There is not enough coffee for both me and America.

— Dr24Hours (@Dr24hours) May 13, 2013

To the network:

Grand CENtral: Guest Post: “#Chemclub” by Andrew Bissette

Newscripts: In Print: Shall We Play A Game? and Amusing News Aliquots

The Haystack: Biotech, Pharma, & VCs Offer Rare Disease Patient Groups Some Advice

The Watch Glass: “We can now make a few milligrams of anything” and Inspection, with Mustache and Membranes in Immunology and Making of Breaking Bad

Credit: Disney

Forget mouse ears. The best souvenir of your Disney vacation is your face on a 7.5-inch Stormtrooper figurine (or a figurine of yourself locked in carbonite after you have to pay for said vacation). [iO9]

Super geek dad builds 7-foot tall Transformer costumes in his spare time (with video). [Geeks Are Sexy]

The Newscripts gang loves irony. Like the burglary researcher whose work keeps getting plagiarized. [Improbable Research]

Tap … tap tap tap tap … tap tap tap tappp tap … It’s “Call Me Maybe,” why can’t you get that?! My fault?! No, you’re bad at communicating! [iO9]

Secret to hearing other galaxies? Be really, really quiet. Like, turn-off-your-cellphone-and-radio quiet. [NBC News]

Malaria parasites not only make mosquitoes more harmful, but also more hungry for human blood. Great. [BBC]

Kangaroo attacks an Australian politician during his jog, which is scary but also kind of adorable. [ABC News]

Also in Australia: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a hot-air balloon in the shape of a mammal with several nipples that’s supposed to make us reflect on our place in the world called Skywhale! [The Australian]

What’s the secret to living a long, healthy life? Well, it helps if you’re a woman. [BBC]

What’s it like to be a chemist?

Regular C&EN readers hopefully got a good idea from Carmen Drahl’s great article about #RealTimeChem. This growing project, led primarily by Jason Woolford, encourages chemists to share their lives, whether by blogging about it, or taking photos, or even remixing it with some dubstep.

#RealTimeChem Week took place in the last week of April. For one week, chemists from across the world blogged and tweeted intensively about their work and lives. This was a great chance to meet other chemists and hopefully to show the human face of chemistry to the outside world. Perhaps in the popular imagination we all wear labcoats and handle beakers of dry ice, but in reality we are diverse. Even within a particular field, two chemists will have very different labs and lives. #RealTimeChem is a fantastic way to showcase that diversity.

However, diversity has a downside. It is so easy to get absorbed in the details of your own narrow field that keeping up with even closely-related areas can be challenging. What’s worse is that this can be a vicious cycle: the less you know about a subject, the harder it is to keep abreast of things and to identify the really promising new findings.

Since reading as widely and thoughtfully as possible will always be essential, several aids for this purpose have appeared. For example, some reference managers suggest new papers, and journals regularly highlight important publications. My preferred solution is to ask a friend.

That’s why I started #chemclub.

We chemists are lucky to have a strong and enthusiastic online community, as #RealTimeChem week demonstrated. We’re a diverse lot, including everyone from undergraduates to professors, from a range of specialities. Being chemists, naturally every single one of these people is a shining beacon of genius.

#chemclub aims to draw on that collective wisdom. First and foremost we ask people to highlight the papers they’re reading. It’s very simple: anyone can post papers to Twitter with the hashtag #chemclub for public discussion, and every week I round up a selection on my blog, Behind NMR Lines.

The idea of #chemclub is to complement your reading with some papers you might otherwise have skipped, giving you an appreciation for new developments in other fields. Hopefully this will make it that little bit easier to build up a broad knowledge from across chemistry.

To this end we’re expanding #chemclub beyond just the hashtag. The first baby step is to include blogs in the regular round-up; there are plenty of great chemistry blogs out there, and many discuss recent papers in some detail. We’ll be focusing on those that offer context which the casual reader might miss.

Long-term, we’re looking at other ways to help chemists. Our next big thing will be #chemclub reviews: short, coffee-break reviews aimed at giving the reader a quick overview of a subject. Naturally these will lack the gory detail of an academic review, but hopefully will benefit your own reading by providing easily-digestible context and from someone who knows the subject intimately.

Ultimately, #chemclub is much like #RealTimeChem: it’s about community. We’re slowly building an online, ongoing literature meeting that users can dip in and out of, helping chemists to stay current with the literature, meet others from across the world, and broaden their knowledge.

