Month: October 2007

Ten Improvements on the ACS Website

The American Chemical Society (ACS) website got a makeover. They haven’t gone totally two-point-oh (thankfully) but they have made a few improvements (ten to be precise, at least according to their announcement), two of which are comprehensiveand at least 2 or 3 of which amount to the same thing. Still, it is nice a nice layout, albeit, a bit toooo web one-point-ohhhh and a little more 2005 than 2007. If you’ve used the features leave a comment and tell us about your experiences.

Anyway, here’s the top ten according to the ACS itself:

  • Consistent, global navigation
  • Unified look and feel
  • Ten comprehensive categories
  • Member focused
  • Home page highlights
  • Comprehensive search
  • Easier to read
  • Faster access
  • One stop for help
  • User Tested and Approved

Cutting the Cost of Watts and Soaking up CO2

Environmental research

In this month’s Intute Spotlight, I report on a new approach to carbon storage that researchers hope will allow us to reduce or stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, although I have my doubts.

Carbon sequestration is a well-studied theoretical approach to reduce carbon emissions by locking up carbon dioxide deep in the ground or on the ocean floor in various forms. Whether or not such an approach is tenable in terms of the overall energy balance is open to debate but experimental efforts at developing efficient systems to extract the gas from the emissions of electric power stations are underway. The latest effort was recently patented by researchers at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

A nanostructured polymer membrane that can extract carbon dioxide from a gaseous flow and convert it to bicarbonate ions could be the key to carbon sequestration in the fight to control levels of the greenhouse gas.

Also high on the green agenda, improving the efficiency per unit cost of solar energy panels, which seems a reasonable alternative and could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, with the proviso that making, installing, maintaining, and recycling such panels still costs energy and resources, despite the implications made by some environmentalists that they offer free energy. The work in question claims to have cut costs to less than $1 per Watt produced. Finally, there are some doomsayers who would say that we need not worry about the long-term threat of climate change and the decline of fossil fuel supplies because we are long overdue for a catastrophic asteroid impact. The European Space Agency’s “Don Quijote” mission hopes to tilt at asteroids and help give us a clear view of incoming.

Nobel Prize for Medicine 2007

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize website was offline at the time of writing presumably unable to take the strain of hacks and bloggers every scrabbling to learn of the winners. Anyway, Mario R. Capecchi (US) and Oliver Smithies (US) and Martin J. Evans (UK) have won the 2007 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their work on gene targeting in mice.

Their research is being used to help scientists understand at the cellular level why certain diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, occur and why otherwise healthy people can succumb to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, and cancer.

The same threesome the Lasker prize in 2001, so in the absence of a Nobel website you can read more about the award-winning work here. Thanks to blogger Luboš Motl for bringing that link to my attention.

You can see a complete list of past winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine here.

Life Science Careers

Life science careersAccording to Toby Freedman, a university life “generally does not prepare individuals for careers in industry”. On the other hand, news this week that a freshman physics class just launched their own company, suggests he might on occasion be wrong. Nevertheless, an academic training is not entirely compatible with a move to the harsh realities of the commercial world and Freedman, who does hold a PhD, which she obtained from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has written a book to help life scientists make the transition.

Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development provides a detailed overview of more than 100 careers in the life sciences industry, advice on carrying out a targeted job search, and useful guidance on making the leap from the ivory tower into the commercial lab or non-academic work environment. Of course, I use the phrase “ivory tower” with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek, given the often equally cutthroat environment in which contract research associates work in academia.

Freedman writes from experience as a scientist who transitioned into business as a writer, recruiter, and entrepreneur, and recently launched a life sciences recruiting firm, Synapsis Search, which pairs job candidates with companies.

From the book’s blurb: “Topics cover 20 vocational areas, including research and development, regulatory and medical affairs, sales and marketing, business development, information management, law, executive leadership, consulting, recruiting, and finance. Each chapter includes a discussion of job security, future trends, and potential career paths; specific educational requirements and personality characteristics needed to excel in a chosen profession; recommendations of books, magazines, and Web site resources; and issues to consider regarding salary and compensation.”

