We created “C&ENtral Science” with a bit of trepidation. There was concern about diverting staff resources from covering hard news of the chemistry enterprise toward what some viewed as ephemera. There were questions about setting priorities. People pointed out that successful blogs often had a snarky tone that we thought was inappropriate for C&EN. Others worried that the lighter, breezier tone we were hoping to achieve on “C&ENtral Science” could detract from the perception of C&EN as a serious newsmagazine.

For the past two years, “C&ENtral Science” has been something of a grabbag. Numerous staff members attending national meetings continued to post on, yes, tchotchkes, dining experiences, and people they ran into on shuttle buses, as well as symposia and governance functions. C&EN’s informal “staff photographer,” Associate Editor Linda Wang, worked with C&EN Online Visual Designer Tchad Blair to create memorable slide shows from the meetings.

Other posts on “C&ENtral Science” ranged from my editorials to serious discussions of lab safety to lighthearted items on almost anything that caught a C&EN staffer’s fancy. One memorable posting—a tribute to Michael Jackson after his death—came from Senior Editor Lisa Jarvis following her two-week fellowship at NSF’s Toolik Field Station in Alaska (see C&ENtral Science, July 6, 2009). In 2009, “C&ENtral Science” had more than 137,000 page views.

Now it’s time for “C&ENtral Science” to evolve to the next level. Jarvis got the discussion going last September with the distribution to C&EN’s senior staff of what I have come to call her “blog manifesto.” In it, she wrote: “The business group had a spontaneous discussion about the future of journalism and social media this week, and one result was a growing desire to allow staff to have their own blogs. The idea is to have a portal that would lead readers to any of several blogs that focus on a particular beat.”

After much discussion and the work of an ad hoc task force led by C&EN Online Editor Rachel Pepling, that’s what will happen. On March 22, in conjunction with the national meeting in San Francisco, “CENtral Science” will relaunch as a portal to, initially, six hosted blogs on the following topics:

• General chemical business, hosted by Senior Editor Alex Tullo.
• Cleantech chemistry, hosted by Senior Editor Melody Voith.
• Newscripts, hosted by Assistant Editor Lauren Wolf and the “Newscripts Crew.”
• Pharmaceuticals/biotechnology, hosted by Jarvis and Associate Editor Carmen Drahl.
• The Editor’s Blog, hosted by me and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Maureen Rouhi.
• Chemical safety, hosted by Associate Editor Jyllian Kemsley and Senior Correspondent Jeff Johnson.

Relaunching “CENtral Science” as a portal to several hosted blogs that focus on specific topics of interest to C&EN’s diverse readership is a natural evolution of the site. Since its launch, “CENtral Science” has provided C&EN reporters with an alternative outlet for their natural curiosity and creativity and C&EN readers with another channel to express their opinions.

We hope that the new “CENtral Science” will allow C&EN reporters and the readers who follow their reporting to develop productive relationships in which the flow of information and opinion is truly multidimensional. We hope you will find one or more of the blogs on “CENtral Science” to be of interest and that you will contribute to the content by posting comments on the blogs.

Thanks for reading. And commenting.

One reason the workflow project has been so complex and drawn out is that C&EN is a weekly magazine with three delivery modes—print, electronic, and C&EN Online—which we produce in parallel. We do multiple types of editing simultaneously, and the content you read isn’t final until the pages of the print edition are complete. Our workflow is inherently complicated.

Another reason, however, is the complexity of the typography and design of a magazine that covers the chemistry enterprise. Of necessity, C&EN contains many “special characters”—Greek letters and mathematical symbols, for example, to express chemical names and concepts. We have also chosen to retain many elements of classical typography, with the names of journals and the Latin names of species italicized, to take another example.

Because I have been in the magazine business for more than 30 years, I am sensitive to typography. Have you noticed how some of the elements of typography I noted above have completely disappeared from newspapers and most magazines? You won’t see Science magazine or Escherichia coli in italics in the New York Times. You almost certainly will not see α-interferon, either. I call this the tyranny of XML; it is a protocol that is powerful for the electronic delivery of content, but it is wreaking havoc on print.

I know, print’s days are numbered, so who cares? Well, we offer the electronic edition of C&EN—an electronic facsimile of the print edition—and only 13% of ACS members living in North America opted in 2010 to take it over the print edition. It appears that many ACS members still prefer to read C&EN on paper.

