Laurent Mathey, Development Editor – Chemical Science Blog

Author Archive

15th Host Guest Supramolecular Chemistry Annual Symposium RSC award winners

06 Jun 2017

The Host Guest Supramolecular Chemistry Annual Symposium (website in Japanese) is an annual event that is organized by the Association of Research for Host-Guest and Supramolecular Chemistry. This year, the 15^th occurrence of this symposium took place at the Ritsumeikan University on 3-4 June 2017. The event was attended by 230 people and counted 39 talks and 128 poster presentations.

The Chemical Science, ChemComm and Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry poster prizes were delivered to the 3 most outstanding poster presentations, along with 7 other poster prizes.

Nobuhiko Nishitani from Kyoto University was awarded the Chemical Science award for their poster titled: STM Observation of Cooperative Self-Assembly at the Liquid/Graphite Interface: Influence of Intercolumnar Interactions on Domain Size and Shape

Tsuyoshi Mashima from Osaka University was awarded the ChemComm award for their poster titled: Construction of Zn-substituted Hexameric Hemoprotein with Multiple Photosensitizers and Evaluation of its Light Harvesting Function

Tomokuni Kai from Tokyo Institute of Technology was awarded the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry award for their poster titled: Polyaromatic Micelles: Emission Enhancement of Eu(III)-complexes in Water upon Encapsulation

From right to left: Prof. Tatsuya Nabeshima (University of Tsukuba), Nobuhiko Nishitani, Tsuyoshi Mashima, Tomokuni Kai, and the poster prize winners, along with Prof. Hiromitsu Maeda (Ritsumeikan University, left) (Click to enlarge)

Dr Hiromitsu Urakami, from the Royal Society Chemistry, gave a lauded presentation on Publishing on 3^rd June.

Dr Hiromitsu Urakami

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Chemical Science lighting talk prize winner at UCCS 2017

04 Apr 2017

The 2017 University of California Symposium for the Chemical Sciences (UCSCS) was held on March 27-29, 2017 at the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Conference Center and was attended by over 100 University of California graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

The UCCS is a symposium for current graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in all fields of chemistry from all campuses of the University of California. The whole conference is organised by graduate students and postdocs from the UC campuses. The first UCCS meeting was held in March 2016, at the Lake Arrowhead conference center in Lake Arrowhead.

Chemical Science is proud to announce that the Chemical Science lighting tak prize was awarded to Dr Noelle Catarineu from University of California Berkeley. The prize was awarded by Dr Jennifer Griffiths.

Dr Catarineu’s talk was on Reticular Chemistry of Asymmetric Organic Linkers and One-Dimensional Secondary Building Units in Metal-Organic Frameworks.
Congratulations Noelle!

Dr Jennifer Griffiths (left) awarding the Chemical Science prize to Dr Noelle Catarineu (right)

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Awardees of the IUPAC 2017 distinguished women in chemistry or chemical engineering

14 Mar 2017

To celebrate International Women′s Day on the 8^th March 2017, IUPAC was pleased to announce the awardees of the IUPAC 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering:

Prof. Misako Aida, Hiroshima University, Japan
Prof. Lifeng Chi, Soochow University, Suzhou, China
Prof. M. Concepción Gimeno, Institute of Chemical Synthesis and Homogeneous Catalysis (ISQCH), CSIC-University of Zaragoza, Spain
Dr Jaqueline Kiplinger, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
Prof. Zafra Lerman, Malta Conferences Foundation, Evanston, IL, United States
Prof. Thisbe K. Lindhorst, Universität Kiel, Germany
Prof. Ekaterina Lokteva, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Prof. Yvonne Mascarenhas, University OF Sap Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil
Dr Veronika Ruth Meyer, Empa St. Gallen (retired), Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland
Prof. Ingrid Montes-González, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Prof. Frances Separovic, University of Melbourne, Australia
Prof. Jihong Yu, Jilin University, China

This award aims to acknowledge and promote the work of women chemists and chemical engineers throughout the world. All awardees have been selected based on excellence in basic or applied research, distinguished accomplishments in teaching or education, or demonstrated leadership or managerial excellence in the chemical sciences.

The award ceremony will take place during the IUPAC World Chemistry Congress in São Paulo, Brazil in July, coinciding with a special symposium on Women in Chemistry.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Jihong Yu, an Associate Editor for Chemical Science, has been awarded this prize. Congratulations!

Professor Jihong Yu

Professor Yu is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Secretary-General of the International Zeolite Association (IZA) and in 2015 was officially elected as Academician by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Professor Yu’s group’s research focuses on three main areas, including synthesis of new types of inorganic microporous materials, investigating new routes to the synthesis of inorganic microporous materials, and working toward the rational design and synthesis of inorganic microporous materials.

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Putting the ‘ant’ in antibiotics

08 Mar 2017

Bacteria living on African ants make polyketides that are active against some drug resistant bacteria, new research shows.

An impending crisis due to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria means there is high demand for new drugs to treat infections. Natural products shape the backbone of the antibiotics we use today, over half of which derive from compounds made byStreptomyces and other soil microbes. But researchers are now looking in more unusual locations for the next generation of antibiotics.

