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Posts Tagged ‘RSC’

  1. Faces of Chemistry

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    August 2, 2013 by IPAlchemist

    Well would you credit it?  Your very own IPAlchemist is now A Face of Chemistry!  Those who said I had to choose – I could be a lawyer or a chemist but not both – well they were wrong.

    Before I go on to explain what on earth I am talking about, I have to give the now-usual obligatory apology.  It has been MONTHS since I posted here.  It is not that nothing has been happening – far from it – but that what blogging time I have has been exclusively reserved for the IPKat (check out the Publications page for a periodically updated list of IPKat posts) with the only occasional foray as a guest blogger on the India-specialist Spicy IP blog.  There have been some other writings as well, but for those too you have to peek at the Publications page as well.

    Anyway, a little while ago those lovely people at the Royal Society of Chemistry (and I mean it – they really are lovely) asked if I would mind being filmed for the Faces of Chemistry series.  You can check the RSC’s explanation of the series on the Faces of Chemistry microsite, but my understanding is that they are aimed at young adults, and that the intention is to encourage people to study chemistry to show what an amazing range of career opportunities it leads to.  Well that is very much my bag, and I will do anything I can to further and improve the public image of chemistry, so of course I said yes.

    We burbled around for a little while making all the arrangements, and then on the appointed day two wonderful people came from the RSC with a cameraman who brought with him all that impressive looking kit.  The way they structured it was that the nice lady asked me lots of open questions, and then I was supposed to reply in such a way that when they edited out the questions, the answers by themselves would make sense.  Well I soon got the hang of it and we were away.  And then before I knew it they said they had enough material and that was it.

    We had agreed that they would also film around the office, with me lecturing, working, discussing cases, and so on, and that they would also interview two other chemists in the firm – Fergus Tyrrell who is my trainee, and Robert Lundie-Smith who is an IP solicitor.  This would give different perspectives on the topic.

    It turned out that they had so much material that they made two films – one of me, and one of Fergus and Robert.  So a little while later two draft edits appeared in my inbox.

    Well, dear readers, I can tell you that although I can handle speaking in public and even being filmed, watching it back is quite another thing altogether.  All three of us found it excruciating watching ourselves, and my toes curled with embarrassment.  Why do I go “Ummm” so much?  Why do I look shiftily to one side when I am thinking?  Why did no-one tell me?  And do I really sound like that?  Not to mention look like that?  Apparently I do.  So I have watched the proofs twice for quality control purposes (in fact they were perfectly edited and I didn’t request any changes, and neither did my colleagues), and then never again.  Well, maybe one day I will bear to look once more.

    Anyway you can go and watch them yourself on You Tube – Me and Robert and Fergus.  I will be very happy if you “like” it.

    Or if you prefer it embedded in the RSC website, see here  for the series, and the individual resources of me and Robert/Fergus.

    The IPAlchemist would like to thank the RSC for a great opportunity.  It has been a joy and a privilege to be associated with this project.

     

     


  2. Stop Horsing Around With Our Food – RSC Public Lecture

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    April 18, 2013 by IPAlchemist

    On 14th March 2013 the IP Alchemist attended a panel discussion hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry, entitled “Stop Horsing Around with Our Food”; the goal being to “tease out the issues to be tackled” in the wake of the recent horsemeat scandal and the progressively decreasing amounts of resources made available for food sampling and analysis.

    The event took the form of a brief talk from each panellist followed by a question-and-answer session. The panel of industry experts consisted of:

    – Dr Derek Craston, UK Government Chemist, Chief Scientific Officer at LGC and chair of the panel.

    – Gerald Heddell, Director of Inspection, Enforcement and Standards Division at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

    – Dr Mark Woolfe, member of the RSC’s Analytical Methods Committee and formerly of the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

    – Liz Moran, President of the Association of Public Analysts.

    Dr Craston began proceedings by indicating that any food analysis or testing only usually takes place in relation to known issues, after a problem had been brought to light. Current resources are insufficient to test in areas where no issue has been identified.

    Dr Woolfe stated that he was “not that surprised” that food adulteration had taken place and that he was only surprised by the scale of the issue. He said that the food chain had become longer, because price pressure from supermarkets led suppliers to source food production from abroad. He added that any supply chain should be as short as possible to avoid any untoward contamination.

