Posted on behalf of Materials Girl:

This is the first part of a three-post series

Less than two weeks ago, organized chaos descended on campus as 9,000 undergraduates relocated from their homes to the dormitories. Those of us who volunteered as Move-In Assistants (MIAs) came early in exchange for “slave labor”, providing a smooth transition for the incoming hordes by decorating, hauling, directing, etc.

An MIA’s duties include giving shuttle tours for incoming families. This includes an inquiry of the incoming students’ majors, which inevitably results in a nervous, energetic chorus of “Undeclared!”, “Psychology!” or “English!” The mood is occasionally lifted by a dour proclamation of the intent to enter engineering, or even pre-med. Alas, it seems that the breed of chemists here is dying out in the wake of humanities, engineering, and – horrors – biochemistry!*

Stating my own major tends to draw blank expressions – we may as well be aliens from the planet Tetraphenylcyclopentadienone.** Freshmen, especially, seem to hold in awe anyone who studies any branch of chemistry, and others haven’t a clue what materials science engineering even is.

Having not attended school in the traditional fashion, I am at a loss to guess why there exists a relatively small number of chemistry applicants arriving from high school. What are they teaching before university? Have the ranks of chemists always seemed few? Hopefully, that is just the case at this one California school, and the land of chemists thrives elsewhere…

Seriously, they are all wonderful, but the ratio of biochemists and chemists is approximately 3:1 and feels like 100:1 – even less with materials chemists. The all-knowing *cough Facebook search at my school lists a mere 13 Chem/Mat-Sci majors, two-thirds of which are grad students.

**C₂₉H₂₀O, because that was the first interesting compound I synthesized during freshmen year. (Nothing soothed my nerves more than seeing fine, beautiful, dark purple crystals appear out of an unfathomably dark solution). Plus, the name is just cool. Say “tetraphenylcyclopentadienone” ten times fast.

This week, the Second Nature events series brings a topical special event on Bluetongue disease.

Hot on the heels of another Foot-and-Mouth disease outbreak, a Bluetongue Disease outbreak was declared in the UK last week. This summer, there have been 3,000 reported cases of Bluetongue in Northern Europe alone. What is Bluetongue? How does it spread, why is it here now and where will it go next? And is it all because of climate change?

Join us for a special session with Professor Philip Mellor from the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright for a discussion of all the details of Bluetongue, what we can expect from the outbreak and whether global warming is going to result in Bluetongue and other animal diseases becoming the norm.

Title: Bluetongue Disease special

Speaker: Professor Philip Mellor

Location: Second Nature Island

Date: Thursday 4th October

Time: 7am SLT, 10am EST, 2pm GMT, 3pm BST

Contact: Joanna Wombat

More info:

Bluetongue disease and Professor Mellor’s research group