Anyway, the lead article in the March 2 “Science Times” section of the New York Times was a fascinating story entitled “Striving to Map the Shape-Shifting Net.” The focus of the story was the evolving nature of the channels over which information flows on the Internet. That volume is enormous. The article quotes Cisco Systems’ Doug Webster, who said, “When we started releasing data publicly, we measured it in petabytes of traffic. Then a couple of years ago we had to start measuring them in zettabytes, and now we are measuring them in what we call yottabytes.” The article defines a petabyte as 1 million gigabytes; a zettabye is 1 million petabytes; a yottabyte, 1,000 zettabytes.

A statement that caught my eye was that Cisco “estimates that video will account for 90% of all Internet traffic by 2013.”

I know, video requires much greater bandwidth to transmit than text, so the statement doesn’t mean that 90% of the content will be video. Still, what does this say about the evolution of how we exchange information? Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press using movable type in 1439 or so. Widespread literacy has been a trait of civilized humans for only 500 years. Speech and storytelling are hard-wired in our genes. We are called Homo sapiens, but would anyone know we could think if we didn’t talk about our thoughts? Reading words on paper or a computer screen is most definitely not part of our basic nature.

Is it possible that reading words is a transient phase in our evolution as storytellers and information exchangers? That if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million? That in the future, people will choose to receive the information they need by listening and/or watching rather than by reading?

I have no idea what the answers are to these questions. I do know from the C&EN workflow project that the Internet is not friendly to words rendered gracefully, the way Gutenberg and his printing descendants rendered them.

Thanks for reading.

Okay, that makes my head ache. And thank goodness, Steven Trainoff, director of engineering at Wyatt Technology assures me that even if I don’t exactly know what zeta potential is, I could still appreciate the importance of an instrument they are introducing at Pittcon 2010, the Möbiuζ, which Wyatt claims can more precisely and easily measure the electrophoretic mobility of proteins than other methods.

Accurate measurement of protein electrophoretic mobility—which is related to the zeta potential—is especially important in formulating protein drugs. That’s because protein drugs must be charged in a formulation. The charge must be high enough to ensure that proteins are stable—individual molecules repel each other—but not so high that not enough molecules can be crammed in the formulation. It’s therefore critical to know the charge on the molecule, which can be inferred from the electrophoretic mobility.

Now, many instruments out there can measure electrophoretic mobility, Trainoff says, but they are not good with small proteins, such as the 14.4-kilodalton lysozyme, in the high concentration that they exist in a formulation. That’s because as proteins become smaller, the noise from diffusion becomes too much. Wyatt’s new optical instrument solves this problem by using an array of 30 photodiode detectors instead of the usual single detector. The massively parallel detection system means faster detection and higher sensitivity than is possible with other instruments. For example, Wyatt’s Möbiu? can determine the electrophoretic mobility of a 1-mg/mL sample of immunoglobulin G in about 30 seconds.

Watch out for the March 29 issue for C&EN’s official coverage of Pittcon 2010. Senior Correspondent Stu Borman will summarize the highlights and trends, Senior Correspondent Steve Ritter will compile the most noteworthy instruments on display, and Senior Editors Celia Henry and Mitch Jacoby will report from the technical sessions.

I completed my chemistry education without ever seeing, let alone using, an NMR instrument, and I’m so excited that high school and college students can actually use, touch, and manipulate the machine instead of just learning how to read and interpret the spectra, thanks to affordable and low-maintenance products such as those from Anasazi.

Don Bouchard, president of Anasazi, tells me that Anasazi FT-NMRs are ideal for the education market because they do not use superconducting magnets that need gases and cryogenic conditions to operate. The company does have a few industry customers, he says, for applications that can be optimally executed with the 60- and 90-MHz instruments. The
difference in price, according to Don, is significant: about $100,000 for an Anasazi instrument, including a five-year warranty vs about $225,000 + $15-30,000/per year in maintenance costs for a 400-MHz spectrometer with a superconducting magnet.

Anasazi NMR spectrometers are installed at three U.S. high schools and many colleges, including at least 20 community colleges in California, Don says.

Although Anasazi’s primary customers are from academia, Don and his wife, Julie, are at Pittcon in hopes of attracting customers from industry and government labs. Those of you chemistry teachers with some Department of Education Title III money might want to talk to them.

