More than a burner

Posted on 31 Mar 2011 by Neil Withers

Today (or possibly yesterday) marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Robert Bunsen.

Firstly – and let’s get this out of the way right now – yes, he invented (or possibly didn’t – who cares?) the Bunsen burner. If I had a pound for every time I’d used one of these since school, I’d have…well, probably not enough to buy a pint of beer in most pubs I frequent. Flames and solvents don’t mix. I can’t think of many “iconic symbols” of science – in the eyes of laypeople – that are used less frequently by active scientists than this damn burner. Right, rant over.

So what else did my academic great-great–great–great–great–grandfather (I think – also another two ‘greats’ if you count along another line) do? A whole damn lot, that’s what.

Apart from almost poisoning himself while developing a cure for arsenic poisoning, he played a crucial role in the development of spectroscopy. He then used his spectroscope to discover caesium and rubidium from their emission spectra – and isolate them from mineral spring water. 40 tons of water gave up just 50 grams of caesium. In work that feels remarkably modern, he replaced expensive platinum electrodes with carbon to produce a battery that was widely used in arc lighting and electroplating.

His study of cacodyl, the evil-sounding tetramethyldiarsine, furthered the understanding of organic radicals. So that’s organic, inorganic, analytical, physical and electrochemistry ticked! Oh, and he dabbled in geology too, studying lava gases and developing a widely accepted theory on geysers.

By all accounts, Bunsen was also a great teacher and supervised numerous excellent students, many of whom went on to win Nobel prizes (von Baeyer, Haber and Lenard [physics]) or become famous names in their own right: Carius, Meyer, Beilstein, Tyndall, Frankland and Mendeleev.

His influence on 19th century chemistry – and thus modern chemistry and indeed industry – is pretty staggering. I think there are quite a few chemists of his era who are overlooked today, partly because they studied such a range of disciplines and partly because it’s very difficult to appreciate what they did when viewed through the cloudy lens of history. We can understand single achievements that are now viewed as easily labelled conceptual leaps in a historical narrative – Wohler’s urea synthesis, Mendeleev’s table or Perkin’s mauveine synthesis – but taking in a career like Bunsen’s requires more effort.

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

ACS: The magic of the movies

Posted on 30 Mar 2011 by Stephen Davey

A session that will stand out in my memory from this year’s ACS spring meeting was the presidential symposium on “Hollywood chemistry”. I attended both the early press conference which is well worth viewing, and the full event later in the day.

This event was perfectly themed for the location of the meeting, and also ties in nicely with the many International Year of Chemistry public outreach events. If you don’t work in or study science, then TV shows and movies might be the only place that you are exposed to science, so how realistic is it? And how do they achieve this?

The ACS gathered together Moira Walley-Beckett, writer-producer for the TV show Breaking Bad; Kath Lingenfelter writer-producer for House MD; Jaime Paglia writer-producer of Eureka. Also present were science advisors: Kevin Gazier, Donna Nelson, and Sidney Perkowitz. Finally Mark Griep who uses movie clips in his teaching and is author of the book Reaction: Chemistry in the movies which was reviewed in Nature Chemistry here (subscription required).

The common theme in all the TV shows mentioned is that without science, there would be no story but the shows discussed do span a broad range from factual shows through medical procedural drama to science fiction. Even in science fiction, Perkowitz notes, there may be one big suspension of disbelief, but beyond that, the science is as accurate as is possible within the confines of writing an interesting story. Paglia points out that the big difference is that “this is science fiction and not magic” – illustrating this with the difference between Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak and the cloaking device used by Klingon warships in Star Trek – one just works, and the other diverts electromagnetic radiation around the ship.

Breaking Bad is a show that I haven’t yet watched, but plan to having been at this meeting. The misguided hero is a high school chemistry teacher, who turns his skills to illegal drug manufacture in order to provide for his family when he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. While we might disapprove of what he chooses to do, it’s hard not to like a character that throughout the series uses his chemistry knowledge to get himself out of one fix or another. I wonder, however, what the British Home office would make of the character though and would like to remind them that this is fiction. I also note that the science in Breaking Bad is taken so seriously that the show’s writers have, in the past, been advised by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Not surprisingly, when the show does describe illicit drug synthesis there are some key steps left out.

