In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, researchers in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off "switch" that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals........

An international team of scientists has identified a new theoretical approach that may one day make the synthesis of hydrogen fuel storage materials less complicated and improve the thermodynamics and reversibility of the system. A number of scientists have their sights set on hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal that contain carbon, pollute the environment and contribute to global warming. Known to be the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is considered an ideal energy carrier - not to mention that it's clean, environmentally friendly and non-toxic. However, it has been difficult to find materials that can efficiently and safely store and release it with fast kinetics under ambient temperature and pressure........

In the early part of the 19th century, the word scientist had yet to be coined. As the scope of materials and phenomena that natural philosophers and historians dealt with increased, there was a growing sense that these terms were inadequate to describing the task of this new breed of inquirers. In the 1830s, the British Association for the Advancement of Science explored potential candidates, but ultimately rejected various proposed terms, including scientist:

"Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term,..; savans was rather assuming,..; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist, and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this termination when we have such words as sciolist, economist, and atheist — but this was not generally palatable."

The need remained, however, and a decade later, William Whewell, a philosopher and biologist pushed the issue again: “We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist.” This time it stuck.

Once the name stuck, an image quickly became attached -- wild hair, lab coats and odd apparatus all became part and parcel of what it means to be a scientist. My most recent Thesis columnin Nature Chemistry -- Men of Mystery -- takes up popular images of scientists, and considers the impact the images might have on public discourse about science.

UPDATED: See Snail's Tails post about philosophy and philosophical instruments. The ad for the "philosophical instrument makers" is fascinating!

To ensure that ACS is positioned to take advantage of and respond to technology-related trends that will likely have a major impact (positive or negative) on ACS's products and services, the ACS Board of Directors has requested that a "Technology Trends Roadmap" be prepared. The Society is asking for your help in identifying the key information technology trends that will affect ACS and its ability to best meet its strategic goals. As active members and stakeholders in the Society, your perspective is very valuable in informing this research project; please complete our 10-minute online survey before February 5.

To address such sustainability challenges as providing sufficient and secure energy, clean drinking water, and adequate food, housing, and medical care, the creative input of the global scientific community is needed. As part of that effort, ACS will host an innovative Sustainability Engagement Event (SEE) during the Spring National Meeting in San Francisco. The event is designed to help us SEE the future of sustainability through chemistry. It will focus on collecting, refining, and implementing the ideas of a broad range of stakeholders, as well as strengthening their engagement. The goals are to generate excitement about ACS sustainability efforts; to brainstorm, create, and develop projects that can and will make a difference; and to connect with members of all ages and fields, especially those who are not currently engaged with ACS on a volunteer level. Complete schedule and links to preregistration for the SEE Forum are available online.

A crystal of rock salt is not a molecule. At least, is not a molecule in the sense a water molecule is. If you divide a crystal of rock salt you get two crystals of rock salt: no change in properties. If you divide a water molecule you would get hydrogen and oxygen: huge change in properties. A molecule can indeed be huge (polymers are the most obvious example). But chemistry is not the study of molecules. As you said, chemistry is a hugely diverse subject, and a lot of chemistry currently deals with non-molecular entities.

A crystal of rock salt is a molecule. Who ever said molecules can't be HUGE? Correspondingly, chemistry is a hugely diverse subject. Let's just get on with it.

In December, we published an editorial called "Questioning chemistry" that discussed the definition of chemistry on the back of the recent awarding of the Nobel prize in chemistry for research into the "structure and function of the ribosome". It was further discussed here on the Sceptical Chymist.

We have since received a comment from Dr. Paolo Ghigna at the University of Pavia giving his views on the apathy of some chemists to the award. These can be found below and may just spark off a little more debate on the subject.

Gavin Armstrong (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

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The Editorial in the December 2009 issue of Nature Chemistry remarked on the apathy of the chemical community for the 2009 Nobel prize.

Of course, such a debate would entail the definition of ‘chemistry’, and the editorial defines chemistry as ‘the study of matter and its transformation’. Although it is true, as the editorial says, that “defining research topics is becoming increasingly difficult”, this definition is really too broad to be effective. On one side, elephants are pieces of matter, and during their lives, they go through transformations; on the other side, neutrinos are also pieces of matter that also transform. But no one would doubt the fact that the study of elephants’ life is pertinent to biology, and that studying neutrino oscillations would be the business of physics.

We are then carried back to the question ‘What is chemistry?’. For sure, chemistry is a way of studying matter but we also have to ask how chemists study what kind of matter. To answer this question, as is implicit in the editorial, we need to think about what is the focal point in chemistry classrooms. The large majority of the chemical community would agree that this is the notion of ‘chemical reaction’: chemists are proud of their chemical intuition, that is the ability of being able to predict how a compound would react even in the absence of detailed kinetic and thermodynamic information.

A further step forward can be made simply by looking at the IUPAC definition of a chemical reaction “a process that results in the interconversion of chemical species” Now, a definition of ‘chemical species’ is required. Looking again at IUPAC one finds that a ‘chemical species’ is “an ensemble of chemically identical molecular entities that can explore the same set of molecular energy levels on the time scale of the experiment. The term is applied equally to a set of chemically identical atomic or molecular structural units in a solid array”. Note how, with this definition, questioning about what is pertinent to chemistry does not involve problems of length scale: any crystal of rock salt belongs to a chemical species, is usually much bigger than a ribosome, and is not a molecular species (this is a point chemists tend to forget. For example, CaF2 was named 'molecule of the week' on the ACS website).

Probably, one of the reasons for the debate could be that chemists do not recognize a ribosome as a “chemical species”: a ribosome does not fulfill the IUPAC definition. Or, to look at the flip side of the coin, can we apply our chemical intuition to a ribosome?

In 2006, Bora Zivkovic brought us the first edition of Open Laboratory, a print collection of the best science blogging of the year. Now in its 4th year, the 2009 edition, guest edited by scicurious at Neurotopia is going to press soon. A record 760 posts were nominated, winnowed down to fifty by scicurious and her panel of judges.

One post of mine (The Pressure to Preserve) will be included! While you're waiting for this edition to come out, I heartily recommend browsing the earlier editions. Who says scientists can't write?

I am very proud to call Dr. Ed Grabowski a good friend and a great gentleman. I have known him for 18+ years and he was a great company at Merck's fitness center. His wisdom on may subjects ranging from chemistry to other stuff are phenomenal. In these troubling times in the pharma industry, people like him will have a hard time getting around. I can attest to the fact that we was very well liked at Merck process (I was in med. chemistry)as I had several friends in that department. In that respect I will place him ahead of his peers. He is truly geniune and too good to be true! Thanks for the great article.

