Chemistry World Blog

PCSK9 inhibitors for cholesterol problems perform well – $500m for Ista – And light materials from Bayer (more…)

Static electricity usually conjures up images of Van de Graaff generators, crazy hair, sticking balloons to walls and the odd shock from an inappropriate clothing choice.

But when Classic Kit columnist Andrea Sella happened to mention a couple of months ago that the cause of static charging is still far from understood, my interest was piqued.

I had assumed from schooldays that it was all sorted out – you rub stuff and it gets charged. But when you think about it, what’s actually causing that charge buildup? Is it really electrons? Surely the work function – the energy required to displace an electron from the surface – of those materials is far higher than simply placing them in contact with another material? What about ions? Or both?  Or even bits of the materials themselves transferring over – as I found out researching my latest news piece?

So what’s really going on? (more…)

Any excuse for a trip to the beach – catching some rays is the best way to prevent rickets by stimulating production of vitamin D in your skin. David Lindsay heads for sunnier climes in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

12 March 2012: Have something to say about an article you’ve read on Chemistry World this week? Leave your comments below…

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Plugging snails into the Matrix © ACS

In the 1999 film The Matrix, a race of sentient machines gets its power by harvesting bioelectricity from farms of plugged in human beings.

While that’s (as far as I know) not yet been realised, a group at Ben-Gurion University in Israel has managed to plug into a snail as a power source.

The team implanted a biofuel cell into a living land snail. The cell is made from carbon nanotube ‘paper’ modified with enzymes that process sugar. As the snail eats, some of the glucose in its food ends up in the fuel cell and generates electricity.

There’s no danger of the machines overthrowing their human masters just yet, though – the maximum power from the snail cell was 7.45µW, so it would take quite a lot of snails to power even a small robot. That said, the aim of these devices is not really to create a new source of renewable power by enslaving armies of snails – more to power tiny implanted medical devices that deliver drugs or monitor diseases.

I just hope they don’t join forces with the cockroaches with fuel cell-powered implants to control their movements.

Phillip Broadwith

Ref: L Halámková et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2012, DOI: 10.1021/ja211714w

Today is international women’s day. That’s something to celebrate – women have made boundless contributions to our scientific and cultural advancement, from Marie Curie and the Bronte sisters to Ada Yonath and Dolly Parton.

But in another sense it’s an indictment of our culture that we feel we have to make special efforts to highlight these people’s work just because they are women. Should great contributions not be recognised simply on their own merit? Of course this is the ideal, but history tells us that ideals are rarely realised. Marie Curie was denied election to the French Academy of Sciences, despite discovering two new elements. The Brontes initially published many of their novels under male-sounding names to disguise their gender. (more…)

The green, green grass of home reminds us that pretty much all life on earth owes its existence to the light-harvesting powers of humble chlorophyll. Duncan McMillan reveals how in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

Takeda to shed 2800 jobs – FDA approves Voraxaze but rejects dapagliflozin – BASF and Philips light up auto market with OLEDs (more…)

Developments in the case of Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji’s death at UCLA in 2009 have been dominating the chemistry news for the last week or so. With the University of California and Sangji’s supervisor Patrick Harran facing criminal charges relating to their management of their health and safety obligations.

The detailed twists and turns of the case have been doggedly covered by Jyllian Kemsley over at Chemical & Engineering News, and debate online over where responsibility lies and what the problems were has been voracious.

Sangji’s is the most serious of a series of high-profile incidents, including explosions at the University of Liverpool, UK, and one at Texas Tech University, US, where a student lost three fingers and perforated an eye among a list of other injuries. This prompted the US Chemical Safety Board to investigate the incident and their report paints a stark picture of safety at TTU (which by all accounts has improved significantly since). The case study also includes anecdotal evidence from 120 other incidents, suggesting a more widespread issue.

Here at Chemistry World, we wanted to examine what it takes to make laboratory environments safer, and what differences there are between the US and the UK and elsewhere.  You can read my story here, but we wanted to take the opportunity to ask you, our readers, what you think:

What is the safety culture like in your institution, or others you’ve worked in?

Has anything changed since these incidents? Do you think it will?

Having spent a few years in a synthetic chemistry lab myself, as well as stints in industry, I’ve come across my fair share of minor incidents, both at my own bench and at colleagues’. I also saw the difference between attitudes to safety at two UK universities. Personally, I hope that our laboratories can become safer places to work, but there are not going to be any quick fixes. We all need to take responsibility for safety – after all, understanding safety comes down to understanding chemistry. If you know the risks involved with what you’re doing, you can take steps to manage them, just like when you drive a car or cross a road.

One of the clearest messages that came back to me from talking to several health and safety professionals in researching my story was that no one wants to stop anyone doing research. If it’s done right, health and safety management should enable researchers to do the work they need to, but in an appropriate environment. So again, let us know what you think – does this happen where you are?

Phillip Broadwith

What comes to mind when you hear the term E numbers? Hyperactive children? Or a simple labelling system for food additives? In this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast, Brian Clegg admits that while the health worries over tartrazine –  perhaps the most famous E number of all – might be justified, it brightens up our lives in other ways.