Category Archives: Chemistry

26-09-2012 05:48 A chemist whose alleged mishandling of drug samples has thrown thousands of criminal cases into question said she holds a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, but school officials say they have no record of it.

More:
UMass: No record of 'rogue chemist's' master degrees - Video

25-09-2012 21:18 Chemical Structure and Reactivity

Read more from the original source:
Chemistry 3B - Lecture 9 - Video

With the 2012 season long ago cast aside as a lost cause, the Boston Red Sox are pulling out all the stops to keep fans interested for the final two home games, and Tuesday night that meant celebrating the eighth anniversary of the 2004 Curse-busting champions. Over 20 members of that team were on hand at Fenway Park before the Sox dropped a 5-2 decision to the Tampa Bay Rays, and as they cruised around the field in Duck Boats to raucous applause, it crystallized just how joyless the 2012 club has been. Fixing this team's wayward chemistry will be one of the main priorities of the offseason. Former Sox standouts like Pedro Martinez and Kevin Millar discussed the importance of chemistry. "You hear that a lot, 'What's chemistry? If you don't have players, you don't have chemistry,'" Millar said. "Bull, bull, bull, bull, OK? You've got to pull for each other. You're not fooling us. We can fool you guys. You can say the right thing, and we know a few of the teams out there that say the right thing in front of the cameras. But you can't fool your teammates. "If someone is pulling against Keith Foulke because he wants to be the closer and doesn't know his role, you feel that. If someone is pulling against Pedro Martinez because he wants to be the guy, you feel that. We pulled for each other. That was what was cool." The Red Sox have had chemistry problems all season, though many of them will be corrected when manager Bobby Valentine is presumably replaced. The Sox could do worse than study what worked in 2004. "You either have it or you don't," Millar said. "We had the right mix. We never argued over music, whether it was hip hop or country or Latin. We respected it. We loved each other. It's hard to explain. It sounds quirky, but we cared because they were good guys."

Read the rest here:
Millar offers Red Sox a chemistry lesson

Chemistry Professor Roy Lowry experiments with Liquid Nitrogen and the results explode on the web.

The experiment took place at Plymouth University on July 26. Lowry explains the dangers of storing liquid nitrogen. A liquid with the ability to maintain temperatures below the freezing point of water. This ability allows liquid nitrogen to have a wide variety of uses.

It can be used as a coolant for computers and cameras, in cryogenics for preservation, and it can be used to make ice cream. However, it's uses go much further than those listed.

As Lowry explains, storing liquid nitrogen in a one-liter bottle is "perfectly safe." He continues, "but one thing you really shouldn't do, is screw the cap on." The video explains why.

This video is not professor Lowry's first. This video from 2008 documents his experiment with a jelly baby, reports Yahoo!.

With experiments like these, Lowry is quickly becoming a sensation to not only his students but to anyone with internet access. The liquid nitrogen video has already exceeding 70,000 views.

See more here:
Chemistry Professor Roy Lowry explains the dangers of Liquid Nitrogen with ping pong balls

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gl3wdg/studies_in) has announced the addition of Elsevier Science and Technology's new book "Studies in Natural Products Chemistry, Vol 38" to their offering.

Natural products present in the plant and animal kingdom offer a huge diversity of chemical structures which are the result of biosynthetic processes that have been modulated over the millennia through genetic effects. With the rapid developments in spectroscopic techniques and accompanying advances in high-throughput screening techniques, it has become possible to isolate, and then determine the structures and biological activity of natural products rapidly, thus opening up exciting new opportunities in the field of new drug development to the pharmaceutical industry. The series also covers the synthesis or testing and recording of the medicinal properties of natural products.

"There is a good mix of chemistry, structure elucidation, synthesis, and biology in the various chapters, thereby appealing to a diverse readership. The diagrams are clear and the writing excellent. In summary, this is another excellent volume in a very valuable series on natural products for which Professor Atta-ur-Rahman is to be congratulated...... an important and essential asset for those libraries supporting the efforts of natural product research groups."

Geoffrey A. Cordell, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA, PHYTOCHEMISTRY, Vol.65, 2004

Topics Covered:

1. Phytoestrogens: Estrogene-Like Phytochemicals

2. The Discovery and Synthesis of Brevisamide

3. Recent Asymmetric Syntheses of Tetrahydroisoquinolines Using Named and Some Other Newer Methods

4. 1-Methoxy-Canthin-6-One and Related -Carbolines: From Natural Compound to Synthesis and Biological Activities

Link:
Research and Markets: Studies in Natural Products Chemistry, Vol 38

In my blog post the other day about element 113, I mentioned that the process of going from a successful experiment to a successful claim of discovery is tortuous. It relies on researchers convincing a joint panel of experts representing the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) and their physics counterpart, Iupap, that their evidence fulfils all the criteria for discovery of a new element.

A joint working party from Iupac and Iupap is currently considering claims relating to elements 113, 115, 117 and higher. Both the Japanese team from RIKEN and a Russian team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna submitted claims relating to element 113 in May this year for the working party to consider. Kosuke Morita, the leader of the Japanese team has confirmed that they have asked the panel to take this latest paper into consideration along with their earlier results, but it will be down to the panel to decide.

Both of the claims build on earlier work that has so far failed to convince the joint working party. The two claims are quite independent of each other, Morita explains. Neither team’s data will support the other’s claim, as they involve different isotopes of the elements in the decay chains.

The Russian team’s claim revolves around an experiment designed to create element 115, which decays to element 113 by emitting an alpha particle, then continues down its decay chain, through a series of alpha decays. The advantage of the Russian group’s experiment is that they have generated many more atoms of their putative element 115 (and hence element 113), so they have a lot more data than the Japanese team. The disadvantage is that all the nuclides on the decay chain were previously unknown isotopes, so they needed to do some difficult chemical characterisation to prove their identities.

On the other hand, the Japanese team’s experiment, taking into account the latest result, has its decay chain firmly anchored in known nuclide territory. This is a distinct advantage when it comes to the strength of the claim, as it is one of the principal criteria expected by the Iupac-Iupap working party. They have also, Morita believes, gathered sufficient extra evidence supporting their previous claim to answer the joint working party’s concerns from the last review.

However, as the Japanese team only acquired this final puzzle-piece in August this year, if the panel decides that the Dubna team has done enough to characterise the nuclides in their decay chain, it could still award them priority, and possibly even a two-for-one deal including element 115 as well. If not, it looks likely that the RIKEN team has a strong enough claim to earn the first Japanese-named element.

This is by no means an easy decision to make, so both groups will be eagerly awaiting the verdict. Watch this space everyone.

Phillip Broadwith

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?feed=rss2