By J.P. Hoornstra, Staff Writer

By J.P. Hoornstra Staff Writer

GLENDALE, Ariz. - The locker stalls stood in various stages of emptiness at Camelback Ranch.

The pingpong table, the water cooler of the Dodgers' clubhouse, was eerily quiet when the team broke camp Sunday.

"It's like the last day of school," Tony Gwynn Jr. said.

To Gwynn, the takeaway from his second camp with the Dodgers was how quickly the players jelled at the beginning.

"That's the big thing that differs from last year to this year," he said. "Last year, there were guys coming in off an off-year, trying to bounce back.

"This year there's a little of that, but not as much."

According to a few players, the chemistry also worked in part because only a couple roster spots were up for grabs. Roles clearly were defined from the beginning and, with one exception, stayed the same until the end.

The one exception was Jerry Sands, who entered camp as the front-runner for the final position player's job. He was demoted to the minor-league camp after batting .158 with no home runs, and the job still is up for grabs.

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DODGERS NOTEBOOK: Players passed chemistry test

It was made to save fuel by stopping tyre wear but now saves lives by stopping bullets. And it’s useful for much more besides. David Lindsay looks at the wonder material, Kevlar, in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

                  

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Pealeontology, archaeology and chemistry – if I say those words you’re probably thinking isotopic rations, and chemical analysis. But what about peeling back the layers of biological history?

Loren Williams of Georgia Tech has been doing just that with the ribosome, specifically, the large subunit (LSU) ‘where all the chemistry happens.’ X-ray chromatography of the ribozome, that thing some people won the nobel prize in chemistry a few years ago, shows that the core of the LSU is conserved across the tree of life, implying not just a common ancestor but, says Williams, that the core is what the LSU began it’s life as. Peeling back the layers to the core as molecular time travel.

So Williams is working on making a testable model of what the core was, and to establish what the LSU did before it grew up and joined with the small sub unit and started making protein chains. However, it was a throw-away comment in Williams’ talk that really got me thinking. He said that as we look out of the window, or watch a nature documentary, that impression of such wide diversity is an illusion. If you break the ribozyme, meddle with the core of the LSU, life cannot continue. Once that core functionality was achieved, it stayed and at the core of all life, the structure and sequence is almost identical.

Now maybe it’s the long days, but I find that such an interesting concept and relevant to this entire meeting. The convention centre and the hotels are filled with disparate groups of chemists. Different sections that can spend their entire time in a couple of rooms, their niches. Looking at the programme, the science covered seems so diverse but ultimately, at the core the science is the same.

Laura Howes

                  

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A chocolate chemistry session, how could I refuse? Not only that, but when I got there I realised that there were also free samples.

Happily, from the talks I saw, ‘eat chocolate, it’s good for you’ seems to be the message. A lot of the science focused on the antioxidant in chocolate and the individual studies were compelling, although everyone was sure to highlight that cutting out other risk factors, such as smoking, is even more important. Not only were there individual studies, but Eric Ding from Harvard Medical School presented a meta analysis that suggested those conclusions were part of a larger pantheon of evidence.

But the really interesting talk for me, was one from Francisco Villarreal of UCSD that suggested that as well as chemical actions, the antioxidant chemicals epicatechin and catechin also have biological mechanisms. That they seem to affect signalling pathways and receptors, and even act as antagonists to each other. And how much chocolate do you need for this affect? Villareal says less is more: about 5g of dark chocolate. A paper is apparently in the pipeline with pretty big results, so stay tuned!

Villareal is, however, a big proponent of chocolate. From it’s mystical health and strength giving importance in Mesoamerica to its benefits brought back to Europe, and essentially being described as the first super food, Villareal says he believes that that’s all down to the flavanols and minerals in the chocolate. And who am I to argue with Casanova, who consumed chocolate before ‘entertaining’ – perhaps he needed a pick me up to boost his stamina!

