tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530Fri, 25 Aug 2017 19:26:45 +0000Rantings, ravings, comments, and criticisms from the world of chemistry.http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)Blogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-6510660398681403439Sat, 09 Nov 2013 18:55:00 +00002013-11-09T18:55:56.985+00:00If you're a regular reader (hello, both of you!) you may have noticed a slight gap in the update schedule since, er, July. One of the great pleasures of having only a small following is being able to sod off for a few months without upsetting anyone. I imagine if ChemBark or Derek Lowe did so, their inboxes would very quickly fill with confused messages checking if they were still breathing... http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-this-thing-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-2709770033413549790Sat, 09 Nov 2013 18:38:00 +00002013-11-09T18:38:46.492+00:00 The Economist's "daily chart" from October 21st came with a striking headline: "Why most published scientific research is probably false". The accompanying video explains that under certain assumptions, we are drawn inexorably to the conclusion that most scientific results are false. I won't outline their logic here: the video is only a minute and a half long, so go ahead and watch it. I'll http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/11/unlikely-results.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-8503784954772225429Sun, 13 Oct 2013 11:49:00 +00002013-10-13T12:49:26.774+01:00 This month's review is by Chad Jones, who is finishing up his PhD studying ion-neutral gas phase interactions. He blogs and podcasts at The Collapsed Wavefunction. The most amazing type of chemistry is supramolecular chemistry. Now, you may or may not agree with that statement, but it is my goal in this review to at least convince you that supramolecular chemistry is among the most amazing.  http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/10/chemclub-reviews-cucurbiturils.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-5221128510197409761Sun, 08 Sep 2013 18:59:00 +00002013-09-08T19:59:21.573+01:00 This month's review is by Kat, aka the Grumpy Chemist, a PhD student working on Pd-catalysed reactions. You can find her on Twitter as @Chemistry_Kat. Biaryls – what are they good for anyway? Biaryls are those nice, flat little structures that are very common in natural products, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals or even functional materials and make one forget that there’s such thing as http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/09/chemclub-reviews-c-h-activation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-723898498641968974Fri, 02 Aug 2013 15:10:00 +00002013-08-02T16:10:40.485+01:00This month's review is by JessTheChemist, who did her PhD working with fluorine chemistry, and is now a postdoc researching chiral amines. She blogs at The Organic Solution. Fluorine, why do I love thee so? Although I am no longer a fluorine chemist, I thought that I would take you on a journey into what was the background of my PhD research all those years ago. Interest in this small but http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/08/chemclub-reviews-fluorinated-drugs.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jess B)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-3437751252728328532Fri, 12 Jul 2013 17:40:00 +00002013-07-13T02:59:16.243+01:00Over at Pharyngula, Chris Clarke has some pointed words for douchebags chemists about a popular satire of chemophobia: the dangerous and ubiquitous chemical DHMO, or dihydrogen monoxide. It's a pretty popular hashtag on Twitter and I'm not exempt from joining in the joke, so Chris' criticism includes me. In brief, his point is that this joke unfairly mocks the uneducated: The dihydrogen http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/07/punching-up-chemophobia-and-dhmo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-3772073060839763909Wed, 10 Jul 2013 21:50:00 +00002013-07-10T22:50:54.394+01:00 This month’s review looks at the Pummerer rearrangement. I first met this reaction as an undergraduate and liked it for a few reasons: for one thing, it worked well! It has a simple mechanism that can lead to diverse behaviour and is always nice in group problem sessions. This brief discussion will cover the basic details of the reaction and a few interesting variants. The Pummerer http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/07/chemclub-reviews-pummerer-reaction.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-170158802134242235Sun, 30 Jun 2013 19:28:00 +00002013-06-30T20:28:54.197+01:00Once again, here's a roundup of the best of the #chemclub Twitter feed from the last two weeks. (Confused? Read this.) The second review will go online early in this week; this unfortunately coincides with the death of Google Reader tomorrow. If somehow you both use this reader and live under a rock, you may need a replacement; personally I'm using Feedly, which now has a pretty green button on http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/06/chemclub-roundup-12.