Stupid Science

safety-specsHere are a few worrying science confessions from the lab bench:

Incidents and accidents happen, like dropping caustic sodium hydroxide pellets down your trousers, leaning over roaring Bunsen burners, or pouring one wrong liquid into another to produce a nice cloud of noxious vapour that leads to the evacuation of the whole chemistry building. It wasn’t me, honest guv, I was in the physics department that day…

Anyway, I asked a few contacts to reveal the stupidest thing they did or saw in a science lab. Make sure you don’t follow in their footsteps.

Fundamental among stupid things to do in almost any lab (probably with the exception of a computer science lab) is to not wear goggles, or gloves when handling anything hazardous or using heating apparatus, which Alice de Sturler has certainly observed.

Peter Lapinskas recalled a chemistry lab where we the class were introduced to “aromatic” compounds and, to illustrate the point, the teacher passed a bottle of benzene around for the students to sniff. I too recall a similar lesson with a bottle of pyridine, needless to say the males in the class who had done some pre-lecture background reading passed on that one. Nevertheless, not 25 years ago we were washing our hands in acetone after lab, and lecturers often regaled us with tales of getting rid of nitric stains from fingers with benzene instead of soapy water.

Bunsen burners are always a favourite for a scientific anecdote and I still have a tiny scar on the back of my hand where a fellow student enthusiastically overheated a glass slide over a Bunsen that shattered and spat scalding fragments around the lab. Karen Lund echoes a Bunsen tale I’ve heard many times: “A classmate in high school accidentally unscrewed the tube part off a Bunsen burner. Flames in all directions! I was across the lab table from her and thought to turn off the gas. No big deal,” she told me, “Maybe it wasn’t stupid, just a mistake. But it was the most dramatic mistake I’ve seen in a lab.”

She adds that her own personal worst mistake was pipetting hydrochloric acid by mouth. “Mmmmm…not tasty,” she said. Dina Solimini Rufo remembers a co-worker drinking a mug of coffee while mouth pipetting a bacterial sample. Although Rocio Merino Fernandez-Galiano tops even that with a tale of his aunt (a nurse) working in a poverty-stricken hospital using mouth-geared pipetting for far worse, bodily fluids and biosamples for instance, “She has tasted excrement more than once,” he revealed.

Martin Blundell emphasises how rules are there for a reason, like no running in the lab, no eating, and no pipetting by mouth. However, there wasn’t a rule to forbid storing 2 kg of uranium hexachloride on a shelf. “Boy, that Geiger counter really freaked out!” he recalls. But, even that didn’t beat burning down the lab. “My colleagues and I used a toluene-based solution for scintillometry. A technician made about 10 litres at a time and stored it in a glass vessel. Someone left the faucet dripping and there were several ignition sources. I had an alibi. We all had to work for a year in Francis Crick’s lab,” Blundell recalls.

laboratoryBack in 1987, year before I graduated in fact, Jason Atwood recalls some prankster turning on the gas taps for all the Bunsen burners prior to going home for the night. “The next morning, in the first class someone said I smell something really weird and sparked a starter and blew up the entire lab,” he says. Apparently, there were only a few minor burns and some lost eyebrows.

David Mark has a whole list of stupidities he’s witnessed: Tipping over a small beaker of alcohol in side a hood next to an open flame, and then trying to blow out the fire. The idiot blew the alcohol to the back wall of the fibreglass benchtop hood, which started to burn; Mouth-pipetting stinky 2-mercaptoethanol (that person got a seat all to themselves on the bus home that evening; Casual handling of carcinogenic chemicals; Mouth-pipetting chromium 51.

Less hazardous but equally silly incidents are top of the stupid list of Miriam Cortes-Caminero: “I have plenty of fun stories in the lab but my top three are: This gal was blowing really hard into an Eppendorf tube (like it was a balloon) since the protocol was to air dry a DNA pellet; This guy needed to thaw out a live bio sample, so he was putting it into the microwave to speed it up; This gal confused an incubator for an autoclave, overnight incubation takes a complete new meaning.

Kirill Shingel warns of just how readily hot glass apparatus can shatter when plunged into cold water: “I put a just-sterilized 400 ml sample bottle, the contents of which were at about 120 Celsius, into cold water to cool. What an explosion! The whole stainless steel sink turned into a sieve as pieces of glass bottle pierced the metal. Thankfully, I didn’t get even a scratch.”

Gerald Lo warns of how opening flammable liquid cabinets is like playing laboratory Russian Roulette. “I often find old diethyl ether containers that someone has labelled with the date they opened it.” Presumably, this was to inspect for invisible highly explosive peroxides that form when this substance is exposed to air! he adds.

Lo has many tales to tell but also points out just how hardy chemists can be in their quest for discovery. “By synthesizing compounds with powerful bioactivity at six or eight orders of magnitude above their commercialized dosage concentration, one scientist discovered the, ahem, transdermal absorption route of a new compound, plus its literally heart-stopping properties,” he says. “I try to stay out of the lab as much as I possibly can,” he adds.

Joe Turner once misread instructions and added 100 grams per litre rather than 100 milligrams per litre. Not hugely dumb in the scheme of things, but I still felt pretty stupid. That kind of thing must happen a lot, and is far worse when it’s in a hospital rather than a lab. However, Turner points out that, “It’s not too clever if the data ends up justifying a theory in a scientific journal.”

Meanwhile, David Jacobs was a microbiologist spending some time in the company’s chemistry lab. The tests he was doing used sintered glass filters, which were getting somewhat blocked. He was told that the best way to clean these filters was to use nitric acid and ethanol. So he poured 100 ml of ethanol into 100 ml of nitric acid in a beaker – in a fume cupboard thankfully. “Within seconds the beaker was rocking with puffs of brown fumes coming out! Within a minute there was a mass of brown fumes and a gloopy brown goo pouring out of the beaker and running out onto the floor. I dumped a load of paper towels onto the brown mess on the floor. Of course, the nitric acid mess ‘ate’ the paper towels. We just stood back and let it finish it self off. It looked like something out of a science fiction B-movie!”

Jacobs confesses to feeling really stupid as he should have known better. The company marked it down as a Health & Safety near miss incident. “Thankfully, my manager admitted that the company did not have a procedure for cleaning sintered glass filters and that I should have been better advised by my chemistry lab colleagues,” he adds, “Needlessly to say when I repeated the procedure, I was dripping nitric acid on to the filter with a pipette, and certainly not by mouth.”

Krutarth Engineer tells a tale of a classic school lab error. “We had to identify substances by performing various chemical procedures,” he explains, “A fellow student accidentally dropped some sodium into a sink and a mild conflagration ensued. Unfortunately, as girls in the class started screaming, the teacher panicked and ran to put on the water tap. BANG. We had always believed that our teacher was no good at chemistry and it was proved at that day. Stupid & dangerous.”

With thanks to everyone brave enough to reveal their lab stupidity or the stupidity of others in their lab!

Everybody’s Free to Wear Goggles

wear-gogglesFor the chemical class of 1999…

More than a decade ago, American journalist Mary Schmich offered her advice to youth in the form of a spoof graduation speech centering around the crucial maxim ‘wear sunscreen‘, the article was published in the Chicago Tribune. As is the way with these things it struck a chord among the literati and quickly spread to the Internet through the usenet and discussion groups. [Of course, today, it would be simply tagged linkbait or tweeted and would be said to have gone viral.]

But at the time, somewhere along the wire, Schmich’s text was attributed to American cult novelist Kurt Vonnegut as a student prank and the ‘wear sunscreen’ speech somehow gained its own cult status.

Then, Australian film director Baz Luhrmann (Romeo & Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge) picking up on the Vonnegut vibe, put the words to music and at the beginning of June the ‘song’ was released as a single in the UK…just in time for countless graduations around the academic world. At the time, I thought chemists probably needed their own speech…but somehow ‘wear sunscreen’ was not quite right…so…

Wear goggles…

If I could offer you only one tip for your career, goggles would be it. The long-term benefits of goggles have been proven scientifically, whereas my other advice has no basis more reliable than my own ramblings. This advice is dispensed below.

Enjoy the size and power of your first grant. You will not understand just how small it is until the next bill. But, in 20 years, you’ll look back at all those lost grant applications and recall with fondness the possibilities that lay before you and how little cash you had to fulfil them.

You do not have as many pens in your breast pocket as others imagine.

