From The CENtral Science Blogs
The Safety Zone
Jun 18th, 2013Proposed ACS undergrad guidelines increase safety requirements
By Jyllian KemsleyCleantech Chemistry
Jun 18th, 2013Optimists at the BIO Show
By Melody BomgardnerNewscripts
Jun 17th, 2013In Print: Prince Harry Turns into a Doll and Other Misleading Headlines
By Jeff HuberGrand CENtral
Jun 14th, 2013This Week on CENtral Science: Gribbles, #3Dprinting, and more
By Rachel PeplingTerra Sigillata
Jun 4th, 2013Daughters and Famous Women Chemists
By David KrollThe Chemical Notebook
Jun 11th, 2013Why Doesn’t Radio Shack Sell 3D Printers?
By Alex TulloArtful Science
May 26th, 2013How long should conservators protect David Beckham’s football?
By Sarah EvertsThe Haystack
May 13th, 2013Biotech, Pharma, & VCs Offer Rare Disease Patient Groups Some Advice
By Lisa JarvisJust Another Electron Pusher
Apr 18th, 2013#ChemMovieCarnival – The Absent-Minded Professor
By Glen Ernst
All Latest Posts
Proposed ACS undergrad guidelines increase safety requirements
This week’s issue of C&EN includes a story by Celia Arnaud about proposed changes to the ACS Guidelines for Bachelor’s Degree Programs, which are developed by the Committee on Professional Training. The issue also has a comment by committee leaders Anne B. McCoy of Ohio State University and Ron W. Darbeau of Louisiana’s McNeese State University.
Included in the changes are revisions to the safety requirements. Former committee leaders told me a few years ago that the last guidelines revision, completed in 2008, had more explicitly addressed safety than earlier versions, so the newly-proposed revisions take the criteria a step further.
Here’s what the requirements say now in the safety section:
7.3 Laboratory Safety Skills.
Approved programs should promote a safety-conscious culture in which students understand the concepts of safe laboratory practices and how to apply them. Programs should train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational level and scientific needs. A high degree of safety awareness should begin during the first laboratory course, and both classroom and laboratory discussions must stress safe practices. Students should understand responsible disposal techniques, understand and comply with safety regulations, understand and use material safety data sheets (MSDS), recognize and minimize potential chemical and physical hazards in the laboratory, and know how to handle laboratory emergencies effectively.
And here’s what’s proposed (overall, there’s a shift from “shoulds” to “musts”):
Section 7.3 Laboratory Safety Skills (p. 14-15)
Programs must train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational level and scientific needs. Approved programs must promote a safety-conscious culture in which students understand the concepts of safe laboratory practices and apply them.
- Programs must train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational and scientific needs.
- The promotion of safety awareness and skills must begin during the first laboratory experience and be incorporated into each lab experience thereafter. Classroom and laboratory discussions must stress safe practices. Students should be actively engaged in the evaluation and assessment of safety risks associated with laboratory experiences.
- Safety understanding and skills should build throughout the curriculum and be assessed.
- Students should
- understand responsible disposal techniques
- understand and comply with safety regulations
- understand and use material safety data sheets (MSDS)
- recognize and minimize potential chemical and physical hazards in the laboratory and know how to effectively handle laboratory emergencies.
- Students must undergo general safety training as well as lab-specific training before beginning undergraduate research.
- Approved programs must have an active, departmental safety committee.
What say you, readers? Are the proposed changes necessary or sufficient? What would you add or subtract?
From McCoy and Darbeau’s piece this week: “Please send comments to cpt@acs.org
by Aug. 1 so they can be discussed at the next CPT meeting. The committee will also hold an extended open meeting on Sept. 8 at the ACS national meeting in Indianapolis that will focus on the guidelines revision. Details will be posted on the CPT website. CPT plans to publish the new guidelines in 2014.”
Optimists at the BIO Show
I’m in Montreal today for the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology – put on by the Biotechnology Industry Association. The soaking rain that threatened to drown my arrival on Sunday has given way to warmer weather with just a few threatening clouds. Similarly, the mood at the show is one of patient optimism.
