For China and U.S., Better Living Through Better Leaders’ Chemistry: View

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Editorials

Photographs by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg, Nelson Ching/Bloomberg; Illustration by Bloomberg View

By the Editors Mon Feb 13 00:00:41 GMT 2012

Don’t expect any breakthrough deals from this week’s meeting between the U.S. president and China (CNGDPYOY)’s leader-in-waiting. In an election year for Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, who is in line to replace President Hu Jintao this fall, the best outcome to hope for is good chemistry.

Given the tensions in the air, that can hardly be assured. Consider Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s stump bluster about how, on his “first day in office,” he will impose tariffs on any Chinese goods that benefit from “unfair trade practices.” Or the more than five dozen pieces of legislation introduced in Congress in 2011 that took up Chinese behavior on everything from rare earth mining to exports of American flags. President Obama himself has occasionally shown a weakness for tough talk. Vice President Xi also has made a few brusque pronouncements on “foreigners with full bellies.”

The feel-good visits planned for Xi to California and Iowa offer one way to rise above such acrimony. For Americans in particular, the latter trip can be instructive. In 1985, Xi visited Iowa when he was a provincial leader in Hebei to honor a sister-state relationship, touring farms and baseball fields and sharing views at the Rotary Club. Then, Xi was eager to learn modern farming techniques. Now, Iowa does roadshows to China to hawk its goods as U.S. growth wanes. Nor is Hebei the backwater it was back then; its economy is bigger than Hong Kong’s. Barring a serious crisis, China’s economy may be bigger than America’s in 10 years.

China’s tremendous economic growth over the 27 years since Xi’s Iowa trip has been a signal human achievement, lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, and enabling billions of consumers around the world to enjoy a higher standard of living. That dynamism continues, and with it the added double-edged benefit of Chinese savings still underwriting U.S. profligacy.

Today, the U.S. and China share an enormous and widening array of interests, such as maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and preventing a global financial meltdown. Just as the U.S. has sometimes seemed oblivious to the enormous internal challenges that China faces, so, too, China has resented or willfully ignored the reality of the new responsibilities that it must shoulder.

The immediate task before Obama and Xi is to build a relationship that will enable their countries to bridge that perceptions gap. In that process, we imagine that Obama can turn the harsh rhetoric of the Republican candidates to his advantage -- something that must make former China hand George H.W. Bush spin in his parachute. Moreover, the situations in Iran and Syria, not to mention recent abductions and killings of Chinese workers in Egypt, Sudan and Thailand, are forcing the Chinese to re-examine their precepts about non-intervention, the importance of upholding global norms and their own relative inability to shape the situation on the ground. All those things can contribute to a convergence of views.

The good news is that Xi, 58, seems better suited to relationship-building than China’s current president. He’s regarded as more affable and spontaneous. And his worldview is colored by his years living in coastal provinces like Zhejiang, home to some of China’s most successful entrepreneurs, such as Zong Qinghou, a soft-drink merchant, and Li Shufu, founder of automaker Geely International Corp. Many of the province’s business owners pride themselves on succeeding without government help, a dynamic China could use more of. Given Xi’s background, for example, he should know China is imperiling its future by letting Google Inc. (GOOG), the Information Age’s biggest name, walk away and blocking Facebook Inc.

That’s not to say that the U.S. and China don’t have different, competing and at times conflicting interests. We’ll spare you the inevitable Valentine’s Day references: Obama and Xi don’t have to love each other, but they do have to get along.

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.

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For China and U.S., Better Living Through Better Leaders’ Chemistry: View

DongYan Chemistry = LEGENDARY MAGIC

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During the press conference for My Beloved on Tuesday, Director Dominic Zapata shared that although he has worked with Dingdong and Marian separately in the past, it’s his first time to work with them together. He also stated in an interview that the chemistry between Dingdong and Marian, aka DongYan, is really magical. In the Manila Standard article, he shared how honored he is to witness the legendary magic that happens when Dingdong and Marian are together.

Direk Dominic has worked with Marian and Dingdong separately in different projects and related that he feels very fortunate to finally work with the two of them in one show. “I’m honored to witness the legendary magic that happens when Marian Rivera and Dingdong Dantes share the screen,” he enthused.(source)

That’s definitely one way to put it. Now make sure to witness once again the legendary magic from DongYan in My Beloved which will premiere in the Philippines on Monday after Biritera and before Legacy. Pionoy TV’s premiere is Februaty 14th. check your Channel Guide for time.

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DongYan Chemistry = LEGENDARY MAGIC

Minnesota companies aim for greener living through chemistry

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EarthClean CEO Doug Ruth demonstrates how TetraKO is fire-resistant. He coats his hand in the gel and uses a blowtorch on the product, which resists flames up to 2,000 degrees for several minutes, he says. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

Lots of entrepreneurs boast about "eating their own cooking," but Doug Ruth takes it to a whole new level.

The CEO and founder of EarthClean, a clean-tech startup in South St. Paul, will pop a fingerful of his company's TetraKO firefighting gel into his mouth to prove it's nontoxic.

EarthClean's product, made of 50 percent cornstarch, is a goopy example of how the green-chemistry movement is starting to grow beyond the seed stage.

Renewable, bio-based substitutes for petroleum-derived chemicals have been under development for several years in Minnesota, but now they're finally starting to sell.

Bio-based plastics are popping up in supermarket delis, consumer electronics and on the shelves at big retailers, and consumers and industry observers are beginning to pay attention.

Some see the state well-positioned as a hub for "green chemistry." At the second annual Minnesota Green Chemistry Forum at the University of Minnesota recently, Dale Wahlstrom, CEO of The BioBusiness Alliance, compared green chemistry to Minnesota's medical-device industry in its infancy decades ago.

But before the industry produces "the next Medtronic," there are challenges to overcome.

First, chemical startups are not like Facebook or Google, which were launched in college dorm rooms.

Cutting-edge chemistry requires laboratories and pilot production plants that can cost a cool million dollars up front before the first product hits the shelf.

Second, chemical-based

products must undergo extensive and expensive regulatory review before they can be sold.

Third, studies show consumers will not buy a product just because it's environmentally friendly, people at the Green Chemistry forum acknowledged. Green companies have to demonstrate that their products can save money as well.