Don’t worry about that overnight experiment. Well, worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve a crystal structure by chewing the crystals first. The real troubles in your lab are likely to be things that never crossed your worried mind, such as lab technicians smoking over open ether bottles at 4 pm on a lazy Tuesday.

Do one experiment every day that scares you, such as a Grignard reaction in the bath.

Distil.

Don’t waste other people’s reagents. Don’t put up with people who waste yours.

Evaporate.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you publish first, sometimes you don’t. The experiment is long and, in the end, it’s only chemistry.

Remember the acceptance letters you receive. Forget the rejections. If you succeed in doing this, tell your older colleagues how.

Keep your old lab-books. Throw away your old COSHH forms.

Re-crystallise.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do in the lab. Some of the most interesting chemists around didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their labs. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds still don’t.

Get plenty of acetone. That chocolate stain might just come out of your lab-coat.

Be kind to your reaction flasks. You’ll miss them when they’re gone and there’s no budget for new glassware till next semester.

Maybe you’ll synthesize, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have by-products, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll become an accountant at 40, after all, maybe you’ll collect your Nobel Prize on your 75th birthday. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your yields are half chance. So are those everybody else.

Enjoy your Bunsen. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. Don’t worry about it’s size, they are all the same. Remember, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Analyse, even if you have nowhere to do it but the back office.

Read the literature, even if you don’t follow it.

Do not read glossy science magazines. They will only make your results look feeble and pointless and make you resent journalistic hype.

Get to know your mentors. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your lab-mates. They’re your best alibi when things go wrong but the people least likely to remember where you put your spatula.

Understand that reactions come and go, but a precious few will go to completion. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and disciplines, the tighter funds get, the more interdisciplinary research is likely to complete a successful grant application.

Work in industry once, but leave before it makes you hard. Work at the University of Utopia once, but leave before it makes you soft.

React.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Reaction yields will fall, enantiomeric excesses will dwindle. Referees will criticise. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasise that when you were young, yields approached 100%, compounds were optically pure, referees were always fair and post-grads respected their supervisors.

Respect your supervisor.

Don’t expect anyone to support you, except funding councils, industrial collaborators and your institute. Maybe you have a patent. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy benefactor. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair – unless you work with sulphur or selenium – or by the time you’re 40 it will look you did, already.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of distilling the past, evaporating off the solvent, recrystallising the product and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the goggles.

With a nod and a wink to Mary Schmich of The Chicago Tribune who wrote an article entitled ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNG, which has recently been resurrected as a pop ‘song’ by Baz Luhrmann under the title Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Incidentally, if this seems familiar, I first published it in my weekly Catalyst column on the original ChemWeb.com back in the spring of 1999, at the time Lurhmann had the hit record.

Did you survive the decade in the lab? Find out who almost didn’t in Monday’s Sciencebase post on Stupid Science.

Flatus Impudicus, Plume-seeking Insectibot

bad-smellIt’s a crude schoolroom axiom around which many an adult pub debate might also revolve: He who smelt it, dealt it.

However, there is a serious side to quickly locating the source of noxious odours in an indoor environment of varying airflow, as Zhenzhang Liu and Tien-Fu Lu of The University of Adelaide, Australia, will attest. They are developing an insect-like robot capable of odour plume tracing that could be used to detect toxic gas leaks, identify the source of a fire, or uncover cached explosives.

“The recent increasing threat of chemical weapons technologies has highlighted the need for superior detection of hazardous emission sources,” the researchers explain, “One promising area of technological development is odour source detection using plume-tracing robots.” Such devices would be able to trace toxic emissions without putting personnel in danger.

The team explains how odours require a complicated search and find approach, something that sniffer dogs and insects seem to be very good at but that has been impossible to emulate with technology. An odour released into a seemingly still environment will diffuse through the air but airflow from open windows, swinging doors, people moving around and working equipment, will quickly influence the motion of any odour molecules, leading to the formation of a complex, twisting plume rather than a cartoonish cloud of odour.

Liu and Lu integrated two control algorithms to endow the robot with odour-tracing skills. The first is the fundamental wall-following collision avoidance algorithm that allows the robot to make its way around a building. The second taps into built-in odour sensors and uses the so-called anemotaxis, or plume-tracing, algorithm, based on insect behaviour, to follow a scent.

smelly-robotThe team used ultrasonic sensors for obstacle detection, airflow sensors for monitoring air movements, and ion detectors for sensing the odour plume. Working together, the two algorithms allow the robot to trace odour plumes even in an obstructed building environment.