C&EN has covered the health concerns associated with BPA extensively for several years. We have covered the reports of the National Toxicology Program on the health effects of BPA and the Food & Drug Administration’s difficult balancing act in regulating human exposure to the chemical.

C&EN has also covered the chemistry that makes it difficult to eliminate all uses of BPA associated with food. Senior Editor Mitch Jacoby, for example, wrote in the Dec. 15, 2008, issue (page 31) that “for many food applications, for example, in the metal-packaging industry, finding a new material with just the right combination of properties remains a major challenge” because “the materials used to coat food cans must adhere strongly, provide corrosion resistance, and withstand the high temperatures required for sterilization and processing. The coating also has to be compatible chemically with the food and cannot impart a flavor or odor.” BPA has all of these characteristics; most potential alternatives do not.

Last year, Senior Editor Melody Voith addressed this issue as well (July 20, 2009, page 28). “Linings made with BPA give a wide range of canned goods their long shelf life and good food safety record,” Voith wrote. “Without any lining, a typical aluminum or steel can creates a strong air and light barrier all by itself. But eventually, contact between the food and the metal will corrode the packaging, leading to spoilage or microbial contamination. Corrosion would rapidly ruin high-acid foods, such as tomatoes. Low-acid foods like peas may last longer but are more likely to harbor toxin-producing bacteria such as Clostridium botulinum.” Alternatives to BPA-based linings do not perform as well and/or are significantly more expensive.

The fact is that the evidence linking BPA with adverse health effects is weak. Many studies have been carried out, and the results have been contradictory. This is why FDA has acted cautiously with regard to BPA and why the chemical and food-packaging industries resist stringent regulation of it. FDA announced earlier this year that it has “some concern” about the potential health effects of BPA in infants and children, but also said that more research is needed to fully assess the safety of the chemical (C&EN, Jan. 25, page 8). Market pressure, however, has effectively removed BPA from products such as baby bottles, so that’s no longer an issue.

Nevertheless, the drumbeat against BPA continues. Once suspicion of any kind has been leveled against the safety of a chemical, watch out. No amount of contrary evidence will ever convince some chemophobic environmentalists that use of the chemical should continue. Ban it. Period. It’s no wonder the chemical industry shudders at the mere mention of the precautionary principle.

A front-page story in the Feb. 23 Washington Post, “Replacing BPA in Cans Gives Foodmakers Fits,” carries on in that tradition. Despite the fact that it calls BPA a “synthetic estrogen,” which it isn’t (BPA exhibits weak estrogenic activity, but it is not related to estrogen structurally), the story is, for the most part, factually accurate. Its underlying premise, however, is that exposure to BPA is dangerous. Running throughout the story is the assumption that BPA should be removed from all food containers. A sidebar on the jump page is titled “How to reduce BPA exposure.”

No one has shown that adults exposed to BPA at the levels that leach from food container liners suffer any harm. Potential replacements for BPA don’t work as well and very likely will pose risks of their own. BPA and the polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins that are made from it are useful chemicals that are getting a bum rap from people who don’t know what they are talking about.

Thanks for reading.

Herrema

Whitney

We just finished from the first ever C&EN luncheon at Pittcon, attended by 100 guests. Not a bad crowd, considering that Tuesday is the second day of the exhibition. Our luncheon guest speakers were Frank Witney, president and CEO of Dionex, and Greg Herrema, senior vice president and president of analytical instruments at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Both made a strong case of the complexity of analytical challenges in the 21st century, as well as the ability of the instrumentation/analytics to develop new methods and tools to meet these challenges. So far so good.

At Q&A period, though, not one person in the audience asked a question. What’s with that? Are people too busy, shy, wary to participate? Any ideas about how to encourage discussion during a luncheon?

Altogether, the luncheon was fine. As moderator, I asked a question with several follow ups that I think the speakers and the audience appreciated.

I’m still figuring out zeta potential, but I have to catch my flight back to Washington, DC now.

Photo credit (both): Peter Cutts Photography

Instead of mints, ballpens, or any of the usual freebie trinkets at exhibitions to get people to stop at their booth, Heidolph believes that Demo for Donations will attract more traffic because, as O’Connor’s explains, it offers attendees “a way to give something back to the community.” I warned O’Connor that the San Francisco might attract more than 12,000 people, and Heidolph could be deluged with sign ups. O’Connor’s expectations are conservative, about 1,500.

