A feature of a blog which is quite different from a journal article is how rapidly a topic might evolve. Thus I started a few days ago with the theme of dicarbon (C 2 ), identifying a metal carbide that showed C 2 as a ligand, but which also entrapped a single carbon in hexa-coordinated mode.
The title of this post summarises the contents of a new molecular database: www.molecularspace.org[cite]10.1021/jz200866s[/cite] and I picked up on it by following the post by Jan Jensen at www.compchemhighlights.org (a wonderful overlay journal that tracks recent interesting articles). The molecularspace project more formally is called “ The Harvard Clean Energy Project: Large-scale computational screening and design of organic
A comment made on the previous post on the topic of hexa-coordinate carbon cited an article entitled “ Observation of hypervalent CLi 6 by Knudsen-effusion mass spectrometry ”[cite]10.1038/355432a0[/cite] by Kudo as a amongst the earliest of evidence that such species can exist (in the gas phase). It was a spectacular vindication of the earlier theoretical
C 2 (dicarbon) is certainly interesting from a theoretical point of view. Whether or not it can be described as having a quadruple bond has induced much passionate discussion[cite]10.1038/nchem.1263[/cite],[cite]10.1002/anie.201208206[/cite],[cite]10.1002/anie.201301485[/cite],[cite]10.1002/anie.201302350[/cite]. Its occurrence in space and in flames is also well-known.
A reader asked me about the mechanism of the reaction of 2-picoline N-oxide with acetic anhydride to give 2-acetoxymethylpyridine (the Boekelheide Rearrangement[cite]10.1002/ejoc.201000936[/cite]). He wrote “ I don’t understand why the system should prefer to go via fragmentation-recombination (… the evidence being that oxygen labelling shows scrambling) when there is an easy concerted pathway available (… a
The blog post by Rich Apodaca entitled “ The Horrifying Future of Scientific Communication ” is very thought provoking and well worth reading. He takes us through disruptive innovation, and how it might impact upon how scientists communicate their knowledge. One solution floated for us to ponder is that “ supporting Information, combined with data mining tools, could eliminate most of the need for manuscripts in the first place ”.
A little while ago, I set out some interpretations of how to push curly arrows.
Many moons ago, when I was a young(ish) lecturer, and much closer in time to my laboratory roots of organic synthesis, I made some chemistry videos. One of these has resurfaced, somewhat (to me at least) unexpectedly. Nowadays of course, such demonstrations are all carried out using virtual simulations (Flash animations etc) as the equipment itself becomes less common.
In a time of change, we often do not notice that Δ = ∫δ. Here I am thinking of network bandwidth, and my personal experience of it over a 46 year period. I first encountered bandwidth in 1967 (although it was not called that then). I was writing Algol code to compute the value of π, using paper tape to send the code to the computer. Unfortunately, the paper tape punch was about 10 km from that computer.
A few years ago, we published an article which drew a formal analogy between chemistry and iTunes (sic )[cite]10.1021/ci060139e[/cite]. iTunes was the first really large commercial digital music library, and a feature under-the-skin was the use of meta-data to aid discoverability of any of the 10 million (26M in 2013) or so individual items in the store. ‡ The analogy to digital chemistry and discoverability of
