chemistry · chemistry July 2016 Flavours and fragrances: using pharma methods to sni for substitutes chemaust.raci.org.au. Your RACI Member Benefit Program. Di ni n g & E nt ert

• Inside the National Innovation and Science Agenda• Lodgement season for the Export Market and Development Grant • Chernobyl and caesium, 30 years on

in AustraliachemistryJuly 2016

chemistryFlavours andfragrances:using pharmamethods to sniff forsubstitutes

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cover story

news & research9 News11 On the market12 Research13 Aust. J. Chem42 Cryptic chemistry42 Events

members28 New Fellows29 From the RACI30 Obituary

views & reviews4 Editorial5 Your say31 Books33 Collections34 Economics36 Gravitational waves38 Technology & innovation39 Grapevine40 Environment41 Letter from Melbourne

18 Inside the ‘ideas boom’Cultural change is at the core of the new National Innovation and ScienceAgenda, say its proponents.

22 Prime numbers: 41 years of EMDGThe Export Market Development Grant is helping take Australian innovationto the world.

26 Protein scissors that also learned to glueAn enzyme found in plants has some remarkable abilities that have drugdesigners excited.

Flavours, fragrances and force fieldsComputational methods that analyse how drugs interact with protein targetsare also effective for flavour and fragrance molecules.

22

14

41

On the cover: Flowers of Crocus sativus; the crimson stigmas when dried are known as saffron. Picrocrocinand safranal are responsible for saffron's flavour and fragrance.

Early on 28 April 1986,alarms sounded as anemployee of the Forsmarknuclear power plant inSweden set off a radiationdetector on his way backfrom the bathroom.Radioactive particles on hisshoes were soon identified asbeing Soviet (bit.ly/1rfZwYi).The fuel used and theoperation and design of anuclear reactor partlydetermine the radioactivenuclides produced – asignature of the power plantof origin. Soviet authoritieshad no choice to announce,two days after the event, thedisaster at the Chernobylplant in the Ukraine.

The Chernobyl disaster isnow 30 years behind us, andduring those years theradioactivity attributable tocaesium-137 has decayed tohalf of its original level.Caesium-137 is a troublesomefission product becausecaesium’s most commonchemical compounds are salts, which can move easily throughnatural environments. Being an emitter of gamma rays,caesium-137 is convenient for mobile detection.

In September 2014, a sample of reindeer from Jotunheimenin southern Norway was found to contain a surprising8200 Bq/kg of caesium-137. Levels in that region two yearsbefore had been as low as 1500 Bq/kg. (The regulatory limit inNorway for caesium-137 in reindeer meat is 3000 Bq/kg.) Sowhy the increase with time? Lavrans Skuterud of the NorwegianRadiation Protection Authority (NRPA) thinks that a long andbountiful season for mushrooms, of which reindeer are veryfond, may be the answer (bit.ly/1rPzNqq).

Species such as the gypsy mushroom (Cortinarius caperatus)are effective accumulators of caesium-137, and they’re apopular food for people as well as reindeer. Scandinavianauthorities recommend that residents limit their intake ofC. caperatus. Mushrooms have been suggested as a way toremediate radiation-contaminated sites, although theeconomics of such work throws their feasibility into question.

Regulatory thresholds for radionuclides vary significantlybetween countries and have been revisited worldwide since theFukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan in 2011.

Thresholds in any country must account for the frequency ofconsumption of different foodstuffs by residents. Scandinavianauthorities also consider the impact of thresholds on indigenouspeoples such as the Sami – these people consume more reindeermeat and they make a living by reindeer herding, includingselling meat. The NRPA has been testing radioactive caesiumlevels in reindeer herders since the 1960s.

Location and weather conditions (e.g. elevation, snow, rainand wind) during nuclear tests and accidents affect thedistribution of radioactive fallout. Reindeer delicacies such asmosses and lichen have been tested as biomonitors in order tocreate a regional map of fallout from Chernobyl in Norway(bit.ly/1rfTBCu).

And what of the people of Chernobyl? Despite the exclusionzone restrictions within 30 kilometres of the ill-fated Reactor 4,it seems people have to return to their homes, catching localfish and harvesting mushrooms.

Chemistry in Australia4 | July 2016

editorial

Sally Woollett ([email protected])

Thirty years in the life of Chernobyl caesium

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Kebnekaise valley, Lappland, Sweden. Reindeer herding is apredominant livelihood for the Sami (also known as Laplanders), indigenous people who inhabit northernNorway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Alexandre Buisse/CC-BY-SA-3.0

Science denialI felt a frisson of fear when I read John Cook’s description ofpsychological experiments on political conservatives (May issue,p. 6). I was reminded of men of science of another era, whoconducted experiments on those deemed to be defectivemembers of society. I am not suggesting that the experimentsJohn Cook describes had the same intent as those earlierhorrific crimes, but I am concerned when the impression isgiven that those who hold opinions different from those of anelite are in need of re-education. There is also the fear thatapplying labels to those who hold different views is an effort tochange the way language is used. We are already seeinguniversities mandate the use of various words when discussingvarious contentious subjects. Perhaps, to borrow a word fromGeorge Orwell’s Newspeak vocabulary, it will be a ‘thoughtcrime’to even consider alternative points of view not approved by anelite.

I am concerned that John Cook confines his model ofdenying science to conservatives and denial of climate science.There are of course other important examples. The denial of thetheory of evolution as proposed by Darwin and built onsuccessively since pre-dates the climate change controversy bymore than a century. On the ‘progressive’ side of politics, theGreens have made implacable opposition to the nucleargeneration of electricity an article of faith, in spite of theadvances in technology that make it a safe, non-carbonemitting solution to the use of fossil fuels. It is also part oftheir ideology that genetic manipulation of crops to reducepesticide use and improve yield is evil. There are other beliefsthat involve denials of science, such as anti-vaccination,biodynamic farming, the superiority of ‘organic’ foods, thefluoridation of the water supply and perhaps even the use ofaluminium utensils in cooking. A more holistic approach mighthave made for a more credible argument.

I also have a concern as to a ‘cookie cutter’ approach in theintimation that all conservatives are climate change deniers.Firstly, the term ‘conservative’ can be regarded as a very broaddescriptor, varying according to culture and country, andcapable of many shades and nuances. For instance, it is quitepossible for a person to be conservative in the belief thatlargely unfettered free enterprise and free markets offer the

best routes to human prosperity, be an atheist, and admit thatthe climate is warming after the last Little Ice Age, but havesome reservations as to the extent to which humans have hadan impact. Such a person may also consider that while sciencehas brought us inestimable benefits, scientists don’t always getit right all the time. Further, those who would describethemselves as ‘progressive’ may well express a range of views onvarious subjects and not necessarily ascribe to a monolithic setof beliefs.

There is also a danger that by concentrating solely on thesubject of climate change denial, the impression could begained that motives other than pure altruism may be at work.Most of the large number of scientists active in this area arefunded from the public purse in one way or another. It is clearthat government policy can have an impact on available fundsand hence employment prospects, and those affected willbehave as would any other when their job is at stake; that is,with great energy and fervour.

Tom Smith FRACI CChem

There are a number of common misconceptions aboutpsychology and psychological research, some of which are foundin Tom Smith’s comment on my letter to Chemistry in Australia(May, p. 6).

Psychology is probabilistic, not deterministic. Many studiesinto how people think about climate change have observed thatpolitical conservatives are more likely to reject climate sciencethan independents or liberals. But note the term ‘more likely’.Psychology doesn’t make deterministic claims such as ‘allconservatives are climate change deniers’, as Tom characterises.Rather, political ideology makes it more likely for a person tolean a certain way but by no means certain. That’s why in myprevious letter, I used phrases such as ‘strongest predictor’ and‘more likely to reject’ to characterise the relationship betweenclimate science denial and political ideology.

Because of the probabilistic nature of psychology, it’sabsolutely possible for a political conservative to accept themany lines of empirical evidence that humans are causing mostof global warming. It’s just harder than for someone whosebeliefs aren’t threatened by the scientific evidence. If yourideology predisposes you to oppose regulation of the fossil fuel

EDITOR Sally WoollettPh (03) 5623 [email protected]

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PRESIDENT Paul Bernhardt FRACI CChem

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEESam Adeloju (Chair) [email protected], Amanda Ellis, Michael Gardiner, Helmut Hügel, Alan Jones, Amanda Saunders, Colin Scholes, Madeleine Schultz, Richard Thwaites

CONTRIBUTIONSContributors’ views are not necessarily endorsed by the RACI, and noresponsibility is accepted for accuracy of contributions. Visit the website’sresource centre at chemaust.raci.org.au for information about submissions.

© 2016 The Royal Australian Chemical Institute Inc. unlessotherwise attributed. Content must not be reproduced whollyor in part without written permission. Further details on thewebsite (chemaust.raci.org.au). ISSN 0314-4240 e-ISSN 1839-2539


your say

Chemistry in Australia 5|July 2016

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your say

industry, then you are more likely to deny that there is aproblem that needs regulating.

Tom also makes the important point that science denial isn’trestricted to climate change. There is evolution denial, anti-vaccination and GMO science denial. What typically unitesthese diverse forms of denial is that the implications of thescience are perceived to conflict with a person’s belief system.For example, evolution science is perceived to conflict withreligious belief. However, to reinforce the earlier point againstdeterminism, there are a number of religious believers whoaccept evolution science.

What also binds these different forms of science denial arethe five characteristics of science denial (Diethelm P., McKee M.Eur. J. Public Health, vol. 19(1), pp. 2–4). These characteristics,remembered with the acronym FLICC, are Fake experts, Logicalfallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking andConspiracy theories. Diethelm and McKee observed that FLICCoccurs across all these different forms of science denial.

Understanding the techniques of science denial is key toneutralising the influence of misinformation. For this reason, Iconcur with Tom that we should avoid the use of labels, andinstead direct our focus on the techniques and fallacies used todistort the science.

For example, a commonly encountered claim that Tomrepeats is the conspiracy theory that climate scientists aremotivated by publicly funded money rather than scientificdiscovery. However, in my own research (Cook J., Nuccitelli D.,Green S.A., Richardson M., Winkler B., Painting R., Way R.,Jacobs P., Skuce A. Quantifying the consensus onanthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature.Environ. Res. Lett., 2013, vol. 8(2), 024024), we observed that97% of relevant climate papers affirmed the consensus thathumans are causing global warming. Included in this consensuswere over 10 000 scientists from countries all over the worldpublishing scientific papers affirming human-caused globalwarming. These were scientists from countries with liberal orconservative governments. The scientific papers were publishedover a 21-year period, with the scientific consensus among USscientists just as strong during the Bush administration as itwas during the Obama and Clinton administrations.

This disproves the conspiracy theory that government policyis driving the scientific consensus on climate change. Thenotion of thousands of scientists all over the world colluding tofalsify a consensus is less plausible than the notion that theMoon landing was falsified in a government conspiracy.

John Cook


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A native freshwater algae grown in northern Australia can be used to create a high-quality, renewable jet fuel, an international research team has found.

The multidisciplinary team, which includes researchers from James CookUniversity, the University of Sydney and Israel’s Ben Gurion University, has developeda proof-of-concept process to create high-quality renewable biofuel from themacroalgae Oedogonium, ready for blending with regular petrol, jet fuel and diesel.

Results for their collaborative work have been published online in Energy &Environmental Science.

Professor Rocky de Nys MRACI CChem from the Centre for Macroalgal Resources andBiotechnology at James Cook University led the group responsible for providing theproject with the freshwater algae. He said the algae was grown under specialconditions and tailor-made to fit the needs of the project.

‘Oedogonium is a robust, non-invasive species that is highly productive and easilycultivated on a large scale. This makes the macroalgae an attractive source ofbiomass for further processing to create renewable fuels and chemicals.

‘Its cultivation is highly efficient relative to harvesting of land-based plants andalso avoids conflict for agricultural resources that might be diverted from foodproduction.’

Joint leaders at the University of Sydney, Dr Thomas Maschmeyer FRACI CChem,Professor of Chemistry, and Professor Brian Haynes from the University’s School ofChemical and Biomolecular Engineering worked with their teams to understand howto control the conversion of freshwater algae into a crude oil equivalent.

‘A key problem associated with processing algae into liquid transportation fuel isthe presence of nitrogen from algal proteins in the intermediate bio-crude oil, as thenitrogen poisons downstream catalysts required for further upgrading,’ saidMaschmeyer, who is also the Director of the Australian Institute for NanoscaleScience and Technology.

‘However, the nitrogen content can, in fact, be controlled at multiple points inthe production chain from biomass to high-grade fuel product.’

Explaining the process Haynes said:‘The low-nitrogen macroalgae are converted to bio-crude oil, which is combined

with a synthetic fuel stream produced by catalytic conversion of waste CO2, resulting,after further processing, in a finished fuel blend.

‘The process makes use of water at very high temperature and pressure to liquefythe algae and convert it into an energy-dense bio-crude oil.’

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July 2016

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The CONSUL 21 is new to Rowe Scientific Pty Ltd from Orto Alresa andfeatures a maintenance-free induction motor, a large volume (holding amaximum of four 400 mL bottles) and a motor that spins up to 14 300 rev/min,while remainingquiet, at lessthan 60 dB.Available in bothrefrigerated (21R)and non-refrigerated (21)models, theConsul 21R canoperate at 4°C atmaximum speedwith any rotorsthat are availablefor this model.

With an easy-to-read touch-screen that can be seen up to 3 metresaway, the CONSUL 21 is extremely user-friendly. You can decide onrevolutions per minute (RPM) or relative centrifugal force (RCF) as theparameters and view time, temperature (in 1° increments) andacceleration (in 1 second intervals).

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on the market


Professionals Australia:‘Innovation at risk due to lackof science certainty’Professionals Australia, the associationrepresenting science, technology and engineeringprofessionals said the federal government needs tomake sure science is funded with certainty, overthe long term, or we risk our nation’s future as aninnovator.

