DNA from the Beginning is an animated tutorial on DNA, genes and heredity. The science behind each concept is explained using animations related to DNA topics, an image gallery, video interviews, problems, biographies, and links related to DNA. There are three sections, Classical Genetics, Molecules of Genetics and Organization of Genetic Material. Key features are the clear explanations of classical experiments and the excellent photographs of researchers and their labs.For information and credits on the development of DNA from the Beginning, go to http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/credits.html

Here's your chance to mix chemicals without wearing safety goggles. You won't spill any acid on the spectrometer in this lab. Choose solutions from the vast database and mix 'em together till the cloned cows come home. Marvel as the chemical solutions react in real time.

A collection of simulations and virtual labs focusing on first-year college physics. An interview with the award winning author can be found in About us at Phet Video

Educational physics applets designed to be scripted in JavaScript for use in quizzes, homework problems, and Just in Time Teaching activities. Includes applets that can be used in a wide range of classes and at different levels.

The acoustics of musical instruments and the voice. The "Basics" directory introduces and explains general concepts. There are "Introduction to the Acoustics of [instrument name]", data bases, technical material, web services (including a hearing test) and a FAQ.

VR Molecules presents dynamically and interactively the vibration and rotation modes for 24 molecules (out of a more extensive list) containing up to twelve atoms. It allows the user to create and save on his or her hard disk documents containing, much in the same way as Power Point presentations, up to 10 "pages", each featuring one or two molecules with specific parameters (viewpoint, active modes, etc.). These presentations can be made available through the Internet, with optional sound and text explanations associated with each page.The latest, augmented version of VR Molecules, called VR Molecules Pro 1.1, is available online as well as in a stand-alone version (Mac and Windows).To view a video of the award winning author, go to View VR Molecules - Chemistry Award Winner 2007 video VR Molécules est un logiciel de simulation (en ligne et en mode local) permettant de visualiser et d'explorer les modes de vibration et de rotation des molécules (24 molécules sont disponibles).Il peut tout aussi bien être utilisé par le professeur pour préparer des démonstrations en classe, intégrer des animations (interactives ou non) dans ses documents HTML, que par les étudiants pour revoir les démonstrations présentées en classe et explorer par eux-mêmes la vibration et la rotation des molécules.La plus récente version (1.12) de VR Molécules, est accessible en deux versions : en ligne et en mode local (à télécharger, pour Mac et Windows).

MecMovies is an extensive collection of examples, theory, and games designed to complement the entire Mechanics of Materials course. The software features impressive graphics and animation that are highly effective in visually communicating course concepts to students. Special emphasis is placed on developing the learner?s understanding and proficiency in basic concepts and skills through interactive exercises and games. Classroom implementation of the software has produced improved student performance and more positive student attitudes regarding the Mechanics of Materials course. To see a video with the award winning author, go to View MecMovies video

This interactive site allows participants to learn about skeletal anatomy by viewing the bones of a human, chimpanzee, and baboon. Users select a bone from the list of four bone types on the skeletal image, and launch the bone viewer. A detailed look at each bone from six viewing angle options is provided along with the option to select another bone or make a comparison with another species (chimpanzee or baboon). The Comparative Anatomy section enables users to make direct comparisons of bones. The material is appropriate for science teacher education as it illustrates how careful observation leads one to wonder about the dizzying beauty of a planet that works by bringing us one different creature after another.

The entry point to an extensive site concerning the nervous system and neuroscience. The site includes descriptive materials, experiments, activities, links to articles, resources for teaching neuroscience, and a listing of Internet resources related to the neurosciences.

This provides text description and audio examples of various heart and breath sounds. The sounds are broken up into certain catagories. The heart sounds are divided into systolic, where you can hear aortic stenosis, mitral regurgitation, etc.., and diastolic, where you can hear mitral stenosis, aortic regurgitation, etc.. The lung sounds provide examples of cackles and wheezes.

