Periodic Tabloid

The STEM acronym: what is it good for? Possibly nothing.

In a heritage institution, the marriage between technology and interpretation more often feels arranged than passionate. Communicating historic objects authentically in a new medium requires new thought patterns. Enter The Alchemical Quest interactive project, which attempts to thwart this tradition. Here's what we're learning.

Sometimes important discoveries happen in the lab; sometimes they happen in unexpected spaces. In 1954 Vladimir Prelog learned that a formal ball was just the place to work out an important scientific issue.

When the human genome was sequenced a decade ago it stirred hope that knowing the chemical identity of our own personal DNA would yield precise clues about what to expect in our lives. Alas, DNA predictions are not that easy, at least according to a recent scrutiny from Johns Hopkins and Harvard researchers.

Last week some fellow staff members and I boarded a plane headed to Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums conference. I came back with snapshots to share.

There are a goodly number of medicinal agents that remain useful for treating bacterial infections, even despite the specter of antibiotic resistance. But a recent study reveals that the mechanism by which they kill bad bacteria is more complicated than we ever expected.

It’s an old case, but not a cold case. Isaac Newton left clues in his own hand. “Two women clothed riding on two lyons each with a heart in her hand....The right hand lyon farts on a company of young lions behind it….” Rather than an example of bad taste, Newton’s farting lion is part of a sophisticated chemical process. Unfortunately, no one has yet unlocked its meaning.

Most have heard the phrase “fight fire with fire,” which is generally taken to mean using the same tactics as your attacker. Although perhaps a stretch, attacking oil spills with carbon may be an equivalent concept, or at least one can so infer from a recent paper.

The emergence of the semiconductor industry has opened up new frontiers in electronic music. The effects of this transition recently became apparent to me while designing The College of New Jersey’s From Etherphone to Microchip, an exhibit that spans the history of electronics from radio to high-definition television, including several milestones from the history of electronic music.

Chemistry can be a dirty business—just ask Isaac Newton. He begins one of his alchemical recipes with “Take of Urin one Barrel.” He then instructs the person with the newly acquired barrel of urine to let it ferment for three months in the summer. Neighbors back then must have been a less litigious bunch.