Beyond their descriptions of the shows, and revealing just how much they do rely on their science advisors, a wealth of fascinating stories and anecdotes were on offer. It’s tough to do them justice in a blog post – but I’ll leave you with this one – Kath Lingenfelter gave up her ambition to be a medic because she “just didn’t get organic chemistry” – she won’t be the only person out there to feel like that, but she is now involved in some of the most widely watched science related TV….

Steve.

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

ACS: All in good taste

Posted on 27 Mar 2011 by Stephen Davey

My first highlight of the meeting was Eric Anslyn’s talk ’ Mimicking the mammalian chemical senses using supramolecular chemistry’. Here I learned that, like me, Anslyn is a Coca-Cola man…by which I mean that he doesn’t like the taste of the diet version – I presume this applies to other soda brands as well. It’s not just him though, his chemistry can tell the difference too.

Anslyn and co-workers use arrays of supramolecular receptors to discriminate between analytes. The idea is that while no one member of the array binds selectively to a particular analyte, each analyte will bind to each receptor slightly differently and it is the overall pattern that discriminates. This is similar to the way in which we taste, as flavours are not like a lock and key with a single receptor for a single flavour, but a combination of the sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami.

So it all comes down to pattern recognition, and Anslyn and co-workers have used similar systems to identify terpene molecules in “cheap” perfume (presumably the research grant doesn’t run to Chanel No.5!), detecting the type of artificial sweetener used in a cup of tea, and most recently to detecting the grape variety used in a wine.

It’s no Oz Clarke yet, but this latest research allowed them to develop a pattern recognition that could test red wine and identify the grape by the pattern of recognition in an array of peptides, you can read more about it here (subscription required). Interestingly, of the wines tested there was one outlier – a Zinfandel which in the pattern recognition fell more in the region of a Pinot noir. The punchline?…the winery called Anslyn the other day to explain that that particular wine did contain a lot of Pinot in the blend!

Steve

Stephen Davey (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

PS. It’s my birthday, so I’m planning to identify some wine varietals of my own later.

Reactions – Graham Saunders

Posted on 25 Mar 2011 by Anne Pichon

Graham Saunders is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, and works principally on investigating the chemistry of transition metal complexes of fluorinated ligands, most recently N-heterocycle carbenes, and using transition metal complexes to break C–F bonds.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Those first few days in the school’s chemistry laboaratory: the odour of the lab was exciting and the apparatus looked so mysterious. We started off with paper chromatography of rose petals and ink, but we soon got to experience the bangs and smells. And then we were introduced to all those famous chemists with wondrous names. They were all Welsh, or so my chemistry teacher, Dilwyn Davies, had us believe. It was a big disappointment to find out a few years later that Amedeo Avogadro wasn’t born in Merthyr Tydfil.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

If a debilitating lack of ability were not an issue I would play cricket professionally for my home county, Sussex. Part of the reason I love the ‘meadow game’ is that it is a team sport in which there are quite distinct individual roles. Everyone can play a part even if they have only one of the skills. It is also a sport in which thinking is an important factor, so it satisfies the academic. I play regularly, but poorly, for a local team.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

A major thrust at the moment is somewhat of a departure from inorganic chemistry. A few years ago colleagues and I developed a simple method of making copper and zinc extremely water repellant. It was a project that was born out of ignorance; we never would have tried what we did if we’d known the area or read the literature. Fortuitously, our method generated an extremely superhydrophobic surface that rivalled the best. The collaboration, although now geographically antipodal, is continuing and we are investigating and developing the method further. I guess it’s true of most chemists that their research, although undeniably academically valuable, won’t directly have an industrial or domestic application. It was pleasing to find that some students in California have developed our work for a high school practical, but it would be very satisfying if it finds more widespread use. At present it is leading me into engineering.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Chemists are explorers; we seek and discover new compounds, new reactions, new properties. I would like to have dinner with an explorer of the more usual type: Sir John Franklin led expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in the first half of the 19th century. His final voyage came close to finding the Northwest Passage, but ended in disaster. Nevertheless, he was an inspiration to many other polar explorers, including Amundsen. Undoubtedly he would have a few good tales and some useful advice. A species of gull bears his name and there is a folk song about him. It would be interesting to find out what he would think of these honours.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Today. Days when I don’t visit the lab to tinker with something are rare. Unfortunately it is typically only to grow crystals, but I still enjoy making new compounds and preparing starting materials. I find running NMR spectra can be very therapeutic, and try do that as often as possible. Today I was only trying to grow crystals of an imidazolium salt.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

