If you didn't make it to the autumn 2009 meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington DC last week, you can get the highlights from the Sceptical Chymist blog (http://tinyurl.com/mg8q83). Nature Chemistry associate editor Stephen Davey and Andrew Mitchinson, a senior editor at Nature, share their impressions from pleasantly overcrowded lecture rooms.

Mitchinson gives high ratings to several 'nano' talks, including work on metal-lined nanocages and the creation of nanoparticles that can carry DNA plasmids into cells. He writes, “the science was great ... with lots of interest in each talk” and declares it his “favourite session of the meeting so far”.

Davey writes about a lively couple of sessions on work by young investigators and winners of the Arthur C. Cope Award — which centred on the use of pyridines in natural-product synthesis and modern alchemy using “cheaper and abundant metals for catalysis”, respectively.

And if you've ever wondered how quickly chemists can evacuate during a fire drill or how the Declaration of Independence is stored, those answers are in the blog too.