Category Archives: Chemistry

Jennifer Aniston says her “chemistry” with Paul Rudd has “always been there”.

The Hollywood pair have maintained a good working relationship over the years, appearing in films including The Object of My Affection and more recently Wanderlust.

Both actors have a great on-screen chemistry, which Jennifer admits is very natural.

“I just think it’s something that has been there. I mean, it’s grown – because we’ve grown, but I think that that chemistry has always been there,” she told Access Hollywood.

Jennifer and Paul engage in a few semi-naked scenes in the comedy film, including one with a prosthetic penis.

Jennifer says the experience was a totally new one for her.

“That’s a first – that’s an absolute first,” Jennifer insisted before Paul pondered about the question. “That’s not your first?” Jennifer laughed.

Wanderlust is produced by famed comedy director Judd Apatow and tells the story of a married Manhattan couple who move to a rural commune after facing sudden unemployment. The film also stars Jennifer’s partner Justin Theroux.

The actress says the relaxed script allowed for the cast to improvise throughout.

“There would be the scene as written, then there would be a Judd Apatow touch where he would have these alternate lines written, so we would try version one, version two, version three. They were all hilarious, I don’t know how they decided what to put together,” Jennifer said.

“Then there were also times when we would keep rolling and see what happened,” Paul added.

The pair admit that the final edit was made appropriate for the big screen.

“There was so much that was naughty that got cut,” Jennifer exclaimed before Paul laughed: “There is only so much disgusting stuff the audience is gonna handle!”

© Cover Media

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Jennifer Aniston proud of Rudd chemistry

Next fall, one of my closest friends at Ohio State will begin the long and arduous task of earning a doctorate in something chemistry related. Another will begin pursuing his in biological anthropology. My younger sister's favorite part of the school day? Her AP Chemistry class.

Me? Well, I am a perfectly content and successful student in communication. In March, I will receive my diploma and journey out into the real world with no foreseeable plans to do anything related to science. And yet, in my very last quarter, I am enrolled in Chemistry 101 and I kind of love it.

The hallmark of a true liberal arts education is the requirement that students take courses from a breadth of disciplines. For the most part, I appreciate it. I took an incredible course on civil liberties. I got to channel my inner Aaron Sorkin in a second writing course called "Criticizing Television." Fulfillment of the foreign language requirement inspired me to complete a minor in Spanish. The liberal arts have been good to me. But I have been dreading my lab science, which is why it is not so surprising that I put it off until I couldn't any longer.

On the first day of chemistry, my lecturer told all 275 of us that this would be the hardest class we ever take. If she was trying to weed me out, it was working. Then she said something that included the phrase, "All of you freshmen." How embarrassing. Far removed from my high school chemistry class, I sat there wide-eyed and dumbfounded as every single voice in the lecture hall except my own recited in unison the three states of matter. I was thoroughly panicked.

The first chemistry lab was stressful. The first homework assignment impossible. But there was something about the delight in my sister's voice as she walked me through the steps of dimensional analysis (a personal favorite of hers) that made it all seem just slightly more bearable. I started finding success in the class. And then it got fun. Certainly not because of the 8:30 a.m. lectures, but because of the labs spent observing chemical reactions and solving for the missing piece of the puzzle. And because of the opportunity to become even closer to my sister as she tutors me and shares her pure joy for the science while I inspire some jealousy because she thinks my labs are so much cooler than hers.

My chemistry friend and I have never wanted for conversation, but now we have even more to talk about. I can make lame jokes about supersaturated resumes and he daydreams about an odd alternate reality in which I discover my chemistry "talents" early enough to become his study buddy.

So, liberal arts gods, listen up. I don't say this often, but I was wrong and you were very much right. I can't say what practical good it will do me that I have hand-crafted tin oxide, but I do know that my undergraduate education and my life are fuller for it.

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Liberal arts curriculum brought out surprising chemistry with science

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Jets players such as offensive guard Matt Slauson (68) and quarterback Mark Sanchez (6) should be more focused on what they need to do to win, instead of worrying about team chemistry and coming up with ideas such as bowling outings.ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: 2:00 AM - 02/19/12

Points to ponder while wondering if the Jets think they can just decide, "Hey, lets build us some chemistry for next season!''

Chemistry isn't something you mandate, not something you cross off a checklist. Chemistry must be developed. A team must have the right pieces in place to have chemistry. It must have the right leadership inside the locker room and on the sideline.

Chemistry isn't something developed from team bowling nights or other so-called bonding activities being looked into by Jets offensive lineman Matt Slauson. It is, best put, something that is developed from a culture in which 53 guys possess the same goal.

That goal is winning.

When every single guy in the locker room places winning above personal achievement, there is chemistry. Of course bonding should be stressed. But you don't need 53 guys getting along like frat brothers. You need 53 guys sacrificing for the common cause: winning.

