The importance of rare earth elements is less obvious that that of more common resources – we don’t eat them nor power our cars with them. However, their use in many of recent high-tech innovations make them an invaluable resource for the decades to come: computer hard drives contain neodymium and dysprosium, tellurium is used in solar cells, and several rare earth elements are so far irreplacable in optical devices such as lasers, LEDs and phosphors. Although rare earths are not so scarce, their distribution on earth is uneven – and more than 90% are currently produced in China. The US and other countries consider (re)opening mining sites, but for the upcoming years, China will have an increasing weight and decision power over prices and distribution of rare earths.

In order to ensure a sustainable use of scarce elements, strong incentives will be needed. For example in Japan, a country without such resources which industry highly depends on importation, the Element Strategy Initiative is a good example of such efforts.[2] Besides reuse and recycling, the potential lack of such elements can be regarded as another challenge for researchers worldwide, who are trying to find alternative materials, thus reducing the need for rare earths in the future.[3]

More generally, the rare earth issue reflects a more general problem that may occur in the upcoming decades: I remember a seminar where a professor mentioned that, if the current trends go on, we will be running out of most precious metals (e.g., rhodium, platinum) in less than a hundred years. Further, resources of lithium (for rechargeable batteries) and phosphorous (for fertilizers) are also limited. In every single field, from ’simple’ food production to state-of-the-art technologies, the limited resources of our planet will eventually constrain us to play the equilibrist’s game of long-term sustainability.

References:

[1] Nature Materials 2011, 10, 157. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2985
[2] Nature Materials 2011, 10, 158. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2969
[3] Nature Materials 2011, 10, 162. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2973

See also:

Nature Photonics 2011, 5, 1. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2010.308

The second, more recent example of poor communication is provided by the recent buzz that accompanied the publication in Science by researchers from the NASA astrobiology institute and the US geological survey of the existence of bacteria that can integrate arsenic under certain conditions – a discovery that clearly expands the view of what it takes for living things to survive. The purpose here is not to discuss the validity of the presented science (others have done it better) but the way the information was handled and passed to general public. A few days before the official publication of the article, I found on the web page of a swiss popular journal an intriguing title about a discovery that “will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”, and was quite excited to see what it was about. Then came the proper article in Science. Although the research was quite interesting, I had some difficulties to see the direct link with extraterrestrial life. This is the first fact that is disturbing to me and, I imagine, to the general public: the press release promises E.T. and the finding turns out to be a bacterium… not so impressive at first sight! The second disturbing fact is the way the involved research team treated the (sometimes quite harsh) criticism that burgeoned soon after the release of the Science article: at first, they refused to address any type of criticism (see here), claiming that any further debate should be peer-reviewed as the article had been. It is perfectly understandable that they were not going to reply to every random blog commenting about their findings, but as they did start the fanfare with the initial press conference, they were expected to take their responsibilities when questions would come.

In retrospect, one of the very visible and damaging consequences of both cases appeared in recent interviews of the protagonists: Phil Jones for the infamous climategate at the University of East Anglia, and Felisa Wolfe-Simon for the bacterium isolated in California: both were unprepared to media exposure and went through extremely hard, exhausting times. This is at most partially their fault: scientists have been cloistered for a too long time in their ‘ivory towers’, and now that they are increasingly confronted to media and the public, they lack skills on how to deal with sudden broad exposure. I even know some professors who simply don’t see the point of talking to the public – there also exist good examples of scientists communicating to the public! – and I would strongly advocate a proper training for scientists in communication, particularly when it comes to speak to broader audiences or under particularly pressuring circumstances.

In order to keep credibility and respect, scientists must communicate to the general public in a way that is both honest and clearly understandable. This results in a general interest for research, as well as a better understanding of money spending by tax payers, who are in most places the first sponsor of science.

In a recent article in Science, Pires et al. report a new lithographic method based on the local desorption of an organic resist by a heatable probe. A hot, sharp tip is employed as a nano-pen to scratch a surface covered by a layer of a polyphenolic compound. Repeating the process over and over again results in 3-dimensional patterns, and the obtained motif can be transferred to various substrates. For example, they started by carving the IBM logo, but then needed a more demanding task. They tackled the challenge offered by the well known Matterhorn shape. The nanomountain was carved into a 100 nm thick film after 120 separate steps. The model they created (picture below) stands 25 nanometers tall, which is 179′120′000′000 smaller than the 4478 meter high Matterhorn!

AFM scan of the replica of the Matterhorn written into the molecular glass

New methods for nanofabrication allowing to create functional structures are highly seeked, and research such as that presended here is promising, because it seems to be scalable to more practical uses.

