Chemistry Update Newsletter 289, 29th September 2017 Inside this Issue Calendar of Events Leading National Education Conference Held in 2-3 Department of Chemistry Research Seminar Speaker: Dr Luisa Ciobanu, French Alternative Smith Group Mixes it Up 3 Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) Towards the Quadruple Carbon-Carbon Bond 4 Date: Wednesday 4 October Time: 1pm—2pm An App for Applicants 5 Location: C/B101 Could Interstellar Ice Provide the Answer to Birth of 6-7 DNA? KMS Seminars Summer Student Development Work in Teaching 7 Date: Wednesday 4 October Laboratories Time: 2pm—5pm Location: C/A101 York Scientists Pioneer New Directional Drug 8-9 Release Gel Green Chemistry Seminar Speaker: Dr Florent Bouxin, Tobacco-Smoke Residue that Lingers in Furniture, 9 Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Curtains and House Dust Can Still be Harmful Date: Thursday 5 October Green Chemists of the World Come to York 10-11 Time: 3pm—4pm Location: C/F106 Iodine in Japan by Professor Duncan Bruce 12-13 York Chemistry Retains 4th Position in The Times 13 Industry Mini-Symposium University League Table Speakers: Professor Tim O'Riordan, Sygenta and Peter Lindsay-Scott, Lilly Students’ Experience of China 14-15 Date: Wednesday 11 October University Teddy Bear is Cover Model 15 Time: 12.30pm—2pm Location: C/B101 Potatoes to Plastic 16 Inorganic Seminar Computational Analysis of Surfactants using both 17 Speaker: Dr Joy Farnaby, HSPiP and Origin University of Glasgow An Unusual Scientific Mind 18 Date: Wednesday 18 October Time: 1pm—2pm New Starters 19 Location: C/B101 Last Departmental Cricket Game of the Summer: Match Report Green Impact 20-21 Date of Next Issue: 27th October 2017 New Arrivals 21 Leading National Education Conference Held in Department of Chemistry The Variety in Chemistry Education and Physics Higher Education Conference (ViCEPHEC) is the leading national conference for chemistry and physics education at tertiary level in the UK. This year the conference was held in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York between 23 and 25 August. Delegates ranged from academic staff at universities to schoolteachers, outreach officers, laboratory specialists, technicians, students, industrialists and publishers. The event, attended by over 175 delegates, provided opportunities to share best practice within the disciplines of chemistry and physics by discussing cutting edge educational research and practice. New for 2017 was ‘Labsolutely Fabulous’, chaired by Dr David Pugh, which was an opportunity for conference delegates to present lecture demonstrations, experiments and outreach activities. This addition to the programme complemented the interactive workshops, oral presentations and five minute oral bytes. A poster session at the National STEM Learning Centre provided further opportunities to discuss aspects of teaching and scholarship. Professor Andy Parsons and Dr Glenn Hurst both gave presentations at the meeting. Andy talked about his online course ‘Explaining Everyday Chemistry’ and the way in which this demystifies organic chemistry to a wide range of different learners. Glenn presented the variety of ways in which, working alongside Louise Summerton, Avtar Matharu and James Clark, he has been embedding Green Chemistry principles into a range of different learning environments – from schools in Brazil to undergraduate labs here in York. Professor John Holman gave a thought-provoking plenary lecture in which he explored the transition made by students (and himself) between school and university chemistry education. A number of York alumni also came back to the Department and made great contributions to the meeting: Dr Dan Cornwell (ex-Smith group, now Kings College London) described a new introductory ‘sweet’ experiment to spectrophotometry and Dr Russ Kitson (ex-Taylor Group, now University of Warwick) presented a brilliant example of how students can be motivated with monopoly money via ‘game- based learning’, in which they must work in teams to spend their money wisely on analysis in order to determine molecular structure as efficiently as possible. Page 2 A highlight of the meeting was the conference dinner held at the National Railway Museum – a spectacular venue, which made a real impression on conference delegates and showed off York at its very best. Dr Glenn Hurst, Chair of the conference organising committee said: "The many great discussions over dinner and throughout the rest of the meeting attest to the healthy state of education in the physical sciences at university level and the strong sense of community that exists." Smith Group Mixes it Up New research from the Smith group has reported innovative new materials that successfully ‘mix up’ four different components, each of