Wesley Matthews, a starter since joining the Bucks, is still adjusting to his role but has contributed as a three-point shooter and defender.(Photo: Jeff Hanisch / USA TODAY Sports)

An NBA player choke-slamming his teammate and then hitting him with a folding chair isn't usually the kind of pregame activity that screams positive team chemistry. It's working pretty well for the Milwaukee Bucks, though.

Wesley Matthews and Robin Lopez joined the Bucks as free agents this summer, rekindling a friendship they built over two years together in Portland from 2013-15. Acting out wrestling scenarios was part of their high jinks back then and they've resumed the practiceas members of the Bucks, playing out pregame skits in arenas around the country much to the surprise of arena staff and the delight of their teammates.

In Boston, Matthews ambushed Lopez in a narrow hallway, hitting him with team equipment as teammates continued their stretches nearby. There was a stone-cold stunner in Oklahoma City, the aforementioned chair appearance in Chicago and most recently the two played out a nearly minute-long tag-team match that included a cameo kick from Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Were going to run out of material soon," Matthews said with a smile. "Its something weve done for a while now we did it in Portland but nothing, like, to this magnitude. Its just kind of goofing around but were really starting to embrace it, have fun with it, the teams starting to get in on it a little bit more and now weve got to keep it fresh. ...

I think Im going to start sending RoLo some film. Were going to start bouncing ideas back off each other.

Although he was never much of a wrestling fan, Lopez has always been game for playing the heel. He's got plenty of practice from his famous, playful interactions with mascots around the league and when Matthews the wrestling fan and brains of the operation needed a worthy adversary, Lopez was ready to step up.

I like to think of myself as a thespian," Lopez said."Im not a wrestling connoisseur in the same way Wesley is, but its something weve been doing for a little bit. I found that we have a lot of wrestling fans on the team, so its something thats kind of blossomed, taken a life of its own.

One of the team's biggest wrestling fans is none other than Antetokounmpo. He took his family to WWE Raw in Chicago on Christmas in 2017 and less than a week later he took some of his teammates to another event on a road trip in Toronto.

The interest of Antetokounmpo and other Bucks players is what has helped Matthews and Lopez's routine go mainstream, taking their act to the tunnel before the teamheads out to the court instead of being a random sideshow for sparse crowds in the hallways of the arena. As a collectively sanctioned event, more and more players want to get involved.

Its fun," Antetokounmpo said."I told them I wanted to join the routine and they allowed me to join the routine. So, it's fun."

This new act adds a new wrinkle to what was already one of the more positive locker rooms in the NBA. Last season, the Bucks established a fun, loose, cohesive culture that permeated everything they did.Everyone kept a laser focus on the court, but outside of game time their intensity melted away as they enjoyed each other's company and kept things light and drama-free.

A new pregame bit from a pair of veteran additions fits in nicely with the vibe.

It kind of just gets everybody loose, ready for the game," Matthews said.

Of course, performing in games is more important than performing beforehand. Through 15 games heading into a clash at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with the Detroit Pistons at Fiserv Forum, both Lopez and Matthews are still adjusting to their new roles.

Robin Lopez has averaged 4.6 points and 2.7 rebounds over 14.2 minutes per game as a member of the Bucks.(Photo: Associated Press)

Lopez, backing up his twin brother, Brook, has averaged 4.6 points and 2.7 rebounds over 14.2 minutes per game. He has worked to stretch his game out beyond the three-point line with tepid results, going 6 of 25 (24.0%). However, before an 0 for 2 night Thursday against the Trail Blazers, Lopez had made three-pointers in three straight games.

Matthews has had more of an impact, particularly lately. He's been an every-game starter since joining the Bucks, though his contributions have generally been understated and reserved his defense and three-point shooting. Thus far, 61 of Matthews' 87 shot attempts have come from long range.

I think it should never be underestimated or not appreciated what he does for us defensively," Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said before Wednesday's game in Atlanta."I think hes locked in, he makes things difficult on the wings. So, I think thats where we want him to start. Hell get more and more comfortable. I think his patience is good, I think hes in a good place and I think things will start happening for him on both ends.

Budenholzer's words proved prophetic. Matthews got going a bit on offense against the Hawks, putting up 10 points and displaying more offensive balance than any game to this point in the season, scoring inside and out while dishing out three assists. On Thursday, Matthews predominantly spent his time behind the three-point line, making 4 of 7 attempts, including one in the fourth quarter that padded Milwaukee's lead to eight points.

"You know every night hes going to defend," Antetokounmpo said."You know hes going to do that no matter whats going on, but when hes locked in offensively, knocking down shots hes definitely taking this team to the next level.

