Chemistry – Page 58 – David Bradley

Say NO to Straddling Molecules

“Imagine you are standing, John Wayne style, on the backs of two runaway horses pulling a stagecoach. You try to bring the horses to a stop but instead the harnesses break, the horses separate, and an unlucky passenger gets thrown from the stage.”

That’s how the latest chemistry news release from Sandia National Laboratories. Poetic in its own way, I suppose, but couldn’t they have got the scientist in question Carl Hayden to put on a ten-gallon hat for the photo shoot at least?

The news release goes on to explain how he and colleagues at SNL and the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, and elsewhere, straddled a molecule by, in effect, standing on pair after pair of joined nitric oxide molecules (NO dimers) and watching as each pair split after being excited by an ultrashort laser pulse.

The researchers not only measured the direction of each separating NO molecule but also the direction and energy of an electron spat out as each molecular break up occurred. The electron reveals the quantum energy levels of the dimer as it separates.

Then, computer back calculations from the final speeds and angles provided the team with a way to reconstruct the event and so “see” the exact path the electron and each dimer fragment had taken, exactly as though they had ridden on the dimers as they split.

The detailed experimental results, reported in Science, allow the team to test the computational methods used for combustion and atmospheric modelling involving NO.

Chemical wedding anniversary gifts

Most people have heard of the traditional wedding anniversary gifts – silver, ruby, gold, cotton, paper etc, but we’ve compiled a list of wedding anniversary gifts aimed at the chemical couple in your life. So, if you’re looking to celebrate a stable bond take a look, but please avoid if you’re easily offended, some of the entries might cause a reaction.

Vioxx Drugs Okay?

Researchers at Imperial College London and Queen Mary, London, are suggesting that drugs related to the withdrawn Vioxx may still be the best drugs for treating arthritis.

They argue that although Vioxx and related drugs have been associated with an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, the same might also be true for the more conventional non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

Jane Mitchell and her colleagues have reviewed the medical literature on the use of NSAIDs and Vioxx-like drugs and are convinced that despite the cardiovascular side-effects of certain COX-2 drugs they could still be the drug of choice for certain patients without cardiovascular risk factors, especially if they cannot tolerate NSAIDs because of the gastric side effects of those drugs.

It’s all about benefit-risk management (BRM) which sounds a little like marketing jargon, but underpins a much more effective attitude to medicine than holistically abandoning effective drugs.

Regardless of the status of Vioxx and its analogues there is much imminent movement in the pharmaceutical industry as the likes of GlaxoSmithkline vie for pole position in the market for the successor to COX-2 inhibitors. Of course, if Mitchell and her colleagues are right, then, the generic NSAID manufacturers could take another nice chunk of that market before it’s even opened up.

Primary Elements

Primary age school kids will be exposed to chemistry for the first time, thanks to an initiative instigated by scientists at Queen’s University Belfast.

Chris Hardacre and Marie Migaud of QUB hope to catch students at a young age through their new science programme, which will be tested on final year primary children (age 10-11 years).

Universities in Ireland and the UK are struggling to attract new students, doors have closed at several departments in the last year or two and straight chemistry has been subsumed by new ChemBioChemPhysBiolChem centres and the like. In stark contrast to the many, QUB has actually seen an increase in chemistry enrolment because of targeted approaches to students from primary school to A-level (17-18y) with departmental visits, open days, and demonstration lectures.

This latest initiative could plant the seed (sorry, that’s sounds a bit Bio) in the next generation of chemists through a five-month test period starting this month.

The program will include interactive demonstration lectures, support materials, and student science projects with a prize at the end.

If that doesn’t get them reaching for their labcoats, I don’t know what will!

H2O and All That

Chemical philosopher Eric Scerri recently mentioned a humorous book by Martyn Berry about which I’d entirely forgotten: H2O and All That. Berry was/is a chemistry teacher and created this hilarious compilation of the wit and wisdom of years of student chemists as revealed in their exam papers.

I remember receiving a copy for review when I worked at the Royal Society of Chemistry, some fifteen years ago, and thinking it was the text to bring the wonder of chemistry to the masses. As Scerri points out, it’s still available on amazon for about 8 quid (12 bucks). If you fancy a laugh, I can highly recommend it, it’s timeless humor.

Accelerated Aging

Chemical analysis spots malfunctioning protein.

