CiA_July 2017.pdf - Chemistry in Australia magazine |

• The declining art of scientific glassblowing• Andrew Holmes celebrates RACI’s centenary and 50 years of membership• Peter Doherty on marching for science

chemistryFrom Gothic to the GPO:a Melbourne architectural tour for Congress delegates

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in AustraliaJuly 2017

chemistryFrom Gothic to the GPO:a Melbourne architectural tour for Congress delegates

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The State Library of Victoria’s La Trobe Reading Room as viewed from the fifth floor. It comprisesfour landscape photos combined vertically. David Iliff/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

July 2017

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22A short city tour of MelbourneTrevor McAllister leads the way between some of Melbourne CBD’s greatbuildings.

cover story

18 RACI’s first 100 years: aninspiring chemical historyTo celebrate his 50th year as an RACImember and the Institute’s centenary,Andrew Holmes reflects on somegreat Australian chemistry over thepast century.

26 A rare and declining craft‘A bench all down one wall contained aselection of glassware apparentlycreated by a drunken glassblower withhiccups, and inside its byzantine coilscoloured liquids seethed and bubbled.’Terry Pratchett, Eric

Chemistry in Australia4 | July 2017

guest editorial

Founded in 1917, the RACI is the oldest scientific or technicalprofessional society in Australia. This month we are hosting oneof the most exciting activities as part of the Institute’scelebration of our first 100 years – the RACI Centenary Congress.As members read this column, many will be preparing to travelto Melbourne to participate in the many and varied activitiesassociated with the Congress. Some members and delegates maywell be reading this while they’re immersed in the Congressprogram. For Congress delegates who don’t normally receive acopy of Chemistry in Australia, I offer a particular welcome. Ihope you enjoy perusing this edition of our monthly magazine.I look forward to meeting with as many Congress delegates aspossible over the week of celebrations.

The Centenary Congress is the largest scientific and technicalmeeting ever organised by the RACI, with approximately3000 delegates attending over five days. The CentenaryCongress is an opportunity to celebrate the contributions thatchemistry has made to Australia’s, and the world’s, social,economic and intellectual advancement over the past century aswell as to look forward to the challenges and opportunities inthe century ahead.

The Centenary Congress brings together the RACI NationalCentenary Chemistry Conference, incorporating the 17th AsianChemical Congress, and seven international conferences allunder one roof. This structure allows the Congress to cover allof the major areas of the chemical sciences. All delegates to the

Congress will be able to satisfy their diverse interests across thechemical sciences by being able to freely move between anyand all of the parallel meetings.

The quality of the technical programs is first rate. Speakersinclude Nobel laureates, Australia’s Chief Scientist and a widerange of international leaders in chemistry research, educationand policy development, as well as captains of industry. Scientificsessions span the spectrum from creating new knowledge throughto translating our knowledge of chemistry into innovative newtechnologies that enhance our quality of life.

To encourage scientific discussions in less formalenvironments, special attention has been paid to the Congresssocial program, with a welcome reception, several conferencedinners and social functions coinciding with the various postersessions. Additionally, with many tours on offer in and aroundMelbourne, delegates will be able to enjoy the cuisine, winesand unique flora and fauna of Victoria. I am sure that alldelegates will enjoy a stimulating and pleasant Congress, fromboth the scientific and the technical points of view.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege over the past threeyears to serve as the Chair of the Congress organisingCommittee. However, this Congress has come together as theresult of the hard work and dedication of a large number ofcolleagues. The diverse technical program has been developedunder the leadership of Chairs of each of the PartnerConferences as well as the technical Divisions of the RACI. Thelogistics have been managed by a talented team ofprofessionals from ICMS Australasia under the stewardship ofEmma Bowyer. However, I pay particular tribute to the tirelessefforts of our CEO, Roger Stapleford. Roger has been the drivingforce behind almost every aspect of the Congress’s organisation.His creative thinking is first class, and his eye for detail isexceptional.

I look forward to the RACI Centenary Congress being aplatform from which the RACI will contribute to society for thenext 100 years.

EDITOR Sally WoollettPh (03) 5623 3971 [email protected]

PRODUCTION EDITORCatherine Greenwood [email protected]

PRODUCTIONControl Publications Pty Ltd [email protected]

BOOK REVIEWSDamien [email protected]

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTSDavid [email protected]

GENERAL ENQUIRIESRobyn TaylorPh/fax (03) 9328 2033/[email protected]

PRESIDENT Peter Junk FRACI CChem

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEESam Adeloju (Chair) [email protected], Amanda Ellis, Michael Gardiner, Helmut Hügel, Colin Scholes, Madeleine Schultz, Richard Thwaites

CONTRIBUTIONSContributors’ views are not necessarily endorsed by the RACI, and noresponsibility is accepted for accuracy of contributions. Visit the website’sresource centre at chemaust.raci.org.au for information about submissions.

© 2017 The Royal Australian Chemical Institute Inc. unlessotherwise attributed. Content must not be reproduced whollyor in part without written permission. Further details on thewebsite (chemaust.raci.org.au). ISSN 0314-4240 e-ISSN 1839-2539


Mark Buntine FRACI CChem, Centenary Congress Chair

RACI Centenary Congress: an opportunity to celebrate

Speakers include Nobellaureates, Australia’s ChiefScientist and a wide range ofinternational leaders inchemistry research,education and policydevelopment, as well ascaptains of industry.

http://chemaust.raci.org.au

Chemistry in Australia 5|July 2017

your say

I noted with interest Kieran Lim’s report (May, p. 40) on thedifficulties many students have with the mathematical aspectsof chemistry. Some years ago, a colleague and I explored thisissue (Fensham P.J., Lui J. School Science Review 2001,vol. 83(302), pp. 57–62), and so I can add a few other sourcesof this problem.

Chemistry textbooks rarely comment upon or explain the useof the symbol → in a chemical equation in contrast with thefamiliar = symbol used for equations in mathematics.Furthermore, many teachers simply start by introducing theequation expressions for chemical reactions, which include thesymbol →, without discussing how different chemicals can beadded, to produce yet further different chemicals, when inmathematics adding x apples and y oranges does not lead toanything new.

We found that in German mathematics, the two symbols arein use. The symbol = is used, say, for 6 + 4 = 10, meaning thequantity on the left side is equal to the quantity on the rightside. The symbol → is used in 6 + 4 → 7 + 3 to indicate that, ifyou add 4 to 6, you can produce new numbers, 7 and 3, whichis a process many Australian students will have practised intheir early stages of their learning about numbers.

We also found that while teachers can usually assume ratioand proportion have been taught and understood inmathematics before they are required in chemistry, the use ofthese concepts in even the simplest quantitative calculations ofa chemical reaction is considerably more complex and needsvery careful teaching.

Peter Fensham FRACI CChem

An oenological jibe at an Aussie inthe TrentinoBeing a regular reader of Geoffrey Scollary’s Grapevine articlesand being of Italian descent, I was most pleased with his‘Italian bubbles for summer’ article in the December2016/January 2017 edition (p. 40). Its review of the wines fromdifferent Italian regions brought back memories, as I’m sure itdid for many, of past and recent trips to Italy and theexperiences with its most convivial people.

I was particularly chuffed that the wines of the Trentinoregion (far north-east corner of the country) were mentioned, itbeing from where my father’s side of the family hale. When Iwas visiting the area recently, I stopped for a wine tasting,after which I purchased some fabulous wine in gorgeous gold-label bottles (presentation as you know is important!).

During the purchase I did mention that I was from Perth,Western Australia, to which the winemaker jokingly replied thatit was about time that we bought some of their wine, sincethey had bought copious amounts of wine from our MargaretRiver region! Just goes to show that Australian wine is makingan impact.

Alf Larcher FRACI CChem

RACI members and U3AThese comments follow on from an earlier article in November2016 (p. 26) titled ‘Science in the Third Age’.

I wrote to several high schools in Dubbo, New South Wales,before Science Week in August 2016 offering to give illustratedtalks with samples on any topic they wanted me to cover. Iespecially mentioned the new zirconium/rare earth mine andgold mining in the Central West, pollution, etc. Of the twoschools that replied, they were too busy with their programs. Ifit is not possible for chemists in Science Week to visit schools,we need another approach.

My suggestion is to work with the senior citizens attendingU3A in this country. I am taking a class for two hours a week atU3A in Dubbo this year. The topic is ‘Caring for theEnvironment’. I will cover the new zirconium/rare earth minenear Dubbo, gold and coal mining, pollution problems and othertopics that interest the class.

Informed senior citizens may then be able to help educateother family members and friends. The people who have turnedup to register for this year are very interested in the future ofAustralia.

Chris Owens FRACI CChem

Equations in maths and chemistry

‘Your say’ guidelinesWe will consider letters of up to 400 words in response tomaterial published in Chemistry in Australia or about novel ortopical issues relevant to chemistry. Letters accepted forpublication will be edited (no proof supplied) for clarity, spaceor legal reasons and published in print and online. Full nameand RACI membership type will be published. Please supply adaytime contact telephone number (not for publication).

Publication does not constitute an endorsement of anyopinions expressed by contributors. All letters becomecopyright of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute andmust not be reproduced without written permission.

Send letters to [email protected].

news


First Chief EnvironmentalScientist for VictoriaThe Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria hasappointed Dr Andrea Hinwood as Victoria’s first ChiefEnvironmental Scientist. An Associate Professor at Edith CowanUniversity and a sessional member of the State AdministrativeTribunal of Western Australia, Hinwood commenced her newrole on 1 May. She has previously worked with EPA Victoria inchemical and contaminated land management. The appointmentwas announced by EPA Victoria CEO Nial Finegan in March.According to EPA news, Hinwood will ‘provide advice to EPA’sleadership team and other senior decision makers, including theMinister for Environment and Victoria’s Chief Health Officer.’

Nuclear fuel in the spotlightThe evolution of and influences on public opinion aboutnuclear fuel use in Australia need to be revisited, according toa review of the South Australian nuclear fuel issue in Canberrain April. The Canberra meeting, a symposium organised by theEnergy Change Institute of the Australian National University incollaboration with the Academy of Science, ATSE and EngineersAustralia, reviewed the report of the South Australian NuclearFuel Cycle Royal Commission.

The Royal Commissioner, the former Governor of SouthAustralia, Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce, framed the symposiumwith a summary of the Royal Commission’s findings, followed bya series of panel discussions on topics involving keystakeholders in industry, government, research and relevantorganisations.

Given that social licence to operate was a key theme in allaspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, the symposium recommendedthat expertise in the humanities and social sciences be engagedto study the evolution and determining factors for publicopinion on nuclear issues in Australia. This could be facilitated,it said, by conducting an Australian Council of LearnedAcademies (ACOLA) research project on the ‘social licence tooperate’ on nuclear fuel use.

ACOLA’s predecessor organisation, the National AcademiesForum, published a major report, Understanding the formationof attitudes to nuclear power in Australia, in 2010. That reportrecommended a national, longitudinal program of research onattitudes to energy and climate change policy.

ATSE

The need to providecommunity with healthadvice was a driver incompleting my PhD inenvironmental exposure andcontinues to inform mycommunity-based researchand engagement.Dr Andrea Hinwood, EPA Victoria (quoted in EPA news)

… the Symposiumrecommends that expertise inthe humanities and socialsciences be engaged tostudy the evolution anddetermining factors for publicopinion on nuclear issues inAustralia.Excerpt from Nuclear Fuel Cycle Symposium communique

EPA Victoria


Experts are warning that moves toderegulate the US drug approval processcould see a flood of unproven and evenharmful new drugs enter the market thatcould threaten human health.

The warning follows a speech toCongress by President Trump in which hesaid the US Food and Drug Administration’sdrug approval process was ‘too slow andburdensome’, and where he promised to‘slash the restraints, not just at FDA butacross our government.’

Trump’s claims reinforce comments hemade in January to pharmaceuticalindustry executives, where he said: ‘We’regoing to be cutting regulations at a levelthat nobody’s ever seen before’, addingthat up to 80% of regulations could beslashed.

In an editorial in Nature on 29 March,three experts said moves to deregulatethe drug testing and approvals systemwill harm health everywhere, not just inthe US, and that such moves will alsostifle innovation and waste patients’ andtaxpayers’ money.

One of the letter’s authors, ProfessorJohn Rasko from the University of Sydneyand Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, saidTrump’s argument is consistent with ahistory of neoliberal economic thinkingthat claims regulatory agencies aresystematically biased towards excessivecaution, and that the burden of testing adrug’s efficacy before it comes to marketoutweighs the benefits.

‘They argue that potentially harmfuldrugs can be identified quickly after theygo on sale’, said Rasko, ‘and that the FDAruns an overly stringent system thatwithholds or delays safe and effectivedrugs from patients.’

These arguments are wrong, he says.‘The most extreme proponents of

deregulation say the market should bethe sole arbiter of utility: if a medicinesells well, then it must, therefore, be safeand effective.

‘A more moderate version of thisargument says reliable information on

safety and efficacy can be collected aftera drug is on sale, through observationalstudies or using biomarkers.

But Rasko and his co-authors, policyresearcher Douglas Sipp and healtheconomist Christopher McCabe, sayrelaxing the FDA’s regulatory system willsubject patients to drugs that may betoxic.

They point to the iconic example ofthalidomide – a 1950s drug prescribed fornausea during pregnancy – that causedmore than 10 000 birth defectsworldwide.

‘Even in the past dozen years, initiallypromising drugs, such as torcetrapib (forreducing cholesterol and heart-diseaserisk) and semagacestat (for improvingcognition in people with Alzheimer’sdisease), were found to cause harm onlyafter they had been tested in large,mandatory trials – effects that were notseen in the smaller trials’, said the authors.

Another problem with deregulatoryarguments is the issue of safe but‘useless’ drugs.

‘Untested drugs can be reasonablysafe but provide no benefit’, said Rasko,‘and unregulated markets are hopeless atsifting out these “futile drugs”. We onlyhave to consider the multibillion-dollarindustries in homeopathy and otherpseudo-medicines to see this.

‘These ineffective pills and potions area massive waste of money and providefalse hope to millions of peopleworldwide. What’s more, for progressivediseases such as cancer or multiplesclerosis, if a doctor were to prescribe adrug that didn’t work, she’d be giving adisease a free pass.’

Meanwhile, the current regulatorysystem is working well, said Rasko andhis colleagues.

In January 2017, the FDA released areport identifying 22 products that wereinitially promising but disappointed inlater-stage clinical trials: 14 for lack ofefficacy, one for lack of safety, and sevenfor both reasons.

Rasko said it’s important to considerhow far we have come thanks toregulatory agencies like the FDA, andwhat’s at stake right now as PresidentTrump considers appointing a possiblyradical new FDA commissioner.

