Chemistry News

Alex stopped by last week. He has started graduate studies in chemistry at Stanford and is working in the lab of Prof. W.E. Moerner on single-molecule imaging of biological systems. And now that you know that, you probably know what a GUACAmole is.

Chemists know that Mole Day, the day set aside annually to celebrate Avogradro's number (or 6.02 x 10^23), actually occurs from 6:02 AM to 6:02 PM on October 23. Publication schedules being what they are, Chemistry & Engineering News didn't go public with last year's Mole Day announcement until the next day, C&ENews Oct 24, 2011, Newscripts, but when they did, they worked in a connection to Reed College:

… take Colin Purrington’s (Reed '88, Biology) advice and use a Sakura Gelly Roll pen. In 2003, after a leaky ceiling dripped all over his lab notebook, Purrington, a former professor of evolutionary biology, got serious about ink.

“My ink was fine” after the fateful incident, Purrington says, “but the episode prompted me to think a bit more about pen choice.” So he decided to test how various writing utensils stand up to hazards that scientists might meet while experimenting: water and heat. He also tested threats chemists regularly face, such as the organic solvents methanol, ethanol, and acetone. Out of the 14 pens Purrington tested, the Sakura Gelly Roll performed best.

Contrary to the reputation that Sharpies are permanent, their ink dissolved the most readily in each of the organic solvents, as did the ink in the Bic pens tested. And if the lab is toasty, scientists should avoid fountain and Pilot pens: Their ink fades the most when exposed to heat, Purrington found.

“I was taught how important it is to keep an accurate lab notebook in college by a chemistry professor,” Purrington says of his time at Reed College, in Oregon. Purrington’s professor had been involved in forensic court cases and stressed to his students the significance of collecting accurate raw data in case they are ever challenged.

Reed chemistry profs continue to stress the importance of accurate lab notebooks written in indelible ink. If you would like to see a photograph of one of Colin's experiments with lab notebooks, various types of inks, and how they hold up to solvents and heat, visit his blog.

Would I be overstating the facts if I said that papers published in Science magazine meet a higher standard for scientific importance and/or achievement? Probably not. And, as many scientists know, that’s why it is so darn hard to get a paper published in Science. They only accept a few.

It appears, though, that one strategy for becoming one of the lucky few to have “published in Science” is to make sure one of your co-authors has a degree from Reed. Here are two recent samples:

• “Determination of Noncovalent Docking by Infrared Spectroscopy of Cold Gas-Phase Complexes”, Science 10 Feb 2012, vol. 335, p. 694, Etienne Garand, Michael Z. Kamrath, Peter A. Jordan ’03, Arron B. Wolk, Christopher M. Leavitt, Anne B. McCoy, Scott J. Miller, Mark A. Johnson
• “Cytoplasmic Dynein Moves Through Uncoordinated Stepping of the AAA+ Ring Domains”, Science 13 Jan 2012, vol. 335, p. 221, Mark A. DeWitt ’06, Amy Y. Chang, Peter A. Combs, Ahmet Yildiz

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At the beginning of this month I attended a lecture at the University of Portland that was given by Prof. Robert Bergman, U. California-Berkeley. His presentation was titled, “Selective Stoichiometric and Catalytic Reactions in Water-Soluble Host-Guest Supramolecular Systems”.
Bergman pointed out that most of the research in this area is performed
in collaboration with scientists in other research groups at Berkeley,
but I was completely unprepared to see “R. LaLonde” listed as the lead
author on one of the projects described by Bergman.

“R. LaLonde” is none other than Rebecca (“Becky”) LaLonde ’01. A little investigatory work at the web site of her dissertation adviser, Prof. Dean Toste, led me to an alumni page and the following information: “Rebecca got her Ph.D. in 2010 and is currently working at DOW in Philidelphia.” (sic)

And the lucky encounters just keep piling up. A week ago I visited Vancouver, BC to attend the 2012 AAAS annual meeting. I had a little personal business to attend to, but as I prepared to step on to the escalator at the convention hall, who should step off but Kate Stoll ’04. “Dr. Kate” earned her Ph.D. work in biochemistry at U. Washington back in 2010. Then, after a brief postdoc, moved to Washington, DC, where she is currently working as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation.