Periodic Tabloid

For the Hach Gallery exhibit that features rare books from the Othmer Library, The Alchemical Quest, exhibit designer Keith Ragone aims to create a “set design for the actors which are the books.”

If you watch the news today (or perhaps tomorrow) you will be among the first to know that not just one, but two elements (114 and 116) will be baptized with their newly official names.

Spidey’s secret identity is being revealed, and it has nothing to do with Peter Parker. Chemists and biochemists are manipulating spider silk in ways that a few years ago would have been possible only in a comic book.

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.