‘The 1938 US Food, Drug, andCosmetic Act required only that drugsdemonstrate safety’, he said. ‘In 1962,new legislation demanded that marketeddrugs also go through well-controlledstudies to test for therapeutic benefit.

‘More than 1000 medical productswere subsequently withdrawn afterreviews found little or no evidence ofefficacy. The free market that existedbefore 1962 revealed no connectionbetween a drug’s ability to turn a profitand its clinical usefulness.’

The same is likely to be true of anyfuture deregulated market, the expertswarn in Nature.

‘Patients and doctors must haveaccess to reliable information to makeeducated and ethical choices.

‘But reliable information costs moneyand no one will invest in producinggood-quality evidence if they can makethe same profit on a drug or technologywithout it.

‘Rigorous clinical studies are still thebest way to learn whether a drug works,and regulation is essential to ensure thatthese studies are conducted.’

University of Sydney

Don’t relax drug approval process,experts warn

iStockphoto/negodina

news


Left to right: Nishar Hameed, MaximeMaghe and Srinivas Nunna on the AustralianSynchrotron Infrared Spectroscopybeamline.

Infrared (IR) imaging technology at theAustralian Synchrotron, developedspecifically for carbon fibre analysis, hascontributed to a better understanding ofchemical changes that affect structure inthe production of high-performancecarbon fibres using a precursor material.

A research collaboration led by CarbonNexus, a global carbon fibre researchfacility at Deakin University, SwinburneUniversity of Technology and members ofthe Infrared Microspectroscopy team atthe Australian Synchrotron, has justpublished a paper in the Journal ofMaterials Chemistry A (2017, issue 16),that identified and helped to explainimportant structural changes that occurduring the production of carbon fibres.

The research was undertaken toelucidate the exact chemicaltransformation occurring during the heattreatment of polyacrylonitrile (PAN),

which produced structural changes.The majority of commercial carbon

fibres are manufactured from PAN butthere has been an imperfection thatoccurred during production that affectedits material properties.

Because the conversion of PAN tocarbon fibre did not occur evenly acrossthe fibre, it resulted in a skin-corestructure.

Manufacturers want to prevent theformation of the skin-core structure inorder to enhance the strength of thefibres.

The research, led by Dr NisharHameed, provides the first quantitativedefinition on the chemical structuredevelopment along the radial direction ofPAN fibres using high-resolution IRimaging.

‘Although it has been more than halfa century that carbon fibres were firstdeveloped, the exact chemicaltransformations and the actual structuredevelopment during heat treatment isstill unknown.’

‘The most significant scientificoutcome of this study is that the criticalchemical reactions for structuredevelopment were found to be occurringat a faster rate in the core of the fibreduring heating, thus disrupting the morethan 50-year-old belief that this reactionoccurs at the periphery of the fibre dueto direct heat.’

A multitude of experimentaltechniques including IR spectroscopyconfirmed that structural differences

evolved along the radial direction of thefibres, which produced the imperfection.

The difference between skin and corein stabilised fibres evolved fromdifferences in the cross-linkingmechanism of molecular chains from theskin to the core.

The information could potentially helpmanufacturers improve the productionprocess and lead to better fibres.

‘Using a technique called attenuatedtotal reflection (ATR) to focus thesynchrotron beam, the IR beamlineallowed the research team to acquireimages across individual fibres, to seewhere carbon–carbon triple bonds in thePAN were being converted to doublebonds,’ said Dr Mark Tobin, PrincipalScientist, IR, at the AustralianSynchrotron, who is a co-author with DrPimm Vongsvivut and Dr Keith Bambery.

‘Previous IR studies have beenconducted on fibre bundles and powderedfibres, while we were able to analyse thecross-section of single filaments.’

To acquire detailed images of thefibres, which are only 12 micrometresacross, the IR team modified thebeamline for the experiment using ahighly polished germanium crystal tofocus the IR beam onto the fibres.

Lead author Srinivas Nunna received apostgraduate research award from theAustralian Institute of Nuclear Scienceand Engineering (AINSE) to support thestudy.

First published at www.synchrotron.org.au.

IR insights into carbon fibres

The American Chemical Society (ACS) announced in April athree-year collaboration with the Korean Chemical Society (KCS)to recognise outstanding contributions by distinguishedscientists in Korea. The collaboration includes an annual awardand a symposium.

The new ACS–KCS Excellence Award – sponsored by ChemicalAbstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society –honours a scientist working in Korea who is excelling in thefield of chemistry. The recipient is selected by KCS and receivesa cash award, three-year complimentary access to SciFinder and

a three-year ACS membership. The award will be presentedannually during the KCS spring meeting.

For 2017, the ACS–KCS Excellence Award recipient is DrSukbok Chang, a director of IBS, a professor at KAIST and anassociate editor of ACS Catalysis. Chang is being honoured forhis development of catalytic systems that enable highlyselective and efficient C–H functionalisation of low reactingmolecules. He received his award on 20 April.

American Chemical Society

American and Korean Chemical Societies collaborate to recogniseadvancement of science


The US National Center for Science andEngineering Statistics announced inJanuary the release of the 2017 Women,minorities, and persons with disabilities inscience and engineering report, the USgovernment’s most comprehensive look atthe participation of these threedemographic groups in science andengineering education and employment.

The report shows the degree to whichwomen, people with disabilities andminorities from three racial and ethnicgroups – black, Hispanic and AmericanIndian or Alaska Native – areunderrepresented in science andengineering (S&E). Women have reachedparity with men in educationalattainment but not in S&E employment.Underrepresented minorities account fordisproportionately smaller percentages inboth S&E education and employment.

Key findings include:• The types of schools where students

enrol vary among racial and ethnicgroups.

• Since the late 1990s, women haveearned about half of S&E bachelor’sdegrees. But their representationvaries widely by field, ranging from70% in psychology to 18% incomputer sciences.

• At every level – bachelor’s, master’sand doctorate – underrepresentedminority women earn a higherproportion of degrees than their malecounterparts. White women, incontrast, earn a smaller proportion ofdegrees than their male counterparts.

• Despite two decades of progress, awide gap in educational attainmentremains between underrepresentedminorities and whites and Asians, twogroups that have higherrepresentation in S&E education thanthey do in the US population.

• White men constitute about one-thirdof the overall US population; theycomprise half of the S&E workforce.Blacks, Hispanics and people withdisabilities are underrepresented inthe S&E workforce.

• Women’s participation in the workforcevaries greatly by field of occupation.

• In 2015, scientists and engineers hada lower unemployment rate comparedto the general US population (3.3%versus 5.8%), although the rate variedamong groups.For more information, including access

to the digest and data tables, seehttps://nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd.

National Science Foundation

Next phase for smallerelectronic devicesResearchers have made a technologicalbreakthrough that will help unlock thenext phase of creating smaller everydayelectronic devices such as mobile phonesand laptops.

In a paper published in April in NatureCommunications (doi:10.1038/ncomms15056), researchersreport the creation of a diode out of asingle molecule, which will help continuethe downsizing trend of electronicdevices.

Diodes, which are responsible fordirecting electric currents in mostcommon electronic devices, allowcurrents to flow in one direction whileblocking currents in the oppositedirection.

Lead researcher Dr Nadim Darwish,from Curtin University’s Department ofChemistry and Curtin Institute forFunctional Molecules and Interfaces, saidthe physical limit of current computingpower had been reached because today’sconventional technology was limited toallowing only the printing of millions ofdiodes on silicon chips, not thousands ofbillions of diodes.

‘While we are not the first to havecreated single-molecule diodes, thisdiode is much smaller and more efficientthan any previously reported. Using thistechnology, we can fit more than tenthousand billion diodes onto a 1 cm2 areaof a silicon chip, which will help make iteasier to develop even smaller everydayelectronic devices in the future.’ Darwishsaid.

Co-author Dr Simone Ciampi, also fromCurtin University, said the team ofresearchers was now focused onincreasing the mechanical stability of thediodes, to ensure it worked to open up arange of exciting technologicalpossibilities for modern electronicdevices.

The paper was co-authored byresearchers from the University ofBarcelona and the University of NewSouth Wales.

Curtin University

Women, minorities and persons withdisabilities in science and engineering report


news

Sorghum bicolor is widely used as a feedstock and biofuel.

Research by CSIRO now makes it possible to produce oil in theleaves and stems of plants as well as the seeds. This promisesto be a game changer in the global production of renewableoils. US-based company Amfora and CSIRO have signed anagreement that will advance development andcommercialisation of the technology to produce energy-richfeed for livestock.

In some plants, the research team has been able to getaround 35% oil content into vegetative tissue, the sameamount as in many oil seed crops.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall said the workdemonstrates the capacity of Australian researchers to developinnovative solutions for global industries.

‘It is estimated that in 20 years’ time we will need 50% moreplant-based oils just to meet the nutritional needs of a globalpopulation, and there is also a growing demand for renewablebiofuels’, Marshall said.

Amfora will use the technology to develop oil content in thevegetative tissue of corn and sorghum, meaning they canmarket a feed for dairy farmers that does not require them topurchase additional oils, such as tallow or cotton seed, tosupplement feeds.

Dairy cattle require around 7% fat in their diet to producemilk. If their feed already contains this fat in the form of oil,then this means less agricultural land is needed to produce feedand fewer greenhouse gas emissions are produced from feedproduction.

CSIRO

World’s most spoken language is‘Terpene’Research by microbial ecologists from the Netherlands Instituteof Ecology has demonstrated that two very different groups ofmicro-organisms use fragrances to communicate with eachother, the most common type being terpenes.

In only one gram of soil billions of micro-organisms arethriving, so that makes many ‘speakers’. On top of that, this‘chemical communication’ will probably work for many other lifeforms as well. This is what the research team discovers inScientific Reports, a relatively new journal from the Naturefamily (doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-00893-3).

The researchers have demonstrated that bacteria and fungirespond to each other. In other words, they can holdconversations. Group leader Paolina Garbeva explained,‘Serratia, a soil bacterium, can “smell” the fragrant terpenesproduced by Fusarium, a plant pathogenic fungus. It respondsby becoming motile and producing a terpene of its own.’

The researchers established this by studying which geneswere switched on by the bacterium, which proteins it began toproduce and which fragrance.

‘Such fragrances – or volatile organic compounds – are notjust some waste product, they are instruments targetedspecifically at long-distance communication between theseminute fungi and bacteria.’

But how widespread is this language of smells? Pathogenicsoil fungi such as Fusarium also have an effect aboveground,where they make plants sick. Can they communicate with thoseplants? Garbeva said, ‘We have known for some time that plantsand insects use terpenes to communicate with each other. Butwe’ve only just begun to realise that it’s actually much wider.There is a much larger group of “terpene-speakers”: micro-organisms.’

Fungi, protists, bacteria, and even higher animals. Terpenesact as pheromones, which makes them a regular ingredient ofperfumes. So it’s likely that the language of terpenes forms avast chemical communications network indeed.

Terpenes are by no means the only volatile organiccompounds that are in for a good chat. The researchers foundothers as well: in the soil, for instance. Garbeva’s PhD studentRuth Schmidt, the first author of the article, added, ‘Organismsare multilingual, but ‘Terpene’ is the one that’s used mostoften.’

Who knows, maybe without realising it we are nativespeakers too?

Netherlands Institute of Technology

Australia’s next oil boommight just come fromplants

Wikimedia/CCA-BY-SA3.0


Brewer Paul Holgate is quiteemphatic. The new subject hehelps teach at the University,‘An introduction to beerstyles’, does require studentsto swallow, not spit.

‘It’s the only way’, he says.‘The only way! This is what wedo in beer judging tounderstand style and a beer’scharacteristics. To get the fullhop or bitter sensation on theback of the tongue, you needto swallow the beer.’

The higher the percentageof hops, the more bitter thebeer, but students need tokeep in mind that bitternesscan be off-set by thesweetness of malt, which helpsdetermine a beer’s flavour andstyle. Tasting the beer will tella drinker all about that.

‘An introduction to beerstyles’ and ‘Sensory analysisand principles of brewing’ – two breadthsubjects introduced this year by theFaculty of Veterinary and AgriculturalSciences – cover a fair bit of beer-makingand drinking territory, with help fromPaul and Natasha Holgate, of HolgateBrewhouse in Woodend, 70 kilometresnorth-west of Melbourne.

Paul is a guest lecturer in the highlypopular ‘Beer: theory and craft’ subjects,which teach a range of skills to would-bebeer-makers. It’s a chance for students tolearn about a fast growing industry fromreal-world professionals.

For the Holgates, the subjects mark areturn to their old stomping ground. Thecouple met in the University’s chemistrylibrary in 1987. Both were chemistrymajors (BSc(Hons) 1989), who went onto work in the chemical industry beforePaul decided to take his enthusiasm forhome brewing and turn it into abusiness.

The couple moved to Woodend andbegan selling beer they made in abackyard shed. Eventually, they left theircorporate careers to concentrate on their

passion. The timing was perfect.By 2002, when the Holgates bought

an old hotel (circa 1896) in Woodend’smain street, interest in the craft-brewingmovement, which had begun in the USand Britain, was taking off in Australia.

It has been portrayed as a kind ofgrassroots rebellion against thedominance of big, multinational brewers.Paul says ‘craft brewing’, a term that hasbeen bastardised by big breweries,requires time, attention to detail andquality ingredients.

It has proved to be a winning formulafor Holgate Brewhouse, which has sinceexpanded to a restaurant and hotel, witha showroom and beer discovery centre inthe works. The Holgate brews sell in bars,pubs and outlets across Australia.

Subject coordinator Dr Charles Pagel,a lecturer in veterinary and agriculturalsciences and an avid home brewerhimself, says the study of craft brewingfits well with other University subjects inwine-making and viticulture.

‘Breadth subjects allow students tolearn about something they’re interested

in from outside the core disciplines oftheir degree’, he says. ‘Many of thestudents I have talked to are interestedin the recent rise of the craft-brewingmovement, and are keen to learn moreabout brewing and even to get theirhands dirty and have a go themselves.’

Dr Pagel says enrolments in thesubject have been high, prompting himto move classes to a bigger lecturetheatre and to add more practicalsessions. Students will learn the skills tobrew good-quality beer, with additionallectures in biochemistry, agriculture,sustainability and marketing.

Meanwhile, Paul and Natasha’sdaughter, Emily, is now at the Universitystudying a Bachelor of Arts. She has yetto say whether she will follow in herparent’s beer-brewing footsteps.

‘I think she would know a lot moreabout beer than regular kids her age,’says Paul. ‘We’ll wait and see. Let herenjoy uni first.’