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-4302657267526087247Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:02:00 +00002013-06-18T20:02:20.720+01:00Last week there was an online campaign to create pressure to publish negative results. The potential benefits are obvious, and are nicely summed up in the cartoon by Nik Papageorgiou: if we had a database (like Reaxys) of "stuff that doesn't work", we could all save time, effort, and money going down futile routes. Much of it has been coming from biological quarters, but it's something that http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/06/acc-chem-fail.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-3329184736707887708Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:19:00 +00002013-06-16T20:19:17.240+01:00Here's the usual roundup of papers from the #chemclub Twitter feed and various chemistry blogs in the last fortnight. If you're not sure what #chemclub is, click here. Derek Lowe highlighted the recent Carreira paper in Science, which appeared in the last roundup. He summarises this impressive work nicely. The ever-prolific SeeArrOh wrote up several papers, including a JACS paper on the http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/06/chemclub-roundup-11.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-7819660927023039844Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:00:00 +00002013-06-04T22:48:26.358+01:00Here are some highlights from the #chemclub Twitter feed in the last two weeks. The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that #chemclub was featured in the Blogroll column of this month's Nature Chemistry. Thanks to Dr. Jay for the kind writeup! Starting this month I've expanded the scope of #chemclub to include monthly articles about different topics in chemistry by various authors. The http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/06/chemclub-roundup-10.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-4198898676955505874Sat, 01 Jun 2013 21:13:00 +00002013-06-01T22:14:03.849+01:00Welcome to the first in a new series: #chemclub reviews. Every month there'll be a short article about an area of chemistry, the idea being to allow readers who are only vaguely familiar with a topic to learn some more as quickly and painlessly as possible. I hope that these will be a useful supplement to your regular reading! The key goal is to provide you with context, or the 'big picture' of http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/06/chemclub-reviews-protocells.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-6091300129653289167Mon, 27 May 2013 19:07:00 +00002013-05-27T20:07:28.297+01:00 Chemistry blogger BRSM is leaving to do a post-doc in the USA pretty soon. Jess from The Organic Solution arranged for a group of us to pass on our wisdom to him, in the hopes it'll help him excel in his new role. She's provided a set of questions for people to answer (a full list of responses is available at her blog). As you might imagine a mere PhD student like me has very little advice http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/05/bye-bye-brsm.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-5770048158337927277Sun, 19 May 2013 17:40:00 +00002013-05-19T18:40:00.286+01:00A quick round-up of posts to #chemclub from the past fortnight. Last week, #chemclub was featured at Grand CENtral - so hello to any new readers! On the blogs, a few papers have been discussed in depth. At It's The Rheo Thing, John talks about the glass transition of Teflon, which turns out to be pretty involved. Both C&EN and In the Pipeline featured a recent Science paper about iron-catalysed http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/05/chemclub-roundup-9.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-6866784124966588608Sun, 05 May 2013 16:27:00 +00002013-05-05T17:27:28.202+01:00Here's the regular roundup of papers posted to #chemclub. For the first time I'm including recent blog posts that discuss individual papers, as I mentioned earlier this week. If you've seen any around that I've missed, leave a link in the comments below. #chemclub will be expanding further soon; if you want to get involved, get in touch! From around the web come a couple of very nice articles. http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/05/chemclub-roundup-8.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-3243887846904442630Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:59:00 +00002013-04-30T10:59:03.966+01:00 #chemclub has been running successfully for a couple of months now. This is all down to the people who take time to contribute regularly, so thank you! I hope it's proven interesting and useful. I've been thinking about ways to expand #chemclub. The first step is blogs - there are plenty of great writers out there covering individual papers in depth. There's been some discussion about the http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemclub-reloaded.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-6002290931005602975Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:19:00 +00002013-04-28T23:04:38.260+01:00It's the end of #RealTimeChem week and it's been great fun. Kudos to Dr. Jay and everyone else behind it! In addition to the regular round-up of #chemclub highlights, I'm going to pick out some of the best of #RealTimeChem week. My favourite thing about this week was the chance to speak to a lot of new people and find new blogs. You might notice that the blogroll (over to your right) has been http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemclub-roundup-realtimechem-edition.