‘We currently have a bizarre situation inAustralia where levels of investment in science arehigh but our best and most talented sciencegraduates face job insecurity and ongoing fundinguncertainty,’ said Chris Walton, CEO ofProfessionals Australia.

‘Scientists are in a funding merry-go-round, andthere’s always a review just around the corner. ThisBudget does nothing to fix the despondency in thesector following thousands of job cuts ingovernment sector agencies like the CSIRO.’

The most recent Scientists Remuneration Surveyby Professionals Australia found:• 77.3% of scientists agreed or strongly agreed

that cost-cutting was affecting theirorganisation’s science capability

• 32.5% of scientists reported a decline in thenumber of professionals with sciencecapabilities in management and decision-makerroles in their organisation

• a third of scientists reported being dissatisfiedin their current role. Of those who said theywere considering leaving their current job,55.3% said a pay increase would alter theirintention.‘The Government is good at talking the talk

when it comes to creating a strong science andinnovation agenda. This must be backed up withtangible actions to boost public-sector STEM skillsand simplify funding for research anddevelopment,’ said Walton.

‘We commend the Government for fully fundingthe $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund,representing a potential quantum leap forward forthe industry. As part of our commitment to thesector, we must ensure we retain the staff we needby funding Medical Research Institutessustainably.

‘Prime Minister Turnbull envisages his$1.1 billion National Science Innovation Agendawill drive a “culture of ideas and innovation”.Experienced scientists and secure funding deliverreal innovation,’ said Walton.

Professionals Australia

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Strongly coupled hybrid materialsfor enhanced solar fuel productionPhotoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, which uses sunlightto produce hydrogen, is a clean, renewable and environmentallybenign strategy for making fuels. Organic–inorganic hybridmaterials are highly attractive in PEC applications for theirfavourable light trapping and absorption and fast chargeseparation and transfer. The research team of ProfessorShizhang Qiao at the University of Adelaide, in collaborationwith Associate Professor Tao Ling at Tianjin University, China,has taken significant steps in this area. They have stronglycoupled Nafion molecules and ordered porous CdS networks forvisible light PEC hydrogen evolution (Zheng X.L., Song J.P.,Ling T., Hu Z.P., Yin P.F., Davey K., Du X.W., Qiao S.Z. Adv. Mater. 2016, doi: 10.1002/adma.201600437). Impressively,the organic Nafion molecules favorably shift the band positionsof CdS and effectively suppress the formation of compensationdefects in the semiconductor. Consequently, this hybridphotoelectrode achieves a remarkably high incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (75%) under visible lightillumination. It is expected that the effect of strong couplingbetween inorganic and organic materials will provide a newroute to engineer photoelectrodes in water-splitting devices.

Reflections of antimicrobial andamyloid peptidesAntimicrobial peptides have attracted significant interestbecause of their potential as next-generation therapeutics tocombat the spread of drug-resistant bacteria. A team led byProfessor David Craik and postdoctoral fellow Dr Conan Wang atthe University of Queensland has explored the use of mirror-image peptides to determine the structures of β-sheetantimicrobial peptides (Wang C.K., King G.J., Conibear A.C.,Ramos M.C., Chaousis S., Henriques S.T., Craik D.J. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 5706–13). A cyclic antimicrobialpeptide from baboons called BTD-2 was crystallised by racemiccrystallography, in which crystals were grown from a mixturecontaining the peptide and its synthetic mirror image. Thestructure revealed a supramolecular assembly that might

represent the active form of BTD-2 and also resembles a fibril-like assembly, providing an intriguing structural link to amyloidpeptides. The potential of antimicrobial peptides astherapeutics is currently being further explored at theUniversity of Queensland.

research


Compiled by David Huang MRACI CChem ([email protected]). This section showcases the very best research carried out primarily in Australia. RACI memberswhose recent work has been published in high impact journals (e.g. Nature, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.) are encouraged to contribute general summaries,of no more than 200 words, and an image to David.

aust j chem

July 2016

Highlights of the July issueThe 35th Australasian Polymer Symposium (APS) took place on the Gold Coast,Queensland, 12–15 July 2015, and encompassed three and a half days ofstimulating talks from numerous areas of polymer science. There were260 delegates from Australia and around the world in attendance, with sixplenary speakers and 24 keynote speakers, five of whom were Early CareerResearchers. Plenaries were from Professor Mitch Winnick from the University ofToronto, who talked about his work investigating metal-chelating polymers andtheir potential for biological applications of sensing and imaging. Professor YanleiYu from Fudan University, China, discussed the field of liquid crystal polymers:crystalline aromatic polyesters that form areas of highly ordered structures whenin the liquid phase. Professor Bjorn T. Stokke from the Norwegian University ofScience and Technology gave a plenary lecture on responsive polymer hydrogels.Professor Benjamin Hsiao from Stony Brook University, New York, demonstratedan example of translation of laboratory to industry with his work on nanofibrousmembrane filters for high-flux water purification. Professor Werner Joseph Blaufrom Trinity College Dublin described his interdisciplinary work with materialsscience and physics in the development of nanocarbons and atomic crystals.Finally, Professor Mats Andersson from the Future Industries Institute, Adelaide,discussed his work on polymeric materials for energy and conducting applications.

Topics covered exemplified the diversity of our discipline, includingphotopolymerisation, advanced characterisation techniques, biomaterials, drugdelivery, polymers for bioimaging and biomedical applications, novel synthetictechniques, and industry and innovation.

This special issue of Aust. J. Chem. has a Research Front and includes a reportfrom plenary speaker Mats Andersson on the ‘Stability of polymer interlayermodified ITO electrodes for organic solar cells’. A highlight paper by invitedKeynote Professor Christine Luscombe illustrates how changing the end-functionalgroups of P3HT to incorporate chalcogens opens up the opportunity to controland alter interactions with different materials.

Two review articles from Early Career Researchers include Dr Katherine Locock’s(CSIRO, Melbourne) review, which traces the development of the antimicrobialpolymethacrylates from the initial mimicry of global cationic and lipophilic AMPproperties through to the level of specific amino acids present in the peptides. DrLuke Connal, University of Melbourne, reviews the design and synthesis of polymersfunctionalised with amino acids. Dr Connal also presents a communication paperthat highlights how morphologies of poly(2-vinyl pyridine)-block-poly(dimethylsiloxane) diblock copolymers can be tuned by controlling theinterfacial energy using functional surfactants.

The RACI Treloar Best Posterprize winner, Molly Rowe fromthe University of New SouthWales, presents a research paperentitled ‘High glass transitiontemperature fluoropolymers forhydrophobic surface coatingsvia RAFT copolymerization’ (seefigure).

Amanda V. Ellis FRACI CChem, Guest Editor, and Greg G. Qiao FRACI CChem, Associate Editor, AustralianJournal of Chemistry

M1792 MEP Chemistry Metrohm new titration jun 16 275x76.indd 1 4/6/16 13:34

Computationalmethods thatanalyse how drugsinteract with proteintargets are alsoeffective for flavourand fragrancemolecules.

Flavours and fragrancestraditionally depend onessential oils drawn fromnaturally occurring products.

Camphor oil is obtained by steamingthe wood of the camphor tree; saffronis the stigma plucked from the flowerof Crocus sativus.

Natural products are often subjectto short or erratic supply owing toweather and other natural events.Environmental or preservationconsiderations also come into play. Upto 50 male musk deer are killed toproduce 1 kilogram of musk, highlysought after for perfumes. Ambergris,produced in the digestive system of

the sperm whale, was formerly usedas a fixative to make scents last longer.Its use is now illegal in Australia andthe US and the synthetic ambroxide iswidely used as a substitute.

Synthetic substitutes that retain thesame odour and flavour characteristicsas the natural compound have beendeveloped for many flavours andfragrances. Degradation is a particularfactor for flavours, and syntheticversions are often chosen because oftheir longer shelf life. Healthconsiderations drive other syntheticchoices; for example, low caloriesweeteners as alternatives to sugar.

Companies are continually looking


BY MARTIN SLATER AND KATRIONA SCOFFIN

Flavours,fragrances

and force fields

iStockphoto/crispphotography

for new and improved versions ofthese substitutes, synthetic orotherwise. In some casesmanufacturers are keen to identifyalternative natural products that have asimilar effect to hard-to-obtain flavoursand fragrances. Molecular modellingplays an important role in identifyingpossible alternatives.

Applying pharmaceuticaldiscovery methods to flavoursand fragrancesThere are many well-establishedcomputational techniques formodelling the interactions betweenpharmaceuticals and proteins. Sinceflavour and fragrance moleculesinteract with specific protein targets toexert their effects, many of thesecomputational techniques are directlytransferable from pharmaceuticals toflavours and fragrances.

When looking for new syntheticflavours or fragrances, the startingpoint could be an existing natural orsynthetic compound, or a taste orodour receptor. Perhaps surprisingly,flavours are more diverse and complexin their interactions thanpharmaceuticals. Some components oftaste perception also include thesimultaneous triggering of olfactoryreceptors, which belong to the wider,therapeutically important, G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) family.

Clearly, there are many differencesbetween flavour and fragrancemolecules compared with their drugcounterparts. The pharmacologicaleffects of pharmaceuticals cover awide spectrum of therapeuticallyrelevant biological targets and alsorequire physiochemical properties inkeeping with their use; for example,oral, central nervous system, inhaledor topical applications.

Fragrance molecules need to beboth non-toxic and volatile and as suchare restricted by tight chemical andphysical property considerations. Inaddition, the mode of action offragrance molecules is generallyaccepted to be through GPCR

agonism and therefore the spectrum ofsize, shape and molecular weight isaccordingly further narrowed (seegraphs above). It is an incredibleobservation that the huge spectrum offragrance perception is dictated by theprecise 3D distribution of typicallybetween only 2 and 20 atoms of onlyfive elements – carbon, hydrogen,nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. Possiblyunsurprisingly, this translates into verycompact electrostatic, shape andchirality profiles for each of thesespecial molecules.

Molecular fields and virtualscreeningSmall molecules are recognised byand bind to proteins on the basis oftheir 3D electrostatic, shape andhydrophobic properties, otherwiseknown as their molecular fields. It is

possible to calculate detailedcomputational models of these fieldsthat provide a highly accuratedescription of the interactions betweena small molecule and its proteinbinding site. In this way, the activeprofile of a compound can becalculated, visualised and analysed,giving a ‘protein’s eye view’ of thecompound (see below). Thesecalculations are complex and long ifcarried out by using quantummechanics methods, but a comparablelevel of quality can be obtained in afraction of the time using a force fieldapproach. The molecular fields shownhere were calculated using the CressetXED force field, which combineselectrostatic calculations incombination with Van der Waals forces.

However, molecular fieldcalculations are computationally


The physiochemical properties of 18 diverse fragrance molecules (blue diamonds) and 9diverse musks (green squares), showing the narrow spectrum of size, shape and molecularweight that these molecules occupy.

The molecular fields around two caramels, ethyl maltol and furaneol. The surfaces show theshape (grey) and the positive (red) and negative (blue) electrostatic isopotentials, giving a‘protein’s eye view’ of the compound.

intensive. It is unfeasible to use anentire molecular field profile to searchthrough large collections of molecules.Such a search would take morecomputing power and time than anyproject would have available. Instead,methods have been developed tocondense molecular fields down to‘field points’ that encode the fieldsaccurately enough to makebiologically useful comparisonsbetween the profiles of differentcompounds (see above). Field pointsare an elegant and computationallyviable way of expressing themolecular field patterns of moleculesand they unlock tremendouscomputational potential.

These field point profiles can beused as molecular fingerprints tosearch databases of active molecules

to return compounds that are likely tohave similar activity. Field points makeit possible to search a database ofabout 10 million compounds in48 hours on a 30 CPU cluster. Thismethod of virtual screening hasproved highly successful inpharmaceutical research in identifyingcompounds with similar activityprofiles, despite being from differentchemical classes and having markedlydifferent 2D structures.

The same method has beensuccessfully applied to fragrance andflavour molecules in order to comparetheir active profile. Field-basedmodels of active flavour and fragranceingredients can be developed in thesame way and used to search forsynthetic alternatives for naturalproducts. Once a range of alternative

compounds has been identified, theindividual alternatives can bemodelled and compared in greaterdetail by using a more accuratecalculation of the molecular fields.

Utility of molecular fields foranalysing flavour and fragrancebioactivityTo illustrate the usefulness ofelectrostatic descriptions for fragrancemolecule space, a small set of27 diverse fragrance molecules werebuilt and analysed (Kraft P.,Bajgrowicz J.A., Denis C., Frater G., Angew. Chem. 2000, vol. 112, p. 3106;Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2000, vol. 39,p. 2980; www.leffingwell.com/chirality/chirality.htm). The set included anextended group of musks.

One of the compounds, coumarin,was chosen as a starting point for theanalysis. The centre of gravity and theoverall dipole were fixed relative to thisstarting point. Some detailedmodelling work was carried out on thecompounds in the set in order todetermine the likely 3D alignments.

Similarity scores were calculatedfor all of the compounds and eachmolecule was scored relative to eachother to generate an all-by-all matrix


Two structurally diverse musks, nitro musk (left) and ambrette (right), with theirelectrostatic isopotential surfaces positive (red) and negative (blue). The molecular fields(centre) reveal similar bioactivity that is not evident from their 2D or 3D structures. Fieldpoints (bottom) make it possible to compare thousands of structures and fragments on thebasis of biological similarity.

When looking fornew syntheticflavours orfragrances, thestarting pointcould be anexisting natural orsyntheticcompound, or ataste or odourreceptor.

(see figure top left). This simpleexercise was limited only by the lownumbers involved in the analysis, yetstill provides a very intuitive picture.From the matrix, brighter greencorresponds to higher similarity, andred to a low similarity.

There is a significant cluster aroundthe musks, but also other hot spots ofhigh similarity. For the sake ofcomparison, a purely chemicalstructure driven analysis was alsocarried out using EFCP4 2D similarity.The results are shown in the matrix onthe right and they reveal a starkcontrast to the force field version,showing mostly low similarity. The

relationship of the musk structureactivity relationships (SAR) in thisexample is likely to defeat most 2Dsimilarity methods; therefore, thestructurally diverse musk clustersdisappear and the caramels blend intothe noise.

