Over the transom today — to borrow a phrase from the aforementioned old friend — came some sad news. Kenneth M. Reese, who wrote C&EN’s Newscripts column for 36 years, passed away on March 3 at the age of 85.

Ken had a long history with C&EN, first joining the Chicago office in 1954. He eventually found his way to ACS headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1962, when he assumed the role of the magazine’s managing editor. In 1967, Ken retired from the weekly editor’s grind to take the best job at C&EN — Newscripts Editor.

Although his wasn’t the first byline to accompany the Newscripts column, it’s fair to say that Ken took C&EN’s odd little back page and made it into one of the magazine’s most read. Even five years after Reese’s retirement, readers still tell us that Newscripts is the first page they flip to — the highest compliment one could pay columnist. The loyal following undoubtedly comes from Ken’s wry humor, easy rapport with readers, and genius at picking subject matter.

As one of the gang of writers who has helped put the column together since Ken’s retirement in 2004, I’d personally like to thank him for setting Newscripts’ editorial policy. “The editorial policy, if any,” he wrote on the occasion of the column’s 50th anniversary in 1993, “favors the chemical over the nonchemical, the scientific over the nonscientific, the grotesque over the normal.” From this Ken managed to assemble a brilliant body of work, documenting everything from soapmaking inmates to spontaneous human combustion to Komodo dragon acupuncture.

Personally, I’m still in awe of the breadth items he cobbled together for his recurring feature from the Department of Obscure Information: About 1 g of ozone will neutralize the odor of a liter of hog manure slurry; Japan saw the arrival of flush toilets in the late 1980s; red and yellow onions, but not white ones, contain quercetin. I can only assume that Ken gathered such information without the aid of the Internet, since he always submitted his columns  as neatly typed pages (presumably tapped out on the typewriter in his iconic picture) which were then reentered into an electronic file by a copyeditor.

Have you got a favorite Newscripts column? A memory of Ken you’d like to share? Please put it in the comments. I’m sure Ken would want us to remember him with a good laugh.

An easy way to ensure that pricey organic milk isn’t just conventional milk that’s been relabeled. NY Times

Derek Lowe breaks down the recent OPRD smackdown. In the Pipeline

Could rotton eggs be the next Viagra? Wired Science

Brits announce program to retrain out-of-work scientists to be science teachers. Guardian

Chemical engineer tackles big problems while eschewing profits. His first project: Making the antimalarial artemisenin. His next: Biofuels. Newsweek

Biotech mogul unearths 13,000-year-old weapons cache in his backyard. LA Times

Greener gardeners turn from plastic pots to pots made from cow pies. NY Times

NSF has some issues with NSFW web surfing. Politico (hat tip to Chemistry Blog for the story and the acronym joke).

Brits: Be on the lookout for old bulbs. The Royal Society of Chemistry is offering a $750 reward for Britain’s oldest working lightbulb. Guardian

Those peanut butter crackers were pretty tasty…until you found out they were recalled. What to do now? Slate

Random (and kinda gross) armpit research shows men smell like cheese and women smell like onions. New Scientist

The UK’s Institution of Chemical Engineers has compiled 10 safe “flash bang” demonstrations to spark high schoolers’ interest in science. Guardian

It’s OK for guys to play the cello again, but the guitar may still be problematic.  (This isn’t a chemistry newsbyte, but it turned up in my science RSS feeds, and I just had to share.) LA Times

Chemistry Nobel Laureate Peter Agre talks about aquaporins, running for senator in Minnesota, and what his mom said when she found out he won the Nobel Prize. NY Times

Why do cold cellos sound lousy? Slate

Cambodian villagers are learning about water safety by watching karaoke videos. NPR

Galileo’s DNA will be tested to probe his failing eyesight. Seems like it might be a little late for that. Guardian

Artemisinin may be losing its antimalarial potency. NY Times

Dung beetles tire of the same old, um, stuff. Decide to munch on millipedes instead. ScienceNOW

The science, or lack thereof, behind wine-enhancing devices. NY Times

Media makes a mess of methane on Mars. Discover

Astronauts making a long haul into space may find silkworms on the menu. Yum? ScienceNow

Pheromones shmeromones. NPR

Chemotherapy may be most effective in the morning.  LA Times

Check out an excerpt from Steven Johnson’s new book about Joseph Priestly, “The Invention of Air.” NPR

