Hello all,
The summer is sadly slowly coming to its end (nooooooo), which means that I’m sure most of you all have made AMAZING discoveries in your respective labs or other experiences. And as, well, “female” as this sounds, I’d love to hear about what you’ve been doing! Or if you’re like me, what you’ve not been doing! Anything exciting you’ve learned? Any funny stories? Let’s hear ‘em!
A few cool, short articles I came across while perusing MIT’s Technology Review blogs. Perfect for waiting while cycling glassware into the glovebox, a coffee break, or waiting on your NMR acquisitions:
Nanoscale, crystalline magnetite particles coated with a charged surfactant reflect different wavelengths based on the strength of a nearby magnetic field.
Glue with and On/Off Switch:
An adhesive with pH-dependent stickiness. Most interesting to me was the brief mention at the end of the article about possible applications for organ-specific drug delivery.
Finally, a JACS communication by Gregory Fu’s group to round things out:
Alkyl-Alkyl Suzuki Cross-Couplings of Unactivated Secondary Alkyl Halides at Room Temperature
Ah…brings back fond memories of Orgo III with Buchwald.
You might be pleased to find that many of us are aspiring to one or several of Wired’s Top 10 “Best Dangerous Science Jobs“. Note #6, the infamous “Grad Student”.
Well, if our jobs don’t kill us, we may get to enjoy another decade or two of late nights in lab says an article in MIT’s Technology Review about a longevity pill being tested on humans by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. The article describes the pill as a “souped-up version” of resveratrol, a phytoalexin (a type of defense chemical produced by plants under attack) found in, for example, the skin of red grapes and already marketed as a nutritional supplement.
(reseravtrol structure)
Sirtris’s senior director stated in a press conference that the drug, SRT501, “reduces glucose and improves insulin sensitivity in animal”, which brings up a related article in Technology Review on a study about the relationship between insulin in the brain and longevity.
1) i guess i don’t read this often enough, but i was looking through old posts and saw benzophenone as a molecule of the week. but it didn’t mention the importance of benzophenone in the synthesis of fluoresceins. so i’ll add that.
2) i thought club chem was going to do stuff over the summer. i think we should. so let’s do stuff with that $$$ that they give us. seriously, i miss you guys?
Is Yogi friends with the writer of xkcd? Why were they flying a kite? If I befriend Yogi, does that mean I can be tight with da man?
These questions are completely irrelevant to Chemistry, and require answerings.
Synthesis:
Uses:
2 S2O32− + AgBr —-> [Ag(S2O3)2]3−) + Br-
In this technique, developed by John Herschel, the sodium thiosulfate is known as a photographic fixer.
2S2O32−(aq) + I2(aq) —-> S4O62−(aq) + 2I
4NaClO + Na2S2O3 + 2NaOH → 4NaCl + 2Na2SO4 + H2O
The links bar now has a section for Journal links. JACS, JOC, Science, etc., now in one convenient place for you to get your daily dose of chemistry communcations. If there’s a site you’d like linked, just let me know.
Additionally, from the wide world of chemistry blogs I’ve consolidated some of the more interesting/accessible/useful blogs into a Blogroll. Let me know if you have a favorite you’d like to add.
The blogs focus on a variety of subjects. For those of you looking for your organic synth fix (I’m looking at you, Stephen), check out Chemist in a Transition State (for a weekly retrosynthetic analysis quiz) or Org Prep Daily.
Blogs like Cabon Tet, Liquid Carbon, Organometallic Current, The Synthetic Referee, the power of goo, She Blinded Me With Science, and Totally Synthetic mix personal chemistry musings with commentary on recent publications.
Other blogs like A Synthetic Environment, carbon-based curiosities, ChemBark, The Culture of Chemistry, Science Base, and Totally Mechanistic are a mis-mash of fun or entertaining chemistry observations and an account personal work.
If you’re bored in lab and waiting on a reaction, check out some of these links. There’s a lot of cool new/old/useful/bizarre chemistry under discussion.
Scientists at Harvard and McGill “have found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact.” The full article from Telegraph.co.uk can be found here.
The drug under testing is propranolol (shown below) the first successfully developed beta-blocker and a compound traditionally marketed to treat hypertension. Propranolol was developed by James W. Black in the 1950s, and his efforts resulted in a Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery in 1988.
Much german Pokerblogs:
Internetpoker oder besser Poker online ist sehr beliebt bei deutschen Glücksspielern. pokern zuhause macht zwar auch spass, aber die Anfänge beim Poker sind ohne richtige Poker Tipps oder Poker tools wirklich sehr schwer. Es gibt viele Anfängerfehler beim Poker wie z.b. die Kartenbezeichnung der einzelnen Pokerkarten. Eine Pokerstrategie beim online pokern gibt es nicht wirklich, aber das bluffen bei Casino Poker muss eigentlich jeder können. Verschiedene Pokerbegriffe und die Poker Regeln sind immer gleich, aber jeder Spieler kann beim Pokern kostenlos Geld gewinnen. Das Poker ein sport ist wissen nicht viele, aber die Poker Geschichte sagt was anderes. Auch bei Poker Tuniere spielen viele Frauen poker in einer Poker-community aus dem Internet. Auch Frauen müssen die Texas Hold´em Regeln mit Ihrem Pokerstil vereinigen und lernen können. auch Poker an der
Uni ist sehr beliebt geworden. deshalb spielen viele Studenten Poker oder Online-Poker in Ihrer Freizeit und kaufen Zubehör im Casinoshop wenn sie richtig Pokern wollen.
Is this the Way to play Poker?
You know what’s really obnoxious? People who have conference calls or just use the damn speaker phone and stay on it for like an hour. And everyone else in the office has to listen to their stupid conversation. It’s so damn annoying.
Er, but anyways. I figured that I’d talk a little about what I’m doing this summer. Since it is at a company, and it is “confidential” (damn corporations), it will be pretty brief. I’m working on making biosensors with nanowires. At first we thought we could use nanotubes, but after talking to Prof. Carl Thompson, Course 3 department, who we’re apparently collaborating with now, we’ve changed plans and decided to give wires a try. For now we’re detecting glucose, but that’s probably just because glucose is well studied and cheap. If (emphasis on if) this works out really well we might expand it beyond glucose to introduce other (possibly more important) molecules to detect.
So here is sort of where you come in: do you know stuff about nanotubes? nanowires? anything? You should talk to me. I’d love to hear from information from you. One of the things I’m trying to figure out right now is how nanowires can be functionalized to bind to enzymes. If you know anything, we should have a lovely little talk. I’ll even take you out to lunch! (if you’re pretty, that is). In the mean time, I’m going to scream in my head at the people on the speaker phone who really should be doing their talking in the conference room with closed doors. GRRRRRR