A hierarchical clustering was alsocarried out, which provided a differentoverview of the fragrance set.Interestingly, gingerbread, carameland orange fragrance compounds,which many would say are highlycomplementary flavours, showed ahigh similarity, which suggests thattheir corresponding targets may behighly similar to each other. The 3D

aligned structures of gingerbread andorange with their molecular fields areshown below.

Pharma potentialThe world of flavours and fragrancesholds a wealth of subtle chemistry andhuge potential for benefiting from thetransfer of computational methodsfrom pharmaceutical discovery.

The analysis discussed heredemonstrates the power of a field-based approach for usefully analysingthe bioactivity of flavour and fragrancemolecules. The fields approach gets tothe essence of the unique and preciseway that flavours and fragrancesmolecules interact with their proteintargets, independent of their chemicalarchitecture.

Field-based models of activeflavour and fragrance ingredients arealready being used in industry toprovide novel chemotypes, echoingthe success of this technology inproviding new hits and leads for thepharmaceutical industry.

Martin Slater is Director of Discovery Services andKatriona Scoffin is Science Writer at Cresset,www.cresset-group.com.


(Left): All-by-all field similarity matrix of 18 diverse fragrance molecules and nine diverse musks (green – yellow – red signifyingdecreasing similarity), showing significant clustering around fragrance groups.(Right): All-by-all ECFP4 2D similarity matrix of 18 diverse fragrance molecules and nine diverse musks, showing the low levels ofsimilarity calculated using a purely structure-driven analysis.

Gingerbread and orange; coumarin (left) and laural aldehyde (right) and positive (red) andnegative (blue) electrostatic isopotential surfaces.

Australia has a science andinnovation problem. By now,most of us are aware of thebleak statistics – Australia is

ranked ninth in the Global InnovationIndex in respect of the calibre of itsscience institutions, yet 72nd forinnovation efficiency. So why do wecontinue to have such troubletraversing the gap between scientificresearch and innovation?

Many of us regard a paucity ofgovernment funding as beingresponsible for our underperformancein commercialisation and, undoubtedly,this is an issue that must be addressed.However, our inability to translateworld-class scientific research intoinnovative and commercialisedoutcomes is a problem far more

complex than simply a lack of financialsupport from the key funding bodies. Itis something much more challengingto address.

The underlying problem is ourculture. We’re a risk-averse nation,which is further compounded by ourgenerally poor understanding of howto practically innovate research intocommercial success. Indeed,Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr AlanFinkel, has acknowledged thecrippling ‘fear of failure’ mentality thatlies deep among Australians.

So what is being implemented toshift our risk-averse culture to one thatpursues innovation andcommercialisation? In the past15 years, Australia has seenapproximately 60 reports on


Inside the ‘IDEASBOOM’

BY BRITTANY HOWARD

Cultural change is atthe core of the newNational Innovationand ScienceAgenda, say itsproponents.

iStockphoto/Bannosuke

innovation at the Commonwealth level.The recommendations in these reportsmostly remain to be actioned, orotherwise they have evidently failed totransform this fear of failure mentality.

Yet, in December of last year, theGovernment, led by Prime MinisterMalcolm Turnbull and the Minister forInnovation, Christopher Pyne, releasedthe National Innovation and ScienceAgenda (NISA). How is this programdifferent from all those that have gonebefore? Well, quite simply, it aims totransform our culture from one of a‘fear of failure’ to one of ‘embracingrisk’.

Extent of Australia’s scienceand innovation problemAustralia is ranked a dismal 72nd forinnovation efficiency according to theGlobal Innovation Index. This‘innovation efficiency’ is a measure ofinnovation output a given country isobtaining for its comparative inputs,which is based on turning researchinto commercial outcomes.

Contributing to our inability toinnovate, Australia’s venture capitalmarket is yet to recover from theglobal financial crisis, while countriessuch as the US have surged ahead. Forus, it’s all too difficult for start-ups toobtain finance.

Further, Prime Minister Turnbull hascontinually highlighted that, as a nation,we are poor at forming collaborationsbetween researchers, typically atuniversities, and businesses. Thougharguably, particularly in the chemicalsciences, Australia simply does nothave an industry with the capacity toengage in fundamental research. Theongoing downsizing of the chemicalindustry, as exemplified by theoverseas acquisition and local closureof Biota Pharmaceuticals in 2015indicates that this scarcity of industry–academia collaborations in Australia isunlikely to change anytime soon.

Finally, Australian workplaces lack ahigh performance innovation culture.Statistically, only 16% of Australianbusinesses have a high performance

innovation culture, in contrast to 44% ofthe Global Innovation 1000. Factorsthat contribute to a nation’sperformance innovation cultureinclude whether a business sourcesideas for innovation from users orcustomers, the importance a businessplaces on innovation as a measure andstrategy for business performance,and a tendency to network andcollaborate.

The Government has recognisedthese key points as being just some ofthe barriers that continually preventfundamental research from beingtranslated into commercial outcomes,and the implementation of the NationalInnovation and Science Agenda (NISA)is aimed at lowering these barriers.

What is the NISA?Prime Minister Turnbull is banking onan ‘ideas boom’ as being the newsource for Australia’s growth andprosperity in the face of a decliningmining industry. To support this, helaunched the NISA, a policy that willcost the government $1.1 billion overfour years, and will be introduced intolegislation effective from 1 July 2016.

The policy recognises thatinnovation is critical to improvingAustralia’s competitiveness, standardof living, high wages and generoussocial welfare net. Most essentially, theNISA proposes that fosteringinnovation and commercialisingresearch will be a key driver of futurenational growth.

The NISA includes the creation ofan advisory body, Innovation andScience Australia (ISA), spearheadedby Mr Bill Ferris AC and Dr AlanFinkel AO. According to itsGovernment website(innovation.gov.au), ISA ‘will be a newindependent body with a mandate toprovide strategic whole-of-governmentadvice to the Government on allscience, research and innovationmatters’.

ISA will publish its research findingsand advice in order to promote publicdiscussion, and will publicly advocate

reforms on key issues that includeinnovation investment, collaboration,research infrastructure, and how tobetter invest in research anddevelopment. It will have a role inauditing the performance of the NISAand in developing a 15-year plan forthe Government’s investment inscience, research and innovation.

The NISA will focus on four keypillars: culture and capital,collaboration and skills, incentivisingrisk and government as an exemplar.

July 2016

… only 16% ofAustralianbusinesses have ahigh performanceinnovation culture,in contrast to 44%of the GlobalInnovation 1000.

Stockphoto/LeeYiuTung

Key to the NISA is the emphasis onthe need for collaboration betweenbusiness, research organisations andeducational institutions. As it stands,Australia ranks last among OECDcountries for business collaboration,and the NISA proposes to take steps torectify this by introducing ‘clear andtransparent measures of non-academicimpact and industry and end-userengagement’ through a nationalassessment of university researchperformance. What this means,however, remains unclear, although apilot assessment program is set tocommence in 2017.

The NISA will also seek to reversethe innovation problem by introducingan Entrepreneur Visa ‘forentrepreneurs with innovative ideasand financial backing’ that provides apathway to permanent residency.Further, the pathways to permanentresidency for postgraduateresearchers with STEM qualificationswill also be significantly enhanced.

The NISA also aims to create a

culture that fosters and inspiresentrepreneurship and innovation,which it plans to do through changesto the research and development taxincentives and bankruptcy laws. Thisincludes reducing the bankruptcyperiod from three years to one year,introducing a safe harbour to protectdirectors from personal liability forinsolvent trading, and introducingclauses that allow for the termination ofcontracts in the event of insolvency.

Perhaps most importantly, the NISAplans to provide additional educationalopportunities. This includes armingyoung Australians with the requisiteskills for the jobs of the future, as wellas investing in measures to encouragemore women to pursue STEM-relatedcareers.

The funding itself is spread acrossmultiple initiatives, of which thehighlights include: $200 million toCSIRO for an innovation fund to helpcommercialise research; $2.3 billionover 10 years for the NationalCollaborative Research and

Infrastructure Strategy, the AustralianSynchrotron and the Square KilometreArray; $127 million for research blockgrants with greater emphasis onresearch-industry collaboration;$13 million to promote women inscience, including the Science inAustralia Gender Equity (SAGE) pilot;and $48 million to promote STEM to allAustralians over the next five years.

There is no doubt that the NISA is abroad-ranging and ambitious agenda.Prime Minister Turnbull has statedthat ‘the package is designed toinspire. It is designed to lead. It isdesigned to encourage every singlebusiness, large or small to be moreinnovative, to be more prepared tohave a go at something new … anational culture of innovation, of risk-taking. Unlike the mining boom, theideas boom is ‘a boom that cancontinue forever; it is limited only byour imagination.’

Does the NISA focus oninnovation and researchknowledge?Undoubtedly, the NISA has an aura ofchange to it. It has a sense ofaddressing a long-felt need, and therousing potential to propel Australiainto the ideas boom.

However, disappointingly, the NISAfails to mandate innovation andcommercialisation training.Consequently, Australian scientists willgenerally still be lacking anunderstanding and the practical skillsthat are so essential in translatingresearch into commercialisation,although perhaps this responsibilitylies not with the Government, andinstead with the very researchinstitutions set to benefit from the NISA.This includes research institutions,such as the CSIRO, universities andeven secondary schools.

Australian scientists need to beraised in an innovative andcommercialisation-savvyenvironment – it needs to becomesecond nature. For this to occur, afundamental understanding of


Antennas of CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia.. The ASKAP telescope is a high-speed surveyinstrument comprising 36 independent beams. It uses innovative technologies such as anextremely wide field-of-view interferometer with phased array feeds. The first ever 36-beamimage was produced in April during commissioning activities. CSIRO/CC-BY-3.0

Make Sense of ScienceAustralasian Science makes sense of science, with scientists and expert commentatorswriting about their own work in their own words: no hype or spin – just the facts.

www.austscience.com

iQoncept/Adobe

innovation and commercialisationshould ideally be introduced atsecondary school level. Otherwise,every tertiary student, especially thosein STEM courses, must be introducedto these skills. At the postgraduatelevel, courses directed to thecommercialisation of specific researchprograms should be available, if notcompulsory. This will eventually lead toa generation of Australian scientistswith the skill and practical know-howto drive the ideas boom. Only then willwe be capable of undertaking themuch needed shift in culture from ‘fearof failure’ to ‘embracing risk’.

In the meantime, there must be afocus on further training for currentresearch leaders, including universityscientists, as this is where we presently

have the greatest potential to innovate.It is rare to find a senior academic orlab head who has had formal trainingin these areas, and, instead, they mustsolely rely on knowledge they havepicked up from many years of workingin the field. It is a priority that futureleaders directing research groupshave a knowledge of innovation andcommercialisation.

The NISA is a promising stepforwardTo be a successful nation, Australianmust ditch its ‘fear of failure’ culture andinstead adopt an ‘embracing risk’culture. Pleasingly, the Governmentappears to be actively encouraging thisthrough the implementation of the NISA,which proposes to knock down the key

barriers to commercialisation, andinspire us to achieve through innovation.

However, it won’t come withoutchallenges, and as Prime MinisterTurnbull has stated, ‘Australia hasembarked on one of the mostambitious public sector innovationprojects ever attempted … Its aim isset out in the National Innovation andScience Agenda.’

With the upcoming Australianfederal election, we can only hope thatit’s a priority of the government tocontinue with a long-term vision toencourage and foster innovation.

Brittany Howard MRACI completed a PhD inmedicinal chemistry at the Monash Institute ofPharmaceutical Sciences before undertaking apostdoctoral position with the National Institutes ofHealth (US). She is currently a trainee attorney withFB Rice.

BY DAVE SAMMUT Now embarking on its 41styear, the AustralianGovernment’s ExportMarket Development Grant

(EMDG) is very much a program in itsprime. It is arguably the country’s mostsuccessful long-term targetedeconomic stimulus initiative.

It’s July, and lodgement season hasopened once again for exporters tosubmit claims for entitlements underthe EMDG program. For every dollarspent on eligible export marketingactivities, these companies will be

claiming a cash rebate of almost 50%,up to a maximum of $150 000 of cashin hand per claim.

One of the keynote characteristicsof the EMDG is that, unlike most othergrants and funding, it is a legislatedentitlement program. Businesses thathave expended funds according to theeligibility criteria are entitled to claimthe associated benefits. The money isnon-discretionary, and non-competitive.

I have seen the critical differencethat this program has made for many


Prime numbers

41 years of EMDG

iStockphoto/TERADAT SANTIVIVUT

new exporters, yet I am alwayssurprised by how many people haveyet to hear about it. The EMDG istargeted at businesses that are seekingto grow their export revenues for theinternational sale/licensing of theirproducts, service and/or intellectualproperty.

The activities eligible for cashrebate are broad, and include most ofthe key items that would be on thechecklist of any potential exporter:overseas representatives, exportconsultants, international intellectual

property protection and trademarks,marketing travel, trade shows andpromotional events, free giveawaysand samples, advertising (both printand digital) and even some costs forbringing overseas buyers to Australiafor approved export purposes.

One of the factors behind thesuccess and longevity of the programis that it is thoroughly audited, and sosuccessful claims are very muchbased on clear and pertinentevidence: documents and receipts thatdemonstrate both the expensetransactions and the purpose and/orproportionality of those expenses.

The EMDG is performance based.A company’s entitlements are linked tothe actual export revenues itgenerates, but in the ‘fair go’ Australianspirit the Government gives thecompanies two years to put ‘runs onthe board’ before this applies.

And it is this balance betweenperformance, auditing rigour and fairusage that has made the program asuccess over the last four decades.

Until recently, the legislationunderpinning the EMDG had a five-year ‘sunset clause’, meaning that theprogram had to be independentlyreviewed and reintroduced toparliament every five years or so.

