THE ENDLESS QUEST FOR MEDICINAL PLANTS CONTINUES... "Here's a strange little vine that smells like camphor." www.sciencecartoonsplus.com

Mutual Admiration Society
A couple of years ago, I managed to sneak in a round of golf in Florida while I was attending Pittcon. The starter put me in with a group of three and off we went. After a couple of holes, I asked the other guys what they did for a living. All three were professional baseball pitchers attending spring training camp.

Being a big baseball fan, I was pretty excited to play golf with them. One of the players asked what I did, so I told him I was a chemist. His reply surprised me: “Wow. You don’t get to meet a chemist everyday!”

Buzz Off
At the ACS National Meeting in Chicago last August, Joel Coats and Chris Peterson, researchers from Iowa State University, presented their findings that nepetalactone, an oil isolated from catnip, was more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET (diethyl-m-toluamide), the compound found in most commercial repellants. The scientists placed 20 mosquitoes each into two-foot glass tubes that carried small amounts of the repellants on one end and, after 10 minutes, counted the number of mosquitoes that landed on the repellant-bearing end of the tube. The researchers found that it takes about one-tenth as much nepetalactone as DEET to repel the same number of mosquitoes.

No one knows why catnip repels mosquitoes, says Peterson, but the findings have given the “Lighter Elements” editors pause to ask if being attacked by drug-addled cats is really an improvement over a few mosquito bites?

Dress to Cure, Not Kill
Getting your daily dose of vitamin C may soon be as simple as getting dressed, literally.

Fuji Spinning Co., a Japanese clothing firm, has developed a line of T-shirts composed of fibers that have been embedded with a provitamin that turns into vitamin C upon exposure to skin. The shirt is said to contain the same amount of vitamin C as two lemons and should remain effective after 30 washings. (Source: BBC News)

In a similar vein, Diana Irani, a research student at London’s Royal College of Art, has developed a line of clothing that has been embedded with microcapsules of herbal medicines. When a person wears “Clothes that Cure”, the medicine is absorbed directly through the skin into the bloodstream. According to Irani, the medicines last for many months and maintain their efficacy through repeated hand washings. (Source: British Standards Institution)

Labster’s Unabashed Dictionary

Amphipathic (adj): The ability to hike both ways.

Graduate school (n): It’s not just a job; it’s an indenture.

Micellar (adj): Where I stayed when the tornado hit.

Polar head group (n): Inuit psychiatrists.

Separation anxiety (n): Stress in a chromatographer.

Sulfatide (n): The effect of a moon on Venereal oceans.