The late Sherwood Rowland got his Nobel prize for his work on this week’s molecule. But it’s best kept at a safe distance. David Lindsay takes a look at ozone in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast to find out why.
Here at the Chemistry World homestead we’re coming over all patriotic with the diamond jubilee of the Queen this year. So the news that the chaps responsible for the wonderful periodic table of videos have engraved the world’s smallest portrait of the Queen onto a diamond to celebrate the jubilee brought a tear to my eye.
The periodic videos team at the University of Nottingham dug out the diamond to be engraved from an old, broken infrared spectroscopy mount. They then had a quick word with some colleagues in the nanotechnology department and borrowed their engraving device to fire high speed gallium ions at the diamond to etch out the portrait. Using the picture of the Queen found on a stamp they produced a portrait just 46µm by 32µm – you could get 300,000 of these onto a postage stamp.
Martyn Poliakoff, a professor of chemistry at Nottingham and the presenter of the periodic table of videos, says that they’ve thought about giving the portrait to the Queen to celebrate the jubilee but aren’t sure what she’d do with it. They now considering donating it to an exhibition of some kind. If you have any ideas about a home for the diamond portrait they’d like to hear from you.
Patrick Walter
First it was the snails, now it’s the turn of the clams to be plugged in and used as living batteries. The same group of scientists from the US and Israel, led by Evgeny Katz, has now implanted biofuel cells into clams and integrated them into batteries.
The researchers implanted the battery’s electrodes in the clam through holes cut into their shells. To produce power, enzymes on the electrodes catalyse the oxidation of glucose, which the clams produce when they metabolise food.
The cyborg clam: implanted with biocatalytic electrodes
Katz’s team even set up the clams in series and parallel and tested their power outputs, comparing the two arrangements. Three clams set up in series produced a measly 5.2µW; three clams in parallel generated a massive 37µW.
They hooked up the clams to a capacitor to collect the energy for an hour and then discharged it through an electrical motor and managed to make the motor rotate a quarter of a full turn. The team says this is the first step on the long journey to bioelectronic self-powered cyborgs for potential military and homeland security applications. Self-powered cybernetic organisms? Now I can’t get the image of a Terminator clam brandishing an Uzi 9mm out of my head!
Hasta la vista, baby!
Elinor Richards
— Interns wanted
We are looking for a student member to join us this summer for a science writing internship. The selected candidate will gain experience as a science journalist on both Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry and will receive a hands-on introduction to the complete editorial process from picking what news to report, through writing and editing, right up to final web and print publication.
This eight-week position is supported by the Marriott Bequest Trust with a bursary of £1750. Applicants should have an interest in science communication, demonstrate an enthusiasm for writing and are also (probably) coming towards the end of a chemical science undergraduate degree or postgraduate course. Visit the RSC recruitment pages to find out more and/or apply.
Past interns Josh Howgego and Akshat Rathi have recently confirmed they’ll be heading for The Times Higher and The Economist for some work experience this summer so it really is a once in a life time opportunity. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Bibiana Campos-Seijo
PS: The deadline is 25 May
In the April podcast, we’re tackling the big questions: How do you make a diamond out of an onion? What’s a ’salt burst’? Where did Lewis and Clark go to the toilet? What does Patrick sound like? The answers are all here in the podcast. Plus, we’ve got Michael Hamblin on the lighter way to treat disease with photodynamic therapy, and Volker Hessel discusses the future of flow. Your auditory edification awaits…
Happy Easter everyone! As the bank holiday draws near we thought we’d leave you with a little seasonal news about how egg shells are being investigated as a new material for, um, protecting eggs. I think the phrase here is meta.
— Eggs!
So yes, egg shells surround the egg, either protecting a growing chick embryo or the makings of a yummy breakfast, but they aren’t all that great. After all, we don’t buy eggs and just chuck them in our shopping bags without the protection of an egg box do we? Egg shells are brittle – they’re mainly calcium carbonate held together with a protein matrix, but it’s the starch within the shells that’s relevant for our tale today. The University of Leicester, and more particularly Andrew Abbott’s group of chemists, are now investigating how to extract the glycosaminoglycans in the shells and turn them into starch-based plastics.
Abbott has already created starch based plastics using salts as plasticisers that break up the hydrogen bonding between the glucose rings. So it’s likely that something similar will be used on the extracted glycosaminoglycans.
And why egg shells? Well, because the food industry uses millions of eggs and creates tonnes and tonnes of waste in the form of egg shells. Leicester firm Just Egg, for example, sends about 480 tonnes of egg shells to landfill every year, at a cost of around £30,000. So saving money and reducing oil based plastic consumption sounds like a doubly good idea. The ultimate in recycling – turning eggs’ protective shells into protective packaging for eggs.
