EuCheMS Brussels News Update, Oct 2014

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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to 

Eric Betzig, Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA,

Stefan W. Hell, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany and

William E. Moerner, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy” 

Surpassing the limitations of the light microscope

For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres. Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Helland William E. Moerner are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 for having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld.

Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. Two laser beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow, another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.

Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation for the second method, single-molecule microscopy. The method relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilized this method for the first time.

Today, nanoscopy is used world-wide and new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind is produced on a daily basis.

More information on http://www.nobelprize.org

Official press release, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
08.10.2014

IAESTE Switzerland – all-round service for internship placements

IAESTE is specialized in the placement of qualified students in technical and scientific disciplines. The program works according to the 1:1 principle: Each employer who offers a job via IAESTE creates at the same time a placement abroad for a Swiss student.

No matter if the study field is aeronautical engineering or microbiology – IAESTE will find the best candidate for each employer. It only takes the employer a few minutes to register online and to specify his required job profile. After a few clicks, he just has to wait until IAESTE makes a proposal for a suitable candidate to him. There will be no longer time-consuming reading of hundreds of application folders left.

Furthermore, IAESTE is taking care of visa and work permits and offers an international, daily increasing network from which students and employers can profit. Do you like to benefit from the expert knowledge of students and young professionals? Then register your internship workplace here: www.iaeste.ch

David Spichiger, SCS
06.10.2014

EcoChem 2014 in Basel cancelled

EcoChem, the global Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering Event, Basel, Nov 11-13 2014, is cacelled. The communication reached us on Monday as follows: 

Dear Sir/Madam 

Vego Ltd T/A Ecochem

We write to advise you that the directors of the above-named Company, having regard to its financial position, have decided to take steps to place the Company into creditors’ voluntary liquidation. 

David Spichiger, SCS
01.10.2014