A magazine providing a snapshot of the latest developments across the chemical sciences.
Issue 1
Getting rid of nasty chloro-phenols
Chlorophenols are highly toxic compounds, used as pesticides and disinfectants, for which oxidation by hydrogen peroxide is the prime treatment process. Gábor Lente, University of Debrecen, Hungary, and James Espenson, Iowa State University, US, have studied the kinetic efficiencies of several iron catalysts in this reaction. They compared efficiencies using a standardized set of simple experiments-rather than using only one catalyst and more complex analytical procedures-to determine the best catalyst taking several different requirements into account.
Tag with biomolecule
Herman Overkleeft and colleagues at Leiden University, The Netherlands, and Harvard Medical School, US, survey chemical labelling techniques as tools in the study of biomolecules. Examples include the use of chemically modified metabolic precursors, the tagging of fusion proteins with synthetic probes and the tagging of enzymes with activity-based probes. The researchers emphasise the potential application of these techniques in fundamental biochemistry, pharmaceutics and medicine.
No protection required
Thomas Kaden and co-workers at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have developed a route to new difunctionalized macrocycles without the need for costly protection steps. Addition of hydride to a copper macrocycle containing two identical side chains results in only one of the side chains being modified. The hydride ligand is key to the reaction as it not only instigates the process but also binds the end-product ensuring that the other side chain does not react.
World's smallest test tube
Verified in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's smallest test tube, David Britz and colleagues from the University of Oxford and the University of Nottingham, UK, have carried out reactions to form linear, unbranched polymers inside a single-walled carbon nanotube. With a diameter of approximately 1.2 nanometres and a length of 2 micrometers, the total volume of the vessel is one yoctolitre (10-24 litres). The resulting 'peapod' structure offers new routes for the synthesis of novel materials.
Essential Elements
Celebrations all round at RSC journals
2005 is a momentous year for RSC Publishing, with two of its prestigious journals celebrating milestone anniversaries.
A Lab on a Chip special delivery
Lab on a Chip moves from strength to strength in 2005 by doubling in frequency to monthly issues and starts the year with a cutting-edge special issue on cell biology.
The RSC book, Clean Energy, has been well-received by the UK's Select Committee on Science and Technology
Research Highlights
Evidence that nanoparticles might damage DNA adds to debate
Lining up to revolutionise electronics
Dye molecules in hybrid nanomaterials are manipulated to behave like diodes
Reading polymer chains in Reading
Sequence-recognition in synthetic chemistry akin to biological systems
Supercritical problems dissolved
The possibility of using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) as a cheap and effective reaction medium may soon become a reality thanks to a team of UK scientists.
Improving asymmetric reactions
New breed of organocatalysts is set to improve on existing systems
A new way to gather chemical information quickly and cheaply has been developed by UK chemists
A new class of a specific organic reaction looks set to provide a useful approach to making functionalised organic building blocks for natural products.
Spontaneous self-building silicate structures
A new way to make silicate nanoparticles that spontaneously self-assemble.
Corrosion-resistant, stable magnetic nanomaterials have been made by German researchers
Inorganic synthesis in the spotlight
Canadian chemists are developing a new general way to make platinum-phosphorus bonds
Arsenic donors gratefully received
A groundbreaking mixed donor diamido-diarsine [As2N2] macrocyclic ligand that coordinates to a series of early transition metals (ETMs) has been designed
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