This year is the show’s tenth anniversary and it is reported to be the largest one yet with 1200 attendees. There are actually seven tracks of breakout sessions which makes it rather difficult for this reporter to follow along.
The major change that I’ve noticed compared to my first show four years ago is in the content of the presentations. It used to be all about the super microbe – speakers would show off elaborate slides with metabolic pathways – they all looked like very complicated subway maps. Since then the industry has learned that microbes can build a lot, but they can’t build your business for you.
This year the subject matter is all about scale up and applications. The language is more MBA than MicroBio. Supply chains, value chains, financing, customers, joint ventures, IPOs. Of course by now any start-up with a microbe has learned by now if their business plan is worth money or not – and only those that answer yes are still here.
I’ve been told to expect some major announcements this morning so follow along with my tweets @MelodyMV if you want the dish. Yesterday Myriant said it got its bio succinic acid plant up and running in Lake Providence, LA. It will be ramping up tp 30 million lbs per year.
In Print: Prince Harry Turns into a Doll and Other Misleading Headlines
Read all about it: Misleading headlines can even plague presidential elections. Credit: Byron Rollins/AP/Wikipedia
The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the print issue of C&EN.
There’s an unfortunate trend that seems to be becoming increasingly popular in today’s science news world. The recipe goes like this: Take one misleading headline, add an introductory sentence that takes liberties with the subject matter it’s covering, and stir in one gullible blogosphere, and before you know it, you have a distorted science news story that appears to be popping up everywhere.
That’s the controversy that C&EN Senior Editor Carmen Drahl took on in last week’s Newscripts column. Carmen stumbled upon a press release purporting to have found a way to analyze human health through the measurement of genetic material. She called bullocks on the claim, and the journal responsible for the press release apologized.
According to Carmen, this incident is nothing new. She says National Geographic blogger Ed Yong and many others have been leading a battle against misleading public relations for years. She also remembers stumbling across two particularly dubious “news stories” herself. One centered on the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) Project. As Carmen remembers, the project’s attempts to catalog the pieces that make up the genome led to press releases that claimed so-called junk DNA served a life function, which in turn led to a barrage of articles both deriding the articles as hype and asking for clarification on what constitutes as “junk.”
This Week on CENtral Science: Gribbles, #3Dprinting, and more
Tweet of the Week:
4th opinion: Myriad – isolated DNA is not patentable, but synthetic DNA is.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 13, 2013
To the network:
Cleantech Chemistry: The Gut(microbe)less Gribble – Biofuel Hero? and IEA Looks To Fossil Fuel Industry to Control Climate Change
Newscripts: Amusing News Aliquots and Hey, ACS, Where’s My Comic Book?
The Chemical Notebook: Why Doesn’t Radio Shack Sell 3D Printers?
The Watch Glass: Nitrogen Fixation and Systems Biology’s Clinical Future and Environmental Issues of 1976 and Crime Labs in 1967
Amusing News Aliquots
Silly samplings from this week’s science news, compiled by Sophia Cai, Bethany Halford, and Jeff Huber.
It’s a boy: And he’s pregnant. Credit: Chicago Department of Public Health
Newest scare tactic to prevent teen births: photos of pregnant boys. [Today]
Speaking of dude looks like a lady, Aerosmith’s organist is a leading geneticist in his spare time. [CNN]
Mountain livin’ changes the way people talk. In a related story, talkin’ about mountain livin’ makes the Newscripts gang want to drop the letter g from gerunds. [Perth Now]
Here’s a job we don’t want: tiger acupuncturist. [CBS News]
The world’s best sci-fi-themed bars. It’s like they were made for the Newscripts gang. [io9]
Florida scientists dismiss the notion of “vampire mosquitoes.” Somewhere a “Twilight” fan sighs heavily in disappointment. [News 13]
Turns out antidepressants kill the libidos of male minnows. No word yet on whether some Barry White music and a bottle of wine might mitigate these effects. [TreeHugger]
There’s no front basket for E.T. to sit in, but this helicopter bike can actually fly (with video). [Gizmodo]
And while we’re on the subject, these scientists are tired of waiting to hear from aliens–they’re phoning E.T. first. [NBC News]
The Gut(microbe)less Gribble – Biofuel Hero?
