Chemistry World Blog

 It’s good news!! Chemistry World has been shortlisted for best specialist site for journalism in the Online Media Awards. The awards are well known within the media industry and nominees in other categories include Channel 4 News, Sky News, Al-Jazeera English and the BBC.

Chemistry World is in good company in the specialist category and faces tough competition from the Press Gazette, the Guardian data website and Nursing Times.

The awards ceremony will take place in London on 12 June and we will know then whether we won or not. Wish us luck!

Bibiana Campos Seijo

PS: For the full list of nominations and to see who we are up against you can go here.

Kids’ chemistry sets seem to be making a comeback (check out our great feature on chemistry sets), complete with the old gender stereotypes. Tesco is the latest retailer to come under fire for sexism, after it placed a toy chemistry set in the ‘boys’ category in its online shop. (more…)

We all love a cartoon. Animation is a fiddly and time consuming but I can remember the fun of making flip books. Taking it up a notch, IBM researchers have some more expensive kit than my notepad and pen, and now they’ve used it to make an ‘atomic movie’.

Scanning tunnelling microscopes can image individual molecules on a metal surface, and drag those same atoms and molecules around to make letters and images. Stop-motion animators today make an image, take a picture, change the image slightly, take another picture, and repeat that cycle until they have enough frames to make a film. Put the two together and you get ‘The boy and his atom’ premièring today on YouTube and certified by Guinness World Records as the smallest ever movie. The cast ? Carbon monoxide molecules.

In total the movie is made of 242 frames and I love how you can see the ripples in electron density that surround ‘Adam’ and his bouncy little friend. I’d love to know how long the entire process took, not just the imaging but the tidying up of the image and the putting it together. Using such big machinery cooled down to low temperatures to keep the molecules where they’re put is pretty expensive and labour intensive, so I’m not sure atomic animation will be taken up by Hollywood just yet. But as a demonstration of the control IBM now has over single atoms and molecules the video is pretty neat. IBM has also released a video with some more behind the scenes detail which you can watch here.

My verdict? Well I just tried to make a flip book of a thumbs up, but I think I’ll leave the animation to the professionals. Good job. What do you think?

Laura Howes

Mission controllers at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have turned off some of their instruments for a few weeks and have sent many of their staff on holiday. Communications between Earth and their spacecraft on Mars will diminish during this period. 

But do not fear, this is not an extraordinary event. It happens every two years, lasts for about two weeks and is due to a solar conjunction. To explain it in a few words, it means that Earth and Mars are at opposite sides of the Sun, which is obscuring the two planets and is thus preventing regular communication between us and the red planet. It is an interesting phenomenon and, if you are curious, you can watch this video and find out how it affects the work at Nasa.

In any case, this is the fifth solar conjunction for Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity since its arrival in 2004 and will be the first one for Curiosity.

You would think that with so many Nasa staff on holiday we would hear less about the explorations on the red planet. And you would be so wrong… In fact, taking advantage of the enforced break, institutions worldwide have invited those working on the rovers to give public lectures about their work so there will be plenty of talks about Mars in the coming weeks.

© NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the RSC we couldn’t let this opportunity go by and will be hosting not one but two events with two different speakers from Nasa to discuss the adventures of  Curiosity.

The first of the two talks will be hosted by the Northern Ireland Assembly’s All-Party Group on Science and Technology, in conjunction with Matrix, and will feature a presentation by Nagin Cox, formerly Deputy Head of Engineering for Nasa’s Mars Curiosity Rover. This will be on Monday 15 April from 3.30pm to 5.00pm, in the Senate Chamber, Parliament Buildings, Stormont, Belfast. If you live near and want to attend you can register here.

The second event, named Where the streets have no name, will be in London on Thursday 18 April at 6.30pm and will be streamed live online so anyone can watch from anywhere in the world!  Mars rovers’ driver Paolo Bellutta, who also works at Nasa JPL, will talk about his work, and driving Curiosity and other rovers on Mars.

The Chair for the evening will be Quentin Cooper, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Material World, and he’ll be taking questions via @RSC_Comms and #RSCpubliclecture. 

Also, don’t forget you can follow Curiosity and Opportunity via twitter at @MarsCuriosity and @MarsRovers. The planets will soon move away from the conjunction and you will once again be able to receive first-hand information on the latest mission to Mars!

 Chiara Ceci

Govert Flinck, Portrait of Dirck Jacobsz. Leeuw and elemental distribution images of the painting.

While X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy is a well-established technique for the investigation of paintings, the apparatus used are usually custom built and not widely available. Now, Matthias Alfeld and colleagues have developed a portable macro XRF spectrometer to look at paintings in situ.

The team used the device to look at a portrait by Govert Flinck, a Dutch painter who was a protégé of the great Rembrandt. Interestingly, they found that originally the subject was painted wearing a broad bobbin lace collar and long lace cuffs but this was toned down for the final version, possibly because it was too trendy.

The device also made it possible to visualise Flinck’s first sketches on the canvas before he got to work with the paint. The authenticity of this particular painting was never disputed but being able to see sketches is a good indication of whether a painting is an original or a copy.

Which paintings would you like to look at with the device? I wonder how many fake Van Goghs could be uncovered?

Jennifer Newton

One of the stories published in the April issue of Chemistry World started a wider conversation about the value, or otherwise, of explosions in chemistry outreach. Do we over rely on flashes and bangs or do chemistry bangs beget engagement?