So for both antioxidant benefits, and the more biological effects, the advice is the more cocoa solids the better, but how much of it you eat is, as always, probably more to do with appetite rather than intention.

Laura Howes

                  

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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? The short answer is we really don’t know. That came across talking to Dan Lacks at Case Western Reserve University, US. Lacks told me that he’d originally got into looking at tribocharging when he was approached by a company with a project. ‘I thought it would be easy – I’d just read in the literature how it works and be able to simply solve their problem.’

Static charge on a Teflon surface touched repeatedly with an inflated and deflated rubber balloon © Wiley-VCH

It turns out to be significantly more complex, and seven years later Lacks is still pondering the issue. In a recent paper of his own, Lacks has shown that touching a rubber balloon to a Teflon surface charges it oppositely depending on whether it’s inflated or deflated, so straining a material changes how it charges.

Not only that, with the advent of modern microscopy techniques, it’s now possible to see what’s happening to charged surfaces at the nanoscale. Last year, Bartosz Grzybowski from Northwestern University, US, showed that – rather than one surface charging positively and the other negatively when 2 materials are rubbed together – both surfaces are covered with tiny mosaic patches of positive and negative charge, and a tiny imbalance of one over the other is responsible for the overall charge.

When you combine that result with his latest work on how nanoscale fragments of the materials are transferred between surfaces on contact, taking their charge with them, it becomes easier to see how material transfer can flip the polarity of the charge on two materials.

But it gets even more interesting when you start to think how that material transfer happens. Grzybowski says that it involves ripping polymer chains off the surfaces, which involves breaking covalent bonds. The same happens when you deform polymers – some of the bonds break and, according to Grzybowski, this produces radicals. If you have the polymers under water when you deform them, then you can produce hydrogen peroxide or stimulate other radical chemistry processes.

To demonstrate how effective the process is, Grzybowski’s team injected a solution of a boronate protected umbelliferone into the sole cavity of some Nike Air trainers. Walking around in the trainers produced enough radicals and H₂O₂ to cleave the boronate group and release fluorescent umbelliferone.

Fluorescent trainers - the next fashion craze? © Wiley-VCH

I’m not sure the people at Nike will be taking it up as a marketing gimmick (especially since you need a UV lamp to see the fluorescence), but it certainly shows that the charge and electronic behaviour of polymers is  mind-bogglingly complex and a potential source of some really interesting chemistry – harnessing polymers as a convenient source of mechanically produced radicals could have huge potential when you consider how many industrial and academic processes involve radical pathways.

Phillip Broadwith

                  

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The ACS Award for Creative Innovation Symposium in honour of Chad Mirkin was a who’s who of clever nano chemistry with bio applications.

John Rogers presented his flexible circuits and you can read my story here. But the flexible circuits are also being used in a way I didn’t mention in the story – for imaging the brain during epileptic fits. With patients with extreme epilepsy, surgery is sometimes used. Surgeons open up the skull, cover the brain in electrodes and then provoke a seizure to see where to cut. Rogers’ group has developed their circuits for this as well, and he showed an amazing video of the repeating waves that pulse through the brain during a fit. So what looks like very applications based science has now given new insights into epilepsy:

I luckily got to chat to David Walt after the session about creative innovation and how spin outs can amplify the impact of science. Obviously, being the founder of Illumina, Walt has an interesting perspective. ‘A lot of scientists don’t realise that the real impact is when you grow a technology to when it’s commercially successful,’ he says. He urged people not to focus on the ‘quick buck’ but focus on creating a lasting, long-term company. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but Walt does believe that the entrepreneurial side of science then pushes you to do better fundamental research. At the symposium today, that was a heady and enticing prospect.

Laura Howes

                  

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It has been brought to our attention here at the Chemistry World cabana that one of our staff has been the victim of a vile plot to impersonate a science journalist. In a staggering revelation, we have learned that a professional actor has been hired to masquerade as our beloved Philip Robinson.