Well, ACS national meeting attendees, perhaps you can help O’Connor exceed expectations. Again the place to do something good for Haiti in San Francisco is booth #1110.

From Heidolph, I next visited Wyatt Technologies. They’re excited about a new instrument that measures something related to zeta potential and has a key application in protein drug formulation. I’ll tell more about this advance in Part 3. Right now I have to understand what zeta potential is. Can anyone help?

I’ve had interesting conversations since the first function I attended, the Waters Symposium Dinner last night. There I met James A. de Haseth, a senior partner of a company based in Georgia called Light Light Solutions. It makes instruments that help analyze fibers as they are processed for various uses, including as alternatives to glass. De Haseth tells me the company is working with Canadian groups that are interested in natural fibers such as flax as superstrong, superlight materials for industrial applications.

Another interesting conversation was with Patricia A. Bordell, Pittcon’s chair for shortcourses. She works with the College Board, the organization best known for the SAT and the Advanced Placement Program. Bordell goes around the country and the world to train teachers who teach AP and pre-AP chemistry. The push now by the College Board, she says, is to train chemistry teachers to apply inquiry-based learning in pre-college chemistry classrooms.

I have not been to a Pittcon since three years ago, and I find it pleasing that the familiar hallmarks of Pittcon are still around, such as the trays of apples in the exhibit area and the shuttles that go back and forth the center aisle to move attendees from one end of the exhibition area to the other. I did remember to bring comfortable shoes.

At the exhibition hall, the people I talked to give the impression of optimism. First up was Kristof O’Connor, product manager of Heidolph Brinkmann LLC, a manufacturer of such staple laboratory equipment as rotary evaporators and magnetic stirrers. Heidolph did “well during the recession,” O’Connor tells C&EN, “exceeding sales expectations by 3.5%.” Heidolph’s attitude, O’Connor explains, was to work with customers within their budgets–so if a customer bought a second-hand equipment, Heidolph will help them make it work–with the hope when money becomes available and customers are ready to make new purchases, they would go back to Heidolph. Heidolph saw a significant effect of the Obama Administration’s stimulus money, O’Connor says, with increased business from beneficiaries of NIH and NSF largesse, military research facilities, public universities, and companies in the alternative-fuel business. Demand for evaporators was high from companies trying to make biodiesel from algae.

But what O’Connor really is excited about is what Heidolph plans to do at the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco, which they are calling “Demo for Donations.” More about that in my next update.

Photo credit: Cutts Photography

The stories in this week’s issue of C&EN illustrate why this criticism is unrealistic in today’s world. The first seven department stories—from the cover story to both stories in the Business Department, both stories in the Government & Policy Department, the single story in the Science & Technology Department, and even the first story in the ACS News Department—all deal with issues that have a public policy component to them. Science and technology and public policy are inextricably linked in modern societies.

For example, the cover story, “Fluorochemicals Go Short” by Senior Correspondent Steve Ritter, is a comprehensive examination of the development of a policy for dealing with two particularly persistent long-chain perfluoroalkyl compounds: PFOS and PFOA. As an interim measure, chemical companies, with EPA’s blessing, are replacing PFOS and PFOA with compounds with shorter perfluoroalkyl chain groups that impart the same functional properties as the longer chain compounds. “Although the alternatives are just as persistent, they aren’t as bioaccumulative and appear to have a better toxicity profile—which is still being confirmed by testing—and are thus considered sound replacements,” Ritter writes.

This is not a trivial public policy issue. Fluorocarbons are extremely useful. Ritter quotes David W. Boothe, global business manager for DuPont Fluoroproducts, who says: “The societal benefits of fluoroproducts—boosting gas mileage in cars while cutting air emissions, adding durability to clothing, improving semiconductor and communications cable performance, and increasing fire-fighting speed—help consumers save money and make products safer, last longer, and environmentally friendlier.”

Nevertheless, in January 2006, DuPont and seven other major PFOA producers and users agreed with EPA that PFOA had to go. What Ritter chronicles is the scientific, technological, and public policy challenges that stemmed from this decision. This is a success story that should be applauded. A regulatory agency and chemical producers and users can work together to protect the environment.

