Chemists

In honor of the upcoming Summer Olympics, British scientists have synthesized and IBM scientists in Switzerland have imaged the smallest possible molecule with five rings, an unusual molecule that they have named olympicene. The molecule is just 1.2 nanometers in width, about a hundred thousandth the width of a human hair. The molecule, composed of 19 carbon atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms, essentially consists of five interlocked benzene rings and was synthesized by chemists David Fox and Anish Mistry of the University of Warwick.

A German tinkerer has combined his love of Iron Man movies and passion for laser gadgets to build a real-life version of the super hero's robotic arms, and he has sold the laser-firing device for more than $2,660. Patrick Priebe, 29, of Wuppertal, Germany, posted a video of his "Iron Man Laser Gauntlet" on YouTube on Saturday, showing a red and gold full-metal shell gadget for his arm equipped with two 1.2-watt blue lasers and another two 4-milliwatt red lasers. Priebe demonstrates the device and how it works throughout the first half of the video.

Chemists have developed a new type of military camouflage face paint that could help protect from the heat of explosions and fires. The makeup could also be used by firefighters entering burning buildings to ward off heat. Soldiers use camouflage face paint to help them blend in to their environment and hide from enemies. But the paints are typically mineral oil-based or mineral spirit-based and provide no protection from the heat of a blast. In fact, the paint can melt or burn, increasing damage to the soldier's skin.

Annie Dookhan, a former chemist for the state of Massachusetts, was arrested at her home Friday, accused of lying about the results of drug tests and about her qualifications, the latest step in a scandal that has compromised thousands of criminal cases. Dookhan, 34, of Franklin, Mass., was arrested without incident by state police, the attorney general's office said. Dookhan faces two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of pretending to hold an advanced degree, officials said.

Jason Wasserman no longer gets a kick from cocaine. Every year, millions of dollars worth of the stuff passes through his hands. And every work day, without fail, he gets a new shipment. But it has become a bore. Wasserman is one of three chemists employed by the Los Angeles Police Department in the San Fernando Valley. He and two colleagues at the department's Van Nuys Station do 50 to 100 drug analyses a week. The vast majority of these are cocaine-related.

The city plans to dedicate a street next week to its most famous former resident, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg. Seaborg--who won the Nobel Prize in 1951 for discovering the radioactive element plutonium--lived in South Gate as a youngster, attending school in Watts before enrolling at UCLA. Seaborg was the first scientist to head the Atomic Energy Commission. He was also chancellor of UC Berkeley and co-founder of the Pacific 10 athletic conference.

Two years out of college, Paolo Beltran is making the kind of money many newly minted graduates would die for. But the 23-year-old nuclear chemist sees his $50,000 annual paycheck as simply a means to a more ambitious end. What he really wants to do is use the money he has already earned to pay for a master's degree in business administration, which would give him the education he needs to launch a new career.

A Texas chemist who wrote a guidebook on illegal drugs was accused Monday of providing expertise and supplies to what authorities say was one of the largest and most sophisticated Ecstasy labs ever found in the United States. Hobart Huson, 33, of Humble, Texas, was arraigned Monday in federal court on a charge of conspiracy to manufacture Ecstasy. He pleaded innocent.

A coaches' association, in conjunction with the American Assn. for Clinical Chemistry, Wednesday announced plans to send each U.S. high school a primer on steroids, stressing testing as the best method to stop abuse. The "High School Coaches' Guide to Steroid Use and Detection" will be sent to about 19,000 U.S. high schools before the football season starts, said Skip Morris, executive director of the National High School Athletic Coaches Assn.

The 27-year-old chemist chosen as Britain's first space traveler appeared calm on the eve of her blastoff to the Soviet Union's Mir station. "I have done all the training that was required. I'm ready," Helen Sharman of Sheffield, England, assured the Soviet space commission after it announced officially that she would be part of the crew with two Soviet cosmonauts. The three will spend eight days aboard the orbiting Mir station.