Fourth, Minnesota is competing not just with other parts of the country where green chemistry is bubbling, like California or Massachusetts, but countries like France, Brazil and Canada.

But that has not stopped people from dreaming.

Marc Hillmyer, a chemist and professor at the U of M, said the area has a cluster of green chemistry start-ups, led by NatureWorks LLC, "the juggernaut of renewable polymers."

The Minnetonka-based company, half owned by agribusiness giant Cargill and half by a Thai chemical company, makes a corn-based plastic that goes into everything from clamshell food cases in the deli section to potato chip bags for Target to iPhone cases.

NatureWorks has had a plant in Nebraska since 2002 but is building a second one in Thailand to be closer to its Asian customers, where half of its output is now exported, NatureWorks spokesman Steve Davies said.

Established giants like St. Paul-based Ecolab and 3M, which have long pedigrees in chemistry and polymers, also can play a role, the experts say.

"They're not green-chemistry companies but companies that can practice green chemistry," Hillmyer said.

Green chemistry favors the Midwest, with its feed stocks for new materials and abundant land and water, local experts believe.

And the area is growing the brains for a green chemistry workforce at the U, which opened the Center for Sustainable Polymers three years ago. The center, headed by Hillmyer, received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation last year.

SMALLER FOOTPRINTS

The variety of products made with bio-based plastic substitutes once was limited to a few products like flimsy food containers but now includes clothing, carpets, electronic gizmos and other products of everyday life.

Just cruise the aisles of Target or Staples and pick up a slender plastic bottle of Method laundry detergent.

In this case, the green isn't the container. It's in the detergent itself, which carries a bio-based solvent made by Segetis, a Golden Valley startup, that allows the detergent to be super-concentrated.

Segetis, which employs about 35 people, uses a contract manufacturer but has a small "semi-works" at its headquarters that produces about 250,000 pounds of material a year.

Company spokeswoman Tess Fennelly said Segetis is planning to build its own plant with a capacity of "tens of millions of pounds." .

That sounds like a lot, but it's hardly a drop in the bucket of the 13 billion pounds of plasticizers produced globally each year. And it's that room to expand that drives companies like Segetis.

Gevo, a company that is headquartered in Colorado but licenses technology from Cargill, is retrofitting an ethanol plant this year in Luverne, Minn. to produce isobutenol, a basic building-block chemical for petroleum substitution.

Isobutenol's carbon structure can be altered to produce everything from gasoline to jet fuel, for which the company has a contract to conduct a study for the U.S. Department of Defense.

"It's not 10 years from now," Pat Guber, Gevo's CEO told the green chemistry forum audience. "We're doing it now," the former Cargill scientist said. "The game is to make it happen big."

EarthClean has a similar idea. The company started in a small shop in Minneapolis three years ago and gained exposure by winning the first regional Clean Tech Open competition in 2010, and went on to take third in the nationals later that year.

EarthClean moved last year to South St. Paul for more space, taking over a 6,000 square foot office-warehouse. Liana Palaikis, the company's PhD chemist and director of product development has a "lab" in the warehouse, marked off with blue tape on the floor.

The lab is crowded with plastic Home Depot buckets filled with white TetraKO powder, makeshift workbenches with microscopes, hand mixers to mix up beakers of the gel and Kermit the Frog, the company mascot, overseeing operations from a shelf.

In startup fashion, EarthClean operates on a tight budget. Palaikis, who spent many years as a chemist at 3M and has six patents to her name, dreams one day of a separate lab. "It would be really nice," she sighed.

EarthClean has been beta-testing TetraKO with local firefighting units but is just beginning to make sales.

Last year, EarthClean signed a contract to sell TetraKO to South Korea, pending government approval, and it has signed firefighting supply dealerships on the West Coast and in Kuwait, Ruth said.

The product costs about three to five times as much as conventional foam, but it knocks down fires at least five times faster, the CEO said.

That can save fire departments money on total time on a call and save firefighters' lives by reducing the time they are exposed to toxic smoke under heavy stress, Ruth said.

Last year the company, which has nine employees, had $135,000 in sales and it's projecting $1 million this year, Ruth said. The company doesn't expect to turn a profit until the end of 2013, he said.

But as a way of thinking bigger, the company is brainstorming ideas beyond firefighting.

"Which is why we named it EarthClean Corp. and not fire suppression inc." Ruth said.

THE HOUDINI PROBLEM

The ability to walk down the aisles of your neighborhood store and easily find green-chemistry products is a sign of progress, said Steve Kelley, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Humphrey School and a former state senator.

"Three years ago, I don't think you could say that," he said.

The next steps are more research and innovation to lead to even more bio-based substitutes for petrochemicals in higher quality plastics, Kelley said.

A couple of serial entrepreneurs are working on that next step.

The Selifonovs - Sergey and Olga - are Russian-born chemists who founded Segetis in 2006 and own a minority stake in the company, even though they have no hand in its operations anymore.

Instead, they've been hard at work in Golden Valley on two new polymers to be marketed under separate companies.

One company, called XLTerra, developed a high-grade clear plastic from cellulosic biomass, using materials like corn cobs instead of corn kernels, said Sergey Selifonov, XLTerra's chief technology officer.

The plastic has twice the strength of conventional corn-based plastics called polylactides (PLA for short), he said. It has a long list of possible commercial applications, from durables like Plexiglass and auto parts to semi-durables like a toothbrush handle.

The other company is named Reluceo, which has a degradable superabsorbent polymer that can be used in diapers. Unlike conventional superabsorbent polymers, Reluceo will break down, solving a landfill problem, he said.

Sergey called the challenge to make Reluceo's polymer both superabsorbent and biodegradable "harder than Houdini escaping from that box."

Over the next few weeks, the couple are moving to a lab with more power in Plymouth so they can build a mini-plant that can produce hundreds of kilograms of each material a day. The plant will be large enough to learn how to make the product at industrial scale and to test the new materials in different applications, said CEO Olga Selifonova (the 'a' at the end of her name is the Russian way of denoting gender).

As with Segetis, the Selifonovs said they have gotten financial backing from California-based Khosla Ventures, a big-name venture capital company in renewables.