Ed Grabowski was Vice President of Chemistry in the Process Research Department at the Merck Research Labs, and spent 39 years working on the design and development of practical processes for compounds of interest to the company. He is now a consultant in chemical development, and sits on a number of chemistry-related advisory boards.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I have always believed that our interests are directed by strong genetic components in our make-up, and mine drove me towards chemistry. I was fortunate that as a child growing up in New York City in the 1940s I became aware of the AC Gilbert Company who sold, by today’s standards, very interesting chemistry sets. I had my share of them, and spent much of my youth trying blow myself up and burn down the house down. Fortunately, I succeeded at neither. My first organic chemistry course in college set the die, and I decided to become an organic chemist. After my PhD, chance brought me to the Process Research Department at the Merck Research Labs, and I spent my entire career there trying to design syntheses of the company’s products and potential products, and understand the chemistry that we were using.

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

Taking the view from the 21st century, I would study genetics or biology, which is, of course, just the chemistry of some very big molecules. Now is the time to do this.

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

I retired from Merck in 2004, and have been doing some consulting since, and have sat on a number of chemistry Advisory Boards. I try to bring both my knowledge and experience to my consulting work, to help companies circumvent some of their chemical and chemical development issues. There is a large school of thought these days that chemical development is a commodity that can be bought, like widgets. People seem to have forgotten that a strong component of creativity, lots of hard work, receptive minds and luck are needed for successful complex chemical development. On the advisory board side, I recently finished a 14 year stint with the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund’s Advisory Board – the last 6 years as Chair of the Board. I take great pride and pleasure at having been associated with the PRF for so long. As a society we must support creative and bright scientists and engineers in pursuing the research areas that they think important, and that has been one of the PRF’s strong suits over the years. Right now I am on the Advisory Board of CENTC, a multi-centered NSF program in chemical catalysis. I will be part of the summer program this year, and am looking forward to working directly with the students, and giving them some insight into the opportunities in catalysis in the pharmaceutical industry. When not engaged in the above, I am a serious philatelist (read that as a stamp collector) and specialize in the French Colonies. I have published over a dozen philatelic articles in the last few years.

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

That’s an easy one – Charles Darwin. I am simply in awe of his brilliance, and how he successfully developed a new field of science at a time when the tools to do so were so primitive. The foundations of evolution which he established are still being validated and extended today. I whole-heartedly agree with Prof. Dawkins view that evolution is ‘the greatest show on earth’. Should Darwin not be able to make it, I would not mind having dinner with Prof. Dawkins!

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

I was on the Editorial Board for Organic Synthesis a few years back. OS receives important chemical procedures from experts and pioneers; the Editors are responsible for checking and validating them; and they are published as a bible of established, working procedures for doing chemical synthesis. I was responsible for checking a new organometallic procedure that required considerable quantities of the triazine from 4-bromophenyldiazonium chloride and morpholine. A young MS chemist in my group was doing the actual chemistry, but I did not want her preparing large quantities of the triazine because of its possible carcinogenicity. So I prepared about 75g in three experiments. Of course my part of the checking was right out of Annalen in 1900; hers was right out of JACS in 2005, and required a lot more skill and attention to detail.

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

Ah, two more easy choices. The album would be Beethoven’s Opus 131 Quartet, simply the greatest music ever written, but I would take all seven of the performances I have as each presents a very different view of the work. The book would be Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

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

Professor Blackmond mentioned both myself and Paul Reider in her comments for the blog, so I would think it only appropriate to get Paul’s point of view in these areas too. Paul and I worked together for more than twenty years and we were a great team – much like Laurel & Hardy, or Abbott & Costello, or Martin & Lewis. Others will have to decide the who’s who for the analogies. Paul has a unique perspective on chemistry and industry, and I think people would be interested in reading his views. He is now at the Chemistry Department at Princeton.

'tis the season for baking on the home front. It's been mostly biologically based leavening (yeast) at my house, but some strictly chemical rising has been going on as well. For an interesting mix of chemistry and biology in the kitchen check out Not So Humble Pie's science cookies: zebrafish, drosophila, gel electrophoresis and atoms are on the menu. Something to keep in mind for the next snow day around here...

The last chemistry podcast of 2009 is now online. You can download it from the usual ChemPod place, or even iTunes.

It's got a diverse mix of chemistry on offer, from Gérard Férey talking about his latest work using MOFs as nanoscale carriers to deliver drugs (from Nature Materials) to our own Katharine Sanderson discovering why GFP glows.

It also covers our recent commentary article discussing why chemists have been slow to pick on the web 2.0 type publishing models that our physics and biology colleagues have done. Or, as Derek Lowe put it, Why Don't Chemists Communicate? (Or Do We?). As well as the authors of the commentary, those who offer opinions include Peter Murray-Rust, who works very much in this area.

Happy listening!
Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

The author of the paper, Dr. Jo got noticed at the age of 18 when he was awarded the bronze medal at the music contest, established to cherish Jaeha Yoo, who was a great musician and died young. His band "Miseoni," one of typical girl's names in Korea, debuted in 1997 and the first official album of the band was released in 1998. The band was quite a big success in Korean indie scene.

In 2001, his first solo album "LUCID FALL" was released and he started to use Lucid Fall his name as a musician. He participated in a few movies as a music director as well. He went to Sweden for his master's degree and then Switzerland for PhD afterwards. He released his 2nd and 3rd album in Korea while he was a student in the continent and even had concert tours during winter break for many years. He wrote songs for other musicians in Korea and participated in many albums of other musicians.

He could have continued to do research as a post doc or something. But he came back to Korea to pursue music that he loved after he finished his PhD.

His 4th official album was released yesterday (December 11, 2009). The reasons his paper on Nature Chemistry or JACS is mentioned not in science section are mostly because he has been better known as a musician who was PhD in chemistry rather than a "pure" chemist.

Lucid fall's KPOP WIKI page is http://www.kpopwiki.com/index.php?title=Lucid_Fall

and he has a page at myspace (of course!) http://www.myspace.com/thelucidfalll

I can say that he is a great musician. It is almost impossible not be touched by his lyrics and melody.

Greg Scholes is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and works on understanding light-initiated processes in nanoscale systems.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I remember when my dad came to my grade two class and demonstrated how to grow copper sulfate crystals. The class were in awe… not so much of the science, but because dad is tall and he had to duck his head to get in the door! My career prospects waivered from scientist to computer programmer to synthetic chemist, then finally physical chemist.

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

I assume a reality check is needed, so I can’t choose NBA star! I would then have to decide between marine biologist and graphic designer.

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

In some of our latest work we’ve found surprising quantum phenomena in the photosynthetic proteins of algae. In addition to elucidating this further, I’m interested in working out what factors decide the evolutionary development and diversification of photosynthetic light-harvesting proteins in these algae and their relatives.

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

I would have dinner with Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest Australian cricket player of all time.

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

The last experiment I did in the lab was about 7 years ago when I synthesized CdSe nanocrystals and shelled them with ZnS under the tutelage of my postdoc at the time, Peggy Hines. I was pretty pleased with myself even though the sample was a far cry from those Peggy made routinely!

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

I can imagine lazing on the island wearing Prada shades and reading the book I’m about to start: The Crossroads by Niccolò Ammaniti. However, I think I would have to take Herman Weyl’s The Classical Groups: Their Invariants and Representations because at the rate I’m currently progressing I will need a few years on a desert island to get through it! A desert island would be a good chance to play one of the Deep Purple albums banned from my home, though I might have to take the classic Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock.

