his ~2,500 word post ‘Wonders of extraction: Brewing beer’, he takes readers through a thorough look at the first two steps of brewing beer: mashing and wort boiling. In his words, these “are really quite sophisticated extractions”.

And finally…what better way to decorate a new chemistry lab than to frost some pictures of molecules onto the glass doors, and onto a funky yellow glass artwork? Well, if you go ahead and decide to decorate your lab with molecular structures, perhaps you should check out at ChemBark what happened when Georgia Tech did this. If you don’t like five-valent carbon or triply bonded bridge head atoms on fused rings, you have been warned!

[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is October’s article]

Funding woes spark indignation and ire, but excellence sparks inspiration.

The release of the new research portfolio of the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in July dismayed many chemists (see Chemistry World for some of that dismay) but it angered synthetic organic chemists the most. They are due to be among the first to feel the pinch of reduced funding. Rather than take this lying down, Paul Clarke of York University started off with a blog post at Sheer Lunacy that soon ended up with letters to national newspapers, cabinet ministers and the prime minister.

In response, EPSRC chief executive David Delpy argues that organic synthesis has received “a greater proportion of EPSRC support than most other areas in [its] physical sciences portfolio” and that this will be reduced so they can increase funding in other important areas. But of particular annoyance to Clarke and other organic chemists was the lack of consultation: it seems the EPSRC’s definition of ‘consultation’ is different from, among others, the RSC’s, with president David Phillips writing to Delpy outlining his concerns. The issue is so contentious that the Periodic Table of Videos crew made a video called Angry Chemists.

From angry organic chemists to inspirational ones…Dr Freddy, on Synthetic Remarks, implores Phil Baran (Scripps) to “Slow down, Phil”. Poor Dr Freddy offers this plea, because “mortals have no chance to keep up with you” and they “need a break” from Baran’s relentlessly high-profile publications! Dr Freddy suggests Baran should ‘do a Heck’: “Invent an awesome reaction, publish, disappear from the face of the Earth for some 20+ years, only to return to pick up the Nobel prize.” In a nice post-script, Baran himself commented on the post, humbly suggesting that it was his students who deserve the credit.

[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is September’s article]

A worrying tale of misconduct, a consideration of ‘chemical intuition’ and a very useful reference finder.

How can we distil more than five thousand words, spread across a series of blogposts, that themselves distil 167 pages of information about the misconduct of Columbia graduate student Bengu Sezen? (And I was never any good at distillations in the lab…) The series comes from ChemBark, which has doggedly (pun only slightly intended) pursued this case for some time. In obtaining the documents, under a Freedom of Information Act request, ChemBark has uncovered a fascinating story that deserves to be widely read, if only to act as a warning. Starting with ‘finicky or sensitive’ reactions, that only seemed to work with Sezen in the lab, and progressing through doctored spectra before ending with retracted JACS papers, the whole story is bewildering and depressing. The documents themselves can be downloaded, and the posts are still ongoing at the time of writing and include a discussion on the role and responsibility of Sezen’s advisor Dalibor Sames. For a summary of the case, take a look at Chemical & Engineering News.

What is chemical intuition? The question is posed — but maybe not fully answered — at the Curious Wavefunction. Is intuition, however we define it, more important in chemistry than in physics? Wavefunction thinks so, but Google doesn’t agree: ‘chemical intuition’ gets only ~31,000 hits, compared with ~135,000 for its physical counterpart. In any case, the post goes on to suggest some tips that Waveform has noticed from great chemists down the years. Don’t ignore the obvious (like colour and smell), get a feel for energetics, stay in touch with the basics, and learn from other fields.

And finally…the editorial team just love the reference resolver developed by Alex Zhurakovskyi — just type/paste in the reference in almost any style you like, and bingo! You’re directed straight to the article.