But it will be several years before either product makes its way to market. The Selifonovs are confident they can do it.

"These are promising and innovative technologies," Olga Selifonova said. "I truly believe they will be commercialized."

Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at 651-228-5475. Follow him at twitter.com/suzukamo.

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Minnesota companies aim for greener living through chemistry

Texas A&M scientist recognized for chemistry work

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Published Thursday, February 09, 2012 12:04 AM By MAGGIE KIELY
maggie.kiely@theeagle.com

A&M chemistry professor Dr. Oleg Ozerov holds the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research. Ozerov received the award for his work on greenhouse gases during a ceremony held in his honor at The Clayton Williams Former Student Assosiation building on campus Wednesday.

Texas A&M chemistry professor Oleg Ozerov discovered his passion for chemistry as a 12-year-old in Russia, while experimenting with small-scale explosive material with a friend whom he remains close to today.

He became even more fascinated with the subject when he began learning about it as a freshman in high school, and later went on to earn his master's degree in chemistry at the Russian Academy of Science.

From there, he went on to the University of Kentucky, where he earned his Ph.D. in chemistry before taking a teaching position at Brandeis University.

He made his way to Aggieland in 2009 as a professor with the chemistry department and was hired as the graduate recruitment coordinator in the fall.

But even though his profession has taken him across the globe, Ozerov said he never imagined he'd be sitting in a room full of colleagues and students at the Alumni Center on campus Wednesday, being recognized for his work and honored as the 2012 recipient of the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research.

The award comes with a $100,000 personal check. He'll likely use some of the money to do something nice for those who've helped him along the way -- "especially his research group, which consists of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students, Ozerov said.

A chunk will go into his 3-year-old daughter's college fund, he said.

Ozerov, 35, is the second A&M professor to win the award since it was created by the Welch Foundation in 2002. Paul Cremer was honored as the 2006 recipient.

The Welch Foundation, a national organization founded in 1952 to provide private funding for chemistry researchers, presents the award annually to a Texas chemistry researcher who has made notable achievements during his early career.

Ozerov's research focuses on understanding unusual molecular structures and how to create or break chemical bonds.

During one of his most recent and notable discoveries, Ozerov created a way to break down the carbon-fluorine bond at room temperature.

Carbon-fluorine bonds are considered some of the strongest in chemistry and are often found in greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

The breakthrough could have a positive effect on combating atmospheric pollutants.

"Chemistry fascinates me," Ozerov said. "If you say something is difficult to do, it's like the red flag to the bull, and we have to figure out how to do it."

Ozerov was chosen for the award in part because of his attitude, said Beth Robertson, Welch Foundation chair.

"At only 35, Dr. Ozerov already has made significant contributions in both transition metals and main group chemistry that may ultimately improve our world," she said. "Known for his chemical ingenuity, his work is aimed at exploring exciting new facets of chemistry."

In addition to the Hackerman Award, Ozerov recently was named the 2012 Pure Chemistry Award recipient by the American Chemical Society.

"I don't think I did anything outstanding," Ozerov said after receiving his award Wednesday. "I feel like I understand chemistry. I have an affinity for it, and it was always easy for me to get."



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Texas A&M scientist recognized for chemistry work

Flutes let the bubbles go up your nose

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Everyone enjoys a nice glass of bubbly – no one more so than us here at Casa del Chemistry World. But some people go that bit further to investigate just what it is that makes a glass of champagne taste the way it does. And in this case it turns out that the glass can make all the difference.

Gérard Liger-Belair from the University of Reims, France, and his team looked at the concentration of ethanol and carbon dioxide floating above the surface of champagne in the tall, thin flutes and squat, wide coupes using micro-gas chromotography to try to make some quantitive judgements on the merits of the two glasses. They discovered that the levels of carbon dioxide were two to three times higher just above the champagne in a flute than in a coupe, although the level of ethanol was comparable.

Infrared image of carbon dioxide flowing from a champagne flute

They also used an infrared imaging technique to look at carbon dioxide levels and created some amazing pictures of the gas escaping from the drink.

Liger-Belair and his team have spent some years investigating all aspects of bubbly’s taste and smell (nice work if you can get it) and have featured on the pages of Chemistry World a number of times. Liger-Belair himself has written for us extolling the chemical virtues of investigating champagne and it’s packed with interesting facts – did you know champagne corks explode out of the bottle at 60km/h? Or that on the Moon the bubbles in champagne would be three times larger than here on Earth?

So how did the coupe glass come about? Well, it was created in the 17th century especially for the English aristocracy. Later a myth grew up around it that the curves of the glass had been modelled on the breast of Marie Antoinette – unlikely as she hadn’t been born yet. The glass became increasingly popular in the 1930s as its shape encouraged the champagne to go flat quickly for those that weren’t such a fan of the bubbles and burps that go with champagne and it became particularly popular in the US. But coupes’ popularity dived later that century as champagne warms up quickly in these glasses and people came to appreciate the bubbles.

Flutes also appeared around the same time, although designs have become taller and finer over time as glass-working skills and production techniques improved.

But which is better? There’s only one way to find out. Fight! Well, if you prefer your champagne with bubbles then a flute’s the way forward. On top of this, the higher levels of carbon dioxide floating above the champagne give the drink its distinctive nose as the gas irritates the nasal passages. So for the authentic champers experience don’t be a barbarian and stick to a flute!

Patrick Walter

PS Remember to open your champagne safely!

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Cooperative rotaxanes

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When I picked up the JACS paper from Belowich et al earlier this week, I have to admit I got quite excited. Not only was this a collaboration between Fraser Stoddart’s lab in the US and Lee Cronin’s here in the UK, but molecules that seem to almost self-catalyse their assembly are very reminiscent of origin of life ideas, which I love. It’s interesting that using the same kind of interactions that biological molecules use, in fine balance, can result in this cascade that gives you much more complicated chemistry, and I couldn’t help thinking that this was an example of the chemicals outsmarting the chemists.

Favourable pi stacking interactions and hydrogen bonding allowed the researchers to get very high yields of these polyrotaxanes

Favourable pi stacking interactions and hydrogen bonding allowed the researchers to get good yields of the polyrotaxanes © J. Am. Chem. Soc.

