ChemCafé

A couple of months ago, I had to struggle very hard in order to be allowed to use osmium tetroxide for my experiments. Safety rules enforced at my institute make it almost impossible to obtain this apparently super toxic compound… so my curiosity was excited when I found a paper in PNAS (also commented on [...]

A recent issue of Nature featured a series of articles on global warming. Not that it is particularly new, but the interest here was that it was a mix of papers dealing with the current situation and its probable evolution over the next century – with all the likely consequences knocking at our (not well [...]

Last week we enjoyed in Lausanne the long expected visit and talk by Prof. Makoto Fujita, from the University of Tokyo. Since my undergrad supramolecular chemistry courses I had been fascinated and intrigued by the macrocycles and cages that regularly popped up from the Fujita lab, so the idea of watching him giving a talk [...]

If you had appreciated the PCR song (still can’t believe the guy kisses the thermo-cycler…) or the famous epMotion video, it’s likely you’ll also like these commercials for SciFinder… They really make it look like an exceptional instrument, allowing you to succeed easily in research, but also making you so much happier in the out-of-the-lab [...]

Following recent fears of a potential influenza pandemic, anti-viral drugs are receiving substantial media coverage. Among them is oseltamivir, marketed by Roche under the trade name Tamiflu. But, how is it working? What is the chemistry behind this strange name? What is a neuraminidase inhibitor? Here are some answers…
Tamiflu is often refered to as a [...]

Doing my weekly lit overview, I found on the Chem Comm Advance articles page a review, which title immediately attracted my eye. During my studies, I learnt how chemists can be smart when having to coin new names for molecules and techniques – think for example about the DEAD reagent, the INADEQUATE NMR technique, or [...]