    Gerald Heddell looked at parallels with regulation of medical products. He stated that the answer cannot lie solely in testing but requires regulation of the supply chain: a poorly-regulated supply chain could not be compensated for by any amount of testing or analysis. He reported that 60% of adults have changed their shopping habits in the wake of the scandal, indicative of a collapse of confidence in the sector as a whole.

    Liz Moran, of the Association of Public Analysts, painted a rather bleak picture of the decline of the UK food analysis system which is currently “in the eye of the storm” with 30% of the UK’s food testing laboratories having closed over the last few years resulting in a significant loss of expertise. She went on to argue that labs need to be able to react quickly to problems that present themselves and help the FSA. This issue was not routinely tested for before, but now labs were working round the clock testing beef for equine and porcine DNA. She stated that laboratories must be prepared for the next issue that presents itself and that regulation via paperwork would be insufficient due to possibility of forgery.

    The floor was then opened to questions and contributions. Dr Chris Smart of Leatherhead Foods defended the industry and argued that food safety and traceability were taken very seriously. He pointed out that when fraud happens (of which there have been a number – orange juice, baby formula, olive oil) it can be hard to spot when it first happens, emphasising the importance of the integrity of the chain. When a question was raised regarding the acceptability of hiding cheap ingredients in processed food, he pointed out that one cannot simply “hide” ingredients and that doing so was illegal. He argued that there was nothing wrong with convenience food and that such products addressed a consumer demand. He pointed out that consumers have an expectation that products have good shelf life, but taking out emulsifiers, salt, and other ingredients can compromise this.

    On the question as to whether cheaper and faster testing was being developed, Dr Woolfe outlined the immense number of issues surrounding food analysis, indicating for example that the presence of methanol in drinks is easy enough to detect whereas determining the geographic origin of meat is far more challenging.

    One enquiry which aroused much interest from the panel was the question of how sensitive and specific the tests for horse meat were. Liz Moran immediately indicated that the last thing any lab would want to do is report a false positive result, and indeed that no lab would declare anything without undertaking repeat measurements. She went on to indicate that ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay) tests are sensitive to 1% and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) testing is sensitive to just 0.01 %, posing a further question as to what exactly constitutes an acceptable limit, pointing out that detection of equine DNA is not the same thing as establishing that the meat is horse meat as such.

    Mark Woolfe pointed out that surveys and investigation come from intelligence – often from within the food industry itself, while Gerald Heddell re-iterated that testing cannot rule out all risk and that supply chain management is also key.

    Ms Moran understandably criticised cuts to testing labs. When questioned, she explained that there have been cuts to DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) but that local authorities also have responsibility for testing. The number of samples taken by local authorities has been declining in recent years and some have reported no testing at all to the FSA. Naturally these cuts were implicated in the fact that the horsemeat problem did not first come to light in the UK.

    The IP Alchemist very much enjoyed this evening and thanks the RSC for putting it on in a very short timescale. He did however feel that each of the speakers pretty much said what you might have them to say, given their current or previous affiliation, and pretty much the same went for the audience contributions (where their loyalties were stated). Cuts were blamed where expected, and the importance of consumer choice and demand were also emphasised by precisely those who would be expected as well.

    The IP Alchemist would like to thank his Twitter interlocutors, in particular @RSC_Comms, @chemical_ian, @melancholysci, and @chiara_ceci for enlivening the evening, and for creating a record on which this blog post could be based. The hashtag used for the event was #stophorsingaround. He is also enormously thankful to Fergus Tyrrell for assisting with the first draft of this report.

    The event was webcast live, and there is a promise that the recording will be made available, but as at the posting time this has not yet occurred.

     


  3. RSC Profile

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    April 4, 2013 by IPAlchemist

    Over the last year or so, I have been involved in a number of projects related to the public perception and understanding of chemistry, and also showing to current or aspiring chemists what possible careers are available for them, and what chemistry-related jobs might look like.

    On Twitter, we have had #RealTimeChem (see @RealTimeChem, organised by @DrGalactic, whose blog is on my blogroll).  The next event is going to be a week, not just a day, beginning on 22 April, so do all look out for that.  I shall be at BIO in Chicago that week, so I am hoping to tweet and blog from there.  It is my first time attending the BIO convention, so I am very excited about it.

    The other week I was also thrilled to be added to @JessTheChemist ‘s family tree of tweeting chemists (where everyone is connected via a current or former supervisor).  Her blog is on my blogroll, and the post with the family tree is here.

