Where is C&EN?

Experimenting With Food

Posted by Melody Voith on June 30, 2008 in Chemistry and Food, Where is C&EN?

I’m in New Orleans at the International Food Technology show. Even before I left D.C., I made sure to tell everyone about it beforehand–“Did I tell you that I’m going to New Orleans for a food show?”–in order to inspire a little jealousy. So, I was having fun even before I got here.

But make no mistake, much like ACS meetings in New Orleans, this one is about The Science. The expo is enormous, and it covers the Alpha to Omega-3 of advances in formulating food with healthy or healthier ingredients.

Speaking of long-chain fatty acids, I met a longtime ACS member while he was trying brownies spiked with fish oil. (They were actually quite tasty.) Bryan Tungland (Isn’t that a great name for a food scientist?) says that if people want to spend less on health care and live longer, all they need to do is radically change their diets.

Almost every exhibitor had samples to try, but today, I am going to avoid the noshing. I got a little carried away yesterday and ended up with a heck of a stomachache.

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Postcard From Estonia

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.

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The Real Excitement At BIO

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on June 19, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

Walking the convention floor this afternoon, I heard a roar rise from somewhere on the floor, seemingly from the direction of the German pavillion. The cause of the commotion? A scientific breakthrough? An exciting deal announcement? Not even close. It seems Germany had been prescient enough to have a huge plasma-screen TV at their booth, and a crowd had gathered to watch Germany play Portugal in the Euro quarter-final.

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Highs And Lows Of BIO

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on June 19, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

When you attend a conference as big as BIO—more than 20,000 people have converged on San Diego—the chance of seeing some pretty heavy-hitting speakers is high. Unfortunately, the chance that a heavy-hitting speaker will be a speck in the distance is also high. The line for yesterday’s keynote luncheon, which featured the odd combination of J. Craig Venter (of human genome fame) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (of gubernatorial—or, depending who you ask, “I’ll be back”—fame), was already about a mile long an hour before the doors to the ballroom at the San Diego convention center were scheduled to open. I ended up in the “overflow” room, where I watched their speeches on a gigantic screen (and found myself oddly clapping along with everyone else at the end of Venter’s talk, even though he was several city blocks away). So it felt particularly special when, just a few hours later, I found myself at a media event hosted by Amgen, where I sat just 5 feet away as Elizabeth Edwards gave her perspective on innovation and the drug industry. It’s well known that Edwards is dealing with a recurrence of breast cancer, and she’s been a regular contributor to the national debate about health care.

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The BIO Circus In Full Swing

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on June 17, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

Greetings from sunny San Diego, site of this year’s annual meeting of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. I will try to post a few dispatches from the conference because I find that it hosts a truly unique intersection of multiple industries (drugs, agriculture, and energy), academia, and government. It’s also something of a circus. Every state wants to attract that next big biotech firm to boost its economic development and is hoping to promote the biotech “cluster” that already exists in its area. As such, the conference is flush with cocktail parties, giveaways, and myriad forms of reverie as state representatives try to woo attendees. This translates into the best swag I’ve seen at any conference around, not to mention an abundance of spending that makes me wonder how taxpayers in, say, Iowa, would feel about the excess.

The exhibit floor opened at 3 PM today, and as I walked to a meeting at a company’s booth at 3:30 PM, people were already walking around with armfuls of goodies. We’re not talking pens and buttons or raffles for an iPod shuffle. We’re talking basketballs and Crocs and the chance to win mountain bikes and trips to Europe. It’s pretty insane. If you’ve been to a meeting with better “prizes,” let us know in the comments!

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It’s All Relative: Inside The U.S. Chemistry Olympiad Study Camp

Posted by Linda Wang on June 13, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

“How do we look to someone who’s normal?” Ari Frankel, a high school senior from Buffalo Grove, Ill., asked me this morning, just hours before taking a four-hour final exam in chemistry.

I hesitated, not quite sure how to respond.

“Do you think we’re insane?” he pressed. “I mean, anyone who would spend two weeks studying chemistry nonstop has to seem insane to someone on the outside.”

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Art You Want To Eat

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?

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Mercury Fountains

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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