The real Philip Robinson

An imposter

The architects of this nefarious scheme remain unknown and their motives are as yet unclear but the implications would appear to be sinister in the extreme. We can only assume that our brave and handsome reporter was getting too close to the truth and those in danger of being exposed have sought to damage and discredit his good actual name. Rest assured, the RSC has been quick to respond and has issued a statement to the press, exposing the fraudster. But fear not, dear readers, such cowardly tactics will not intimidate us. The truth will out – Chemistry World will not be silenced.

The writer wishes to remain anonymous

                  

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Well I’m here in San Diego for the Spring ACS meeting (even if my suitcase isn’t) and the packed schedule has already brought up some gems. Here’s my round up of day 1…

The San Diego skyline, a nice place for a conference!

Bassam Z Shakhashiri, the new ACS president, wearing his ‘Science is Fun’ pin badge, used the meeting to launch his priorities for his presidency. As ACS presidents only have a one year term to implement their vision, I often wonder how much can really be achieved in that year, but Shakhashiri does at least seem to be getting one thing done. He’s appointed a working group on the public understanding of the science of climate change, to develop a tool kit for ACS members. Public understanding of science is something Shakhashiri has been very involved in for many years, but he says that the kit is needed to make sure that the ACS membership is well versed in the science of climate change, as well as then using it to communicate the facts more widely.

‘In my visits with colleagues, graduate students, high school teachers, university professors, members of our profession and industry,’ he explained diplomatically. ‘I have discovered there is a need to refresh our knowledge of what a greenhouse gas is.’

Shakhashiri’s climate change group has also been asked to look at how to communicate the science of climate change to the wider public, from teachers to policy makers, to the people I walked past on my way to the convention centre. ‘There are the deniers, there are sceptics and there’s everyone else,’ he said. ‘I have deliberately chosen not to spend too much time engaging in conversation with the deniers … that will definitely elevate my blood pressure. I’m very much interested in conversing with sceptics and with everyone else – in science we make progress by being sceptical.’

If you’re interested in the toolkit, it will be web-based and, while it is only two-fifths completed, it should all be available by the time of the Fall meeting in Philadelphia.

Of course, with Shakhashiri’s interest in communicating science, there are some great talks at a more general level in the programme. I felt I had to go to the plenary session in the afternoon to listen to Roger Tsien and I’m so glad I did. Tsien, I’m sure, needs no introduction, but in his first slide introduced us all to the jelly fish that makes green fluorescent protein (GFP), which he says his should Nobel prize should go to. What followed was not a look back at the work that led to Tsien being awarded his Nobel Prize, but where that work has taken him since.

The spring ACS is dedicated to the chemistry of life

There’s something really neat about sitting in a packed room seeing how papers you gave as journal clubs back at university, now fit into something much larger. Tsien’s activatable cell penetrating proteins (CPPs) specifically target cancer cells, making them fluorescent so that during surgery, doctors can ensure that all of the tumour is removed. Or the cell penetrating proteins can be made specific for nerve cells, protecting the nerves from the scalpel during prostate surgery (something which, Tsien said, men are quite interested in!). That’s some low hanging fruit for Tsien’s spin out Avelas if ever I heard it.

Laura Howes

                  

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EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: Monday, March 26, 2012, 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society

A press conference on this topic will be held at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, March 26, 2012, in the ACS Press Center, Room 15A, in the San Diego Convention Center. Reporters can attend in person or access live audio and video of the event and ask questions at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive.

Newswise SAN DIEGO, March 26, 2012 The traditional way of making medicines from ingredients mixed together in a factory may be joined by a new approach in which doctors administer the ingredients for a medicine separately to patients, and the ingredients combine to produce the medicine inside patients bodies.

Thats one promise from an emerging new field of chemistry, according to the scientist who founded it barely a decade ago. Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D., spoke on the topic bioorthogonal chemistry here today in delivering the latest Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). More than 15,000 scientists and others are expected to attend the meeting, being held here through Thursday and featuring almost 12,000 reports on new developments in chemistry and related sciences.

