ChemCafé

During the second half of 2010 a term usually reserved to specialized audiences started to spread in mainstream media: the rare-earth elements. Although they are not so scarce as their name would suggest, increasing concerns about their availability in the near future were expressed, and a recent issue of Nature Materials featured several articles dedicated [...]

Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the world’s most widely manufactured chemicals and can be found virtually everywhere – it is present in many polymer plastics, food and drink containers, toys, computers, baby bottles, and medical equipment. BPA can easily leach from these products (e.g. in packaged food and drinks), and is therefore detectable in [...]

After yesterday’s Nobel Prize in Physics which went to two relatively young researchers (Andre Geim* and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester) for a very recent discovery (graphene, isolated in 2004), today’s Prize in Chemistry went to much older people for discoveries made 40 years ago: Richard F. Heck (emeritus professor at the [...]

Tuesday’s plenary session involved Bert Meijer (from Eindhoven University of Technology) speaking about self-organizing polymers into complex assemblies. Very interesting stuff, and I spent part of the day in the session of supramolecular chemistry, attending a lecture by Eric Anslyn on one of my favourite topics (arrays of differential sensors), and some time in [...]

Still reporting from Nürnberg (where the EuCheMS meeting takes place this week), I had the opportunity this morning to observe and think on how people behave at a conference.
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 [...]

Hi, I’m back on ChemCafé after a long, moreless justified, interruption.* I’m now reporting almost live from Nürnberg (Germany) where the 3rd edition of EuCheMS (unpronounceable acronym for European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences) chemistry congress takes place this week. I’ll try to send regularly short posts reflecting the atmosphere of this event.
Today was [...]

Synthetic chemists use to perform their reactions in various pieces of glassware such as round-bottomed flasks, vials, Schlenk tubes of simple beakers. An article recently published in PNAS(1) reports synthetic chemistry performed in an unusual environment, as the authors present it, ‘in the physiologically relevant context of a mouse‘!
The team from University of California (UC) [...]

To romantic people such as chemists, autumn and its spectacular colors provides every year an endless source of wonder. Rather unsurprisingly, a couple of coloured chemicals are involved in the process, which leads several billions tons of leaves to go from green to red, yellow or orange, and finally to fall and let the winter [...]

When inhalated, organophosphorus compounds can cause death within minutes. Although they are prohibited by the Chemical Convention Weapons, several states still possess large stockpiles of these chemicals, and terrorist organisations are not particularly known for complying with international conventions – one of these organophosphorus compounds is sarin, (in)famous for having been spread in the Tokyo [...]

It is a pity Mr Nobel did not think about including a prize for biology in his final will. Today’s announcement was eagerly awaited in my department, particularly since a very member of our institute was part of the Thomson Reuters nominees, which raised considerable buzz over the last couple of weeks. We all crossed [...]