Before I forget – I wrote a story last week about a race to break the record for the shortest ever metal-metal bond. A race that the participants didn’t seem to be aware that they were a part of.
Check it out.
Angstrom olympics!
Reply
Monthly Archives: August 2008
ACS Philadelphia 2008: Board
The meeting is in full swing, and here in the city of brotherly love, beshorted chemists can be spotted all over the place. Quite a sight for the uninitiated, I can assure you.
I wandered into the ACS board meeting this morning, which also includes bigwigs from other international chemical societies today. It was an open meeting, I didn’t gatecrash. I got there in time to hear a discussion about what the ACS can do to be more sustainable.
This huge meeting with 15,000 participants (and, bizarrely 25,000 hotel rooms booked), will take its toll on the city – not only because the poor Philadelphians have to play host to these many thousand scientists, but in terms of an environmental impact. Massive rooms need to be serviced, shuttle buses fuelled, conference programmes printed etc etc etc. This is clearly something the ACS feels bad about. Madeleine Jacobs, board member, did point out that the meeting is in some ways a hostage to the city in which it is held. But I was amused to hear talk of virtual meetings as a solution. I am sure they were talking about smaller division and board meetings, because I think the internet would buckle and break if it had to play host to all this chemistry all at once.
But it is an intriguing concept. Will big meetings like this become obsolete as sustainability becomes more relevant to more people?
[NOTE – I am also posting these blog entries and more on the Nature News blog – In the field]
ACS – Chemistry issues
I’ve arrived in Philly for the ACS meeting and it was after a less eventful journey than the one taken by the last Nature Chemistry editor that attempted to get to an ACS meeting. My flight thankfully set off and landed more or less on time and it was predictably full of chemists.
I spent the day and night cursing chemistry; it’s not the best of starts for a week spent with hundreds of chemists all talking about it. My first problem was at the airport where I cursed materials chemists. Nobody in particular, just in general and to be honest it’s not really their fault. Let me explain: I broke my iPod headphones after somehow tangling them up and tearing their outer sheath, thus exposing the internal wires. Curse number 1: why can’t they make tougher materials to protect my headphone wiring?
After checking in at the airport, I bought some new headphones and wandered off to my gate. This is the point at which I realised there was no way of opening the extremely tough plastic packaging that encased my new headphones without using scissors. How many pairs of scissors do you think there are around airport gates… yup … there are (quite reassuringly) none. Curse number 2 was aimed at polymer chemists who can make very tough, thin materials that are evidently very well designed to protect the encased cargo*.
This leads me to my first session here at the ACS. I went along to hear Krzysztof Matyjaszewski introduce the sessions on Controlled Radical Polymerisation (CRP). He gave a very interesting talk about the current status of research on the topic and affirmed to me how complicated poymeric synthesis can be. There are so many different types of polymers (homopolymers, block copolymers, periodic copolymers, graft copolymers, etc …) that can be created using this method and the very complex kinetics involved in the CRP process need to be expertly controlled to get the product/properties you need. I’m at peace with polymer chemists now, they may have caused me all kinds of problems with my headphones but the talk this morning showed what interesting synthetic work they’re currently doing.
My third chemistry gripe was with that of my own body. I woke up at 2.30 AM this morning completely wide awake and unable to get back to sleep: the joys of jet lag and an upset circadian rhythm. I admit to knowing little about such things but a quick internet search shows that it’s related to melatonin secretion cycles and mine must be a little upset. This graphic shows that I was supposed to be in the deepest part of my sleep around that time and instead I was wide awake watching the qualifying rounds for the Olympic men’s discus throwing (I must go and have a chat with these guys at the poster sessions this week). This also infers that at about 6 PM this evening I’ll be desperate to sleep, so I must go and squeeze in as much chemistry as I can before I drop off — I have planned an afternoon quenching my thirst for physical chemistry at the ‘water mediated interactions’ session.
- With the help of two publishing pals from the Royal Society of Chemistry, I managed to open the packaging for my headphones using my house key, my teeth and pure brute force.
Gavin Armstrong (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)
Reactions – Catherine Murphy
1. What made you want to be a chemist?
I always liked science and nature even from a young age (around 6). I was fortunate enough to have great chemistry teachers in 8th grade (age 13) and in high school (age 15). I also found high school chemistry labs far more interesting than biology (I killed things) and physics (boring).
2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?
I would have two part-time jobs: one working outside in a garden, and the other in a coffeeshop/bookstore, both of which would pay me over $100,000 per year (as long as I am describing the ideal situation). I like to be outside, drink coffee, and read a lot of books so this is the perfect combo.
3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?
Scientifically, by connecting the molecular scale we deal with to larger, more complicated systems like biology, medicine, the environment. Of course we also have the chance to get students excited and more knowledgeable about chemistry early at the university – many students have to take chemistry, not just chemistry majors. So education of future citizens, to look at the evidence of phenomenon and come up with a good explanation that passes multiple tests, is a general good that chemists and other scientists bring to the world.
