Yes, but are we poets or scientists? Wax lyrical in your poetry, but maybe have some standards in our science? cheers, tom
Tom Peat Proteins Group Biomedical Program, CSIRO 343 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC, 3052 +613 9662 7304 +614 57 539 419 tom.p...@csiro.au ________________________________ From: CCP4 bulletin board <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on behalf of Goldman, Adrian <adrian.gold...@helsinki.fi> Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2019 7:39 AM To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK <CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] challenges in structural biology ..and responding in the same vein: my OED says that its etymology also comes from the Latin sulfur, sulphura in the plural. So there is an etymological basis for the ph, even if it doesn’t come from Greek. Plus, since when has etymological logic has _anything_ to do with English spelling? Finally, it may be how the RSC is spelling it, but I would take a fair bet that writers of English prose today (pace America), contemplating an stinky inferno, will write “sulphurous flames”, not the unattractive and less stinky “sulfurous ones”. Adrian On 23 Jul 2019, at 22:21, CCP4BB <0000193323b1e616-dmarc-requ...@jiscmail.ac.uk<mailto:0000193323b1e616-dmarc-requ...@jiscmail.ac.uk>> wrote: Hi Going off at a tangent... The accepted spelling by the Royal Society of Chemistry (i.e. the professional body representing chemists in the U.K.) since at least the early 1990s has been "sulfate" too. "Sulphur", etc, has been deprecated for quite some time. Why? Well, there's no good etymological reason for the "ph" in "sulphate". My 1984 copy of Greenwood and Earnshaw's "Chemistry of the Elements", written in Yorkshire, uses "sulfur" etc throughout. "Phosphorus" comes from the Greek, so retains the "ph"s on both sides of the pond. Element 13 appears to have started life as "alumium", mutated to "aluminum", and finally (in the English speaking world outside North America) settled down as "aluminium". Harry -- Dr Harry Powell On 23 Jul 2019, at 17:12, Engin Özkan <eoz...@uchicago.edu<mailto:eoz...@uchicago.edu>> wrote: On 7/23/19 3:35 AM, melanie.voll...@diamond.ac.uk<mailto:melanie.voll...@diamond.ac.uk> wrote: No longer those 20 odd names for ammonium sulphate You mean ammonium *sulfate*. As it is called across the pond. :) On a related note on common nomenclature for recording crystallization experiments that Janet brought up: I find it odd that we still do not report cryo-protection methods and conditions in PDB depositions. Given that a large fraction of the small molecules observed in crystal structures are derived from the cryo-protectants, one would think that reporting the contents of that solution (and pH) would be paramount to a PDB deposition. Surely, the crystallographic experiment has changed since 1990/use of synchrotron sources, which PDB has adjusted well to in most other aspects (e.g., including reporting of synchrotron x-ray optics and all the new detectors during submission). Engin ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