The second story in the Business Department, by Senior Correspondent Marc Reisch, is also a success story, but perhaps a bit more controversial than Ritter’s. Reisch examines the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a CO₂ cap-and-trade program that has operated for more than a year in the northeastern U.S., generating $500 million in 2009 for energy-saving projects in the 10 states involved.

The program has its critics, Reisch notes, quoting one who calls cap-and-trade “a standard-of-living killer.” Nevertheless, the Western Climate Initiative (seven states and four Canadian provinces) and the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord (six states) are adopting the RGGI model. When implemented, the programs will create a trading area covering more than 50% of the U.S population and more than 50% of U.S. emissions.

Any mention of climate change in C&EN stirs up some people. RGGI is happening, however, and it shows that cap-and-trade can work.

Finally, the first ACS News story by Associate Editor Linda Wang looks at the ACS policy statement on endocrine disruption adopted by the ACS Board of Directors at their December 2009 meeting. ACS has policy statements on a variety of topics. Statements are developed by ACS committees with expertise in the area covered by the statement, and they are reviewed every three years to determine if they should be retired, renewed, revised, or replaced. The ACS Standing Board Committee on Public Affairs & Public Relations has responsibility for the review. One of the policy statements up for review in 2010, in fact, is the society’s position on global climate change.

Thanks for reading.

The American Chemical Society Scholars Program celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2010. The program awards renewable scholarships of up to $5,000 per year to underrepresented minority students who want to enter chemistry or chemical engineering or related fields such as environmental science, toxicology, and chemical technology.

As part of the 15th anniversary celebration, C&EN is launching in this issue a series of profiles of current and former ACS Scholars. The profiles will run in the last issue of each month.

The first profile is of Steven W. Meier, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, an American Indian tribe with its headquarters in Shawnee, Okla. (see page 41). Meier was an ACS Scholar at Rice University. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Rice, went on to receive his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern University, and is now at ExxonMobil R&D in Annandale, N.J.

Through the year, C&EN will tell 12 of these inspirational stories. There are many, many more. The ACS Scholars Program, which won the 2001 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring and the 1997 American Society of Association Executives Award of Excellence, has aided more than 1,900 students since its inception.

African Americans comprise 55% of the recipient pool, Hispanic/Latino students represent 39%, and Native American students represent 6%.

To date, more than 900 students receiving scholarships have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in a chemical science, and 48% have entered the chemical science workforce. Thirty-six percent of the students majored in chemistry; 36%, chemical engineering; 13%, biochemistry; and 10%, a chemistry-related discipline. More than 60 ACS Scholars have gone on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, chemical engineering, or a related discipline.

Eligibility requirements for ACS Scholars and other information on the program can be found at www.acs.org under “Funding & Awards.”

Madeleine Jacobs, ACS executive director and chief executive officer, says of the program: “The ACS Scholars Program has had enormous impact in only 15 years in literally changing the face of the chemistry enterprise. Since the program’s inception, $12.2 million in scholarships have been awarded, plus ACS has provided all the administrative support. When I look at the success stories of our hundreds of ACS Scholars and the Ph.D.s the program has produced, I know that this success would not have been possible without the tremendous support of the ACS Board of Directors, which committed significant funding and moral support to launching and sustaining the program, as well as the generous contributions of companies, foundations, ACS members, and other individuals. This is a program of which we can all be very proud.”

Mentoring is key to the success of the scholars program. ACS seeks mentors from college and university faculty, industry, members, and volunteers associated with minority advocacy organizations.

Also key to the success of the program has been the support it has received from companies and foundations. The program does not have an endowment but rather relies on funding from ACS and contributions to continue its operation. Some of the companies and foundations that have been particularly generous include Founding Partner PPG Industries Foundation, which has contributed more than $1 million; Sustaining Partners Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Procter & Gamble, each of which has donated $200,000 or more; and National Partners 3M Foundation, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Bayer, Dow Corning Foundation, DuPont Central Research & Development, Schering-Plough, and Xerox, each of which has contributed $100,000 or more.

Individuals and ACS local sections have also contributed time and money to the scholars program. If you are interested in becoming involved, please contact Kathy Fleming in the ACS Development Office at (800) 227-5558 ext. 6210 or k_fleming@acs.org.

Thanks for reading.