Volume 36, Issue 5

Every day, we all make choices. In reviewing “Multiple Uses of Chemicals—IUPAC and OPCW Working Together Toward Responsible Science” (feature p. 9), we are presented with a website resource that explores the beneficial uses, misuses, and abuses of multi-use chemicals, both historically and presently. This educational material considers how to make responsible choices in chemistry and what it means to practice chemistry responsibly. If the topic intrigues, I recommend that you read these pages, visit the website, and preview the video. Most informative, the video showcases the hands-on workshop held last year during the IUPAC Congress in Istanbul and explores how to use the resource by examining how chemists/students make choices. This project builds on the premise that education and outreach are key to prevent the abuse of chemical substances. While such a topic might seem far from the concerns of chemical warfare, it is really not a big leap to teach chemists and teachers about the importance of regulatory agencies such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the creation of codes of conduct. In that context, the “About” section of the website ends with the following statement: “Each of us as scientists and citizens have a responsibility to ensure responsible uses of the chemical substances that are important to every aspect of our everyday lives.”

After the difficult financial times that we have experienced in recent years we are now in a period with the opportunity for recovery, renewal, improvement, and growth. In better times it is too easy to coast along on the wave taking the comfortable pathways and to fail to critically examine the benefits and costs of decisions. One of the better outcomes of a recession is that it sharpens critical functions by making necessary a general examination and questioning of every choice made. Even the magic of our chemistry could not empower IUPAC to complete immunity from the global financial malaise and, as I have reported previously, two of our income streams—those from publications and investments—have inevitably been reduced. It also has been an expensive few years for us with the excitement and success of the International Year of Chemistry still fresh in our thoughts.

The feature that perhaps most distinguishes chemistry from the rest of the sciences is the ability of chemists to control the structure of matter at the molecular level. Unfortunately, we are not nearly as adept at the synthesis of molecules with defined functions as we are at the synthesis of molecules with defined structures. As the focus of chemistry increasingly shifts from structure to function, chemists will need to develop better strategies to efficiently generate molecules, and systems of molecules, with desired physical, chemical, or biological properties in order to meet the biomedical, energy, and environmental needs of the future. Indeed this challenge represents one of the great opportunities for synthesis in the coming years. One direction we can turn for help is Mother Nature: after all, living organisms carry out a remarkable array of complex functions using natural molecules and molecular assemblies. With this theme in mind, the focus of our work has been to exploit nature itself, i.e., use the synthetic strategies, molecules, and biosynthetic machinery of living organisms, together with more traditional chemical approaches, to generate molecules with properties that might be difficult to realize by chemical strategies alone.

Imagine being a chemist in the summer of 1941, four years prior to the end of the Second World War. The pressure to use the powerful knowledge of chemistry in service of national and political interests is enormous. The end result? At the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp, Zyklon B, an infamous weapon of mass destruction, is first used. Over the next four years it claims responsibility for the lives of several million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other death camps. When mixed with water, Zyklon B releases hydrogen cyanide, which fatally interferes with the respiratory processes of those inhaling it. Hydrogen cyanide is a simple, triatomic molecule whose power for destruction is now burned into our global consciousness as a symbol of how badly things can go wrong when the tools of chemistry are misused. Prior to the Second World War, hydrogen cyanide had been used as a delousing agent and insecticide, and this toxicity inspired its use in designing a new way to kill people.

Every two years, IUPAC holds an election for its officers and committee members. About 120 individuals are to be elected or reelected either as Titular Members, Associate Members, or National Representatives. Information concerning the voting process and the role of each kind of member is contained in the Union bylaws (see www.iupac.org/home/about/organizational-guidelines.html).

In May 2014, IUPAC and Solvay announced the winners of the 2014 IUPAC-SOLVAY International Award for Young Chemists presented for the best PhD theses in the chemical sciences as described in 1000-word essays.

University of Cambridge professor Steven V. Ley (Cambridge, UK) is the 2014 recipient of the IUPAC-ThalesNano Prize in Flow Chemistry. The award was presented on 25 June 2014 at the International Conference on Microreaction Technology (http://www.imretconferences.com) in Budapest, by former IUPAC Committee of Chemistry and Industry (COCI) Chair Prof. Michael Droescher and Dr. Ferenc Darvas for ThalesNano and for the Flow Chemical Society.

The 2014 Chemical Structure Association (CSA) Trust Mike Lynch Award is being presented to the “InChI Team,” namely Steve Heller, Steve Stein, Alan McNaught, Dmitrii Tchekhovskoi, and Igor Pletnev.

Sound, reproducible scholarship rests upon a foundation of robust, accessible data. For this to be so in practice as well as theory, data must be accorded due importance in the practice of scholarship and in the enduring scholarly record. In other words, data should be considered legitimate, citable products of research. Data citation, like the citation of other evidence and sources, is good research practice and is part of the scholarly ecosystem supporting data reuse. In support of this assertion, and to encourage good practice, a set of guiding principles for data citation has been developed by the “Data Citation Synthesis Group.”