Bertozzi explained that the techniques of bioorthogonal chemistry may fundamentally change the nature of drug development and diagnosis of disease, so that the active ingredients for medicines and substances to image diseased tissue are produced inside patients.

Suppose a drug doesnt reach diseased tissue in concentrations high enough to work, Bertozzi said, citing one example of the potential of the new chemistry. Maybe it is an oral drug that doesnt get absorbed very well into the blood through the stomach. You can imagine a scenario in which doctors administer two parts of the molecule that makes up the drug. The two units reach diseased tissue in large amounts or get absorbed through the stomach just fine. Then they recombine, producing the actual drug in the patients body. Bioorthogonal chemistry is chemistry for lifeliterally!

Bertozzi explained that bioorthogonal chemistry opens the door to creating new proteins, fats and sugars directly inside living cells without harming them. The field emerged from her frustration in the late 1990s with the lack of tools available to see sugars on the surfaces of living cells. Chains of these sugars, called glycans, sit on the surfaces of cells in the body and control the doorways through which different molecules enter. When a disease-causing virus enters and infects a cell, for instance, proteins on the virus's surface attach to certain glycans.

To do that, we had to come up with a chemical reaction that would be really selective, only targeting the sugar of interest and the fluorescent probes that we delivered to it, said Bertozzi. The chemicals also couldnt stick to other biomolecules that the researchers didnt want to see.

That turned out to be a tall order, indeed. We pulled all of our big textbooks off the shelves and flipped through them to see if there was something out there that fit our criteria, she said. Those criteria were essentially the conditions inside a living cell or living organism such as a mouse a reaction that could occur in water at pH 7 and at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The reaction also couldnt interfere with all the other biomolecules in a cell or organism that keep it alive.

It was a pretty restrictive set of conditions that a traditionally trained organic chemist like me never had to work within, she explained. Thats because these types of reactions are usually performed in very clean, dry test tubes and flasks under conditions that the chemist can control. A living cell or organism, with all its water, proteins, fats, sugars and metabolites is very messy and uncontrollable by comparison.

Continue reading here:
New Field of Chemistry Has Potential for Making Drugs Inside Patients -- and More

OU chemistry professor receives Oklahoma Chemist of the Year award

Hailing from a small Oklahoma town, one OU alumna and faculty member has been picked from among all research chemists in Oklahoma to receive a statewide award.

OU chemistry professor Donna Nelson received the award for Oklahoma Chemist of the Year March 17 for her research with single-wall carbon nanotubes, alkenes reactions and organic chemistry education.

Nelson has researched carbon nanotubes, a new form of carbon used to change the characteristics of polymers, for five of six years, she said.

Her research with alkenes reactions, used to form compounds like alcohol, and organic chemistry education has spanned two decades, she said. She has published in all three areas.

This award is particularly special to Nelson because of her ties to the state, she said.

I have won a lot of other awards, national-level awards, and Id have to fly away and accept awards in different cities like Chicago or Washington D.C. ... but its always nice to be recognized at ones home, Nelson said.

Nelson has taught organic chemistry at OU for 25 years, OU President David Boren said in an email.

Boren wrote one of the letters of recommendation for Nelson when she applied for the honor.

She has inspired thousands of students to enter into the field of chemistry, Boren said in an email. More importantly, she encourages her students to pass this passion for science to younger generations by serving as mentors for high school chemistry students.

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OU chemistry professor receives Oklahoma Chemist of the Year award

The Cavaliers' losing streak reached five games last night following a 87-75 loss to the Detroit Pistons at The Q. The Cavs have lost 8 of 9, with 6 of those losses by at least 10 points.

