Meanwhile in the Whitesides lab (IV)

08 October 2013 - Nobel Time

Nobel time is near so let's have a quick look at what George M. Whitesides (99:1 on Chembark) is up to in his laboratory, also see previous episodes from 2012 , 2011 and 2010. We are detecting some themes here, for example soft materials like the (The Jumping Soft Robot) from an earlier blog , the lab-on-a-chip here and premeditated torture of little worms here, this time by starvation.

A very recent contribution is what looks like research on 3D-tumor models DOI for drug evaluation involving no doubt a lot of chemical engineering. Another report is about stretchable transparent conductive films (DOI) en route to transparent loudspeaker systems (that would be cool) . Whitesides also has an interest in the binding of ligands to proteins and the role water plays in it, as recently summarised In the Pipeline.

And what is this? In the brand new field of infochemistry you can create a devise that can burn up to three alkali metal salts on a piece of cotton, creating 19 unique signals and then record the signal using a telescope from a kilometer away (DOI). What for? Search and rescue of course!