Alas, most of us need our nightly sleep and function miserably when sleep deprived. But what if the performance hit from too little sleep could be ameliorated by tweaking brain chemistry?

New research from a collaboration between scientists at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Glasgow, and Toronto identifies a chemical-signaling pathway involved in the memory and learning deficits that result from suboptimal sleeping. (Nature 461 [22 October 2009], 1122–1125) Five hours of sleep deprivation in mice caused impairment of hippocampus function by increasing the activity of the enzyme that degrades cyclic AMP—phosphodiesterase. Treating the critters with a drug (rolipram) that inhibits phosphodiesterase restored hippocampus function.

In the words of the authors, the results “lay the groundwork for further analysis of the functional biochemistry of sleep deprivation.” This may be good news for those of us moderns who never seem to find enough time for proper rest. Don’t start pulling all-nighters yet, though, as five sleepless hours for mice doesn’t quite mimic the chronic effects of weeks or years of too little shut-eye for people.

If sleep fascinates you, see my previous post on the subject. On the other hand, don’t bother if my writing makes you drowsy….

High-school students—equally impressionable—don’t often have this same opportunity to engage in research projects, at least in part because their teachers don’t, either. To redress this latter problem, a group of researchers at Columbia University created a program for high-school teachers to join Columbia scientists’ labs in the off-session summer months.

The wonderful result (Science 326: 5951 [16 October 2009], 440–442) is that the students whose teachers gained research experience do significantly better (10.1 percentage points) in a standardized test of science knowledge (the New York State Regents exam) than the students of non-participating teachers.

Why is this so? At the risk of being either mordant or enigmatic, I’ll answer the question with another: would you rather learn to play the cello from someone who plays the cello, or from someone who listens to lots of compact discs of cello music?

Moore’s law— named after Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel—famously predicted over 40 years ago that the transistor density of integrated circuits would double about every two years. So far, it’s been right.

Carlson’s curve—named after biologist Rob Carlson—refers to a graph showing the diminishing cost per base of sequencing DNA over time. Like transistor density, DNA sequencing prowess is similarly exponential, and showing no signs of slowing down.

Of course, neither of these is a fundamental law of nature, only empirical observations, and reality will inevitably deviate from the prediction someday.

So one naturally wonders, if it were a contest, which will hold steady the longest?

If one assumes a conventional mathematics of exponential growth, Moore’s law will be repealed first because it started first (approximately 1965 and 1990 for the two cases), and such a curve always levels off.

Deviations from a standard exponential would most likely come from new discoveries or technological innovation. For Moore’s law, the physical constraint of moving electrons in circuits is certainly limiting, as is the near certainty that a transistor can’t be smaller than a single atom. However, quantum computing or DNA computing might overcome these inherent limits of silicon chips.

For DNA sequencing (or DNA synthesis for that matter), the cost of chemical reagents and the ability to physically resolve DNA fragments cheaply are clearly limiting at some point. However, rapid advances in robotics, miniaturization, and “lab-on-a-chip” technologies can be expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

Based on nothing but the intuition that cost is easier to overcome than physics, my bet is that halving the price tag of DNA sequencing will outlast the course of integrated circuit doubling. Doubtless, readers can present counter-arguments, which I of course welcome and encourage.

But this is just the observable universe. Cosmologists are now pretty convinced that the true reality is a multiverse, or many parallel universes existing at the same time. Naturally, one wonders how many such universes there might be.

Imponderable as this question may seem, a duo of physicists at Stanford University has taken a stab at answering it. The analysis can be found at the open access preprint site for physics and related disciplines. (Aside—how come chemists don’t do this?)

The mathematics of quantum fluctuations required to understand the work will tax most readers, as will the final answer: 10^10^10^7. This is a number that is virtually impossible to comprehend or even to write down. It has over 10^10,000,000 digits!

With all those uniquely different universes, there surely is lots of potential for chemistry beyond even our wildest imaginations. Perhaps a different periodic table, unusual reactions, compounds we can’t imagine in our own universe. Maybe even altogether inconceivable life forms.

Apparently such gigantic numbers as 10^10^10^7 lead one to unchecked speculation. But perhaps a quantity we can better understand is Douglas Adams’s answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe and everything,” as recounted in the estimable Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy—42. I can relate to that one.

The bad news is that indiscriminate toxins can also damage normal tissues. Hence, the agony of awful side effects that accompanies cancer treatment.

A new study (with 30 authors from several research centers in Canada and Britain) describes an incredibly detailed look at how a single tumor—metastatic breast cancer—acquires genetic heterogeneity over time (Nature 461 [8 October 2009], 809–813).

Starting from the initial diagnosis, the research team measured genetic changes over nine years that eventually led to spread of the cancer to other body sites.

The result? Significant molecular evolution occurs as a tumor grows and then spreads. This is the source for tumor cell heterogeneity and ultimately is why some cancer cells will be eradicated by therapy and others not.

It is also a real challenge to personalized medicine to create drugs that will target every variant cell type rather than indiscriminately carpet-bombing them all. Luckily, this new work is a starting point for doing just that.

Leaving aside television and the Internet (and who wouldn’t be better off leaving these aside?), my main info sources are podcasts and books. Here are a few current favorites from each category.

My iPod is a constant companion on early-morning runs in whatever city I happen to find myself. Favored  science-related podcasts:

1. Distillations, CHF’s own award-winning romp through the world of the molecular.
2. Science Friday,the always perceptive Ira Flatow hosts NPR’s weekly broadcast on all things scientific. Unpredictable but reliably interesting content.
3. Scientific American, hosted by the always curious Steve Mirsky.
4. This Week in Science, a humorous and irreverent look at current science.

