I went to the carbohydrate-protein interactions and glycolipids session this morning (I’m at the ACS, in case you forgot). It was a great session! Even with the best efforts from the session chair, there were so many questions that we got way behind (which unfortunately meant that I missed George Wang’s talk due to a previous engagement). One particularly interesting part of the morning was yet another tribute to Emil Fischer, who seems to have done more work in his life than occurs in a year at most universities. In this particular story, Jacqueline Gervay-Hague was discussing the troubles with substituting sugars at the alpha position, and had tried to use trimethylsilyl iodine in combination with an alcohol to activate the center and incorporate the alcohol as a substituent. To her amazement, her student didn’t form the ester, but instead purified the iodated sugar. They looked back in the literature for any precedent of stable iodo-substituted sugars, and found that Fischer not only made them, but crystallized them back in 1910. The secret? The alpha-substituted sugar is stable, whereas the beta-functionalized position reacts right away. They have since used this insight to couple unprotected lipids to TMS-protected sugars; with the right purification conditions, they get the unprotected final product in one step.

Catherine Goodman (Assistant Editor, Nature Chemical Biology)

It’s that time of year again. I spent the weekend in town mostly, weaving my way through moving trucks parked in the streets and large piles of discarded furniture dumped on sidewalks. Indeed, the school year has begun and with that come hordes of new students, postdocs, and faculty seeking their fortune in science.

To help new arrivals (and even veterans) make their way through the city, I (with the help of a few contributors) have come up with a very informal list, in no particular order, of to-do’s (and a couple of don’t-do’s) if you’re looking for diversions outside of lab.

Seminars, seminars, seminars

Boston is a magnet for top scientists from around the world to come and give talks. Find out who’s speaking at that university down the road from you by checking out these online listings:

Nature Network Boston (Contains events from a wide range of fields. Sorry, had to throw in that bit of self-promotion)

Some more discipline- or school-specific listings include Biology Week, Harvard Medical School and MIT.

Arts, entertainment, and other stuff

The theater and live entertainment here are good, but tickets aren’t always that affordable. Take a look at Arts Boston, a nonprofit group promoting the arts, and get email alerts to cheap deals. You can also buy same-day, half-price tickets through this group at kiosks in Copley Square (Copley Square T stop) and Faneuil Hall (Government Center or Haymarket T stops). Universities usually have deals as well for their faculty, staff, and students.

You’ve probably heard about the Ig Nobel Prizes on the news (awards for research on things like artificial replacement testicles for dogs and cataloging frog odorous secretions), but now you can see the awards ceremony live on October 5. There’s nothing quite like being in an auditorium full of people (presumably, most are scientists) throwing paper airplanes and celebrating the hilarious and ridiculous in research. And when else will you get to see so many Nobel Laureates in one place? (Nobel Laureates hand out the prizes.)

Even if you’ve never rowed a boat, it’s still worth seeing the Head of the Charles, a major rowing regatta in October on the Charles River that attracts schools worldwide. And even if you never plan on running a marathon, cheer on others who choose to do such a crazy thing at the Boston Marathon in April. It’s difficult to get across the city anyway on Marathon Day so you might as well cheer a few exhausted runners on.

The new Stata Center at MIT, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry and built to the tune of nearly $300 million houses MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a couple of other labs. All I’ll say is, it’s quite unlike any building in Boston. You’ll either love it or hate it. Either way, worth seeing.

The Museum of Fine Arts is the art gallery that everyone knows to go to. But one that’s off the beaten path, not that far from the MFA, and quite unique is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It’s basically the large house of Gardner (who was an art collector and philanthropist in the late 1800’s), filled with a wide range of paintings, sculpture, furniture and tapestries. What’s also interesting is what’s not there. The Gardner Museum was the victim of a much talked-about, $300 million art heist in 1990 that still hasn’t been solved. Because Gardner said in her will that nothing could be changed in the museum, the frames that contained the stolen pieces still hang empty on the walls.

And keep an eye out for the Institute of Contemporary Art, now under construction on the Boston waterfront and scheduled to open later this fall.

Food and drink

You may have already noticed the almost perpetual out-the-door lineups to get into Bartley’s, the Harvard square hamburger joint. One Nature staffer here says it’s overhyped and not that good and recommends instead R.F. O’Sullivan’s near Porter Square for its half-pound burgers.

The Miracle of Science near MIT on Mass Ave is a good pub in which to find lots of science geeks. Their menu is written on a big blackboard in the form of the periodical table. Other unique drinking experiences can be had at:

Cuchi Cuchi in Central square – Wait staff are in funky costumes, but don’t worry, you don’t have to dress up.

Top of the Hub – The drinks are pricey, but on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Center, the view is impressive on a clear day.

Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard square – It’s a restaurant on the first floor, but go up to the bars on the second and third floors and find why people talk about their “scorpion bowls.”

People’s Republik on Mass Ave between Central and Harvard squares – because it’s open later than most other bars, until 2am on weekends.

Transportation

For a mere $30 roundtrip, you can zip down to New York city for the weekend on the Fung Wah bus. It’s cheaper than Greyhound, runs about as frequently, and departs from the same station (South Station). I’ve never taken it, but speaking as someone who last year was stranded in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut on a broken-down Greyhound bus for a few hours, I’m very tempted to start using the Fung Wah as my bus line of choice to New York. (see addendum below)

I would recommend Zipcar, the car-sharing company that got its start in Cambridge, if you don’t own a car but occasionally need access to wheels (for those big trips to the grocery store). Sign up as a member, pay an annual fee, and you can rent cars by the hour that are parked in a large number of locations around the city. Gas, mileage, insurance are included. I signed up only a year ago and now I wonder how I survived without it.

Don’t do

Tourists flock to the statue of John Harvard in Harvard yard. You can look, but definitely don’t touch. It’s a common ritual among Harvard undergrads to urinate on it.

Thanks to Josh Finkelstein, Pat McCaffrey and Constanza Villalba for their contributions.

This list is by no means complete, so please post your Boston to-do’s and don’t-do’s here.

Addendum (posted Sept 6): Ok, so I wrote this piece before I heard about all the troubles Fung Wah has been having, so now I am hedging on that recommendation. There’s always

Peter Pan bus lines, which I must admit I hold dear to my heart. It was a Peter Pan bus that rescued some of us when we were stranded in Connecticut on a malfunctioning Greyhound bus.