I’m in Salt Lake City for the spring ACS. Though I grew up not far from here, the mountains in my town were to the west, so it’ll be an adjustment. I hope I don’t wander into the lake, or down to Arches by mistake…

I’ve put off looking at the schedule until just now, and I am completely befuddled. How do I decide between 2, let alone 4-5 different sessions that all sound great? Should I go to all 8 iterations of a continuous topic, and really dive in and learn a lot, or should I bounce around learning tidbits about different topics? Should I go to talks by people I’ve heard of to get the update on what they’re doing, or should I seek out people I don’t know? Should I go to morning sessions, or poster sessions, or just not sleep at all? Perhaps the first session tomorrow should include some kind of cloning step, so I can really see everything that’s going on.

Anyway, the ACS actually wants us editors to play journalist for the week (at least to get free access to the press room – seems fair, really!), so stay tuned for more on where I end up.

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Many moons ago, I had a few thoughts about how scientific words are pronounced, and particularly wondered if different pronunciations might reflect where scientists were trained, either in a certain field or a specific country. The precursor to this question, though, is where do the words originate?

One obvious possibility is that once a new word or definition appears in print, scientists across the world can see the article and use the new term going forward. This would explain how groups of people use the same word but pronounce it differently, as there isn’t anyone flying around to different universities to give speech lessons (although that would be awesome. Count me in!). That’s also the rationale behind our recent Commentary on GPCR nomenclature (in our new March issue). However, what happens before the first paper gets published? Are pockets of researchers discovering new phenomena and weird effects, and just calling them all different things? Are some of these discoveries so obvious in their terminology that everyone just happens upon the same name? I imagine that it’s a bit like getting glasses, with similar yet subtly different words being thrown around until everyone focuses on a single term.

In contrast to the ‘first publication defines a new name’ idea, what happens if two competing sets of terminology are published at the same time? I think a related problem happens a lot in biology, where the same proteins (or genes) from different species get different names, and then papers have to spend a lot of time explaining that this protein is equivalent to that protein but not that other protein, etc.. But with two terms for the exact same thing, which one wins out? And is there a way to prevent this kind of silliness, or is that just one of the perverse joys of being in science?

Finally, what about more elusive ideas, like how to develop standards for a new field? How do researchers arrive at a meeting of the minds when each scientist may have a different idea of what is appropriate and/or different abilities to meet those standards? This has been a particular difficulty for scientists working on small-molecule screening, as discussed in our March editorial. What other fields are encountering this problem, and how are you/they dealing with it? In the editorial, we suggest a couple of remedies; if those don’t work, I’d suggest you take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

Posted on behalf of Sugar Daddy

With the changing of the guard in Washington, late-night night television hasn’t quite been the same. I guess the new guy in charge is a harder target for comics. Anyway, to a certain extent, the late-night hosts have been turning their attention elsewhere, and eventually chemistry was bound to make it. In this clip, Conan O’Brien draws attention to, among other things, the discovery of a fourth form of pure elemental boron.

The humor in the clip originates from a recent New York Times article that had mistakenly counted the number of pure forms of boron, and Conan was mocking them for not being able to correctly count to four. The surprise for me was that Conan whipped out a big poster board with crystal structures of the various forms of boron and then started to describe them in rather gory scientific detail. I don’t think this will help the public understand chemistry any better, but it’s better than nothing, I guess. Plus, he’s funny.

I just discovered that it looks like a major Canadian funding institute has lost its place in the recent Canadian federal budget (see here and here for coverage). I’m wary of saying more than is supported by the limited information that I have, but it seems like a troubling turn for scientific research if this trend continues?! Anyone know more?

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

My sister recently gave me ‘a mini guide to the periodic table’. The interesting fact for today is: Neodymium is magnetic, and in fact NIB (neodymium, iron, boron) magnets are so strong that you can put them on either side of your hand and they will stick. That’s kind of creepy.

Little things like this make me happy to be a chemist. The more I meet people who aren’t scientists (all 3 of them), the more I realize that it’s a privilege to be happy doing what you do.

[Addendum, or a quick note of clarification: I don’t mean at all to suggest that you need to be a scientist to be happy. Rather, I think it’s harder to accidentally become a scientist if you’re not fairly passionate about it. Or, just that I was talking to people who don’t like their jobs.]

Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)