Chemistry Blog

Condensed Print Format

My boss has pointed out this piece of news covered by C&EN. Apparently, starting from July, all ACS journals will be printed in a “rotated and condensed” format, that is two pages on one printed page in landscape format. This is an effort to reduce printing and distribution costs.

In my opinion, this change is just one further step towards purely electronic journals that are not printed at all. I think this will deeply affect the way we present our data and how we look at formatting. Preparing a manuscript in a way meant for printing is different from one which will never appear in print. Some may welcome this change because it saves paper, others will probably miss the possibility of flicking through a new issue of JACS. Although I rarely go to the library to pick up a printed journal, I admit to reading printouts very often (see this post).

Update: Apparently, in 2010 the print versions will stop completely, with the exception of JACS, Acc. Chem. Res. and Chem. Rev. See also Nature News.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

ACS Front Page

Looks like ACS is giving the Cold Fusion press conference some nice front page real estate. It is currently prominantly displayed on http://www.acs.org/

I’m getting embarrassed for ACS at this point.

Our recent coverage of the Cold Fusion Press conference: Cold Fusion Has Its Press Conference, Monday Update from ACS in SLC

Pic of the ACS front page is below.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Cold Fusion Has Its Press Conference

Jeremy and I scored press passes to the recent Cold Fusion Press Conference at the ACS 2009 Spring Meeting. Unfortunately for them I’m a nuclear chemistry PhD student. Jeremy did a quick wrap-up of the press conference,^[CB] but I thought it would be useful to have a critical chemist perspective of their recent announcement. The press conference did nothing to address the violation of the most elementary of chemistry and physics that I painstakingly explained in this old post titled “The difference between cold fusion and cold fusion“, but I’ll move on to address their statements.

As this was a press conference and not a scientific talk there wasn’t any data that I can point to as evidence for a cold fusion claim. However, we can tear some sanity from their own words. I asked why they haven’t observed any gamma rays from their cold fusion experiments. Pamela Mosier-Boss was quick to reply that they indeed did measure gamma rays, but they “came in bursts… and are averaged away [over the duration of the experiment]“. Dissect that statement and reflect on it as a scientist. Think to yourself: “Hmmm… clusters of peaks coming all of a sudden but randomly”, “Hmmm… as they run the experiment they see these peaks average out?”, “What does this mean?”. You don’t have to be a spectroscopy expert to figure this one out. The answer is simple, they measured background. Background is a random process, it will come in bursts, they may even cluster to make a peak for a short time, but when you run it over the course of the whole experiment it is “averaged out”; that my friend is background you measured.

At an other point of the conference Mahadeva Srinivasan claims to be able to measure tritium, neutrons, and other ionizing radiation not by actually measuring them, but indirectly from looking at his electrodes and observing craters and holes and trying to ascribe the radiation that caused it. Sounds sort of reasonable unless you’ve ever done any electrodeposition, which is what the process he described would yield if running current through a wire. Here is a picture of an electrodeposited layer of europium oxide my fellow colleagues made in the lab.

You can see craters and valleys in the image. I hope their electrodes didn’t look anything as awful as this, but you can see for yourself that electrodeposition can create ugly surfaces. Which was a major reason for the Thin Film community’s move away from electrodeposition and embrace of Sol-Gel techniques, because it causes less cratering and produces homogeneous and uniform films.

So should I believe the claims of a scientist who does not understand the difference between background and peaks? Should I believe a scientist who doesn’t understand the basic consequences of his own technique? You don’t even have to be a nuclear chemist to call bull-shit on this one.

I want to end this on a positive note, because I’ve spent a lot of time hammering these cold fusion people over the years. Honestly, if they are measuring more energy out of their systems than the energy they are putting in, then this is fantastic news. If they see excess heat, then they need to chase this line of inquiry down. But nuclear fusion is not the right path. I truly want to believe these people are capable of measuring the amount of energy in their system versus the energy out correctly. But the electrochemistry they are performing is non-reversible and that makes energy accounting, in their dynamic system, a very difficult mess. The simple act of having gas bubbles float from your electrodes will deposit more energy into your solution, due to friction, then you would expect. And frankly, after listening to these people talk for 45 minutes I don’t believe they are capable of correctly accounting for energy in a dynamic system.

