It is not new that the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis”. Recently, in recognition of their achievement, American Chemical Society (ACS) decided to provide free access to 101 articles published in ACS journals over the past 10 years by chemistry’s newest Nobel Laureates, namely in Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organometallics, The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Organic Letters. For the papers published prior to 1996 the access to the abstract is provided.
(Almost) Related: The 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes winners are already known. One should remember that “every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes people laugh then makes them think”. The Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry is a confirmation of this statement. The proud winners were Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, “for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?” For the records, the article, named “Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?”, has been published on the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.
The 37th International Chemistry Olympiad will take place in Taiwan, from July 16 to 25. Additional information can be found here.
Update: According to the site, South Korea was the winner of this Olympiad, since their students won 4 gold medals. The young Russian Alexey Zeifman won the absolute first prize. The full list of winners can be found here.
The measurement of the mass of a protein molecule, on the zeptogram (10-21 g) scale, is now possible, as can be read on New Scientist.com. Previously, in 2000, the mass of a cluster of gold atoms, near one attogram (10-18 g) was already measured. The next goal, a gigantic step, is to develop devices capable of weighing masses on the yoctogram (10-24 g) scale, meaning measuring the mass of a single hydrogen atom. The article is worth reading as is this one, published on PhysOrg.
Another very interesting promotion from Knovel : Yaws’ Handbook of Thermodynamic and Physical Properties has unlimited access until April 6th. [via K-News]
CAS Science Spotlight, already mentioned here, has been updated. The 4Q-2004 data as well as 2004 annual data have been added, except the most cited articles list. The author with the highest number of requested articles from CAS electronic services worldwide during 2004 was Stephen L. Buchwald of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The most requested journal article was Toward Catalytic Rigid-rod ß-barrels: a Hexamer with Multiple Histidines, by Gopal Das, Naomi Sakai and Stefan Matile, published on Chirality. The complete list of the most requested documents, articles and patents, can be found here.