You can read my story here, but there’s only so much you can fit into a story, so below I’m pasting some more of the details from a conference call I had with Stoddart, Belowich and Ron Smaldone.

And Cronin? Well he didn’t make the conference call, owing to being tied up chatting to the BBC about some unrelated work, but he phoned me a bit later. His involvement in this paper was with the ion mobility mass spec, which proved that the pi-stacked rotaxanes were incdeed stiff, rather than flexible. But Cronin told me that this is just the start of a long running collaboration between his lab and Stoddart’s and the first of several papers due out soon. So as they say, watch this space…

Matt Belowich: The original intent of the project was to make these rotaxanes rigid and inflexible and we had maybe some inkling at the beginning that we might have some cooperative effects, just because of how we were constructing these using non-covalent bonding interactions and pi stacking, but we certainly didn’t suspect it at first and it was something we stumbled upon.

Fraser Stoddart: I think there was another driver, which was just how far we could go in terms of putting numbers of rings and associated numbers of reactions into place and get, in the beginning, acceptable yields. I was blown away by the fact that as Matt went higher and higher the yields maintained their awesome level and in some cases they seemed to get better. And so the fact that we aimed for a 20-rotaxane was just a round number. At Matt’s thesis defence a couple of months ago, somebody asked him if he could make a 50 rotaxane and I don’t think he hesitated for a minute before saying ‘Yes, it’s just a matter of a little more effort.’

MB: Absolutely, it’s just a matter of ‘Do you want to do it and do you want to put in the work?’ I don’t think there’s any question that it could be done.

It seems you were getting phenomenally high yields given the number of components…

MB: Yeah, that was one of the properties that fascinated us so much by this and I think it’s really a testament to the type of chemistry that we were using, which is dynamic covalent chemistry, which is performed under thermodynamic control. If you think about typical organic reactions, which are mostly done under kinetic control, you think about putting two or three components, maybe four at the most, in a reaction and getting, if you’re lucky, 90% yield. But because of our thermodynamically controlled reactions we can put in, in the case of the 20 rotaxanes I think 39 components and 38 reactions, and get these remarkable yields of 90% overall, which means each individual reaction is occurring in greater than 99.7% efficiency.

FS: I want to raise one thing. If you analyse the possible mechanism, which we’ve done in the presence of computational chemist Bill Goddard at Caltech… he reminded me that it must be remarkable from the point of view of entropy because you’re ending up with something that’s very very highly ordered. But the point is a route to it. If there wasn’t crosstalk between the rings, you’d expect them to be jumping around when the first one, the second one is on, the third one and that must mean that these intermediates must be pretty highly entropically favoured. And yet all of that seems to be overcome, presumably by the enthalpy garnered, as Matt points out, not only by the hydrogen bonding interactions that associates each ring with its charged centre on the dumbbell, but the pi-pi stacking interactions that come into play between the rings. One can just speculate, and we’re waiting on Goddard to shed more light on the reaction, that the rings might come on willy nilly to begin with. But my way of thinking of it is that they then cluster and that these clusters form the basis for the cooperativity. A bit like there are several cars on the road to begin with that are moving twowith some sort of velocity and then there’s a sudden acceleration.

It starts and then it reaches a tipping point and shoots and accelerates to the end point?

FS: I think it’s a bit like crystallisation in that it’s crystallisation in one dimension. If you draw the analogy then you can think that we’re as ignorant of the real details of the reaction as one is today about the process of crystallisation. You know, the editor of Nature back in the 1980s some time, Sir John Maddox, said that even at that time, and it could be repeated today, that we know little or nothing about that process. So I think that the last comment I’ll make is that this area of dynamic covalent chemistry – mechanistically we’re really in the dark ages, we are still just waving our hands. It’s nowhere near as developed as if it were a kinetic reaction and you could talk about SN1 or an SN2, or an E1 or an E2 or whatever it might be in terms of mechanism.

MB: We know what happens at the very beginning and what the outcome is but for everything in between we have blindfolds on. I think just looking at the mechanism of forming the 2 rotaxane, with just one ring, is difficult enough and you can imagine with 19 rings it’s just impossible right now. It’s very much an open area of research right now.

Ron Smaldone: My part of this project was to explain some of this using some basic computational chemistry. But what we found with the calculations was that there was actually a remarkable change when you went from the non-rigid type of rotaxanes, which are really only a couple of atoms or bonds longer in their spacing than the ones Matt made and the structure were remarkably different. I think it’s really cool that if you look at the interactions that are involved – really just solvent, hydrogen bonds and pi stacking as far as the non-covalent interactions go – it’s really similar to the way DNA assembles and if you look at a lot of studies of synthetic DNA you see that there’s a very cooperative type of assembly as well. It’s kinda cool, and it’s one of the things I really like about supramolecular chemistry, that you can use the same interactions that nature uses and it doesn’t really matter what the bones are of your molecule, you can still use some similar things with it. Matt’s molecule in some ways looks like a DNA but it’s really not at all like DNA, but its assembly properties are actually pretty similar, in some ways, to DNA. Which I think is remarkably cool and offers the potential to use the concepts of nature to make things that aren’t really like nature at all. You can never imagine using these rotaxanes to make synthetic life forms or anything like that but maybe you could use them as a really smart assembly for materials that use the same principle as nature but for a totally different purpose. That’s one of the things I thought was really cool, just very small changes in the molecule totally change its properties.

It struck me that you’ve got this very complicated thing and then it starts to self-assemble and self-catalyse. Are you going to look back and see other ways that things can cascade? Are you going to use this inspired approach to lead to different things?

FS: I think one is going to see more of this type of chemistry, more of this type of synthesis. As Ron puts it, it’s bio-inspired if you want to put it in that language. We tend to approach our chemistry based on a decade or two, or three now, of weak interactions being studied under the umbrella of supramolecular chemistry. But one’s never far away from the fact that when you make an observation such as Matt made with these bigger and bigger rotaxanes, that got almost easier to make, if you put aside the effort he had to put in to make the dumbbell. After that it was just zip, zip, zip to get these products. But I would like to put a note of caution – it took probably five or six years to get to where we are today. The interactions are very finely balanced and I think of the inspiring things was that Matt went back and looked at a piece of chemistry that had been published a few years ago and said, ‘Let’s reduce the space between the rings,’ and that’s what Ron was alluding to as well, to the point where we have this magic 3.5 Angstroms, the same stacking distance that you get between the bases of DNA, and see what happens. You can look back in retrospect and say we should have thought about this a bit earlier. It took us a little bit of time to work this out but once we got it, it just took off and the sky would seem to be the limit.