Mitch

P.S. Make up your own mind, a link to the press conference is here, Cold Fusion Press Conference. I ask my question around the 28 minute mark. Aaron Rowe from wired science blog is now my favorite science journalist, his question is asked at 34:50 minute mark.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Monday Update from ACS in SLC

Generally Speaking.  On Monday, we were greeted with some light snowfall, and I don’t think it’s going to get much warmer while I’m here.  Aaron from Wired Blog made the comment that attendance looks low at ACS in Salt Lake City.  I agree, and I wonder if it’s a function of the economy.  On the humorous side of science, there was a vendor in front of the Salt Palace this morning selling “Obamium” t-shirts.  I didn’t get one (we live in a McCain/Palin household).  Also, I’ve noticed that there isn’t a lot of ground-breaking synthetic organic chemistry being presented. 

LENR = Cold Fusion?  Not quite a tabletop source of energy, but interesting nevertheless.  Pamela Mosier-Boss, Steve Krivit, Antonella De Ninno and a few other experts took questions from a packed house about the interpretation of recent results surrounding advancements in low energy nuclear reactions (LENR).  Those in attendance included Scott Chubb (of Infinite Energy fame), KSL-TV Channel 5 and the legendary Mitch Andre Garcia.  I’m not even going to try and explain the crux of the talk (being a synthetic organic chemist, and all).  However, the video of the press conference is available here, and I encourage you to check it out if you’re interested.  Perhaps if you ask Mitch really nice, he’ll write a post on the ins and outs of the debate.  While there are several critics of the research (for example, click here), the crux of the talk appeared to focus on recruiting young chemists to explore this “new” area of science. 

Feel the Burn.  The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced their discovery of gas hydrates—“a frozen form of natural gas that bursts into flames at the touch of a match.”  Tim Collett (project co-leader) claims that this work may bridge the gap between relatively dirty fossil fuels and clean energy because gas hydrates purportedly leave a small carbon footprint. 

Just Scan it.  I took a few moments to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Silk, president of Silk Scientific, about his digitizing software.  I haven’t seen this sort of program before, so I’ll make the assumption that others haven’t either.  The product (called “UN-SCAN-IT”) takes a chart, graph, HPLC trace, etc. and converts the image into data points, which can be dropped into a program such as Excel.  With the “raw” datapoints, UN-SCAN-IT allows you to integrate, take derivatives, and perform curve fitting.  If this sort of thing tickles your fancy, you can download a demo of the software here.  For all of you bio-type peeps, Silk Scientific also sells a second program called “UN-SCAN-IT gel,” which acts as a densitometer for gel images.  As for future generations of products for Silk Scientific, I suggested he make a program that will automatically solve ¹H-NMR spectra.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Sunday Update from ACS in SLC

On my flight into Salt Lake City, I was greeted to nasty turbulence, an overcast sky but a comfortable mid-50 degree temperature, which eventually turned to rain (there’s a chance of snow tonight). 

So, what happened today?

The Inorganic/Medicinal Version of Brown.  M. Frederick Hawthorne is slated to win the highly coveted ACS Priestley medal for his contributions to boron chemistry in SLC this week (March 24, 2009).  In addition to synthesizing polyhedral borane clusters such as B₁₂H₁₂^2- in the 1950’s, he is noted for his boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT)—a promising technique in the war on cancer (see: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 6507-6512).  I realize this isn’t really news per se since C&EN covered it last June, but some of you might have missed it.

Smith’s Dithiane Chemistry.  I caught most of Amos Smith’s talk about his lab’s recent efforts in the realm of dithiane transformations (you should be thinking “umpolong”).  He did a nice presentation on multicomponent anion relay chemistry (“ARC”; for example see: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 12368-12369 and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.  2008, 47, 7082-7086) while making a cute comment that the resultant “protected” alcohols are easily removed with Philadelphia tap water.  For those not familiar, the Smith lab has been applying hybrid umpolong/Brook rearrangement chemistry to synthesize cool “proof-of-concept” natural product-like molecules.  Smith mentioned that this type of work has caught Jeff Johnson’s attention (hence the umpolong connection) evidenced by a fairly recent publication about the synthesis of zaragozic acid C (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 17281-17283).  I had to leave the talk a bit early, but from my vantage point I noticed a lot of male chemists slowly starting to assemble for M. Christina White’s talk.  I was truly sorry that I missed it.  Oh, in case you were wondering, I did not notice her trademark ostentatious belt buckle.