The most recent review wasconducted in 2015 by Michael Lee(former director of Zip Industries). Inhis report to the Minister for Trade andInvestment, Lee stated: ‘I have seenfirsthand the benefits that this modestgovernment support provides toAustralian companies at critical earlystages in their export journeys … Ifound that this 40-year-old schemeremains highly relevant and continuesto bring benefits to Australia byencouraging the creation,development and expansion of


‘50% cash back’ – howit worksEffective from 1 July 2016, the EMDGprogram has eight categories ofeligible expenditure to help determinethe cash rebate payable to anapplicant (a company, partnership,sole trader or trust). Austrade hasspecific schedules and varying rules forclaimable expenditures for each of theeight categories:• Overseas representatives/offices on

a 12+ month contract, up to$200 000

• Marketing consultants, either basedin Australia or overseas, up to$50 000

• Travel for export marketingpurposes (international anddomestic, up to 21 days per trip,including flights plus dailyallowance of $350)

• Free samples and giveaways, up to$15 000

• Trade fairs and promotional events,such as conferences, trade fairs,forums and private exhibitions,uncapped

• Advertising and literature,including brochures, videos,websites, advertising, uncapped

• Overseas buyer expenses for exportpromotion, up to $7500 per buyerper visit, and up to $45 000

• Intellectual property protection,including international patents andtrademarks, up to $50 000The total expenditure from these

schedules is added together. $5000 isdeducted, and the balance ismultiplied by 50% to give themaximum entitlement, up to $150 000(i.e. $305 000 of expenditure). This isthen compared against theperformance target (see box ‘Theperformance text – a fair go’) for thegiven claim year to determine thatactual grant.

The Export Market Development Grant ishelping take Australian innovation to theworld.

overseas markets for Australian goodsand services. It was particularlyencouraging to note that more thanhalf of the 74 finalists in the 2014Australian Export Awards werebeneficiaries under the scheme.’

KPMG modelling in the Lee reviewfound that every EMDG dollargenerates an economic benefit of$7.03 when industry spillovers andproductivity gains are taken intoaccount. The industry’s peak EMDGbody, the Export ConsultantsAssociation Inc. (ECAI), pointed toeven higher statistics for the success ofthe program. In the three years prior tothe review, the first-time claimantsunder the scheme achieved $13 ofexport revenue for every dollar spent.By claim 7, the export revenue was onaverage over $54 per dollar of EMDG.

Put simply, there is no other grantprogram that achieves such strongleverage of national benefit versus

government expense for smallbusiness. And Lee clearly agreed,proposing that the government’sfunding of the program should belifted to provide greater certainty ofoutcomes for Australian exporters.

Following the review, amendedEMDG legislation was passed byparliament with bilateral support. As alandmark change, the legislation hasbeen fixed in the pantheon ofgovernment support to industry, withthe removal of the five-year sunsetclause. The legislation also tweakedthe entitlements slightly, removing a3% automatic benefit forcommunications costs, introducing a$15 000 limit on free sampleexpenditures, and increasing the dailyallowance for food, accommodationand ground transport while travellinginternationally to $350.

However, despite an increase infunding from $125 million to

$137.5 million for 2013/14 claims, theprogram is still chronicallyunderfunded. In a recent briefing,Austrade (which administers theprogram) estimated that total claimswould exceed $170 million. As such,claimants will be paid a guaranteed upto $40 000 immediately on approval oftheir export expenses claim byAustrade as a first instalment, then apercentage of any amount over$40 000 based on the pool of availablefunds once all claims have beenassessed. ECAI anticipates that theshortfall could leave maximum$150 000 claimants ‘short’ by $40 000–50 000 for 2014–15 financial yearclaims.

Compare this to the benefit of theR&D Tax Incentive (itself a criticalsupport mechanism for businessesconducting R&D in Australia). A recentanalysis submitted by the Centre forInternational Economics to the federalreview of the R&D Tax Incentive,identified additional Australian R&Dexpenditure of between $0.3 and $1.0per dollar of tax forgone for largefirms, and between $0.9 and $1.5 perdollar of tax forgone for SMEs. That is a


The EMDG istargeted atbusinesses thatare seeking togrow their exportrevenues for theinternationalsale/licensing oftheir products,service and/orintellectualproperty.

The performance test – a fair goThe maximum EMDG grant in a given year is based on the export revenueperformance by the business. After giving an applicant two claim years to establishits exports, it then caps the entitlement at 40% of export revenue received for thethird claim, and ‘raises the bar’ each claim thereafter: 20%, 10%, 7.5%, 5% and5% for claims in years 4–8.

Export performance requirement for maximum EMDG claim.

For this reason, some applicants often elect to ‘skip’ a year or more in theirclaims, and only lodge EMDG claims when their export performance maximises thegrant entitlements. As Rod Campbell (Chair of the Export Consultants AssociationIncorporated) says: ‘You can only claim eight times over the life of the company.Make it eight good claims.’

1

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0.750.33

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substantially lesser benefit, yet theR&D program is virtually uncapped, ata cost of nearly $3 billion per annumand based on self-assessment.

With the falling Australian dollar anda general improvement in internationalconditions following the GFC,Australian companies are againlooking outwards for growthopportunities. For many of thosecompanies, particularly the SMEs, thefunding support available through theEMDG will be a critical factor in theirinvestment decisions for the comingyear.

EMDG registrations for 2015–16opens on 1 July. Has your companyconsidered accessing its entitlements?

Dave Sammut FRACI CChem is principal of DCSTechnical, a boutique scientific consultancy,providing services to the Australian and internationalminerals, waste recycling and general scientificindustries. Dave is also a ‘Quality Incentive’ EMDGconsultant (as listed on the Austrade website),supplying services through Rod Campbell &Associates – a specialist practice on EMDG since1980.


Getting the claim rightAustrade data shows that the use of EMDG consultants has grown strongly overrecent years, to 71% of claims for the 2013–14 year. This would in part reflectthe change in Austrade’s approach to the EMDG program from that year, with theintroduction of fairly punitive compliance provisions, and the removal ofprovisions to query ‘grey area’ items in claims. Austrade has acquired powers toact as judge, jury and executioner in assessing errors in EMDG claims, and thepower to declare applicants as ‘not fit and proper’ persons for EMDG, with theeffect of both striking out the whole claim under assessment and potentiallypreventing any company associated with the claimant signing authority fromever claiming again. So it is understandable that many applicants would turn toconsultants to help ensure that the claims are correct.

The EMDG is very much an evidence-based program, but it is also complex,with a highly-nuanced set of rules, exceptions and exclusions. According toAustrade data, the total ‘slippage’ (the difference between the amount claimedand that approved after assessment) was 27% for self-claimants in the 2012–13financial year. For the top quartile of professional EMDG consultants, theslippage was 4%. So there is also a strong economic incentive for companies touse the advice of expert consultants to plan the export strategy maximiseentitlements.

A list of ‘Quality Incentive’ consultants (which have passed Austrade’s mostrigorous assessment with the highest success rates) is available on Austrade’swebsite: www.austrade.gov.au/Australian/Export/Export-Grants/Consultants.


Good thingscome in small packages. To present your product

or service to our specialist market of

chemistry professionals, contact

Gypsy Media Services:Marc Wilson

0419 107 [email protected]

BY JOSHUAMYLNE

An enzyme found inplants has someremarkable abilitiesthat have drugdesigners excited.

Proteins are a hotly researchedarea of drug design, butproteins can be degraded bythe human body. Protein rings,

however, are super-stable, giving themgreater potential as drugs.

The main way to make protein ringsis by chemical synthesis, but this iscostly, inefficient and uses toxicchemicals. However, we have workedout how sunflowers turn a proteinstring into a super-stable protein ringin their seeds.

The enzyme that performs this ring-forming reaction is one that usuallycuts proteins, but instead of usingwater to finish the job it uses the head

of a protein chain to form a new bondinstead of breaking one. The ability todevelop water-based reactions willeliminate the need for expensive andharmful chemical synthesis of drugsthat are stable protein rings.

The work on this unusual ring-forming reaction began with a smallprotein found in the seeds ofsunflowers called SunFlower TrypsinInhibitor 1. SFTI-1 is a ring of 14 aminoacids that has no head or tail.

SFTI-1 was discovered in the late1990s and became popular withsynthetic protein drug designers, butonly in 2011 did the gene that encodesSFTI-1 become known. The sequence


Protein scissors that alsolearned to glue

Artwork by Scot Nicholls, Domokun Design, reproduced from Chemistry & Biology

for SFTI-1 is buried inside a gene thatalso makes seed storage albumin, aprotein that accumulates to very highlevels in seeds before degradingduring germination to providenutrients for the growing seedling.

How the sequence for SFTI-1 cameto be buried alongside an albuminseemed curious indeed, but recentwork has found that sequences forprotein rings like SFTI-1 have beenburied in albumin genes for at least 28 million years. SFTI-1 is just the firstknown member of a very large familyof tiny seed proteins.

Seed storage proteins were workedon a lot in the 1990s. Ikuko Hara-Nishimura and her Japanesecolleagues found a protease calledAEP that helps to assemble seedstorage proteins. It transpires that thealbumin and its adjacent SFTI-1 bothneed AEP to be assembled correctly.

A breakthrough that made itpossible to study the ‘string to ring’reaction was the ability to make AEPproperly in bacteria. Escherichia colihas been used in labs all around theworld to make tens of thousands ofdifferent proteins, but it sometimesstruggles to make certain proteins.Some proteins are toxic to E. coliwhereas others don’t fold properlyand, once extracted, are insoluble inwater. Sometimes a protein can besoluble and correctly folded, but E. colicannot decorate the protein with theright chemical modifications for it tobe active.

Over the years, the number ofengineered E. coli strains hascontinued to grow, each with differentcapabilities. The E. coli strain thatenabled us to make active AEP was anew strain that was especially good atprotein folding and forming sulfur–sulfur bonds, which isn’t something E. coli usually does well.

We used this new strain of E. coli tomake and purify a suite of AEPs. Oncewe had pure AEP we changed the pHand the AEPs would self-activate bycutting themselves in several places.This self-activation by proteases is

quite common.We mixed these activated

AEPs from E. coli with a range ofprotein strings containing thesequence for SFTI-1, and foundthat AEP uses a rather ingeniousway to make a protein ring.

Proteases usually cut proteinsfor two reasons: enthalpy andentropy. Enthalpy refers to theenergy balance of the reaction.Cutting a protein releases energywhereas forming or ligating aprotein bond usually requires anenergy input. Hencebondbreaking is easier to do thanmaking one.

Entropy is about order. Cutting aprotein usually gives you two proteins.It’s easier for one piece of protein tobe cut into two than for twodisconnected proteins floating insolution to come close enoughtogether to be joined by an enzymeinto one.

For SFTI-1 to be made by aprotease, these barriers of enthalpyand entropy must be overcome.

Proteases usually cut protein bondsby binding to the protein and thenusing water to hydrolyse the bond.However, water isn’t involved whenSFTI-1 is made.

The SFTI-1 string is made into aring by cleaving off and discarding asmall part of the string and using anearby amino head group (H2N)instead of water (H2O) to complete thereaction (see diagram). To overcomeenthalpy and entropy, AEP uses theenergy obtained from cleaving to jointhe head of SFTI-1 to its tail in areaction that moves a protein bondfrom one place to another place that’sheld really close by. The result is acircular protein with no ends.

During the same studies we foundthat if SFTI-1 did not get made into aring it quickly broke down. Sealing theends of a protein together makes itmore stable, and this process has thepotential to be industrialised usingAEP. The ability to seal off the ends of aprotein by joining them together is

therefore a popular approach thatprotein drug designers use to stabiliseproteins that would otherwise berapidly broken down in biologicalfluids.

An interesting finding from ourwork, which has been published inChemistry & Biology (bit.ly/1UgnWLX),was that only one of four AEPs couldperform the ring-forming reaction tomake SFTI-1. The other AEPs couldonly cut the string into two pieces ofstring. What was perplexing is that thisbond-making AEP looked very similarto the bond-breaking AEPs.

A different ring-forming enzyme incyanobacteria has an extra protein‘wing’ that helps protect the activecentre of the enzyme from water, sohow our bond-making AEP keepswater away from its centre must bemore subtle.

Future work will attempt tounderstand what changes in thegenetic sequence turn a cutting AEPinto a ligating AEP and what changesimprove its ligating ability. This shouldallow the engineering of artificialenzymes with superior cutting orligating ability for industrialapplications in biotechnology andprotein drug stabilisation.

Joshua Mylne is an Australian Research CouncilFuture Fellow appointed jointly to the School ofChemistry and Biochemistry & The ARC Centre ofExcellence in Plant Energy Biology at the Universityof Western Australia. This article originally publishedin Australasian Science (www.austscience.com).


A protein string becomes a stableprotein ring.


raci news

New FellowsShi-Zhang Qiao received his PhD inchemical engineering from the HongKong University of Science andTechnology in 2000, and is currently aprofessor (Chair of Nanotechnology) atthe School of Chemical Engineering,University of Adelaide, and an HonoraryProfessor at the University ofQueensland.

His research expertise is innanomaterials and nanoporousmaterials for drug/gene delivery, andnew energy technologies. He has co-authored more than 252 papers in

refereed journals (over 15 000 citations with h-index 66),including Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Communications,Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemieand Advanced Materials, and has filed several patents on novelnanomaterials that are promising for drug/gene delivery, fuelcells, photocatalysis and lithium-ion batteries.

He has attracted more than $8.5 million in research grantsfrom industrial partners and the ARC, including seven ARCDiscovery projects, one ARC Linkage project and four ARC LIEFgrants.

In recognition of his achievements in research, he washonoured with a prestigious ARC Discovery OutstandingResearcher Award (DORA, 2013), an Emerging Researcher Award(2013, ENFL Division of the American Chemical Society) and aUniversity of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Award(2008). He has also been awarded an ARC ARF Fellowship, anARC APD Fellowship and an inaugural University of QueenslandMid-Career Research Fellowship. He has delivered more than60 plenary, keynote and invited presentations at internationalconferences.