Get involved by posting to the #chemclub hashtag on Twitter.

–Organize yourselves. Find as many patients as possible, and establish a registry that will make it easy for a drug firm to begin a clinical trial. “Beginning to identify people, getting them into a registry, and collecting natural history data is one of the most valuable things a developer can have when they’re thinking about a program,” says Genzyme’s CEO David Meeker. “Among the most helful things that patient advocates can do is to help us to understand the natural history of disease,” agrees Kevin Lee, CSO of Pfizer’s rare disease unit. “Without that understanding of how the disease progresses, and what the endpoints can be, its almost impossible to do drug development.”

–Find a way to collaborate with one another. In even the smallest of diseases, patient groups tend to proliferate. And while its natural and understandable for advocates to want to do all they can to help their own child or family member, it can lead to duplicative efforts. The disparate groups can also make it tougher for drug developers to access. “We all need to give everybody a lot of space here to do what they think is best, but in an optimal world, there are tremendous advantages to being coordinated,” Meeker says.

–Be connectors. Patient organizations have the amazing ability to bring together academics who had previous not collaborated. “What I have found over and over again is that patient advocates know the investigators in their field far better than the investigators themselves do,” says Christopher Austin, director of NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). “They can be instrumental there.”

–Get the right researchers interested. Often only a handful of academic researchers are working on a given rare disease, and drug developers say attracting new scientists into the field, while also giving careful consideration about who to fund is key. Patient groups should look for someone who can use advocacy funds to attract larger grants. “If they can get some grant support, you’ll get more done,” says Emil Kakkis, CEO of Ultragenyx. “If they can’t get any grant support, you’ll have to wonder if it was just because the disease is rare, or another reason.”

–Don’t cut corners. As more patient groups directly fund and organize natural history studies and early clinical trials, they need to make sure the work they support is of the same caliber as that done by biotechs or pharma. “Every data point they generate may some day be helpful in getting a drug approved,” says Philip Reilly, venture partner at Third Rock Ventures.

–Take the reins. With the passage of FDASIA last year, FDA committed to allowing patients more of a seat at the table during regulatory discussions. But the role patient groups will play—how they will be allowed to particulate and how much influence they have—is still to be determined. Ritu Baral, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, thinks there’s opportunity in that vagueness. “Give an inch, take a mile. If they’re going to define it, then we can define it as a patient group,” Baral, who also sits on the board of a disease foundation, says. “We can set the markers where we want to set them.”

–Help drug developers understand your needs. Drug companies are partnering with patient organizations earlier on in the drug process than in the past, convening patient advisory boards to understand how best to design a clinical trial, says Amy Waterhouse, vice president of regulatory affairs at Biomarin. That design ins’t just about regulatory practicalities, but about what families need out of the design in order to participate—a three day visit to a hospital instead of four, for example, can make all the difference. “We learn so much from discussions [with patient groups] that we wouldn’t get from the literature,” Waterhouse says.

The Nintendo Entertainment System came out in the U.S. almost 30 years ago. My family bought the gray video game console in 1988, and my friends and I played it for countless hours. We once staged a Nintendo Olympics, with each kid adopting an official song and flag. Winners received medals or a trophy made from Legos, I think. For this week’s Newscripts column, I relived a bit of my childhood when I wrote about a computer scientist who taught his computer how to play Nintendo games.

Stompin’ goombas: A computer scientist taught his computer to play Nintendo games such as “Super Mario Bros.” Credit: Tom W. Murphy VII

Tom W. Murphy VII is the computer scientist, and he works on machine learning, which is basically teaching computers how to perform specific tasks. (Yes, Murphy is the seventh Thomas Murphy in his family. He says the first died in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War.)

The neat thing about Murphy’s Nintendo-playing program is that it uses a simple, general strategy that works on several games, including the classic “Super Mario Bros.” The program can play a wide range of games because it doesn’t know anything specific about a game (for instance, it’s unaware that mushrooms make Mario grow big). Instead it uses a two-phase process to learn what it means to win in a specific game and then looks for the best series of button presses to succeed.

In the first phase, the computer “watches me play the game and peers inside the memory of the Nintendo and looks at what’s going on,” Murphy says. Basically, it finds bytes of memory that increase in value as Murphy plays. These bytes often correspond to things like the score or progress through a game level—although the program doesn’t know what the bytes translate to on the screen.