By Jeni Port. First published in 3010 MelbourneUniversity Alumni magazine, unimelb.edu.au.3010,issue 1, 2017.

Students get a taste for brewingPaul and Natasha Holgate have takentheir beer-making knowledge to campus.Chris Hopkins

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23-28 July 2017

The oldest scientific ortechnical psociety in Australia, the

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Be social. Mingle in amongst old friends and make new ones. Celebrate the Centenary and enjoy yourself.

This novel congress concept involves all of the partner conferences running concurrently during the week allowing delegates to access sessions across a wide variety of chemistry disciplines.

Download the App from the Congress website.

Join the conversation#RACI100

Plan ahead, create your own itinerary and make contacts with other attendees.

Attend the Academic Sharp Brain• 10 intelligent minds will

pitch their ideas• Panel of experts vote for

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will compete by offering bigger dollars


Consult with your colleagues and make valuable connections. Speakers, sponsors and exhibitors and attendees alike are experts in their field.

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pitch their ideas• Panel of exper

23-28 July 2017Attend the Academic Sharp Brain• 10 intelligent minds will

pitch their ideasts vote for • Panel of exper

23-28 July 2017Join the conversation#RACI100

23-28 July 2017

society in Australia, theRoyal Australian ChemicalInstitute celebrates theircentenar

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research


The research teams of Christopher Barner-Kowollik and Peter Roesky at theQueensland University of Technology andKarlsruhe Institute of Technology,Germany, have pioneered a newmacromolecular catalyst by embeddingtransition-metal catalytic centres intofolded single-polymer chains(Knöfel N.D., Rothfuss H.,Willenbacher J., Barner-Kowollik C.,Roesky P.W. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017,56, 4950–4). Critically, the team wasable to demonstrate for the first timethat the folded polymer chains retaintheir original shape during catalysis andcan be readily removed from the reactionmixture by a simple precipitationprocedure and recycled. The teamdemonstrated the stability of the shapeof the single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs)via light-scattering, NMR andchromatographic methods. Remarkably,the folded single-chain macromolecularcatalysts showed similar activity to areference homogeneous metal catalyst,opening a new door to the design ofadvanced macromolecular catalysts. The

field of catalysis based on precision-mademacromolecules folded into well-designedcatalytic nano-environments ultimatelyaims to achieve the selectivity ofnaturally occurring catalysts such asenzymes, but with significantly enhancedstability and tailored specificity. The

team envisages being able to construct awide array of metal-containing single-chain folded systems for catalyticapplications, providing a significantimprovement over existing homocatalyticreactions.

University of New South Wales chemists have produced thestrongest organic acid, demonstrating that protein ions in highcharge states can protonate molecules and atoms that are

normally considered inert, such as argon and nitrogen, at roomtemperature. Such protein ‘superacids’ are >10 kJ/mol moreacidic than H2F

+, the primary acidic component offluoroantimonic acid and strongest acid on record(Zenaidee M.A., Leeming M.G., Zhang F., Funston T.T.,Donald W.A. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, doi:10.1002/anie.201702781). Protein sequence analysis isprimarily achieved by mass spectrometry and proteins withmore charges can be more readily sequenced than those withfewer charges. By forming highly charged protein ions, proteinscan be nearly completely sequenced from the mass spectra ofsingle charge states for proteins up to 66 kDa. The previouslimit for such experiments was 10 kDa (which covers <5% ofhuman proteins). Because these highly charged protein ions are>375 kJ/mol less basic than the components of electrosprayionisation solutions, this research resolves a longstandingdebate in the literature about how protein ions are formed inelectrospray ionisation. This finding could change the way thatmass spectrometers are designed – by modifying the ion sourceto reduce proton transfer, even higher charge states can begenerated to yield significant performance gains.

Turning proteins into the strongest known acids

Stable, recyclable catalysts using single polymer chains


Rapid protein purification and surface tethering for continuous flow biocatalysisEnzymatic assembly lines have evolvedover eons to synthesise a vast range ofbioactive compounds. Inspired by thepossibility of performing assembly linesyntheses in the laboratory, a researchteam at the University of California,Irvine, and Flinders University in SouthAustralia have developed a facile methodto purify and attach enzymes to thesurface of the glass tube in a vortexfluidic device for use under continuousflow conditions (Britton J., Dyer R.P.,Majumdar S., Raston C.L., Weiss G.A.Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 2296–301). Six proteins were purified andimmobilised in only 10 minutes to createa ‘reaction-ready’ system suitable for atleast five days of continuous flowprocessing. The proteins included tobaccoepi-aristolochene synthase, which isparticularly difficult to purify and workwith due to its propensity to aggregate;it was attached via a Hisn epitope fusedto the protein’s terminus. As multi-steptransformations become increasingly

popular in continuous flow synthesis, theauthors aim to use the new method todetermine what beneficial attributesrapidly immobilised proteins can yieldand whether it is possible to create

chemoenzymatic assembly lines outsideof the cell for the eventual synthesis ofcompounds vital to human health.

Anions typically form quite weaksupramolecular interactions, particularlyin competitive and/or protic solvents.But now researchers at the AustralianNational University, in collaboration withcolleagues at the University of Adelaide,have demonstrated that anions can beused to assemble porous supramolecularframework materials in water(Morshedi M., Thomas M., Tarzia A.,Doonan C.J., White N.G. Chem. Sci. 2017,8, 3019–25). The materials were

assembled by charge-assisted hydrogenbonds between tetratopic amidiniumreceptors and terephthalate anions.Impressive selectivity was observedduring the synthesis as no frameworkswere obtained if a range of other anionswas used in place of terephthalate(namely halides, nitrate, sulfate orisophthlate). Two forms of the frameworkwere prepared: one containing a networkof connected pores, and anothercontaining smaller discrete pores. The

researchers showed that these were thekinetic and thermodynamic forms of theframework, respectively, and that it waspossible to switch between the two inresponse to stimuli. Furthermore, theframeworks could be disassembled andrapidly re-assembled in response to acid–base triggers, suggesting that relatedmaterials could be used to selectivelybind and release guests.

Switchable supramolecular frameworks in water

research


Compiled by David Huang MRACI CChem ([email protected]). This section showcases the very best research carried out primarily in Australia. RACI memberswhose recent work has been published in high-impact journals (e.g. Nature, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem. Sci.) are encouraged to contribute generalsummaries, of no more than 200 words, and an image to David.

Exploiting nature in the fightagainst tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health burden, withtwo billion people currently infected with the microbethat causes it, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2015alone, TB was responsible for 1.8 million deathsworldwide. Perhaps most concerning is the rapidemergence of drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains,which means that new TB drugs with novel modes ofaction are desperately needed. A multi-disciplinaryteam led by researchers at the University of Sydney hasrecently reported a new class of anti-mycobacterialsderived from the sansanmycin family of naturalproducts, which has previously been shown to possessactivity against M. tuberculosis (Tran A.T., Watson E.E.,Pujari V., Conroy T., Dowman L.J., Giltrap A.M.,Pang A., Wong W.R., Linington R.G., Mahapatra S.,Saunders J., Charman S.A., West N.P., Bugg T.D.H.,Tod J., Dowson C.G., Roper D.I., Crick D.C.,Britton W.J., Payne R.J. Nat. Commun. 2017, 8,14414). A library of over 30 natural product analogueswas synthesised via an efficient solid-phase strategy,from which key structural features required for anti-mycobacterial activity were identified. Lead compoundsexhibited nanomolar activity against M. tuberculosisand were exquisitely selective over other clinicallyrelevant bacterial strains. The team subsequentlydetermined that the antimycobacterial activity of thecompounds stems from inhibition of the enzymetranslocase I (MurX) involved in peptidoglycanbiosynthesis. MurX has yet to be exploited as a TB drugtarget and so these natural product analogues serve asan exciting starting point for the development of anovel TB drug.

Hollow microtube arrays for efficientwater electrolysisElectrochemical water splitting is a key process in sustainableenergy technologies, but the electrochemical activity and durabilityof electrocatalysts must improve and their cost reduced for thisprocess to be commercially viable. Engineering well-definedmicro/nanostructures through a rational synthesis strategy is oneway to achieve this goal. Recently, Professor Shizhang Qiao of theUniversity of Adelaide and co-workers have developed anelectrochemical sacrificial-template strategy to prepare hollowCo3O4 microtube arrays featuring interesting hierarchical structuresfor electrocatalytic water splitting (Zhu Y.P., Ma T.Y., Jaroniec M.,Qiao S.Z. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017, 56, 1324–8). CoHPO4

microrods with low stability in alkaline media were employed astemplates for the Co3O4 microtube arrays, which were produced byanodic bias treatment. The resultant arrays could be used directlyfor electrocatalytic water splitting with high activity andremarkable stability, even surpassing the combined performance ofprecious metal IrO2/C and Pt/C benchmarks. The impressiveperformance is related to the considerable surface area, hierarchicalporosity and hollow structure, ensuring abundant active sites andexceptional mass transfer. Owing to the readily scalable synthesis,material availability, and excellent performance, this work pavesthe way for the exploitation of three-dimensional and free-standingelectrodes with well-structured morphologies and adjustablechemical compositions for high-efficiency water electrolysis orphotolysis.

What do you think when you receive anexhortation to publish in ‘an academic,online peer-reviewed journal’ that has thestated objective ‘to publish qualityresearch that undergoes a thoroughscrutiny process’? But their thoroughscrutiny does not extend to spelling‘chemistry’ correctly! Not much, I imagine.

We are all getting daily invitations tosubmit to or review for new ‘journals’, andthis seems to paint a picture of anexplosion of new journals. The mostannoying issue here is that we are beingasked to contribute to journals that haveno relationship to our area of expertise.

Additionally, the deluge of invitationsto give keynote presentations at a myriadof dubious conferences is a new worryingtrend. A salient example is when acolleague of mine at the University ofWestern Australia was issued with a cordialwelcome to be the chair/speaker in theconference theme ‘Snack Food and SweetFood, Baking Food’ on the basis of arecently published paper entitled ‘Sandwichand half-sandwich metal complexes derivedfrom …’. Clearly an amusing faux pas, butone begins to wonder what has driven theequivalent of the Nigerian email scam.

This phenomenon of predatorypublishing has been the subject of afascinating study by a Polish group whocreated the identity of fake scientistAnna O. Szust and applied on her behalf tothe editorial boards of 360 journals (seeNature, 543, 481–3, also the subject of anarticle in the New Yorker). Szust’s academicrecord was constructed to be inadequateand not of the standing to be approachedfor editorial board membership, but thatdid not hinder her appointment to 48 ofthose journals. In fairness, quite a numberrejected her application on these grounds;perhaps some of them recognised that‘Szust’ was Polish for fraud.

Most of these predatory publishers seekto profit from the fees that are requestedfor publishing in their so-called journaland their continued proliferation suggeststhat a significant proportion of people aretaking up the offer. What’s driving the

phenomenon? I imagine the ever-increasing scrutiny of academicperformance has driven unsuspectingacademics to try and accumulate thetokens required to remain in their jobs. Ina world where a keynote invitation to aninternational conference is promotioncurrency, such offers would be tempting.Thus, unqualified metrics have driven thephenomenon of predatory publishing andthe proliferation of dubious conferences.

The over-reliance on metrics such as h-index and journal impact factor, while easyto measure, is misplaced. Such instrumentsare rather blunt and lack the agilityrequired to effectively indicate quality andeven, perhaps, impact.

It used to be said that the one goodthing about being an academic chemistwas that our conferences were held in niceplaces. Now you have to be very carefulwhere you register. I regularly getconference invitations from Stefania, thelatest being ‘Seventh Joint InternationalConference organised by Institute ofResearch Engineers and Doctors’ and Ihaven’t the heart to tell them that I amnot an engineer. I’d like to be able to tellyou how to spot a predatory journal and abogus conference but the scams arebecoming sophisticated, unlike the recentone when advertising its AdvancedSynthesis and Catalysis Sessions, whichsuggested that chiral pharmaceuticals werecreated by enantioselective catalysisdefined as ‘synergist hilter kilteramalgamation’.

The question we face is whether thesepredatory journals are a clear threat orsimple ruses that are easily spotted andshould therefore be disregarded. Perhapsthere should be a return to a register ofpredatory journals, which was once online,compiled by University of Coloradolibrarian Jeffrey Beal. The only answer, inmy view, is good science published inrespectable journals. We all know whichthey are.

George Koutsantonis FRSC, FRACI CChem, Co-Editor-in-Chief, Australian Journal of Chemistry([email protected])

aust. j. chem.

July 2017

Would you publish in a ‘Chemsitry’journal and who is Stefania?

M1937 Eco IC Adv 275x76 20161213.indd 1 21/05/2017 20:03

To celebrate his 50thyear as an RACImember and theInstitute’s centenary,Andrew Holmesreflects on somegreat Australianchemistry over thepast century.

At the time that the RoyalAustralian Chemical Institutecelebrates its 100thanniversary in 2017, I shall

have been a member of theorganisation for 50 years, and I thinkthat is something to celebrate.

I decided to list some of theluminaries of the late 19th and 20thcentury that I would like to ‘invite back’to the 100th anniversary dinnercelebration. One could start with theearly giants recognised in the field ofchemistry in Australia (in those days,nearly always men).

Sir David Orme Masson was thefirst professor of chemistry at theUniversity of Melbourne and thefounder of the (Royal) AustralianChemical Institute in 1917. It would beinteresting to ask him whether hisvision had been fulfilled and what hewould expect today of the modernRACI. Masson worked closely with hismentor Sir William Ramsay (of Bristoland later UCL). They were veryinterested in the classification of theinert gases (and whether they shouldbe assigned to a special group in theperiodic table), and Masson


An inspiring chemical history

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introduced the ‘flap model’ of theperiodic table that is so eloquentlydiscussed in Ian Rae’s* article in the2013 volume of Historical Records ofAustralian Science, vol. 24, issue 1(June 2013). Masson classifiedhydrogen above fluorine in group VIIand I believe that version of theperiodic table was extant in at leastone lecture theatre in my earlyundergraduate years at the Universityof Melbourne.

Other notable dinner guests wouldbe the chemists who were thefoundation chemistry Fellows of thefledgling Australian Academy ofScience in 1954. These includephysical organic chemistRaymond J.W. Le Fèvre, agriculturalchemist James A. Prescott, andphysical chemist A.C. David Rivett(Masson’s successor at the Universityof Melbourne before he moved on tolead what is now CSIRO).

