Oct
8
8
Sarah Everts
The Chemistry Nobel … And A Rap To Celebrate It
Posted by Sarah Everts on October 8, 2008 in Uncategorized
So this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given in equal thirds to Osamu Shimomura (Woods Hole) and Martin Chalfie (Columbia) and Roger Y. Tsien (UCSD), “for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP).”
As the bubbly flows and other celebratory activities ensue, how about the following rap in honor of “Notorious GFP”?
Yeah. Hilarious, weird, and well, apropos.
(more…)
Rooftop Racetracks And Chemistry Conferences
Sep
16
16
Posted by Sarah Everts on September 16, 2008 in Where is C&EN?
Some 2,000 chemists are currently wandering around an old Fiat car factory in Torino, Italy. The factory has been converted into a mall, hotel, and mega conference center, and we are all here for the European Association for Chemical & Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) conference.
(EuCheMS is an affiliation of chemical associations from some 35 countries across Europe, representing some 150,000 people. The conference is Europe’s answer to the ACS meeting, but on a smaller scale. Also, the EuCheMS conference happens only every two years, as opposed to ACS’s twice per year.)
Before popping inside the refurbished factory to see K. C. Nicolaou and Martyn Poliakoff give opening plenary lectures, I hit the roof, where there’s a retired racetrack with an amazing view of Torino and the nearby Alps foothills.
Conference Surveillance
Jul
22
22
Posted by Sarah Everts on July 22, 2008 in Where is C&EN?
In addition to Spanish tapas and cocktails served at the ESOF conference mixer Monday night in Barcelona, I was also served something less appetizing: the news that for the past five days, unbeknown to me, a radio frequency infrared device (RFID) hidden in my name tag had been reporting my conference attendance habits to organizers. Ditto for the more than 3,500 other participants.
A radio reporter from Southern Germany showed me the RFID hidden in between the front and back sides of my name tag; he had also just discovered the strip in his own badge.
So that was the explanation for the twin pillars at the doorway of every session room and the main building’s entrance: They were the RFID readers. Despite my otherwise enjoyable time at the conference, I suddenly felt a bit irked.
Home Sweet Home
Jul
22
22
Posted by Sarah Everts on July 22, 2008 in Where is C&EN?
You’ve got to hand it to the Spanish. When it comes to architecture and design, they’ve got panache. (Think Antoni Gaudi. ) But my new favorite example of Spanish flair is a supercomputing center located in a Barcelona’s Torre Girona chapel, which I toured on an afternoon break from the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) conference, currently taking place in the Catalonian capital.
In 2004, when the federal and local governments decided to fund the supercomputing center at the Technical University of Catalonia, no other buildings owned by the university had the right interior dimensions to accommodate 10,240 processors and their associated cooling units. Apart from using the chapel, the only other option was to construct a new building.
“We were pretty lucky it worked out this way,” said Oriol Riu, a computer scientist and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center tour guide. Riu told me the chapel had been a nun’s college up until the 1970s, after which it was used intermittently as an auditorium, exam room, and classroom.
The supercomputing center was once the most powerful in Europe, but now it’s in 8th place on the continent and in 26th place worldwide.
Still, you can’t beat location. And the center does have the juice of 20,000 personal computers, which researchers use to model everything from climate to aeronautics. But keeping the computers cool in the Mediterranean heat has one heck of a price tag: Riu said the annual energy cost to keep the supercomputer running is about 1 million euros per year, with air conditioning being a healthy portion of that cost.
Postcard From Estonia
Jun
23
23
Posted by Sarah Everts on June 23, 2008 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Where is C&EN?
When I arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, on a trip to visit some local chemists, I didn’t expect the city to be so wired. Here, even the green spaces have small signs that announce how to get connected.
For example, to access this park’s wireless password, you just need to send a text message. You’ll then get a response with the correct code. Paying for street parking or bus fare is also just a text message away. Even on a bus through the countryside, I snagged some of the free wireless that blankets most of the country, including the bucolic middle of nowhere.
Art You Want To Eat
May
30
30
Posted by Sarah Everts on May 30, 2008 in Where is C&EN?
So I was recently checking out some art at a small gallery in East Berlin. It was a pretty cool installation of gray insulation foam that had been sliced and diced with a machete into what appeared to be very sharp, jagged rock.
After looking at it awhile, I admitted to the guy standing next to me (incidentally, a chemist) that I was having a hard time resisting the urge to squeeze the squishy, yet hard-seeming, piece of art. The artist, Sonja Vordermaier, who happened to be in earshot, wandered over and kindly gave me the go-ahead to indulge my impulse.
Then she told me that my urge was actually pretty pedestrian compared to what had happened the day she installed the piece in the gallery.
Apparently, she had gotten a little thirsty amid all the setting up and had gone to the back room of the small gallery to make some tea. When she came back to the sculpture, something was missing.
During her absence, somebody had taken a big bite out of the foam.
Yes. They took a bite out of the sculpture and then left the gallery. Stifling a laugh, I looked a little closer, and there it was: an unmistakably clear outline of somebody’s chops. The person had even left with part of her art in their mouth.
I wasn’t quite sure if having someone eat your sculpture was a traumatic experience, so I asked, “Um, how did that make you feel?” Sonja quipped that she considered the bite to be one of the biggest compliments she had received for her work. Right answer.
The whole thing got me thinking about how old-school chemists used to sample their creations as part of the characterization process. (Some current-day chemists probably sample, too.) It also got me thinking that I don’t capitalize on all available senses when experiencing daily life. I mean, I have never tasted a piece of art, except perhaps on a plate at a good restaurant here and there. And I typically don’t lean in for a whiff at galleries. But now I may be tempted.
One more thing, about our own literary art. For the record, I don’t condone rampant destruction of C&EN back issues. But if you simply can’t resist the urge to take a nibble or a not-so-delicate chomp on a particularly well-written article, so you can really chew on the content, just don’t swallow the paper, okay?
Mercury Fountains
May
19
19
Posted by Sarah Everts on May 19, 2008 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Where is C&EN?
Barcelona, Spain, is rife with decorative fountains, so why not one flowing with mercury? As someone with a modicum of sense and some retirement savings, I normally avoid streaming pools of toxic metals, but this one sort of found me. On a trip to the Catalonian capital this weekend, I decided to check out a museum dedicated to the surreal artist Joan Miró. Entering the permanent exhibit, I saw a rather lovely fountain. On closer inspection, it was flowing with a silver liquid. Yup, mercury.
So the American artist Alexander Calder, better known for his amazing hanging mobiles, built the mercury fountain for the Spanish pavilion of the World Fair in Paris, back in 1937. For context, the mercury fountain was exhibited right next to great artworks such as Picasso’s Guernica and Miro’s The Reaper (an antiwar mural that has disappeared) at the World Fair. Calder donated the fountain to the Miro museum as a token of friendship with Miro.
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