Mar
5
5
Where is C&EN?
First Impressions At Pittcon – Final Edition
Posted by Maureen Rouhi on March 5, 2010 in The Editor's Blog, Where is C&EN?
I don’t have the time to fully understand zeta potential, so of course I go to Wikipedia, according to which: “Zeta potential is an abbreviation for electrokinetic potential in colloidal systems. In the colloidal chemistry literature, it is usually denoted using the Greek letter zeta, hence ζ-potential. From a theoretical viewpoint, zeta potential is electric potential in the interfacial double layer (DL) at the location of the slipping plane versus a point in the bulk fluid away from the interface. In other words, zeta potential is the potential difference between the dispersion medium and the stationary layer of fluid attached to the dispersed particle.”
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.
First Impressions At Pittcon – Part 4
Mar
4
4
Posted by Maureen Rouhi on March 4, 2010 in The Editor's Blog, Where is C&EN?
I had back-to-back meetings with 10 companies while at Pittcon; some of them I’ve mentioned in earlier posts. The one that left a deep impression is Anasazi, a maker of 60- and 90-MHz FT-NMR instruments that sells 90% of its products to the education market: community colleges, 4-year colleges, and even high schools.
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.
First Impressions Of Pittcon–Part 3
Mar
2
2
Posted by Maureen Rouhi on March 2, 2010 in The Editor's Blog, Where is C&EN?
C&EN’s full coverage of Pittcon 2010 will appear in the March 29 issue. In that issue, C&EN reporters Celia Arnaud, Stu Borman, Mitch Jacoby, and Steve Ritter will synthesize the four-day scientific and exhibition fest on instrumentation/analytics in highlights of product introductions, technical sessions, and industry trends. Their stories will be C&EN’s definitive take on Pittcon. What I am posting are my mere musings.
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
First Impressions at Pittcon—Part 2
Mar
2
2
Posted by Maureen Rouhi on March 2, 2010 in The Editor's Blog, Where is C&EN?
As I said yesterday, what Frank O’Connor of Heidolph Brinkmann is really excited about is Demo for Donations, which the company will implement at the ACS national meeting in San Francisco on March 21-25. According to O’Connor, Demo for Donations works like this: Meeting attendees sign up for a product demonstration at Heidolph’s booth, #1110, and Heidolph will contribute $10 per sign up to the Red Cross earthquake relief fund for Haiti.
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?
First Impressions At Pittcon
Mar
1
1
Posted by Maureen Rouhi on March 1, 2010 in The Editor's Blog, Where is C&EN?
For Pittcon 2010, the Orange County Convention Center is in its full glory. It’s one of the most beautiful convention centers in the county, said Annette Wilson, president of Pittcon 2010, at the opening ceremonies this morning, and I agree. It looks gorgeous from the outside. It is also huge, so huge that despite hosting more than 2,000 booths, more than 1000 exhibitors, and more than 2,000 technical papers, Pittcon occupies only the West Section. Advance registration totals more than 14,000.
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.
Blame It On The Brain(s) Behind The ACIEs Puns
Feb
11
11
Posted by Sarah Everts on February 11, 2010 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Ripped From the Pages, Where is C&EN?
So. My breaking point came a few weeks ago when I read one of ACIE’s genius abstract caption titles, “Just another Mannich Monday.” After laughing out loud, I proceeded to hum the cheesy tune by the Bangles, loudly, from C&EN’s rooftop Berlin office, for three days. From here until perpetuity, the lyrics “I can’t be late because I guess I just won’t get paid” will remind me of Mannich-derived, stereoselective, one-pot syntheses of “spirocycles, 1-aminoindanes, and 5,6-fused azabicycles that have a quaternary carbon center.”
Yeah yeah. I know I’m not the first to grin, groan, or comment about the puns, pop references, and general goofiness ACIE puts into its online abstracts. Many a blogger (Derek Lowe, Excimer, “Phil,” and Chiral Jones ) have also, um, “admired” ACIE’s ability to bring Shakespeare (“Double, double, no toil and trouble”), Star Trek (“Beam me up,” twice), the X-files (”The truth is out there“), and the disembodied voice from the London Underground (“Mind the gap”) into the world of chemistry. The journal has even gotten pretty risqué of late with “Metal ménage à trois” and “Balls galore!”
But Mannich Monday followed soon on the heels of the caption “The Write Stuff,” which permitted the New Kids On The Block hit–(oh yes, here’s the video)–to breach my consciousness for the first time in 20 years—a particularly traumatic reminder of the boy band phenomenon.
So much so, that I had to meet the evil mastermind behind it all.
(more…)
Snoverkill Safety
Feb
10
10
Posted by Kenneth Moore on February 10, 2010 in Chemistry is Everywhere, Where is C&EN?
Safety goggles protect the eyes from more than stray chemicals: this hardy worker protects his eyes from the driving wind and snow of today’s Snowpocalypse III, Snoverkill, GroceryStore Thunderdome, Snoverload, whatever you want to call it.
Although ACS offices have been closed all week, C&EN is still operating, and we do need to eat. Venturing into the tempest, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Maureen Rouhi, Associate Editor Linda Wang, and I went to pick up lunch for the seven of us who stayed in hotels in town or braved the commute to get to headquarters and produce the magazine on schedule. On our way back with the victuals, we encountered this fellow shoveling the sidewalk in front of the hotel/restaurant.