Books come in two familiar flavors: digital and analog. On the digital side, my travelling buddy Kindle currently holds three science books:

1. Science Matters (Robert Hazen and James Trefil), short and snappy essays on each major branch of science and its major questions. Easy reading.
2. What’s Next (Max Brockman), a more challenging set of 18 pieces by scientists peering into the future.
3. The Invention of Air  (Steven Johnson), a biography of Joseph Priestley focusing on the intersections of his scientific, political, and spiritual dimensions.

On the bedside table are two volumes:

1. The Age of Wonder (Richard Holmes), a totally charming history of literary and scientific explorations (some by the same people) at the cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries. Highly recommended, and the author will be visiting CHF next spring for a public lecture.
2. Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (John D. Barrow), a sumptuous visual exploration of how images help us make sense of the physical world. Hint: anticipates forthcoming exhibits in the Museum at CHF.

Of course, I also read unchallenging, lowbrow, and unredeeming works, mostly in the fiction category. Probity prevents me from revealing any titles….

But why should you care what these microscopic creatures do in the privacy of their own … wherever?

Because the DNA they exchange by a Kama Sutra-like variety of mechanisms can contain genes encoding drug resistance. And if a harmless bug transfers drug resistance to a nasty pathogen, look out, because it just might have abolished your chances of effective therapy.

If things weren’t already grim enough, consider a new report from Harvard Medical School.  Sommer et al. asked how much antibiotic resistance potential lurked in the harmless bacteria that inhabit our bodies, potentially available to be donated to disease-causing critters (Science 325: 5944 [28 August 2009], 1128–1131). The answer: an “immense diversity of resistance genes in the human microbiome could contribute to the further resistance in human pathogens.”

Even worse, many of these genes code for resistance mechanisms not yet identified. The only silver lining is that medicinal chemists can count on steady gainful employment as they labor to come up with new drugs that replace the ones rendered inactive.

If antimicrobial drug resistance really turns you on (or scares the heck out of you), I’ve written about it before (see posts from 31 July 2008 and 16 April 2009).

The resolving power for any such instrument depends of the wavelength of light used for detection and the ingenuity of the optical device used to capture that light. The human eye, as an example, is highly ingenious but limited to the visible wavelengths, thus restricting our ability to directly inspect small objects.

Electron microscopes use smaller wavelengths and can thus see smaller objects. But nobody thought we could ever see the individual atoms and bonds of a molecule because the necessary light would be so energetic as to destroy the very molecule under observation.

Luckily, intractable problems attract smart scientists. A group from IBM Research in Zurich and the Debye Institute in the Netherlands avoided the optical problem by touching the molecule instead of looking at it (Science 325: 5944 [28 August 2009], 1110–1114).

The new work uses atomic-force microscopy to visualize the complete chemical structure of pentacene, a five-ring aromatic hydrocarbon. The trick in this accomplishment lies in refining the tip of the AFM device (in this case with adsorbed carbon monoxide) so that it doesn’t perturb the sample and allows highly precise visualization. The technical achievement is dramatic enough, but the experience of actually “seeing” a real molecule is truly cosmic.

Check it out yourself, and be prepared for the most remarkable reality show possible. The wholly authentic images will send a chill down your spine.

But have you ever seen a chemistry movie? Obliquely maybe, in The Andromeda Strain, GATTACA, or The Absent-Minded Professor. But we count ourselves lucky if scientists are depicted as anything better than nerdy geeks who spend all their time wearing lab coats and not knowing how to behave in social situations.

But now, thanks to the good folks at Nature, we can watch videos that show chemists in full Technicolor glory. Following on a successful film feature with physicists last year, the Nature crew invited hundreds of young researchers to interact with Nobel laureates on the German island of Lindau. Then they filmed the proceedings and produced five totally beguiling movies.

A different member of the chemistry firmament is displayed each week in September: Aaron Ciechanover, Harry Kroto, Peter Agre, Richard Schrock, and the duet of Roger Tsien and Richard Ernst. The films are nicely edited, with cool graphics and an appealing soundtrack. If you love chemistry, check ‘em out!

Without consulting a dictionary, I would say that a metaphor is a comparison that shows how two things not fundamentally the same have at least one thing in common. The actual dictionary says much the same thing, albeit with more precision. Thus, while not physically a stage, the Bard tells us that much drama is acted out in the world.

The periodic table, that veritable icon of science, has itself been used as a metaphor for countless ideas. So much so that I’ve posted more blogs than on any other subject on what Mendeleev (unintentionally) begat.  (See posts from 14 February 2008, 25 February 2008, 14 April 2008, and 2 October 2008).

And now, combining idioms, comes the Periodic Table of Metaphors, courtesy of artist Christoph Niemann.

Like all periodic tables, the metaphors are aligned into groups with similar properties. There is Group I, “The Classics” (e.g., worm in an apple, hammer and nail, train entering a tunnel), and Group VI, “The Toxics” (piles of money, light bulb, piggy bank). Presumably you want to steer clear of these.

There is also Group IV, “The Zombies,” but since this includes the double helix I think I’d have trouble avoiding it. My favorite is Group III, the “Editors’ Faves” (Swiss army knife, brain, crown of thorns). Presumably I’d have no trouble getting published if I claimed that the Chemical Heritage Foundation is a brainy Swiss army knife.

But the real value of this version of the periodic table, at least according to Niemann, lies not in figures of speech, but in creating conceptual metaphors. There’s no way to describe what he has in mind so visit his Web site to see for yourself. Then announce your ideas so our drama can have “all the men and women merely players” (Shakespeare, ibid).