Chemists have developed a new type of military camouflage face paint that could help protect from the heat of explosions and fires. The makeup could also be used by firefighters entering burning buildings to ward off heat. Soldiers use camouflage face paint to help them blend in to their environment and hide from enemies. But the paints are typically mineral oil-based or mineral spirit-based and provide no protection from the heat of a blast. In fact, the paint can melt or burn, increasing damage to the soldier's skin.

William S. Knowles, a retired Monsanto Co. organic chemist who shared a Nobel Prize in 2001 for helping to solve a vexing problem in the manufacture of medicines, died Wednesday of complications of ALS at his home in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo. He was 95. Knowles shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry with two other scientists, K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University...

In honor of the upcoming Summer Olympics, British scientists have synthesized and IBM scientists in Switzerland have imaged the smallest possible molecule with five rings, an unusual molecule that they have named olympicene. The molecule is just 1.2 nanometers in width, about a hundred thousandth the width of a human hair. The molecule, composed of 19 carbon atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms, essentially consists of five interlocked benzene rings and was synthesized by chemists David Fox and Anish Mistry of the University of Warwick.

When President John F. Kennedy announced in 1961 that America was committed to "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade, winning the race became the paramount objective of the national space program. But UC San Diego nuclear chemist James R. Arnold played a crucial role in drawing official attention to another goal: preserving and studying the soil and rock samples that Apollo astronauts would bring back with them. Arnold, 88, who died Jan. 6 in La Jolla from complications of Alzheimer's disease, was a member of a group of four scientists — dubbed the Four Horsemen by colleagues — who sounded the alarms that led NASA to establish a program for analyzing what proved to be a treasure trove for lunar research.

Har Gobind Khorana, who rose from poverty in rural India to become a giant of modern biology, winning the Nobel Prize in 1968 for work that helped decipher the genetic code and explain how cells make proteins, died Nov. 9 in Concord, Mass. He was 89. Khorana died of natural causes, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was an emeritus professor of biology and chemistry. Described by colleagues as brilliant and humble, Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with two other scientists, Robert W. Holley of Cornell University and Marshall W. Nirenberg of the National Institutes of Health.

In recent months, not only soccer-obsessed eyes have turned toward Africa, but musically curious ears too. Most prominent has been the Broadway success of the "Fela!" musical, which chronicled both the Nigerian legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti's extraordinary personal and political life as well as his majestic Afrobeat rhythms, whose tendrils run as much toward James Brown's funk as they do Ghana's highlife. But the revived interest in Kuti is merely the tip of a massive iceberg of recently released African-related music projects.

A former chemist for the Food and Drug Administration was sentenced to 30 days in prison for taking $4,300 in bribes in exchange for favorable FDA treatment of applications for approval of generic drugs produced by two pharmaceutical companies. David Brancato was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Hargrove in Baltimore to three two-year prison terms, but the judge suspended all but 30 days.

A trusted chemist at Cal State Fullerton was arrested at his university office Monday morning after state agents accused him of making the drug ecstasy in a lab on campus. James Edward Lightner, 42, of Riverside had worked for nearly seven years as an institutional support technician, responsible for ordering, keeping track of and dispensing all chemicals and supplies for the university's chemistry department, said Judy Mandel, a university spokeswoman.

Robert L. McNeil Jr., a Philadelphia chemist who developed a little-known pain reliever called paracetamol into the global blockbuster Tylenol, creating a fortune that he freely distributed to charities, universities and museums, died May 20 of a heart ailment at his home in Wyndmoor, Pa. He was 94. McNeil was not a brilliant synthetic chemist discovering new compounds through long hours in the laboratory, said Arnold Thackray of the nonprofit Chemical...

Stan Thomas Head of high school sports federation Stan Thomas, 78, who served as commissioner of the California Interscholastic Federation's Southern Section from 1986 until 1993, when he was forced to resign over disputed expense-account reports, died Wednesday at an Orange County hospital after a heart attack. Thomas, who lived in Fullerton, had been battling illnesses for the last 11 years, according to his son, Chris. As commissioner of the body that governs high school sports, Thomas was credited with improving relations among the state's various high school organizations and praised for his administrative and managerial skills.