Qiao is an Associate Editor of Journal of Materials ChemistryA (RSC), Editorial Board Member of ChemBioEng Review (Wiley)and Energy Storage Materials (Elsevier) and Advisory BoardMember of ChemNanoMat (Wiley), Journal of Materials Science &Technology (Elsevier) and Advanced Materials Technologies(Wiley). Qiao is currently appointed to the ARC College ofExperts. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry(FRSC).

At an early age, Tania Notaras spentmany weekends assisting her olderbrother, Dr Boban Markovic withexperiments in the garage. This earlyinfluence and the additional support andencouragement from her mother Mirainspired her to choose a career in science.

Notaras commenced her career underan industry traineeship in 1988 thatquickly led to her appointment to varioustechnical and management roles. Applyingher talent and passion to continuedeveloping the industry and creatingefficiencies, Notaras emerged as abusiness leader in her field, locally and overseas.

Notaras’ major impact to the industry was in 2005 asManaging Director and founder of Envirolab Services in Sydneyand acquisition of MPL Laboratories Perth in 2010. From humblebeginnings, this is now a successful, multimillion dollarcommercial enterprise with offices and laboratories acrossAustralia providing reliable, quality professional services for theenvironment and WHS sectors.

Notaras gives back to the profession by supporting thecareer development of her staff and offering industryplacements for students. She is a mentor of women in industry,supports various student development programs and sponsorstechnical and professional meetings. She was a Telstra BusinessWomen’s Award Finalist in 2008 and appointed as a 2009Women in Business Mentor, while also holding membership ofthe exclusive Executive Connection (TEC) since 2010.

From personal efforts and strategic alliances, Notaras istoday sought for expert technical advice and guidance bydecision makers in industry and government instrumentalities.These services have extended to assisting in the setting ofindustry standards and offering advice on regulations, andrecognition through industry award nominations. Notaras alsoactively and voluntarily undertakes senior leadership roles inRACI affairs. This is illustrated by her 2015–17 successfulnomination to the RACI New South Wales Branch as President-Elect and election to the RACI Board as an Ordinary BoardMember. Attending RACI events has also assisted Notaras in hercontinued career development and business endeavours.

Alongside her successful professional career, Notaras hasbeen happily married to her husband John for 26 years and isthe proud mother of Natalie and Daniel.


The Athel Beckwith Lectureship Generously supported by the JohnMorris Group

The Organic Division has established an annual fundedlectureship to allow outstanding, recently appointed, organicchemists to travel around Australia and present the results oftheir research work. The objective is to provide the lecturerwith the opportunity to achieve broader recognition andexposure at an early stage in their career. Reasonable travel andaccommodation expenses up to a maximum of $3500 will beprovided.

The Mander Best PhD Thesis inOrganic Chemistry Award

Generously supported by Davies CollisonCave

The Mander Best PhD Thesis in Organic Chemistry Awardrecognises the best PhD thesis in the field of organic chemistryfor outstanding achievement and communication. The recipientwill receive a cash prize of $1000, generously provided byDavies Collison Cave.

Student Bursaries for ConferenceTravel

Generously supported by CSIRO ManufacturingUp to 10 student bursaries (of up to $500) areavailable to assist current RACI student members,

who have been a member for at least one year, with attendanceat organic chemistry related conferences within Australia.

RACI Organic DivisionAwardsThe RACI Division of Organic Chemistry is calling fornominations for the following awards. Nominations should besubmitted to Dr John Tsanaktsidis([email protected]), Chair of the Organic ChemistryDivision, by 30 June 2016. For more information, visitwww.raci.org.au/events-awards/organic-chemistry.

RACI Board electionsNominations are open for the following positions on theRACI Board.• President elect• Treasurer• Ordinary board memberForms are available at www.raci.org.au/theraci/corporate-governance/board-elections-2016Nominations close 20 August and elections will be held

the first week in October.

Young Chemists Group –Professional Development SeriesPart 1Professional Development SeriesPart 1: Grants, Fellowships andAwards

The first career event of the RACI Victorian Young ChemistsGroup provides participants with useful information aboutexisting grants, fellowships and awards. Furthermore, wehave invited successful researchers who will share theirexperience of writing and reviewing grants. The event willbe split into 15-minute talks from our speakers, a paneldiscussion, followed by dinner and drinks.

Invited speakers Grants, fellowships and awards – what is out there?Dr Karen McConalogueManager, Research Programs, Monash UniversityA reviewer’s perspectiveDr Cathy FoleyDeputy and Science Director of CSIRO Manufacturing

Venue Thursday 14 July 2016, 5.30 pm – 7.30 pmRMIT Building 80, Level 5, Room 12, 445 Swanston Street,MelbourneRACI Members $10, non-RACI Members $15 (includesdinner and drinks)

Register at www.ivvy.com/event/VZG595.Contact RACI (03) 9328 2033

Nobel Prize-winning chemist and past president of the RoyalSociety of Chemistry Harry Kroto died on Saturday 30 April aged76.

Kroto was awarded the 1996 chemistry Nobel Prize, alongwith Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, for the discovery offullerenes, and was knighted the same year.

Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, to parents who leftGermany as refugees during the second world war, Kroto spentmost of his childhood in Bolton in northern England, where hisparents set up a balloon manufacturing and printing companyin 1940. He went to Bolton School, where he developed afascination with chemistry, physics and maths, and went on tostudy chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1958, where hecompleted a BSc in chemistry, and then a PhD in molecularspectroscopy.

Upon completing his PhD in 1964 he moved to Canada andtook up a postdoc position at the National Research Council(NRC) in Ottawa to undertake spectroscopy research. Then, in1966, he went to Bell Labs to study liquid phase reactions using

Raman spectroscopy, but soon moved back to the UK to take upa postdoc position, and later a permanent lectureship at theUniversity of Sussex.

For several years at Sussex he continued to carry outspectroscopic studies into new chemical species. Around thistime he also worked with astronomers in Canada to characteriselong, linear carbon chain molecules (such as HC3N and HC5N)detected in outer space. This work eventually led to thediscovery that would win him the Nobel Prize. In the 1980s,Kroto was working with Curl and Smalley at Rice University, US,on experiments that simulated conditions in the atmospheres ofstars. It was these experiments that led to them discovering anew allotrope of football-shaped carbon – C60 – that could formfrom a condensing carbon vapour. It was Kroto’s idea tochristen the new allotrope buckminsterfullerene in homage tothe US architect Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes hadhelped him visualise the structure of C60.

In the wake of his Nobel success, Kroto became a prolificspeaker and science communicator, devoting much of his timeto educational outreach and public engagement activities. In1995 he set up the Vega Science Trust to create science filmsthat were broadcast on BBC television.

He was president of the Royal Society of Chemistry from2002–2004, after which he became a professor of chemistry atFlorida State University in the US.

Robert Parker, now chief executive of the Royal Society ofChemistry, worked in the publishing wing of the organisationwhen Kroto was president. ‘I’ve always been struck by Harry’sgenuine passion for chemistry, which he shared so generouslywith young people and early-career researchers especially. Hehad an easy-going style which made him so approachable andsuch a good communicator and ambassador for chemistry,’ hesays. ‘While he was clearly a brilliant scientist, it wasn’t hisonly passion and his abiding interest in art and design filteredthrough to influence in innovative journal covers and findingnew ways to approach big problems. His warm-hearted nature,authentic interest in people and deeply-held personal opinionswill be missed.’

Michael Farthing, vice-chancellor of the University of Sussexsaid: ‘Harry Kroto’s intelligence was stratospheric – and hiscontribution to chemistry will live on forever … He wasresponsible for changing the way modern scientists think aboutchemistry and he mirrored this with an active role in globalpolitics and the arts. His love of so many academic and culturaldisciplines meant that he was able to view the world and itspossibilities in such a unique and positive way.’

He is survived by wife Margaret, and two sons Stephen andDavid.

By Emma Stoye. This article was originally published by Chemistry World. Readmore from Chemistry World at http://www.chemistryworld.org.

obituary


Nobel Prize winner and buckyball discoverer Harry Kroto dies

Pd1000/CC BY-SA 3.0

books


Pumps, channels andtransporters: methods offunctional analysisClarke R.J., Khalid M.A.A. (Eds), Wiley, 2015,ISBN 9781118858806, 488 pp., $178.95(hardback), $143.99 (ebook)

This book is volume 183 of Chemicalanalysis: a series of monographs onanalytical chemistry and its applications(series editor Mark F. Vitha). Your body(and those of most other cellular life forms)

is kept going by a large variety of ion pumps, channels andtransporters. Indeed, such structures are helping you interpretthis information as you read. A lot of attention has been paidto how such systems work, and a number of Nobel Prizes havebeen awarded for research in this area; although as the editorsof Pumps, channel and transporters: methods of functionalanalysis point out, the number of prizes awarded in a field maynot be the most objective criteria for judging its relativeimportance.

Chemistry has long been involved in answering biologicalquestions such as ‘How do ions traverse membranes?’ Thestructure and function of membrane proteins that facilitate suchprocesses continue to be of interest, and over the years manytechniques have become available to enable their study. Thisbook, to its great credit, covers pretty much all them, and to animpressive level of detail. There are chapters coveringeverything from the more traditional methods of physiologysuch as patch clamp recording, through infrared, nuclearmagnetic resonance and electron paramagnetic resonancespectroscopies, to cutting-edge technologies, based on theobservation of single molecules. It even finishes with a chapteron molecular simulations for understanding channel function.Structural methods such as X-ray crystallography or electronmicroscopy are, however, intentionally omitted, since the bookis focused on cellular kinetics.

The chapters are divided logically into four main sections.The book starts with an introduction to the history of ionchannels, pumps and transporters, and covers their basicfeatures and biological roles. This section is well worth readingby itself. I was quite interested to discover, for example, thatosmosis was first discovered, accidentally, by a French priestand physicist (science and faith not being so far apart in timesgone by as they are today) conducting an experiment involvingan alcohol-filled pig’s bladder being immersed in water. Quitewhy such an experiment was deemed necessary in the first placeis not explained – but the original reference for this experimentis provided for the curious reader.

Section 2 discusses the use of electrical techniques tomonitor currents produced by ion channels, pumps andtransporters, while the third section covers the use ofspectroscopic techniques to detail their macromolecularstructure. The fourth section contains techniques that fall

outside the electrical or spectroscopic categories, such astheoretical simulations. I was particularly interested to readabout the use of atomic absorption spectrophotometry forcation uptake studies in this section.

Each chapter starts with a detailed description of thetechnique and the principles behind it before moving on tothose applications of said technique in understanding ionchannels, pumps and transporters. The reader can dip in andout of the book and pick up information on a technique ofinterest or read in detail how such methods can give usefulexperimental information. It is quite pleasing to see methodsthat are sometimes overlooked, such as EPR, discussed.

The book brings together a large range of experts from allover the world with contributions from researchers fromAustralia, Germany, Italy Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UK and theUS. The editors are Ronald Clarke (University of Sydney) andMohammed Khalid (University of Taif). It is pleasing to see suchcooperation between Australian and Saudi Arabian researchers,with this book being one of the many positive outcomes thatcan result from such collaborations.

Overall Pumps, channels and transporters: methods offunctional analysis is an excellent book full of useful, detailedinformation and well worth reading whether you are anexperienced cellular biologist or just a curious scienceundergraduate.

Oliver A.H. Jones MRACI CChem

To explain the world:the discovery ofmodern scienceWeinberg S., Penguin Random House,2016, ISBN 9780141980874 (paperback),416 pp., $26.99

Much lauded, To explain the world: thediscovery of modern science, whichoriginally appeared under the HarperCollins banner in 2015, is now availablein paperback form. Author StevenWeinberg (b. 1933) is a Nobel laureate in Physics (1979, for hiscontributions, with Salam and Glashow, to theoretical physics,specifically to the unification of the weak force andelectromagnetic interaction between elementary particles) witha fascination for the history of science, rather than a traditionalhistorian of science. His particular interests are in the history ofphysics and astronomy and these are reflected in the book. Ifyou’re an academic or a teacher, one of the best ways I know toget your ideas straight in an area where you might not be, shallwe say ‘the world’s greatest expert’, is to ‘volunteer’ (andsometimes that can mean you just weren’t quick enough to stepbackwards!) to teach it to someone. This is exactly whatWeinberg did and the book arises from his experiences andresearch.

Your advert could be here.For further information about advertising here or on our website, contact:Marc Wilson ◆ Gypsy Media Services ◆ 0419 107 143 ◆ [email protected]

iStockphoto/Jirkab

books

Weinberg’s treatment benefits from elements of irreverenceand the interspersing of his personal opinions from time totime. I expect a ‘proper’ historian of science would almost neverdo this, but it does add to the reader’s experience and, if you’rea Nobel laureate, then I guess you’ve earned the right to haveopinions. For example, Weinberg writes of Francis Bacon andRene Descartes as ‘the two individuals whose importance in thescientific revolution is most overrated’. In similar vein, in afootnote about Isaac Newton’s death, he observes the surgeonin whose arms Newton died and his doctor both reported toVoltaire that Newton ‘never had intimacies with a woman’,which, you’d have to agree, is a felicitous turn of phrase. Hegoes on to comment that Voltaire did not say how the doctorand surgeon could have known this! An interesting conundrumindeed!

The book is divided into three main sections: the textproper, a 94-page series containing 35 technical notes, and asection of endnotes tied to the chapters. You can read the bookquite satisfactorily without going anywhere near the technicalnotes. However, if you want to know more or seek greater detailon how work from the past fits in with what actually exists innature, the technical notes are useful and educational.

The main text of the book runs for 214 pages, covering Greekphysics, with its philosophic notions of an ideal world,uncluttered by any experimentation or reality checking andGreek astronomy. Subsequently, moving to the Middle Ages,

Weinberg discusses the influence of Arab science and the milieuof medieval Europe. This is followed by an extensive expositionon the unravelling of the mysteries of the solar system beforeNewton more-or-less pulled things together into what we knowas modern experimental science.