The next wave would includeinorganic chemist John S. Anderson,spectroscopist Noel Bayliss, organicchemist Arthur J. Birch, chemicalphysicist A. Lloyd G. Rees, and surfacechemist Ian Wark. Mineral chemistryresearch was extremely strong inAustralia, and the froth flotationprocess developed by Wark and hiscolleagues for extracting elementsfrom crude ore has gone from strengthto strength, most recently under theleadership of Graeme Jamieson whowas awarded the inaugural PM Prizefor Innovation in 2015. Thinking of themenu for the dinner we wouldcertainly wish to have a fish course. SirIan Wark was famous for a popularcommercial fishing fly called the ‘DrWark’ that he developed from aNorwegian design that made him themost productive trout fisherman on theBig River.

Most senior academic chemistryappointments in the early days inAustralia involved individuals who had

been trained abroad. With one or twoexceptions the majority came from theUK. Archibald Liversidge was an earlyappointee to the Chair of Chemistry atthe University of Sydney, RobertRobinson was the inaugural professorof Organic Chemistry from 1913 to1915, and according to Ian Rae’s 2005(vol. 52) article in Ambix thecontributions of Eustace Turner andGeorge Burrows created the importantdevelopment of organo-arsinecompounds as ligands in coordinationchemistry that spawned a number ofgenerations of successful chemists

from Sydney. Rae has drawn attentionto the fact that Edward Rennie was thefirst Australian-born chemist to hold achair in chemistry in an Australianuniversity.

In the late 1930s, the University ofSydney produced a number of verydistinguished chemists who went on toillustrious careers in the UK.Arthur J. Birch and Rita Harradenceshared the University Medal and theytogether with John Cornforth (whosubsequently married Rita and in 1975was awarded the Nobel Prize) all went

to Oxford to study for the DPhil underRobert Robinson, supported byscholarships from the RoyalCommission for the Exhibition of 1851.Other notable contemporary chemistswere Allan Maccoll andRonald S. Nyholm, who both heldchairs of chemistry when I studied forthe PhD at University College London.Birch returned to Australia to hold theChair of Organic Chemistry at Sydneybefore being lured to Manchester. Heultimately returned to found theResearch School of Chemistry at ANU


*I am grateful for stimulating discussions withhistorian of science Ian Rae (an organic chemist),who is co-editor of Historical Records of AustralianScience.

Other notabledinner guestswould be thechemists who werethe foundationchemistry Fellowsof the fledglingAustralianAcademy ofScience in 1954.

The Shine Dome, home to the Australian Academy of Science, in Canberra.Bidgee/CC BY 3.0

as a foundation Chair withDavid P. Craig (also then at UniversityCollege). Nyholm was also expectedto join them, but evidently changed hismind and remained in London.

The PhD degree was introduced inAustralian universities in the mid-1940s. Until then, Australianresearchers either finished theirresearch with a masters degree orwent abroad (largely to the UK) tocomplete a doctorate. In his 1999article in Historical Records ofAustralian Science, vol. 12, issue 3, IanRae describes the experiences ofsome 159 Australian chemists whoearned a UK doctorate between 1945and1965. He reports that by 1954 thenumber of homegrown doctoratesexceeded those that were earnedabroad. I consider myself as being atthe tail end of that mass migratoryexperience. As an undergraduate atthe University of Melbourne, I waslargely unaware in those early days ofthe opportunities for PhD research. Iwas passionate about chemistry andprobably chose science as a degreebecause I thought qualifying as amedical practitioner would take toolong. Little was I to know that it took meeven longer to obtain a tenuredacademic research appointment.

The University of Melbourne in theearly 1960s had benefited from theappointment of the organic chemistLloyd Jackman, an Australian who wasrecruited to Melbourne from ImperialCollege. Jackman was a specialist innuclear magnetic resonance andintroduced modern physical andmechanistic organic chemistry to thelecture courses as well as attracting astrong and talented cadre of researchstudents who have subsequently madean impact at home and abroad, helpedby Jackman’s influence in placing thenin strategic postdoctoral positions.There were not many women inteaching positions, but those that werethere were extremely influential.Emily Stephenson ran the teachinglabs with a rod of iron, and I learned somuch from her. She taught us among

many things how to use the old-fashioned water aspirator. To this day, Iwill always turn a water tap full on, andthen back half a turn to prevent thewasher swelling up, closing off andjamming. Valda Macrae became theofficial departmental historian and wasdeeply loved and admired by all whoknew her, and Joan Radford wasextremely influential in the area ofchemical education.

In those years in the mid-1960s, theRACI thrived. I believe there wereclose to 6000 members and themembership was dominated by thosewho worked in industry. Many of thelarger chemical companies had asignificant research laboratory inAustralia and often this was located inMelbourne. How different the situationis today, with fewer members andbarely any major chemical companydoing research in Australia. This is ourchallenge in the era of the NationalInnovation and Science Agenda. Muchresearch is being carried out in smallstart-up companies and in small andmedium enterprises (SMEs). Today, wemust find ways to connect the researchbase in chemistry with these end-users, many of whom are unaware ofthe opportunities available and forwhom the cost of funding suchresearch is beyond their ability. This iswhere the government can assist. Afundamental aspect of the NISA shouldbe a systematic program, funded bygovernment, of connecting researchprovider with end-user. The challengeI pose to the members of RACI is howwe draw new members from industryinto the organisation to try andestablish some of the impact andinfluence that RACI can exert on behalfof the discipline of chemistry in thecommunity. As well as enjoying thecompany of the giants of the previouscentury at our centenary dinner, Iwould include entrepreneurs andbusiness angels to re-establish thestrong engagement that obviouslyexisted in the past.

Towards the end of my Mastersresearch in Melbourne when


Chemistry Building, University of Melbourne.HistorygroupZRZ/CC BY 3.0

Many of the largerchemicalcompanies had asignificantresearchlaboratory inAustralia and oftenthis was located inMelbourne. Howdifferent thesituation is today ...

Lloyd Jackman was lured toPennsylvania State University, I wasencouraged to apply for a scholarshipto the UK. I was fortunate to beawarded a Shell Scholarship to studyfor the PhD degree withFranz Sondheimer at UniversityCollege London. Sondheimer hadmoved from Cambridge to London theyear I joined him. He wastremendously wealthy, owing to hisearly involvement with the companySyntex that developed the first femaleoral contraceptive, first in Mexico andlater in Palo Alto. Arthur Birch andGilbert Stork were consultants toSyntex. Sondheimer was a brilliantsteroid chemist, but is probably bestknow for his invention of the‘annulenes’ – the cyclic conjugatedhomologues of cyclobutadiene andbenzene respectively.

It was an exciting time to be inLondon at the end of the ‘swingingsixties’ but depressed a little whenPM Harold Wilson devalued thecurrency and told us that the ‘pound inyour pocket will still remain the same’.

Working with Sondheimer wasexhilarating, and many of his grouphad the opportunity of then going on todo postdoctoral work with the verybest chemists in the world. In my case,

it was the opportunity to work withAlber Eschenmoser at the ETH-Zürichon the end steps of the total synthesisof vitamin B12. This was supposed tobe a partnership with R.B. Woodward’sgroup in Harvard, but in reality it was arace that was pretty much a dead heat.

By the greatest good fortune, I wasoffered an academic appointment as ademonstrator (assistant lecturer) inCambridge. There I worked with someof the most intellectually ableacademic chemists in the world as wellas having the privilege (and thechallenge) of teaching undergraduateswho were far more able than I inchemistry, with the result that I had tolearn fast. We had outstandingresearch students who did excellentresearch. In fact, one of the professorsof physical chemistry once said to me‘If you can’t succeed as an academicresearcher in Cambridge, there issomething wrong and you shouldn’t behere!’

The message I’ve taken from myCambridge experience is to alwayskeep an open and enquiring mind andbe willing to take the calculated risk toembark on a new project, possibly in

partnership with someone who is anexpert in a different discipline. In mycase, with physicists, we were lucky tobe involved in developing light-emitting polymers for flat paneldisplays. Here in Australia we havebeen doing the reverse, printing largearea flexible solar cells. In addition wehave had a fabulous journey withTony Burgess and his colleagues in theLudwig Institute and now the Walterand Eliza Hall Institute in identifyingkey proteins in intracellular signallingin colon cancer cells.

My recommendation to youngresearchers is to move about – to otherinstitutes and other countries, and tobring back your experience to apply ithere or elsewhere to advance theessential body of scientific knowledgethat will empower society to beinnovative and productive and toprovide an economy that is a little bitmore advanced than one that relies onextracting our wealth from the Earth’scrust.

Andrew B. Holmes FRACI CChem is at the School ofChemistry, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne.


In the late 1930s,the University ofSydney produceda number of verydistinguishedchemists whowent on toillustrious careersin the UK.

University of Sydney, University Commemoration Day (‘Commem’) through streets, 1937.Sam Hood (1872–1953)/State Library of New South Wales

Trevor McAllisterleads the waybetween some ofMelbourne CBD’sgreat buildings.

If you’re a congress participantfrom out of town, then welcome toMelbourne! Please forget thetourist slogans ‘Marvellous

Melbourne’, coined by a visitingEnglish journalist in the 1880s, and‘The world’s most liveable city’, a triteassessment by the business travellersof the Economist. Come with me,instead, on a personalised journeythrough a select part of the city where Ihave lived for 48 years.

Just board the northbound 109 tramoutside the Congress Centre, whichwill take you across the river. On theother side of the river, you pass on theleft the place where the first settlers(from Tasmania) landed on30 August 1835 – now called

Enterprise Park, after the name of theirship. After a block, the tram will turnright into Collins Street.

Three blocks along Collins, youpass through the 1880s bankingdistrict, of which the Gothic Bank, onthe left at the corner of Collins andQueen, is the most remarkable,designed by William Wardell, one ofMelbourne’s leading ‘Gothic Revival’architects. The financial boom of the1880s led to a great crash in the 1890s,but it has left us these amazingbuildings. Get off the tram twointersections further, near SwanstonStreet. Take the pedestrian crossing tothe left and then cross Swanston Streetto the Melbourne Town Hall. The TownHall itself is a fairly typical neoclassical


MelbourneMelbourneofA short city tour

iStockphoto/Greens87

building of the 19th century. Itsfoundation stone at the corner was laidby the then Duke of Edinburgh in 1867(the second son of Queen Victoria).For many years, the auditorium wasthe home of the Melbourne SymphonyOrchestra until the new Arts Centrewas built across the river in 1982.

Turn and look back acrossSwanston at one of the mostremarkable buildings in Melbourne,the Manchester Unity. This marvellousexample of Art Deco ‘CommercialGothic’ was designed by MarcusBarlow and opened in 1932. Thenarrow vertical lines of the windows,the terracotta tiled façade and thetower are reminiscent of the ChicagoTribune building of 1927. One ofMelbourne’s most select apartments islocated in the tower. Next to theManchester Unity is the CapitolBuilding, also inspired by the Chicagostyle, by the architect Walter BurleyGriffin in the 1920s, when he and hiswife Marion Mahoney were living inMelbourne and designing the

Commonwealth capital, Canberra.From 1901 to 1927, the capital of theCommonwealth of Australia was inMelbourne.

Cross Collins Street to the corner ofSwanston and Collins, the site of one ofour planning failures, the so-calledCity Square. This unpromising spacewas once the site of the magnificentQueen Victoria arcade, which wasdemolished in a notorious act of civicvandalism in 1960. It and the RegentTheatre remained empty for decades,under a building union ban, until adeal was done to restore the theatreand build the Westin Hotel, which nowoverlooks the rather meagre Square.Note the statue of Burke and Wills, thetwo explorers who perished in thenorth Queensland outback in 1860.

Walk south along Swanston towardsFlinders, pausing to look across at theNicholas building, a 1920s building inthe ‘Commercial Palazzo’ style. AlfredNicholas was a St Kilda pharmacistwho was given the right tomanufacture aspirin in Australia during

the 1914–18 war against Germany,when the Bayer patents had beenexpropriated as enemy property bythe government of Billy Hughes. Someof the Nicholas fortune went into thisbuilding, designed by Harry Norris. Ithas a lovely arcade roofed in art decoglass tiles. Continue to the intersectionwith Flinders Street. St Paul’s Cathedralis on your left, built in 1890 butreplacing a church of the 1840s.Overcome any religious prejudicesyou may have and go inside to enjoythe stained glass windows, made inEngland by Clayton and Bell in 1887.

Manchester Unity Building.Stephen Bain/CC BY 3.0

Turn and look backacross Swanstonat one of the mostremarkablebuildings inMelbourne, theManchester Unity.

Diagonally across the intersection isFlinders Street Station, which has manylegends attached to it, one being thatthe design was a mistake, originallyintended for Bombay (now Mumbai).But this remarkable example of‘Edwardian Baroque’ is firmly fixed inMelbourne’s social history. The clocksunder the arch have been a meetingpoint since its opening in 1910. Whenthe timetables of the various train lineswent electronic, on screens inside thestation, it was proposed to remove theclocks, but an outcry caused theauthorities to relent. Cross Flinders toFederation Square, created in 2001(100 years after the federation of thecolonies to form the Commonwealth ofAustralia). The conservative citizens ofMelbourne did not like the modernarchitecture of the square when itopened, but they have grown used toit, and it has become the genuine city

square that Melbourne had lackedsince its foundation in 1835. Thecolours of the angular metal pieces ofthe façade mimic the colours of olderstone facades in nearby buildings onFlinders Street.

Continue over the river, acrossPrinces Bridge, to the Arts Centre onyour right, cross to the NationalGallery of Victoria (1968), go insidepast the famous water wall to the GreatHall at the back of the entrance lobbyand enjoy another stained glassexperience, the ceiling of the GreatHall, a modern design by the localartist Leonard French. You need to lieflat on the carpeted floor to appreciateit properly. Unlike the thin, leaded,medieval type of stained glass in StPaul’s, these ‘windows’ are of colouredslabs of glass, a style called dalle deverre by the French glassmakers whointroduced it in the 1930s. This ceiling

is one of the greatest stained glassworks in the world.

Take the tram or walk back over thePrinces Bridge, get off at Young andJackson’s Hotel (1860) and turn left intoFlinders Lane where you will come onCentre Place on the right, andDegraves Street on the left, two of themost photographed laneways in thecity with many al fresco cafes. Turnright and go through Centre Place andthe Centre Walk building to CollinsStreet. Take the pedestrian crossing,turn left at the other side and walkalong to the Block Arcade. This gem ofan arcade, a copy in miniature of theGalleria Vittorio Emmanuel in Milan,dates from 1890, and with itstessellated floor and high windowedVictorian shop fronts is probably themost photogenic of Melbournearcades. On the right is the HopetounTea Rooms, which were started by a


When the timetables of thevarious train lines wentelectronic, on screens inside thestation, it was proposed toremove the clocks, but an outcrycaused the authorities to relent.

