Fast, cheap, and easy medical testing devices can help diagnose diseases across the world. Let’s learn about one recently developed to detect HIV!
Say No to Drugs: Fast and Efficient Drug Detection in Biofluids
How are Olympic doping agents similar to environmental water contaminants? It all relates back to chemical detection methods!
Carbon Monoxide: Future Therapeutic?
Carbon monoxide is probably one of the last things you would expect to see touted as a new therapeutic. How could this compound be used in medicine?
Drawing a map with chemicals!
Buildings and natural preserves create geographical maps. And now, molecules could build a molecular map! By investigating the presence of molecules in the environment, researchers have built some 3D molecular maps, which are the story tellers of our interactions with our living places!
How to unmask the disguised cooking oil from natural oil?!
In recent years, some traders were found to have recycled cooked oil and added to lard in order to reduce production costs. This oil mixture undoubtedly raised food hygiene and safety issues in the food industry. The big question is, how can we distinguish the disguised animal oil from their natural counterparts?
Smart Bandages for Wound Monitoring
“Smart” bandages – or bandages that provide real-time monitoring of the health and progress of wound healing are here!
Revealing the inside story behind the break-up of water
In this article, let’s hear the inside story of how water has broken up by means of computation!
Simple Measurement of Alcohol Content with an Infrared Camera
Title: One-Shot, reagent-free determination of the alcoholic content of distilled beverages by thermal infrared enthalpimetry Authors: Juliano Barin et. al. Publication Info: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2017.05.011 During the manufacture of chemical products, the ability to rapidly and accurately monitoring the concentrations of various components is critical. For the alcoholic beverage industry,…
How a method is recognised as a method? – an example by a honey story
You are what you eat and we want to be safe with what we eat. We rely on testing methods as our guards, but how do we know if they are qualified?
Health Assessment in Your Home via Disposable Breath Analysis Sensors
Title: Diagnosis and Classification of 17 Diseases from 1404 Subjects via Pattern Analysis of Exhaled Molecules Authors: Hossam Haick et al. Publication Info: ACS Nano, 2017, 11 (1), pp 112–125 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b04930 This work reports on the development of a portable, inexpensive, and non-invasive breath analyzer that couples the use…
A Simple Approach for Developing Inexpensive and Sustainable Metal Catalysts
In order to keep catalyst-based industries sustainable and profitable, new catalysts need to be developed that utilize inexpensive, earth-abundant materials. The authors here present a novel method for easily forming stable earth-abundant metal catalysts, which are inexpensive and sustainable alternatives to precious-metal catalysts.
Quantifying the Effects of Individual Nanoparticles
Title: Electrocatalytic Activity of Individual Pt Nanoparticles Studied by Nanoscale Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy Authors: Jiyeon Kim, Christophe Renault, Nikoloz Nioradze, Netzahualcóyotl Arroyo-Currás, Kevin C. Leonard, and Allen J. Bard* Publication Info: J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2016, 138 (27), pp 8560–8568 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b03980 The mere mention of…
Continuing the pesticide analysis journey: peeking into different LC-MS instrumentation
This article will be focusing on a very commonly used instrumentation, Liquid Chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Who wins in the battle between LC-QqQ, QTOF, TOF?
How much pesticides are in your food? – Sample preparation in a nutshell
How do we know we are safe with what we eat? Here, the authors introduce a fast and easy way to dig out the pesticides from our food for analysis.
A Simple Organometallic Fluoride Sensor
Title: Stibonium Ions for the Fluorescence Turn-On Sensing of F– in Drinking Water at Parts per Million Concentrations DOI: 10.1021/ja308194w Author: Iou-Sheng Ke a, Mykhaylo Myahkostupov b, Felix N. Castellano *b, and François P. Gabbaï *a Journal: Journal of American Chemical Society Affiliation: a) Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University, College…
Quantum coherence and energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes
Title: Electronic coherence lineshapes reveal hidden excitonic correlations in photosynthetic light harvesting, Nature Chemistry 2012 Authors: Cathy Y. Wong, Richard M. Alvey, Daniel B. Turner, Krystyna E. Wilk, Donald A. Bryant, Paul M. G. Curmi, Robert J. Silbey and Gregory D. Scholes Take-home importance according to the…
Harry: Do you know my blood type?……………….. Riddle’s Diary: Yes
Paper-Based Blood Typing Device That Reports Patient’s Blood Type “in Writing” Li, M.; Tian, J.; Al-Tamimi, M.; Shen, W. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012 …
Online Resources for Doing Organic Chemistry
Yes!!! 100% conversion to product, zero impurities, and a workup so easy I finished it while writing this sentence!Well, that’s what writing it down on an o-chem problem set might make it seem like at least. Turns out doing organic chemistry in practice isn’t so straightforward,…
Copper (I) Hydroxide–Cuprice
Chemists probably would not willingly search for CuOH unless there is some theoretical basis for its existence. Without changing the oxidation states, a readied reaction could be 2 CuOH –> Cu2O + H2O. Its existence has been speculated on, now the really interesting work begins with the compound’s isolation (for a synthetic chemist).
Controlling Nanoscale Architecture – Stepping Towards Synthetic Light Harvesting Complexes
Title: Anisotropic Organization and Microscopic Manipulation of Self-Assembling Synthetic Porphyrin Microrods That Mimic Chlorosomes: Bacterial Light-Harvesting Systems Journal of the American Chemical Society Authors: Chappaz-Gillot, C., Marek, P. L., Blaive, B. J., Canard, G., Bürck, J., Garab, G., Hahn, H., Jávorfi, T., Kelemen, L., Krupke, R., Mössinger, D., Ormos,…
The ChemCam Instrument Suite on the Mars Science Laboratory Rover Curiosity: Remote Sensing by Laser-Induced Plasmas
Title: The ChemCam Instrument Suite on the Mars Science Laboratory Rover Curiosity: Remote Sensing by Laser-Induced Plasmas Authors: Wiens, R. C., S. Maurice, and the ChemCam Team Journal: Geochemical News Affiliations: Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Institute de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (France) Take Home Importance According to Authors: The ChemCam…
Thanksgiving chemistry- cranberries and your blood
To do the biological study of how particular (good) chemicals like antioxidants affect people, there needs to be a quick, reliable, and consistent way to measure those chemicals in humans. Furthermore, a good method would test for multiple chemicals, because the health benefits from some chemicals only exist in the presence of others (phenolic acids and flavonoids in this case). The authors of this paper demonstrate a gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS) method to investigate how some of the chemicals present in cranberries (from cranberry juice) go into your bloodstream after you ingest them.
Stack Exchange Strategies for the Synthesis of Covalent Double-Channel Photosystems by Self-Organizing Surface-Initiated Polymerization
Title: Stack Exchange Strategies for the Synthesis of Covalent Double-Channel Photosystems by Self-Organizing Surface-Initiated Polymerization Authors: N. Sakai and S. Matile Journal: Journal of the American Chemical Society Affiliation: University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Take Home Importance: Well-ordered polymeric ‘columns’ of different chromophores in the same polymer were prepared…
Molecular-scale versions of diodes invert “normal” diode behavior
Article Title: Inverse Rectification in Donor-Acceptor Molecular Heterojunctions Authors: Shannon K. Yee, Jibin Sun, Pierre Darancet, T. Don Tilley, Arun Majumdar, Jeffrey B. Neaton, and Rachel A. Segalman Journal: ACS Nano Affiliation: University of California- Berkeley: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Department of…
Belt-Shaped π-Systems: Relating Geometry to Electronic Structure in a Six-Porphyrin Nanoring
Title: Belt-Shaped π-Systems: Relating Geometry to Electronic Structure in a Six-Porphyrin Nanoring Authors: J. K. Sprafke, D. V. Kondratuk, M. Wykes, A. L. Thompson, M. Hoffmann, R. Drevinskas, W.H. Chen, C. K. Yong, J. K€arnbratt, J. E. Bullock, M. Malfois, M. R. Wasielewski, B. Albinsson, L. M. Herz, D. Zigmantas, D.…