Month: October 2011

Ada Lovelace Day for Miss Hall

In case you missed it, it’s Ada Lovelace Day. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 — 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron (yes, she was the only child of the poet Lord Byron). She is perhaps best known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Think SteamPunk iMac.

Within Lovelace’s notes on the machine is an algorithm intended to be run by the machine…it is, essentially, the first computer program. Remember, this was the Victorian era, Ada Lovelace was the “World’s First Computer Programmer”, the Godmother of SteamPunk you might say…just look at all those pearls and brass cogs if you don’t believe me.

Anyway, on 7th October, Ada’s day, bloggers and others are to share a story of a woman who has inspired them, whether engineer, scientist, technologist, mathematician, whatever. I might have written about Rosalind Franklin or perhaps Marie Curie, very inspiring women to any chemist. But, actually I think this year, I’ll mention Miss Hall.

Miss Hall was tall. She was my third year high school chemistry teacher and had the classic long white labcoat, with a spatula and pens in the front pocket, several rips and countless stains, acid burns, Bunsen burner scorch marks, and definitely a few blood patches…on her skin, mind you, not her labcoat!

Miss Hall towered over us physically and intellectually but within the prescribed curriculum for 14-15-year old chemistry students she spliced in stuff that we weren’t supposed to learn until we got to uni, the fascinating facts, the conjuring tricks chemistry teachers have to do to gloss over the misconceptions and misdirections in the curriculum and more besides.

But, more than that she also allowed us freedom to experiment way beyond the allowances of health and safety. Such experimentalists as we were we made aqua regia and dissolved a chunk of gold, we heated stuff well above what it was ever meant to be heated at and I have the scars to prove it. She used to fill our lab with stinking sulfurous fumes and we inhaled deeply the knowledge that came with them.

On one special occasion rather than creating a lame and frothy vinegar and bicarb volcano, Miss Hall poured concentrated sulfuric acid on to a pile of sugar to create vast billowing clouds and a frothing charred mass of porous black carbon. Incredible and a memory to cherish. I don’t remember any brass cogs or pearls, but I do remember chemical inspiration!

Ada Lovelace Day.

Flexible crystals in the blood

With crystals in the news thanks to the award of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Dan Shechtman for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals, it is quite timely that I was writing about another crystalline discovery just before the announcement. This one is from US chemist George Richter-Addo of the University of Oklahoma and his team who have demonstrated that crystals need not necessarily be as solid as once thought. The existence of a new type of “flexible” crystal hints at new understanding as well as relying on a novel technique that might be used to probe matter more deeply than ever before: Flexible Crystals.

I asked Mathias Senge of Trinity College Dublin to give me a perspective on Richter-Addo’s work:

“This is a very noteworthy contribution by Richter-Addo’s group and certainly worth being highlighted,” he says. “Any structural chemist will immediately see the implications of this work and it will serve as a route map for how to investigate small (gaseous) molecule interactions with coordination compounds.”

“More importantly this might reignite interest in solid state, crystal, chemistry in general. I personally think that this might be on par with advances made in time-resolved X-ray crystallography. While the latter might be of more general relevance, the gas-diffusion approach is easier and can be reproduced and used by any chemist.”

He adds that the specific compounds investigated by Richter-Addo’s team, porphyrins, the molecules at the heart of oxygen-carrying haemoglobin in the blood, might provide inspiration to others. “I can even see that people might go back to investigations of the (then) groundbreaking picket fence porphyrins from Collman and have a second look at interactions [between iron and carbon monoxide, and oxygen]. Perhaps its even possible to get similar effects with porphyrin-protein crystals,” he adds.

“Likewise, what George described in his paper using X-ray crystallography might be easily extended to similar studies with resonance Raman spectroscopy, looking at changes in the core conformation, and then the same spectroscopic method can be used to identify what goes on in biological samples (proteins).”

Research Blogging IconXu, N., Powell, D., & Richter-Addo, G. (2011). Nitrosylation in a Crystal: Remarkable Movements of Iron Porphyrins Upon Binding of Nitric Oxide Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 50 (41), 9694-9696 DOI: 10.1002/anie.201103329

Danny Shechtman discusses quasicrystals

Danny Shechtman discovered quasicrystals in 1982. They produce a sharp diffraction pattern like other crystals, but they have fivefold symmetry, which is “forbidden”. You cannot tesselate pentagons, after all. Hexagons, yes. Squares, of course…the discovery of these quasicrystals turned on its head our understanding of what it means to be a crystal. A crystal needn’t be regular as these quasicrystals show, like the Moorish artwork of ancient palaces and the patterns described by Roger Penrose et al. The discovery earned Shechtman the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2011 on 5th October. Here he is discussing the discovery and its implications:

Thanks to Simon Frantz for sharing this Technion video via Twitter.

2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to Daniel Shechtman
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel “for the discovery of quasicrystals”

I got my tweet out seconds before NobelPrize_org and certainly before the rest of the chemistry blogosphere. Sad or what?

In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world (see my Alhambra photos for examples) reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Daniel Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.

Full Nobel Chemistry press release here.

UPDATE: Shechtman is 70 years old and his work is one of the first times we can date a Nobel-winning scientific discovery to a specific day in 1982. Committee is hoping to speak to him by phone, but they cannot get hold of him right now.

