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Category Archives: Chemistry

I’m a scientist – Get me out of here

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I’ve recently heard of a competition called I’m a scientist – Get me out of here and I must say that I love the concept. Basically, it is a free online event a little bit like an X Factor-style (yes, I know, shameful but I do watch it) competition for scientists, where students are the judges. 

How does it work? Scientists put up a profile on the I’m a Scientist website where students then ask questions and challenge them over fast-paced online live chats.  Overall, over a two week-period (17–28 June), there will be around an hour of live text chats  and an hour answering questions each day so it is a fun way of developing communication skills, gaining a fresh perspective on your research, and finding out what young people think about science and the role of scientists.

The objective is to get school students to meet and interact with scientists and it works very well. Plus everything happens on the web, so participants can join in without leaving their desk. In addition, students have the option to vote and the winning scientist gets £500 to spend on science communication. Not bad!

 A number of Societies and professional bodies are supporting the competition and the Royal Society of Chemistry, for example, is sponsoring the Energy Zone, which will cover the science of and issues relating to maintaining a supply of affordable, secure energy. 

Scientists who want to take part need to apply before 6 May 2013.

Students who want to take part need to get their teacher to sign up asap.

Good luck and happy chatting to all!

Bibiana Campos Seijo

 

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Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2013/04/26/im-a-scientist-get-me-out-of-here/

A (metal-organic) framework for progress?

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History is peppered with stories of scientists simultaneously making discoveries. One of the most famous was, of course, when Newton and Leibniz independently developed calculus, but this also occurred for other huge scientific discoveries, such as Darwin and Wallace both coming up with the theory of evolution and, in chemistry, Scheele and Priestley separately discovering oxygen.

So, perhaps I should not have been so surprised when I saw two papers, published around the same time, both reporting the discovery of the exact same metal-organic framework (MOF).

Two groups both independently created the same MOF using the same linkers

But is this coincidence something to be expected? A curious indication of the massive popularity MOFs have gained? It’s a fame that is well deserved. Their potential is huge due to their remarkable porosity, and they are being explored for applications like gas storage, catalysis, gas separation and sensors.

However, I realised I knew next to nothing about their origin. They have a structure that’s not dissimilar to zeolites, but zeolites occur in nature (that’s how we discovered them), whereas MOF-like structures do not. Were they somehow inspired by zeolites? Were they specifically designed for their applications?

I feared that it might be one of those things that have been forgotten, but a little digging proved me wrong. Although some reports suggest that there’s more than one story, it looks like they were made because, like a lot of great innovation, someone said it couldn’t be done.1

The majority of molecules are zero- or one-dimensional. Zero-dimensional being your bog standard small molecules, while one-dimensional are periodic structures like polymers. It’s harder, however, to make two-dimensional periodic molecules and, at the time, people were pretty certain that three-dimensional molecules were impossible.

The crystal structure of the MOF

So, MOFs were invented to prove a point. Despite scientists knowing of their existence since the 1950s,2 no one really explored what they could be used for until 40 years later (people were still questioning the stability of these materials even a decade ago), when researchers such as Omar Yaghi realised that these things had huge surface areas and began to wonder to what might be done with them.3

Since then, the amount of MOF work has grown almost exponentially and, as Hupp et al’s paper suggests, we’re perhaps now at a stage where their use in vehicles (to replace petrol with methane gas) isn’t too far off.

In energy conscious times, this will provide a bit of relief for countries that have to import their oil and could hopefully also drive petrol prices down. Of course, burning gas should also be cleaner than petrol too.

One final consideration. Hupp’s team note that gas-powered cars are already running in the US, although they don’t use MOFs. In a country that calls ‘petrol’ ‘gas’ does anyone else foresee some sitcom-esque misunderstandings at ‘gas stations’?

Yuandi Li

References

1 M O’Keeffe, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2009, 38, 1215

2 J H Rayner and H M Powell, J. Chem. Soc., 1952, 319

3 O M Yaghi et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1997, 119, 2861

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Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2013/04/24/a-metal-organic-framework-for-progress/

Hopeful developments on World Malaria Day

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Mosquito nets have been instrumental in cutting cases of malaria

A person dies from malaria every minute. Seven people are infected with this debilitating disease every second. These are the figures that World Malaria Day – which is today – is seeking to highlight.

World Malaria Day has been going since 2007. It was established by the World Health Assembly, part of the World Health Organization, to get people to sit up and take note of this often underreported disease. While the headline figures look bad, great steps have already been made in tackling the disease.

The good news is that the global mortality rate for malaria has fallen by 25% since 2000. At the same time, 50 out of the 99 countries where malaria is endemic are set to meet targets to cut infection rates by three-quarters by 2015. However, new problems have emerged. As the UN and projects like the Medicines for Malaria Venture, with the help of philanthropic organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have stepped up the fight against the disease, criminals have taken advantage. It’s now estimated that a third of malaria drugs sold around the world are counterfeit.

Fortunately, scientists are coming up with ways of identifying the fakes. Announced to coincide with World Malaria Day, the US Food and Drug Administration is planning to start trials on a handheld testing device that can tell the bogus medicines from the real thing.

Other recent good news includes work to drive down the cost of the drug artemisinin, the most effective treatment against the deadliest form of malaria. Scientists have just published work in Nature where they were able to engineer yeast to produce 10 times more of the chemical precursor to artemisinin – artemisinic acid – than before. This can then be chemically converted into the drug.

French drug giant Sanofi has gone one better, scaling up artemisinin production using the same engineered yeast. Using some photochemical wizardry Sanofi hopes to be synthesising enough of the drug to meet a third of world demand by next year.

While artemisinin is still on the frontline in the fight against malaria, the counterfeiters have been taking their toll in another way. Often, criminals place a small amount of the drug in fake antimalarial drugs to try fool tests meant to pick them up. Unfortunately, when these drugs reach malaria patients they give the malarial parasites the opportunity to develop resistance to artemisinin as there’s not enough of it to kill them. Happily, researchers are working hard to develop new drugs all the time and there are some exciting new compounds in the pipeline. One group of researchers has resurrected an old drug and appear to have overcome some of its toxicity problems. This molecule can target all stages of the malarial parasites’ lifecycle, which is virtually unheard of, and early tests indicate that the parasite cannot easily develop resistance to the drug. Brilliant news!

 Patrick Walter

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Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2013/04/25/hopeful-developments-on-world-malaria-day/


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