An interesting piece loosely speculates that an Obama Administration might help keep more women in science, with some interesting factoids: 70% of tenured male science faculty are married with kids compared with only 44% of their tenured female colleagues; women earn only 20% of the bachelor’s degrees in physics but 50% of the bachelor’s degrees in that other math-heavy major–mathematics. Also, chemistry is called “not quite plush toy material.” NY Times

No cash to decorate your Christmas tree? If you’ve got a gas grill, a vacuum, some sand, and a little laundry detergent, you can make your own glass ornaments. Popular Science

Enterprising British chemist rakes in $15 million dollars making moonshine…but also will spend more than nine years in jail. Telegraph

Ladies Leaving the Lab: RSC study finds that 72% of first year female chemistry Ph.D. students want a career in academia, but by the time they’ve reached their third year, 37% are off the academic track. Guardian

Forget shaken versus stirred. Try your next martini with sublimation. NPR

Will nanophobia kill the new wave of sunscreens? NY Times

Esser-Kahn’s hip-hop interpretation of his thesis on “Protein Cross-linked Hydrogels” didn’t win, but it certainly gets C&ENtral’s science’s vote for best dance with an ice bucket.Winners are after the jump, along with some of our favorite chemistry-related grooves and one marine biology graduate student who was totally robbed. You can see all 36 entries here.

Sue Lynn Lau, a student at Australia’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research snagged the Graduate Student prize for interpreting her research on “The Role of Vitamin D in Beta Cell Function.” Particularly impressive are the aerial acrobatic maneuvers Lau’s colleague in the yellow shirt busts out toward the end of the dance.

Miriam Sach, winner of the Postdoc Prize and currently a postdoc at the University of California, San Diego, leaps, tumbles, and rolls around the floor to illustrate her Ph.D. work on “Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography. A comparison between single subject and group analysis.”

Vince LiCata, a biology professor at Louisiana State University, took home the Professor Prize for some rhythmic swaying with grad students. LiCata’s Ph.D., which he earned in 1990, is titled “”Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids.” The gloves and safety goggles are a nice touch.

With more than 14,000 views, University of Illinois graduate student Markita Landry won the Popular Choice prize for a tango that depicts “Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes.”

“Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor Disputes” by Virginia Tech professor Barbara Allen

“Properties of Hard, Nanolayered TiB2:CHx Low Friction Coatings” by Northwestern grad student Bo Zhao

“Structural analysis of phosducin and its phosphorylation-regulated interaction with transducin beta-gamma” by Harvard University professor Rachelle Gaudet

Although not chemistry-related, C&ENtral science would like to recognize the outstanding dance by University of South Florida graduate student Christin Murphy depicting “Hydrodynamic Trail Detection in Marine Organisms.” Hula-hooping with fire! Hello, how did this not win?

Call it Roger Hiorns’ blue period. In “Seizure,” his latest and most ambitious work, the English artist has taken a derelict London flat and covered it in copper sulfate crystals. After reinforcing the floor and ceiling and covering the flat in plastic sheeting, Hiorns pumped 90,000 liters (about 23,775 gallons) of a supersaturated copper sulfate solution into the building through a hole in the floor of the flat above. Then he waited for the temperature to drop and for crystals to take over the abandoned space.

“The walls and ceilings are covered in blue copper sulphate crystals, their rhomboid facets glinting in the gloom,” writes Guardian art critic Adrian Searle. “Silvery shards of cold light spangle and wink and beckon. Every surface is furred and infested; big blue crystals dangle like cubist bats from the light fittings. Little wonder the flat has been abandoned: you’d move out, too, if the crystals moved in.”

If you’re going to be in London, the exhibit will be open until the end of the month. And you can see a video of Hiorns showing his piece after the jump. Meanwhile, I’m going to try to convince my husband that we should consider using Hiorns’ method to redecorate.

Beryllium fires! Exploding beakers! Lab floods! Share your tales of undergrad (or grad or postdoc or P.I.) labmate disasters. Carbon Based Curiosities

Forget about the backyard barbecue. Get a backyard nuclear reactor instead. Guardian

Scientists are getting closer to detecting human growth hormone in urine. LA Times

RNAi gets a glamorous write up. NY Times

The secret to bleach’s bug-killing magic. ScienceNOW

Do not taunt happy fun ball. Danger Room