Quasicrystal patterns that are infinite and do not fit the normal requirements of regular solid, crystal structure, has revolutionised our view of solid matter over the years. It shook the foundations of solid-state science. The discovery has actually left us knowing less than we knew before the discovery. It changed the concept of crystallinity. We now do not know what constitutes a crystal. Indeed, we only have an operational definition now the defines a crystal as a solid that produces a diffraction pattern under X-ray irradiation. Regularity no longer comes into it. (To paraphrase committee member Sven Lidin).

UPDATE: Just had word from Professor David Phillips, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry: “Quasicrystals are a fascinating aspect of chemical and material science — crystals that break all the rules of being a crystal at all!” he says. “They’re quite beautiful, and have potential applications in protective alloys and coatings. The award of the Nobel Prize to Dany Shechtman is a celebration of fundamental research.”

Supernova acceleration and whisky

The video production team at Nottingham-based Sixty Symbols put together a Nobel vid to discuss this year’s supernova prize. According to videographer Brady Haran, “This year was easy because some of our Nottingham-based astronomers actually knew the winners,” he says, “In fact, our own Mike Merrifield is on quite good terms with co-winner Brian Schmidt [a wine-making cosmologist known as cosmicpinot on Twitter]. In our video, Mike sheepishly admits he has doubted an aspect of Brian’s work and the two have a long-standing bet about it. With the Nobel Prize committee’s verdict now pubic, Mike concedes he owes his old friend a bottle of whisky.”

Interestingly, this is the first Nobel Prize for Physics that involved results from optical telescopes. Also, interestingly Schmidt’s twitter count has merely doubled since I tweeted his twitter handle yesterday. Of course, others were mentioning it as well…

2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae” with one half to Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Schmidt and Riess.

Perlmutter is at The Supernova Cosmology Project, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Schmidt is at The High-z Supernova Search Team, Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia and Riess at The High-z Supernova Search Team, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Basically, this is for the supernovae evidence for “dark energy” (the 2008 sciencebase feature on dark energy).

In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Riess was to play a crucial role. The research teams raced to map the Universe by locating the most distant supernovae. More sophisticated telescopes on the ground and in space, as well as more powerful computers and new digital imaging sensors (CCD, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009), opened the possibility in the 1990s to add more pieces to the cosmological puzzle.

The teams used a particular kind of supernova, called type Ia supernova. It is an explosion of an old compact star that is as heavy as the Sun but as small as the Earth. A single such supernova can emit as much light as a whole galaxy. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected – this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma – perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.

Full announcement – The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

UPDATE: 11:03 BST: Schmidt compares winning the Nobel to the birth of his children, in interview with Nobel committee broadcast live. Says he feels weak at the knees. Even though he was one of the favourites to win the 2011 Prize, it was unexpected. Looking forward to teaching his cosmology class on Wednesday on this very subject. Grew up in Alaska so looking forward to the medals in December in the Swedish winter.

Thought Perlmutter’s team were getting an answer that the universe is slowing down not speeding up, was with trepidation that revealed to the world that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. A little scared by their findings. Always looks to Einstein for explanation, the energy of space itself, the simplest reason for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. So despite, recent allegedly superluminal neutrinos, Einstein’s 1915 theory does predict the acceleration the supernovae data provide evidence for. Confirm Einstein’s cosmological constant published 1917.

A posthumous Nobel Prize for Medicine?

One of the scientists who was announced as a Nobel laureate today for his work on the immune system and fighting cancer actually died (aged 68) of the disease himself last Friday before he could be told of the award. Apparently, his own discoveries had been used in the extension of his life.

Of course, now the Nobel committee has something of a quandary, they did not apparently know of the death of Canadian-born Ralph Steinman at the time they made the award, but the Nobel statutes say that awards cannot be made posthumously as they are intended to help the laureates expand on their science.

Famously, Rosalind Franklin who some would suggest deserves far more recognition than she achieved for her X-ray crystal structure work on DNA, had died of ovarian cancer in 1958 years before the Nobel committee gave the 1962 award to Francis Crick, James Watson and Franklin’s boss at King’s College London, Maurice Wilkins. There were other X-ray structures of DNA before Franklin’s but it was hers that gave Watson and Crick the necessary clues to unravel the double helix and to proclaim they had found the secret of life, in the Eagle pub, Cambridge.

Happiness and the pursuit of dopamine

We all know it when we receive it. It’s that most pleasurable feeling, that emotion that drives us. Reward! Well, drives us to what exactly? One might say that biochemically speaking we seek out those things that fure up the dopaminergic neurons and the release of this rewarding chemical and that it is dopamine that motivates us in so many areas of our lives. What else is there to living than mood, motivation, movement, sleep, sex … reward.

Read on in my October Research Highlights column in the ChemistryViews magazine: Could Dopamine be the Most Evil Chemical in the World?

2011 Nobel Prize for Medicine

The most disappointed man on the planet, has to be Japanese stem cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka who for an hour so was cited by a Wikipedia vandal as being the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011, the announcement went mildly viral around the web and on Twitter.

However, when the Nobel people got their livestream working again after a short technical glitch the announcement came that the award was to be divided, with one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.

I suspect Yamanaka was not even aware of the false Wikipedia citation, although I’m sure someone will tell him sooner or later. Maybe next year Professor?

via The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Press Release.