Mumble mumble, reborn, mumble mumble…
Laura Howes
Enzymatic reactions are cleaner, produce fewer byproducts and use less energy, she explained. But attempts to replicate natural enzymes for industrial applications are limited by our incomplete knowledge of these proteins.
Ondrechen and Penny J. Beuning, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, have received a three-year, $565,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a better understanding of enzyme activity.
If you want to design proteins to catalyze a particular reaction, its good to understand how they work, said Ondrechen.
Enzymes, she explained, are made up of a string of amino acids coded by the gene sequence. Each amino acid has a different role in the protein: Some are structurally important while others are required for the enzymes catalytic properties.
There are cavities on the surface of a protein where a molecule can come in and sit down, Ondrechen said. The enzyme does a reaction on it and the product goes away.
The current body of research on enzyme activity mostly focuses on the amino acids in that cavity, which come into direct contact with the reactive molecule. But over the years, some research has suggested that amino acids far away from the active site also play a role in catalysis.
Ondrechens team, using a method she developed 10 years ago, will be able to predict which remote amino acids will impact reactivity. Beunings team will test these predictions experimentally.
My lab is really interested in specificity of enzymes, Beuning said. We look enzymes and figure out how they recognize their substrates.
To do this, her team takes a protein engineering approach in which they manipulate the enzymes composition and observe how it affects its function.
Beunings experimental data can be used to train the computational method to make even better predictions about which amino acids are important to catalysis.
April: Rockets
Scenes from the Rockets' games in April. Click SHOW CAPTION for more information.
Rockets guard Goran Dragic heads to the basket past Lakers guard Ramon Sessions (7). (Harry How / Getty Images)
Lakers forward Josh McRoberts throws down a dunk. (Harry How / Getty Images)
Los Angeles' Metta World Peace (15) scores on a layup in front of Courtney Lee. (Harry How / Getty Images)
Rockets forward Luis Scola (4), of Argentina, and Los Angeles Lakers forward Pau Gasol (16) fight for a loose ball in the first half. (Gus Ruelas / Associated Press)
Kobe Bryant reacts as he is fouled in front of Goran Dragic. (Harry How / Getty Images)
Paul Gasol scores on a dunk in front of Courtney Lee. (Harry How / Getty Images)
Kobe Bryant scores in front of Courtney Lee (5) and Goran Dragic (3). (Harry How / Getty Images)
Andrew Bynum reacts to a foul call. (Harry How / Getty Images)
See the article here:
With latest road victory, the change in Rockets is clear: Better basketball through chemistry
Happy Birthday Robert Bunsen!
Just a quick post to note that it’s Robert Bunsen’s birthday today. He’d be 201 years old if he were alive. If you’d like to learn a bit more about the burner named after this German chemist why not check out our Classic Kit entry on the Bunsen burner. If you want to learn a bit more about the man, rather than the burner, then we’ve got a whole feature on Robert Bunsen, who ought to be remembered for far more than this humble piece of lab equipment.
Part of what made Bunsen such a great chemist was his diverse interests and during his lifetime he was called upon to investigate volcanoes and geysers and the gases exiting blast furnaces (by today’s standards he was a bit cavalier with his safety and had to be rescued on one occasion when he was overcome by fumes and blew himself up on another occasion). He was a man driven by an insatiable curiosity and made contributions to electrochemistry, toxicology and spectroscopy, but perhaps his greatest passion was teaching. So let’s light a candle for him today.
Patrick Walter
Mena Suvari and Chis Klein have talked about what makes the American Reunion cast so special.
The two actors, who have played the ex-couple Heather and Oz in the comedy franchise, shared that American Reunion still has the same chemistry among the cast as seen in the 1999 film American Pie.
PA Images / Matt Sayles/AP
"At the end of American Reunion, there's a lot of photos from the first and second American Pie films in there," Suvari explained to Collider. "When you do look at those, it becomes a reality that it has been that long, but there's so much of this essence that it hasn't been.
"It feels like no time has passed at all. We have so much chemistry with one another that it's so natural. It's the same vibe."
American Reunion, the fourth instalment of the original series, brings back the cast - Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Klein, Suvari, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Thomas Ian Nicholas and Eddie Kaye Thomas - for their high school reunion at East Great Falls.
"We have such a beautiful time, making these movies," Klein said. "The chemistry that you see, as audience members, in these movies is palpable and you can't create that. That is something that either exists in films or doesn't.
"You've watched enough movies where the chemistry isn't there, but in these, it is. We believe in these characters and we can follow these characters. To be a part of something like that, for 13 years now, and to revisit that, it's a really, really cool thing. We're having a lot of fun."
American Reunion opens on April 6 in the US and May 2 in the UK.
Watch the trailer for American Reunion below:
Read more from the original source:
Mena Suvari, Chris Klein: 'American Reunion cast chemistry is natural'
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.
Go here to see the original:
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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