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The latest expedition to the Southern Ocean to test the theory that fertilising the ocean combat climate change has concluded that the process sucks negligible amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. The theory goes that sprinkling iron into areas of the ocean lacking in the metal will stimulate the growth of algae, which will absorb CO2 from the air as they grow and then carry some of this greenhouse gas to the depths of the ocean when they die. The German-Indian Lohafex project is the latest expedition to test out the theory in practice. The team found that dumping six tonnes of iron into the ocean did indeed boost algal growth - but that within two weeks the algae were being eaten by a voracious band of tiny crustaceans called copepods, drastically cutting the amount of carbon captured. These results are just the latest to show that a process that at first glance appears relatively simple is actually far from it. Previous studies - including most recently an investigation into t...

Pfizer is licensing around 100 of its small molecule compounds to Bristol, UK-based Tocris Bioscience and St Louis, US-based Sigma-Aldrich. Under the agreements, unformulated patented and approved drug molecules such as atorvastatin, sildenafil and sunitinib will be sold for use in pre-clinical research studies. In addition, a number of Pfizer’s literature compounds that have not progressed from development to clinical use will also be offered for sale. Laurence Ede, Tocris’s managing director, told Chemistry World that the announcement continued the considerable momentum that the company had seen throughout 2009 despite the widespread economic doom and gloom. That momentum saw the company’s sales increase 17 per cent compared to 2008, with sales of new products introduced in 2009 surpassing even 2008’s record levels.

Eli Lilly has fallen foul of one of the largest pharmaceutical heists ever. On Sunday March 21, thieves stole around $75 million of prescription drugs from a warehouse in Connecticut, US. The warehouse contained a range of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs including Prozac (fluoxetine), Cymbalta (duloxetine), and Zyprexa (olanzapine). According to media reports, the thieves cut a hole in the roof of the warehouse, before sliding down a rope into the warehouse. The company is working with the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Criminal Investigations, and other law enforcement officials, to recover the stolen drugs.

Just a quick blog today as I’ve been out at the Gala dinner here at Glasgow - I had a nice chat with Ben Feringa, who gave a stonking plenary lecture this evening. The man is a genius - he was talking about his group’s work in nanomachinery, making molecular switches, rotors and even molecules that can ’swim’ across surfaces. He made the very interesting point that most chemistry within a cell involves some kind of motor molecule at some stage, whereas none of the chemistry we do in flasks is controlled that way.

March 21th is Jean Baptiste Fourier's birthday. Fourier was a French mathematical physicist who is best known for a method to express a periodic function into a sum of simple sine and cosine expressions. This process is used extensively in optics, quantum mechanics, acoustics and electrical engineering. He was also the first to describe what has become known as the "greenhouse effect". He described a theory where the atmosphere served to heat the surface of a planet by slowing heat loss. Happy Birthday Fourier! Find out what else occurred on this day in science history

Easter is two weeks from today on April 4th. It's time to use those Peeps because you know they'll be rock-hard before Easter. I realize a lot of people love Peeps (Easter treat traditionally found in yellow chick form, though other colors and shapes exist), but I always relegated them to the 'not food' category of Easter candy. That was before I learned how to eat them with chocolate. The recipe is easy and fun. Take a graham cracker, set a Peep on it, put a couple of Hershey's Kisses™ on another cracker, pop them in the microwave, and nuke them until the Peep has expanded so it looks like it's ready to explode (20 seconds seems good). Smush the Peep side and the Kiss side together, and enjoy!

About.com is holding a meeting in Savannah this weekend so I suspect my coworkers would be interested to know that there is a live nuclear bomb off the Georgia coast. In February 1958 a B-47 bomber on a training mission out of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida had a collision with an F-86. The pilot of the F-86 parachuted to safety and the fighter jet crashed. The B-47 also sustained damage. The crew requested and received permission to jettison the 7,600 pound Mark 15 bomb it was carrying so that the aircraft could more safely land at Hunter Air Force Base.

If you've been confused about the answer to this question, it is because Earth Day could fall on either of two days, depending on your preference for when you want to observe it. Some people celebrate Earth Day on the first day of Spring (on the vernal equinox, which falls on March 20, 2010) while others observe Earth Day on April 22. In either case, the purpose of the day is to inspire appreciation for the earth's environment and awareness of issues that threaten it.

Saturday, March 20, 2010 is the vernal equinox, which marks the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Are you familiar with the urban legend that it's easier to balance an egg on end on the equinox than on other days of the year? Test it and see! This vernal equinox one of the two times during the year when the sun crosses the celestial equator and the spin axis of the Earth points 90 degrees away from the sun. Why should this affect your ability to balance an egg on end? The premise is that aligning the gravitational pull of the Sun with that from the center of the Earth should somehow make it easier to balance any object. Test the Hypothesis Yourself Take a carton of eggs and try balancing the eggs on end today. Can you stand any of them up (without resorting to tricks like putting salt under the eggs)? Can you stand eggs on their small ends as well as their large ends? Keep track of your results and repeat the process on the equinox. Do you note any differenc...