To show my prejudices, I found the discussion of Greekscience fascinating, the contribution of the Arabs a worthyconfirmation of one of my pet peeves (‘God’ was not, in fact, aEuropean! Other people had ideas and contributions too!), thematerial about Newton inspiring (but, really wasn’t he a nastycoot; a thoroughly perplexing individual) and the discussion ofastronomy, in many ways the crux of the book, in greaterabundance than my interest (well, that’s my problem, I guess).Alas, chemistry rates not a mention. Certainly, the book‘explains the world’ and explores ‘the discovery of modernscience’, as its title suggests, but only from a particularperspective (physics/astronomy). This is no great revelation:Weinberg set out to do exactly that, and, in my view, he did apretty good job of it. As a chemist, I’m probably a tad sensitivewhen the history of my profession finds itself confined to thewings in the great play about the emergence of modern science.However, chemistry too has its own great history, stretchingback to the ancient Greek ideas about the divisibility of matter,forwards through the alchemists (and if Newton wasn’t a ‘paid-up’ member, he was at least a fellow traveller) to modernchemistry as we know it. I expect biologists could make similarclaims. So, for me, the book is an example of ‘seeing dimlythrough a glass’. The picture is not too bad, but there’s a lot ofstuff lurking in the background if you want a complete picture.

R. John Casey FRACI CChem


John Wiley & Sons books are now available to RACI members at a20% discount. Log in to the members area of the RACI website,register on the Wiley Landing Page, in the Members Benefits area,search and buy. Your 20% discount will be applied to yourpurchase at the end of the process.

Receive 25% off Elsevier books at www.store.elsevier.com (usepromotion code PBTY15).

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Reference materials from all major worldwide sources including:NIST (USA), CANMET (Canada), SABS (South Africa), BAS (UK), Standards Australia, BGS (UK), BCR (Belgium), NWRI (Canada), NRCC (Canada), Brammer (USA), Alpha (USA), Seishin (Japan)

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CERTIFIED REFERENCE MATERIALS

This year is the centenary of the EasterUprising in Ireland. On Easter Monday,24 April 1916, several armed bandsmarched into Dublin and seized a numberof vantage points. The British armyresponded by rushing 20 000 troops intothe city and the subsequent fightingcaused many casualties and muchdestruction. The uprising’s leaders werecourt martialled and executed.

The ‘Easter Martyrs’ were not to knowthat their actions would provide thetemplate for many an independencemovement thereafter, and that thedivisions that surfaced in the newlyindependent nations would mimic thosein Ireland from the 1920s on.

But chemistry is everywhere, even inIreland, so one asks the question: what isIreland’s most significant chemicalachievement? It must surely bedistillation! However, the first records ofdistillation are from the Alchemists ofAlexandria, two millennia ago. Theirproduct was herbal remedies andperfumes from plants. In medieval times,monastic orders produced alcoholicliquors, and by the Renaissance, aquavitsellers were to be found in Europeanmarkets. According to Brian Townsend(Lost distilleries of Ireland, 1997, NeilWilson Publishing), Irish whiskeydistillation probably began in the latemedieval times, and the skill was passedacross the North Channel to the Scots.

In the 18th century, because of theExcise Act of 1779, there were manyillegal stills in the Irish countryside,particularly in Donegal. A new Excise Actin 1823 made profitable the legalproduction of a more reliable product,and Irish whiskey became the dominantchoice of spirit drinkers in the19th century, displacing rum in England.This is the period of the great Dublindistilleries of Jameson, with the greatestdistillery in the British Isles in BowStreet, and Powers in Johns Lane, whose

products were so preferred over Scotchthat there was an active trade in‘adulteration’ of Irish with inferiorScotch, to sell on the English market.

A once great industry was broughtdown by business hubris, prohibition andtariff wars. The hubris was to assumethat the dominance over Scotch wouldremain unchallenged … but the DistillersCompany, which bought up many Scotchdistilleries in the late 19th century,introduced blending, a technique scornedby the Irish, but made possible by thepatent still invented by Aeneas Coffey,the Excise official responsible for the1823 Excise Act. A trade war with Britainfollowed Irish independence in 1922 andsaw tariffs against Irish in favour ofScotch. Prohibition in the US from 1920to 1933 almost killed off the Irish

whiskey trade in America, so that thegreat Dublin distilleries, which escapeddestruction during Easter Week in 1916,finally closed in the 1970s. Most Irishwhiskey is now made at a modern plantin County Cork, owned by the Europeanbeverage giant Diageo. Jameson’s nolonger comes from Dublin.

There is one traditional distillery left,Bushmills, which is on the north coast ofAntrim, near the famous Giant’sCauseway. Followers of Game of Thronesmay well be familiar with this location,which is one of many in Northern Irelandused for that eponymous series.

collections


Postcard from Dublin

Historical whiskey pot still at the Midleton distillery complex of Jameson in County Cork.Stephan Schulz/CC-BY-SA-3.0

Trevor McAllister FRACI CChem([email protected]) is retiredand enjoying life after science as atour guide at the Melbourne Museumand the State Library of Victoria.

economics


In 1911, the Broken Hill Proprietary Company decided to build asteelworks at Newcastle using coal from the Hunter Valley inNew South Wales. Iron ore was shipped from the Iron Knobmine near Whyalla in South Australia. The advent of World War Iisolated Australia from steel supplies in Britain and this madethe new steelworks an extremely profitable operation.

The success of this operation spurred the Australian Iron andSteel Company (AIS) to build a steelworks at Port Kembla usingcoal from near Wollongong and iron ore from South Australia.The works started operation in 1928. Unfortunately for thisenterprise, the Depression of the 1930s resulted in its demiseand purchase by BHP in 1935. Again, isolation from the Empireduring World War II resulted in the two steelworks becomingextremely profitable for BHP. Pressure by the South Australiangovernment encouraged BHP to build another steelworks atWhyalla, which was opened in 1941.

During the 1950s, iron ore resources at Cockatoo Island andlater the enormous reserves of the Pilbara were discovered andone of the conditions of exploiting these resources for exportwas that a steelworks be built in Western Australia. Asteelworks was built by BHP at Kwinana south of Perth, whichfrom the 1960s to 1984 was fed by its own blast furnace.

BHP ran the three remaining steelworks until 1999 when theNewcastle steelworks required major investment, which couldnot be justified by the company. BHP divested the Whyallasteelworks in 2000 and the Port Kembla operation in 2002,forming OneSteel (later renamed Arrium) and BlueScope,respectively.

All of these facilities produced steel by reducing iron orewith coal (as coke) followed by oxidising excess carbon in theiron by the basic oxygen process (BOS, a successor to theBessemer process). This was one of the key technologies of theIndustrial Revolution and still dominates the production of steelaround the world.

The production of steel involves three large unit operations –the blast furnace, a coke oven and the BOS (Bessemer)converter.

The blast furnace is a very tall structure, which takes acharge of coke, iron ore and limestone (as flux) into the top ofthe furnace. Hot air is blown (blasted) into the bottom of thefurnace and causes partial combustion of the coke to carbonmonoxide. As the combustion gases rise through the furnaceagainst the descending solids, the iron ore is heated andreduced to molten metal. Ash in the coke and non-ferrous ore isconverted into a molten slag. The molten iron with a top layerof slag collects below the air injection zone in the furnace fromwhich the iron (pig iron) and the slag are drawn off as liquids.Hot and still combustible gases are drawn off from the top ofthe furnace.

One of the major advantages of a blast furnace is that poor-quality metal scrap and some other intractable wastes can beadded with the feed. Most tramp metals that otherwise would

contaminate the steel, are removed in the slag.In the Bessemer converter, oxygen is blown through the

molten iron, which reduces the carbon content of the iron toproduce steel.

The other main unit operation is the coke oven. This has theduty to produce coke from coal. The coal is charged to a narrowvessel, which is heated externally by burning coke oven gasesand excess blast furnace gas. Heating the coal drives offvolatile matter, leaving behind incandescent coke. This ispushed out of the coke oven and falls into a rail car ready forcharging into the blast furnace. Coke production is a batchprocess and the coke ovens are held in batteries of a hundred ormore ovens to ensure a continuous supply of coke.

The raw coke oven gas is passed through condensers, whichcondense coal tar and an aqueous phase (known as ammoniacalliquor) and produce a coke oven gas used to fuel the coke ovenoperation. The liquids are worked up separately (often by othercompanies) to produce a wide range of coal chemical products.In Australia, coal tar liquids are separated at the Koppers(Koppers Carbon Materials and Chemicals Pty. Ltd.) works nearNewcastle.

The three principal unit operations give the photographersome of the best images of the industrial landscape – blast-furnace tapping of hot metal, steel production when oxygen isblown through the molten metal, and the coke oven whenincandescent coke is pushed out of the oven.

They also have some of the more intractable pollution issuesin industry. Coal and blast furnace and downstream operationsproduce large quantities of slag and dust, which often affectsthe surrounding neighbourhoods, while coke ovens, especiallyolder plant, are sources of discharges of polynuclear aromaticsand benzene to the environment.

Steel production economics benefits from the economies ofscale. Blast furnaces are now built with internal volumes over5000 m3 and produce many millions of tonnes of iron each year.These are very large facilities and one consequence is that thecoke used has to be very strong to hold the enormous weight ofthe material in the top of the furnace. This has generated aspecialised market for some coals (coking coal) and this sells ata significant premium to thermal (power station) coal (seetable).

Pertinent prices for steelmaking in March 2016Commodity Location (contract) Price ($/t)

Coking coal Australia (FOB) 79.10

Thermal coal Newcastle (FOB) 55.86

Iron ore China (CFR) 55.5

Carbon steel Asia ~380

CFR, cost and freight; FOB, free on board.

Because not all coal can produce high-strength coke, thiscan limit the scale of blast furnace operations, which are

Blast from the past: Australian steelworks

Chemistry in Australia 35July 2016

dependent on a local coal resource. This was the case atNewcastle where local coals could only support relatively smallblast furnaces. Coking coal in Australia is produced fromselected mines in the Bowen Basin in Queensland and exportedto the large integrated steel operations in China, Taiwan, Japanand South Korea. These operations now dominate worldproduction of low-cost export steel marginalising manyoperations in US, Europe and Australia.

In recent times the Port Kembla steelworks (BlueScope Steel)has gone through a major restructure and has had considerablestate government support. At the time of writing, the Whyallasteelworks (Arrium) is under the control of an administrator andits ongoing operation is in some doubt. Furthermore, thereduction of iron ore using coal is innately a large emitter of

carbon dioxide. Approximately two tonnes of CO2 are emittedper tonne of iron produced. Clearly introduction of carbonemission charges would exacerbate the current economics ofsteel production in Australia. Furthermore, since the majorfacilities (blast furnaces, coke ovens) are long-life items, pooreconomics makes major investment in more efficient plantunlikely.

In a forthcoming article, I will discuss some of the lowercarbon emission processes that from time to time have beentried in Australia.

Duncan Seddon FRACI CChem is a consultant to coal, oil, gas andchemicals industries specialising in adding value to naturalresources.

Aerial view of Australian Iron and Steel factory in Port Kembla. Established in 1928, Australian Iron and Steel Pty Ltd manufactured iron andsteel, as well as mining coal for use in the steel industry. Flickr/Royal Australian Historical Society

gravitational waves

The historic discovery of gravitationalwaves announced in February involvedthe work of more than a thousandscientists working tirelessly in severaldifferent institutions, across manydifferent countries and time zones.

Why is an entire village, albeit adiverse and disparate one, required toverify experimentally the last ofEinstein’s major predictions in his theoryof general relativity? And how does sucha village function and coordinate in sucha way that maximises scientific output?

A tour of the villageLIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC)consists of two individual experiments,located at two sites in the US, separatedby 3000 kilometres. At each site, a single,very high-power laser beam is split intwo, and travels down two perpendicularfour-kilometre-long vacuum tunnels.

At the ends of these tunnels the laserhits large, 40-kilogram mirrors suspendedby an intricate series of pendula toreduce shaking from external forces.

The laser light returns along the sametunnel, and recombines. Gravitationalwaves cause the actual length of eacharm to change. The way the laser lightrecombines is used to determine thischange.

In order to make a detection, theLIGO instruments needed to measure achange in arm length equal to 1000ththe diameter of a proton. Performingsuch a measurement is a remarkabletechnological feat that involvesdevelopment across multiple scientificstreams.

These fields include, but are notlimited to, quantum physics and quantummetrology; high-powered optics;mechanical systems, including thermal andvibrational control systems; generalrelativity and gravitation; theoreticalastrophysics and traditional astronomy;large-scale computing … the list goes on.

The multidisciplinary nature of thisexperiment is reflected in the structure ofthe LSC, which looks more like a

corporate entity than a traditionalscientific collaboration.

Among other things, there are many,many science working groups which fallwithin the scope of three main themes:instrument science, detectorcharacterisation and data analysis.

Alongside the science working groupssit groups such as Education and PublicOutreach, Diversity, and the Presentationand Publications Committee.

Each working group is a dynamic,scientific collaboration all untothemselves. Each has a chairperson, ormultiple co-chairs, who report to thetheme leaders who, in turn, report to theLSC spokesperson, executive committeeand council.

Who works in the village?So exactly how many scientists does ittake to detect a gravitational wave? Thisparticular effort took 1,006 scientistsworking tirelessly in 16 countries in 83different institutions, located in 14different timezones!

Research for the discovery was doneall over North America, Brazil,throughout Europe, Russia, India, Chinaand South-East Asia and Australia.

We, along with about 50 colleagues,work on this experiment in Australia. Amajority of the leadership group work ininstitutes in the US, at places such asCalTech and MIT.

The result of this unfortunatecircumstance is that full, collaboration-

wide teleconferences typically take placebetween 2am and 4am in Australian time.Over the past two months, building tothe announcement, this has affected ourlives many times!

In general, science working groupshold weekly teleconferences. Many of usare part of working groups that only existon two continents, making it possible toschedule meetings that also allow for arelatively normal existence.

