In my imagination, conferences in the past involved a passionate speaker (usually wearing a hat) who was disclosing his/her latest discoveries, vehemently speaking or writing on a blackboard (sometimes performing live experiments) while the audience was listening in a profound, respectful silence.

Today, what I saw was somewhat different – and I’m not talking of speakers not wearing hats. Actually, I was at a presentation seating next to a professor, who was preparing the powerpoint he was going to present in the afternoon. To do this, he had to ask his collaborator, seated next to him, about the meaning of some graphs he intended to include in the presentation. This took approximately one hour, and was quite disturbing to all the people around, since the discussion included mumblings and laughters.

So, without even considering half of the members of the audience who checked their e-mails or the news on CNN every 5 minutes on their iPhone, I was wondering whether the speaker was noticing this lack of attention. The answer I guessed is probably no (because speakers are generally too busy and stressed to notice what happens behind the front row) but still, I’m wondering why people go to talks to prepare their own slides??

Besides, I wanted to mention today’s plenary session, where Prof. Michael Grätzel from EPFL (it’s always funny to go abroad to attend talks from our own faculty) presented the latest advances in dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs). I still hope to write a full post about Prof. Grätzel’s work sometimes (like next October 6th), and here I just want to mention that there is now a Michael Grätzel Center in Wuhan (China) which, I think, is quite something. The optimism and enthusiasm of Prof. Grätzel are always extraordinarily communicative (especially when it comes to recent applications), and I’m deeply convinced that the future is bright for dye-sensitized solar cells

Now, to be complete, I must mention that WolframAlpha comes with some limitations – or should I say, it is still being developed – but may well become an interesting alternative to other search engines. Among the limitations, if for example you enter ‘taxol’ in the query bar, you obtain a very approximate structure of the molecule, with no mention of stereochemistry, although it is of prime importance for this type of molecules. It also seems that the notion of ‘buffer’ does not (yet) exist, even though a ‘buffer calculator’ would be quite useful…

So have a look at WolframAlpha if you need simple information (on chemistry or whatever else btw) and also have a look at their blog, reporting their latest innovations and ideas.

Chemically speaking, I’ll attend next week the International Symposium on Macrocyclic & Supramolecular Chemistry in Maastricht, the Netherlands, where I hope to find inspiration both for researching and for blogging!

Histamine is a very simple molecule which is present is basically every single cell of our bodies. It is produced through enzymatic decarboxylation of amino acid histidine. Histamine’s many roles include neurotransmission (particularly in the sleep regulation mechanism) and immunological response, explaining why it is involved in various immunological troubles, ranging from relatively mild allergies to severe autoimmune diseases.

Histamine

A high proportion of histamine is stored in cells called mastocytes, which are located mostly at ‘risky’ places where the outside world can come into contact with our internal tissues: skin, lungs, mouth, nose… sounds like places where we can feel allergies right? When an allergy reaction takes place, the (harmless to non-allergic people) allergen interacts at the surface of the mastocyte, inducing the release of a massive amount of histamine in the surrounding environment. This results in well known consequences, such as mucuous secretions, itchiness, conjunctivitis. To produce these effects, histamine needs to interact with particular receptors, called, not so surprisingly, histamine receptors. The easy solution to overcome these effects is to prevent the histamine+receptor interaction: this is done thanks to antihistamine molecules which are also binding to histamine receptors, but without inducing allergic symptoms (pharmacologically speaking, antihistamine is an inverse agonist of histamine).

Finally, what about the widely reported drowsiness side-effect? As stated before, histamine plays a role in the sleep regulation. Histamine metabolism is perturbated upon antihistamine injestion, and one of the side effects is a (slight) inhability to maintain vigilance. Recent drugs (including my relieving cetirizin) are supposed to possess attenuated side-effects, but in my experience it is still not perfect since I tend to feel an urge to sleep after each intake…

Cetirizine, the active compound of many antihistamine drugs.

And now, for people who would (should) be more interested in Prof. Müller’s work than in greek terminology, here are a couple of links to some of his most significant publications, mainly dealing with huge porous capsules, and therefore containing amazing pictures.

Spherical polyoxomolybdate based capsule. The 20 pores are occupied by guanidinium cations.

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2004, 43, 4466-4470;
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, 2085-2090;
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, 5039-5044;
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2002, 41, 3604-3609;
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 2000, 39, 1614-1616;

The good news is that people from the chemical stores told me the situation should improve this summer, but the prices will never go as low as before – there is apparently lots of money to get if you’re an acetonitrile supplier…