Flinders Street Station illuminated for the 1954 Royal Visit. Public record Office Victoria/CC BY-SA 2.0

charity chaired by the wife of thegovernor of the day, Lady Hopetoun,and are eternally popular. Walkthrough Block Arcade to the rotundawhere the arcade turns left, and takethe small laneway on your right, whichwill allow you through to Little CollinsStreet. Cross the street to the RoyalArcade (1867). The tiled floor andVictorian shop fronts, plus the clockwith the Gog and Magog statues,make this a strong competitor with theBlock for the title of most loved arcadein the city.

Turn back into Little Collins Street,and turn left to Swanston. Take the tramor walk left along Swanston Street fortwo blocks to the neoclassical porticoof the State Library of Victoria (on theright). The forecourt in front of thelibrary (dating from 1856) is one of thegreat gathering points in the city, andthe start of many demonstrations (Iconfess to have been in quite a few inrecent years). The empty forecourt, ona Sunday morning in 1960, was thelocation of the last scene of the quietlygrim On the Beach movie (directed byStanley Kramer and starring GregoryPeck and Ava Gardiner) about the endof the world after a nuclear war. So dullwas Melbourne in those days that MsGardiner is reputed to have said ‘It’s agreat place to make a movie about theend of the world’. We trust that herghost has returned to view a verydifferent city! You should take time toenter the library and go to the LaTrobe Reading Room, one of the greatlibrary domes of the world.

Return along Swanston Street,walking or taking the tram one stop toBourke Street. Cross Swanston to theBourke Street Mall. Thispedestrianised strip was the subject ofa typical Melbournian stand-off inplanning in the 1980s. As a result, theTramways, being the most intransigentof the parties, managed to maintain therunning of trams though the mall.Avoiding these, walk along to the1930s Myer Emporium, anotherexample of ‘commercial gothic’.Alongside, on the corner with

Elizabeth Street, is the General PostOffice (GPO, 1867–87), forgotten nowbut once the point of telegraphcommunication with the rest of theworld. It is also remembered as thesad location in 1880 of the death of theartist S.T. Gill, the famous goldfieldssketcher, who drew the oftenreproduced ‘Doing the Block’ of the

fashionable class parading in CollinsStreet.

And this is where you can catch the96 tram, proceeding west to return tothe Congress Centre on the river.

Trevor McAllister FRACI [email protected] is retired and enjoyinglife after science as a tour guide at the MelbourneMuseum and the State Library of Victoria.


What’s on in July in Melbourne• Theatres and exhibition tour, Arts Centre Melbourne,

www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/whats-on/2017/tour/theatres-and-exhibition-tour

• Brave New World art exhibition, National Gallery of Victoriawww.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/brave-new-world

• ‘Changing face of Victoria’ tour, La Trobe Reading Room, State Library ofVictoria, www.slv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/changing-face-victoria-tour

• Laneway tours, www.meltours.com.au/tours/laneways• Run Melbourne, http://events.solemotive.com/run-melbourne-about• Scienceworks museum, museumvictoria.com.au/scienceworks• Screen Worlds, Australian Centre for the Moving Image,

www.acmi.net.au/events/screen-worlds

The Royal Arcade. Diliff/CC-BY-SA-2.5

http://events.solemotive.com/run-melbourne-about

‘A bench all downone wall contained aselection ofglasswareapparently createdby a drunkenglassblower withhiccups, and insideits byzantine coilscoloured liquidsseethed andbubbled.’ TerryPratchett, Eric

The art of professionalglassblowing pre-dates theEnlightenment. And theground-breaking scientists

who first attempted an orderlyunderstanding of the world (July 2014issue, p. 22) performed many of theirexperiments in glassware custom-made for this work.

According to the AmericanScientific Glassblowing Society, glassfirst appeared in Egypt as far back asabout 1500 BCE, used to glaze tiles.But it was a luxury item, and tookalmost another two millennia to spreadto common items, both socially andgeographically. It was only less than athousand years ago that we firstinvented a reliable way of keeping therain out of our homes, while stilladmitting the light (see box).

Glass remains an ideal material formodern scientific experimentation.Inert to most substances andtransparent, glass can be fashionedinto a near-infinite variety of vesselsand implements. It is so ubiquitous inapplication that it forms thefundamental trope representing thearchetypal chemical laboratory.

Yet the artisanal glassblower, likethe cooper or the farrier before him(or her), today practises a craft that isin decline. Although still essential forbespoke and advanced glasswork, therole of the professional glassblower isthreatened. In the 1970s and 80s, wetchemical glassware represented themajority of work for professionalglassblowers. This has been largelydisplaced by cheap imports of lower-quality catalogue glassware. And this,


A rareand

decliningcraft

BY DAVE SAMMUTiStockphoto/Cheitan


in turn, is leading to chronicunderinvestment in the nextgeneration in the craft.

Today, there are fewer than 30members of the ScientificGlassblowers Society of Australia andNew Zealand (SGSANZ). A generationago, almost every major scientificinstitution in Australia had a dedicatedglass workshop. With the recentclosure of ANU’s new facility (after only

a few years of operation), theassociation could now only point toQueensland University of Technologyand the University of Melbourneremaining.

Part of the challenge is that thereisn’t enough work in Australia tosupport the full-time creation ofbespoke pieces. The scientificglassblower needs a core of routinework to survive. Mike Brandon of

A window into historyThe humble window offers a greatview into the evolution of glassmaking techniques.

European windows were small,draughty and covered in oiledparchment (knock carefully!) orcloth. But Venetian glassblowers firstworked out a method to make flatglass: blow a closed cylinder, cut theends off, then cut the cylinderlengthwise – the cut glass could thenbe heated to sag to flat sheets. Overtime, the glass cylinders could bemade up to 2.4 metres long andaround 30 centimetres in diameter,and this came to be the dominantwindow glass production technologyin the 19th century.

New World glassblowers laterworked out a second method: theyspun molten glass on the end of apipe, using centripetal force. The‘crown glass’ discs could be as largeas 1.5 metres, but were commonlymuch smaller, and could be cut intorelatively small squares when cool. Atthe centre was a distinctive ‘bull’seye’ piece that are now collectors’items.

The Pilkington process, inventedin the UK in the 1950s, producescontinuous sheets of flat glass thatare made by floating molten glass ona pool of molten metal, typically tin.Via simple gravity, the molten metalnaturally forms a completely even,horizontal surface for the productionof consistent glass sheet of eventhickness. Common furnaces are9 metres wide and 45 metres long,and can contain more than1200 tonnes of glass at 1200°C. Andmodern understanding of annealingand layering processes means that wecan imbue strength and resilience tothe glass, so that its less likely tobreak, and less likely to cause injuryif it occurs. It’s all really quite clever.

A solubility cell. Brandon Scientific Glassblowing

Brandon Scientific Glassblowing, VicePresident of the SGSANZ, creates highvacuum stopcocks for his bread-and-butter work, primarily for exportmarkets. Other glassblowers mix theirtime between scientific and artisticglassblowing, or run their shops as ahobby.

Brandon was generous with his timein talking about the state of the craft.Starting as a trainee in New Zealand in1981, Brandon worked for the DSIR

(the equivalent to our own CSIRO).Coming from a chemistry background,this knowledge has served himthroughout his career to provide acontext and understanding for thepieces he produces. Brandon wastrained by a member of the BritishSociety of Scientific Glassblowers, butwas introduced to both American andGerman influences in his craft.

He moved to Australia to take up ajob at the University of Tasmania in1989, and in 2008 set up his owncompany. His enthusiasm for his craft isevident. ‘I love what I do. I enjoy thevariety of work, having to do researchwork and work for industry,agriculture, aquaculture and the arts.I’ve done all sorts of weird andinteresting work over the years. It is agreat craft to be lucky enough to be in.’

But there are few students taking upthe craft. Apprenticeships are long – atleast five years. Brandon says thatthey’re expensive for the master, andchallenging for the apprentice. It isvery difficult, he says, when it is likelythat every single piece that theapprentice produces in the first yearwill be discarded. That’s costly inlabour, the master’s time andmaterials, and requires a great deal offortitude as the apprentice learns thecraft.

The British Society of ScientificGlassblowers is the primary certifyingauthority for Australian and NewZealand glassblowers, with acertificate of competence taking aminimum of three years to attain(probably much longer) across avariety of work. And this requirementfor varied experience poses anotherchallenge to apprentices as the workdries up.

The modern scientific glassworkshop is much more sophisticatedthan just furnaces and tongs (whatBrandon refers to as ‘pot workers’).Brandon says ‘We’re mainly “lampworkers”, working at a bench with alamp [a flame], fabricating scientificglass instruments from tubing and rod.And we use instruments like


Ammonia neutralisation apparatus.Brandon Scientific Glassblowing

The modernscientific glassworkshop is muchmore sophisticatedthan just furnacesand tongs ...

glassblowing lathes designed to workthe materials, with specialised burners– not like a normal engineering lathe’.

‘You could be working somethingvery fine and intricate to somethinglarge. I’ve worked with oxygen probesdown to microns in size, up to reactionvessels up to 100 litres. In myworkshop I can work a very widerange.’

But a workshop requires asubstantive investment, and with noapprentice to take over from Brandonin the later years of his career, he isconcerned that one day his workshopwill need to be broken up, and hisspecialist equipment separated andsold for a fraction of its value.

The key for preserving the craft,according to Brandon, is to think locallyas a scientific community. ‘At Australianuniversities, a student can buywhatever they like off the internet.There is no control, no loyalty toAustralian suppliers. If the universitiesand the research labs gave their localindustry a second thought, it might beenough to give support to warrantinvesting in the future. Any scientificcommunity still requires our skill set.’

Brandon says: ‘The craft is in itssenior years, no doubt. But there’salways going to be a demand there.Science changes all the time, sotherefore the demands on yourglassware will change. But withoutsome sort of acknowledgement thatthe craft needs to continue by thepeople who make the decisions … it’sup to Australia to support its localindustry or there won’t be aglassblower out there to do one-offjobs.’

Dave Sammut FRACI CChem is principal of DCSTechnical, a boutique scientific consultancy,providing services to the Australian and internationalminerals, waste recycling and general scientificindustries.

July 2017

Some good news emerged from the Savannah RiverNational Laboratory of South Carolina, US, in December2016. The lab announced the hiring of its first femalescientific glassblower, Chandra Babbitt. A third-generation glassblower, Babbitt was quoted as saying‘Glassblowing is a skill that has to be perfect. Inscientific glassblowing, there can be no flaws. Someoneis depending on you to make it right.’

US laboratory employs first female scientific glassblower

A jacketed sparging vessel. Brandon Scientific Glassblowing

bodu9/iStockphoto

raci news

If you’re a scientist who works in a publicly funded role, thenScience Meets Parliament (SmP) is about your continuedsurvival. Government policy and attitudes towards sciencematters greatly to your employment and ability to attain grants.It’s thus no surprise that SmP is seemingly swamped with thebest and brightest from this sector. For both the employingorganisations and the individuals concerned, attendance at SmPhas potential long-term benefits. But what about the privatesector?

I started my career as a publicly funded researcher, but afterseven years I left to join the private sector (23 years ago) dueto government policy changes affecting funding at the time. Asan industrial consultant who founded his own company 20 yearsago and has a very broad-based experience servicing clientsacross all sectors of industry (private and public), I recognisethat many fellow industrial experienced colleagues would havesome well-justified reservations about events such as SmP.

Those in the private sector familiar with obtaininggovernment funding (whether through sole supplier status,preferred supplier tender panels or open tenders/contracts)know that it is the program managers and project managers whoultimately decide selection and consequent commercialoutcomes. Politicians are not generally of any commercialinterest whatsoever. Neither are senior and especially executivelevel bureaucrats/technocrats.

The format of SmP makes it highly unlikely to result in anydirect personal or corporate gain to anyone in the privatesector. A half-hour meeting with a parliamentarian is not aparticularly effective platform for seeking any specific or evengeneral lobby endpoint. This raises the question: ‘Why attend?’.

This year, approximately 200 highly selected delegates and70 parliamentarians (out of a total of 226; approximately 30%)attended SmP. The organisers of SmP (STA) effectivelycontrolled proportional representation by the manner that theyallocated delegate numbers among their member organisations(the vast majority of whom are government, public research andacademia). As a general (affiliate) member of STA, RACI senttwo delegates (1% of delegates) to represent the entirespectrum of the chemical profession (public and private). Thisyear, STA extended to also include two delegate slots forindigenous women and up to a maximum of 10 delegates fromindustry (other than those via its members).

The only direct interaction was (if opportunity allowed fordirect conversations) at the Gala dinner (where most tables hadone parliamentarian) and any scheduled nominal 30-minutemeeting(s) planned for the next day. As noted by someattending parliamentarians, it’s a sad indictment on the extentof the absent 70% of politicians who either had no interest orcalculated no political benefit from being seen with some of thefinest scientific minds in the nation (both established and upand coming stars). While some may well have had good reasonsfor not attending, the more likely case is that most (if not all

non-attenders) viewed SmP as a political liability or of no valueto themselves. This also raises the question of why the 30% ofparliamentarians who did attend showed up.

As scientists, especially industrial consultants, we strive tobe situationally aware at all times and to test any hypothesis orconclusion we derive from those observations with the view tofilter out hype, misdirection and presentations in order touncover the underlying objective truths. We observe first, thinklater, then test. But we always observe carefully first becauseotherwise we are liable to only see what was expected orcrafted for our consumption. It’s vital not to forget that,especially when a sense of occasion and pomp and ceremonyare added to the mix.

It can’t be overstated because of the many instances ofincongruity I witnessed. Whether in presentations, speech or aspart of discussions, what was said may have been true (in partor whole), but it was always seemingly incomplete. Thus it wasappropriate to test the underlying intent, integrity andcompleteness of what was said.

Everyone who attended SmP likely had their own motivationfor doing so. Mine was to get industry into the conversation. Inparticular, it was to highlight the concept that science (and inparticular industrial science) can positively contribute creativeand viable solutions to political and economic issues acrossmost, if not all, portfolios.

The simple fact is that the reality in Australia has been acontinuing trend over the last few decades of closure anddowngrading of many chemical and related industries. The resulthas been that consulting and employment opportunities withinthe private sector have significantly deteriorated. The trendcontinues unabated (despite any political talk to the contrary)with many companies closing, shrinking or simply beinguneconomically viable to continue for much longer. Politicalspeech about jobs is the mainstay of politics yet manufacturinghas been thrown on the scrapheap by successive governments


Science Meets Parliament 2017: a cost–benefit analysis

As noted by some attendingparliamentarians, it’s a sadindictment on the extent ofthe absent 70% of politicianswho either had no interest orcalculated no political benefitfrom being seen with some ofthe finest scientific minds inthe nation (both establishedand up and coming stars).

of either party. Scientists are ubiquitous insociety and yet do not vote as a collectivebloc and so are a largely ignorable andinvisible part of the electorate.