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

There are so many great choices! Paul Barbara at University of Texas, Austin would have interesting responses. He is someone I admire as a great scientist.

Posted on behalf of Materials Girl

Fellowship applications are almost done! To quote a confident labmate, in regards to his proposed research, “If [the NSF] doesn’t accept me, they’re jerks*!” (He probably meant to say “sorely misguided”, but was carried away with the emotion.) Ah, if only the government had enough money to fund all of our worthy causes… Academic bailout, anyone?

Despite attempts to avoid the computer, I’ve recently discovered the joy/timesink of other chemistry blogs – of which there are many great ones to choose from. Another grad student stated that he’s the most interested in “crazy, blow stuff* up and post it blogs”. (My engineering coworkers periodically ask when I’m going to start causing explosions. Probably never, unfortunately, unless I defect to inorganic chemistry. However, someone else in our lab did recently get a shower in vacuum pump oil…) Personally, I think any blog is potentially interesting. Regardless of whether or not they relate to science, the topics addressed in blog posts thrive through their delivery – give or take some snark and wit.

One of my favorite posts has been this one, as I’ve always regretted the lack of fitting eyewear for my bridge-less Asian nose. On a more relevant note, another by FemaleScienceProfessor stands out. Here, she ponders the merits and drawbacks of explicitly stating her gender in applications. I have considered that question as a grad student: in the interest of Broader Impacts, should I explicitly state my status as an underrepresented female scientist/engineer? (Side note: my name only implies ethnicity, not gender.) As a proponent of individual merit above all else, I’m not a fan of playing the gender card – I generally rely on expressing my motivation to assist qualified individuals in underrepresented groups. Still, many organizations seek out the extra factor of diversity. How should we convey our membership in underrepresented groups, without detracting from personal merits [that are not based on genetics]?

*Changed by the editor to remove original, more colourful, language

When I was lecturing on lasers this week, I was surprised to discover how many of my students were unaware that laser was an acronym (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). Science is replete with acronyms - Ira Levine once essayed that if you knew enough acronyms you could pretend you knew computational chemistry - good, bad, really funny and occasionally unfortunate.

On my desk is a paper which refers (with as near as I can tell with a straight face) to "PUS research." Public Understanding of Science. I swear this is true.

If you've got a favorite one - funny, famous or truly unfortunate - leave it in the comments for all of us to enjoy...

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Related Posts
Science in the kitchen: Jello lasers
Romancing the stone (steampunk lit and lasers)

Donna Blackmond is currently in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London and will join the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, in February 2010. She works on kinetic aspects of asymmetric catalytic reactions and on developing models for the origin of biological homochirality.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

A confession: I am not trained as a chemist, but as a chemical engineer! My father, who was an electrical engineer, thought all of his children should be engineers. I liked chemistry, but the “chemical” in engineering was as close as I got. Nearly a decade after finishing my PhD in Chemical Engineering, I learned organic chemistry on the job, when I worked at Merck. This job was truly the defining experience of my career, being challenged by the likes of Ed Grabowski and Paul Reider.

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

Either a neurosurgeon or a NASA physicist. After all, what I do now isn’t really brain surgery or rocket science, is it?

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

I recently had one of those “Eureka moment” ideas, which combines aspects of two of our models for the origin of biological homochirality in a way that might generalize the concepts. We hope it will lead to understanding how the single chirality of both amino acids and sugars came about, all in one fell swoop.

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

In science, it would be Jacobus Hendricus van’t Hoff, who made important fundamental and practical contributions to both physical chemistry and organic chemistry. And he had his share of skeptics early on in his career.

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

The work I do now has nothing to do with what I was trained to do as a student, so the lab is a challenge. When I was on sabbatical at Harvard in 2002 with Eric Jacobsen, the graduate students agreed to let me start a reaction – hydrolytic ring opening of epoxides – by injecting water into a septum cap reaction vial. But I ended up spilling water all over the reaction calorimeter, which was embarrassing because I was the one who was supposed to be teaching them how to use it.

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

Of course the book is the complete works of William Shakespeare (“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams”).

The music would be a CD recording of my son Daniel singing and playing guitar and piano versions of his own songs (especially his signature “Remember to Forget”) and his best covers: Queen, Simon and Garfunkel, Newton Faulkner, Richard Shindell, and Karl Jenkins’ Adiemus vocal pieces (very eclectic tastes).

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

My former Merck colleague, Ed Grabowski, who taught me the definition of enantiomeric excess, and whose response to adversity is something I can learn from: when confronted with the news that a major drug candidate involving several years’ work had failed in clinical trials, Ed promptly treated himself to fois gras and a glass of Chateau d’Yquem.

Scientists from the University of California, Irvine have found that Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Ozone (O3) react with surfaces painted with lead based paint to increase the release of lead from said paint posing an even greater risk for children. By Roberta Barbalace

Posted on behalf of Ros - as I'm sure you noticed the previous 2 were

A major theme of the conference this year is, unsurprisingly, the application of materials science in the search for new sustainable energy solutions. This year, Gerbrand Ceder received the MRS medal for his work in developing first principles materials design methods for battery technologies.

In his medal speech, Ceder pointed out the discrepancy between the time it takes to move a materials innovation from conception to commercialisation (on average 18 years according to a 1995 paper in Technology Review) and the urgency for novel sustainable energy solutions. Substantial government and industry interest in such technologies could accelerate such time frames to commercialisation, but nevertheless this statistic is certainly food for thought. And it was his opening gambit for a discussion on the power of ab initio methods for developing materials for improved energy storage devices.

The awardee pointed out that the search for electrode materials is a good problem for first principles thermodynamic analysis, because many of their relevant properties can be directly related to energy or free energy calculations. He has assessed thousands of compounds for their utility as electrode materials, using data mining to explore whether commonly held assumptions about electrode materials hold universally true. For example, does high energy density automatically mean low electrode stability (as a result of volume effects)? Ceder’s approach can rapidly reveal materials which do not conform to these assumptions; such outliers from general trends offer new opportunities for scientific learning and demand further scrutiny in the search for new technologies with novel performance capabilities.

Ceder hinted that new materials for other sustainable energy applications, for example thermoelectrics, could be revealed using similar computational methods.

Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Ceder readily admitted that once intriguing compounds have been revealed, the arduous task of identifying synthetic strategies must commence. And then, once generated, the materials must of course be rigorously tested for their real world practical utility. Nevertheless, any approach which offers an opportunity for the acceleration of materials innovation, such as the first principles methodologies adopted by Ceder, is certainly something which materials researchers would do well to consider.

Ros

Rosamund Daw (Senior Editor, Nature)

Tony Atala of Wake Forest University is a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine. He was first to implant an organ grown in the laboratory into humans – a bladder. Now he has taken the technology to a new level.