Did you once hear Hakeem Nicks or Mario Manningham or Jake Ballard complain about a lack of touches? Did you see a Giants player quit on his team during a game? Was there an occasion when players griped about coaches, at least publicly? Not that I can remember.

Oh sure, more than one Giants player found defensive coordinator Perry Fewell's schemes hard to grasp at different points in the season. You can bet they expressed their frustration from time to time. But they handled it in-house. They communicated. They worked through it. And guess what? Because they dealt with it like men, unlike the Jets, Fewell and his guys discovered the formula that helped the Giants win the Super Bowl.

Safety Antrel Rolle had the biggest outburst, complaining after the late-season loss to Washington that teammates needed to practice through relatively minor injuries. Seemed a little harsh at the time. But players responded, saying Rolle's rant represented a much-needed kick. In the end, teammates knew that Rolle, if a bit chatty in the press, cared only about one thing: winning.

The Jets can hold all the pizza-and-wing nights they want. They can hit the local bowling alley until the skin peels off their kegling thumbs. That doesn't make chemistry.

Chemistry arrives when Santonio Holmes cares more about winning than catching footballs. Chemistry arrives when teammates support teammates through difficult times. Chemistry arrives when every player believes in every coach, and when the head coach earns the respect of every player in the locker room.

Here's a team-bonding activity for Slauson. Have every teammate over your house whenever possible during the offseason, and each week during the season. Make it a two-hour meeting with the same topic: What can each player in the room do to make the team better? Discuss your feelings. Hash out issues.

Communicate.

And you won't have to wear those creepy bowling shoes.

Wanted: A 35-year-old receiver who sat out last season, totaled 28 receptions for three teams in 2010 and has a long history of minimizing his effort.

What, no takers for Randy Moss?

Gee, can't understand it.

For fans of the United States Military Academy, and I am one, Tampa Bay's offense (Mike Sullivan) and defense (Bill Sheridan) will be run not only by former Giants assistants, but by former Army assistants.

I wish Jeremy Lin would just go and take care of this global warming mess before the playoffs tip off.

The following is not fair, but then, sports and life aren't always fair. I can only make one prediction very strongly this baseball season:

A.J. Burnett is going to win 15 games.

It won't be fair to those forced to sit through that long-running tragicomedy at Yankee Stadium known as "The Worst of A.J. Burnett.'' It won't be fair to manager Joe Girardi, who watched Burnett stink up the joint almost every fifth day for two seasons, who stood by Burnett when almost everybody wanted him banished to the bullpen or, better, Siberia, and in response heard Burnett grumble about quick hooks.

Now Burnett's in Pittsburgh, right about where he belongs, way off the beaten baseball path in a super low-pressure hardball environment. It's precisely the scenario in which Burnett, his crucial flaws from the neck up, can and probably will thrive.

What do you know, Floyd Mayweather Jr., became the only person on planet Earth to diss Jeremy Lin.

Lin's a good player, Mayweather said, "but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise.''

This, folks, is an example of why bigotry and ignorance go hand in hand.

I for one am anxious to see what Nicki Minaj has up her sleeve for the NBA All-Star game after that nutty Grammys bit of hers.

kgleason@th-record.com

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Gleason's Sporting World: Wins solve chemistry, not bowling outings

Day two at the AAAS meeting brought more interesting debate and discussion. Bright and early first thing in the morning Greg Scholes, from the University of Toronto, Canada, filling in for Graham Fleming, from the University California, Berkeley, who was ill, said that we have to learn lessons from nature on solar light harvesting.

A great venue with a gloomy backdrop!

He describes himself as a quantum biologist – someone who probes natural structures on the quantum scale to try to understand what makes them tick – and says that we have to learn from millions of years of evolution to improve the ways in which we capture light energy. He points to green sulfur bacteria that live in the Black Sea at a depth of 80m that can still survive by harvesting what little light there is down there. By probing these sorts of light harvesting complexes using ultra-short laser pulses scientists can learn how to more efficiently gather light energy and transfer it to where it is needed.

We were up in the clouds next, as Ravi Ravishankara, director of the chemical sciences divison of the earth system research laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, took us on a whirlwind tour of aerosols. Unfortunately, the effect of aerosols on the climate is still something of a black box, he explains, and we’re missing quite a bit of the information we need. The net effect of aerosols on the climate is thought to be roughly the same as carbon dioxide, thanks to aerosols like black carbon, which can absorb heat, or others which can damage the ozone layer. Vikki Grassian, from the University of Iowa, US, says that the error bars in our understanding of how atomspheric aerosols affect climate are big. She says the problem is complex as aerosols come from so many sources, have different lifetimes, undergo different chemistry, so atmospheric chemists are trying to build a database. Obviously, trying to cover all the aerosols and their reactions would be a sisyphean task. ‘You try to study the most important reactions, you try to use chemical intuition,’ she adds, ‘I’m not going to study methane, it’s not going to do anything, it’s pretty inactive.’ It’s up to chemists, she says, to use their box of analytical tools to work out which reactions are going on and take this to the modellers so they can plug the effects into their models.