    On the blogosphere, See Arr Oh hosted a Chem Coach Carnival on his blog Just Like Cooking, also on my Blogroll, last October, which I participated in here.

    In a perhaps similar vein, the Royal Society of Chemistry has every month in RSC News, which accompanies Chemistry World, the magazine for RSC members, a profile of a chemist.  And I am in the April edition, which you can find here (the profile is on page 7) or on the RSC Blog The Reaction here.

    As it happens, there has been a bit of an intellectual property theme going on in the RSC News profiles recently, because just a few months ago the towering IP barrister Michael Edenborough QC was likewise featured – you can see his profile here.  I actually only found out quite recently that his background was quite so strongly chemical – barristers practise in a wider range of technical and legal fields than patent attorneys so have a diverse array of backgrounds.

    I hope that this little array may help any chemists out there who are considering what direction their career may next take.

     


  4. Making Sense of Scents – British Society of Perfumers

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    January 16, 2013 by IPAlchemist

    Can we really be two weeks into the New Year already? I intended to have a quiet December relatively free from social media activity, but that was supposed to be followed by an active January. It has not quite panned out that way. I have joined the IPKat as a permanent member, so my IP-blogging will mostly be done there. That leaves plenty of other things to write about here – it is, as usual, just a question of finding the time.

    On 10 January (nearly a week ago now!) I attended a fascinating event, again at the Royal Society of Chemistry, but this time in association with the British Society of Perfumers, and also supported by IFRA (the fragrance trade body) and basenotes (a website for fragrance enthusiasts). The format was not actually that clear from the advance information, but I attended because I have a long-standing interest in the chemistry of fragrance. Like many things, fragrance is underpinned by a lot of chemistry (a fact that perhaps escapes many people), and in a previous incarnation I used to do some patent work in this space.

    When I turned up, the event, entitled Making Sense of Scents, turned out to be a kind of question time, with pre-submitted questions, and further and follow-up questions from the audience, being put to a fabulous panel of experts, namely:

    John Bailey, current President of the British Society of Perfumers

    Steve Pearce, CEO and Founder of Omega Ingredients Ltd and Maverick Innovations Ltd

    Penny Williams, Perfumer and consultant, Orchadia

    Grant Osborne, Founder, basenotes

    Lisa Hipgrave, Director, IFRA

    Ruth Mastenbroek, Perfumer, Ruth Mastenbroek (eponymous niche perfumery)

    Will Andrews, Fragrance Scientist, P&G Prestige

    I didn’t keep detailed notes, which is why I should have written my blog post a lot sooner. But several points stuck in my mind.

    When asked whether perfumery is an art or a science, the panel responded unanimously and in unison: “Both”. Of course that is so. Even chemistry is an art as well as a science, so of course perfumery is also. It was noted that there are “no young Master Perfumers”, and that the acquisition of the necessary knowledge set takes a long time.

    I was happy to see it acknowledged that perfumery is a branch of the chemical industry, without equivocation. That means that it has not been untouched by the increasing regulatory pressures applied to chemicals generally. As I understand from what was said, the use of certain fragrance compounds has been banned, while others are permitted only at specified concentrations, depending upon the nature of the final product. Of particular recent concern is apparently the development of allergies to particular fragrance compounds, which is a two stage process – initial sensitisation, requiring exposure to a sensitising dose, after which the allergy can be triggered by the compound at a much lower level. IFRA in particular hope that this issue can be addressed by ensuring that the sensitising dose is never reached. Friends of the IP Alchemist will know my frustration over chemophobia, where “chemical” equals “something toxic” while “natural” equals “safe”, and will therefore not be surprised that I was reassured to note that it was acknowledged that certain flower oils (i.e. “natural” essential oils) are amongst those associated with allergic responses. Of course. I do not quibble at all with sensible regulations that in widely distributed products only compounds with appropriate safety profiles are used. But I do worry that a safety agenda is being driven by an ill-informed constituency, with poor understanding of risk, and fuelled by chemophobia.

    I enjoyed seeing the breadth of the fragrance industry, from the ultra-niche perfumer, to the fragrances that are put in household products such as cosmetics and cleaning products. The full breadth was represented on the panel, and their perspectives did not, so far as I could see, differ much on most of the key questions.

    The audience, perhaps surprisingly, could field only one person willing to identify themselves as a “perfumista”. The problem for such people apparently is that many fragrances are offered only in larger quantities than a collector wants – someone who wears only one fragrance may wish to buy 100ml bottles, but the person with a collection of 100 fragrances will want smaller unit sizes.