4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?
Julia Child – she was a hoot, and plus would make us a great meal!
5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?
Sadly, years ago as an assistant professor, when I was purifying compounds and DNA by HPLC. I still visit the lab every other day or so, and do demos for my university chemistry class.
6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?
Dante’s Comedy (Dorothy Sayers translation) and KD Lang’s Hymns from the 49th Parallel.
Catherine Murphy is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, and works on metal nanoparticle synthesis, optical properties and applications; she also has an interest in the nanoscale structure and dynamics of DNA.
You put your left hand in…
For those of you who don’t know, today is International Lefthanders Day. Hooray! A celebration of chirality if there ever was one. I wonder: if we were made with D-amino acids instead of L, would left-handers be righties and vice versa? If we met aliens, would it blow our minds more if they looked just like us or if we figured out that they were just like us except made of D-amino acids? What if you found your alien doppelgänger and you measured your optical rotation and it was exactly opposite? Even worse, what if it wasn’t opposite?! Would it mean that one of you had some crystallographic impurities??
Enough of that silliness! Well, one more bit of silliness: I have been watching the Olympics, and the coverage of synchronized diving is very interesting. One unexpected thing I noticed is that, when the dive involves a turn (along the vertical axis, not a flip), it still counts as being synchronized if the two divers turn in opposite directions. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the commentators described this as chiral?
Ok, on to even less silly stuff: I am looking forward to the ACS meeting next week. We were talking in the office earlier this week about why people continue to go to such a huge overwhelming meeting when you could go to smaller meetings. However, the ACS meeting is always a great place to meet old friends or that famous professor you’ve been admiring. Plus, it always keeps me entertained with the huge diversity of topics – I can learn about everything from forgotten aspects of drug discovery to the most recent advances in proteomics, or even try to figure out the basis of left-handedness at sessions like this.
Anyway, I hope to see you there! If you don’t see me in some of these sessions, you can probably find me somewhere in Philly, trying to figure out how to use right-handed scissors.
Catherine (associate editor, Nature Chemical Biology)
NChem Research Highlights: Natural products, light-harvesting and water-splitting
Just to keep you on your toes, Research Highlights are coming to you on a Tuesday this week. So read on for your chemistry fix!
Steve loves total synthesis, and he got to write about TWO approaches to a pretty hot natural product. Platencin shows activity against MRSA and has been tackled a few times recently, but these approaches are effecient and rapid.
Next up, some porphyrins are linked together directly, rather than with spacers, and that gives cyclic arrays with better light-harvesting potential.
And last, but laughably by no means least…you might have noticed a vast amount of press coverage about Dan Nocera and Matthew Kanan’s water-splitting Co catalyst. We couldn’t really not cover it! I was fortunate enough to hear Dan’s talk about it at ICCC38 and speak to him afterwards. For those wondering if this really will be the next big thing, he said an Arab oil sheik is going to use the technology in 50,000 houses in a new town…gulp.
You can see a video about the breakthrough made by Chemical Explorers, or the man himself at MIT Tech TV.
And finally…a wine-tasting sensor has got a lot of coverage this week, but I think I’d rather take the risk and do the tasting myself! Meanwhile, apparently there’s a little sporting event happening over in China. Seeing as chemists most often get bad press at the Olympics thanks to drug cheats, here’s a slightly more positive angle: Oxford chemistry graduate Jen Goldsack is competing in the double sculls for the US. Any other Olympian chemists out there??
Neil
Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)
Reactions – Neil Withers
1. What made you want to be a chemist?
A combination of natural curiosity, parents who are scientists (with enough patience to answer endless questions), good teachers throughout my school years – and finally luck, in the form of the admissions tutor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Durham. The Natural Science course for which I’d applied was over-subscribed, and Mike Crampton wrote to ask if I’d like to change my application to chemistry. I did, and 12 years later, here I am on Nature Chemistry.
2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?
Working for Heston Blumenthal on his ‘molecular gastronomy’ would be pretty amazing, and certainly looks great fun on TV. But that’s practically chemistry!
3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?
Engage with it. Chemistry can, and has, improved the world to a staggering degree, but people just don’t seem to be aware of it. So if the general population can appreciate what chemistry has done for it, that engagement could remove some of the problems that chemistry is perceived to cause. For example, people might be so keen on polluting if they understood the potential damage more.
4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?
Bede and Linus Pauling. Defining what chemistry is, is always tricky, but for me it comes down to chemical bonds, and Pauling pretty much invented the way we see chemical bonds today. In addition to his chemistry Nobel Prize, he also won the peace Prize for campaigning against war and nuclear weapons, and he remains the only person to win two un-shared Nobel prizes. Bede was a monk in the kingdom of Northumbria in the 7th century AD (a system of reckoning time that he in fact invented). While he’s remembered today as ‘the father of English history’, his knowledge and influence is far greater than that. It’s incredible to think that, in a place often seen nowadays as so far from civilisation at the time, he ‘had at his command all the learning of his time’.
