Blog Posts

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

Assuming you could actually make a DrugPrinter, how instantly would it be able to produce enough drug for testing? Let’s assume we want to make 10 mg of compound (enough for physicochemical analysis and basic screening) and it has a molar mass of 500 g/mol.

Over the Easter weekend a rather interesting paper has been doing the rounds of the chemistry community on Twitter. The paper in question is entitled

I’ll update this post occasionally as and when I find good sites about basic stats.

This page is mainly an aide-mémoire for me but some of these may be useful for others. Add suggestions for improvements in the comments.

I spent some time making a 3D model and render to represent some work we’ve been doing recently and thought I would share.

Over at Chemistry-Blog there is an article about some alleged manipulation of images in a couple of papers. Having been sent some dodgy images in the past (a story I can’t really put online but suffice to say they didn’t make it to publication) I thought I’d share a very useful website - FotoForensics. FotoForensics uses a technique called Error Level Analysis that doesn’t confirm image manipulation but accentuates/highlights areas in an image that may have been saved a different number of times to the rest of the image.

Below are what I plan on adding to the series. If there is anything else you think should be covered comment below or email/tweet me (see contacts page)

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

This is part of a series of posts about producing publication quality graphics. See here for the introduction and links to other parts.

As DeevyBee has pointed out previously, these days academic publishers expect scientists to not only to produce the written content of a journal article but also to provide figures in a suitable format that they can use directly, usually to very specific technical guidelines (for an example see the Wiley’s guidelines for Angew. Chem.. Although I don’t entirely agree with DeevyBee’s position on this, part of science communication is the production of good quality graphics, the expectation by publishers that all scientists will be au fait with the technicalities of graphic design is absurb and throwing around jargon such as

During a recent conversion about the lower temperature of testicles compared to the rest of the male body I was attempted to find the temperture differential when I stumbled across this wonderful product sold by Babystart Ltd through their website babystart.co.uk

I got asked to make some images for a paper recently so was messing around with Blender. Some higher res versions (and the underlying .blend file) will eventually make it to the gallery but I’ll leave that until the paper is published to prevent any issues with the publishers and copyright. These were made in response to a question over how easy it was to change the appearance (hence me taking the piss slightly with the monkeys (Suzanne)).

If you’ve read any form of science news over the last few years you are bound to have heard about graphene. Graphene is a single layer of graphite with a structure resembling chicken wire and this results in some fascinating properties including extremely high electrical and thermal conductance. Consequently there’s great interest in graphene for next generation electrical devices (see here for one example). Whether you believe the hype around graphene or not it does have one major drawback, it’s rather expensive to make. One of the best ways of making graphene is micromechanical cleavage of graphite. This is more commonly known as the Scotch tape method as its discoverers (Nobel Prize winners Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov at Manchester University) used pieces of sticky tape to remove single layers from graphite and transfer it to a silica surface. It doesn’t really need saying but this isn’t really a practical method for making the large quantities of graphene that will be required if it is to be the future of electronics.

When starting a new website it seems only polite to start out with some introductions and a bit of background on the reasons it exists. I’m Seb Spain, a research chemist in the field of drug delivery and this is my site. There are several reasons I’ve set this up. Firstly, it’s getting to the point in my career where a bit of exposure can only be good and I wanted somewhere to keep details of my research that doesn’t change if I move jobs. Secondly, I want some where that I can showcase recent research developments (e.g. new publications). Finally, I want somewhere that I can hone my science writing for a lay audience. For more info about me or the site see the about page.