Source: © Royal Society of Chemistry
Formicamycins are more potent than the previously reported and structurally related fasamycins

Matt Hutchings from the University of East Anglia and colleagues have discovered a new family of antibacterial polyketides, called formicamycins, in bacteria living onTetraponera penzigi, a species of fungus-growing plant-ant. Not only have the team found a new family of molecules but the bacteria that made them, Streptomyces formicae, is new to the scientific community too. ‘Plant roots have lots of Streptomycesbacteria in them, and lots of insects like ants, particularly fungus-growing ants, also pick up these bacteria,’ Hutchings explains.

Read the full story by Adrian Robinson in Chemistry World.

This article is Open Access.

Z Qin et al., Chem. Sci., 2017, DOI: 10.1039/c6sc04265a

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Bürgenstock Conference 2017

17 Jan 2017

30 April – 4 May 2017, Brunnen, Switzerland

Apply now!

Started in 1965, The ‘SCS Conference on Stereochemistry’, better known as ‘Bürgenstock Conference’, is an outstanding international chemistry meeting of high scientific quality, with a focus on inter-disciplinary discussion.

According to the conference’s tradition, the 52^nd Bürgenstock Conference 2017 will be interdisciplinary, covering many areas of chemistry, and will be welcoming relevant highlights from neighbouring disciplines, with a strong focus on structural and mechanistic aspects.

Organizing Committee:

Prof. Christian Bochet (University of Fribourg)
Dr. Alain De Mesmaeker (Syngenta Crop Protection Research)
Prof. Cristina Nevado (University of Zurich)
Prof. Jérôme Lacour (University of Geneva)
Dr. Guido Koch (Novartis Pharma AG)
Prof. Helma Wennemers (ETH Zürich)

Our Executive Editor Philippa Hughes will be attending the conference. Meet her there!

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Basically record breaking

20 Dec 2016

Ortho-diethynylbenzene dianion is the strongest base ever made

Source: © Royal Society of Chemistry
The superbasic ortho-diethynylbenzene dianion (red) readily abstracts protons from many weak acids

The methyl anion H3C– was the strongest known base for 30 years, until Tian and colleagues made the lithium monoxide anion in 2008, which has held the record since. Now, scientists in Australia have knocked LiO– down to second place, making a gas-phase dianion with the highest basicity ever found.

Superbases with high proton affinities like n-butyl lithium and sodium hydride are fundamental to organic synthesis. Chemists use them to deprotonate weak acids – the weaker the acid, the stronger the base needed to deprotonate it.

Read the full story by Will Bergius in Chemistry World.

B L J Poad et al., Chem. Sci., 2016. DOI: 10.1039/c6sc01726f

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Royal Society of Chemistry and ACS Publications commit to ORCID integration

01 Dec 2016

On 28 November 2016, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society Publications Division, ACS Publications, both signed the ORCID Open Letter committing to unambiguous identification of all authors that publish in our journals.

The official press release can be found here: http://rsc.li/orcid

In brief, this partnership with ORCID will resolve ambiguity in researcher identification caused by name changes, cultural differences in name presentation, and the inconsistent use of name abbreviations, thereby ensuring their contributions are appropriately recognized and credited.

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Frontiers in Chemical Sciences (FICS-2016)

16 Nov 2016

8 – 10 December 2016, IIT Guwahati, India

The FICS-2016 conference is a national biennial conference hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati on 8-10 December 2016 in Guwahati, India.

The conference is mainly aimed at motivating and promoting aspiring young scientists in the field of chemistry and allied sciences, by giving them an opportunity to present their work alongside the stalwarts in the field.

All branches of chemistry and sister sciences will be covered, from theoretical to experimental and applied chemistry, as well as modern science and technology. The scientific program includes plenary sessions, invited talks, and poster presentations.

Chemical Science, ChemComm and Chem Soc Rev proudly sponsor this event: 3 poster prizes will be awarded at the conference on behalf of each journal.

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Multi-talented polymer more versatile than sum of its parts

08 Nov 2016

Researchers in China have designed multi-talented materials with mix-and-match functionalities, such as shape memory, self-healing or colour changes, which can be triggered by stimuli such as heat, light or voltage.

Source: © Royal Society of Chemistry - The polymer can heal a scratch (top left) or hole (bottom left) within 10 seconds when exposed to light

Stimuli-responsive polymers adapt to environmental changes, making them useful for applications such as drug delivery systems that exploit differences in pH to direct medicines to the required organs or thermochromic coatings for windows reversibly tint the glass in response to temperature.
However, integrating responsivity to numerous stimuli in smart polymers ‘in particular when considering a simple and feasible synthetic route’, has been challenging, notes Patrick Théato, from the University of Hamburg, Germany, who wasn’t involved in this work.

Read the full article in Chemistry World >>>

Multi-stimuli responsive and multi-functional oligoaniline-modified vitrimers
Qiaomei Chen, Xiaowen Yu, Zhiqiang Pei, Yang Yang, Yen Wei and Yan Ji
Chem. Sci., 2016, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C6SC02855A, Edge Article

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