Worth more than gold
Cawthron Institute made the front page of our local paper tonight with a great story about a new business they have developed. Cawthron has become an important source for rare marine toxins, used as standards for calibrating the instruments used for detecting them in food such as shellfish. They get very high prices for these chemicals: one example was quoted where €3000 was paid for 1 mg (that’s one thousandth of a gram). There were many interesting stories along the way. Here’s one of them: