Scientific protocol regarding reproducible data
Keeping track of your sheep just got a lot easier…Thanks, science!
this week on questionable uses of fluorescent proteins…
btw, there’s a long history of manipulating the pictures of glow-in-the-dark creatures in news stories
Absorbing news
Nanoengineers at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering have invented incredibly tiny sponges capable of soaking up a broad class of dangerous toxins in the bloodstream. So-called “pore-forming toxins” punch holes in cell membranes, killing them, and are produced by lethal microbes like MRSA and E. coli and in the venoms of snakes and bees.
Unlike other anti-toxin platforms that require customization to individual toxin types, the scientists say the new nanosponges (approximately 85 nanometers in diameter or roughly 3,000 times smaller than a red blood cell) absorb multiple toxins regardless of molecular shape. In a study using alpha-haemolysin toxin from MRSA, pre-innoculation with nanosponges enabled 89 percent of tested mice to survive lethal doses. Administering nanosponges after the lethal dose led to 44 percent survival.
The research, led by Liangfang Zhang, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Nanoengineering and researcher at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, was published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Read the full news release here.
A pretty amazing (and completely new!) way of removing toxins from the blood stream: The nanosponges, which are 3000 times smaller than red blood cells, flood the blood stream and intercept the toxins. The nanosponge can absorb tens to hundreds of toxins before it is eventually metabolized by the liver (with no ill effects).
that’s promising. more research! (i.e. more funding!)
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How To Synthesize Sudafed from Meth
Frustrated by how difficult it is to buy Sudafed these days? Tired of being looked at like a meth addict when you sign your name and give away half of your personal information to get some simple nasal decongestant? So were these chemists*
A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover,according to government maintained statistics, N-methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.
A journal article worthy of The Onion. Please don’t try this. Please.
(* and by “these chemists” I of course mean “people who do not actually exist”)
Self-reblog because of Breaking Bad reasons (and because it makes me laugh, always).
We call them “trailer park chemists”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m02fg5B61U1qbh26io1_500.png)
We call them “trailer park chemists”How To Synthesize Sudafed from Meth
Frustrated by how difficult it is to buy Sudafed these days? Tired of being looked at like a meth addict when you sign your name and give away half of your personal information to get some simple nasal decongestant? So were these chemists*
A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover,according to government maintained statistics, N-methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.
A journal article worthy of The Onion. Please don’t try this. Please.
(* and by “these chemists” I of course mean “people who do not actually exist”)
Self-reblog because of Breaking Bad reasons (and because it makes me laugh, always).
THIS. IS. heterocyclic chemistry.
A cascade, fifteen or so step, one-pot reaction yielding one freak heterocycle as the main product, with more sulfurs in it than … I dunno what.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1997, 36, 281-283. (DOI: 10.1002/anie.199702811)
Listen to this. Hünig’s base acts as a reactant and electrophilic sulfurs play the main characters. I love it. This is the crème de la crème of heterocyclic chemistry.
I can’t resist the temptation to once again mock retrosynthetic analysis. How many of you upon beeing presented with structure 1, would stand up and say
‘Hm… maybe if I treated Hünigs base with sulfur dichloride in the presence of DABCO…’?
Smell receptor. Coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of a section through the olfactory (smell) epithelium of the nose. At centre (orange) is an olfactory receptor cell body. At its top two long, modified non-motile cilia project into the liquid lining of the nasal cavity. The cilia are thought to be the sites of interaction between odiferous substances and the receptor cells. Surrounding the receptor cell are the supporting cells with surface microvilli (finger-like). Within the cells, mitochondria (purple) & endoplasmic reticulum (flattened sacs) are seen. Magnification: x2,130 at 6x7cm size. Magnification: x7,300 at 10x8 inch size.
Chemotherapy, string theory and cures for baldness are among the varied subjects explored in this month’s readers’ art gallery
This picture is called Pondering a Cure for Baldness by Alex Veis. You can flick through a selection of the artworks submitted to our Share your art science blog, here.