In today's Comment of the Day, Slimshady blames the struggles on the trade of Ramon Sessions and the release of Ryan Hollins,

"The Cavs chemistry they had before with Sessions & Hollins being dumped and the injury to Boobie is gone. The trade of Ramon Sessions has killed the Cavs. He was the second best guard on the team. Sloan & Harris are just bodies that breath that's all. The team is gutted with the trade of Ramon and the dumping of Hollins. What the Cavs team lacked in talent they made up with in chemistry, energy & coaching. The Cavs used to be fun to watch this season but now they are horrible after they were gutted."

Are the Cavaliers unwatchable? With four picks in the upcoming draft, are you OK with that? Get in on the discussion below.

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Cavaliers have no chemistry: Comment of the Day

"Chemistry on the nanometer scale often appears to be different compared to chemistry in the normal scale and carbon nanotubes provide ideal conditions for studies of reactions in nanospace," says Alexandr Talyzin, docent at the Department of Physics, Ume University.

The standard approch to make chemical recations inside of single walled carbon nanotubes, SWNTs, is to fill the inner space with molecules (e.g. fullerenes, thus forming so called peapods) and make them react with each other.

The nanotube walls will then protect the encapsulated molecules from outer space and make reactions with molecules and atoms outside the tube impossible. Once the SWNTs are filled with C60 molecules there is not enough space for hydrogen molecules to go in. That was the common opinion when the research groups started their experiments a few years ago.

But their experiments leave no doubt, hydrogen does actually penetrate into peapods and react with fullerenes. The evidence is rather direct, when the temperature and pressure of hydrogenation is taken to extreme values the fullerene cage collapses completely and large hydrogen molecules are formed. This was confirmed both by Raman spectroscopy and high resolution TEM.

The study provides one more example that chemical reactions in nanoreactors are not always the same as in normal conditions. In three-dimensional structure molecules can react with their neighbours in all possible directions, up, down, right, left etc.

"Inside of carbon nanotubes fullerene molecule have only two neighbours, lets say to the right and to the left. Similarly, the reaction with hydrogen is also limited to one-dimension," says Alexandr Talyzin.

A great advantage is that even single molecules inside of SWNTs can be observed using high resolution electron microscopy, something extremely difficult for bulk powders, he adds. High quality images collected at Aalto University allowed the scientists to observe not only hydrogen induced collapse of C60, but also hydrogen-driven coalescence of molecules into chain polymers and tubules.

"What we learned is a rather general result for nano-chemistry. Now we have direct evidence that molecules inside of SWNts can be reacted with gases. It opens enormous possibilities for synthesis of novel hybrid materials and chemical modification of encapsulated molecules and materials," says Alexandr Talyzin.

More information: Hydrogen driven collapse of C60 inside of SWNTs is published on line in Angewandte Chemie, http://onlinelibra 946/abstract

Provided by Umea University

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Chemistry in one dimension offers surprising result

Public release date: 26-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jennifer Beal physicalsciencenews@wiley.com 44-012-437-70633 Wiley-Blackwell

Weinheim, Germany -- Wiley-VCH, part of the scientific and technical publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and the Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES) today announced the launch of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry, the second pan-Asia society chemistry journal after Chemistry An Asian Journal (2010 Impact Factor: 4.188), launched by ACES and Wiley-VCH in 2006.

ACES is an association of 13 chemical societies in Asia and the Pacific region (the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Inc., the Chinese Chemical Society, the Hong Kong Chemical Society, the Chemical Research Society of India, Himpunan Kimia Indonesia, the Chemical Society of Japan, the Korean Chemical Society, Institut Kimia Malaysia, the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, the Singapore National Institute of Chemistry, the Chemical Society Located in Taipei, the Chemical Society of Thailand, and the Chemical Society of Vietnam). For the publication of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry, ACES is joined by the Korean Society of Organic Synthesis.

The Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry (www.AsianJOC.org) will publish strictly peer-reviewed primary and secondary research in all aspects of organic chemistry. The first issue will appear in print and online in Wiley Online Library in the autumn of 2012 and will be published monthly thereafter. The Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry is a sister journal of the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, which is published by Wiley-VCH and ChemPubSoc Europe, the sister organization of ACES in Europe.

The Editorial Board is co-chaired by Sung Ho Kang from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon), Keiji Maruoka from Kyoto University, and Deqing Zhang from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), whose combined and extensive expertise in organic chemistry reflects the broad scope of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry. In a joint statement, the Co-Chairs said, "Until now, the top international organic chemistry journals have been either American or European; the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry is the realization of a dream for organic chemists in Asia".

Among others, Nobel Laureates Ei-ichi Negishi (2010), Akira Suzuki (2010), and Ryoji Noyori (2001) support the new journal as members of the Honorary Board. Kang, Maruoka, and Zhang are joined by a host of distinguished organic chemists on the Editorial and International Advisory Boards to ensure that the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry is of the highest possible standard.

"The launch of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry reflects the extraordinary and continuing growth of the organic chemistry community in Asia" said the President of ACES, Youngkyu Do (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). "The opportunity to bring this to the global stage in a focused, high-quality publication is exciting" he added. Koji Nakanishi, a prominent member of the organic chemistry community and member of the journal's Honorary Board, remarked that: "In view of the surge in contributions from Asian countries, the launch [of the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry] is wonderful".

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Wiley-VCH and ACES to launch organic chemistry journal rooted in Asia

LANSING, MI (WNEM) -

Going Green could earn you an award from the state. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (EPA) has announced open nominations for the fourth annual Michigan Green Chemistry Governor's Awards.

The Governor's Awards recognize advances that incorporate the principles of green chemistry into chemical design, manufacture, or use, or that promote activities which support or implement those technologies and efforts. The awards acknowledge efforts to design and implement safer and more sustainable chemicals, processes, and products.

Awards are open to individuals, groups, and organizations, both non-profit and for profit. The program was established by the Michigan Green Chemistry Roundtable, and it celebrates innovations using green chemistry in Michigan. Eleven awards have been presented in the first three years of the program.

Entries must be sent no later than July 20. The awards will be presented at the 2012 Michigan Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference: "Driving Sustainable Manufacturing," which is scheduled Oct. 26 at Wayne State University.

For a copy of the nomination packet, or more information on the Michigan Green Chemistry Program, visit the DEQ Web site at http://www.michigan.gov/greenchemistry, or call the DEQ Environmental Assistance Center at 800662-9278.

Copyright 2012 WNEM (Meredith Broadcasting). All rights reserved.

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State opens up nominations for green chemistry awards

We’ve had the heart on a chip, kidney on a chip and brain on a chip. Now, we’ve got another body part on a chip – the gut.

This gut on a chip, designed by Donald Ingber from Harvard University in the US, and colleagues, is quite special as it mimics the gut’s structure, conditions and even the peristaltic motions (gut muscles contracting and relaxing in turn along the tube to move food along). The team hopes that it’ll replace animal guts used in studies, such as seeing how drugs are absorbed into the body through the gut.

The team made the device from two microfluidic channels separated by a porous flexible membrane coated with extracellular matrix and lined with human intestinal epithelial cells. To recreate the natural gut’s environment, they had fluid flowing through the tube at a low rate and they exerted a strain on the tube at constant intervals to mimic peristalsis.

— A schematic of the gut-on-a-chip showing the flexible porous extracellular matrix-coated membrane lined by gut epithelial cells crossing horizontally through the middle of the central microchannel, with vacuum chambers on both sides. The mechanical strain is exerted by applying suction to the vacuum chambers

Under these conditions, a columnar epithelium developed, which grew into folds – similar to the structure of intestinal villi. Then, the team grew a normal intestinal microbe (Lactobacillus rhamnosus) on the epithelium’s surface, which survived for around a week (not an easy thing to achieve, they say).