In Symposium X (Frontiers of materials research) Atala presented data published in a recent PNAS paper showing tissue engineered penises can be implanted into rabbits and can be fully sexually functioning. A particular challenge was the degree of vascularisation which is required for full function. As exciting were his hints to unpublished work in which his team have grown a fully functioning engineered uterus in the lab and implanted it into an animal which has subsequently conceived and grown a pup to full term. The animal suffered no ill effects and the uterus shrunk back to its normal size after birth.

Atala emphasised developments in growth factor biology as an important advance in the field of regenerative medicine. From a materials perspective, he also pointed out that the scaffolds used as the basis for his engineered organs must closely resemble the mechanical and structural properties of the tissue to be replaced.

Ros

Rosamund Daw (Senior Editor, Nature)

How hard are materials researchers really thinking about the environmental impact of new materials that they are designing? How can we make materials research a green science? John Warner of the Warner Babcock Institute presented an interesting perspective on this topic at the Green Chemistry session at the Materials Research Society Fall meeting on Monday.

While many researchers sell their new materials as more environmentally sustainable, it is often just one aspect of the materials development process which has been highlighted as benign. This is to be lauded and certainly suggests a general shift towards ‘greener’ thinking in materials science. But there are numerous issues which need to be borne in mind in order to make a material that is truly sustainable, twelve according to Warner. For example, he believes that the scientist needs consider the prevention of waste during synthesis, less hazardous reagents, energy considerations, renewable feedstocks, formation of unnecessary derivatives, use of catalysis, design for degradation, green analytical methods, amongst others. It seems a huge challenge for materials scientists to consider all these issues on top of creating the new functionality for which their new material was originally intended.

But there is an additional benefit. Warner pointed out that one of the greatest impediments to commercialising new materials and products is environmental regulation. By minimising the environmental impact of their materials as far as possible, right from the initial materials design phase, scientists will achieve an additional competitive advantage over those who have not.

What is required in the next few years is the development of a new “toolbox” of basic green chemical methods to manipulate chemical bonds, said Warner. This will be the foundation from which green materials science design will grow.

Warner also pointed out that materials science and chemistry students are rarely if ever provided with opportunities to study and thus understand the toxicity and environmental impact of materials. This needs to change, he argued, so that the next generation of scientists will have the insight to understand the how to develop new materials and processes to inflict the least damage on our environment and get the most out of our finite resources.

Ros

Rosamund Daw (Senior Editor, Nature)

That is what Richard Wool suggested as apparently, when treated thermally near their melting temperature, the cheratin in the feathers develops tunnels around 7 Angstroms in size, which are very good for hydrogen storage. The material is not very efficient, but at least it is extremely low cost (3000kg waste feathers a year are produced in the US alone).

Wool presented also an interesting technology for prefab roofs. They would be made of recycled cardboard or other natural fibers and soybean oil resin, which is then cross linked by free radical polymerization, started by a cobalt based catalyst. Although this technology has been around for a few years (it was developed to make roofs able to withstand hurricanes) it has been recently picked up by the South African government which will deploy it on 2.2 million homes as an energy efficient substitute for steel and other materials currently used in housing there.

Stephen Davey, associate editor for Nature Chemistry, blogged at the Sceptical Chymist about visiting the National Archives and seeing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was surprised to find that the documents were stored under helium as opposed to argon - and wondered why. That started me wondering as well, particularly since the inert gases are not interchangeable in all circumstances (you can use helium to dilute the air mixture for diving, but not argon, for example.)

Helium is both more expensive (not an issue in this context, the cost of the gas inside the cases has got to be the least expensive piece!) and difficult to work with than argon. It can leak out through materials that seem air and water "tight". That's why those latex balloons that looked so cheery on the day of the party are withered and droopy by the morning. They're waterproof, but not helium proof.

In the 1950s the US National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) was charged with deciding on the best way to preserve the Charters of Freedom (the three founding documents of the United States of America). (You can read the full report here.) Helium was chosen, despite its propensity to leak through many materials, partly because a high purity, local source was readily available but most because of its thermal conductivity.

The designers of the encasements wanted a way to measure the pressure of the helium within the cases without having to open them, or remove a sample. Since the thermal conductivity of helium is very different than that of air, changes in the thermal conductivity (how heat moves between the panes) could be used to detect leaks. Argon's thermal conductivity is similar to air, so if argon leaked out and air in, the change would be hard to detect.

New casements were designed about ten years ago, with argon as the gas of choice this time. Sapphire ports are embedded to allow the atmosphere inside the cases to be monitored spectroscopically - by passing a beam of light through the port. Since the new methods of monitoring don't require the inert atmosphere to have a different thermal conductivity, it allows argon - which can't wiggle its way out the way helium can - to be used.

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The photo is from The Science News-Letter, vol. 62 (Dec. 6 1952), p. 359.

Thanks for the link. I'm with Andrew on this one. For communicators of science, this year's Chemistry Nobel should be an opportunity to talk about how chemistry is everywhere. Since I write for chemists, it's important in a case like this one to make sure the chemistry behind the prize is front and center.

Stuart Warren is in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Cambridge, and worked on new synthetic methods, particularly those involving phosphorus or sulfur, rearrangements and asymmetric synthesis.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was lucky enough to go to Cheadle Hulme School in Cheshire and be taught chemistry by David Goodison. I had an early love of science and it was not long before David’s thoughtful approach and emphasis on ‘why?’ rather than ‘how?’ led me to prefer chemistry to any other science. I can still picture vividly the day he introduced organic chemistry to us. He used carboxylic acids as examples and I grew angry at this and protested to him that they weren’t acids at all. He smiled and suggested that I wait and see what was to follow. Sometimes people who react quite violently against something come to love it because they are so deeply engaged with it. That was how I came to like organic chemistry. But it was Denis Marrian, Peter Sykes and Malcolm Clark in my undergraduate days at Cambridge who gave organic chemistry the solid intellectual foundation that made me want to do it for the rest of my life.

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

I might have wanted to be a professional cricketer, but I wasn’t good enough. I tried biochemistry at Harvard with Frank Westheimer and rejected it in favour of organic chemistry. So no other science. I suppose an actor, a novelist or an Anglican minister.

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

I no longer have a research group but my writing continues. I am now working on the second edition of the textbook ‘Organic Chemistry’ with Jonathan Clayden for OUP. Paul Wyatt and I have completed the four books in the Organic Synthesis series for Wiley, the last one to be published later this year. Paul and I also do courses in industry including one on ‘Advanced Heterocyclic Chemistry’ and I have hopes that we might produce a book with that title as the next, and for me probably final, project. It seems me that there is a great need for an accessible, mechanistically oriented book on Heterocyclic Chemistry that tries to explain the reactions rather than give lists of them.

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

The Duke of Wellington was a master of the sharp remark, had no patience with administrators, and saw practical results as what really mattered. I want to find out how he got round the British, Spanish and Portuguese administrators in the Peninsular War and what made him persist with the Catholic Emancipation bill when all seemed lost. He would decline the invitation, of course, so maybe it would be Sir Pelham Warner who could describe his very long cricketing career or I could resurrect Charles Rees to continue the many conversations so rudely interrupted by his death.