My scheduled parliamentarian was theHon Richard Marles MP, Shadow Minister forDefence. The meeting was very enjoyableand seemed mutually so. I found him quitenuanced and focused. Clearly veryintelligent and thoughtful, he weighedeach sentence and response with care tounderstand and analyse on the fly withconsidered responses.

I tested intent. When I asked him ‘Whatcan we do for you?’, his response was‘Scientists should engage more in politics’.Drawing on the entire conversation pluspresentations made throughout SmP, itbecame apparent that the underlyingdriving political need was to havescientists provide politicians with crediblebacking for pre-existing policy platforms(that may have had no prior scientificinput).

During conversations, I created on the spot an example of anew product of potential use in his portfolio, using relativelysimple technology and cheap, easily sourced materials frombusinesses in his electorate of Geelong that could be conductedusing known existing capabilities within CSIRO and DST Group.Further, the products could have applications outside of hisportfolio and could form the basis for exports of value-addedhigh tech.

Despite interest during our discussions, diligent follow-upresulted in no response.

The particular example I created is immaterial. The value layin demonstrating that solutions can be created at will that areviable, economical and within capabilities and utilise publicresearchers in a way that can boost the economy.

Serendipity played a major role in the days when Iconducted clinical cancer research so it was oddly fitting in howit played a role at SmP. An accidental meeting at the Galadinner produced the potentially best outcome. Late in theevening, I noticed a person sitting alone a few tables away andjoined him. We spoke at great length in general conversationthat flowed easily and enjoyably. It turned out to be SenatorChris Ketter and the end result was an invitation for a futuremeeting and a link to make a submission to a senate selectcommittee inquiry on funding of cancer research for cancerswith low survival rates (a topic very close and dear to me). Isubmitted a contribution that I hope ultimately results ingetting significantly better outcomes for patients with lowsurvival rate cancers.

In terms of cost–benefit, participation in Science MeetsParliament costs are fairly inconsequential relative to long-term

gains for the profession. Chemistry is vital and underpins theperformance of the economy directly and by supporting otherscientific and engineering disciplines. Politicians need to bereminded of this fact at every opportunity.

In terms of improving the impact factor for protecting publicresearch funding, SmP is likely a good vehicle. In terms ofrepresenting science, it is skewed in favour of public-fundedresearchers and organisations.

Those seeking any gold or glory out of attendance will verylikely be sadly disappointed. The highest probability is that thebusiness cards you freely handed out have most likely foundtheir way into recycling bins long before you even made it backto the airport, let alone any further. The politicians had a verybrief PR window and their attentions are now on far morepressing matters. Fellow delegates have returned to their ownlives and continued those unabated and the memory of you ismost likely fading rapidly, to be extinguished by the passage oftime and focus on more pressing matters closer to home. Themoment has passed and life has moved on. But this is not tosay there is no benefit from attendance.

Even with the most diligent follow-up, the chances ofanything tangible eventuating are slim and nebulous.Serendipity may occur but can’t be relied upon. The greatestsuccess you can have at SmP is in the experience itself and theimpact (if any) that it may have left on the parliamentarian youinteracted with.

For the sake of the profession as a whole, I highly commendSmP and strongly encourage future participation by both publicand private sector RACI members.

Dr Motty Sobol FRACI CChem. Visit www.raci.org.au/raci-news/science-meets-parliament-2017-the-raci-experience for a general overview of SmP 2017.


RACI delegate Dr Motty Sobol at Science Meets Parliament 2017.

books

Something smells off:Kate Grenville’s Caseagainst fragranceGrenville K., Text Publishing, 2017,paperback, ISBN 9781925355956,208 pp., $24.99

Scents, fragrances, perfumes. Thesewords transform the mere concept ofodours into something more evocative.Fragrance is intimately linked with ourmemories and feelings.

For me, the heavy smell of eucalyptusis forever associated with summer. Awaft of its scent and my mind brings up

the feeling of heat and the buzzing of cicadas. Kate Grenvilleshares a similar reminiscence of her mother’s perfume in herlatest book, The case against fragrance.

So why a case against? As Grenville writes, ‘Surely only aweirdo wouldn’t enjoy the smell of flowers and pine forests?’

But consider those to whom fragrances bring blindingheadaches, asthma attacks and allergies. Something like a thirdof all Australians have adverse reactions to fragrance, with nearly8% so severe that the people involved have lost work days.

Grenville builds the case that fragrance is having asignificant adverse impact in modern society through personalanecdote and peer-reviewed research. On the way she takes usthrough the multitudinous things that fall under the term‘fragrance’: how we perceive it, who regulates (or fails toregulate) its components, who tests it for safety, and how wecan share the air together, fragrance fans and foes alike.

Readers may be puzzled. We have been using fragrances forthousands of years: how could something so ubiquitous beharmful? Surely we would have noticed before now? But let meremind you that we used toxic white lead as a cosmetic forcenturies before realising its harms.

Grenville points out that many of the natural essential oilsthat form the basis of fragrances have adverse or toxic effectsthat have only recently been recognised. The properties thatmake the chemicals in fragrances able to vaporise easily andstimulate our sense of smell also mean that many are highlyreactive and able to stimulate immune reactions.

One example is carvacrol, the chemical that gives oil oforegano its distinctive scent. It can also chemically react withproteins to stimulate an immune response. β-Damascenone,whose chemical structure looks like an industrial hazard, is a

natural compound found in rose essential oilsand Kentucky bourbon (it is safe at fragranceconcentrations, but can cause allergicreactions). 1,8-Cineol, which is part of thedistinctive smell of eucalyptus, can causeliver damage if you consume enough of it.

Grenville shows that with modernprocesses, fragrances are more available than

ever before. Whereas in the past perfumeswere expensive items used onlyoccasionally outside those well-off,fragrances are now everywhere, not only inperfumes but in air fresheners, detergentsand laundry liquids to name a few placeswe find them.

The rise of synthetic fragrances has theadvantage of low cost and less need to useanimals. (We no longer need to extractmusk from the glands of civets.) But thisubiquitous use and higher concentration offragrances means that more people areexposed to fragrances for longer than ever before.

Grenville smoothly charts this rise, and the regulatory andsafety issues. Fact-dense and extensively referenced, the bookis a delight to read and never gets bogged down. I may bebiased, of course, by my love of chemistry.

While some of the science has been simplified, the bookgenerally conveys the sense of it correctly. I particularly saluteGrenville for working through the labyrinth that is Australia’sNational Industrial Chemicals Notification and AssessmentScheme (you can find the NICNAS section on cosmetics here).The issue of regulation is a thorny one, given the current moodof government is for less, but the book gives a good walk-through of the regulatory and testing issues. Anyone who canwrite about NICNAS without inducing somnolence is a masterindeed.

While the issues around fragrance and headaches, respiratoryissues and allergies are well documented and supported, theissues around hormone (or endocrine) disruption are less clear.There is evidence that high concentrations of some of theessential oils that make up fragrances (and other non-odoriferous components that go into fragrances) can activatehormone receptors. But these compounds are hundreds tothousands of times weaker than our natural hormones.

Grenville gives diethyl stilboestrol (DES), used in therapy, asan example of how endocrine disruptors can affect health. ButDES is very potent, hundreds to thousands of times more potentthan the weak hormone mimics in fragrances and cosmetics.This could give people a misleading impression of the riskassociated with fragrances. We’ve seen similar discussions aboutphthalates found in cosmetics.

Statements such as, ‘We know about the dangers ofendocrine disruptor bisphenol A in our plastic water bottles’,are unhelpful because they are basically untrue, based onexaggeration of risks.

Nonetheless, the issues around other risks, regulation andfragrance in the workplace are well developed and thoughtful.Read The case against fragrance and you will never think aboutfragrance in the same way again. If you have been sufferingfragrance in silence, you will know you are not alone.

Ian Musgrave, senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide. Firstpublished at theconversation.com.


Goodreads

Carvacrol, the chemicalbehind oregano’s odour. Ian Musgrave

β-Damascenone, found inroses. And Kentucky bourbon. Ian Musgrave

Physical chemistry –how chemistry worksKolasinski K.W., Wiley, 2016, paperback,ISBN 9781118751121, 744 pp., $134.95

Physical chemistry has been definedas: ‘The futile attempt to fit theuniverse to y = mx + c’. This remainsmy favourite description of physicalchemistry. My new second favourite isfound in Physical chemistry – howchemistry works: ‘The role of physicalchemistry is to tear down mirages ofexplanation in order to construct themachinery that results in fundamental

understanding’. In this book, author Kurt Kolasinski, whoseresearch interests in surface science straddle physical chemistryand chemical physics, constructs this machinery with a focus onstatistical mechanics. Many books on physical chemistry couldeasily be divided into two stand-alone halves with nothingmuch to connect them, but Kolasinski always has one eye onstatistical mechanics as the essential link betweenthermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

Kolasinski’s ferocious love of his subject matter showsthrough on every page. He has a distinctive voice which – whilenot everyone may appreciate it – I found to be clear,imaginative and entertaining. He does not shy away fromcomplicated derivations, or leave vital parts of them missing. Iwas pleased to find him a stickler for IUPAC definitions; heincludes numerous links to IUPAC publications, especially thephysical chemistry Green book.

The exercises are numerous, frequently interesting andgrounded in real-life problems. These have obviously beenconstructed with care, not tacked on as an afterthought. Boththe Latrobe Valley and the Ashes are mentioned in them,indicating that the author is not completely unaware of ourcontinent.

There are many figures in the book that are well thoughtout, describe something interesting, and that I haven’t seen ahundred times before in other physical chemistry textbooks.Colligative properties, overpotential and hyperfine splitting areall illuminated by figures different from any I have seen before.On the other hand, there are quite a few figures reproducedfrom publications of variable quality that would have beenbetter adapted and redrawn.

Many points are illustrated with examples drawn from recentresearch, especially in Kolasinski’s field of surface chemistry,and in general these examples are more inventive than usual.For example, the Carnot cycle – usually the dullest few pages inany physical chemistry textbook – was discussed using theexample of a hurricane, which made it awesome.

The main problem I found with the textbook as it stands wasa lack of internal connections. At times, it seemed as if thebook was designed to be disarticulated into separate chapter

readings meant to stand on their own. When the Sackur–Tetrodeequation reappears in Chapter 8, for example, there is nocitation of its previous appearance as equation 6.127, and ifyou think ‘Hmm, where exactly did I see that equation before?’and look in the index, you won’t find it. There are numerousplaces – unavoidable in a physical chemistry textbook, whichmust always leap with some degree of arbitrariness into ameandering stream of interconnected knowledge – wheresomething is mentioned in passing as more-or-less assumedknowledge when it will be properly introduced later in the book;yet very rarely was there a word from Kolasinski letting thereader know that this possibly unfamiliar concept would beelaborated on in such-and-such a chapter.

But all in all, this is the best new general textbook onphysical chemistry I have seen for a long time, and I amseriously considering adopting it for several of our teachingunits.

Chris Fellows FRACI CChem


A fascinating insight into the real world uses of chemicals

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books

A day in the life of abrain: theneuroscience ofconsciousness fromdawn till dusk Greenfield S., Penguin Random House,2016, paperback, ISBN 9780141976341,199 pp. $10–20

Who isn’t curious about what it is tobe human and have independentthought? 'What is consciousness?' isstill the ‘hard question’ according topsychologists, neuroscientists,

philosophers, theologians and the like. What is consciousness? Susan Greenfield’s book A day in the life of a brain: the

neuroscience of consciousness from dawn till dusk delivers aninteresting read in just nine chapters and a total of 199 pages,serving as a short foray into offering an explanation for thehuman experiences of consciousness. The catchy title looks intothe 24-hour period of the life of one family (a father, a mother,an adolescent and a mother-in-law). One day in the life of thisfamily affords Greenfield the opportunity to digress to a diverserange of topics such as mental illnesses (depression,schizophrenia, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’sdisease), ages and stages of babies, adolescence and adults, aswell as learning styles (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic), thepsychology of colour, and even animal consciousness.

Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE is Professor of SynapticPharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford. As a neuroscientist,Greenfield has written several books about the brain. A day inthe life of the brain is a sequel to The private life of the brain.In this latest book, the chapters are appropriately named: Inthe dark, Waking up, Walking the dog, Breakfast, At the office,Problems at home, Dreaming, Overnight and Tomorrow.

Greenfield establishes an interdisciplinary approach for hercentral supposition of a meta assembly that gives rise to amoment of consciousness. Phenomenology (a subjectiveapproach using philosophical discussion) and physiology (anobjective approach using neuroscientific techniques) areintertwined to offer a way forward into thinking aboutconsciousness. The constant analogy used throughout the bookis that the size of the stone (cognitive factor) and the forcewith which it is thrown (intensity of the stimulus) into a pool,the viscosity of the puddle (availability and concentration ofvarious modulators), the frequency with which subsequentstones are thrown – the extent of the ripples from the impact –combine to determine the degree of consciousness at any onemoment.

According to Greenfield, conscious experiences may bemindless (consisting of small neuronal assemblies) or moremeaningful (consisting of larger neuronal assemblies). As anovice in this area, I am not convinced by Greenfield thathuman consciousness has been elucidated.

But Greenfield offers explanations for what it means to loseconsciousness or to be unconscious. And it was interesting tothink about whether a foetus is conscious at 4–5 weeks. Herbook reads like a review of conscious research with manyreferences made to scientists of note from around the worldsuch as Crick and Koch, Oliver Sacks, Friedrich Neitschke, andHebel and Wiesel to name a few. As well, references are made toleading philosophers and psychologists through the passage oftime. ‘Snapshot’ studies are presented as well as results oflongitudinal studies.

Scientific techniques mentioned included voltage sensitivedye imaging used to detect brain activity over milliseconds,fMRI used for activity of the brain measured over seconds,functional electrical impedance tomography by evoked response(fEITER) for short time scales and non-invasive brain activityinterpretation, and EEGs and a bispectral index were referred toin the measured effects of anaesthesia.

There were many interesting facts that I would like to beable to call upon in any trivia competition. For example, thereare 100 billion changeable neurons that make up your brain,hearing is the last sense to cease functioning under generalanaesthetic and the first to re-awaken, the loss of sense ofsmell is the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s disease, humans withnormal vision are able to appreciate a staggering 2.3 milliondiscernable colours, and donkeys sleep for 3 hours a day whilearmadillos sleep up to 20 hours!