The robot was able to track an odorous plume and avoid obstacles even in a room with a disturbed airflow, but did so, not surprisingly, and much more slowly than any insect. Nevertheless with optimisation of the algorithms and improved sensor and detector technology one can envisage that the next prototype will be a lot speedier. It is doubtful though whether it will ever be quite as fast as those who adhere to the “smelt it, dealt it axiom”, however.

Research Blogging IconZhenzhang Liu, & Tien-Fu Lu (2009). Odour source localisation in a wind-varying indoor environment Int. J. Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, 2 (1/2), 168-186

Science Books, Hayfever, and Plectrums

f1-guitar-pickI’ve let quite a pile of review books accumulate on my desk again as well as a couple of non-book oddities, so here’s a quick round-up.

First up is the Instant Egghead Guide to the Mind by Emily Anthes published by Scientific American. The first in a series, Anthes breaks down the overwhelming topic of mind into bite-sized chunks. She covers the basics of how the various parts of the brain work individually to what happens when they come together. “We go all the way from how does a neuron work and what is a neuron to what is consciousness, which is probably one of the biggest ideas that’s out there,” she says.

Next is Steven Holzner (author of Physics for Dummies) who has put together a more focused follow-up Quantum Physics for Dummies. The subject is never going to be one for any kind of dummy to understand, and Holzner, by necessity, presents a very mathematical treatment. I suspect that the lay reader hoping for a quick explanation of Young’s slits experiment, quantum tunnelling, or to learn the fate of Schroedinger’s feline friend will be sorely disappointed. This is one for fledgling physics students.

Echoes of Life by Gaines, Eglinton, and Rullkoetter presents a fascinating history of fossils, but not the stony, bony impressions with which we are all familliar, they home in on fossils at the molecular level revealing what ancient chemistry can tell us about life millions of years ago.

Is God a Mathematician? It seems a facile question, but Mario Livio is not concerned with the theistic implications he is hoping to explain why the universe seems to follow mathematical rules. Is the universe intrinsically mathematical or is its mathematical behaviour simply a product of the human mind? Would an alien intelligence use a different system to explain the laws of the universe?

My good friend Scientific American editor Mark Alpert sent me a copy of his novel Final Theory. It’s a gripping, fast-paced thriller hinging on a hypothetical unified theory of the universe left unpublished by Einstein. The theory could be quite literally earth shattering and certainly tips its hat to the unfounded concerns about the Large Hadron Collider. It’s a good read although the explanations of autistic behaviour in one character perhaps unfold the stereotype a little too brashly.

In Sex and War, Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden offer a biological solution to humanity’s eternal efforts at self destruction. They suggest that war and terrorism are essentially male aggressive behaviours locked into our primordial biology. Our evolutionary status is not our destiny, they offer, and suggest that empowering women could help the biology of peace win out against the biology of war.

So, what about the hayfever and plectrums? Well, Jenny Liddle sent me a sample of HayMax Pure, which is a non-greasy gel hayfever that sufferers can apply to the edge of their nostrils to prevent the entry of pollen during peak times. It’s the end of March, so I, as a sufferer of allergic rhinitis, should soon have a chance to test the product. I’m sure it’s a more pleasant alternative to smearing on petroleum jelly and may even allow me to cut down on my antihistamine intake this summer, here’s hoping. UPDATE: June, 2010: Now, I’m well into the second season of HayMax use and I can certainly vouch for its benefits. I’m not entirely without symptoms but at this time of year I’d usually be unable to step out doors without suffering.

Finally, Allen Chance sent me a mixed bag of F-1 ergonomic guitar picks to try out. From his description of the benefits I had high hopes of many happy hours strumming and plucking. In one sense they’re nice and bright sounding, but I’m not convinced of their ergonomic value. It’s one’s fretting fingers that need the ergonomic reassessment.

Moreover, the picks are designed to prevent them from rotating in your fingers, but, deliberate rotation is crucial to getting different sounds such as scrapes and pinched harmonics, as well as for allowing fast shredding or big power chords. I’m sure some guitarists will find them very useful, but personally, I’ll be sticking to conventional picks and fingerstyle for the time being.