5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?
Well, outside the lab, I made some Chelsea buns before I started on Nature Chemistry. I followed the ‘lab script’ carefully, weighed out my ‘reagents’ as accurately as I could and ended up with better looking ‘products’ than I ever made as an undergraduate! The pictures are on Facebook if anyone cares to look. Seriously, the last experiments I did in my PhD were conductivity measurements – but not before the seriously fiddly soldering of copper wires onto my precious samples (metal oxychalcogenide pellets), and hoping for an ohmic contact.
6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?
As lots of other people cheat on this one, so shall I! I would love to take the 20 books of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin cycle or all the Jeeves and Blandings books of PG Wodehouse. If you’re going to be strict, I’ll plump for a Ray Mears survival guide! The man’s a legend anyway…
As for a CD, it’s a close call between Johnny Cash at San Quentin and the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album. I think the Stone Roses win on points!
Neil Withers is an Associate Editor for Nature Chemistry.
Journal journeys: Day 189, Paper trail
For those of you who haven’t noticed, Nature Chemistry is now open for business – our online submission system is up and running…
Such a small sentence, but it is the culmination of a huge effort by a large number of people.
Online submission systems don’t just build themselves, it takes a number of talented individuals to make sure that they are compiled correctly and run smoothly. Many test manuscripts passed through an imaginary peer-review process and were evaluated – not particularly thoroughly – by the likes of Dr Green, Professor Black and Mr Brown. Inboxes were flooded with large numbers of e-mails to make sure the correct message was dispatched under the appropriate circumstances. After all, you don’t want to accept a manuscript when all you actually are trying to do is send someone a message confirming their submission… try getting out of that one!
To coincide with the online submission system going live, we needed to put together a guide to authors. To put together such a document, we needed to sit down as a team and decide what we actually wanted to put in it. What article types do we want? How do we want them submitted? And so on… In addition to the editorial concerns, our production department also cast their eye over the GTA to make sure their requirements were met and then the whole document was copy-edited. If we’re telling you not to make mistakes when compiling your paper, it would be embarrassing if we had mistakes or inconsistencies in the GTA.
That’s still not all though. Web production had to put the GTA on our website and that also involves tweaking the navigation on the site and making sure that all other related sites at NPG now point to the right place. Marketing needed to know when we were going live so that they can get the message out to the wider chemical community and so on….
And so, the manuscripts are starting to arrive – so I probably shouldn’t spend too much time blogging today, I need to go and look up some references. (Although I plan to put up a post in the near future about the choices we made concerning article types).
Stuart
Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)
Materials Girl: Delays
Posted on behalf of Materials Girl
It seems that the editors have lately been posting on the go, so I figured I could get away with adding my own little adventures to the mix… I am on the return trip from a weekend visit to L.A. – it’s now back up north to finish the last month of my internship. At the moment, my flight is under “mechanical delay” for technicians to “take a look at” an emergency latch. We are projected to depart under an hour late, so it’s nothing like Stu’s mishaps on route to ACS conferences. It must be said, however, that the cause of the delay is of some concern. I can just imagine the emergency door detaching mid-flight, with me in the adjacent seat…
In terms of more chemistry-related delays, labwork has been slowing lately due to finishing a milestone in my project and working on a poster for our facility-wide presentation day. Speaking of which, this is the first scientific poster I have created. Any tips? Succinctness, accuracy, organization, and overall aesthetic pleasure are my current goals – along with providing tangible evidence that chemistry outshines the other research departments. We will definitely have prettier pictures than, say, the CS people. (Synthesizing fluorescent nanoparticles beats writing computer programs. Hah!)
In any case, there’s still pressure to finish what my boss has planned for the summer, even though I may be a lowly intern who is NSF funded – and hence of little financial interest to the international corporation. Deadlines and such in ‘real life’ research are worse, from what I’ve gathered, but I will finish my work regardless (assuming that the theoretical chemistry works itself out in time). No need to protest about my situation – as long as they don’t stop bringing mini-bagels to our weekly group meetings.
NChem Research Highlights: Arenes, rotaxanes and rotors
After a little while out of the office, what better to start the week than bring you all some fresh Research Highlights…
In a nifty link to Catherine’s post on pi interactions, Steve highlights some people measuring arene–arene face-to-face inteactions.
Ros has written about rotaxane molecules whose muscle-like contraction can be controlled by different wavelenghts of light.
And finally, Jane features some work by Ben Feringa and colleagues, who have speeded up a molecular rotary motor based on cyclopentane – it now speeds round at megahertz frequencies, thanks to a picosecond photochemical isomerisation.
As it’s the start of a new month, why not go and check what’s Astromolecule of the Month over at The Astrochymist?
Neil
Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)