Next, the program starts playing the game itself. It simulates pressing different combinations of the eight buttons on a Nintendo controller. Going forward through the game, the program tests to see if the inputs make those winning bytes increase. If not, the computer goes back in time and tries another combination until it thinks it’s winning.

I think the program’s most impressive feat is how it stumbles on to moves that exploit bugs in the games. For example, Mario can jump into and kill a goomba—an evil sentient mushroom—as long as the plumber is falling slightly. A person would probably avoid trying this move because normally running into the mushrooms is deadly. But in this scenario, Mario is immune.

In control: A computer program learns which series of button presses will help it win as it plays Nintendo games. Credit: Evan-Amos

Why does the program try such a risky move? “It doesn’t really know what jumping is; it doesn’t know that goombas are dangerous,” Murphy says. Because the program is just trying a bunch of button presses to maximize the score, it doesn’t know not to try these moves, he says.

I suggest watching Murphy’s YouTube video about the program. He shows footage of its successes and failures. My favorite bit is at the very end when he talks about how poorly the program plays “Tetris.” The computer figures out things aren’t going its way, and to avoid defeat, it pauses the game right before the final block lands at the top of the screen. “And really, the only winning move is not to play,” Murphy says, referencing a famous line from “WarGames,” the 1983 movie about a video-game-playing supercomputer.

Oh, the ’80s nostalgia!

No, no, no *closes think geek* I can’t have ALL the things.

— Jamie Gallagher (@JamieBGall) May 9, 2013

And now, to the network:

Cleantech Chemistry: No Magic In China’s Solar Industry

Newscripts: In Print: Droplets of Rain, Strands of Honey and Amusing News Aliquots

The Safety Zone: On the importance of teaching safety and Patrick Harran arraigned on four felony counts, #SheriSangji case to be continued in June

The Watch Glass: Brain Chemistry and U.S. Prepares to Launch Sea-Air Study and Art Directors Club Selection, 1965 and Science, world politics, and human rights

University of California, Los Angeles, chemistry professor Patrick Harran was arraigned today on four felony charges of violating the state labor code. A Los Angeles County judge entered a not guilty plea on Harran’s behalf for all four counts. The charges stem from the death of research assistant Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji from injuries sustained in a 2008 fire in the professor’s lab

Another judge ruled last month that Harran should face trial on three charges, each citing a violation of a separate state safety regulation: failure to correct unsafe workplace conditions and procedures in a timely manner, failure to require work-appropriate clothing and personal protective equipment, and failure to provide chemical safety training to employees. The Los Angeles County District Attorneys added a fourth charge that essentially expanded on the clothing and protective equipment charge.

The new charge is for violating occupational safety regulation 3383(a), which states “body protection may be required for employees whose work exposes parts of their body, not otherwise protected as required by other orders in this article, to hazardous or flying substances or objects.” The original charge cited part (b) of that regulation: “Clothing appropriate for the work being done shall be worn. Loose sleeves, tails, ties, lapels, cuffs, or other loose clothing which can be entangled in moving machinery shall not be worn.”

At the arraignment today, Harran’s attorney, Thomas P. O’Brien, said Harran would not enter a plea because the defense team planned to file a demurrer motion to dismiss the charges. Deputy District Attorney Craig W. Hum argued that the defense could file the motion after the plea. The judge then entered the not guilty plea for Harran.

The case was assigned to a new courtroom and the next court date was set for June 27. The June 27 appearance will be a status update to see how ready both sides are for a trial.

High school junior Justin Beckerman tests out his submarine at Lake Hopatcong, in New Jersey. Credit: Saed Hindash/The Star-Ledger

Kids these days do some pretty wild stuff. This New Jersey teen built his own submarine. [NJ.com]

Approximately 78,000 people have paid money to apply to be one of the first four settlers on Mars. And for those who aren’t selected, Earth’s toilets still offer plenty of opportunity to flush money down the drain. [NBC News]

Listen to Paul. Don’t let sad kitten ruin your job interview. [ChemBark]

Here Europeans are worrying about horse in their meatballs, while Chinese consumers have to worry about bird flu in their KFC and rat in their mutton. [NPR]

Study finds that people with nicknames earn more than those with longer names. What do you think about that, Sport? [TheLadders]

Find some psych study conclusions a bit weird? That may be because their subjects were primarily WEIRD. [Slate]

Sucking on a child’s pacifier may promote the child’s defenses against allergies. It also teaches stressed-out parents how to self-soothe. [ScienceDaily]

And last but not least: Mates in Australia, check out today’s solar eclipse. The rest of the world can watch it via live feed. [National Geographic]

As members of the ACS Presidential Commission on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences, we challenge Richard N. Zare’s comment on the inappropriateness of including a recommendation about laboratory safety in our report “Advancing Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences” (C&EN, March 4, page 51). While admitting that safety is important, Zare states the report “should instead have been about preparing graduate students, about the future.”