C&EN Enjoys Snoverkill
Most people in DC seem to have taken a light-hearted outlook to the past couple Snowpocalypses, unlike the first one in December, when a cop pulled a gun at a snowball fight. This fellow chuckled and was very happy to have his picture taken with Linda. As quoted from a fellow C&ENer who saw this photo, “Linda looks like she’s about to happily bonk the equally happy grinning dude! Reminds me of Japanese TV!”
Global Warming and Global Whining
Dec
19
19
Posted by Pedro Alvarez on December 19, 2009 in Copenhagen 2009
COP15 ended today with a political agreement to cap temperature rise to 2°C, reduce GHG emissions and raise financial assistance to developing countries (to $30 billion over the next three years) to adapt and mitigate against climate change. Many stake holders were disappointed that the meeting ended without reaching a legally binding agreement to reduce GHG emissions, as most experts had predicted. Many criticized this agreement as low in ambitions, poor on targets and vague on money. However, it represents a small but important step to move in the right direction, where countries recognize joint and differential responsibilities tailored to their economic and geopolitical capabilities and constraints.
Overall, I was left with a sense of frustration about the UN negotiating process, which is in urgent need of reform. Too much time was wasted in repetitive and digressive speeches, especially by countries who are neither particularly highly susceptible to climate change nor bring significant solutions to the table. Many breakout groups looked like procrastinating children that leave their homework until the last minute. At this level of negotiation, no time should be wasted to address global warming, so we should restrict the time devoted to global whining.
It is very difficult to make progress when there are so many people negotiating, often giving more importance to political considerations than to a scientific reality that demands our urgent attention. On the other hand, the current agreement reflects a compromise between the two major emitters – the USA and China, which is too few parties at the decision table. Considering that ten countries are responsible for 2/3 of the global CO2 emissions (i.e., China, USA, Russia, India, Japan, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, South Korea and Iran- ranked from higher to lower emitters), I think they should form a smaller group that includes a few representative of the G77 to continue the negotiations throughout the year, and commit early on to a transparent and accountable process that is essential to earn trust and build a common shared vision. If there is one thing that quickly makes us put aside differences is the threat of a common enemy, and we are facing an enemy created by our own actions- an enemy of devastating consequences on food security, global health, natural disasters and the economy. There is plenty of blame to share, but it is more important to find solutions that culprits and start preparing for next year, COP16 in Mexico.
COP15 Proletariats
Dec
18
18
Posted by Jerry Schnoor on December 18, 2009 in Copenhagen 2009
Posted on behalf of Anthony Berger, a student at the University of Iowa:
Stepping off the metro into the brisk Copenhagen air, seeing the Bella Center’s wind turbine circling ominously in the distance, and the sensing the invigorated buzz of conference participants mentally-preparing for the second week of COP15 to commence, I optimistically descended the steps from the metro platform.
After gazing excitedly at the facade of the conference venue, I began my search for the point at which the registration queue terminated. Continuing my walk to the end of the line, I denied admitting that this was indeed a very long line. Though initially worried I wouldn’t make a 9:00am meeting with my accrediting NGO (Mediators Beyond Borders), I convinced myself that the line would move steadily, and that I’d eventually make it to the meeting a few minutes late, at worst. I mean, the line had nearly quintupled in length, and my naivete precluded that most of these people would eventually be registered and admitted.
Hillary Hits a Double — Obama to Bat Clean-Up
Dec
17
17
Posted by Jerry Schnoor on December 17, 2009 in Copenhagen 2009
Hillary Clinton was a big hit today before a packed crowd of 300 news reporters in the main press hall at the COP15 Climate meeting. She was confident, convincing, and straight-forward while making two points crystal clear: 1) For the first time, she committed the U.S. to do its part towards an ambitious target of international assistance, ramping up to $100 billion per year by 2020, designated for the “poorest and most vulnerable countries” (translation– not including China); and 2) She emphasized that emission reductions will need to be strictly verified for all participating countries (including China).
Clinton admitted that there had been “all kinds of unfortunate discussions and disagreements” during these COP15 negotiations, sometimes about the past as well as the present. But regarding the financing of the agreement, she was clear: “The U.S. will do our part,” including both the long term as well as the fast-funding start of $10 billion per year in 2010 and $20 billion/yr by 2012.
In answer to a question about “transparency” (verification of emission reductions), Secretary Clinton was emphatic: “If there is not a commitment to transparency, then that is a deal-breaker for the U.S. — that undermines the whole effort.”
Clinton set the stage for the arrival of President Obama tomorrow and cast a ray of hope for a successful conclusion of COP15. Most feel a compromise can be reached regarding the transparency of emission reductions that will satisfy both the U.S. and China. The strong commitment of funding is key to bringing along African nations and those most affected by climate change already.
President Obama will need to use his personal popularity here and formidable diplomatic skills to hone a final agreement.
Most feel the Copenhagen Climate meeting will not end in a full-fledged, binding treaty. More likely, it will result in a political statement and agreement to pursue an operational accord (treaty) next year at COP16 in Mexico City. That’s unless Obama can drive in the winning run in Copenhagen tomorrow.
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