The challenge now for Matthews and Lopez will be to help the Bucks get to that next level. That applies both on the court and to their pregame shenanigans.

Well see, thats the fun of it, Robin Lopez said. Well keep you on the edge of your seats. Were not sure what turn were going to take next.

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'Well keep you on the edge of your seats': Newcomers have brought game and WWE antics to the Bucks - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Michael Inkpen underwent treatment for lymphoma, played indie rock and studied chemistry internationally before joining USC Dornsife. [4 min read]

While making scientific inroads to molecular electronics and energy storage, chemist Michael Inkpen also aims to be a science communicator. (Photo: Rhonda Hillbery.)

Ten years ago, Michael Inkpen had a busy schedule, shuttling from the chemistry lab where he pursued his Ph.D. studies by day to the London clubs and bars where he performed with an indie rock band well into the night. That changed abruptly when one day he felt a lump in his neck.

In retrospect, Inkpen sees something worthwhile in the life-interrupting diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma that followed. His cancer turned out to be highly treatable, and experiencing serious illness firsthand elicited a philosophical outlook that has stuck with him in the years since.

Life is too short to get hung up on small things, said Inkpen, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. It was a humbling journey, realizing that youre essentially just a bag of water, and amazing, really, that youre here at all.

After chemotherapy and radiation treatment, Inkpens cancer was in remission. He returned to juggling chemistry and club gigs before ultimately pulling back from performing to focus entirely on earning his Ph.D. Then, after a postdoctoral stint at Imperial College in the U.K., he spent two years at Columbia University in New York and one year at the University of Rennes 1 in France on an EU-funded Marie Skodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Global Individual Fellowship. This past January, his path led to Los Angeles, where he joined USC Dornsife and set about designing his own lab.

Moving to Los Angeles and joining USC offered a dream opportunity to design and build my own independent lab and create a research group at a top university in a world-class city, Inkpen said.

Building blocks

Inkpens research is located at the interface of chemistry and physics; his goal is to better understand how molecular systems can be used to transport electric charges. Building on his interdisciplinary training, he aims to both synthesize new materials and then study their properties by connecting them between tiny, nanoscale electrodes.

His approach is reminiscent of LEGO bricks he explores relationships between individual molecular building blocks and their extended, assembled chemical structures in one, two and three dimensions. This research might eventually bring about insights into and breakthroughs in energy storage or molecular-scale electronics.

Moores Law famously predicted in the 1960s that improvements in microchip transistor manufacturing would yield ever smaller components, resulting in steadily increasing computing capability. This principle has so far held true, as seen in todays compact, more powerful devices. (Think smartphones.)

If you extrapolate Moores Law, you eventually get to molecular-sized circuit components, Inkpen said. In addition to their small size, molecular components are highly customizable and demonstrate unique properties tied to quantum mechanics. Today there is growing interest in exploring what molecules can do that traditional silicon-based technologies cannot.

Inkpen is particularly interested in how the introduction of positive or negative charges may change the electronic properties of materials. This is akin to how charging a balloon by rubbing it against hair will let it stick to a wall, whereas, demonstrating a different behavior, an uncharged balloon simply falls to the ground.

Scientific storytelling

Beyond the science itself, Inkpen is fascinated by how science can be shared with diverse audiences in innovative, creative ways. Human connection is important in science, he said, and the desire for it is what led him to cofound a band so many years ago.

The Ph.D. can sometimes be a lonely business, particularly when your experiments arent working out and you dont know why, Inkpen said. Writing songs and gigging was fun, and provided a healthy counterpoint to long hours at the chemistry bench.

Today, Inkpen attends science cafes and follows science bloggers and vloggers, including Derek Lowe of In The Pipeline, Dianna Cowern of Physics Girl, and the University of Nottinghams Periodic Videos. Inkpen is a fan of the late physicist Richard Feynman, legendary for popularizing science in unique ways as well as for bongo drumming. Feynman, a Nobel laureate, published accessible works on the philosophy of science and delivered TV interviews and lectures in a timeless, inimitable style.

These scientific rock stars didnt stay in their ivory towers doing experiments, they embraced unconventional approaches to show millions of people why what they do, and how they think, is fascinating and relevant, Inkpen said.

Its no surprise that besides teaching and mentoring graduate students, Inkpen enjoys occasionally blogging about chemistry and life as a researcher and plans to boost his involvement in science outreach to K-12 and underserved college populations.

For me, being a scientist is not only about the results and hard data; you are part of a community, he said. I have frequently been inspired over the years by captivating school experiments, science documentaries, blog posts or even simple tweets, and I am determined to pay it forward.

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Cancer experience inspires chemist both as a researcher and a science communicator > News > USC Dornsife - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts...