How Not to Grab the Blogosphere

The Blogosphere

This week I, and a dozen or so other science writers and bloggers, got spammed with a single email by a public relations company hoping to get us to write about the “next big thing” from their client. Nothing shocking there, we all get PR puff blown at us every day of the week. One of the frustrating things about this particular pitch though was that it was about some science news that had already appeared in many of the mainstream magazines and a few of the less mainstream outlets by the time the campaign reached our inboxes.

More irritating than that was that the email was cc’ed to us, not bcc’ed, so all of us who know each other anyway saw that we had all received this “alleged” news. There were several variations on contact addresses for some of us, including at least four different cc’s to one particular popular magazine, so they were effectively spammed repeatedly with the same email. Not professional. Possibly inadvertent and maybe just a result of naivete, but not professional. Although that said, it should also be pointed out that the PR person never divulged who their client actually was despite being asked by the cc group. Such a “lack of transparency is a particularly bad tactic when dealing with bloggers,” one of the group remarked to me in a personal email.

The upshot of this PR campaign was that all of us who had been cc’ed, ended up chatting about it because we all hit “reply all” when we responded in-kind to the sender. At least one of the cc’ed group described this kind of email as “depressing” another said they could imagine it happening at their own company because there is “a fundamental misapprehension about the way the web [and the blogosphere] works”. Another was incredulous that the sender thought that bloggers are so gullible that they would reprint anything that’s set in front of them. Personally, I thought nothing more of the incident than that it lended itself to its own blog post on the subject of how not to get journalists on-side. And, so here we are.

By sheer coincidence this week, Amit Agarwal (who wasn’t cc’ed on that email) was discussing a new code of conduct for publication relations companies hoping to ingratiate themselves with the blogosphere and the mainstream media. Ironically, the guidelines were written by another PR company in consultation with bloggers, which presumably involved a lot of cc’ing too.

I’m perfectly happy to receive press releases from pertinent sci-tech sources, but these guidelines could save a lot of heartache on both sides of the fence, as well as reducing corrosion of the interweb’s pipes through all those wasted electrons being sent to and fro.

Oh, by the way, science story was, as I said, all over the blogosphere a few weeks back and was covered by at least a handful of those guys cc’ed in the original email several days before the PR puff blew up. It involved a serendipitous discovery in some laboratory or other that seems to contravene at least one law of nature. These kinds of email often do, it seems.

This Sciencebase blog post from December 2004 shows that these kinds of claim are nothing new, in it I discussed the issue of burning water

Organic Chemistry for Dr Hook

Molecular Networks Inc this week launched SYLVIA, software to rapidly evaluate the synthetic accessibility of any given organic structure and to prioritize thousands of structures according to their synthetic complexity. The company describes SYLVIA as the link between computer-aided de novo molecular design, chemoinformatics and synthetic chemistry.

SYLVIA scores compounds based on structural elements, similarity to commercially available chemicals and a reaction-based component extracted from reaction databases.

No doubt to the irritation of many potentially interested parties you have to purchase a license for SYLVIA, although a free evaluation download is available. Input file format is MDL, SDFile (incl. Molfile), SMILES, and CTX file. No mention of InChI unfortunately. Output is as MDL, SDFile (incl. Molfile), and CTX file. In fact, I couldn’t even find InChI mentioned on the Molecular Networks site, which is odd given this unique identifier’s potential in the field of organic chemistry.

Shopping for Genes

Leaning strongly towards the bio today, I thought I’d mention a new database for biologists that works like a shopping mall. An international team has opened a virtual bazaar, called PAZAR, which allows biologists to share information about gene regulation through individually managed boutiques. Customers may draw data for free from any boutique or extract information from the “superstores” that aggregate data of similar types.

In deciphering the human genome sequence, researchers hope to understand the “when and where” of gene expression because it could underpin novel cancer therapies, stem cells treatments for degenerative disease, and explain complex diseases such as diabetes.

No More Chocolate Headaches

chocolate-chunksDoes eating chocolate give you a headache? What about red wine? Cheese, perhaps? Yes, well read on to find out how a space-age detector developed to look for signs of life on Mars could soon become the kitchen gadget of choice for anyone who suffers a painful reaction to their food.