CAS and Nanotechnology.  In the few hours I’ve been at the ACS conference, I’ve noticed that there’s an awful lot of material (no pun intended) on nanotechnology.  While nanotechnology touches areas of pharma, materials and even the molecular automotive industry, the issue of classification is making its way through the chemical community.  Roger Schenck (of CAS) did a fine presentation on the issue from Chemical Abstracts Service’s vantage point.  CAS currently catalogs 80 sections of chemistry (#1 is pharmacology), and, according to Schenck, CAS is not planning on adding #81 (which would be nanotechnology) anytime soon. It seems that the issue will be tabled for a bit longer while the field continues to grow/evolve.  For you history buffs out there, Schenck contends that nanotechnology probably began with Kroto’s C₆₀ discovery (Nature 1985, 318, 162-163). Interesting tidbit: Kroto even mentioned that he’d “prefer to let this issue of nomenclature be settled by the consensus.” 

Alright, I’m off to the expo social event.  See you tomorrow. 

Subscribe to the comments for this post

ACS-2009 Salt Lake City

Jeremy (J) and I will be attending the upcoming ACS meeting and will be blogging the conference as it unfolds. If anyone in the audience is interested in doing a meet-up leave a comment.

For those looking for more than a meet-up I present you with…
Corny Chemistry Pick-Up Lines:

1. If I could rewrite the periodic table, I would put Uranium and Iodine together, for U and I!
2. What does it take to get over YOUR activation barrier?
3. I’m positive, you’re negative, let’s get together and make a compound!
4. My favorite element is uranium, because I love U!
5. It’s true that opposites attract. We’re like an electron and a proton, we come together and now we’re stable… and steady!
6. You want to see if we can make some new compounds from an “energetic” reaction?
7. You must be one of those new neon compounds with fluorine and iodine, because you are FINe!
8. If I were a Bunsen burner, you would be my flame, hot enough to melt a few things.
9. I got a charge out of bonding with you.
10. You make my atomic number rise.
11. You’re so cool, molecules stop in your presence.
12. I have mass. You have mass. We’re naturally attracted!
13. Hey baby, I’ll raise your kinetic energy.
14. You make me hotter than crystallizing a super saturated solution of sodium acetate.
15. You can hydrolyze me anytime.
16. You must be a good benzene ring, because you are pleasantly aromatic.
17. You’re an electrophile and I’m a nucleophile, we’re attracted and we can make each other happy.
18. You’re an alcohol and I’m your ketone. I’ll protect your from the Grignards of life.
19. You are a photon quanta to my valence electron. You excite me to a higher energy level.
20. Baby, quench me and work me up anytime!

You can blame Chemical Forums for this collection: A request for cheesy Chemistry related pick-up lines

If you can think of better ones please share.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

The Nano Song – Chemical Edutainment Done Right

So ACS has the Nanotation contest right now trying to find the most entertaining way to explain the concept of Nano. These people from Berkeley have done an amazing job*, so Mitch, I want you to hook up a brotha (me) with these people. I showed it to my niece and she memorized the song today and said:

boyie’s cute five year old niece: “i’m going to teach my teacher about nanotechnology!”

I present to y’all, the Nano Song.

* chemistry-blog does not officially endorse the video for the nano contest (unless Mitch deems it so), but boyie sure does love the nanosong.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Science Podcasts

I got a new iPod Touch from Sigma-Aldrich for Christmas this year (no, really).  Probably the best part is the wi-fi capabilities.  I tried keeping up with podcasts before on other iPods, but it was too much work to plug the iPod into the computer, transfer over the new episodes, and repeat.  Now I can grab the new episodes directly from the iTouch, and it’s awesome.  (btw, does anyone know how to subscribe to the podcasts so the iPod will update itself with new episodes automatically?)

Anyway, I’ve been surveying the chemistry podcasts over the past few weeks.  They’re great to listen to while running a column or doing other tasks that don’t require a lot of mental energy.  Most of the major journals have a podcast, as do most news outlets and some other random sites.  I’ll tell you about some of the ones I liked below the jump if you’re interested in giving some of them a listen.

Read more »

Subscribe to the comments for this post