Bond, Q, and Controlled Cleavage

bond-q-cleavageBond, Q, and controlled cleavage – US chemists have made an iron catalyst that can be used to rapidly break strong carbon-hydrogen bonds within molecules, up to one thousands times faster than other methods. The research could solve one of the great chemical challenges.

Depressing brain scans – The first study of its kind has used MRI to demonstrate how changes in cortical thickness may surprisingly relate brain structure to clinical depression. The large-scale US study suggests that a thinning of the right hemisphere of the brain could be a risk factor for depression.

Naturally synthetic capsules – Synthetic capsules made from natural building blocks have been studied with NMR spectroscopy. The block copolymer capsules made from protein and sugar components mimic the behaviour of cells and might be useful as microreactors or as drug-delivery agents.

Going cellular – An artificial cell made from molybdenum-based building blocks whose pores can open and close has been devised by an international team. The pores can allow molecules that are “too big” into the capsule.

Sensitive SERS beats ELISA – Scientists in South Korea have developed a new magnetic approach to immunoassay detection of important biological marker compounds and antigens using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of hollow gold nanospheres. The technique is not only much faster than standard assays but up to 1000 times more sensitive.

Promiscuous drug transporter – The multi-drug transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp) detoxifies cells by promiscuously exporting chemically unrelated toxins and drugs. Now, X-ray crystallography has helped US scientists home in on the protein that also helps give cancer cells resistance to chemotherapy agents.

Six of the best from the latest SpectroscopyNOW.com

Dehydrated Water

hydridic-oxygen-subhydrateMeanwhile, I have been trawling the medical and scientific literature for more than two decades, hoping to spot a genuine medical panacea that might also be used to get greasy deposits off your kitchen surfaces.

Now, is the time to reveal what I’ve found Hydridic Oxygen(II) Subhydrate (HOS). This dessicated compound is astounding. It looks and behaves like Dihydrogen Monoxide but has none of the lethal effects.

The DHMO site explains that Dihydrogen Monoxide itself, although colourless and odourless, is in reality hydric acid, whichcontains the incredibly reactive hydroxyl radical. This chemical species can cause mutations in DNA, damage essential proteins, and even burst cell membranes. Moreover, it can alter the critical biochemistry of neurotransmitters in the brain. It is a common chemical found in soda even those without benzene, desserts, all kinds of meat, and countless beauty products. Indeed, DHMO is present in many cosmetics at much higher levels than even nanoparticles.

Hydridic Oxygen(II) Subhydrate, in contrast, has none of these properties. Indeed, whereas hydric acid has an astoundingly high specific heat capacity and expands on cooling below its freezing point, HOS has an infinitesimal heat capacity even at absolute zero and is not affected by temperature fluctuations.

It is in the world of medicine that HOS reveals its true character, by reacting this compound with hydronium hydroxide it is possible to produce a substance that exists in a fluxional redox state bound in the liquid phase by hydrogen bonds. This material has properties closely aligned with DHMO and can act as both detox preparation, hangover cure, and with the addition of ionic surfactants can even remove greasy deposits from kitchen surfaces.

Environmentalists may offer cautionary tales of the use of excess quantities of this material especially given that the redox form of HOS is present throughout our homes. However, it is possible to eradicate HOS from the domestic environment, with a substance best described as copious.

HOS could be a boon for travellers, as it has such a low density that it is essentially weightless, and only requires handling in an air-filled storage container, the gaseous contents of which can easily be displaced. Just add water.

Meanwhile, there is currently widespread discussion on the internet of products such as filtered, ionised alkaline water. The hype surrounding these super-water products claims how they are “better” than bottled water and have a more positive effect on your health and can even clean your drains.

According to dozens of sales sites, the filtering system for producing this special water could allow you to replace medicines and even household cleaning products. The so-called antioxidant properties of these special waters are so powerful they are even recommended by their supporters as the ultimate hangover cure.

Apparently, you can set the alkalinity/acid, the pH, to produce medicinal water, cleaning product or hangover cure as you see fit.

But, I’m afraid there’s nothing special about this supposedly uniquely filtered water that separates it from bog-standard tap water or even the priciest of spring-fresh mountain water. It’s H2O however you look at it.

For those on 2009-04-01 who assumed that hydridic oxygen(II) subhydrate was some new scary substance, check out the new title to this blog post and think again.