Many of us also work in groups thathave numerous members on three ormore continents; very early, or very lateteleconferences are not uncommon, butremind us of the scale of thecollaboration and the international effectof our work.

What do they do?As mentioned before, this is a precisionmeasurement! Every aspect of theexperiment is incredibly finely-tuned. Forexample, multiple groups and individualsaround Australia work on the technologyand design of the mirrors.

Monash University researcher YuriLevin, while a PhD student of Kip Thorne’sat CalTech, developed the theoreticalframework for computing thermal noise(which is now widely used within thecollaboration). From this work it becameclear that LIGO mirrors requireexceptionally high-quality reflectivecoatings.

The coating noise Levin anticipated isnow considered to be among the most


Australia’s part in the global effort to discovergravitational waves

In order to make a detection, the LIGOinstruments needed to measure achange in arm length equal to 1000ththe diameter of a proton. Performingsuch a measurement is a remarkabletechnological feat that involvesdevelopment across multiple scientificstreams.

serious sources of noise in the LIGOexperiment.

Scientists at Adelaide Universitydeveloped, installed and commissionedwavefront sensors for the LIGO mirrorsthat measure the mirrors’ change inshape due to the temperature of thehigh-powered laser, and corrects thesedistortions.

Researchers at CSIRO developed mirrorcoatings and polishing techniques for theinitial phase of the LIGO experiment thatlasted from 2002 to 2010. A team at theAustralian National University developedtip-tilt mirror suspension systems thatcan be used to steer the laser light withremarkable accuracy.

A group at the University of WesternAustralia have built a mini-LIGOexperiment that is used, among otherthings, to study an instability the high-powered laser can induce on the mirrors,causing them to wobble uncontrollably.

Each element and each component ofthe incredibly complex LIGO systemundergoes incredible levels ofdevelopment and scrutiny.

This is perhaps best exemplified in thedata analysis sphere. In Australia, wehave strong groups at Monash University,the universities of Melbourne andWestern Australia, the Australian NationalUniversity and Charles Sturt University.

We all work on developing andrunning computer software that can picka tiny signal out of noisy data streams.Somewhat infamously, LIGO puts itselfthrough a process called blind injections.

Blind injections are performed by avery small group of people. The teaminject a fake signal into the data streamby artificially shaking the mirrors of thedetector in such a way that makes itlooks like a gravitational wave haspassed through.

The unsuspecting data analysts playtheir usual games of analysing this dataand, lo and behold, inevitably find thesignal.

An early result?The most famous of these blind injectionsoccurred in September 2010. Very soonafter the signal was automatically

injected into the detectors, it was pickedup with the initial data analysisalgorithms.

The purported signal looked like it tocame from the constellation Canis Major,and the event was subsequently calledthe ‘Big Dog’. The collaboration thenwent through a six-month process ofvetting, checking, and re-checking theanalysis, and even wrote up a full paperto be submitted to the journal.

An independent Detection Committeereviewed all of the results, and acollaboration-wide vote was held onwhether to submit the paper for peerreview – the result was an anonymous‘yes’.

And then the envelope was opened:the signal was fake.

That exercise, while incredibly painfulto many, shows just how seriously theLIGO Scientific Collaboration takes itsscience. That this latest detection wasnot a blind injection has been known bythe entire collaboration for a long time –the experiment was only beginning tocollect data, and the blind injectionsoftware had not yet been set upproperly.

Less than one hour after the LIGOexperiment wobbled from the

gravitational wave on that fateful day onSeptember 14, 2015, one of us (Lasky)and fellow Monash academic and LIGOresearcher Eric Thrane, who sits on thefake injection committee, were sitting atour laptops at home when we bothreceived an email titled ‘Very interestingevent on ER8’ (ER8 stands forEngineering Run 8, which was the nameof the pre-science phase of theexperiment).

A quick Skype conversation quicklyensued:Thrane: Have you seen the email?Lasky: Yes. Is it a false injection?Thrane: No!Lasky: Did we just detect a gravitationalwave?Thrane: I think we did.

And the rest, as they say, is history.This is truly the dawn of a new age of

discovery. The gravitational-waveuniverse has many untold stories to tell,and scientists across Australia arestriving to tell the tale along with therest of the world.

Paul Lasky is Postdoctoral Fellow in GravitationalWave Astrophysics, Monash University. LetiziaSammut is Postdoctoral Research Fellow inGravitational Wave Astrophysics, Monash University.First published at The Conversation(www.theconversation.com).


LIGO Laboratory operates two detector sites, one near Hanford in eastern Washington, andanother near Livingston, Louisiana. This photo shows the Hanford detector site. LIGO/Caltech

technology & innovation

The emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) gram-negativepathogens is now a major global health issue, a problem that isfurther compounded by the lack of development of newantibiotics.

Gram-negative bacteria, particularly Pseudomonasaeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae,are spread worldwide in virtually all environments that supportlife. These opportunistic pathogens have a range of seriousconsequences for infected patients, including secondarymeningitis, respiratory problems and ventilator-associatedpneumonia.

‘There are currently very limited options available for thetreatment of infections caused by MDR gram-negative“superbugs”. This has forced clinicians to revive “old”antibiotics such as the polymyxins,’ says Dr Kade Roberts, SeniorResearch Scientist in the Li Lab at Monash University andproject manager for the group’s polymyxin drug discoveryprogram.

Currently, polymyxin B and colistin are used as a ‘last-resort’treatment for MDR gram-negative bacteria. However, effectiveuse of these antibiotics is limited by their potential to causekidney toxicity in patients. Delivering a smaller, suboptimaldosage does not present a viable solution, as this will decreaseefficacy and potentially promote resistance to the polymyxins.There is an urgent need to develop new polymyxins that haveimproved safety and efficacy.

In a program based on intellectual property developed byMonash University, Dr Roberts and an interdisciplinary team ofresearchers aim to produce novel polymyxins with improvedsafety over the currently available polymyxin antibiotics.

‘We are really excited by the progress of our drug discoveryprogram to date. We have developed some really promisingnovel polymyxins that have significantly improved safety inanimal models. Over the next 12 months two of our leadcompounds will undergo IND-enabling studies. If successful, wecan then move them into phase I clinical trials,’ says Dr Roberts.

Dr Roberts will discuss aspects of their polymyxin drugdiscovery program including their novel drug design strategy,compound synthesis and lead optimisation studies at the 17thInternational Biotechnology Symposium (IBS 2016) to be heldin Melbourne, 24–27 October 2016 (www.ibs2016.org).

‘We are excited to be presenting our research at IBS 2016.This conference is a great platform for highlighting Australiandrug discovery efforts like ours to an international audience ofboth academic and industry researchers from a diverse range ofscientific fields,’ says Dr Roberts.

This is the first time IBS will be hosted in Australia byAusBiotech, Australia’s biotechnology organisation. Since 1960,IBS has been organised under the auspices of the InternationalUnion of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and is the mostrepresentative biotechnology event at the global level; typicallymore than 1000 participants congregate from academia andindustry to explore the advances and frontiers of science andapplied biotechnologies.

The IBS 2016 program in Australia will present the mostadvanced issues in biotech, green chemistry and its relatedfields, which will be discussed by an extraordinary group ofinternational speakers, many of whom will travel to Australia forthe first time. Topics will include agri-business; industrial andenvironmental biotechnology; pharmaceutical, medical andmolecular; bioenergy and bio-refinery; the bio-economy, policyand investment; and biosensors and nanotechnology.

IBS 2016 will be part of International BioFest 2016, a three-conference event that paves the way for the life sciences toadvance Australia’s knowledge economy. These events includeAusBiotech 2016, Australia’s national life sciences conference,and Australia Biotech Invest, Australia’s investment showcase.

This conference forms a critical part of the chemical researchecosystem and is essential to its growth, particularly foremerging elements of the industry.

Find out more at www.ibs2016.org.

Dr Kade Roberts is Senior Research Scientist in the Li Lab at Monash Universityand project manager for the group’s polymyxin drug discovery program.


Improving the safety and efficacy of ‘last resort’ antibiotics

This month I will continue discussing options for acidificationof grape juice or must and wine. A medium-size winery inAustralia may spend around $10 000 per vintage on L(+)-tartaricacid, of which a significant proportion is lost through tartrateinstability. Techniques that can reduce this cost are eagerlysought after.

Plastering (great name for a wine treatment!) is a practicethat evolved in Spain for the production of dry white fortifiedwine (aka sherry). It involves the addition of calcium sulfate,plaster of Paris, to wine and is based on CaSO4 being moresoluble than calcium tartrate (CaT). The process can berepresented as:

CaSO4(s) + H2T → CaT(s) + 2H+ + SO42–

thereby releasing 2H+ ions per added Ca2+ and reducing the pH.While the process has been shown to be effective in pH

reduction (see Gómez et al. Food Chem. 2015, vol. 168,pp. 218–24), there are several limitations, including asignificant increase in the sulfate concentration (oftenregulated) and an increase in the calcium concentration thatenhances potential for post-bottling CaT precipitation.Plastering does not yet have general approval for use in wine.

Cation exchange, now approved in many countries, iseffective, especially for juice and wine that is high inpotassium. The resin is first prepared in its hydrogen form bytreatment with sulfuric acid and regenerated by the passage ofsulfuric acid as required during the treatment of juice or wine.Cation exchange is far more effective in correcting acidity andpH than tartaric acid addition and it does not lead to tartrateinstability, as does tartaric acid addition. Winemakers whoregularly use ion exchange claim that it is relatively inexpensivecompared to tartaric acid addition, provided the capital cost ofthe unit is not part of the equation. It is recommended to treatnot more than about 20% to a very low pH (about 2.7–2.8) andthen mix this treated batch with the remaining wine or juice.Experience shows that if the entire batch is treated, some‘metallic’ flavours appear, leading to a reduction in quality.

A poster presented by Konrad Pixner and Ulrich Pedri at theIn Vino Analytica Scientia conference in Trento last year,described an industrial trial on a 2012 Chardonnay juice fromSud Tyrol in Italy. The experimental design involved comparingcation exchange resin (CER; 25% treatment) with tartaric acidaddition (TAA; 2.3 g/L addition) to the juice. The control(untreated) juice sample had a pH of 3.60 and a titratableacidity of 5.3. After CER treatment, the pH dropped to 3.32 andtitratable acidity increased to 6.25, while the TAA treatmentgave the same pH decrease, but an increase in titratable acidityto 7.57. This shows one significant advantage of CER: minimalimpact on the titratable acidity value. High titratable acidityvalues can bring about an overly sour taste to the wine, seen asa negative in the marketplace. Reduction of the potassium ionconcentration by about 25% was also achieved by CER,highlighting another advantage.

After fermentation, sensory profiling of the two treatedwines was performed at six and 18 months. The data showedlittle difference in acidity perception between CER and TAA.However, 30 months after treatment, acidity perception wassignificantly lower for the CER-treated wine, suggesting thatacidity perception is more constant over time with TAAadjustment.

Bipolar membrane electrodialysis was approved by theOrganisation Internationale de la vigne et du vin in 2010. It is arather high-tech approach and it is expensive: initial capitaloutlay of $1 million or more. The bipolar membrane consists ofa cation-selective layer, an anion-selective layer and a contact

region between the two layers. The combination of the bipolarmembrane and a potassium ion selective membrane allows forremoval of potassium ions from the wine and their replacementby hydrogen ions, the latter arising from electrolysis of water inthe interface layer of the bipolar membrane under an appliedelectric field. A fuller description can be found by downloadingthe pdf at bit.ly/1rDYlme.

It is claimed that the approach can adjust the pH to within0.05 pH units. It would appear from the limited published datathat bipolar membrane electrodialysis is effective in reducingthe pH and the potassium concentration. The phenolic indexremained constant between the control and a treated red wine,implying no loss of phenolic compounds. The colour intensitywas improved by the treatment, as would be expected with alower pH. Justifying the capital cost means that the techniquewould only be appropriate for large wineries.

grapevine


Adjusting grape and wine acidity

Geoffrey R. Scollary FRACI CChem ([email protected]) wasthe foundation professor of oenology at Charles Sturt Universityand foundation director of the National Wine and Grape IndustryCentre. He continues his wine research at the University ofMelbourne and Charles Sturt University. This column and the twopreceding columns are based on notes that I prepared forworkshops in the Mudgee and Hunter Valley wine regions. Thesupport of the New South Wales Department of Primary Industriesis acknowledged.

Cation exchange is far moreeffective in correcting acidityand pH than tartaric acidaddition and it does not leadto tartrate instability, as doestartaric acid addition.

environment

In August last year, I wrote about domestic renewable energysources and the enthusiasm for the Tesla Powerwall battery, whichwas current at that time. I commented that, based on mediareports and online discussion groups, it seemed that thePowerwall wasn’t quite up to the task of daily charge anddischarge cycles. Well, it seems that I got that wrong!

In early February this year, ABC TV’s Catalyst program reportedon a range of battery technologies for domestic and commercialpower storage. The Powerwall was discussed and, by that time, itwas apparent that Tesla had solved the problem of the limitednumber of charge/discharge cycles. According to the program, it isavailable with a ten-year guarantee, and the major criticism of thesystem was from the consumer organisation Choice, which saidthat the guarantee wasn’t sufficient for a consumer capital itemwith a 20-year payback period. The best new car warranty I haveseen advertised is seven years, and a 20-year working life for a caris not unheard of, so I am close to convinced that battery storageof domestically generated electricity is a new reality.

When it comes to being wrong about battery technology, Ihave to admit to previous form. As a freshly minted PhD in 1987,one of the first tasks I had in my new job was to evaluate afunding request from the University of New South Wales researchgroup working on the (flow cell) vanadium redox battery (VRB).This seemed like a really elegant chemical approach to energystorage, based on the water-soluble salts of the four oxidationstates of vanadium. However, ultimately I didn’t recommend thatthe company should fund the research, mainly because we didn’town a vanadium mine. I wasn’t alone, it would seem. The financialjournalist Trevor Sykes (AKA Pierpont) commented in early 2004:‘A potentially revolutionary worldwide technology had beeninvented on their doorstep, yet all the Top 200 [Australian]

companies yawned’ (Australian Financial Review27 February 2004). Sykes was writing on the occasion of theopening of a wind farm on King Island that used a VRB unit tostore electricity for continuity of supply. Despite its potential, theVRB hasn’t set the world on fire. The Wikipedia entry on the topiclists 14 installed units with capacities between 100 kW and 5MW(60 kWh to 20MWh).