Delicious links March 16-18

• Chemical Science – Building linear polymers from monomers, inaugural paper in RSC's new journal
• Bing maps now let you scan the nighttime sky – The stars are coming out tonight…even when it's cloudy
• Sex and social networking – Patterns of prostitution revealed by analysis of social networking site has important implications for spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
• 7 steps to restore trust in science – Every journey begins with a single step, here's the seventh to restoring public trust in science
• Malevolent Design: The Death of a Loving God – Never before has a book so aggressively levelled the charge that a creator deity, if it were to exist, would be completely and unimaginably evil. Darwin said it first when he talked about parasites, but think opium poppies, oral cancer, spina bifida, famine, malaria, ebola…where's the intelligence in any of that?
• Breaking Bad – Every chemist's favourite TV show returns with a third series in March 2010 BrB -bromobismuth ?-)
• science – Ten Word Wiki – Learning by prediction and observation instead of making sh*t up

Related Posts:

• Antimony, x-rays, childhood obesity
• How to get your fill of Sciencebase goodness
• In What We Trust
• Hacking your online identity
• Hot Science News

Chemical science, night sky, scientific trust is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

This week has seen an outpouring of tributes for Ashok Kumar MP, who was the only chemical engineer serving in the current UK parliament before his untimely death.

David Brown, chief executive of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), has paid tribute to the late Dr Kumar, saying ‘We are shocked to hear of his sudden death. Dr Kumar was an accomplished chemical engineer and a stalwart supporter of the profession and of the process industries. He will be sorely missed.’

Prior to his career in politics, Kumar spent 14 years working as a research scientist for British Steel in Grangetown, UK where he gained a strong conviction of the importance of industrial R&D to the UK economy.

Steve Elliott, vice chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Chemical Industry, said ‘the tragic and untimely death of Ashok Kumar robs the Country of one of our most effective Parliamentarians. He spoke out for his constituents and understood what business and industry meant to his people. We will all miss him.’

PHARMACEUTICALS

Teva cements top spot with Ratiopharm buy

Israel-based Teva has beaten off Pfizer and Actavis in the race to buy Ratiopharm, and cemented its position as the world’s largest generic drugmaker, ahead of Novartis’s Sandoz. The deal for Germany’s second largest generic supplier (and the sixth largest in the world) cost €3.6 billion (£3.2 billion) and will position Teva as the largest generic company in Europe. On a pro forma basis the deal would have boosted Teva’s 2009 European sales from $3.3 billion (£2.2 billion) to $5.2 billion, the combined company would have had worldwide sales of $16.2 billion in 2009.

Teva says that Ratiopharm has ‘valuable know-how in biosimilars, consisting of a number of products in advanced stages of development,’ and that the transaction is ‘perfectly aligned with our long-term strategy in which Europe is an important pillar and growth driver’.

Ratiopharm had been on the market for the last nine months as the Merckle family looked to preserve some of the empire built up by the late Adolf Merckle, one of the most prominent victims of the financial crisis. He committed suicide after he lost various financial bets that left the group so heavily indebted that he had to cede control of it.

Lilly warehouse hit by thieves

Eli Lilly has fallen foul of one of the largest pharmaceutical heists ever. On Sunday March 21, thieves stole around $75 million of prescription drugs from a warehouse in Connecticut, US. The warehouse contained a range of  antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs including Prozac (fluoxetine), Cymbalta (duloxetine), and Zyprexa (olanzapine).

According to media reports, the thieves cut a hole in the roof of the warehouse, before sliding down a rope into the warehouse. The company is working with the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Criminal Investigations, and other law enforcement officials, to recover the stolen drugs.

Lilly gets manly

Having brushed aside being burgled, Eli Lilly has licensed a an experimental formulation of testosterone for underarm application from Australia-based Acrux. The formulation is currently under regulatory review by the US FDA for the treatment of male testosterone deficiency (hypogonadism). The drug has tentatively be named Axiron and, according to Bryce Carmine, president of bio-medicine at Lilly, ‘has the potential to be the first testosterone solution to be applied via an underarm applicator’.

Testosterone deficiency in men is associated with a number of clinical problems and has been estimated that up to 39 per cent of men over 45 years of age may have testosterone levels below the normal healthy range. According to IMS Health, global sales of testosterone therapies are worth more than $1 billion per year - making the upfront payment of $50 million seem quite reasonable.

Roche showcases pipeline strengths

With the dust having settled after its takeover of Genentech, Swiss pharma giant Roche has showcased its pipeline and said it is ’set to strengthen its leadership in oncology and expand in therapeutic areas such as metabolism, inflammation and central nervous system diseases’.

