UPDATE: October 2023 I heard from UCL chemist Andrea Sella, who had attended a Poliakoff lecture, that Martyn still gives me a shoutout when discussing SCFs, which is great to hear!
It’s not often that I’m on the receiving end of journalism, but today Jenny Gristock gave me a taste of celebrity in a Guardian media article about the role played by science journalism in science.
I’d tipped her off about one of the biggest success stories, from the perspective of academic research becoming an industrial commercial reality, that had emerged from the pages of New Scientist in recent years. This is how she put it:
“In 1994 freelance science journalist, David Bradley, wrote an article about the work of the Nottingham University chemist, Professor Martyn Poliakoff (Yes, brother of…). Poliakoff was conducting experiments with supercritical carbon dioxide, a highly compressed gas that can dissolve all manner of chemicals. “It acts like a solvent, but has none of the environmental problems of traditional ones,” says Poliakoff.
Bradley’s article captured Poliakoff’s vision of his research. After it appeared in New Scientist, Poliakoff’s world changed completely. “I was happily working away as an academic, and then the article was published,” says Poliakoff. “Thomas Swan, an industrialist, read it and phoned me. He said we ought to collaborate.”
The result, says Poliakoff, is one of New Scientist’s greatest success stories. In 2002, Poliakoff and Thomas Swan & Co built the world’s first full-scale, multi-reaction supercritical carbon dioxide plant.”
You can read Gristock’s full article here, although you’ll need to register with the Grauniad site to do so. Alternatively, Gristock has posted the full text on her blog.
I’m just waiting for the paparazzi to arrive, and the full profile in Hello magazine, and maybe even a chance to jump up and down on Oprah’s sofa!
From the age of 13, Mark Leach has had a subscription to the popular-science magazine Scientific American, and more recently the journal Nature. His scientific interests include cosmology, high energy and nuclear physics, materials science (particularly carbon nanotubes), geophysics, molecular biology, evolution, information technology, the brain, defense technology, and scientific ethics. Professionally, Mark is a chemist interested in ‘chemistry, the-whole-thing’. I interviewed for my Reactive Profile column this month, find out about the origins of meta-synthesis.com, Dr Leach’s aspirations for his various sites, and how he believes chemistry education could be radically improved through a re-think of some fundamental principles.
What alchemist’s den would be complete without a crucible? The tough little vessels used for mixing all those odd ingredients, goat urine, cow’s blood, sweat, philosopher’s wool, saltpeter etc etc…
A former colonel in the FSB (the successor to the KGB) has allegedly fallen foul of chemistry. Alexander Litvinenko, 43, a vocal critic of Russian President 
Canadian and Korean chemists have locked in a form of handedness into a common catalytic molecule that could make it useful for separating the building blocks of proteins, amino acids, into their chiral forms for biotech applications and drug development. The new locked up cat, might also be used to make purer and safer chemical starting materials for reactions in the drug, agrochemicals, and polymer industries.
New, healthier alternatives to processed food starches with a lower GI, or glycaemic index, may soon be on the menu, thanks to scientists in China and the US. The researcher have begun to unlock the secrets of starches that make dehusked grains, potatoes, and processed foods such as biscuits and breakfast cereals less healthy compared with low GI foods. Their statistical analysis of starchy data could lead to new processed carbohydrates that do not cause the worrying blood sugar spikes associated with conventional processed starch.
Arterial plaques represent a "death zone" within the artery in which white blood cells that would otherwise clear away such fatty deposits are killed before they can do their job.
A 25 femtosecond snapshot of a stick man is all that was needed to prove that a new free-electron laser technique would work. Unfortunately, the poor old stick man evaporated within that split second into a 60,000 degree plasma.