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

In about 1973 Robin Shepherd had completed a series of experiments to establish the stereospecificity of Ph2PO migration. He had an X-ray of the starting material but couldn’t crystallise the product. So I did that, got the X-ray from Luigi Nassimbeni and published the result in Nature. F. H. Allen, O. Kennard, L. R. Nassimbeni, R. G. Shepherd, and S. Warren, Nature 248, 670–671 (1974); Stereochemistry of a carbonium ion rearrangement.

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

It would be a very difficult choice between Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, Hardy’s or Wordsworth’s collected poems or the Revised New English Bible.
Music is easier: Schubert or Vaughan Williams songs sung by Ian Bostrich or Finzi, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality sung by Ian Partridge. I think I would miss most the wonderful sound of the human voice.

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

Guy Lloyd-Jones (Bristol), as his work seems to me to combine the very best in mechanistic analysis and the latest developments in organo-metalic chemistry and asymmetric catalysis. He is one of the sharpest thinkers in the world of organic chemistry today.

@Neil and Han, thanks for the kind words! I work on a 100% pro-bono basis, so if you ever stumble across anymore articles in Korean (or Chinese), I’d love to translate them.

I hadn’t heard of Lucid Fall either, but apparently he’s popular among the ladies for his romantic lyrics.

Here’s one of his songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m-zAcR0XXg

It’s called “Can You See It?”

Hi, one of my friends directed me to this and I personally thought it was hilarious. I'm Korean and I have often done translations and I say Joe's translations look great. The other articles are more or less the same, one is an article about the original article and another is about the Korean Net's reaction to the original story.

I don't listen to pop, but now I'm curious as to what a chemistry phd sings about.

As a PhD chemist I just cannot understand any griping about this award. The ribosome is the central chemical apparatus of life and understanding its chemical structure and function better will yield insights that range from the chemical origins of life to the chemical interventions of medicine. The ribosome is the most significant single chemical apparatus on the planet, I would suggest.

@Joe Brilliant! Thanks very much for your work. You might be receiving many "love calls" from translation agencies yourself in future...

Am I too late to join this party?

I’ve studied Korean pretty intensely for the past 3 years and I’ve been waiting all along for an opportunity such as this to arrive. Here is my translation of the accompanying article.

A quick caveat: I am not Korean, nor am I a professional translator so I don’t think I got this 100%. But I do think I captured the essence of the article. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

The World’s Best Science Journal, Nature, Takes Notice of Lucid Fall’s Thesis,

This past September ballad singer Lucid Fall (born Cho Yoon-seok), a doctor of engineering, has had his thesis published in two global journals, including JACS. Now Nature Chemistry, a new division of the world’s best science journal, Nature, has taken notice of Lucid Fall’s thesis.

This past October 2nd, in its online publication “Research Highlights” Nature Chemistry introduced Lucid Fall’s thesis, and on November 23rd, in the 9th volume of 2009, will formally introduce it.

Out of tens of thousands of theses every month, Nature Chemistry, selects two or three to feature in “Research Highlights.” The fact that Lucid Falls’ thesis is getting so much attention reflects how important the thesis is in the world of chemistry.

Nature became famous domestically several years ago because of Dr. Hwang Wu-seok. But in the scientific community Nature is not only famous for a high citation rate, but also because it has a reputation for the being difficult to get published in. Additionally, the fact that this journal is paying attention to him means that Lucid Fall could have a promising future as a researcher.

In his thesis, “'Micelles for Delivery of Nitric Oxide’ he develops a method for how nitric oxide, --a material that could be used as a treatment but the delivery technology had been unavailable—could be used in the form of nano particles to pass through the membranes of cells and could be used to treat heart disease and erectile dysfunction. He has received a best thesis award from the Swiss Chemical Society and is even applying for a patent in the United States.

Owing to these continuous honors, Lucid Fall is receiving many “love calls” from scholars and industry around the world. However, on December 10th he is scheduled to perform in Les Miserable and on December 19th, he will begin a national tour. Because of these preparations, he has a busy schedule.

Editorial perhaps a little lacking in passion, given how you guys reacted on twitter at the time!?

@Neil, I just realized that I have used translation software for so long that the quote you provided makes clear and perfect sense to me. ::shudders::

"real name Bubbles"? And I thought being "Materials Girl" was a little hokey (I suppose as long as no one thinks I'm trying to reflect Madonna)...

I don't think the Chemistry Nobel bothers me as much as it did when it was first given, because explanations have clarified for me what the chemistry is in their work. What still bothers me, though, is that while in general biology has both Medicine and Chemistry prizes, chemistry awards reside only in Chemistry. While the use of chemistry to elucidate ribosome structure is nice, it probably won't be useful to any significant subset of chemists for their work. Meanwhile, tools that chemists use to do their work (or fundamental breakthroughs in chemistry) are less likely to be highlighted by Nobels, because there are fewer opportunities to do so. The asymmetry in award breadth bothers me.

Early October saw the announcement of this year's suite of Nobel Prize recipients and, as has been the case on quite a few occasions in recent years, there was some consternation when it came to the Chemistry prize. Many thoughts were expressed in the blogosphere and twittersphere and Carmen's post over at C&ENtral Science has a few handy links that you can use as a starting point.

Now that the dust has settled somewhat, we've taken a look at the issue in our December editorial. The first paragraph is repeated below as a teaser:

----------

Chemistry is often referred to as 'the central science' and its associations to all fields are clearly there to behold, but to some these links may stretch too far. Some purists have had their chemical noses put of joint with the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 'studies of the structure and function of the ribosome' — apparently a topic that, for some, is not chemistry but biology. The arguments over the undeniable biological bent of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry are not new, but they seem to have reached a new level of intensity (or at least visibility) this year with various blogs and tweets doubting its current relevance to chemists. The award certainly leads to questions over the definition of chemistry and whether such 'structural biology' can indeed be classified as chemistry.

----------

The rest of the article is available for free on our website to anyone with a nature.com account (and if you don't have one, it's easy to sign up for one).

There is also an 'Editor's Letter' (an Editorial?) in the November issue of ACS Chemical Biology that considers the same topic, including whether we need new Nobel Prizes.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

@Mitch, here's a sample of the Lear-esque nonsense that Google Translate gives (1st sentence of the first link):

Engineering Dr Lucid from the artist's sensibility, Paul (real name Bubbles) this past September, JACS, including whether, where two global chemical journal papers published this year that the world's leading scientific journal Nature (Nature) in the new Department of Chemistry changganhan journal Nature Chemistry (Nature Chemistry) in his paper cover Choi attention has been focused.

See why I was a little confused?!

@Neil, You can use translate.google.com for things like this.

Mitch

(Cross posted at my other blog.)

I am in the midst of writing an essay for Nature Chemistry - about why people are so curious about stereotypes of scientists, but seem less so about other fields. There is the DAST (draw a scientist test), but not as far as I can discover similar instruments to assess the images of other professions. Where are the DATTs (draw a teacher test) and DACTs (draw a chef test)? On the other end of the cultural spectrum there is the Big Bang Theory.

