Chemistry World Blog

The final Chemistry in its Element podcast of 2008 is up – this week Ron Caspi, from the University of California, San Diego, explains the many roles of manganese, a ‘severely underappreciated’ element, he argues. Astonishingly, 3 trillion tons of manganese ‘nodules’ (rock-like shells - below right) are scattered over parts of the ocean floor, but mining them is not commercially viable.

Our elements series will be taking a break until the new year, but Andrea Sella will be back in January 2009 to talk about bismuth – in the meantime, you can catch all our previous episodes here.

All chemistry departments in the UK have had the quality of their research evaluated and compared, as part of the UK’s gigantic Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Overall, the RAE ratings will determine the distribution of over £1.5 billion of research funding annually from next year to 2013.

Chemistry’s slice of that pie won’t be established until March 2009. Nor will individual chemistry departments discover until then how significant the differences in their gradings are.

Still, a glance at the table shows that Nottingham University appears to have done particularly well, while Reading and Queen’s University Belfast have slipped down the rankings compared to 2001. Cambridge, top of the pile, had 40% of its submitted research judged as ‘world leading’ (4*). Huddersfield, Reading and Loughborough, at the bottom, had no world leading research at all (or less than 5%). It’s also worth noting that departments could choose how many researchers they submitted to have work assessed. Nottingham, for example, achieved a slightly higher average score than Oxford – but submitted half as many researchers for scrutiny.

There are two particularly interesting statistics to leap out of this year’s RAE. First, only 33 chemistry departments in the UK entered the exercise (though 2 represent joint entries from nearby *effectively merged Scottish departments Eastchem (Edinburgh, St Andrews) and Westchem (Glasgow, Strathclyde)).  Back in 2001, 45 departments took part, which reflects how many smaller departments have closed since then *and/or strategic merging across departments, with some courses rebranded as forensic science or pharmacy.

On a cheerier note, the RAE suggests that UK chemistry is in a marginally healthier position internationally than UK physics. In sum, 63% of the UK’s chemistry research submitted to assessment  was judged 4* or 3*, that is, world leading or internationally excellent. For physics, that’s down to 57%.  What a turnaround from 2001, when physics seemed well ahead of chemistry – to the extent that some thought the chemistry panel was too pessimistic in its judgements of international research quality.

The 2008 review is the last RAE of its type – where for each subject, thousands of research papers are graded by a handful of dedicated peer reviewers. Future reviews will cut down on this mass of work by using metrics – statistical indicators such as number of PhDs or citations – to grade research quality.

* Updated – thanks for your comments

Chemistry World’s December podcast is out now – with advice on the best way to drink your whisky from John Piggot, from the University of Strathclyde, and an assessment of the promise of algae for biofuels from Al Darzins, of the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

So finally the definitive answer to the question: should you drink your whisky with water? Pleasingly for all of us who have suffered the sneers of whisky snobs, Piggot says it’s personal preference. ‘Dilution [with water] is not just about the oft-quoted release of flavour compounds – it releases some but masks others,’ he explains in our December feature on whisky.

Increasing water content can have odd affects on whisky aroma – it masks the volatility of some compounds which are water-soluble, such as phenols and nitrogen-containing compounds that are the roasted nut and cereal flavours. So drink your malt whisky neat if you like the cereal tones or that smoked peaty aroma. As for iced water, it reduces the volatility of many flavour compounds, keeping them in the liquid, so you lose the aromas but will still get the taste.

For much more on whisky chemistry, read Victoria Gill’s feature, A whisky tour, in the December issue of Chemistry World. Enjoy!

There’s a new look for the political science climate in the UK after Prime Minister Gordon Brown re-organised his cabinet today. In a welcome surprise there’s a new Department for Energy and Climate Change, headed up by Ed Miliband, the younger of the two precocious Miliband brothers.

About time too. Previously we had the hard-nosed Dberr (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) dealing with energy strategy (such as new nuclear power stations, renewables and the electricity grid), and lording it over the softer Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) which took on the side of climate: agriculture, cutting greenhouse gases, and so on.

Exactly how the new Decc (or whatever it will be called) interacts with these two will be the key to success but we can only hope that it will all lead to more joined-up political thinking. (Crosses fingers).

In other reshuffle news, there’s a new science minister at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (aka the science department) – Paul Drayson takes over from Ian Pearson, who had filled in a gap after the retirement of David Sainsbury. Drayson will be the immediate underling of John Denham, one-time chemist, who remains top dog of science in the cabinet.

Drayson has a PhD in robotics, and founded vaccine production company PowderJect Pharmaceuticals (now taken over by Chiron Corp) in 1993. He was also chairman of the BioIndustry association in 2001-02. Made a Dberr minister in June 2007, the self-styled ‘car nut’ stood down 5 months later, officially to compete in the Le Mans car race. His appointment’s been broadly welcomed by scientists. Here’s Colin Blakemore (former head of the Medical Research Council): ‘There’s no doubt he’s been very creative in recognising opportunities to move from basic research into innovation in his own career, so he chimes very much with the Government’s current focus on translational research.  However, I do think he can be trusted to defend the investment needed for the basic research which is essential for innovation in the future.’