On the live webcast visible on the Nobelprize website, the Prize announcement was followed by a live phone interview with Prof. Negishi. He let the audience know he was awaken at 5 in the morning by the phone call announcing him the good news, and that he just had time for a coffee before the interview took place. I imagine this was but the beginning of a very long day for him! Quite amusing was when a journalist asked Negishi about the impact of his discoveries for the human beings. At that, Negishi responded something like ‘Do you have any knowledge of Grignard chemistry?’ The journalist laughed before admitting that he had no clue about it, and Negishi explained the impact of carbon cross couplings in much simpler terms.

* Andre Geim is probably the first researcher to detain a Nobel Prize together with a Ig Nobel Prize, obtained in 2000 for levitating a frog with magnets.

The next day, I saw a talk from Luisa de Cola, who makes really nice looking assemblies of zeolithes with alternating colors (very recently reported in Angewandte), and one from Lee Cronin who, presented the concept of iChell (hope Apple did not protect the name) as inorganic chemical cell, made of large polyoxometallate compounds.

Self-assembly of “green” zeolite crystals and "red” crystals leads to highly regular crystal chains with strictly alternating colors. (reproduced from Schulte, B., Tsotsalas, M., Becker, M., Studer, A. and De Cola, L. , Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. doi: 10.1002/anie.201002851)

Wednesday was also the day of the Congress Party, that took place in the VIP area of the football stadium (the easyCredit Stadion) with a big buffet and unlimited drinks, human table football games, and fireworks. That was quite a party, and a very good time… I hope they put some pics on the congress website soon!

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

The team from University of California (UC) Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led by Carolyn Bertozzi, adapted the methodology known as ‘click-chemistry‘ to the particular conditions required by ‘in vivo’ conditions. Indeed, the original ‘click’ procedures, developed by Barry Sharpless (2), involved the use of toxic copper catalysts. In their article, the authors use a copper-free click reaction to label glycans – sugars particularly abundant on the surface of cells, where they are active in cell activity signalling, as well as in response to infections – which are thought of as appealing target for molecular imaging inside living organisms.

The first step involved the injection of azide-containing sugar derivatives, which are known to metabolically label glycans with the azide function. Then, a purposedly designed molecule carrying a signalling unit as well as a function reactive towards azides, had to be injected. The click reaction proceeded and as a result, glycans could be labeled in vivo, which paves the way for future specific biomolecule labeling inside living organisms.

Click chemistry inside a mouse (reproduced from ref. 1)

References:
(1) Pamela V. Chang, Jennifer A. Prescher, Ellen M. Sletten, Jeremy M. Baskin, Isaac A. Miller, Nicholas J. Agard,
Anderson Lo, and Carolyn R. Bertozzi, “Copper-free click chemistry in living animals”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, published online before print January 14, 2010. doi:10.1073/pnas.0911116107

(2) H. C. Kolb, M. G. Finn and K. B. Sharpless “Click Chemistry: Diverse Chemical Function from a Few Good Reactions”, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2001, 40 2004–2021. doi:10.1002/1521-3773(20010601)40:11<2004::AID-ANIE2004>3.0.CO;2-5

In this context, lots of effort is dedicated to find ways to detect and destroy such compounds before they can cause harm. An appealing solution was recently proposed by a research team led by Julius Rebek, Jr. at the Scripps Institute. In an article recently published in Angewandte, they show how their novel molecules can signal the presence of organophosphorus compounds, but also render them harmless by undergoing a rapid reaction.

The sensing systems is based on an aromatic ring equipped with an oxime group (C=N-OH), which is known to react with organophosphorus compounds. The intermediate product instantaneously reacts further (which is important since at this point, the toxicity survives) to form a harmless decomposition compound and a fluorescent unit, which is used to signal the fact that the reaction has occured, and therefore the presence of toxic chemicals! Really smart approach!

References:
T. J. Dale, J. Rebek, Jr. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2009, 48, 7850 –7852. DOI: 10.1002/anie.200902820

Press release: Ring Closure as Warning

Of course, I am not critisizing the recipients‘ work (anyway, I couldn’t since I am a chemist and don’t know lots of things about ribosomes, apart from their double-potato shape they always have in basic biology textbooks) nor the fact that it deserves recognition, but the point is that the Nobel prize in chemistry went to people who actually do chemistry, say, five times in the last 10 years (2000: conductive polymers, 2001: catalysis, 2002: mass spec and NMR, 2003: cell membranes, 2004: ubiquitin and protein degradation, 2005: metathesis, 2006: eukaryotic transcription, 2007: chemistry on surfaces, 2008: GFP and 2009: ribosomes). So, what about creating a Nobel Prize in biology? They did it for Economics in the 60s…

Well now we just have to wait for next year – and hope that people working with molecules lighter than 50 kDa will be recognized as chemists. I’m quite sure there are hosts of guys working in organic synthesis, catalysis, nanotechnology or physical chemistry – to mention a few – who deserve to get the next Nobels. And regarding Grätzel… I keep my celebrating post for next year!

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.