The earliest anthropological study I can find dates to the late 1950s and is by Margaret Mead (yes, that Margaret Mead) and Rhoda Metraux under the auspices of the AAAS. They analyzed thousands of essays, drawn from a set of 35,000 written by US high school students. The 1 page essays were written in response to one of three prompts. Prompt I read "When I think about a scientist, I think of..."

What took my breath away was Prompt II (italics are not mine, but as given in Mead's original paper - Science 126, 384-390 (1957)):

If you are a boy, complete the following statement in your own words.
If I were going to be a scientist, I should like to be the kind of scientist who...

If you are a girl, you may complete either the sentence above or this one:
If I were going to marry a scientist, I should like to marry the kind of scientist who..."

Math Man points out that I did both.

UPDATE: So there is a draw-a-teacher test (DATt) (H/T to Neil who commented on drawing God - another area that has been explored by educators and psychologists)

---

Images are from K.D. Finson, J.B. Beaver, B.L. Cramond, "Development and Field Test of a Checklist for the Draw-A-Scientist Test" School Science and Mathematics 95, p. 195 (1995).

I know several who do and think it wouldn't be difficult to find more if you are interested.

Aha! And we then covered that JACS paper in a Research Highlight. A quick Google reveals the following page from the Korean Times (in English) that explains a little bit more.

Mystery solved - many thanks Daniel!

I wonder how many other pop stars out there are secretly doing PhDs...

I just clicked on your link 4 which states that a singer known (not to me, though) as 루시드폴 (Lucid Fall) has just published the article in question (under his real name 조윤석 - Yun Suk Jo). So he is the first author.

Do any of our readers speak Korean?? If so, we'd love some help.

Some background...being utterly self-obsessed, we've set up Google News alerts that let us know whenever a news website (or blog) publishes a story that mentions 'Nature Chemistry'. It's nice to see when our articles get picked up elsewhere, and very useful to get feedback of any kind - it's less interesting seeing how many cosmetic products are marketed using the awful phrase "nature's chemistry"! [at least 2 or 3 a week, since you asked]

Anyway, this week we've found 3 or 4 webpages, in Korean, that mention Nature Chemistry. One mentions JACS as well.

So what? Well, the unusual thing is that the articles really don't look like normal science news articles at all! They look a lot more like a celebrity news story, complete with a professional photo of a young chap posing with/without guitar case - check 'em out.

Google Translate doesn't help - apart from providing a kind of Lear-esque nonsense poetry all of its own - but maybe you can! Is one of our - or JACS' - authors famous in Korea? Am I missing the point entirely?

Neil

Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

I think that the Research Highlight feed doesn't have/never had images, but the real research articles in the whole table of contents feed always has. They can take a second or two to load, however, so you might have missed them if you're a quick browser!

Images in our RSS feed was pretty high on our "web toys" wishlist - from our experience of scouring journal feeds for Research Highlights etc, we know what a difference it can make.

Awesome, I just noticed you put images in the RSS feed. I don't remember this always being the case, is this new?

Mitch

Today the December issue of Nature Chemistry went live (yes, I know it's still November and Thanksgiving has not yet arrived for our American cousins, but hey, all the Christmas stuff is already in the shops...!).

Anyway, this represents a fairly significant milestone because it closes out Volume 1 of the journal. Nine issues, lots of pretty covers and some great science to boot! (I guess I'm biased, but you'll just have to live with that). For those who are fans of metrics, it is these nine issues that will contribute to our first immediacy index (due out in the summer of 2010) and our first impact factor - due one year after that.

But we're not resting on our laurels, not al all! So begins Volume 2, and the January 2010 issue is not too far from being put to bed as well (short deadlines because of the festive season...). Indeed, two papers from this issue have already been published online in advance of print - with two more following next Sunday.

We will endeavour to continue bringing you the best chemistry from labs around the world in 2010 and hope you enjoy what we have to offer. But now that we can draw a line under Volume 1, for those of you brave enough to leave comments on this post, we'd be keen to hear what you think we've got right, what we've got wrong - and what your favourite bits were...

Let us know - we're always looking to improve.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Maitland Jones, Jr, teaches in the Department of Chemistry at New York University.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

When I was 12 or 13, I met William Doering. I had asked/demanded (remember I was all of 12) of my parents to be allowed to play the 12-year old tennis circuit that summer. My parents properly replied, "Time to get a job, kid." They met Doering at a party and coerced, or bribed, him into giving their kid what would today be called an internship at Hickrill, a privately funded basic research lab that happened to be near where we lived. There I not only met Doering, for whom I would work for the next ten years or so, but several other wonderful organic chemists, including Larry Knox, for whom I directly worked at Hickrill, washing dishes and being a general gopher. I knew nothing, of course, but the atmosphere was electric, the work intense, and the passion palpable. No one with the slightest interest in science could emerge from that place unchanged.

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

All my life I have loved jazz, and I have spent an enormous number of hours in dingy clubs over the last five or six decades. I know a lot about the music and run a jazz series in Princeton, New Jersey. I probably - certainly - could not be a musician, but I could run a club, or maybe be a critic. I still might do that.

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

Well, I closed the research lab when I moved from Princeton to NYU, so I can only answer that in retrospect. My group worked on the chemistry of reactive intermediates, carbenes, benzynes, and the like. We also expanded into the chemistry of boron cage compounds, and the interactions of reactive intermediates with those three-dimensionally aromatic compounds. We hoped only that it would lead to a better understanding of how molecules react - and of how "electrons talk to each other."

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

Thelonious Monk. I saw and heard Monk when I was a kid. Indeed, I was at the Five Spot for a few of the times Monk played with John Coltrane. I didn't have a good enough understanding of the music then, and I'd like to talk to Monk about his music, or, better, to see him play again, nowI have a deeper appreciation of it.

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

A long long ago, probably in the 1970's - or even 1960's. Peter Gaspar was visiting Princeton for a semester, and we happened on a result of Bill (Florida) Jones's that had, we thought, important implications for the chemistry of phenylcarbenes. So I ran the experiments, evaporating p-tolyl diazomethane through a hot pyrolysis tube and collecting the products, styrene and benzocyclobutene, as Peter and I expected/hoped. Write it out - it is a remarkable transformation. Then work out a mechanism. It's wonderful chemistry. It turns out that a student of Harold Shechter's had run similar experiment but for some reason Harold never published them at the time and they languished in Dissertation Abstracts.

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

It has to be a book I've read because one can't take chances on a desert island, so I might pick Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, for sheer flat-out virtuosity. Even if one doesn't get all the references - or even if one doesn't get the point at all - one can read it page by page, sentence by sentence, just for the brilliancy of the writing. And it's long. If I am allowed another, I'd take David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - for much the same reasons. Or maybe Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. Or....

Music is easy: Charlie Parker, the Collected Dials and Savoys.