Together, these components make a more realistic model than current systems that could be used for absorption and toxicity studies, transport, drug tests and to develop new intestinal disease models.

If you want to find out more about body parts on chips and their uses, the journal Lab on a Chip has loads of papers on the topic.

Elinor Richards

                  

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SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

At the American Chemical Societys Spring 2012 National Meeting & Expo, PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment, today announced the launch of its Ensemble for ChemistryTM integrated informatics suite for enhancing chemist productivity and decision-making, for industry segments including biopharmaceutical, environmental, food and chemical, as well as academia and government.

The Ensemble for Chemistry platform provides a suite of software applications to improve chemists efficiency. This is delivered through tools and content for more efficient planning and recording of experiments, the creation of structure-searchable databases of compounds, reactions and data, and the ability to locate, share and communicate results directly in their workflow.

The software suite allows users to manage chemical structures and their associated data and properties in intelligent and intuitive ways, and integrates disparate data from customers' Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELN), informatics systems and databases, maximizing the value of an organization's scientific intellectual capital.

Chemists across a wide range of scientific and commercial endeavors, whether from academic, biopharma, environmental, food or other segments, share the same core informatics needs ease of use, workflow efficiency, data integrity, knowledge sharing and collaboration, and secure storage, said Michael Stapleton, general manager, Informatics, PerkinElmer. The Ensemble for Chemistry suite provides researchers with the tools they need to understand the chemistry behind the names, structures and reactions, so that compounds and associated data are leveraged effectively on business-relevant pipeline projects.

The Ensemble for Chemistry suite helps businesses meet the challenges facing chemists by enabling them to:

About PerkinElmer, Inc.

PerkinElmer, Inc. is a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment. The Company reported revenue of approximately $1.9 billion in 2011, has about 7,000 employees serving customers in more than 150 countries, and is a component of the S&P 500 Index. Additional information is available through 1-877-PKI-NYSE, or at http://www.perkinelmer.com.

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PerkinElmer Launches Ensemble for Chemistry Informatics Platform at ACS 2012

Public release date: 24-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6042

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2012 More than a dozen symposia and other events at the American Chemical Society (ACS) 243rd National Meeting & Exposition are being sponsored or recommended by noted science communicator and ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D. They range from a science outreach event for children at PETCO Park to news from an emerging field of chemistry that promises to produce medicines inside patients' bodies, as well as a symposium on communicating science to the public.

Communicating science is a major part of Shakhashiri's presidential theme for the year. The William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Shakhashiri is noted internationally for pioneering the use of demonstrations in the teaching of chemistry in classrooms, as well as to the public in museums, convention centers, shopping malls and retirement homes and at his Science is Fun website. The Encyclopedia Britannica termed Shakhashiri the "dean of lecture demonstrators in America."

Shakhashiri said the symposia connect with the grand challenges that face society and scientists in the 21st century, challenges that range from helping to sustain Earth and its people in the face of population growth and climate change to finite resources, malnutrition and spreading disease.

A schedule of the sessions appears at the end of this press release, and individual topics can be accessed online.

Among the speakers in the plenary session, which is among Shakhashiri's recommendations:

Carolyn Bertozzi will deliver the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture. She is the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of sugars that coat the surfaces of cells. Her innovations could someday lead to new ways of making medicines inside the human body.

Another highlight of the ACS 243rd National Meeting & Exposition is a session called, "Communicating Chemistry to the Public." A featured speaker is Paul Raeburn, winner of the ACS 2012 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. Raeburn is a distinguished science writer, author, editor and program director of New Horizons in Science. Other speakers include ACS President Shakhashiri and the following:

Originally posted here:
American Chemical Society Presidential Sessions focus on outreach, chemistry innovations

This year marks a very special anniversary for the noble gases – it’s 50 years since the synthesis of xenon hexafluoroplatinate (Xe⁺[PtF₆]^–). What’s so special about that? Well, before xenon hexafluoroplatinate everyone thought the noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon) were completely inert.