Laura Howes

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Chemistry teacher still going at 93

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AKRON -- Henry "Hank" Stevens stands in a chemistry lab at the University of Akron.

A dozen students at desks in front of him await his instruction. A chart of the Periodic Table of the Elements covers part of the wall to his side.

For Stevens, teaching chemistry, being around young people and staying busy has been an elemental part of his life for a long time. A very long time.

Stevens, who will turn 94 in April, is the oldest employee on campus. For parts of six decades, he has taught chemistry at UA. He thinks he "remains young" by helping students, often 75 years younger than him, understand chemistry.

"I enjoy the contact with young people," said Stevens, a Vienna native who immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 after serving in the Austrian army.

He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Columbia University, married his wife, Jean, and moved to Barberton in 1941 to work for Columbia Southern, which became PPG. Later, he moved to Akron and received his master's and doctorate degrees in chemistry from Western Reserve University while working at PPG.

His first stint as a part-time faculty member was from 1954 to 1963, when he taught doctoral students in the graduate school.

One of his first students was Frank Kelley in a polymer science class. Kelley later became dean of UA's College of Polymer Science.

Stevens retired from PPG following a 42-year career in which he occupied a variety of positions, including chemist, and worked with universities across the country on technology transfer. He began teaching again in 1986 and still teaches one class per semester.

Stevens has taught in the graduate and undergraduate schools at UA as well as through Summit College, where this year he is teaching two sessions of a basic chemistry laboratory.

Throughout the years, he has taught general organic and biochemistry, organic chemistry as well as many other classes.

This semester, Stevens is at UA five hours per week, split evenly between the two labs.

But teaching isn't the only activity that keeps him busy. He is a choir member at Westminster Presbyterian Church and at the University of Akron Symphony Choir.

He gives back in other ways, as well.

The father, grandfather and great-grandfather regularly visits the sick at the Rockynol Retirement Community, where he resides in the independent-living section.

And he gives back through the Dr. Henry C. and Mrs. Jean Stevens Chemistry Fellowship he established in 2006, about a year before his wife died. The foundation is designed to attract highly qualified students to UA's doctoral program in chemistry.

Every year, about $2,000 is given to UA students, he said. University officials said $14,000 has been awarded since the fellowship was established. Every year, he said he invests the money that he is required to take out of his IRA back into the fellowship.

Lori Kraft, associate professor of general technology in Summit College's Department of Engineering and Science Technology, said she hopes she is as active as Stevens when she is in her 90s.

"He is an inspiration," she said. "He told me the kids make him feel young, so I think that is a big motivating factor to have him come back to the lab every week."

Stevens said the bottom line is he likes to stay busy.

"I'm a person who wouldn't sit around," he said. "I need to do something. ... The idea of sitting in front of the tube and having nothing to do doesn't appeal to me."

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Chemistry teacher still going at 93

Will Imran-Kareena's chemistry work at box-office?

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New Delhi, Feb 7 (IANS) Karan Johar is returning this week to woo the box office with a romantic comedy which coincides with the Valentine's Day revelries. He has teamed up with the fresh pair of Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor to attract the audiences.

Directed by debutant Shakun Batra, the film's cast has Boman Irani, Ratna Pathak Shah and Ram Kapoor and it will be released on 1,200 screens worldwide. It is made at an approximate budget of Rs.25-30 crore.

In "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na", Ratna had played Imran's mother, but her character in the new film is a complete contrast.

In the film, Rahul Kapoor (Imran), an architect in Vegas, loses his job, but doesn't share the bad news with his parents and secretly starts the job hunt. His life takes a turn when Riana Braganza (Kareena), a quick-witted hairstylist, enters his life.

They meet and after a fun-filled night of debauchery, Rahul and Ria wake up to discover they've got married. They decide to annul their marriage, but in the course of next 10 days they stay together, fight, laugh and end up developing an unlikely friendship which eventually turns into love.

The film was earlier titled "Short-Term Shaadi", but later changed to "Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu". Going by the promos, the film seems to be targetted towards younger audiences.

Extensively shot in Las Vegas, the entire cast and crew enjoyed working there as the shooting schedule coincided with the festive season of Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Some parts of the film have also been shot in Pataudi, Haryana.

While shooting for the film, Imran also turned a photographer and clicked Kareena. Later, an exhibition was held where all those photographs were put on display.

There were reports that the film's story is similar to that of Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher-starrer "What Happens In Vegas", but the producer denies this contending that the fact that they get married in Vegas is only an aspect of the movie and not the entire movie. The story is different.

The peppy and fun-filled songs of the film composed by Amit Trivedi are already a rage among youngsters and are being frequently played on radio stations.

After the success of Dharma Productions' "Agneepath", expectations are high from the romantic comedy which is also produced by the same banner.

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Will Imran-Kareena's chemistry work at box-office?

Diabetics’ device delivers DNA detection

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Last year, we reported on some research that was repurposing personal glucose meters (PGMs; the little devices that detect your blood sugar level) to enable the detection of a variety of other analytes (cocaine and uranium, among other things). Now the same team have adapted the idea to the detection of DNA, with impressive precision and sensitivity.

But before you rush out and set up a street-corner screening service, there’s a little more chemistry involved. The glucose meters are just plain old glucose meters and don’t actually detect DNA; the trick lies in converting the chemical you’re interested in to a glucose response that the PGM can detect.

Effectively, the team have built a sort of chemical transducer that takes a DNA signal and turns it into a glucose signal. The transducer has two parts: an enzyme – DNA invertase – that turns sucrose into glucose, and a magnetic bead. The enzyme and the bead are each connected to DNA strands that match up to the target DNA strand you hope to detect. So, in the presence of the target DNA, the magnetic bead and the enzyme are brought together and you can then remove the whole thing with a magnet, pop it in some sucrose, and in seconds your glucose meter can tell you if you’ve got hepatitis B (or something else, probably, but that’s what these chaps were looking for).