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

There are only a small number of the great physical organic chemists left - Doering and Roberts, I guess. Few know them now, I'm afraid, as the discipline has fallen so far out of favor. It would be nice to let them have a chance to make the case again.

Dear Gentle Readers,

For a long time I have been an author and outlet for many in the chemistry community and the run was, to say the least, more than I could have ever expected.  It was through this blog that I found a cathartic release of frustration, anger and, most importantly, the insatiable curiosity I have always had for science.

Some time ago, a reader named Bethany Halford asked me a question about why I blog and I framed my answer in as quotable of a context as I could – because I wanted to see how far I could push this thing.  I think I have pushed it far enough and I have reached the end of my intellectual interest and now wish to divest myself from blogging so that I may completely free myself for the pursuit of other things.  No doubt you have noticed that the frequency of posting has diminished as my other projects have begun to take off and my fullest efforts are required there.

Now that blogging appears to be an activity which is regulated by the FTC, I think it’s safe to say that it has finally arrived.  I now know (or at least I think I know) what it takes for someone to develop a successful web presence and what sort of innovations are needed to build on that presence.  My programming skills are also none the worse for the endeavor.

In any regard, this is the end.  The lights will be shut off next month, the gmail account will no longer be answered and the chemblog store with its catchy EJ cup and functional group poster will be deleted.

Good bye, world.

Yours,

Kyle Finchsigmate

Pew tracks American's familiarity with the news of the day - my kids took the latest quiz (and each scored in the top quartile for adults and so were quite pleased with themselves). I played with something similar for science...it's definitely NOT rocket science, so if you've any science background at all -- you should score 100%.

If you're looking for the answers - they are here.

Today I constructed a brand new shelf in my hood.  I love hood shelves.  You can put chemicals on them, solvents, glassware… all kinds of things that would ordinarily go somewhere else more… public.   After I was done constructing my masterpiece I began to admire my handiwork and populate it with things (mostly chemicals) but, while I was standing there talking with my hood neighbor, the consensus was reached that the new shelf begged a novel hood design:  it needed hood Feng Shui.

While I have no idea what Feng Shui actually is, I’m 99% certain it has something to do with colorful fish or those lucky bamboo things they sell at Target and since 99% is basically 100% I figured my hood needs a fish inside of it.

Of course, I’m a realist.  I can’t put a whole aquarium in my hood – that would be chest slappingly short bus retarded.  Since I don’t want to run an air pump through my hood I need a labyrinth fish.  The king of such fish is the betta fish or the Siamese fighting fish.  And  because I’m 99% sure Feng Shi also means making sure your shit matches, it needs to be in a round bottom flask.  (That useless 29/42 ground glass is suddenly less useless!)

So, I’m thinking about something like this:

I would put the fish in a flask on my shelf, where I would feed it and it could watch my reactions for me at night (and tell me who the fuck keeps turning my hood’s airflow alarm back on).

Alternatively, I could set up an ant farm and run the ant tubes all over my hood.  That would prolly kick ass, too.

This energy audit was conducted on our house as part of our 70s house eco renovation project to help us prioritize weatherization and energy efficiency projects. This is one in a series of articles documenting the eco renovation of our house. By Erik North, Free Energy Maine LLC.

After I won a Nobel Prize I suddenly turned into an omniscient sage, whereas formerly I was simply a workaholic.

Richard Ernst, Chemistry 1991

(H/T to Nature Chemistry's October editorial)









Photo of Dirac's Nobel Medal is from: rubberpaw at Flickr

I am at the ACS meeting in Washington DC, here as "press" rather than chemist. It's a very different way to see the meeting. I went to a press briefing this morning - on the first phases of development of aresol vaccines for measles (Robert Sievers). The press center is tucked away next to the registration, and has everything a writer might want: food, wireless access and a steady stream of caffeine and conversation.

The briefings are being streamed live on the web and journalists watching can send their questions in to be asked. Miss something the first time round? Watch the replay here.

Listening as a scientist to a talk, and as a writer to the briefing turn out to be slightly different experiences. Both require critical listening, but listening as a writer prompts me to think far more about the words the science is coming wrapped in. The shorthand scientists use sounds almost staccato in this context. "Measles naive" instead of "never exposed to the measles virus" or "no evidence of viremia" instead of "no measurable virus in the bloodstream".

We try to be both precise and concise, but I wonder how often the combination in giving a talk, or even reading a paper in the literature leads to attentional processing deficits? An interesting experiment in attentional processing is to present subjects with a rapidly changing sequences of letter, interspersed with numbers. If two numbers are placed too close together, subjects can "miss" the second letter while their brain is busy processing the first. Pack too much into a sentence, and your "subjects" might miss bits.

---

My Thesis column in Nature Chemistry this month, Stretching Toplogy, takes a slightly different tack in thinking about the ways words wrap around science.

My youngest and I are heading into Philadelphia tonight for a chocolate dessert feast, so it seems apt that a friend sent me this bit of mathematical magic this morning - with a plea to explain how it works.

Chocolate Calculator:

This is pretty neat. Don’t say your age; you will probably lie anyway!

DON’T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST

It takes less than a minute. Work this out as you read.

Be sure you don’t read the bottom until you’ve worked it out!

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)
3. Add 5
4. Multiply it by 50 — I’ll wait while you get the calculator
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759. If you haven’t, add 1758.
6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number

The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

The next two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)

THIS IS THE ONLY YEAR (2009) IT WILL EVER WORK, SO SPREAD IT AROUND WHILE IT LASTS!

So how does it work?
Expressed algebraically, the procedure if you have had your birthday can be written as:
50 (2n +5) + 1759 - y
where n is the number you chose and y the year you were born

The author asserts that this will produce a number where the digit in the 100's place is n and the remaining digits are your age or 100*n + age. If you have had your birthday this year, your age in 2009 can be written in terms of your birth year, y, as
age = 2009 - y
So the formula should produce 100*n + (2009 - y).

It is trivial (I love saying that) to show that

50 (2n +5) + 1759 - y = 100*n + (2009 - y)

This will not work if your age is greater than 99, but as long as you are younger than that, the last two digits will always be your age even if the number of times you want to eat chocolate in a week is greater than 10 -- so in either case eat all the chocolate you want!

I was playing Scrabble online the other day and when a z materialized on my rack near the end of the game was desperate enough to try "azo". Good news, what I thought was chemist's shorthand, the dictionary thinks is a word. "Azo" has been part of my vocabulary since I was very young. My dad's graduate work was on azides - molecules that contain three linked nitrogen atoms (N₃) tagged at the end and that are notoriously unstable (a fancy chemistry term for "could explode at any time" - at a dinner for his PhD adviser some 25 years later the number of people around the table lacking fingers was astounding). Azo compounds are molecular relatives of the azides - molecules that have an two linked nitrogens in the middle (R-N=N-R). Some azo compounds are brightly colored and generally they are more stable than azides.

As a rule of thumb, if you see "azo" in a compound's name, it's likely to have nitrogen in it somewhere. Why? French chemist Lavoisier dubbed the fraction of air that cannot support life "azote" from the Greek azotos: without + life. We now know that roughly 80% of the air we breathe is nitrogen gas - hence the connection between azo and nitrogen.