It’s one of the earliest things you’re taught in school chemistry lessons. The noble gases don’t react because their highest energy ‘shell’ of electrons is full – they don’t need to share electrons to feel complete. Thus they reside lonely and aloof in their own little world at the far end of the periodic table.

But in 1962 UK chemist Neil Bartlett coaxed them out to play with the other elements while while working with fluorine. The key was platinum hexafluoride (PtF₆), an incredibly powerful oxidising agent that Bartlett and his colleagues had shown would react with oxygen gas. The first ionisation potential of xenon is almost the same as that of oxygen, thought Bartlett. So why not give it a shot?

An explosion of interest followed, and 50 years later we’re still making new noble gas compounds. And to celebrate, the University of British Columbia in Canada, the institution at which Bartlett made his breakthrough, is hosting a special seminar on 23 March. Guest speakers include Derek Lohmann, who worked with Bartlett on the synthesis and use of platinum hexafluoride. He told me that at the time the team wasn’t wholly aware of what an important milestone it was working towards: ‘The initial feeling was one of disbelief and then euphoria.’ It took a very powerful reagent, he explained. ’Like fluorine itself and many other compounds of fluorine, platinum hexafluoride is a very reactive species owing to its ability to attract electrons.’

Andrew Turley

                  

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Scurvy sea dogs are a lot less scurvy thanks to this week’s compound, and Linus Pauling was convinced it could do much more. Simon Cotton puts the ‘c’ in citrus with vitamin C in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

                  

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Dr. Keven Miller, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Murray State University, addressed a talk on Adventures in Ionic Liquids: From Reactions to Solvents to Macromolecular Architectures to students, faculty, and members of the UT Martins Student Members of the American Chemical Society (SMACS) last Thursday.

Dr. Miller says, Ionic liquids are salts that exist in the liquids state. Typical salts (like sodium chloride - table salt) are highly crystalline and require extremely high temperatures to melt. Ionic liquids are poorly coordinated and the melting point is below 100 degrees Celcius, so they are not fully crystalline. Although ionic liquids have been around for nearly a century, the term ionic liquid has been accepted only within the last 15-20 years. Ionic liquids are used in a number of industrial processes such as acid scavenging and cellulose processing. More recently (last 10-15 years) ILs (ionic liquids) have been used more as greener replacements for volatile organic solvents in common organic reactions. Ionic liquids have negligible volatility, flammability and a lower toxicity profile. Some ionic liquids have even been shown to be biodegradable.

Dr. Miller goes on to name the four main classes of ionic liquids cations. They include ammonium, imidazolium, pyridinium, and phosphinium. Anions are not mentioned because they can vary widely.

Dr. Miller then explained the Michael Addition. The Michael Addition is a versatile, efficient method of forming new carbon-carbon bonds. According to Dr. Miller, base catalysts such as carbonate and bicarbonate can range from weak, to moderate, the amine group, to strong, the amides and hydrides groups.

The reactions are done in volatile toxic solvents. Dr. Millers interest on this topic of Michael Addition is how fast the reactions work and if a reaction will even occur. In model ionic liquids, changing the cation will effect the cation-anion interactions because the larger bulky anions tend to result weaker cation-anion interactions but improved organic solubility.

Dr. Miller tested the Michael Addition and found out it was successful. The reactions occurred faster than expected.

The reason for this enhanced rate is unclear but could be due to a number of different factors, says Dr. Miller.

Michael Additions proceeds well in ionic liquid solvents. Future studies for Dr. Miller in response to the Michael Addition is to pursue other anions with phosphonium cations.

Research interests include the applications of ionic liquids in organic and polymer/materials chemistry.

Senior Engineering major Jareth Embrey had this to say about Dr. Millers talk: Most people think research presentations are about a finished product, but this was really insightful for a work still in progress.

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Chemistry professor to speak on ionic liquids