which performs a different job in the final gel. Making materials that do multiple different things can be a challenging task yet has the potential to unlock exciting new biological applications. In this recent research paper Vânia Vieira, PhD student, Laura Hay, MChem project student and Professor David Smith, employ a multi-component approach, gaining an understanding of how different active ingredients can be simply mixed together yet still retain their individual activities. The first component is a soft self-assembling gel, which is highly responsive to pH. This weak gel is physically reinforced by mixing in a robust polymer gel, agarose. Heparin, a key biomolecule that plays key roles in controlling both cell growth and blood coagulation can then be incorporated, with the two different gel networks each playing different roles in controlling the release of heparin from the overall material. Finally, a self-assembling heparin binder can also be mixed into the materials – this binds strongly to the heparin within the gel and completely prevents its release until the whole material has been broken down. Materials such as these have potential biological applications where controlled release of heparin is desirable. Ultimately, this could lead to systems for slow sustained release of heparin, useful in a hospital setting, where a daily injection of heparin is often required to prevent blood clotting. Alternatively, these materials could be useful as scaffolds for growing cells, where controlled heparin release can help direct tissue growth. Research towards these important applications is currently ongoing in the Smith labs. Professor Smith said: "Understanding complex self-assembled materials, which contain mixtures of nanoscale systems, is a difficult job. This paper is an important step forwards with multiple functions being programmed into a single material in a simple and rational way." The researchers are a part of the Molecular Materials research grouping in the Department of Chemistry. Page 3 Towards the Quadruple Carbon-Carbon Bond New theoretical studies support the view that C2 has partial quadruple bond character. All chemists are well-acquainted with alkanes, alkenes and alkynes, which have single, double and triple carbon-carbon bonds respectively. But what happens in dicarbon C2, a molecule which only exists at high temperature in the gas phase? Should the bond be considered as a double bond, a triple bond or perhaps even a unique quadruple bond? This intriguing question has been the subject of much speculation in the field of quantum chemistry. Recent research from the theoretical chemistry group of Dr Peter B Karadakov uses magnetic shielding studies of C2 and C2H2 to provide new insight into this problem. Off-nucleus shielding calculations indicate that the carbon–carbon bond in C2 is more shielded than the triple carbon– carbon bond in the alkyne C2H2, and, therefore, has higher than triple bond multiplicity. Intriguingly, however, the authors find the carbon–carbon bond in C2 is bulkier than in C2H2, and, although it has partial quadruple bond character, it is actually weaker than the corresponding triple bond in C2H2. This study makes use of a new approach developed in Karadakov’s group based on the analysis of changes in the off-nucleus magnetic shielding tensor within the space surrounding a molecule, which has been shown to reveal more information about chemical bonding than simple variations in electron density. The paper, 'Magnetic Shielding Studies of C2 and C2H2 Support Higher than Triple Bond Multiplicity in C2' is published in Chemistry A European Journal, where it was selected by reviewers and editors as a Hot Paper. Page 4 An App for Applicants An interdisciplinary team of staff and students from the Departments of Chemistry and Theatre, Film and Television (TFTV) combined their expertise to design and produce the first mobile app to support admissions at in the Department of Chemistry. The team consisted of Dr Glenn Hurst, Lecturer; Professor Andy Parsons, Admissions Tutor; Katrina Sayer, Undergraduate Student Experience Manager; Dr Jonathan Hook, Lecturer in Interactive Media in TFTV; and Chris Fulford, TFTV undergraduate student. The work was completed as part of a 10-week summer project in 2016 with the aid of a grant from the Student Internship Bureau. Chris designed the app for prospective applicants and visitors to the Department of Chemistry, with features including a campus map, promotional videos, news feed, links to resources to aid the school- university transition, employability information, life as a student and details about admission days. Approximately 250 applicants downloaded the app ahead of their UCAS interview in the Department of Chemistry, with the total number of downloads