Behold the Gribble – a true gutless wonder. The Gribble (pictured here) is a marine wood-boring creature of around 2 millimeters in size. Scientists at the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have been spending quality time with the Gribble because of its exceptional innards.
The Gribble lives in the sea and eats wood. Image: Laura Michie, University of Portsmouth
The tiny animal eats wood that finds its way into the sea. The wood can come from mangrove swamps or wash into estuaries from land. Gribbles, also called ship borers, have also been known to chow on wooden sailing vessels (including, rather famously, those of the Columbus voyages). “I’m sure they’ve taken down a few pirate ships, too” says Simon J McQueen-Mason a BBSRC researcher and materials biology professor at the University of York.
Most critters that eat wood or other lignocellulose plant material rely on symbiotic relationships with a diverse population of gut microbes – called the microbiome – to break down the tough-to-digest meal. When news reports suggest that pandas may hold the key to biofuels breakthroughs because they can live on tough bamboo, it’s really the microbes, and the enzymes made by the microbes, that are of interest.
(You can read a C&EN cover story about pandas, microbiomes and biofuels )
But the Gribble has no microbiome. And it doesn’t have the squishy, absorptive digestive system that most animals have. In fact, it digests its meals of wood in a sterile, hard-sided chamber in its hind gut. McQueen-Mason likens the environment to “a steel container you might use in an industrial lab.”
Instead of microbial helpers, the gribble has a separate organ where it produces the key enzyme itself. Termites do not do this (they have microbes). The gribble “must use quite aggressive chemistry; the enzyme is so harsh that it would kill any microbes” that might otherwise occupy the space, McQueen-Mason says.
The research team found the mystery organ and looked at the genes expressed there. Many of them encoded instructions for making what is called GH7 cellulase. This is a family of enzymes that are normally found in wood-degrading fungi. “These cellulases are abundant but were never reported in an animal before,” McQueen-Mason notes. “We were able to express the genes in a lab fungus and describe the properties.”
They also used X-ray crystallography to discover the structure of the enzyme and show how it binds cellulose chains and breaks them into small sugar molecules.
The GH7 cellulase, an enzyme made by the Gribble, breaks down cellulose into simpler sugars.
The Gribble’s enzyme appears to be very rugged and long-lasting, which is a good quality for an enzyme that might be used in an industrial setting to make biofuels from wood or straw, McQueen-Mason points out. It works very well in highly saline conditions and may also function well in ionic liquids. The use of salt water and ionic liquids for biofuels processing may cut down on the use of expensive, precious fresh water. And like a true catalyst, the enzyme may be reusable.
You can see a video of the Gribble – which I highly recommend – it’s kind of cute.
For more on the enzyme, check out the journal paper: ‘Structural characterization of the first marine animal Family 7 cellobiohydrolase suggests a mechanism of cellulase salt tolerance’ www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301502110.
Why Doesn’t Radio Shack Sell 3D Printers?
About a year ago, I decided the best deployment of unused capital in my Scottrade account was to purchase shares of Radio Shack. My investment thesis was this: 1) I bought a TRS-80 there 30 years ago. 2) I made guitar effects pedals using Radio Shack parts there about 20 years ago. That’s it. The whole idea was predicated on nostalgia. I’m in the red thus far.
I have learned a lot about Radio Shack—the business side, not where they keep the capacitors—after the fact. (The capacitors are in a metal case with pull out drawers near the back.)
For instance, the profit center of the company is the stuff you normally think of when you think of Radio Shack: The thing that connects one electronic gizmo to another, like when you are installing an entertainment center. The problem is there isn’t much growth in that business.
The growth comes from smart phones and the like. The problem here is that the profits here are slimmer and Radio Shack has too much competition.
This is where 3-D printers come in and why my griping about Radio Shack is relevant to chemistry.
