Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category:
Nazi Paraphernalia in Lab
by mitch on May 17 2012 (2936 Views)Today's guest post is by Fraser Parlane.
Many of you most likely deal with gas cylinders. Many of these cylinders have a small window, (or four squares) stamped next to the service dates (these are month, then year). As you can see, this particular bottle dates back to 1945. Of course, this is during WWII era. During the war, Nazi Germany stamped swastikas on their gas cylinders. You can still see that these cylinders came from german companies.
Allied forces "captured" substantial German assets after VE day and shipped them back to the US in mass quantities. As such, there are very many swastika cylinders still in use here. Most are not recognized because the swastika was covered with a box stamp that makes it look like four small boxes.
Update: Someone found a cylinder with a unaligned stamp on it.
Adventures at a Decommissioned Cylcotron.
by mitch on May 14 2012 (966 Views)Norwegian Student, jeppelapp, explores the basement level of his university.
A photo adventure into the department basement begins.
This is looking ominous...
Some lighted up panels in a dark room...
Ah, here's the light.
Note that the date on the calendar is November 23, 2009
Pictures of people standing next to the machine, going all the way back to the 60's
"High Voltage, Dangerous", obviously the power source, probably radioactive, since it's protected by all these lead-plates
Some kind of chart
And a notebook with readings of some sort.
The back of the "power source"
Yup, we're all gonna get cancer
A storage room next to the machine
Where's number 18, man, WHERE'S NUMBER 18?
Proof that this is a time machine, why else would they need a phonebook from 1999, or a book called "The Past in the Searchlight
Hat-tip: Doruk, a Junior Chemistry student
Source: My friends and I went exploring at our University. Found what's most likely a time machine.,
Mitch
Sigma Aldrich Vending Machines
by mitch on May 10 2012 (6082 Views)Today's guest post is by inspector071.
Not Another 5S Friday! - Trustus Pharmaceuticals
by mitch on May 02 2012 (2079 Views)Latest video from ZombieSymmetry
Mitch
Eye-Test Abstracts
by See Arr Oh on Apr 20 2012 (4910 Views)Readers: have you noticed the new trend in graphical abstracts? Seems to me that more and more choose the "coloring book" route. (I've written about this a few times at Just Like Cooking, but I've decided to up the ante and broaden the discussion audience over here)
When designing talks and posters, most chemists will tell you to use color sparingly, say, to accent a particular functional group, or to draw the eye to a key concept. Many shy away from color schemes that won't translate well at a distance, such as white-on-black, or black-on-orange...
J. Am. Chem. Soc., ASAP, 2012
Marketers have long understood that human beings respond strongly to primary colors; it's no secret that Coca-Cola and McDonald's both advertise with bright red signs. But for organic chemistry? If your reaction or concept truly breaks new ground, won't people recognize it without all the visual hype?
Angew. Chemie, ASAP, 2012
I'm not entirely sure what's driving this - desire to have your chemistry noticed on a crowded page? Viewers transitioning to mobile phone apps, where your abstract (presumably) fights for space amongst highly-colored games and ads? 'Artistic' sensibilities?
Organometallics ASAP, 2012
Readers, what are your thoughts? Do you color in your reaction schemes? Do you find colored abstracts appealing, or annoying?
Update (04/20/12) - Almost forgot Nature Chem's coverage of the abstract issue. Thanks, Stu!
Helium for balloons but none for my NMR
by Mark on Apr 19 2012 (7215 Views)
Our reserves of helium are finite and we're running out. This may come as a mild disappointment to children everywhere but its really bad news for science.
My (and everyone else's) NMR machines use liquid helium (at 3 Kelvin) as the coolant for their superconducting magnets. The same goes for MRI scanners and those cathedrals of science the particle accelerators like the LHC. And right now there's a world wide shortage of helium which means that we may have to decommission some of our NMRs. Re-commissioning them will then cost 10s of thousands of dollars, plus it would require huge amounts of liquid helium to cool them down again.
We fill these instruments with liquid helium regularly, replacing the stuff that's boiled off. The thing is that once that helium has evaporated off and into the atmosphere its gone. There's no getting is back. So why don't we bother collecting the boiled off helium? All we'd need to do is stick a balloon on top of the NMR machine, then a simple compressor could be used to turn it back into a liquid.
We don't bother with this simple bit of recycling because there's no immediate economic imperative. But hang on, didn't I just say the reserves are limited, so surely helium is really expensive? Well it aught to be. According to Professor Robert Richardson, who won the Nobel physic prize in 1996 for his research on helium, a helium party balloon should cost $100. Instead they cost about 50 cents. The reason helium is sold well below its 'real' value is because of an odd law passed by the US congress in the 1996. Robin McKie explained some background in The Observer newspaper last month.
In the 1920s the US decided helium would be a strategic resource. It realised that air power would be crucial in future wars, and assumed that these would be fought by airships that would use helium to float.
Then to cut costs in 1996 Congress passed a law mandating the U.S. helium reserve (the largest in the world by some way) be sold off by 2015, irrespective of market price. They set in stone the amount of helium that needed to be sold and so ever since they have been dumping it on the market.
This is a long term issue, but it doesn't explain the immediate shortage. The problem here, as far as I can gather because our suppliers (BOC) aren't telling us much, is that several of the worlds helium refineries are out of action. That, at least, was the case 10 months ago according to gasworld. And they don't expect things to improve until a new plant comes on line in 2013.
In the meantime it looks like there's going to be a long queue for the remaining NMR machine.
25th April UPDATE :
Here's the latest on the helium situation from BOC in the UK.