What is more important in graduate education than ensuring students complete their research as safe and healthy as the day they entered graduate school? A graduate education is the ideal place to instill the mind-set that if you can’t do research while carrying out the best safety practices, then you shouldn’t do it at all. The recommendation to include safety in the final report was unanimously supported by all commission members. …

The facts are unequivocal. Occupational Safety & Health Administration statistics demonstrate that researchers are 11 times more likely to get hurt in an academic lab than in an industrial lab. There have been serious accidents in academic labs in recent years—including fatalities—that could have been prevented with the proper use of protective equipment and safer laboratory procedures.

Most chemistry and chemical engineering graduate students will find employment in industry. As new hires come on board, many companies spend weeks on remedial safety training before new hires are allowed to work in their labs. This clearly shows that the current state of graduate safety education is lacking and that there is a clear need to address it. If the report is supposed to focus on “preparing graduate students, about the future,” how can this not be a relevant topic? …

The “11 times more likely” statistic is inaccurately framed. I followed up on it with the letter authors and Lori Seiler, Dow’s associate director for environmental health and safety in research and development. The numbers actually compare the overall injury and illness rate for academic institutions (including those that might occur, for example, in grounds keeping or a dining hall as well as in laboratories) to Dow’s overall rate. Seiler adds that the injury and illness rate for Dow’s research laboratories is consistent with the company’s overall rate, when calculated per employee.

That said, it seems like it would be wise for the academic community to take this letter to heart.  Banholzer, Calabrese, and Confalone are not writing in a vacuum—they see the skills that chemistry graduates lack, and those skills are necessary whether those graduates are going on to work in industry, academia, or elsewhere.

On a related note, yours truly will be heading  to Virginia next week for the Council for Chemical Research annual meeting on May 19-21. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 19, I’ll be moderating a panel discussion on the pilot laboratory safety program that Dow began last year with the University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Petrichor: The rainy-day smell comes from a potpourri of compounds. Credit: Shutterstock

People living in the Bay Area rarely complain about the weather. But San Francisco-based Senior Editor Jyllian Kemsley tells Newscripts that, lately, she’s been a bit wistful for rain. “We’ve had very very little here since December. The California news last week, in fact, was that the water content in the snowpack is 17 percent of ‘normal,’ ” Jyllian says, noting that they probably mean “average” instead of “normal.”

So for this week’s Newscripts print column, Jyllian dug through old literature to learn the chemistry of the scent of rain–or petrichor, as Australian chemists Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas coined it in 1964. Turns out, they were able to isolate an oily yellow material responsible for the characteristic rain scent (that this Portland-raised Newscripts blogger knows so well). Although Jyllian doesn’t know the original motivations of rain-scent researchers, she does point out that Bear appears to have been a talented chemist.

Also inspired by a scientific question raised in the 1960s, Jyllian’s second Newscripts item discusses why honey and other viscous fluids don’t drip off of a spoon like water but instead stretch to lengths that seem to defy physics. Traditionally, scientists thought falling fluid is driven by gravity and not viscosity, but that doesn’t explain why honey can maintain a droopy strand for 10 meters or more, whereas a thin stream of water breaks up into droplets after a mere 10 cm. 

The ’60s scientists weren’t the only curiously fascinated ones. Assistant Editor Craig Bettenhausen says: “I distinctly remember when I was a kid turning on the sink, looking at it with a strobe light going, and having my mind blown by the realization that it was lots of little droplets and not a continuous stream.”

But thanks to a 2013 study, these collective curiosities are answered. The researchers found that the length of a fluid strand depends on small waves in the materials. These waves amplify over time and once large enough, break the fluid stream. Because viscosity dampens the amplification, honey gets to hang on a little big longer.