I’ve written about 3-D printing in the past. It is, essentially, a new technique for processing plastics. To make a part, one doesn’t need a costly mold. But the tradeoff is that the user can’t make many of the same part very efficiently. Thus, the technique is ideal for designers to make prototypes. And 3D printing also holds promise for hobbyists and tinkerers of all kinds, especially when firms such as 3D
For sale, at Staples, not Radio Shack.
Systems are offering machines for as little as $1,300.
It would seem like Radio Shack would be an ideal retailer for 3D printers and, perhaps more importantly, the consumables involved: cartridges of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and polylactic acid. 3D printers are today very much like ham radios were 40 years ago and computers were 30 years ago: outlets for curiosity and creativity. 3D Printers are also cool. Who wouldn’t be fascinated seeing a 3D printer in a store, perhaps churning out a new object right before your eyes in a demonstration? Why, people might even walk into Radio Shack deliberately to see a 3D printer up close. It would be the first time the store had a draw since it did away with the Battery Club.
But there is a first retailer getting into the 3D printing business with 3D Systems printers: Staples. Is that a good fit? I suppose. They sell toner and report covers. It is the store of last resort for Blue Fun Tak in early September. I think Radio Shack would have been better, to be honest. But Staples outfoxed Radio Shack and that’s the point.
Hey, ACS, Where’s My Comic Book?
BAM! Don’t mess with Tesla. Credit: APS
If you read this blog with any regularity (I know there’s at least one of you out there, two tops), you’ll remember a post I wrote awhile back bemoaning the lack of chemistry coloring books. I had just come across a supercool version about biology—filled with stem cells and neurons and viruses, oh my!—and was wondering what a chemistry version (perhaps produced by the American Chemical Society) might look like.
Well, that coloring book still hasn’t materialized, and now I’m even more miffed: The physicists have comic books. And notice that I didn’t say “a” comic book. They have many of them.
I spotted a few of these at the American Physical Society (APS) national meeting, held in Baltimore, back in March. One called “Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair” caught my eye, as well as a S-E-R-I-E-S of books about the original laser superhero Spectra (you know how it goes: She discovers her powers after a class on lasers and winds up being able to cut through metal and play CDs … just your typical teenage drama). These educational aids for middle school classrooms are distributed by APS.
Able to spot-weld a building in a single bound. Credit: APS
But I wouldn’t even say they’re just for middleschoolers. I read all the way through the story of Telsa: It brings to life the epic battle between himself and Thomas Edison over alternating current (AC) and direct current. I guess I never realized that the “War of the Currents” ended when Tesla successfully used AC to light the infamous World’s Fair in Chicago (where the Ferris Wheel also made its debut). Via the comic, I also discovered that Tesla had a fondness (perhaps a little too much fondness) for pigeons.
So even I learned something!
But it wasn’t until I received a press release about Stephen Hawking’s new comic book that I was pushed over the edge to write this post and point out this educational trend.
Page from new Hawking comic detailing how he learned of his disability. Credit: Bluewater Productions
“Stephen Hawking: Riddles of Time & Space” is produced by Washington-based Bluewater Productions. It chronicles the cosmologist’s life, including how he discovered that he had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and his dispute with scientist Fred Hoyle over the Big Bang Theory.
You can get your print copy of it here for $4.33.
Folks making comic books about physics is by no means a bad trend. But I’m once again left wondering, “Where’s the chemistry equivalent?” We may not have Stephen Hawking or Nikola Tesla to brag about, but surely we’ve got someone who’s got an interesting story to relate to the general public? Organic chemist R.B. Woodward, in all his Mad-Men-esque glory? One of the many bearded chemists of yore?
What about Kevlar, the original polymer superhero? Or how about turning the periodic table of elements into superheroes, an idea originated by a graphic designer here?
Readers, what kind of chemistry comic book would you like to see? (And ACS, when can we have one, pretty please?)
Chemists are notoriously bad at tooting their own horns to the public (go ask someone on the street to name a famous chemist, and you’ll see what I mean). But I’m certain they’ve got interesting stories to tell—the tales have just got to be drawn out.