Up in the press room we were given a lesson in improving on what Mother Nature has already given us – food crops.

The view from the press room. Chemistry is everywhere!

We all know more food will be needed in the coming decades to feed a growing global population with increasingly eclectic tastes. Howard Griffiths, professor of plant ecology at the University of Cambridge, UK, is one of the scientists at the forefront of this huge challenge. He’s attempting to ‘turbocharge’ plants to improve yields and is looking at a number of ways to do this. One of the principal ways he’s trying to do this is by changing crop plants like potatoes and wheat to harness carbon dioxide using the C4 pathway – to produce a four carbon organic acid – rather than the less efficient C3 pathway they currently use. This change could increase light harvesting efficiency from 4% to 6% and, although that might not sound like much, is huge if that increase could be carried over into crop yields. He’s also looking at other ways to improve the enzyme Rubisco, which fixes carbon dioxide into sugars, using strategies such as parking it in subcellular components where it can be suffused in more carbon dioxide.

Richard Cogdell at the University of Glasgow, UK, is pursuing a different strategy and is trying to learn from photosynthesis to make synthetic fuels. They’re trying to use electricity to drive fuel production by harnessing synthetic biology technology. In his group they’re trying to take carbon dioxide and turn it into terpenes – energy dense organic compounds already produced by many plants. They also have the advantage of being immiscible with water, which should make them much easier to harvest than other biofuels such as ethanol. Cogdell describes this type of work as ‘one of the grand challenges mankind faces’ and says that young researchers need to be enthused and sold this opportunity to shape the future of the world. I think we can all agree with those sentiments.

Patrick Walter

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2

The American Association for the Advancement of Science conference has kicked off in Vancouver, Canada, under the theme of flattening the world – not Hulk like destruction, more about sharing knowledge evenly across the globe. There’s going to be plenty of talk on how electronic communications can help spread information around the world that can help people address the myriad challenges they face in feeding themselves, providing clean water and sustainable development. But for now Thursday was a low key start, building to a very busy next three days.

Flattening the world in Vancouver

So what’s out and about? Well we have another theory on what Stonehenge is all about. Steven Waller studies archaeoacoustics – looking at the role sound may have played in ancient cultures. He thinks Stonehenge and other similar circles – sometimes called piper rings or the giant’s dance – are laid out according to patterns of acoustic interference. It’s an odd one I’ll admit and I only mention it as everyone’s heard all the different theories about the site being some kind of cosmic calendar, or an ancient hospital or a landing site for UFOs.

He dreamed up this idea after noticing that interference patterns can create regular deadening of sound. He found that blindfolded volunteers who were walked around two flutes playing a continuous note in the middle of a field described ‘obstructions’ in the sounds they heard – just like something was in the way. This deadening is down to destructive interference between the sound waves, but ancient cultures would have had no knowledge of this. He theorises that they spotted these patterns, but they appeared ‘magical’ to them, as if there was something hiding in plain sight. He thinks that they went on to design their circles on these patterns. You can listen to him here.

Meanwhile, researchers from the energy institute at the University of Texas, Austin, have been looking into hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking to try to help policy makers separate fact from fiction. In a report, they conclude that fracking is no worse than any other oil or gas extraction process. The problem isn’t so much in forcing apart the shale to release the gas, it’s nearer the surface where faulty well casings and poor cement seals allow contaminated water to taint groundwater – much like other hydrocarbon extraction processes.

The day finished with the incoming AAAS president Nina Fedoroff giving a packed auditorium her inspirational life story. Growing up in a Russian family in the US she said she was given little encouragement to be the best she could be. But she persevered always going that extra mile and pushing for opportunities, until she joined Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock’s group. There she made a name for herself in genetics research, cloning and sequencing one of the first plant genes when others said that there was something about plant genes that made them inimical to being cloned. She shared with the delegates her fears for the future, with a rapidly growing world population, pressures on food, water and other resources. And she made the case that science holds the solution to tackling many of these problems, particularly genetic engineering of plants – an area she has some experience in herself. She decried the slow regulatory process for genetically modified organisms and said that it is a scandal that vitamin A enhanced rice – that could help ward off disease in millions – is still not on the market a decade after it was developed. A good start to the conference and there’s some interesting topics ahead – I’m looking forward to it.

Patrick Walter

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2

Germany’s highest court stated on Tuesday that thousands of professors in the country are being short changed, and ruled that their pay must be raised by the end of the year.

But how much should a professor be earning? The chemistry professor at the University of Marburg who filed the lawsuit earns a basic salary of approximately €3900 (£3240) per month – a sum that he and the court agree is inadequate compared with what other civil servants earn.

But is nearly £40,000 per year really too little? How does this compare with pay for professors where you are?

Nina Notman

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2