Entropy maximisation can lead to entropic bonding that is remarkably similar to traditional chemical bonding between molecules, researchers in the US propose, even when effectively no electronic interaction occurs. The phenomenon could be useful in controlling self-assembly of colloids and other structures in soft matter.

The second law of thermodynamics famously states that, in any allowed process, the entropy of a system always increases. Entropy is sometimes defined broadly as the degree of disorder or randomness in a system, and the second law explains why a highly pressurised flask of gas will spontaneously spread out to fill a vacuum but all the molecules in a room will never spontaneously concentrate into a flask, leaving vacuum everywhere else. However, the second law often springs surprises: maximising entropy, which is more precisely the number of microscopic states of a system corresponding to each macroscopic state, can drive molecules to self-assemble from a seemingly disordered liquid into an ordered crystal, for example. The particles can assemble themselves in more different ways if they become a crystal than if they remain a liquid, explains computational scientist Sharon Glotzer of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Under suitable conditions, colloidal nanoparticles can be arranged such that direct intermolecular forces arising from electronic interactions are almost entirely screened. The molecules therefore behave like hard spheres and, in the absence of other forces, are governed purely by entropy. The definitive experiment to establish this required extreme measures to avoid the influence of gravity. They flew the experiment on the International Space Station, explains Glotzer. The astronauts produced all kinds of gorgeous crystals in test tubes.

The microscopic details of entropys influence on systems remain poorly understood, however. When we work with experimentalists and they grow nanoparticles in solution, they get whatever shape they get, and then they try to functionalise them with DNA or organic ligands, for example, to engineer the explicit interactions that arise from electrons, says Glotzer. Nobody ever says How do I engineer the entropy of my system?

In their new research, Glotzer and colleagues conducted a series of computational simulations focusing on hexagonal lanthanide-fluoride nanoplates. These can be synthesised with a wide range of bond angles and, in experiments, are often functionalised with multiple different groups. The researchers, however, focused on nanoplates with no functional groups and therefore negligible electronic interactions. When you strip all those interactions away, what you are left with is just entropy, explains Glotzer.

The researchers found that, despite the absence of physical attractive forces between the molecules, crystal structures formed that were remarkably similar to those seen under the influence of traditional chemical bonding. In principle, we all knew that maximisation of entropy in the absence of any other forces could order things, explains Glotzer, What we didnt know is that these emergent statistical, entropic forces could be highly directional and predictable. That predictable directionality is what has led us to argue that these emergent forces are, to all intents and purposes, bonds.

Theoretical chemist Daan Frenkel at the University of Cambridge says the Glotzer lab hugely expanded his own work on entropic self-assembly in the 1980s and 1990s. She has shown that purely entropic effects can produce a huge variety of crystal structures, liquid crystal structures and quasicrystal structures. That, I think, was a surprise to everybody. He says the present paper is not terribly surprising for people familiar with entropic self-assembly but attempts an intuitive theoretical rationalisation of what they have found in the past that gives general rules of thumb to predict which structures will be formed and which will not.

The researchers now aim to develop a predictive, microscopic theory of entropic bonding that can be combined with traditional theories of chemical bonding to assist in molecular design. We want to understand the role of entropy and shape alone in a system that also has chemical interactions, says Glotzer.

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Odd 'entropic bonds' akin to chemical ones can form between nanoparticles - Chemistry World

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday that they were ending regulations that require chemical plants to provide the public with information about potential risks.

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler says the regulations were unnecessary administrative burdens. Chemical manufacturers lobbied (clearly successfully) for this change.

In 2013, there was a fire at the West Fertilizer Co. plant in West, Texas. It caused ammonium nitrate to ignite, and it triggered a huge explosion that destroyed the plant, as well as a nearby nursing home and apartment complex.

The explosion killed 15 people, 10 of whom were firefighters.

The EPA then put regulations in place under the Obama administration that required chemical plants to provide information upon request to members of the public about risks.

The Dallas Morning News reports:

When new regulations were enacted after a deadly fertilizer plant explosion killed 15 people in a Texas town south of Dallas, West Mayor Tommy Muska hadnt even had the chance to read the rules before they were obsolete.

A week after the Obama-era rules regulating how companies store dangerous chemicals were put in place, the administration of newly inaugurated President Donald Trump put them on hold in January 2017.

Muska was in his first term as mayor when the explosion rocked West on April 17, 2013.

By the time I got [the Obama rules] in my hands, it was already part of the Trump administration, and they shelved it, Muska said Thursday. I was somewhat disappointed. I would love for them to revisit some of those processes that go into chemical storage. Theres a happy medium between economic concerns brought on by regulation and protecting the public.

