The fortune-telling porphyrin

Today I learned that porphyrins have secret desires to be ancient Chinese fortune-telling devices.



Reference: Mi Zhou, Zuowei Li, Tiecheng Liu, Peng Zhang, Dapeng Xu and Shuqin Gao, "Stiffness Tunable Molecular Spring Washers: High-Pressure Raman Investigations on Porphyrin Self-Assemblies", J. Phys. Chem. B, doi: 10.1021/jp910676y

Holiday special: Epic science tattoo

For today's holiday special, we look at illustrations of science, not on journal websites or on dead trees, but rather on a much more ancient medium. The Review posts this link to a blog at Discover Magazine that displays this epic science tattoo:


Clearly the tattoo artists have issued the authors of Graphical Abstracts a challenge. Consider this the body art equivalent of a thrown gauntlet.

Today's holiday is The Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reference: Carl Zimmer, The Loom - a blog of Discover Magazine, That About Covers It, 2008-06-27.

Chaos in olive oil

Detect lack of quality in olive, otherwise there will be much chaos to pay!



Reference: José S. Torrecilla, Ester Rojo, Juan C. Domínguez and Francisco Rodríguez, "A Novel Method To Quantify the Adulteration of Extra Virgin Olive Oil with Low-Grade Olive Oils by UV−Vis", J. Agric. Food Chem., 2010 58 (3), pp 1679-1684, doi:10.1021/jf903308u

Attack of the Killer Space Cells

"Sensors detect a large bulbous, nebulous object in our immediate vicinity, sir."

"Sir! It's opened fire with its Red Ablative Laser Beam!"


"She cannae take much more of this, Cap'n!"

"Engage sublight engines and initiate evasive manoeuvers!"

I swear, that neuron looks like it's cackling evilly.

Reference: Larry J. Millet, Adriana Bora, Jonathan V. Sweedler and Martha U. Gillette, "Direct Cellular Peptidomics of Supraoptic Magnocellular and Hippocampal Neurons in Low-Density Cocultures", ACS Chem. Neurosci., doi:10.1021/cn9000022

Homologous series

This organic chemist really wants you to step up that pyrazinacene ladder


I can't help but feel like I'm looking at future marketing material for Menards. "Home Improvement - with Science!"

Reference: Gary J. Richards, Jonathan P. Hill, Navaneetha K. Subbaiyan, Francis D’Souza, Paul A. Karr, Mark R. J. Elsegood, Simon J. Teat, Toshiyuki Mori and Katsuhiko Ariga, "" J. Org. Chem., 2009, 74 (23), pp 8914–8923. DOI: 10.1021/jo901832n

Do you see what I see?

Do you have a filthy mind?

Let's test how pure and chaste you are - what do you see here?


Let's just say that coloring the adsorbed oxygen atoms differently from the oxide substrate oxygen atoms is not helping here.

Reference: Pentti Frondelius, Hannu Häkkinen and Karoliina Honkala, "Adsorption and activation of O₂ at Au chains on MgO/Mo thin films", Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b917723jt

Space Woodstock

This is pretty trippy, I must say.


All those chemicals must be keeping that astronaut very happy.

Reference: Robert Byrne, Simon Coleman, Simon Gallagher and Dermot Diamond, "Designer molecular probes for phosphonium ionic liquids", Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b920580b

Green blob and red blob

Said Green Blob to Red Blob: I'm gonna take a walk off this here molecule.

Red Blob said nothing.

Said Green Blob to Red Blob: No, really, I'm through. I'm taking a hike.

Red Blob said nothing.




Red Blob isn't doing anything to jeopardize her custody of the imidazole moiety.

Although they are alike in personalities, they're going through a period of great uncertainty in their relationship. One might even say they're starting to feel mutually repelled.

At least Red Blob wasn't an arsole about the whole thing.

Reference: Mark N. Kobrak and Hualin Li, "Electrostatic interactions in ionic liquids: the dangers of dipole and dielectric descriptions" Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/b920080k

Nanobacon

Sara Perry's first law of cooking is "Everything is better with bacon". Since her cookbook popularized the synthesis of bacon and sugar, bacon has since moved beyond its traditional roles as a savory layer in sandwiches or an accoutrement for breakfast eggs.

Chemists in Serbia and the Czech Republic have since brought the notion of bettering the world with bacon one step futher. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B chronicles the invention of nanobacon, an innovation that makes even black and white micrographs of vaguely phallic or turdlike cylinders become totally awesome and delectable:



Reference: G. Čirić-Marjanović et al., "Synthesis and Characterization of Self-Assembled Polyaniline Nanotubes/Silica Nanocomposites", J. Phys. Chem. B, 2009, 113 (20), 7116–7127, doi:10.1021/jp900096b

So, Pollock, have we found the dark matter yet?

As a Holiday Special, Amusing Graphical Abstracts brings you something that isn't a graphical abstract, but is definitely amusing nonetheless. The venerable astrophysics and cosmology blog Cosmic Variance brings you a "newly discovered late-period Jackson Pollock":
The irony of this diagram of dark matter detection data is that it's so wonderfully colored, and yet there isn't a single black patch in the plot.

Reference: S. Carroll, "Art, Meet Science", Cosmic Variance, 2009-12-31.

Today's holiday is New Year's Day.

Putting the Spotlight on the Host-Guest Equilibrium Elephant

This week's JACS ASAP reports the discovery of a new beast, the Host-Guest Equilibrium Elephant.


The Host-Guest Equilibrium Elephant enjoys basking in colored lights arranged in an equilateral triangle. It also appears to play a critical role in maintaining the delicate balance between regular old tetrahedra and special tetrahedra with endohedral green spheres that are so rarely seen in our ecologically-ravaged, uber-technological world.

One theory claims that the Elephant is an allusion to the fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. This, however, does not explain the role of the trichromatic lighting display - it is clearly pointless to illuminate an elephant for blind men, since it is obvious that doing so would be completely ineffective in rendering the ineffable Elephant comprehensible to such sensorily-deprived individuals.

I prefer the simpler explanation: everyone knows that elephants are an auspicious way to herald in a new decade, and the lights are there because the parade's starting in a couple of hours.

Reference: C. Sgarlata et al., "External and Internal Guest Binding of a Highly Charged Supramolecular Host in Water: Deconvoluting the Very Different Thermodynamics", J. Am. Chem. Soc. doi:10.1021/ja9056739