    There was an interesting opening question as to why smell is so evocative. Apparently that sense, unlike the others, feeds directly into the limbic system, a more primitive part of the brain than that responsible for the other senses. This was news to me, and makes a lot of sense (boom boom).

    There was an interesting discussion around marketing – surely more central to the fragrance industry than almost any other. In particular because of the rise of the internet and social media, it becomes possible to have a highly niche brand, or, indeed, an array of ultra niche brands. So some brands may choose to position themselves as actually unattractive to a large section of consumers in order to be more attractive to their very small target market (who don’t want other people to be wearing their fragrance). Thus, although mass market fragrances continue (and the even larger market of consumer items where the fragrance is incidental also thrives, despite those like the IP Alchemist and at least one other audience member who dislike such incidental smells), there is a burgeoning sector of niche scent. Grant Osborne referred to Etat Libre d’Orange as a fragrance house whose website proclaims:

    fragrance has been liberated from the traditional restrictions of the perfume industry, where even the most talented noses are subjected to the expectations of brands and are forced to conform to the demands of the marketplace.

    and whose perfumes are given names than many people might find unattractive or even offensive.

    There was a drinks mixer after the panel session, where I had the delight to meet another past president of the BSP, David Ruskin, as well as two of the panellists Grant Osborne and Ruth Mastenbroek. Ruth, pleasingly, is like me a chemistry graduate of Oxford University who also spent time in Japan – of course the best start to any career.

    I hope to attend and report back on further perfumery related events in due course. This should be a bumper year as the BSP is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013.

     


  5. Another RSC Policy Event – Synthetic Biology

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    November 15, 2012 by IPAlchemist

    Last night I went to the RSC for another of the series of events on chemistry policy, following the two last month that I wrote about on this blog. This time, the subject was “Synthetic Biology: challenges and opportunities for the UK”.

    It was another great event, but quite different from the previous ones. It was not about an individual project, unlike previously where each lecture had focused on a particular molecule (one pharmaceutical and one agrochemical). And the format was quite different too – a largish panel each spoke for about 5 minutes, and then there were a series of questions from the floor.

    I was very gratified that on this occasion Twitter was encouraged, and we were provided with a hashtag #synbio2012. (Usually, in the Chemistry Centre, we are told to turn off our mobile phones because they interfere with the sound recording equipment). If you want a blow-by-blow account of the event, a search on that hashtag should work well (for a while) as there were a number of professional reporters and writers present who are highly skilled in the art of real-time tweeting (unlike your humble servant).

    The event was technologically ambitious, being live-webcast, and having a live video link with a second audience at the University of Bristol. This impressive setup only failed slightly sometimes when there was a strong echo from the Bristol venue.

    The Biochemical Society has a better advance listing than the RSC, and I gratefully take my biographies of the speakers from their website.

    The impressive chairman was Dr Ehsan Masood – Editor, Research Fortnight.

    Ehsan is a science writer, journalist and broadcaster. Since 2009 he has been Editor of Research Fortnight and also teaches a course in international science policy at Imperial College London. As well as writing for Prospect magazine, The Times, Guardian and Le Monde, he writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio.

    The panel in London consisted of:

    Dr Lionel Clarke – Chairman, UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap Coordination Group

    Lionel chairs a group of independent experts who have set out A Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK. Its recommendations include investing in multidisciplinary centres, an annual forum, and funding competitions to support the development of novel applications. It emphasises responsible research to support the UK taking an internationally leading role. Dr Clarke joined Shell in 1981 and has been responsible for planning and delivering strategic research programmes there for more than ten years.

    Professor Robert Edwards – University of York and Chief Scientist, Food and Environment Research Agency

    Professor Edwards is the Chief Scientist for FERA and a Chair in Crop Protection in the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (University of York). His research focuses on countering herbicide resistance in weeds, wheat biotechnology and biorefining. His group have discovered two new classes of plant glutathione transferases and identified their roles in soy, wheat and maize herbicide metabolism.

    Daisy Ginsberg – Synthetic biology writer and commentator

    Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a designer, artist and writer, interrogating science, technology and new roles for design in a biotech future. As Design Fellow on Synthetic Aesthetics, an NSF/EPSRC-funded project at Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh, she is curating an international programme researching synthetic biology, art and design, investigating how we might ‘design nature’.