According to a paper to be published in the November 1 issue of Analytical Chemistry, researchers at the University of California Berkeley have developed a fast and inexpensive test suitable for domestic use that can spot the toxins in certain foods, particularly “aged” or fermented products, including chocolate, cheese and wine. The device could be engineered into a PDA or other handheld device for greater portability and instant access to information on any toxins found in a particular food or drink.

The test detects biogenic amines, natural toxins known to trigger headaches, cause facial flushing, lead to nausea, and raise high-blood pressure. Current tests for biogenic amines usually take hours in a specialist laboratory with bulky and expensive test equipment. With the aim of packing the test into a package small and efficient enough for a Mars landing, Richard Mathies and colleagues, have simplified the whole system down to a lab-on-a-chip device (portable microchip capillary electrophoresis) that produces results in just five minutes.

“These toxins can be a serious health problem and are more common than people think,” says study Mathies, “They are hidden in a wide variety of foods, so having a quick and convenient way to identify them will help consumers avoid them or at least limit their intake.”

The toxins, which include tyramine, histamine, and phenylethylamine, are particularly hazardous to people with reduced levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase and to people on older antidepressant drugs which act as MAO inhibitors. For these individuals the risk of a seriously dangerous rise in blood pressure is very possible.

Biogenic amine tyramine“Some foods have more biogenic amines than others,” explains Mathies, “but you cannot tell in advance because they aren’t listed on the food labels.” Even a single glass of wine has been known to trigger elevated blood pressure, heart rate and headaches in some people, he adds. He suggests that food manufactures and wine producers should be obliged to list biogenic amine content in their products by law. Although if they did, then this would preclude the need for the test kit, I assume, so the research team could concentrate on sending it to Mars instead.

A Natural Blowtorch

Oxy-acetylene blowtorch

Nature’s blowtorch is an enzyme system that oxidizes toxins, drug molecules, and other noxious molecules found in the body ready for excretion. But, understanding exactly how this molecular machinery has been an ongoing research job for many years. Now, Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, Lucy Waskell, and Ulrich Dürr, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have turned to the powerful analytical technique of solid state NMR spectroscopy, to reveal important structural details about the enzyme without removing from its native site in the cell membrane.

The standard approach to working out a protein’s structure would be to extract it from the membrane, crystallize it, and then blast it with X-rays to get a clear picture of the position of every atom. Unfortunately, that does not show you the structure of the enzyme system while it is on the job. Instead, NMR bathes the sample in a strong magnetic field and then scans it with radio waves to see how the atoms respond. Depending on how the atoms in the enzyme are connected and to which and how many other atoms it is possible to build up a structural picture of the complete system.

Rams and his colleague have now found that nature’s blowtorch operates like an oxy-acetylene blowtorch. It is composed of two enzymes working together. The first enzyme, cytochrome P450, is the “acetylene”, which does the actual job of toxic breakdown, while the “oxy”, to stretch the metaphor, perhaps a little two far, is a second enzyme, cytochrome b5.

You can read more details in this week’s SpectroscopyNOW column from David Bradley together with news of the latest developments in using CDs and CD players as analytical tools for medical diagnostics and remote environmental testing. Team leader Ángel Maquieira of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in Spain, told me that the The robustness of a CD is perfect for collecting environmental samples, it can be used offsite, immersed in a mixture of water, sample and reagent for several minutes, washed, and then stored in a pretty much standard CD box for taking back to the lab. Once back on site, the CDs can be played in a standard computer CD drive modified with the addition of a planar photodiode to detect the signal from any sample on the CD.

Also in this week’s issue researchers in California have developed a simple algorithm, which they have integrated into a download Excel spreadsheet that gives wine makers better control over the phenolic content of their product. The input data for the spreadsheet come from a computer-interfaced ultraviolet spectrometer, which can detect the different kinds of phenolics and tannins in the wine at different stages of the production process. You can read more on that here.

Japanese womenThis issue, I also report on how detecting the differences between young and old hair using Raman spectroscopy is now possible, even if the hair is highly pigmented. You can find out more about that here.

Finally, another enzyme story, this time about PKA, protein kinase A, and the power of X-ray crystallography, which I disputed somewhat in the NMR item!