The American people and American politicians, they have a short memory, Muska said. Theyre going to say everything is fine, and every few years something like this is going to happen again, and Oh, yeah, we need to look at this again.

Were yesterdays news. Its not on anybodys minds as it was in 13 and 14.

If you lived next to a chemical plant, would you want to know what was being manufactured there, and what the risk was to the environment, your home, your family, your health, and your own life? Yeah, we thought so. Imagine what a blow this rollback announcement was to the people who lived in the nursing home and the apartment complex and to the families of those who lost their lives. And clearly, its a blow to the mayor of West, who had to lead during an awful tragedy.

Way to put profit before people, EPA. The focus of your press release is about how much money youre going to save but it doesnt quantify that or provide evidence. It might be time to change your name to something else.

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Mayor of Texas chemical blast town on latest EPA deregulation: They have a short memory - Electrek

The crowd chanted, Lubrizol, guilty; the state, complicit, cars honked in solidarity and the citizens marched through the deserted streets, past the looming Gothic cathedral famously painted by Monet at different hours of the day.

Now we have learned that we live on top of a volcano, Dr. Fleury said.

We could die, and we could die in an industrial accident, she added.

And yet nobody has died, and many of the initial symptoms appear to have worn off. Few at the rally complained of having felt anything at all, or of feeling anything now. Some in Rouen are puzzled at the depth of the reaction.

This is a subject that mobilizes a kind of tension, said Guy Pessiot, a local historian who once ran Rouens tourism office. Theres a kind of permanent anxiety. Its the number one subject of conversation.

And yes, he said, theres a kind of hyper-reaction: Were all going to die 15 minutes ago.

He worried that the image of rotten Rouen, industrialized and smoke-filled Gustave Flaubert, the towns most famous native son, described smokestacks of factories pushing out immense brown plumes in Madame Bovary would return.

Bottled water still packs local supermarkets because residents are fearful of drinking what comes from the tap, and slight coughs set off alarms long after ailments linked to the blaze are not present.

The local prefect, the governments top representative, said soon after the fire that there was nothing to worry about.

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Fear Has Yet to Be Extinguished After Chemical Fire in France - The New York Times

ST. LOUIS A $53 million rehab of the Chemical Building, the century-old, 17-story red brick and terra cotta architectural gem that has sat vacant in the heart of downtown for over a decade, has won final signoff from the city.

The St. Louis Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority gave the green light this week to local development incentives for the project, including 17 years of full property tax abatement, a decade of personal property tax abatement and a sales tax exemption on construction materials. Financing is expected to close at the beginning of the year and construction to begin soon thereafter, with completion scheduled for mid-2021.

Restoration St. Louis, led by Amy and Amrit Gill, announced in April that it intended to buy the building at 721 Olive Street from a New York firm whose plans for micro-apartments had stalled. The Gills plan to add a mix of 84 hotel rooms and 72 apartments to the historic structure designed by Henry Ives Cobb and connect it to their recently completed Hotel St. Louis next door.

While the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved the incentive package in July, conflicting personalities and the large size of the incentive package led behind-the-scenes negotiations to boil into view over the summer.

The Gills plan called for extending the 20-year tax abatement district that had been approved for use on Hotel St. Louis to also cover the Chemical Building, providing the last 17 years of tax abatement for the new rehab project. Thats despite a move by the city in recent years to no longer abate 100% of new property taxes except in the weakest neighborhoods.

City officials also gave the Hotel St. Louis project a break on half of the city sales tax on hotel rooms, up to $2.3 million. That was not included in the Chemical Building incentive package, but a personal property tax exemption was added to abate furniture and other fixtures for a decade.

I really believe this is a good use of the citys money, and necessary to restore this building, Restoration St. Louis vice president of development Laura Rebbe told a St. Louis aldermanic committee in July.

Some aldermen questioned the amount of the incentive, given the citys new guidelines, noting the developers also planned to use state and federal historic tax credits as part of the financing package.

The committee chair, Joe Roddy, has butted heads with the Gills on other projects over the years and was upset that the initial proposal included 17 years of personal property tax abatement instead of only a decade, a concession he said he had tried to negotiate. City staff indicated that the difference amounted to only about $100,000 over the life of the incentive.

LCRA Director Otis Williams made a personal plea in July to aldermen to endorse the incentives and get the building redeveloped, reactivating the block and generating new tax revenue.

I understand that many of you have concerns or have issues either with the project tax abatement or with the developer, but if we could for the sake of getting this project done, if we could have support for it, I would certainly appreciate it, Williams said at the July hearing.

With a commitment to reduce the personal property tax abatement to only 10 years, aldermen ultimately endorsed the incentive package.

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Chemical Building rehab poised to move ahead - STLtoday.com