Jin-Shan Hu and colleagues at the University of Maryland, National Cancer Institute, the National Centre for Scientific Research, France, have used NMR to determine the structure of the protein thought to malfunction in premature aging conditions, such as Werner syndrome. The structure might one day lead to a better understanding of this rare genetic disorder as well as other aging-related diseases.

Wedding Anniversary

Well…it’s our fourteenth wedding anniversary this year, today, so a good time to remind sciencebase readers of our alternative chymical wedding anniversary list where you will discover that the fourteenth is “pyrolytic carbon“, which is used to make heart valves.

If you favour the traditional list, then it’s ivory, so we won’t expect gifts, for obvious reasons.

Buckyballs versus DNA

Peter Cummings of Vanderbilt University and his colleagues have discovered that those marvels of the molecular playing field – the soccerball shaped fullerenes, aka buckyballs, can bind to DNA and cause it to deform, according to computer simulations published in the December issue of the Biophysical Journal. Perhaps most worrying is that they see this deformation in an aqueous environment rather than in an organic solvent.

Cummings and Alberto Striolo (now a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma), along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Xiongce Zhao, used molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the question of whether buckyballs would bind to DNA and, if so, whether they could then inflict any lasting damage.

Cummings suggests that his research reveals a potentially serious problem: “Buckyballs have a potentially adverse effect on the structure, stability and biological functions of DNA molecules.”

What is not mentioned in the Vanderbilt press release on this “discovery”, which as you will note is essentially theoretical is that the fullerenes are not particularly soluble in water under normal conditions. Indeed, researchers at London South Bank University explain that [60]fullerene can be dispersed in water but only if it is transferred from an organic solvent using high energy sound (sonication). That word “dispersed” is crucial irrespective of the relatively sophisticated technology required to carry these molecules into water.

One thing that our bodies generally lack is a large supply of organic solvent and a sonicator. So, with any luck, the Cummings work will remain theoretical rather than experimental. While this kind of research must be carried out under the precautionary principle, it is not necessarily providing us with any useful insights into the real risks or otherwise of fullerenes. Moreover, the powerful media machine that includes university press offices these days now has another opportunity to kick chemistry.

Cats aren’t all good

Toxic metals emitted from automotive catalytic converters have been detected in urban air in the USA. The research was carried out by scientists in Sweden working with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The researchers discovered high concentrations of the elements platinum, palladium, rhodium and osmium in air over the Boston metropolitan area. Although these particles are not a serious health risk, evidence suggests they potentially could pose a future danger as worldwide car sales increase from an estimated 50 million in 2000 to more than 140 million in 2050.

Scientists have also detected elevated concentrations of these elements in Europe, Japan, Australia, Ghana, China and Greenland.

Finding ways to “stabilize” these metal particles within the converters “should be a priority to limit their potential impact,” says Sebastien Rauch of Chalmers University of Technology in Goeteborg.

Catalytic converters reduce noxious emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants, but as with all technology there is a counterpoint in this discovery of their constituent elements in the environment. Previously, UK researchers have investigated techniques that could be used to “mine” valuable heavy metals, such as platinum, from road run-off. Whether or not this kind of recycling could ever be viable or whether or not it would reduce atmospheric contamination is still wide open to discussion.

Girls Aloud find the right chemistry

Bet you never thought you’d see a kitchy, yet somehow chic, Brit girl band featuring in the Sciencebase blog!

Well, I couldn’t resist giving the waspish popsters Girls Aloud a mention because their new album due out this week is called “Chemistry”.

Polydor records who promote and press the band say: “Sarah, Nicola, Nadine, Kimberley and Cheryl have made a quirky British pop album. In a genre where girl bands dream of being Destiny’s Vogue, Girls Aloud have made an album that reflects what it’s like to be a 20-something girl living in the UK….blah, blah, blah….”

Like anyone cares, know what I’m sayin? All we really want, what we really, really want is to know that Chemistry also features the new hit single “Biology”.

My friends at the Institute of Physics must be kicking themselves that they didn’t get a mention, but I bet the permanantly poptastic Royal Society of Chemistry with its perpetual penchant for publicity will be rubbing its collective hands with glee as all those teenyboppers start sending in their application forms for membership. Grrrl power to the chemists!

Yeah, right, whateva, d’you fink I’m bovvered?