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-9114057039524778229Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:50:00 +00002013-04-26T16:29:42.521+01:00 Day five of #RealTimeChem week, and the final post in my series about classic chemistry papers. These quick reads have covered topics varying from chromatography to crystallography, focusing on ubiquitous techniques and revolutionary discoveries. Today I want to discuss a truly foundational paper which describes a single-step synthesis. The original paper is in German, so I am using the http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-classics-foundation-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-8710737594652017516Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:09:00 +00002013-04-26T10:50:03.881+01:00 #RealTimeChem week has passed the halfway point, and we've reached the penutlimate post in my series of five classic chemistry papers. These are meant to be quick coffee-break reads covering classic papers from across chemistry; we've covered flash chromatography, NMR spectroscopy, and prebiotic synthesis. 2013 is a significant year indeed. This year we may well have seen history in the makinghttp://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-classics-x-ray-diffraction.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-4864253086249551188Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:18:00 +00002013-04-24T10:18:41.058+01:00 #RealTimeChem week rolls on to day three, and part three of 'chemistry classics' is here. This series of five posts is intended to give you a quick dip into the history of chemistry with a look at classic papers. The first two posts covered purification and analysis techniques; today, we're looking at some synthesis! In honour of Nature Chemistry's focus on prebiotic chemistry this month, andhttp://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-classics-prebiotic-chemistry.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-7965645384039355763Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:55:00 +00002013-04-23T09:55:27.583+01:00 Day two of #RealTimeChem week, and here's post two of five in my series about classic chemistry papers. This is meant to be a quick read to give you an idea of where the techniques organic chemists use every day originated. Today: James T. Arnold, Srinivas S. Dharmatti, and Martin E. Packard, "Chemical Effects On Nuclear Induction Signals From Organic Compounds", J. Phys. Chem. 1951, 19, 507.http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-classics-nmr-spectroscopy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-8261968219931094680Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:08:00 +00002013-04-22T09:09:05.933+01:00 It's #RealTimeChem week! I'm contributing a series of five posts about classic, foundational papers in organic chemistry. #chemclub classics, if you will. Each day this week I'll post a quick read about a paper which has profoundly affected the work of organic chemists. I'm just going to give a quick outline for historical interest - something you can read while you post your tweets to #http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-classics-flash-chromatography.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-9178388183094692818Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:12:00 +00002013-04-20T20:12:41.001+01:00Over at The Collapsed Wavefunction, Chad Jones is talking about a paper in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling (admittedly not one that's on my regular reading list...) which includes a straight-faced endorsement of traditional Chinese medicine. His discussion of the paper and issues associated with it is good and definitely worth a read if you're into bad science. The crux of the http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/points-of-authority-blogsyn-and-peer.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-110759274253926751Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:13:00 +00002013-04-18T23:17:37.999+01:00 This post is part of the Chemistry at the Movies blog carnival started by SeeArrOh of Just Like Cooking. Head over there for a list of other posts. A while back, a friend and I grabbed a few drinks and settled in to watch the classic movie G.I. Joe: the Rise of COBRA. For those of you who somehow missed this historic motion picture event, it's an adaptation of the eponymous range of toys (http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemistry-at-movies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8573432209609574530.post-5455426459214550714Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:35:00 +00002013-04-22T11:06:05.444+01:00 Double edition! I spent last weekend drinking unhealthy amounts of coffee with old friends, and hence skipped the weekly round-up. On the plus side that means a bumper pack of #chemclub highlights from the last two weeks! If you've no idea what #chemclub is, read this. Several people shared what could prove to be a crucial paper from Nature. In brief: X-ray crystallography without the http://behindnmrlines.blogspot.com/2013/04/chemclub-roundup-week-6.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Bissette)2