I do not read a lot of fiction; I often feel after finishing a novel that I could have spent the time more usefully. But ‘Moby-Dick’ is one that I particularly enjoy, partly because it is based on an extraordinary real event and partly because of the factual content. It would certainly be useful if a whale were to become beached on the island. The music album would be ‘The Decline of British Sea Power’ by the indie rock group British Sea Power. To me it is a energetic mixture of passion and chaos, beauty and mayhem, belligerence and tranquility; it rouses a range of strong emotions.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

David Lemal (Dartmouth College). He works in the field of highly fluorinated small molecule organic chemistry. I find his work elegant and inspirational. It is both synthetically challenging and theoretically unusual, because fluorine is so different to hydrogen. He is the cleverest person I have met, and also the nicest. I would like to know what lead him to chemistry, and what job he would do if he weren’t a chemist.

Elemental examples

Posted on 25 Mar 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

You might have heard by now that we are running an essay competition (I promise we won’t keep banging on about it quite so much for a little while) – unless you happen to be at the upcoming ACS meeting in Anaheim… if you swing by booth 1020 at the expo, you might hear a little more about it!

Anyway – we’ve already told you that the In Your Element article by Ken Wade (Bonding with boron) in our very first issue is freely available as an example. To offer you a little more guidance, we have made two other In Your Element articles free to those of you who register (or who are already registered) on nature.com. Tellurium in a twist by Jim Ibers and The two faces of phosphorus by Jonathan Nitschke will be available for the duration of the competition.

So, get reading, and then get writing. Good luck!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Essay competition: Meet the judges

Posted on 23 Mar 2011 by Anne Pichon

Hello from London, where I have temporarily set up camp in light of the uncertain situation in Toyko in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan. We have seen poignant images and videos, including some pictures of a damaged chemistry lab in Tohoku University, and the various consequences — or potential consequences — of the earthquake and tsunami are being widely discussed in the media and on the internet (including Derek Lowe’s take on why Americans certainly shouldn’t rush to take potassium iodide tablets). Like everyone else, I am very much hoping that the situation at the Fukushima site will soon be under control (and that we can go home in the very near future), and I hope I’ll be able to help the disaster-struck areas in some way (at the moment I have settled for donating money).

I would like to bring your attention to more cheerful matters, such as the essay competition, mentioned here a couple of weeks ago.

As announced on the competition page, the Nature Chemistry team planned to enlist the help of an independent judge (that is, from outside NPG) to review the entries and make decisions on the winning essays. Well, we actually have two independent judges — we are delighted that Matthew Hartings and Michelle Francl have both agreed to take on that role.

Matt Hartings works at the American University in Washington, DC, on the uses of metals in biological systems, either for medicinal purposes (metal complexes with anti-cancer activity) or environmental ones (protein mimics that could, for example, convert CO₂ into valuable chemicals). He also blogs at ScienceGeist about science policy, which should — ideally — combine solid scientific understanding and clear communication between scientists, policy-makers and the general public. You can also find Matt on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sciencegeist.

Michelle Francl, a computational and theoretical chemist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, looks to develop new models to probe the structure and reactivity of molecules even before carrying out any experiments. She is one of Nature Chemistry’s regular columnists, and has written in the past about a variety of topics from the image everyone invariably has of scientists — men with weird hair and glasses — to the urban legends of chemistry (subscription required). Over at her Culture of Chemistry blog, Michelle has recently mused about writing science, prompting scientists to write, including about the perfect cup of coffee, their pets, and the last time they itched. You can also find Michelle on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MichelleFrancl.

It’s our turn to prompt you to write about an element — which one of helium, nitrogen, sodium, copper, bromine, indium or plutonium will catch your attention?

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Bells and whistles

Posted on 21 Mar 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

Those of you who read the html versions of our pages may have noticed some enhanced features related to the chemical structures. For example, if you mouse-over a bold compound number in an article, a pop-up box showing the structure of the compound will appear. If you click on the bold compound number, you will be whisked away to a compound information page that gives you even more data about the compound – as well as an interactive 3D structure.

