Archive by category | Conference reports

ACS: Synthetic catalysts, not different, just better

I spent the early part of my first day in the metal-mediated reactions session. I particularly enjoyed a presentation by Andy Thomas from Scott Denmark’s group at UIUC, on rapid-injection NMR studies of Suzuki reaction intermediates.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 6, the finale!

Photo courtesy of Anthea Blackburn

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist. Posts from days 5 and 6 are being posted a little late, sorry for the delay.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 5

Photo courtesy of Anthea Blackburn

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist. Posts from days 5 and 6 are being posted a little late, sorry for the delay.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 4

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 3

Photo courtesy of Anthea Blackburn

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 2

Photo courtesy of Anthea Blackburn

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: Day 1

Photo courtesy of Anthea Blackburn

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who is attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany. Anthea is writing daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist.  Read more

Letters from Lindau: An introduction

Editor’s note: Anthea Blackburn is a graduate student based in the US who will be attending the 63rd Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates (this year dedicated to chemistry) in Germany next month. Anthea will write daily blog posts from the meeting for the Sceptical Chymist.  Read more

Fall MRS 2012: Rare earth magnets — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Hard disk drives, DVDs and CDs — along with many clean energy devices such as wind turbines and electric vehicles — all demand high-quality permanent magnets such as neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-cobalt for their operation. Increasing demand in these products has meant the cost of the rare-earth metals forming these magnets has gone up; and the Western world is already paying a premium to China for the raw materials.  Read more

Fall MRS 2012: Quasicrystals go mainstream

It’s MRS time again and this year the meeting is bigger than ever with 52 symposia running in parallel. As an editor, it’s a painful task identifying which sessions to attend, knowing all the other potentially interesting talks that I will not be able to see. The MRS is attempting to address this for attendees by videoing many sessions to be made available online for viewing. So now I just need to find another 5 days to watch them all!  Read more