The company’s scientists believe that its pipeline includes ten new drug candidates that have the potential to emerge as best-in-class therapies. Half of those are, unsurprisingly, cancer therapies while the others include taspoglutide a new GLP-1 drug for Type 2 diabetes, and the schizophrenia drug RG1678. It also plans to move 20 programmes into late-stage files by 2015.

Severin Schwan, the company’s chief executive,  said Roche is ‘uniquely positioned to deliver sustainable, long-term growth’, and that ‘in order to develop more efficacious and safer medicines, we pursue a seamless cooperation between our pharmaceuticals and diagnostics units from research through to the market to implement personalised healthcare as an integral part of our drug development efforts’.

OSI tries to start bidding war

After having considered Astellas $3.5 billion bid for OSI, its board of directors has concluded that it ‘does not fully reflect OSI’s fundamental, intrinsic value’, and is recommending that shareholders reject the offer.

‘We believe that OSI is a unique asset - the only profitable, mid-cap biotech company with a growing, high quality and fully integrated oncology franchise and a strong diabetes and obesity franchise which also has a proven track-record of success,’ said Robert Ingram, OSI’s chairman.

‘The OSI Board takes its fiduciary duties seriously and will continue to do what’s right for OSI stockholders [and] has instructed OSI management, with the assistance of the company’s financial advisors, to contact appropriate third parties in order to explore the availability of a transaction that reflects the full intrinsic value of the company.’

INDUSTRY

Innospec admits bribery

Innospec has admitted to paying bribes to Indonesian officials to boost sales of the poisonous fuel additive tetraethyl lead (TEL) during a hearing at Southwark Crown Court, UK.

The Ellesmere Port, Cheshire-based company is believed to be the last manufacturer of TEL, which was used in leaded petrol to make engines run more smoothly. However, after years of use the compound was found to be highly poisonous to humans, in particular stunting the mental development of children.

The company has been ordered to pay $12.7 million for corrupting senior Indonesian officials in order to block legislative moves to ban TEL use in fuel on environmental grounds. The Indonesian Government’s intention to move to lead-free petrol was conceived in 1999, but was not realised until 2006.

Former DuPont employee jailed for stealing trade secrets

Michael Mitchell, a former DuPont employee, has been jailed for 18 months in a US Federal Prison for stealing trade secrets associated with its Kevlar branded products and selling them to its competitor Kolon.

In a statement, Tom Sager, DuPont’s senior vice president said that in 2007 the company ‘became concerned about the activities of Michael Mitchell, who left DuPont in early 2006 and was working on behalf of Kolon Industries, a Korea-based competitor to our DuPont Kevlar branded products’. Since then the company has cooperated with the FBI and in February 2009, filed a civil lawsuit against Kolon Industries for theft of trade secrets.

‘Kevlar technology and products are not only important to DuPont, but also to our customers and especially to those whose lives they protect. Those customers expect us to invest in innovation and to conduct business with the highest ethical standards, and we will continue to fulfill those expectations,’ continued Sager.

Mitsubishi upgrades outlook

Mitsubishi Chemical has upgraded its sales and earnings predictions for the 2009 financial year ‘due to an increase in price in synthetic fiber material business and improved operating rates for carbon products and basic petrochemical products’. The company now expects its chemicals business segment to achieve an operating profit of ¥10 billion (£73 million) compared to its previous projections that the unit would only breakeven.

Eastman to buy plasticiser firm

Eastman Chemical has bought Illinois, US-based Genovique Specialties from Arsenal Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount. The company says the acquisition of the speciality non-phthalate plasticiser manufacturer will position Eastman as a global leader in the $9 billion non-phthalate plasticiser market.

The deal includes Genovique’s manufacturing operations in Chestertown, US, Kohtla-Järve, Estonia, and its joint venture in Wuhan, China.

‘Genovique Specialties is a strategic addition that will allow us to grow our attractive plasticiser product lines,’ said Ron Lindsay, executive vice president, performance polymers and chemical intermediates. ‘With Genovique, we will be better able to meet our customers’ demands for non-phthalates while also expanding Eastman’s presence in a high-growth, high-margin segment of the plasticiser market.’