The University of NSW group has continued its research, and isnow focusing on the zinc bromine flow battery. This, too, wasfeatured in the Catalyst program in February, and the developmentof gel applications of the battery was also described. According tothe report, the gel technology gives the potential to embed thebattery in the structural components of a large building, greatlyincreasing the storage capacity of a given site. Most recently, abusiness park in Adelaide was reported to have installed a660 kWh zinc bromine unit. The unit is located inside a standardsix-metre shipping container, and was said to have the capacity topower the business park, where 50 people are employed, for fourdays.

These developments may signal the start of paradigm shiftaway from centralised generation of electricity, and the extensivetransmission systems required to deliver electricity to remoteareas. In developing nations, where cheap power has the potentialto greatly improve quality of life, electricity could be generatedfrom renewable sources like solar and wind, stored and distributedover small local networks. Advocates of the continued use of coalsay that coal generation is cheaper, and the use of renewableswould condemn developing nations to expensive electricity.However, if we Australians are being told that our electricity costshave gone up because of increased investment in ‘poles andwires’, then eliminating long-distance transmission might just bethe low-cost answer. In addition, local generation and distributionmean the environmental footprint (land use) of the transmissionsystem is eliminated, and the power losses in transmission anddistribution are reduced.

While in retrospective mode, I’d also like to go back to April2015, when I suggested that Australia might be a good place tostore radioactive wastes from nuclear power generation. One ofthe Tentative Findings of the SA Royal Commission on the NuclearFuel Cycle was: ‘The storage and disposal of used nuclear fuel inSouth Australia is likely to deliver substantial economic benefitsto the South Australian community.’ The Royal Commissiondelivered its final report and recommendations to the Governor on6 May 2016, as this article went to press. The recommendationsand findings will most likely have been released, and receivedwidespread publicity, by the time you read this (provided thefederal election hasn’t drowned out this important policy debatein the meantime).


Storing power

… if we Australiansare being told thatour electricitycosts have goneup because ofincreasedinvestment in‘poles and wires’,then eliminatinglong-distancetransmission mightjust be the low-cost answer. Tesla Motors/CC-BY-4.0

Paul Moritz FRACI CChem ([email protected]) isa Principal Contaminated Land Consultant with Douglas Partners,and an EPA-appointed Environmental Auditor in Victoria, New SouthWales and the Northern Territory.

Since I worked one of my vacations with Cuming Smith & Co inYarraville, where they made sulfuric acid and superphosphate, Ihave been interested in the processes and the sources of theraw materials. In those days (mid-1950s) the major source ofsulfur was iron pyrites (FeS2), which was a by-product of therecovery of copper ores by flotation. The finely divided pyriteswas roasted and the resulting sulfur dioxide went into leadchambers where it was oxidised with nitrogen oxides and theresulting sulfur trioxide was absorbed in water to form sulfuricacid. The acid strength was about 70%, quite all right forreacting with phosphate rock to produce superphosphate, but adifferent process was used to make stronger acid. The startingmaterial was elemental sulfur that I think was sourced fromFlorida where it was ‘mined’ by the Frasch process, whichinvolved the injection of superheated steam and water intosulfur-bearing strata and separation, after cooling, of whatcame up. The sulfur dioxide from this sulfur was passed withoxygen (air) over a vanadium oxide catalyst, leading to theformation of 96% sulfuric acid, or, if the oxide were dissolved instrong acid, oleum of various concentrations.

In researching the history of acid production in Australia Isometimes came across advertisements for White Island sulfur,which I knew was sourced from a volcanic island in the Bay ofPlenty off the east coast of New Zealand’s north island. It allcame to mind last summer when I was holidaying in that regionand seized the chance to visit the island and walk in an activevolcano. The island, local name Whakaari, is about50 kilometres off the coastal town of Whakatane. A two-hourboat ride or, for the well-heeled or those in a hurry, a shorthelicopter ride, takes visitors to the privately owned islandwhere hard hats and gas masks are issued for the guided tour,which takes a couple of hours.

The island is the extremity of the volcanic region thatincludes Rotorua, but gaseous emissions at the two sites aredifferent. In Rotorua it’s hydrogen sulfide but on the island it’ssulfur dioxide; steam rising from the crater is distinctly acidic.It’s a spectacular place, with crystalline sulfur deposits,bubbling mud pools and a nasty-looking crater lake. Myphotographs provide a couple of glimpses.

James Cook passed this way in 1769, named the island onaccount of the steam plume, but never landed there. Longbefore that it was a birding place for Maori, and there arenumerous gannet colonies (now protected) on the island. Sulfurproduction began in the middle of the 19th century andcontinued on and off for roughly a century, broken by eruptionsfrom time to time and consequent losses of life and equipment.The operation generally involved loading sulfur-laden rock intoan oven and collecting the molten sulfur. The guide had a fundof stories, including one about the supply boat that came tothe island one month with supplies for the miners, but foundnobody left … except a pet cat. Debris from the eruption, butno bodies, washed up on nearby shores for several weeks.

The Cuming Smith company was using White Island sulfur in1882, and in the same year the New Zealand Drug Company(Kempthorne Prosser) used it to produce 50 tons of sulfuricacid, thereby winning a government reward for theestablishment of a new industry. Their counterparts inMelbourne, Felton Grimwade, had brokered a deal between theNew Zealanders and Cuming Smith in Melbourne. The technologytransfer was achieved by the transfer of George Smith, whomade his subsequent career with the Kiwis although theMelbourne company retained his name.

There were no rumbles while I was ashore but the landscapeshowed evidence of successive instances of being torn apart,interspersed with the deposition of layers of volcanic ash.Prevailing winds kept the worst of the fumes away from thesteep northern flanks of the island, where there was some grassand that’s where the gannets were seen. Dolphins playedaround our boat as we made our way to and from the island andgannets followed them, diving in characteristic fashion whenthey saw that the dolphins had rounded up a shoal of fish.

Altogether, quite a day out.


A big day out

letter from melbourne

Ian D. Rae FRACI CChem ([email protected]) is a veterancolumnist, having begun his Letters in 1984. When he is notcompiling columns, he writes on the history of chemistry andprovides advice on chemical hazards and pollution.

Approaching White Island by boat.

Sulfur and acidic steam on White Island.

cryptic chemistry

Across1 Mob sounds out worthless material in

a mineral deposit. (6)5 New cage pins are breaking away. (8)9 Outage duration feathers

opportunity. (8)10 Leave out exchange of carbon with

phosphorus to get forecast. (6)11 How much is tungsten covering? (4)12 Bird the French name. (5)13 Positions groups. (4)14 They come before dogs tied up in new

radical ropes. (10)15 Two or three elements of prejudice. (4)17 Account of proposed law. (4)19 Time planning design of clues hiding

loss of iodine. (10)22 Within an orientation of a group

attached to a non-bridgehead atom. (4-)

24 Radical current for freeway exits. (5)25 Last η ζ. (4)26 Where we work lie new species likely to

change. (6)27 Revolutionary passed away sulfur and,

perhaps, metallocenes. (8)28 Authentic eccentric person. (8)29 Spoiled without a colour added. (6)

Down2 One more near hot change. (7)3 Client age is transformed when

considering the study of heredity. (9)4 Sends out within system it

terminates. (7)5 Choose chrome reaction with iodine,

carbon and aluminium involving a cell. (15)

6 Wrote about Sawyer and Finn inMiracle Men study. (7)

7 Plays guitar selections. (5)8 Path has sodium and hydrogen

reacting with a hydrocarbon mixture. (7)

14 Three elements with a bar. (3)15 Constant Spooner loses feathers – a

no-no. (9)16 Slump upstate. (3)18 Iodine on protactinium spectrum?

There’s a positive and there’s anegative. (3,4)

19 Spike on cutter. (7)20 Moving down line of ancestry. (7)21 R–N: and inert neon reaction. (7)23 Unsettled oxygen pinion. (5)

events

Graham Mulroney FRACI CChem is Emeritus Professor of Industry Education at RMIT University.Solution available online at Other resources.

2nd Energy Future Conference and Exhibition4–6 July, University of NSW, Sydney, NSWhttp://energystoragealliance.com.au/event/energy-future-conference-exhibition

7th Heron Island Conference on Reactive Intermediatesand Unusual Molecules9–15 July 2016, Heron Island, Qldwww.Heron7.org

27th International Conference on OrganometallicChemistry(incorporating the RACI Inorganic Chemistry DivisionConference)17–22 July 2016, Melbourne Convention and ExhibitionCentre, Melbourne, Vic.http://icomc2016.com

International Conference and Exhibition on Marine Drugsand Natural Products 25 July 2016, Rydges, Melbourne, Vic.http://naturalproducts.pharmaceuticalconferences.com

Seminar on GHS27 July 2016, FB Rice, Melbournebit.ly/1qp72iE

NZIC-1621–24 August 2016, Millennium Hotel, Queenstown, New Zealandwww.nzic16.org

6th International Meeting on Antimicrobial Peptides1–3 September 2016Leipzig, Germanyhttp://peptideconferences.org/imap-2016

European Symposium of Biochemical EngineeringSciences (ESBES)11–14 September 2016, Dublin, Irelandwww.esbes2016.org

Chemeca 201625–28 September 2016, Adelaide Convention Centre,Adelaide, SAwww.chemeca2016.org

6th International Conference and Exhibition onPharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs and IPR 29 September – 1 October 2016, Orlando, Florida, UShttp://regulatoryaffairs.pharmaceuticalconferences.com

AusBiotech 201624–26 October 2016, Melbourne Convention Centre, Vic.www.ausbiotechnc.org

RACI events are shown in blue.


The twice-yearly national meetings of the American ChemicalSociety are large and impressive events. More than16 000 delegates attended this meeting in San Diego in mid-March. However, as the convention centre and surroundinghotels are used for particular branches of chemistry, there wasno sense of overcrowding. I attended the three days ofpresentations of the Division of the History of Chemistry, whichwere of a high standard.

The first morning was devoted to six general papers and theafternoon to five papers on the topic of ‘Preceptors ofchemistry’. On the second day, there were 12 papers on theprogram with the overall general title ‘The posthumous NobelPrize in chemistry. Correcting the errors and oversights of theNobel Prize Committee’, though only ten of these papers couldbe presented because two intended presenters had healthproblems.

This topic allowed for some mixture of the hypothetical andthe factual and revealed the tensions and the occasionalpersonal animosity between chemists, which may have led tosome unjust exclusions from the Nobel Prize. There was also thesuggestion that R.B. Woodward may have deserved two NobelPrizes. Overall, it was a good topic, which gave room forspeculation as to what might have been and provided

information about the lives of some great chemists. Furtherinformation about five of the papers presented can be found inan article by Borman in Chemical and Engineering News (2016,vol. 94(15), pp. 19–21) with more suggestions for deservingNobel recipients available in the online discussion of thearticle.

On the third day, there were four more general paperspresented in the morning session. I found the last of thesepapers entitled ‘R.J.P. Williams and the chemical sequence ofnatural history’ presented by B.J. McFarland of particularinterest as he discussed the role of chemistry as a determinantof biological evolution and the importance of the periodic tablein sequencing the development of the Earth and life (McFarland,A world from dust: how the periodic table shaped life, OxfordUniversity Press, 2016).

In the afternoon, the Division of the History of Chemistryjoined with the Division of Inorganic Chemistry to honour thelife and work of Karen J. Brewer, who had recently passed away,with a Memorial Symposium.

The next ACS National meeting will be in Philadelphia, 21–25 August 2016.

Bill Palmer FRACI CChem

events


History of chemistry at the 251st ACS national meeting

Over 160 speakers

7 Plenary sessions

Over 100 exhibiting companies

27 Sessions

Over 1000 participantsAbundance of networking opportunities

24 – 27 October 2016, Melbourne Convention Centre, Australia

Host Body Major PartnerHost Organisation

Contact: [email protected] @AusBiotech | #IBS2016 IBS 2016

17th International Biotechnology Symposium and Exhibition

www.ibs2016.org

Mr Paul Perreault – CEO and Managing Director, CSL, USA

Biotechnology and innovation: risk and precaution: social license or not?

Prof Sir Peter Gluckman – Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, O�ce of the Prime Minister, New Zealand

2016 Millis Oration

Prof Ian Gust AO – Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne

A New Model for Drug Development in Academic Institutions

Prof Dennis Liotta – Executive Director Emory Institute for Drug Development, Emory College, Atlanta USA

Interrogating and Guiding the Microbiome for Macro-organism Health and Productivity

Dr James Tiedje – Director, Centre for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, USA

Self-Assembled Supramolecular Nanosystems for Targeting Therapy of Intractable Diseases

Prof Kazunori Kataoka – Professor, Department of Materials Engineering and Bioengineering Graduate Schools of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan

Synthetic Designer Vaccines Protect from Bacterial Infections

Prof Dr Peter Seeberger – Director, Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany

Biotech and the future of man

Prof Huanming Yang – President, Beijing Genomics Institute, China

Sample PreparationMicrowave Synthesis

Flash Puri�cation Evaporation

Process Tools Peptide Synthesis

Biotage is a global leader in life science technology. With a broad scope of tools for synthesis, work-up puri�cation, evaporation and analysis. Our focus is on developing technology to speed experimental procedures.

Shimadzu Australasia is now the o�cial distributor for all Biotage instruments and consumables

AUS: 1800 800 950 NZ: 0800 127 446 [email protected] shimadzu.com.au

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chemistry · chemistry July 2016 Flavours and fragrances: using pharma methods to sni for substitutes chemaust.raci.org.au. Your RACI Member Benefit Program. Di ni n g & E nt ert