Magnetic grapes and NMR
by Mark on Apr 15 2012 (2879 Views)When I was an undergrad I found NMR to be one of the trickiest techniques to get my head around. I think it was because the technique involves so many concepts that run counter to everything we've learnt before. After all in school we get told about ferromagnets and thats it. Then at uni suddenly someone is trying to tell us that actually there's these other things called diamagnets and paramagnets, which means that even water is magnetic!
So now that I get to teach NMR I like to demonstrate diamagnetism right from the get go. Of course diamagnetism is really weak so you need a precision built, low friction setup. So I set about building one with ....
- 2 grapes
- A wooden skewer
- A pin
- An old film canister
- A neodymium magnet. I get mine from emagnets. The stronger the better I use one with 20 Kg pull.
- Don't let kids play with them.
- Don't put them near your credit cards, phone, watch or any other electrical equipment.
- Don't put 2 magnets anywhere near each other because they'll fly towards one another, shatter and send chunks flying.
- If you have any medical implants don't go anywhere near them.
- Read the safety instructions that come with the magnets.
The Build:
1. Push the 2 grapes onto either end of the skewer
http://youtu.be/-zOzEvHmaK8
Tapping into Your Inner Chemistry Blogger
by Kenneth Hanson on Mar 24 2012 (5416 Views)As many of you may have noticed the posting traffic on chemistry-blog.com has slowed as of late. One of the risks associated with any blog is the correlation between the number of posts and visitors: as the number of post goes down, so does the traffic. Allowing this downward spiral to continue can ultimately result in the end of a blog. Since we at chemistry-blog.com are proud of our small corner of the internet and love sharing chemistry with others we would hate to see it follow this path.
We need your help, especially if you’re an enthusiastic chemist interested in writing. The posts cover a broad range of topics related to chemistry - from random thoughts, literature reviews, humor, interesting youtube videos, and more – and we are eager to see what you are interested in contributing to our community.
There are two options for contributing to chemistry-blog.com. The first is to become a regular contributor to the site with your own login and chemblog identity. The second option is to be a onetime or sparse contributor where the members of chemblog would format your writing and post it under our ID with a clear disclaimer that you are the contributor.
If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor please contact Mitch Garcia. If you would like to be a one time or sparse contributor feel free to contact Mitch, Adam or myself.
We look forward to hearing from and working with you – and thank you in advance to helping our community thrive!
Patent Law 101 for University Scientists
by Kenneth Hanson on Feb 15 2012 (14065 Views)Sometimes, during research, we come up with or stumble upon something that is not only unique, interesting and scientifically important, but also has possible commercial viability. The question you might then ask is, “Can I patent it?” In other words, “Can I legally protect the intellectual property that I have created so that I have exclusive rights to pursue it for financial gain?” and “If I patent something, what rights will that grant?”
Unless you have already gone through the patent process you likely don’t have answers to these questions. Recently, a patent attorney - Jeremy Stipkala Ph.D., J.D., who has his own legal practice called Stipkala Law - visited the Meyer research group to help answer these questions. Jeremy received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and then went on to get his J.D. from George Washington University Law School. His expertise allows him to share insight into the patent process from both a scientific and a legal perspective. He gave us a straight forward handout to provide some insight into the patent process. With his permission, I am now sharing this handout with you.
Arrest Warrant Issued for Patrick Harran
by mitch on Dec 27 2011 (15398 Views)The L.A. County district attorney’s office charged Patrick Harran with three felony charges of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards, in connection with a laboratory fire that killed Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji.
LA Times has the story here: UC system, UCLA professor charged in lab fire that killed staffer.
As always, I hope covering this case will inspire others to think twice about safely working with pyrophorics and hopefully cajole professors into leaving their office and personally instructing their workers in proper technique. This story will be continually updated for the foreseeable future as press releases and statements are given.
Update 1: UCLA issues a statement
Mitch
Read more »
Jimmy Stewart: A Chemist's Everyman
by nickuhlig on Dec 05 2011 (6349 Views)A few weeks ago I attended one of the most inspirational and entertaining talks I've ever witnessed, given by Daniel G. Nocera (from M.I.T) on his wireless "artificial leaf" technology, published recently in Science. Apart from presenting elegant and relevant research (self-healing catalysts, anyone?), Nocera proved to be a very charismatic fellow, and provided many insights into the strategies he used for developing this technology (analysis of technology cost per unit weight and energy storage methods proved to be more interesting than I would have guessed).
The real "moment" of the talk, though, was when he presented a brief excerpt from the 1938 film "You Can't Take It With You", starring Jimmy Stewart:
This was really one of those rare moments when you realize how monumental a particular problem is. That someone in a film 73 years ago explained--in a mildly condescending way--the difficulty of accomplishing artificial photosynthesis and the exciting possibility of using it for large-scale energy applications is truly amazing. That it has taken us this long to fully understand how photosynthesis works and how to reproduce it is humbling, and yet still impressive. This really is one of the greatest problems we face, both from a sustainable energy standpoint, and from a pure research standpoint. The fact that it is now so close after so many years (Nocera has partnered with the Tata Corporation in India to make the push towards production and wider applications) is extremely exciting.
The other, perhaps more humorous and salient, point of the video is the very last line. What did Jimmy Stewart's character end up doing after years of relentlessly pursuing such a noble and complex goal? Throwing in the towel, and heading off to work in "this strange thing called banking".
Times sure have changed, haven't they?
Microwave Grilling: How Does It Work?
by azmanam on Nov 17 2011 (9858 Views)Previous articles in the How Does It Work series:
If you have any topics where you'd like to know: How Does It Work, let me know in the comments 
Today: how microwave grilling works. How does my Lean Cuisine Microwave Panini grill itself in my microwave? And how come when I microwave other things they just get soggy instead of crispy and grilled? It’s like using a toaster oven or George Forman, but not! What the heck is going on?
How'd you get so crispy?! Via Lean Cuisine