LABORATORY

Pfizer licenses actives to Tocris and Sigma-Aldrich

Pfizer is licensing around 100 of its small molecule compounds to Bristol, UK-based Tocris Bioscience and St Louis, US-based Sigma-Aldrich. Under the agreements, unformulated patented and approved drug molecules such as atorvastatin, sildenafil and sunitinib will be sold for use in pre-clinical research studies. In addition, a number of Pfizer’s literature compounds that have not progressed from development to clinical use will also be offered for sale.

Laurence Ede, Tocris’s managing director, told Chemistry World that the announcement continued the considerable momentum that the company had seen throughout 2009 despite the widespread economic doom and gloom. That momentum saw the company’s sales increase 17 per cent compared to 2008, with sales of new products introduced in 2009 surpassing even 2008’s record levels.

‘This license is a forward looking move that, as well as being a welcome additional boost to our product range, is a great endorsement of our company by Pfizer - it should also help us maintain the growth that we achieved in 2009 through 2010 and beyond,’ said Ede.

Matt Wilkinson

Glucagon for weight loss seems to be a common search phrase hitting my science site, so I thought it was time to write a short summary of what glucagon is and what role it might have to play in weight loss and addressing the growing problem of obesity.

Glucagon is a hormone with the opposite action to insulin. It is made in the pancreas and is involved in carbohydrate metabolism. It is released when blood glucose levels start to fall below a threshold level and triggers the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose and release it into the bloodstream, raising blood glucose levels and so preventing hypoglycemia.

However, the picture is complicated by the fact that glucagon also stimulates the release of insulin, so that newly available glucose in the bloodstream can be taken up and used by insulin-dependent tissues. The role of glucagon supplements for weight loss is undecided. My personal advice? Eat less and get plenty of cardiovascular and load-bearing exercise.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool point out that this is not necessarily the answer:

“For obese individuals, successful weight loss and maintenance are notoriously difficult. Traditional drug development fails to exploit knowledge of the psychological factors that crucially influence appetite, concentrating instead on restrictive criteria of intake and weight reduction, allied to a mechanistic view of energy regulation,” they say in a recent research paper (see citation below).

They add that drugs currently being developed that may produce beneficial changes in appetite expression in the obese include glucagon like peptide-1 analogs such as liraglutide, an amylin analog davalintide, the 5-HT(2C) receptor agonist lorcaserin, the monoamine re-uptake inhibitor tesofensine, and a number of combination therapies such as pramlintide and metreleptin, bupropion and naltrexone, phentermine and topiramate, and bupropion and zonisamide.

That said, they also point out that “obesity is typically a consequence of over-consumption driven by an individual’s natural sensitivity to food stimuli and the pleasure derived from eating.” Addressing that issue is as important as ever if we are to circumvent an obesity epidemic of even greater proportions than we currently see in the developed world.

Halford JC, Boyland EJ, Blundell JE, Kirkham TC, & Harrold JA (2010). Pharmacological management of appetite expression in obesity. Nature reviews. Endocrinology PMID: 20234354

Wing-Yan Wong, Ken Cham-Fai Leung, J. Fraser Stoddart
(Paper from Org. Biomol. Chem.)
Wing-Yan Wong, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b926568f
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Pol Besenius, Peter A. G. Cormack, R. Frederick Ludlow, Sijbren Otto, David C. Sherrington
(Paper from Org. Biomol. Chem.)
Pol Besenius, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/c000333f
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In-Sun Cho, Sangwook Lee, Jun Hong Noh, Dong Wook Kim, Duk Kyu Lee, Hyun Suk Jung, Dong-Wan Kim, Kug Sun Hong
(Paper from J. Mater. Chem.)
In-Sun Cho, J. Mater. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b926694a
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Ming Xue, Zhangjing Zhang, Shengchang Xiang, Zhao Jin, Chengdu Liang, Guang-Shan Zhu, Shi-Lun Qiu, Banglin Chen
(Paper from J. Mater. Chem.)
Ming Xue, J. Mater. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b927486c
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Victor Varela Guerrero, Yeonshick Yoo, Michael C. McCarthy, Hae-Kwon Jeong
(Paper from J. Mater. Chem.)
Victor Varela Guerrero, J. Mater. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b924536g
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Munju Goh, Satoshi Matsushita, Kazuo Akagi
(Tutorial Review from Chem. Soc. Rev.)
Munju Goh, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b907990b
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