So, in future you might find yourself asking to borrow a diabetic friend’s PGM. ‘I didn’t know you had diabetes,’ they’ll remark, and you can smugly reply, ‘ I don’t – I’ve got hep B’.


Philip Robinson

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The February edition of the CW podcast is now online

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In the February podcast, we’re all about nanoparticles: they clean up blood, they can listen to cellular noises, they get rid of unwanted pests and they worm their way into the environment. Plus, we learn that fluorinated chemicals might be making their way into our food and discuss the unusual case of hip replacements that produce their own lubricant.

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Economizing chemistry, atom by atom

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Silicon, which is less electronegative than carbon or hydrogen atoms, can significantly alter the electronic characteristics of an organic molecule. Replacing the hydrogen atoms of an aromatic C–H group with silyl groups has emerged as an important strategy in industrial-scale chemical synthesis because these substituents can tune molecular reactivity, enabling construction of elaborate chemical frameworks. 

Chemists normally use transition metals such as platinum or rhodium to catalyze aromatic silylation reactions. But to achieve high conversions, these catalysts need to be mixed with additional hydrogen acceptor reagents, which can generate unwanted waste products, including alkanes. 

Hou and colleagues have pioneered studies into rare-earth metals, such as scandium, which have different catalytic properties to transition metals. Recently, they found that ‘half-sandwich’ scandium complexes, bonded on one side by a flat organic ring, showed unique activity and selectivity in the presence of carbon double bonds. This made investigations of unsaturated aromatic molecules a natural next step. 

When the researchers mixed a methoxy–benzene compound called anisole with the half-sandwich scandium catalyst and a phenylsilane, they found that the silyl group substituted onto the aromatic ring with excellent selectivity and yields (Fig. 1). Furthermore, the catalyst did not require hydrogen acceptor reagents, and generated only H2 gas as a by-product. Hou notes that this reaction is highly advantageous in terms of atom economy.

X-ray and spectroscopic measurements revealed that the working form of the catalyst, which contained a pair of ‘bridging’ hydrogen atoms, activated the reaction by coordinating the anisole’s methoxy group to the rare-earth metal. According to Hou, this relatively strong interaction directs silylation to occur almost exclusively at the position adjacent to the methoxy unit on the aromatic ring—a 'regioselectivity' that outshines that of transition metal catalysts, whose weak oxygen–metal interactions often produce an undesirable mix of silylation isomers.

The team will continue to explore new approaches to improving catalytic sustainability and selectivity by tapping into the extraordinary properties of rare-earth metals.

More information: Oyamada, J., et al. Scandium-catalyzed silylation of aromatic C–H bonds. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 50, 10720–10723 (2011).

Takimoto, M., et al. Scandium-catalyzed regio- and stereospecific methylalumination of silyloxy/alkoxy-substituted alkynes and alkenes. Journal of the American Chemical Society 131, 18266–18268 (2009).

Provided by RIKEN (news : web)

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Students test products made in chemistry project

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Challenged to create a product using skills they learned in chemistry class, eighth-graders at Bettendorf Middle School came up with items from scented nail polish and deodorant to sports drinks and edible slime.

The products were on display Friday during the school's first Chemistry Expo.

The event was part of a project-based learning assignment, said teacher Tanya Gilmore. The students also were responsible for creating posters and a website to market their product.

"It's sort of a way for them to connect the concepts they've learned throughout the year with something real, making chemistry more real to them," Gilmore said. "I think they surprised themselves with how much they actually know."

The students were challenged to create a product that did not just add something to an existing product, but to use their chemistry skills to create something new.

Kassidie Harmon said her group considered making root beer but decided that was too easy. Instead, they chose to make root-beer-flavored gum.

Her group had to order gum base online, but was able to find root beer extract at a local grocery store. They then experimented with different combinations of gum base, root beer extract, corn syrup and sugar.

"It took us five tries," she said. "We had to add a lot of sugar."

After distributing samples to classmates and visitors at the Chemistry Expo, Kassidie said most people either seemed to love the gum or hate it.

"There was no in-between," she said.

Ian Beck's group decided to make deodorant, but wasn't thrilled with the result.

The group used a mixture of corn starch, baking soda and perfumes, which team member Helena Sparbel said were chosen because they smelled like "old lady."

The aroma of the resulting product was a little too strong.

"Enough to knock people out," Ian said.

The team added water to dilute the scent, leaving the final product a little gooey.

"Making it into a stick was not the best idea," Ian said.

The young chemists agreed the project was a more enjoyable way to learn than the usual chemistry lab assignment.

"This was actually a lot of fun," Kassidie said.

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Rex: Sanchez, Holmes to work on rebuilding chemistry

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INDIANAPOLIS — The rebuilding of the relationship between Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez and wide receiver Santonio Holmes may begin with a weekend retreat.

Jets coach Rex Ryan told The Post last night he has spoken with both players and Holmes told him he’d like to get away for a weekend with Sanchez as the two try to fix their chemistry.

“It seemed like that was what Santonio was talking about,” said Ryan, who is at the Super Bowl to make some promotional appearances. “I don’t know if he’s reached out to Mark yet and done anything but that is what I believe to be true.”

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WE CAN FIX THIS ... TOGETHER! Rex Ryan said he believes Mark Sanchez and Santonio Holmes may take a weekend retreat together as a way to fix their chemistry.

UPDATES FROM OUR JETS BLOG

A month after the 8-8 season ended in disaster in Miami for the Jets, Ryan said he feels like everything will be better in 2012. The relationship between his quarterback and receiver is first on that list.

“The first year they had good chemistry together,” Ryan said. “Whatever happened, happened, but we’ll learn from it. I’m confident because I think we have to be successful, they have to be successful together. I know one thing: They are both extremely competitive. There isn’t one person in this organization who feels good about where we finished. We can’t wait to get it done again. We’d love to be able to play tomorrow. We’ll see. I think the strength of our football team will be in how we feel about each other and all that, the chemistry that we’ve always built. I think that will be a strength and won’t be a weakness like it might have been perceived this year.”