Copyright M-H Jeeves

The original article, titled On Ilkley Moor bar TNT, appeared on The Last Retort and started with quite a controversial opening paragraph: ’In my opinion, any chemical lecture is greatly enhanced by an explosion.’

This seemed to divide opinion among readers and you can read about the discussion that ensued on Storify or by following #chemexplosions on Twitter….

What’s your view?

Bibiana Campos Seijo

— One of the participating tokay geckos. Photo: Ethan Knapp and Alyssa Stark

I love a good gecko story, and I love how the cute little critters can climb up most things but would apparently struggle with my non-stick frying pan. Now I’ve found out that if my frying pan was still wet from the washing up Mr Gecko would have a better chance of holding on.

There is a serious side to this science. Hundreds of systems have been developed mimicking the adhesive power of gecko toes and all rely on creating a large surface area that can get in contact with whatever surface you want to stick to using van de Waals forces to do the rest. Understanding how different surfaces affect adhesion is obviously important and it’s been anecdotally known for a while that as well as struggling with Teflon, geckos can’t stick to wet glass despite their feet being superhydrophobic. In rainforests, things can get quite wet so how do the geckos manage?

To test this out Alyssa Stark‘s lab at the University of Akron, Ohio, placed geckos on different surfaces to investigate when the geckos slipped and when they stuck. To get more data than slip versus stick, those little geckos were fitted with harnesses and slowly pulled off surfaces using force meters to record the gecko adhesion values. If ever there’s a day you’d have liked to have been in someone’s lab, the day harnessed geckos were slid around for science has got to be up there (at least for me).

The findings are, in part, to be expected. Wetting surfaces usually makes them more slippery for geckos but it’s only wet glass that causes a real problem – hydrophobic surfaces that were wetted could still be clung on to as the lizard’s hydrophobic feet helped get rid of the water and form a contact with the dry surface beneath. So the lab work confirms that wet leaves shouldn’t be a problem. The exception, which also contradicted the Akron group’s modelling, was PTFE, or Teflon. Wet Teflon, it seems, is much easier for the geckos to hold on to. The why is not certain yet though, so I for one am looking forward to more gecko science, ideally with videos…

Laura Howes

It’s that time of year again, when the mad March hares are making an appearance, daffodils popping up and the world seems to be waking from its long slumber. It’s spring, and this means that the Royal Society of Chemistry’s magazines Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry are looking for their next (paid!) intern to come and work with us. It’s a great opportunity to see how the magazines process works and take part in all stages of the production process.

The eight week position is supported by the Marriott Bequest, which pays out a stipend of £1750 to make sure you don’t starve! Unsurprisingly, we’re looking for someone with a proven interest in science and science journalism. The candidate will probably be part way through a chemical science degree or postgrad course too. If you think that sounds like you then take a look at the job posting and send us your CV and some examples of your writing.

Previous interns have found the experience very handy and it has helped them to move into other interesting and varied jobs. Our 2010 intern, Akshat Rathi, went on to intern at the Economist, who he still writes for, and now works in the communications department of the RSC. Josh Howgego still writes for Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry and is currently on an MSci course in science communication at Imperial College, after a brief work experience stint at the Times Higher Education. And last year’s intern, Ian Le Guillou, is currently doing some work experience at the BBC as a researcher on Dara O’Briain’s Science Club before he takes up a full time science writer job at Understanding Animal Research.

It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity! We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Patrick Walter

— The Naked Scientists

You will have heard of The Naked Scientists. They do loads of very interesting things but, importantly for Chemistry World, they have been supporting us for years with the recording of our podcasts. Well, now it is our turn to support them so at Chemistry World we have decided to risk leaving our bunker as often as we can (no mean feat!) to take part in their podcasts and radio programmes. We will bring what in our opinion are the most interesting chemical sciences-related stories of the week and discuss them with Chris and his team and guests in as interactive and entertaining  a manner as possible (or so we hope!).

We have already taken part in a few programmes so, for example, you can hear Laura talking about a new marshmallow-like material that can selectively absorb oil (and this is the CW story: Mopping up oil spills with marshmallows), explosion-powered nanorobots  (CW story: Soft robots take a leap forward) or you can listen to me talking about how to sober up inebriated mice (CW story: Enzyme nano-parcels sober up drunken mice).

We hope you enjoy these clips as well as the full recordings and future radio shows – don’t touch that dial!

Bibiana Campos Seijo

PS: How many times can someone say ‘actually’ in one sentence? I’m sure I’ve beaten a record…

In a frankly rather bizarre video a research team from the US has been channelling the ever popular internet sensation LOLCats (if you’ve never been to the site you should probably have a look at it as it helps to explain what people under the age of 15 do with all that time they spend on the internet) to help explain their latest paper published in Nature. In a rather savvy piece of science communication that’s bound to grab the attention of teens (and immature editors everywhere…), the video reveals how in their latest work, the team led by David Anderson from Caltech discovered that mice have neurons just below the surface of the skin that solely respond to stroking sensations. Unsurprisingly, behavioural tests showed that chemical activation of these stroking neurons was rewarding for the mice and they sought out further stimulation of these neurons.

Watch the video to learn a bit more and of course as an amusing way to pass a couple of minutes. Perhaps the future of science communication is scientists reaching out to the masses through LOLCats!

Video courtesy Nature Video