These are just a few examples of the enhanced features on our html pages, and for a more-detailed look, check out the video below:

Materials Girl: TA: Totally Awesome

Posted on 17 Mar 2011 by Neil Withers

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl, who would like to make it clear that the punning title has nothing to do with her!]

This academic year, I’ve been taking a seminar series on “Preparing Future Faculty” – an offering from the chemistry department that invites in all grads and postdocs who are interested in pursuing a teaching career. The subjects range from the psychology of learning, to making a proper CV, to the rigors of applying for a faculty position. (We need to finish at least two postdocs to be competitive?!)

Through many discussions, it’s been interesting to see the differences between Teaching Assistants (TAs) from other science and engineering departments. Specifically, I noticed that there are very different requirements for TAing. Rumor has it that the physics department is short on TAs; they coax sleep-deprived grad students into dealing with classes full of 300 clueless undergrads. Chemistry and most of the natural sciences require that all grads teach for a year, after which it is relatively voluntary (and everyone stays as far as possible from the pre-med-packed introductory chemistry courses). My own small department offers relatively few classes each term and even fewer TA appointments are available. Those of us with little/no pay vie for the positions in order to have a livable income, and/or we just want to teach. Others are ordered to TA when their PIs’ funds are running low – or said PIs think their students need more experience. I am inclined to question the latter reasoning, but that is discussion for another day.

Until now, I’ve been lucky enough to both secure a TA spot every term and to teach subjects that I like, with professors I like. However, this term I was assigned a course in which I have ZERO background! Due to various administrative, uh, obstinacies, I was unable to switch classes… Since then, I’ve been squeezing through the term by learning how to do homework problems early, maniacally searching the textbook, and Googling when emailed conceptual questions. I mercifully don’t have to teach formal discussion/recitation sections, since they were scheduled at 8am and no one wanted to go; we exchanged them for me having a billion office hours. It’s been an interesting experience. If nothing else, I try to keep my students happy by letting them camp out in my office to do homework, answering emails quickly, and grading by the next day. (Don’t tell YouKnowWho!) TA quality can make or break an average class – I try to tip the balance in favor of ‘make’.

The graduate student body in my department comes from a range of undergrad backgrounds, anywhere from organic chemistry to biomedical engineering to applied physics. (One of the pure-materials students should be TAing the mechanical properties class in my place! That being said, one of my friends in math once TAed a class in which both he AND the professor had no background, and they learned the material then! He says it wasn’t THAT bad.) In any case, we’re a wonderful, diverse hodgepodge of students who secretly may not always know what we’re doing. Don’t tell the undergrads!

Editorializing

Posted on 16 Mar 2011 by Stuart Cantrill

I just wanted to plug a couple of editorials that have appeared recently in other Nature-branded journals, and see if the chemistry community has any feedback they wanted to share here on the blog – or, indeed, by contacting the journals in question. Before you click the full-text links below, both of the editorials are free to access if you are registered on nature.com (this process is free) or, of course, a subscriber. (As far as I am aware, editorials in all the Nature physical sciences titles – including Nature Chemistry – are free to nature.com registrants).

The first is from the March 2011 issue of Nature Photonics and considers online commenting. Simply put in the standfirst of the artice, ‘Would you welcome or loathe the ability to post online comments on articles…?’ The question of online commenting is one that seems to crop up more frequently these days – and from my trawls through the blogosphere, most of the chemists out there who have chimed in seem to think online commenting would not be a bad idea. So, what do you think? Would this add a valuable channel to scientific discourse, enabling what could be thought of as post-publication peer review in a manner such that the comments are always associated with the original article – or is it the case that the majority of people don’t really have the time (or inclination) to get involved in this way?

Somewhat related to this is the question of greater transparency in peer review – the topic of the editorial in the February 2011 issue of Nature Materials. Again, to quote the standfirst at you, ‘Would the publication of anonymous referee reports and editorial decision letters of published papers benefit the scientific debate?’ There seems to be a blog post every week or so about the positives and negatives of peer review (although it seems as though it is mostly the negatives that get the press). There are too many posts to link to, but trust me, they’re not hard to find with your favourite search engine. There’s even an inquiry into peer review being conducted by the Government here in the UK. Any thoughts on publishing referee reports – or peer review in general?

So, happy reading, and feel free to offer feedback here (that you think is relevant for the chemistry community) or by contacting Nature Photonics or Nature Materials directly.