Ryan just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. He said while he was there he took some time to reflect on what went wrong and what he needed to do to improve the chemistry on his team.

“I had a little pad of paper with me,” Ryan said. “On one side I put down things that I need to improve on after having time to be away from it a little bit. I put how I’m going to get it corrected on the other side. That’s the plan. Each year I try to do that. This year is obviously important. There’s a lot of things I can learn from this past season. I really can’t wait to get started.”

Super Bowl XLVI is a nightmare matchup for Ryan between his in-state rival, the Giants, and his division rival, the Patriots.

“I think it’s going to be an awesome game,” Ryan said. “The last two times these teams met it hasn’t been decided to the final minute of the game. I think it will be the same.”

His prediction?

“I’m not going to make a prediction,” Ryan said. “If I make a prediction on one team and that team loses, I’ll be blamed for it.”

brian.costello@nypost.com

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Rex: Sanchez, Holmes to work on rebuilding chemistry

LeBron says chemistry at ‘all-time high’ with Wade

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Last season, building chemistry was the underlying theme of the Heat’s season. There was very little between LeBron James and Dwyane Wade during that 9-8 start — the two stars took turns watching each other, not playing off of each other. That started to change as the season wore on and into the playoffs and things looked better — until they ran into the ultimate chemistry of the Dallas Mavericks.

This season chemistry is not a problem. Never been better.

So says LeBron James, speaking to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. (Hat tip to Eye on Basketball.)

“It is at an all-time high right now, honestly,” James said of the chemistry between the two. “It is just a chemistry that we have. Last year was a blueprint for us. It is not like we look for each other more than others, it kind of just happens.

“We’re two of the fastest guys in the league when it comes to a break and it is kind of pick-your-poison with the defender, either allow me to get a dunk or allow D-Wade to get a dunk. We are two unselfish players. If a guy is open, we pass it.”

Chemistry and winning are inexorably linked in the public mind — winning teams have chemistry, losing teams do not. That deduction often comes after the fact. In the Heat’s case, the chemistry with Wade and LeBron always seems to be better when they have better players around them that forces defenders to make choices rather than focus solely on them. No doubt LeBron and Wade are more comfortable with each other on the court now than they were a year ago at this time, but the up-tempo style of play and better surrounding cast are a part of that equation, too.

It’s that whole equation that should have other teams concerned.

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LeBron says chemistry at ‘all-time high’ with Wade

James says chemistry with Wade 'at an all-time high'

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MILWAUKEE, Wis.—

   The tag-team approach is back. And now no one is talking about LeBron James or Dwyane Wade being better by themselves. Not when they're playing this well in tandem. Not after these past three games.

   With Wade back from the sprained right ankle that kept him out for six games, James and Wade have regained their common stride in victories against the New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls and New Orleans Hornets, part of the five-game winning streak the Heat carry into Wednesday's game against the Milwaukee Bucks.

   "It is at an all-time high right now, honestly," James said of the chemistry between the two. "It is just a chemistry that we have.  Last year was a blueprint for us.  It is not like we look for each other more than others, it kind of just happens.

   "We're two of the fastest guys in the league when it comes to a break and it is kind of pick-your-poison with the defender, either allow me to get a dunk or allow D-Wade to get a dunk. We are two unselfish players. If a guy is open, we pass it."

   There has been plenty of ball movement between the two over the past three games, with nine Wade assists for James baskets and five James assists for Wade baskets.

   Many of those passes have resulted in spectacular plays.

   Mostly it's been Wade-to-James that has provided the ultimate theatrics.

   "If there was one guy that I've thrown the most lobs to in my life, it's been LeBron, from All-Star games, to Olympics, and obviously playing with the Heat," Wade said.

 "I kind of have a feel for when he's coming. I hear him trucking out of the corner of my ear. I see him and he's the kind of guy that you can just throw it up and he'll get it."

   Then Wade gets to witness.

   "He makes you look good," Wade said. "Just trying to reward him for running hard."

   James said he has a similar feel.

   "We both know," he said of the open-court feel for each other, "also knowing the game and knowing what is going on.

    "When a guy like D-Wade has a good rhythm, you have to keep feeding him."

    Right now, the going is particularly good.

     "It is a residual of all these games and that even goes back to last year," coach Erik Spoelstra said. "We played over 100 games and we had those few extra months, we were able to get much more comfortable with each other and get on the same page.

    "Those guys are such high-IQ players, it was a matter of time before they learned how to play off each other."

   Or, in this latest case, re-learned.

   "They understand what our keys to success are: We have to defend. We have to play off misses. And that gives us an opportunity to play out in the open court," Spoelstra said. "They have been very explosive with that."

   Spoelstra said the two can be particularly explosive when he can keep their minutes down, which he did in Monday's rout of the Hornets. That becomes easier with the bench playing well recently, particularly forward Mike Miller.

   "We have depth right now, now that we are healthy," Spoelstra said. "We can take them out and put in other guys to really put the pressure on."

On the outs

    The last time the Heat played the Bucks, veteran swingman Stephen Jackson was coming off a one-game benching for failing to make it to the shootaround the previous game against the New York Knicks.

    Now Jackson, the mercurial scorer, is coming off another benching, held out of the Bucks' Monday victory over the Detroit Pistons because of what coach Scott Skiles said was a rotation decision.

   Jackson said Monday was the first time he had been held out of a game when healthy and not being disciplined.

   Factoring in is the recent upgraded play of Bucks guard Shaun Livingston, who previously had a brief stint with the Heat. Livingston has started the past seven games in Milwaukee's backcourt alongside Brandon Jennings.

 

iwinderman@tribune.com. Follow him at twitter.com/iraheatbeat

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Research and Markets: Russian Federation In Vitro Diagnostics Market Outlook to 2017

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DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d20db2/russian_federation) has announced the addition of GlobalData 's new report "Russian Federation In Vitro Diagnostics Market Outlook to 2017 - Clinical Chemistry Genetic Testing, Haematology, Histology And Cytology, Immuno Chemistry, Infectious Immunology and Microbiology Culture" to their offering.