    Helena Paul – Co-director, Econexus

    Helena is a co-director of EcoNexus, an organisation analysing developments in science and technology and their impacts on environment and society. She is also involved in the international negotiations of the UN Conventions on Biological Diversity and Climate Change. Dr Paul is currently monitoring UK research on synthetic biology, including consultation with the public and the conduct of scientists in connection with scientific uncertainty.

    Described as the “chair” in Bristol, but in the event acting more like a further panelist (which was welcome, as he spoke very well indeed) was Professor Dek Woolfson – University of Bristol

    Dek has been a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bristol since 2005. His research group’s focus is the prediction and design of protein folds and their application in bionanotechnology and synthetic biology. In 2011 Professor Woolfson won the RSC Protein and Peptide Science group’s Medimmune Protein and Peptide Science award, which is awarded in recognition of excellence in any area of protein and peptide science.

    It will probably be somewhat apparent from the biographies that all except Helena pretty much assumed that synthetic biology was A GOOD THING.  Their discourse focused on whether it would achieve what was hoped of it, whether it had been over-hyped, and how to foster public engagement and acceptance.  They were referring to (and buoyed up by) George Osborne’s speech from last week, on importance of synthetic biology to the UK, as for example reported in The Guardian.

    Helena was a lone voice advocating the precautionary principle.  While the others accepted that there was a serious public engagement issue to avoid a repeat of GM crops being labelled “Frankenfoods”, none of them to my mind seriously engaged with people who genuinely consider that with biological developments we need to set the bar of confidence that no harm can possibly result at a very high level indeed.  It seemed as though Helena and the others were simply taking part in parallel events that were not interacting with each other.

    To be clear, I do not agree with the precautionary principle being applied to developments in synthetic biology, but neither do I think that we can just carry on talking as though its proponents are not in the room.  So I used my question to ask:

    Is there any way to bridge gap between proponents of precautionary principle and those who do not espouse it?

    Even this did not really result in what I would regard as real engagement. There was some discussion of “what would have happened if the precautionary principle had been applied to motorised transport”, which is a good point, but, as Helena did point out, ultimately irrelevant as people who advocate the precautionary principle consider that there is an issue with organisms (which are replicating) that render them fundamentally different, and in need of a far, far higher level of regulatory caution than any other technology.

    My own “what if”, although equally irrelevant ultimately, is the story of CFCs.  They were brought in to replace the toxic and dangerous refrigerants that were used in domestic fridges, but turned out, completely unexpectedly, to harm the ozone layer.  But this was not an irreversible effect, and it is in principle possible to stop using them and return to something approximating to the status quo ante.

    Having squandered my question on this issue, I did not get a chance to talk about the IP issues, although I did tweet a little on the subject.  A sensible question was asked about the effect and role of IP on synthetic biology by Dylan Williams (@vitamindyl), but it did not really result in very informative answers, and I regret that I was not able to dive in.

    A particularly regrettable response was from Helena, who said that she worried that patents would be used by companies to tie up the technology and hide what they were doing.  Of course fundamental to the concept of patenting is disclosure, and so use of the patent system will actually help, not hinder, dissemination of the technology and publication of what is being done.

    There was some talk that the “biobricks” might be open source.  This may or may not turn out to be true – it might happen, but there would be no way to ensure that it happened universally.

    My expectation is that the basic rules of patenting – an invention must be new and involve an inventive step to be patentable, plus the requirements of disclosure and to be not contrary to morality, will turn out to be quite sufficient to deal with the issues presented by synthetic biology, and I do not see that the discipline presents any special new issues that would require dealing with in a different way.  I certainly don’t expect that it will need its own separate legal framework.  How then companies choose to use IP Law – in a collaborative way or in a proprietary way – or, as  is most likely, as a mixture of the two – remains to be seen.  But I am confident that the patent system will provide within itself the necessary flexibility to underpin whatever approaches are adopted.

    A final observation.  It is curious that no-one actually defined what they meant by “synthetic biology”.  While I heard “it is not genetic engineering”, and I heard various qualities attributed to it, no-one actually said what they considered the term to encompass.  Since the semantic meaning of the term is rather vague, if we are going to discuss issues like what will it do and how should it be regulated, I think we do need precision about the scope of the terminology.  I slightly formed the impression, although I could well be mistaken, that not all the panelists and question askers were assuming the same meaning.

    Final verdict – a fascinating evening and I look forward to another.