Wednesday, January 13, 2010

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

Monday, January 11, 2010

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

Sunday, January 10, 2010

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

Saturday, January 9, 2010

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

Thursday, January 7, 2010

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

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

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

Saturday, January 2, 2010

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
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