So in just a couple of hundred pages, A day in the life of thebrain covers the disciplines of philosophy, psychology,neuroscience and physics, as ‘consciousness’ is explored. Howthe ‘water’ of the objective brain events is transformed to the‘wine’ of subjective consciousness is not fully answered. SusanGreenfield discusses variations of consciousness, attempts todisentangle different terms related to consciousness andproposes a way forward to resolve the ‘hard question’ using aneasy reading, narrative style. Best that you read this one foryourself and form your own opinion!

Alison McKenzie


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Am I an inventor?Corrine Porter, Patent Attorney, FB Rice

www.�rice.com.auThe IP Navigators

I was included as an author on a scientificpublication but have just discovered that I wasnot included as an inventor on a patentapplication filed before the paper was published.Why am I not an inventor?

Authorship and inventorship are not the samething. For scientific publications, an author is

usually someone who has contributed to the work presented in thepaper. ey may have designed and/or performed the experiments,supervised the person performing the experiments, analysed the data,prepared the manuscript or contributed reagents or money. Authorsare sometimes included as a matter of professional courtesy.

In contrast, inventorship is a legal concept. is is a complicatedarea of law and inventors are determined on the basis of theirinvolvement in the development of the inventive concept.Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all definition of inventorshipbecause the laws on inventorship vary depending on the country.Accordingly, a person may be considered an inventor in one countrybut not in another. In Australia, the key question is whether theperson has made a contribution to the invention. is requiresidentification of the nature of the invention and the inventiveconcept followed by an assessment of a person’s contribution to theinvention. e latter can be assessed in a number of ways.1 Did their contribution have a material effect on the final

invention?2 Was their contribution part of a collaborative effort?3 Did the person contribute to the ‘conception of the solution’ to a

problem solved by the invention?

4 Did the person have a general idea of what was required butanother person put the idea into effect?

5 Would the final concept of the invention have materialisedwithout the person’s contribution?Typically, not all authors on a publication will be an inventor. A

person is not an inventor if they simply funded the research orcontributed reagents. A person is not an inventor if the work wasroutine or carried out under the direction of others. For example, aresearch assistant who prepares a new drug according to a reactionscheme proposed by their supervisor would not be an inventorbecause they were merely following the directions of their supervisor.In this situation, their supervisor is the inventor. However, if theresearch assistant actively contributed to the development of the newdrug by proposing the reaction scheme used or varying the drug toenhance its efficacy, then the supervisor and research assistant areboth inventors.

It is important that the correct people are named as inventors on apatent application. e inventor(s) own their invention and otherparties must derive ownership from the inventor(s). In extreme cases,wrongly identifying inventors can result in the patent beinginvalidated and a loss of patent rights or someone else being able touse your invention without your consent. Patent attorneys are skilledat reviewing work and assisting in identification of the correctinventors. If you have any concerns regarding inventorship pleasecontact a patent attorney.

For more information, email [email protected].

At the time of writing (May 2017), the eastern seaboard ofAustralia is suffering from an energy crisis of our own making.There are serious issues with the reliability and price ofelectricity. This became apparent to the public when a stormlast year precipitated the shut-down of the electricity grid inSouth Australia. Also, there is increasing uncertainty about theavailability and price of gas. Both of these are interlinked inthat gas is required in large volumes and on an intermittentbasis to run open-cycle gas turbines as back-up generationwhen renewable power fails to generate sufficient electricity forthe demand.

This is clearly demonstrated in the graphs on page 37, whichshow a significant rise for the cost of electricity for the NSWand Victorian wholesale electricity markets and for the gasmarket in Victoria. For the current level of electricity and gasprices, as I have discussed in previous articles, no producer ofaluminium, fertiliser, methanol or similar product would beprofitable. Continuation of energy prices at this level willultimately result in the closure of most energy-intensivemanufacturing on the eastern seaboard.

For years, many in the processing industries have beenpredicting a serious problem with energy supply (see, forexample, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemicals in an op-ed in TheAustralian, 25 April 2012). In a previous article (see October2015, p. 36), I asked if the then-emerging LNG export industrywas worth more to the country than the chemical processindustry. As witnessed by the political inaction to solve thecurrent crisis, it seems that the country’s leaders, without

exception, believe that LNG exports are not only worth morethan the chemicals industry but are worth more than the entiremanufacturing sector.

What action there has been to date appears piecemeal andinadequate. The three main LNG export companies and their gassuppliers have been exhorted to make more gas available to thedomestic market. Not all have agreed to this. But moreimportantly, no mention is made of the price of gas; if it is notreduced dramatically (to below $5/GJ), large numbers ofenergy-intensive manufacturing facilities will be forced to close.

However, state governments continue to block thedevelopment of new gas supplies by bans on advancedproduction and well stimulation techniques, commonly calledfracking, used across the world in the oil and gas industry,including off-shore Australia. This encompasses most of themajor prospective gas resources that could relatively quicklysupply gas to the eastern seaboard. Victoria has gone further byeffectively closing development of its smaller gas fields in thewest of the state, which have been producing gas since the late1960s.

Furthermore, the progressive closure of older coal-firedgenerating stations is putting increasing pressure on the supplyof electricity and increasing reliance on additional renewablesources, which require additional back-up gas-generatingcapacity somewhere in the system. And since renewable sourcesare inherently high-cost generators (due to the capital returndemanded by private corporations on the high capital costs,which include the cost of effective and secure connection to


The energy saga

iStockphoto/Alfredo Allais

the grid), this high cost will be further exacerbated ifexpensive, and as yet unproven, battery technology is adoptedas a partial back-up to renewable generators.

What are the alternatives for gas supply? I have summarisedthese as follows with my estimates for the likely costs and timing.

LNG import into southern states: Spot LNG is readily availableand could be imported at one or several locations. The conceptwould require the construction of LNG re-gasification plant,which could be ship based. The cost of gas would be made upof the LNG price (say $6/GJ), shipping from the North WestShelf (shipping from Gladstone would be perverse), whichwould cost another $1/GJ, and re-gasification (another $1/GJ).The total gas cost would be at least $8/GJ. Taking into accountpermitting requirements and construction of a re-gasificationfacility, this could see gas delivered in three or four years.

Gas by pipeline from north-west Australia: The pipeline woulddeliver gas from the large resources off-shore north-westAustralia to Moomba, which would deliver gas through existingpipelines to Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and then Melbourne.Pipelines of large transcontinental size as the ones proposedwould cost $5 billion. This would include the provision of re-compressor stations every 100–200 kilometres. This solution isvery sensitive to the amount of gas moved. Supplying all of theeast coast non-LNG demand would cost about $3/GJ for carriagecosts to be added to the pre-LNG cost of about $3/GJ. However,if the pipeline was only used for part of the demand (say100 PJ/year), then the cost of carriage alone would be $8/GJ.Permitting has traditionally been easy in Australia but nativetitle issues across inland Australia may now be a problem. Thissolution may take 8–10 years.

Gas by pipeline from northern Australia (Timor Sea): This isthe proposed northern pipeline that would link gas fields off-shore the Northern Territory to the eastern grid at Mount Isa orMoomba. Should the NT government lift its ban on on-shore gasdevelopments, these gas sources could be added. The cost isless than the transcontinental option at $1.5 billion but gascarried would be lower, increasing transmission costs ($4/GJ),so final cost would be similar to a transcontinental pipeline($7/GJ). This is unlikely to be a solution within five years.

Synthetic natural gas (SNG) made from coal: SNG facilitiescould be located on a suitable coalfield and be coal of any type,including low-grade non-exportable coal. SNG would also have theadvantage of producing significant co-generated electricity, whichwould reduce the SNG production cost. The cost of SNG would bein the region of $8–12/GJ depending on the scale and coal costs.Permitting and construction could take four or five years.

Complete lifting bans on exploration and production of gas ineastern Australia: This is the obvious solution but since banshave been in place, several other hurdles have arisen. To beeffective, this would require reform of the fiscal regime of whicha major one would require the states to give up part andpreferably all of their royalty to landowners – farmers andnative title custodians. This would encourage the explorationand development of new reserves. However, it is unlikely that a

very large new on-shore development will occur, rather a seriesof small operations is most likely. Many of these discoveriesrequire the development of coal seam gas or shale, which areinherently high cost ($5/GJ or more). Large-scale discoverieswould, on past history, be more likely to come from off shore indeeper water off Bass Strait, the Otway Basin and the AustralianBight. These are costly, high-stakes operations requiringCommonwealth incentives not helped by current ideas toincrease tax on off-shore oil and gas production. This solutionwould deliver large volumes of gas at low price (<$3/GJ) butstarting from scratch would take at least five years.

None of these proposals would deliver gas in the short termbut, more importantly, all, except large-scale off-shore, arehigh-cost options. The prognosis for manufacturing and thechemical industry in eastern Australia is grim. This is not to saythat all is lost. Gas costs in the west are competitive withinternational practice and there is plenty of gas to bedeveloped to support local industries, so that energy-intensiveand strategic manufacturing may survive. But then again, itwould only take a few turns of the election cycle to destroy thisas well.


140

Price ($/MWh)

120

Vic.

NSW

100

80

60

40

20

4/2012 8/2013 12/2014 5/2016 9/2017Victorian and New South Wales wholesale power prices (AEMO data).

10

8

6

4

2

0 Mar 17

Mar 16

Mar 15

Mar 13

Mar 12

Mar 11

Mar 10

Mar 09

Mar 14

Victorian gas prices – average daily weighted imbalance price(Australian Energy Regulator website).

Price ($/GL)

Duncan Seddon FRACI CChem is a consultant to coal, oil, gas andchemicals industries specialising in adding value to naturalresources.

The mission posted on the March for Science internationalwebsite states:

The March for Science champions robustly funded and publiclycommunicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. Weunite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds thecommon good and for political leaders and policy makers to enactevidence based policies in the public interest. The March for Science is acelebration of science.

To me, it seems the reason concerned people across theplanet are marching today is that, at least for the major playersin the English-speaking world, there are major threats to theglobal culture of science.

Why? A clear understanding of what is happening with, forexample, the atmosphere, oceans and climate createsirreconcilable problems for powerful vested interests,particularly in the fossil fuel and coastal real estate sectors.

Contrary to the data-free ‘neocon/trickle down’ beliefsystem, the observed dissonance implies that we need robust,enforceable national and international tax and regulatorystructures to drive the necessary innovation and renewal thatwill ensure global sustainability and a decent future forhumanity and other, complex life forms.

Here in Australia, the March for Science joins a globalmovement initiated by a perceived anti-science stance inDonald Trump’s administration.

Trump’s 2018 budget proposalIn the USA, President Trump’s proposed budget for 2018incorporates massive cuts to the National Science Foundation(NSF), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA), the United States Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

And, though it in no sense reflects political hostility anddeliberate ignorance, British scientists are fearful that Brexitwill have a terrible impact on their funding and collaborativearrangements.

How does this affect us in Australia? Why should we care?The science culture is international and everyone benefits fromprogress made anywhere. NOAA records, analyses and curatesmuch of the world’s climate science data. A degraded EPAprovides a disastrous model for all corrupt and regressiveregimes.

Science depends on a ‘churn’, both of information andpeople. After completing their PhD ‘ticket’, many of our bestyoung researchers will spend 3–5 years employed aspostdoctoral fellows in the USA, Europe and (increasingly) theAsian countries to our north, while young American, Asian andEuropean/British scientists come to work for a time with ourleading scientists.

The proposed 2018 US President’s budget would, for example,abolish the NIH Fogarty International Centre that has enabledmany young scientists from across the planet to work in NorthAmerica. In turn, we recruited ‘keepers’ like Harvard-educatedBrian Schmidt, our first, resident Nobel Prize winner for physicsand current Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University(ANU).

We might also recall that – supported strongly by PrimeMinisters J.J. Curtin and R.G. Menzies – the ANU (with threeNobel Prizes to its credit) was founded as a research universityto position us in science and international affairs.

Not a done deal, yetWhat looks to be happening in the US is not a done deal.

The US political system is very different from our own. TheDivision of Powers in the US Constitution means that thePresident is in many respects less powerful than our PM.

Unable to introduce legislation, a President can only pass (orveto) bills that come from the Congress. Through to September,we will be watching a vigorous negotiation process whereseparate budgets from the House and the Senate (which maywell ignore most, if not all, of the President’s ambit claims) willdevelop a ‘reconciled’ budget that will be presented forPresident Trump’s signature.

How March for Science might helpThe hope is that this international celebration of science willcause US legislators, particularly the more thoughtful on theright of politics, to reflect a little and understand what theyrisk if they choose to erode their global scientific leadership.

There are massive problems to be solved, along with greateconomic opportunities stemming from the development ofnovel therapies and new, smart ‘clean and green’ technologiesin, particularly, the energy generation and conservation sector.

Ignoring, or denying, problems does not make them go away.Whether or not the message is welcome, the enormous power ofscience and technology means we can only go forward if futuregenerations are to experience the levels of human well-beingand benign environmental conditions we enjoy today.

There is no going back. The past is a largely imagined, andirretrievable country.

Peter C. Doherty, Laureate Professor, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infectionand Immunity. Adapted from a speech delivered at the Melbourne March forScience on Saturday 22 April, 2017. First published at www.theconversation.com.

July 2017|38 Chemistry in Australia

science ↔ society

Peter Doherty: why Australia needs to march forscience

grapevine

Wine sensory profiling withmusicIn the December 1996 issue, I wrote an article entitled ‘Wine,electrochemistry and song!’. The article outlined the advantages ofusing electrochemistry for a wide range of oenological analyses.The ‘song’ part came about as we had access to an instrumentthat would play I’m forever blowing bubbles during the degassingstep in stripping analysis. Some recent research in psychologyseems to suggest that there may be a little more to wine andsong.

A friend in Paris recently sent me a link to an article on theGuardian website that was addressed ‘Can music really change thetaste of wine’ (bit.ly/2mnUPxZ). Jo Burzynska, a presenter at theWorld Science Forum in Brisbane in March this year, explained toClarissa Sebag-Montefiore the concept of stimulating our responseto wine sensory characters by tasting the wine while playingmusic. The conference workshop was presented in a ‘sterile,sound-controlled room’, with different music playing while tastingand then writing impressions of the wine. This is a long way frommy experience in sensory analysis of sitting in a cubicle with acomputer screen with a set of glasses and some aroma and tastestandards nearby to check my impressions against the standards.But maybe my experience is classical sensory science while themusic/wine association allows people ‘to reconnect with theirsenses’, to use Burzynska’s term.

In trying to find the science underpinning the impact of musicon wine sensory profiling, Professor Adrian North published adetailed study entitled ‘The effect of background music on thetaste of wine’ in the British Journal of Psychology (2012, vol. 103,pp. 293–301). At Heriot Watt University at the time (ProfessorNorth is now at Curtin University), the study involved250 students tasting one red and one white wine in groups of 25(alternating 12/13 female/male) in a room with the music playingat 70 dB. Each group of 25 tasted the wine with different musicplaying in separate rooms and also in one room without music.Four descriptors were provided in advance and, after tasting, thestudents scored the descriptors on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10(very much).

The selected descriptors used in the North study (with theselected music in parentheses) were powerful and heavy (CarminaBurana by Carl Orff), subtle and refined (Waltz of the Flowers byTchaikovsky), zingy and refreshing (Just can’t get enough of you byNouvelle Vague) and mellow and soft (Slow breakdown by MichaelBrook). The results showed that the music/descriptor matchingalways had the highest rating. That is, when the wine was tastedwith Carmina Burana in the background, the highest rating wasobtained for powerful/heavy while tasting the same wine withSlow breakdown in the background, the mellow/soft rating cameout in front. There was little variation in the descriptor ratingswhen no music was played in the tasting room.

There are numerous studies in the literature suggesting alink between auditory stimuli and flavour or taste perception,and the results of the North study are in general agreement

with these other studies. Subsequent to the North paper,Charles Spence and Qian Wang have written three reviews onthe wine/music theme in the open-access journal Flavour (doi:10.1186/s13411-015-0045-x; 10.1186/s13411-015-0043-z;10.1186/s13411-015-0046-9). These reviews are descriptive,sometimes labelled as accretion rather than explanation (seereference in bit.ly/1OQO3I9).

One of the questions associated with the type of study usedby North is that the music may not communicate the messagethat is intended. While I love seeing Carmina Burana performedon stage, it is too distracting for me to contemplate playing itwhen tasting wine. Similarly, the Waltz of the Flowers brings tomy mind the distracting image of silly things dancing, althoughMichael Brooks’ Slow breakdown does have the mellow/softcharacter ascribed to it in the North study. North commentedthat his methodology checked that participants did understandthe ‘music message’. While the groups were matched for gender,it would be interesting to see if there is a gender responseeffect – we saw very clear evidence of this when we looked atethanol metabolism in a study some years ago.

To me, present evidence for a wine/music effect has perhapsopened up more questions than it has answered. The conceptdoes have significant implications for wine marketing strategy –what music should be played in cellar door sales that mightstimulate the customer to purchase wine would be a fascinatingresearch study.

Perhaps by way of self-contradiction, I should point out thatI listen to music for relaxation, or ‘de-stressing’ to use thecurrent euphemism. So I am writing this article while listeningto Joseph Haydn’s Emperor string quartet. Haydn’s stringquartets are my preferred music at home when we are dining.Unfortunately, I do not have the financial resources of theEsterházy princes who provided Haydn with a small orchestra toplay for them in the palace dining room.

July 2017 | 39Chemistry in Australia

Stockphoto/narongcp

Geoffrey R. Scollary FRACI CChem ([email protected]) wasthe foundation professor of oenology at Charles Sturt Universityand foundation director of the National Wine and Grape IndustryCentre. He continues his wine research at the University ofMelbourne and Charles Sturt University.

I just failed a course. It seemed a good idea to enrol in aMassive Open Online Course (MOOC) on healthy food andnutrition. The course started in the Easter week. I was busy atmy paid employment, and preparing for the long weekend. AfterEaster, there were more work and social commitments. Suddenly,I had missed more than half the course and was several weeksbehind schedule. It was all too hard to catch up; I failed. WhenI enrolled, my expectation was that it should be easy to findtime to fit study around my other activities. My reality was thatI lacked a commitment to studying this course and continuallygave higher priorities to other things.

The above account is true, but it reads like fiction because itclosely parallels the story of some of my university students.Fortunately for me, there was no financial cost, and the non-completion will have no detrimental effects on my careerprospects. Not so for my students. When they fail to complete acourse or unit of study, there are large financial costs andsevere consequences. In a 2008 Australian Learning andTeaching Council (ALTC) project, Gosper and co-workers foundthat a significant number of students do not complete onlinelearning tasks because they do not establish a study routine,which was my recent experience. Conversely, attending face-to-face classes in a regular schedule helps to establish a routinefor study.

One Australian university has reported that completion ratesfor some MOOCs are typically about 2% of enrolments, and halfof the enrolled students never even start the course. Much ofthe enrolment in MOOCs is driven by impulse. I failed the MOOCbecause the spur-of-the-moment decision to enrol was notassociated with an evaluation of how the course would (orwouldn’t) fit into my day-to-day routine. This experience isdifferent from enrolment in university or TAFE courses, whichusually requires a would-be student to go through a multi-stepprocedure, usually with some financial cost just for submitting

the application. The proportion of university and TAFE studentswho enrol but never start a course is much less than in MOOCs.

An overestimation of the time available for study, coupledwith an underestimation of the amount of time needed to fulfilnon-study commitments is an important factor. Around 70% ofAustralian youth in tertiary study (aged between 20 and 24)have a part-time or full-time job. For those studying full-time,working has a negative impact on study. For example, working16–24 hours a week reduces the completion rate by 8%, whilemore than 24 hours of employment reduces it by 14%. Whilethis problem is not restricted to online learning, the lack of anexternally imposed study routine makes this problem moresignificant in the online context.

Given a choice between online and face-to-face classes, thelatter are preferable: students in face-to-face classes reporthigher student engagement, development of cognitive andsocial intelligence competencies in class, and cognitiveengagement out of class, although these outcomes were notspecifically targeted as learning outcomes.

Online learning has several positive aspects. Sometimesthere is no other choice. Between 50% and 60% of on-campusuniversity students do not attend at least some of the face-to-face lectures available, and of these students, 75% indicatedthis was because they ‘couldn’t attend’ class. These statisticsare about 10 years old; anecdotal evidence is that the numberof on-campus students who do not attend some or all classeshas increased over the last 10 years. The flexibility of time andplace to study is in the tradition of the Royal Flying Doctor’sSchool of the Air in which technology is seen as an opportunityof reaching out to students rather than replacing traditionalmodes of teaching and learning.

Online learning is also good for revision or for those whowant to pause a lesson to clarify a point before continuing.Even for students enrolled in on-campus study, there is apositive relationship between the use of online resources andexamination performance. Students who do not use optionalonline learning because they forgot or ran out of time achievelower marks than those who do not use optional online learningfor other reasons. The availability of online learning is not aremedy for poor study routines or having too manycommitments.

Online learning is another mode for learning. Like otherlearning tools in a broader teaching and learning toolbox, ithas advantages and disadvantages, but it is not intrinsicallygood or bad. Furthermore, teaching science online is moredemanding than many other disciplines. Ultimately, theeffectiveness of online learning depends on how it is used byboth the educator and the learner.

education


Kieran F. Lim ( ) FRACI CChem([email protected]) is an associate professor in the Schoolof Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. In thepast, he has successfully completed online courses of study.

Online learning

iStockphoto/NosUA

I wrote last month about Alexander Findlay (1874–1966), whowas Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University ofAberdeen. Closer to home, he was the external examiner inchemistry for the University of New Zealand in the days whenthe various university colleges there were badged as sections ofthe national institution. In 1938, Findlay came south toperform face-to-face the duties that are normally exercised at adistance by external examiners. Accompanied by his wife, hespent five weeks holidaying in New Zealand, only occasionallycalling in at a scientific institution. The newspapers reportedhis admiring comments on the state of science there. Inaddition to his examining duties, Findlay lectured several timeson the subject of ‘Science and the Community’. This wasn’t quitewhat I (or perhaps the NZ community) was expecting, since inhis lecture Findlay spoke strongly about the perceived iniquitiesof industry. ‘While people were grateful for the many benefitswhich science had produced’, he said, ‘there were some who feltthat the gospel of industrial efficiency, if carried into actionwithout regard to higher considerations, might be productive ofgreat evil’, and that ‘the gospel of efficiency must always besoftened by the gospel of righteousness’.

Although Findlay did not write extensively on this theme, hissocial critique of science is included in the preface of his 1916book where he seems to have a bet each way. ‘Science standsfor efficiency in all the activities of life’, he wrote, ‘and theneglect of science spells waste and industrial decay’. On theother hand, science has cultural value and he urges appreciationof ‘science not entirely on account of its utilitarian value as ameans of increasing wealth and material prosperity’.

On his way home, Findlay called at Sydney in September todeliver the 1938 Liversidge Lecture. It was entitled ‘Chemistry inSpace’ and reading this I wondered if it was an early,unrecognised version of the ‘molecules in space’ (akagalactochemistry, a title that always reminded me of the MilkyWay) research and speculation of the 1970s. It wasn’t, of course:it was all about stereochemistry – van’t Hoff and Le Bel, and ofcourse Pasteur and his tartrates. Findlay included some of this inthe chapter on molecular structure in his 1916 book, Chemistry inthe service of man, later revised and retitled The spirit of chemistryin which he ascribed the ‘Chemistry in Space’ tag to Pasteur.

In his stereochemical chapter, Findlay described a lecturedemonstration that was new to me and I wondered if he used itin his Sydney lecture. If a beam of polarised light is passeddown a cylinder filled with turbid water, the path of the lightbeam can be seen clearly. If the water is replaced with a strongsolution of cane sugar, then the beam appears as a spiral, asshown in the accompanying diagram. The demonstration isincluded in his Introduction to physical chemistry, and was saidto be due to the British physicist George Stokes (1819–1903)and published in the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie in 1899by Nicolai A. Umoff. I should be interested to know if anyreader has seen this demonstration.

After the Sydney visit, the Findlays set off for home andtheir ship called at ports along the south coast of Australia.

Mrs F was not mentioned in the press reports, but I read thatFindlay lunched with chemists in Melbourne, spoke to pressabout the need for four-year degrees when his ship berthed inAdelaide, and went ashore at Fremantle to lunch in Perth withthe WA branch of the Chemical Institute. Sailing on, theydisembarked in Bombay ‘to go overland to Bahrain in thePersian Gulf, to see their son’.

It seems likely that Findlay Jr was working for the BahrainPetroleum Company (BAPCO) and, if so, I wonder if he sharedhis father’s reservations about the impacts of industry. BAPCOtook over Gulf Oil’s assets in Bahrain and, having obtained theonly oil concession from the government in 1930, startedsearching. Their reward came with the discovery of the Awalifield in 1932 – the first of many oil discoveries in the ArabianGulf region. BAPCO shares changed hands a few times in theensuing years but eventually came to be all owned by theBahrain Government. The company still operates in thatcountry.

I was told when I visited Saudi Arabia in 1991 thatpetroleum geologists in Bahrain in the early 1930s hadrecognised, just across the water on the mainland nearDhahran, a ‘jebel’ – the characteristic domed landform arisingfrom an anticline that might have oil trapped far underground.They encouraged partner organisations to explore there, andsuccess came in 1938, leading to the formation of the SaudiAramco company.


letter from melbourne

Ian D. Rae FRACI CChem ([email protected]) is a veterancolumnist, having begun his Letters in 1984. When he is notcompiling columns, he writes on the history of chemistry andprovides advice on chemical hazards and pollution.

Dr Findlay Down UnderIf the water isreplaced witha strongsolution ofcane sugar, then the beamappears as aspiral ...

cryptic chemistry

Across1 Studied carbon true colour. (10)7 Exclusively singular. (4)9 Animal! Second overturns

champion. (4)10 Vatican gift, no fluorine compound,

getting out of mothballs. (10)11 Negative coward jibe. (6)12 & 29 Across Your errand is confusing

for someone with low levelpermissions. (8,4)

13 Radiation from 10nm to200nm/void/radiation from 10nm to400nm. (6,1.1.)

16 Failing sense of application ofbromocresol green, perhaps. (6)

18 & 23 Down The French canvas blundercaused by dormant conditions. (6,5)

20 Penalty payments said to be negative. (8)

22 Does lion destroy coil? (8)25 Tables sense changes. (6)27 Match position. (10)28 Plateau in constant-volume

sampling. (4)29 See 12 Across.30 Neon term is in the soup. (10)

Down2 Adjacent to radical 19 Down in O2. (5)3 & 4 Down A picture that helps us make

agar/turmeric dust! (9,7)4 See 3 Down.5 Dated in period style. (5)6 Put into groups showing disunity. (7)7 Time and again of neon. (5)8 Way-out press gang enrol. (4-5)14 Comparable USA lagoon swamped. (9)15 Front vehicle. (3)17 Can metal ores be a source of

rubber?! (9)19 Esmark’s discovery made him tour. (7)21 Excursions over into scholar’s

levarterenol studies. (7)23 See 18 Across.24 Chosen under stress. (5)26 75th error typically converts into

polymer. (5)

events

Graham Mulroney FRACI CChem is Emeritus Professor of Industry Education at RMIT University.Solution available online at Other resources.

3rd International Conference on Organic and InorganicChemistry17–19 July 2017, Chicago, Illinois, USAhttp://organicchemistry.conferenceseries.com

Vic Branch Centenary Gala Dinner and Ball22 July 2017, Plaza Ballroom, Melbourne, Vic.https://icmsaust.eventsair.com/raci2017/centenary-gala-dinner/Site/Register

6th Modern Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis and itsApplications Symposium12–14 October 2017, Fraser Island, Qldwww.solidphase.org

International Conference and Exhibition on PharmaceuticalNanotechnology 27–29 October 2017, Rome, Italyhttp://nanotechnology.pharmaceuticalconferences.com


RACI events are shown in blue.

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The Organising Committee would like to invite you to the

2017 RACI Centenary Congress.

The RACI is the oldest scientific or technical professional

society in Australia. The Centenary Congress is an

opportunity to celebrate the contributions that chemistry has

made to Australia’s (and the world’s) social, economic and

intellectual advancement over the past century.

ACCC66th Asian Conference onCoordination Chemistry

17 ACC17th Asian Chemical

Congress and 19th General Assembly of

FACS

AIMECS 201711th AFMC InternationalMedicinal Chemistry

Carbon 2017World Conference on

Carbon

Tetrahedron18th Asian Edition

Tetrahedron Symposium

GSC88th International

Conference on Green andSustainable Chemistry

Chemeca 2017Australian and New

Zealand Federation ofChemical Engineers Annual Conference

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CiA_July 2017.pdf - Chemistry in Australia magazine |

Documents

Transcript of CiA_July 2017.pdf - Chemistry in Australia magazine |