GlobalData's new report, Russian Federation In Vitro Diagnostics Market Outlook to 2017 - Clinical Chemistry Genetic Testing, Haematology, Histology And Cytology, Immuno Chemistry, Infectious Immunology and Microbiology Culture provides key market data on the Russian Federation In Vitro Diagnostics market. The report provides value (USD million) data for each segment and sub-segment within seven market categories - Clinical Chemistry, Genetic Testing, Haematology, Histology And Cytology, Immuno Chemistry, Infectious Immunology and Microbiology Culture. The report also provides company shares and distribution shares data for each of the aforementioned market categories. The report is supplemented with global corporate-level profiles of the key market participants with information on company financials and pipeline products, wherever available.

Scope

Market size and company share data for In Vitro Diagnostics market categories - Clinical Chemistry, Genetic Testing, Haematology, Histology And Cytology, Immuno Chemistry, Infectious Immunology and Microbiology Culture. Annualized market revenues (USD million) data for each of the segments and sub-segments within seven market categories. Data from 2003 to 2010, forecast forward for 7 years to 2017. 2010 company shares and distribution shares data for each of the seven market categories. Global corporate-level profiles of key companies operating within the Russian Federation In Vitro Diagnosticsmarket.

Companies Mentioned:

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Siemens Healthcare Abbott Laboratories bioMerieux S.A. Beckman Coulter, Inc. Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics Inc. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. Sysmex Corporation Becton, Dickinson and Company DiaSorin S.p.A Alere Inc. Phadia AB Qiagen N.V. DIAGNOSTICA STAGO, Inc. Danaher Corporation Gen-Probe Incorporated PerkinElmer, Inc. HORIBA, Ltd. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Grifols, S.A. Immucor, Inc. Hologic, Inc. Cellestis Limited Life Technologies Corporation Mindray Medical International Limited

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d20db2/russian_federation

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Chemistry research may help free environment of toxins

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Washington, Jan 29 (ANI): A researcher is studying materials
that use light or darkness to purify air filled with toxins
that are harmful to human health and the environment.

The research, conducted by Manindu Weerasinghe from Kansas State
University, Sri Lanka, could one day lead to filters,
humidifiers and other devices that can detoxify air in
windowless rooms, manufacturing facilities and other indoor
areas.

"Indoor pollutants can come from things like asbestos, markers
and new carpet, and are very harmful in just small amounts,"
Newswise quoted Weerasinghe as saying.

"A room like an office or a laboratory that may have few or no
windows will have higher levels of indoor air pollutants than a room that
has lots of windows. Also, if the room does not have good
ventilation those levels would increase," she said.

For her research, Weerasinghe is testing and analysing
photocatalysts and dark catalysts,
materials made by chemically bonding a metal to oxygen.
Photocatalysts react to light while dark catalysts react to
darkness.

The photocatalysts being tested are made from chromium or
vanadium with titanium. Cobalt is used for the dark catalysts.
Finding which metal is most effective at combating pollutants
is key.

Weerasinghe is also adding varying amounts of pure silica to
each catalyst mixture. Silica is the substance used to make
glass and ceramics and serves as an insulator in chemical
reactions. Based on test results, adding silica improves a
catalyst's ability to remove air pollutants.

"Right now it's not really clear why and how pure silica works
so well, so that's something I hope to also answer with more
experiments," she said.

"Glass is not toxic and silica is very abundant and
inexpensive, so it could be a very good material to use if this
work moves from laboratory-scale production to an
industrial-scale production," Weerasinghe said.

Once made, each photocatalyst and dark catalyst is tested in a
chamber filled with air pollutants. Oxygen is added and the
catalyst is exposed to light or darkness, triggering a chemical
reaction that converts air pollutants in the chamber into
smaller, less harmful levels of carbon dioxide over
time.

Although carbon dioxide is not the ideal byproduct, it is
produced at such small levels that it presents fewer problems
to health and the environment than the air pollutants,
Weerasinghe said.

Of the photocatalysts, chromium photocatalysts reduce the most
air pollutants. Although the work is still in its early stages,
Weerasinghe is finding that the results are more complex. Tests
using the cobalt dark catalysts show significant gains over the
photocatalysts.

"In fact, the cobalt system is 10 times more active than the
chromium system at degrading pollutants," Weerasinghe said.

"It's also a rapid response system, meaning that about 10
minutes into the experiment the cobalt starts to react. This is
something that wasn't expected because these experiments are
about using light. But the best results are coming from a
system that doesn't use light to react," she added.

In one instance, Weerasinghe tried to find the point at which
the dark catalyst stopped reacting. After three days into the
experiment no drop-off point could be found. She plans further
studies to investigate this unexpected phenomenon. (ANI)

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Research and Markets: Forensic Chemistry Handbook

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DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b8cab1/forensic_chemistry) has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd's new book "Forensic Chemistry Handbook" to their offering.

A concise, robust introduction to the various topics covered by the discipline of forensic chemistry

The Forensic Chemistry Handbook focuses on topics in each of the major chemistry-related areas of forensic science. With chapter authors that span the forensic chemistry field, this book exposes readers to the state of the art on subjects such as serology (including blood, semen, and saliva), DNA/molecular biology, explosives and ballistics, toxicology, pharmacology, instrumental analysis, arson investigation, and various other types of chemical residue analysis. In addition, the Forensic Chemistry Handbook:

Covers forensic chemistry in a clear, concise, and authoritative way Brings together in one volume the key topics in forensics where chemistry plays an important role, such as blood analysis, drug analysis, urine analysis, and DNA analysis Explains how to use analytical instruments to analyze crime scene evidence Contains numerous charts, illustrations, graphs, and tables to give quick access to pertinent information

Media focus on high-profile trials like those of Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant have peaked a growing interest in the fascinating subject of forensic chemistry. For those readers who want to understand the mechanisms of reactions used in laboratories to piece together crime scenes and to fully grasp the chemistry behind it this book is a must-have.

Author:

Lawrence Kobilinsky is currently the Chairman of the Department of Sciences and Professor of Biology and Immunology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. An internationally renowned forensic scientist, he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences as well as the New York Microscopical Society. He has published extensively in the areas of identification and individualization using protein genetic markers and DNA analysis, and is the coauthor of Wiley's DNA: Forensic and Legal Applications

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b8cab1/forensic_chemistry

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Research and Markets: Forensic Chemistry Handbook