Lavoisier's alternate terms was "mephitic air" -- another Greek import, this time from the name of the goddess who prevented noxious smells from arising from sewers: Mephitis. Ironically, while many nitrogen compounds smell awful (dead fish anyone?), nitrogen gas, Lavoisier's mephitic air, is odorless. That goddess has lent her name to smellier pursuits though - the striped skunk's Latin name is Mephitis mephitis. I can personally attest to the smell.

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Photo used under Creative Commons license. Credit to Kevin Bowman.

My youngest son, Barnacle Boy, swims like a fish. When he was small, he could stay under water just a second longer than I though he should be able to -- I'd be ready to reach under and haul him to the surface, and then up he would pop. I began to wonder if he had gills.

Nowadays I'm certain he has no gills, though he can still hold his breath for a long time. He's not quite completely adapted to an aquatic life, though. He suffers from water in the ears. And he hates to hear himself sloshing...

The standard remedy for water stuck in the ears is "SwimEar" - an ad for which reads in part:

"Once water enters this tube...surface tension will cause this water to adhere firmly to the walls of the canal, thereby blocking it. Why is this water so difficult to remove? This is due to surface tension effect as well as the fact that it is extremely difficult to break the vacuum that is created behind the trapped water in the ear canal."

Despite the popping sensation you can get when your ears finally clear from water, there is no vacuum behind the water (really, I'm certain). As the ad implies, the trouble is that water is clingy, and therefore has a high surface tension. The high surface tension is what impedes the flow of water out of the ear canal -- think of getting the water out of a thin straw. The ear canal is behaving like a capillary. Reduce the surface tension and the fluid will release.

SwimEar is just a solution of isopropyl alcohol with a dash of glycerin added for comfort. (Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is what we drink - but to a chemist, an alcohol is a molecule that has a "tail" of (mostly) carbons and hydrogens topped off by a hydroxyl group: OH. Ethanol is CH₃CH₂OH, isopropyl alcohol is (CH₃)₂CHOH.) The isopropyl alcohol lowers the surface tension of the water (so will a bit of soapy water for that matter).

Horror of horrors - the Romans used lead to sweeten their fruit. No wonder Rome fell! Except that I was willing to read a 1883 paper (in German with healthy helpings of Greek and Latin) to discover that it may be lead and it may be sweet, but the lead doesn't lead it to be sweet.

In a time when mercury was regularly used as a remedy for maladies as serious as syphilis and as commonplaces as constipation, it doesn’t surprise me that lead compounds were in the pharmacopeia. (In all fairness, some modern antibiotics and most chemotherapy agents are at least as toxic as these less old remedies; they just have a better risk-benefit ratio.) Sugar of lead, or as it’s called in the 19th century medical literature, saccharum saturni, is lead acetate: Pb(CH₃COOH)₂. It was once prescribed for intestinal troubles, an odd choice, since one symptom of acute lead poisoning is an upset stomach. Lead poisoning is also known as painter's colic.

Sugar of lead really is sweet, roughly as sweet per spoonful as sugar. In the 18th and 19th century, lead shot was often dropped into bottles of port, purportedly to make it sweeter - though the more likely effect is anti-bacterial. Why? Lead does dissolve well in alcohol and juices (crystal decanters to store your port are a bad idea) - but I can't find anything that suggests solutions of lead ions are sweet.

The Romans were reputed to use lead acetate as a sweetener. They produced a syrup called sapa by boiling down mildly fermented grape juice in kettles made from lead alloys. (The hydrates of lead acetate are far less soluble in alcohol solutions - you are more likely to get a suspension of crystals in the syrup.) I am suggesting that it’s unlikely that the syrup was sweet because of the lead acetate it certainly contained. An 1883 analysis of sapa produced according to recipes dating from the classical Roman period, in kettles of similar metallic content to those found at Pompeii and other sites, suggested that the lead content of sapa was roughly 850 mg per liter. The equivalent amount of table sugar would be roughly a teaspoon - hardly enough to taste sweet in a liter of liquid. On the other hand, the sugars (glucose and fructose) in the concentrated grape must are the equivalent of 1 cup of table sugar per liter and would certainly swamp any sweetness coming from the lead acetate. It's still not all that sweet. To get a sense of how sweet this is, simple syrup, which has similar culinary uses to sapa, has about 4 cups of sugar in a liter.

I still wouldn't use sapa to poach my pears, but I think it unlikely that the sweet taste of sapa has much to do with lead.

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Photo is c. 2009 John4kc. Used with permission.

I was wandering the Cape Anne historical museum this winter and noticed in a 19th century ship's medical kit a vial labeled "sugar of lead." This is lead acetate, which tastes sweet -- and is reputed to have been used as a sweetener is days past. Other metal salts are sweet as well - yttrium salts and beryllium salts can both taste sweet.

Beryllium was first identified in 1798 by chemist Louis Vauquelin as an oxide in beryl and emeralds (emeralds are beryls with a bit of chromium added!). Since the chloride salt of the new element tasted sweet, the editors of the journal which published Vauquelin's findings suggested he call the oxide (or earth) glucina from the Greek, glyks (γλυκυς) for sweet. The elemental symbol used was Gl.

Beryllium was suggested as alternative once other sweet metal salts were found, for the gemstones in which the element was first identified. It took until 1949 for this to become the official IUPAC name of the element with four protons.

Beryls were used to make "reading stones," magnifying glasses, then eventually ground into lenses for eyeglasses.

The recipe for pulled pork called for 1/2 cup of brown sugar to be dissolved into 1 1/2 cups of apple cider vinegar. What I had in the cabinet was solid as a rock - there was no way I was packing this into a measuring cup. (Yes, I know I could have done this in the microwave...) My scale came to the rescue. I hacked off chunks until I had the correct mass of brown sugar (110 grams more or less). I dumped the three large hunks into the vinegar in a 2 cup glass measure, and noted that the total volume was just about 2 cups. Nice job.

Then I stirred it to dissolve the sugar. And watched the volume decrease to just over 1 1/2 cups of solution! Have I just proved Archimedes wrong? The volume of sugar at first seemed to have displaced the equivalent volume of liquid, but then seemed to vanish...well not exactly into thin air, but vanish nonetheless. As my 15-year old might say, "What's up with that?"

Yes, Archimedes was correct, but his theory did not address substances that dissolve in the liquid. This is a good demonstration of how much "empty "space is in a liquid. The sugar molecules (and other things in brown sugar, which is not terribly pure as chemicals go) insert themselves between water molecules, without needing to push the water molecules further apart. To a good first approximation the volume of a solution made from a solvent and soluble solid is the volume of the solvent used, not the sum of the two volumes.

Try it...it's fun to watch, and it still intrigues me to think about the amount of unused space there is in a liquid that seems so substantial at the macroscopic level!

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The pulled pork was a keeper...though the kids found the BBQ sauce too spicy for their taste. Try it on challah rolls!