Comments(0) I found these two videos. Chemistry made simple and funny. It’s wotrh a look. They both are very similar, but I think two scenes are a little different (one is telling you why noble gases do not bond), so watch them both. It’s hilarious.
Comments(0) These days I have discovered an extension for MediaWiki, which makes it pretty easy to embed MarvinView Applets provided by ChemAxon into MediaWiki-articles. This page shows how to do it. A nice feature is the possibility to visuaolize molcules in 2d by entering a SMILES-string. The other extension adds a button to the article editor of MediaWiki, which can be used to draw a molecule in MarvinSketch an hand it over to MediaWiki.
One problem I discovered is, that it doesn’t seem to work on MediaWiki releases newer than 1.10.x. But since many extensions don’t do that, in my opinion it isn’t clever to use a newer release anyway.
Comments(0) Since using MediaWiki as an eLearning-system for chemistry students shall become part of my diploma thesis, I wanted to embed Jmol as a visualization for molecules. Nicolas Vervelle (admin of the Jmol Wiki), wrote a very nice MediaWiki extension, that makes embedding the Jmol applet very easy. So far so good. When I tried to install the extension on MediaWiki 1.12 nothing worked. After some conversation with Nicolas he found that his extension uses some technology that got changed from 1.11 to 1.12. Within a few days he fixed the issue. Thanks again for that. So now the nice visualization of 3d molecules is possible in MediaWiki 1.12.
Comments(2) This very short short-film won´t ever get an oscar, but it is the very first time, scientist keep an electron on film. They used an ultrafast flashing laser strobe to make the movement visible. The video shows an electron in motion on a lightwave shortly after parting from an atom.
Due to their extremely fast movements, taking photographs or films of electrons wasn´t possible yet. Using flashes of laser that are as short as 1*10^-18 seconds and strong enough to create images, the scientists from Lund University , Sweden managed to make this film. The 3 seconds of this video are a pretty much slown down version of the scene to make it visible.
Obviously motivated by their recent successes the scientists already plan the sequel, with focus on an atom left by an inner electron. And they mentioned the possibility of watching the behaviour of electrons colliding with objects.
Sounds very dramatic but interesting. 
Cheers!
Comments(0) Instantly after my exam I got a bad cold. Every time I get one, Paracetamol becomes one of my best friends, and so this time. One just feels a little better after a dose of 500 – 1000 mg. Reason enough for me to write something about it. By looking at the structure one recognizes, how similar it is to other pain relievers like Ibuprofen, Diclofenac and Aspirin. This becomes clearer when you learn more about the mechanism of action. All three of them are inhibitors of the Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2).
But Paracetamol is a non-selective inhibitor, so it doesn’t use the active site of COX-2. Read more »
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jan | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
1984 by George Orwell
Gomorrha: Reise in das Reich der Camorra by Roberto Saviano