Thomson Reuters have made their predictions for the chemist to lift the 2008 Nobel prize: will it be nanomaterials man Charles Lieber, living polymerisation legend Kris Matyjaszewski, or perhaps, if medicine doesn’t claim him, shining light of the fluorescent probe field Roger Tsien? Or none of the above… Whitesides? Marks? Seebach? Stoddart? Trost? Bax? 

Readers who are interested in the prospects of biobutanol as a future renewable fuel might like to know that Green Biologics, an Oxfordshire, UK-based biotech company Chemistry World featured in January this year, has finalised an agreement with Laxmi Organic Industries (an Indian biochemicals manufacturer), to build a commercial demonstration plant in Mumbai that will produce 1000 tonnes of butanol a year from molasses – a by-product from the Indian sugar industry. The aim is to have the plant in operation by 2010. Watch this space!

The Wall Street Journal has an article today querying the usefulness of an introductory course in organic chemistry that US medical school graduates must all slog through. Apparently (though the article itself is thin on details) ‘leading medical educators … are now re-examining the premed curriculum,’ and the organic course may be ‘pared back to make room for other subjects. … Do doctors really need to know a bunch of different ways to combine two molecules to form a ring of six carbon atoms? “In my many years of medicine, I have never heard the Diels-Alder reaction mentioned once,” says Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine.’

You can add your own two-penn’orth at the WSJ’s blog. I would advocate moderation in all things: I can’t see, beyond the merits of intellectual rigour, why doctors should have to be examined on the Diels-Alder reaction; but they should certainly learn about acid-base catalysis and other mechanisms that might be relevant to the workings of the body or of drugs. That in itself, taught properly, would be quite enough to fill up a year of anyone’s time. Plus, there’s the matter of learning enough to respect what chemists do. So how much organic chemistry does a doctor need to know? Enough to learn what they need, and to grasp an understanding that there are possibly relevant vistas beyond what they’ve been taught. Simple really. Now, let me just look at the details of this syllabus.

If anyone knows anything about buckminsterfullerene, or C₆₀, it’s that its atoms are arranged in the shape of a football (or soccer ball, if you must). It’s a particularly stable structure to have: all the five-carbon pentagons are entirely isolated from each other, surrounded by stabler six-carbon hexagons. 

There are 1812 topological isomers of C₆₀, but only the totally spherical one with non-adjacent pentagons (and icosahedral symmetry) is sufficiently stable to have been made so far. Now researchers at Xiamen University have synthesised some other deformed C₆₀ footballs that violate this isolated pentagon rule – and in high enough yields to do some chemistry with.

— untitled-21

How did they do it? By vapourising carbon using an electric arc, but under helium and carbon tetrachloride gas to lash a stabilising belt of chlorine atoms round the outside – just as the same team did when they made the smaller fullerene, C₅₀Cl₁₀, four years ago. The new isomers are rather more reactive than C₆₀ – the chlorine arms can be replaced at specific sites, suggesting the potential for making some fullerene-based materials. And they are just a carbon dimer twist away from spherical C₆₀, so the researchers reckon they might be intermediates along the black box path that is C₆₀ formation.

Reference: Y-Z Tan et al, Nature Materials, DOI: 10.1038/nmat2275

The US National Toxicology Program (for the National Institutes of Health) has released its final assessment on the safety of bisphenol A, the chemical used to make polycarbonate and epoxy resins, found in baby bottles, CDs, sports equipment, paints, and adhesives.

It’s the same warning as their draft report (released back in April 2008, with concerns slightly upgraded from preliminary conclusions in August 2007). There is ‘some concern’ that BPA could affect health and development in foetuses, infants, and children.

The NIH’s conclusions disagree with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) August draft statement [pdf] finding that “an adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure from food contact uses”.

How much concern is ‘some’ concern?

(more…)

The debate over whether we should be allowed to buy children toys and bottles containing the plasticiser bisphenol A (BPA) seems like it may never end – but consumer worries mean that already BPA is being removed from stores.

In the latest developments, a proposed bill to ban BPA in children’s products in California has been narrowly defeated, just days after the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) released a draft statement [pdf] finding that “an adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure from food contact uses”. This is a controversial statement, given that Health Canada have already banned the compound, and that the US National Toxicology Programme found ‘some concern’ that BPA may pose risks to children’s brain development at typical human exposure levels. More FDA debate on this draft is expected in a 16 September public meeting.

The FDA has been accused of concentrating on industry-funded studies, and ignoring recent animal research linking BPA to cancer and developmental effects even at exposures similar to those humans would receive.  In Europe, the EFSA (European Food and Safety Administration) has affirmed BPA’s safety after a literature review, because, a panel of scientists said, humans more rapidly metabolise and eliminate BPA than do the rats used in scientific research.

While this scientific and political debate plays out, consumers are already forcing BPA off the shelves. Fortunately, BPA-free baby bottles and other products do exist – they’re more expensive, of course, but most parents would feel that it’s a price of precaution worth paying. And it’s hard not to agree with them.

This reminds me of a comment made last year by Richard Ratcliffe (executive secretary for the UK’s Food Additives and Ingredients Association), after new research had linked artificial food colourings to hyperactivity; though supermarkets said they’d already pulled the compounds from their foods thanks to consumer pressure.

‘The tide has already gone out, and studies like these are left on the beach,’ he said.