Drink your pharmaceuticals

An interesting report on the state of our drinking water appeared today on CNN. We've often heard of municipal drinking water being polluted with things like lead, MTBA, pesticides, etc. But this report talks about finding lots of different pharmaceuticals in our drinking water - everything from sex hormones to antibiotics to, yep, antidepressants. Actually in some places more than 50 different drugs were detected. While the amounts are very tiny (ppb or ppt) very little is known about the effects of even small amounts of drugs over a long period of time like decades. I think Dr. David Carpenter says it best:

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

Depressed?

Depression seems to be the illness of the 21st century and for more than 15 years Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors have been the pill of choice. Yes, the number of prescriptions of these antidepressants (effexor, prozac, seroxat, etc) has increased exponentially. So much so that these drugs being excreted by humans is negatively affecting wildlife. With all the billions of dollars being spent on these drugs has anyone ever asked the question, Do they help? Well, psychologists at the University of Hull have reviewed the results of about 50 clinical trials. Their conclusions? SSRI antidepressants do not really seem to provide a benefit to most people as compared to placebos. Sure, there's a little evidence that they help to some extent the most severely depressed, but the large majority of the millions of prescriptions really are doing nothing but causing gender confusion among the fish and frogs.

The Air Has Landed

The good, the bad and the ugly. Well, there's absolutely nothing ugly about the macbook air. It's absolutely gorgeous. Thin thin thin. It is much sturdier and lighter than I expected. It feels weightless. HUGE plusses for design and portability. The keyboard feels great. The screen looks fantastic. You can see some comparisons with my 15" macbook pro. It's definitely smaller by a long shot. I love the lighted keyboard. It seems to function even better than my MBP. 

As for performance, it's not the quickest horse out of the gate but it certainly wasn't as pokey as I expected based on the reviews out there. For most major tasks - keynote, pages, word, web browsing - it performs just fine. It even compared with my 2.0 GHz MBP in iphoto - granted with far fewer photos in the library. I don't need anything more intensive really, so this is good.

Did I mention it was thin? I can hardly tell it's in my bag when I carry it around. That's exactly what I need for traveling. For this reason it is fantastic for me.

One thing I noticed was that the charger works either way it is plugged in. I know some people have complained that the cord bends too much when plugged in if the plug is behind you. No worries. You can just attach the connector the other way around and no more 180 cord bending. The one negative thing that I would say is a real fault is the slow slow battery charging. I just noticed that it is only 35% charged after an hour plugged in when it was down to 15%. Apple, without a replaceable battery, you need to do better than this! Hopefully this can be resolved with a software update soon.

Overall I give this one Three Thumbs Up!

Something in the air

And it will be in my hands some time today! Just in time for me to take it on the plane tomorrow. Yes, the new Macbook Air is a perfect travel partner. I'll give you my review of it soon.

A new precatalyst for Heck Reactions

It's a beauty, isn't it? I mean, look at that monster! And it packs 4 palladium atoms per catalyst too. It just appeared in Organometallics (DOI: 10.1021/om7005613). They actually coupled together iodobenzene and styrene. The cool thing about this is that they could tune the reactivity of the catalyst by changing the metal complexed in the middle of the porphyrin. With M=MnCl it took almost 400 minutes for the reaction to complete, but with M=Mg it only took about 200 minutes. Ok, seriously. I don't mean to pick on Bart M. J. M. Suijkerbuijk, Sara D. Herreras Martínez, Gerard van Koten, and Robertus J. M. Klein Gebbink, but I really don't understand what the purpose of this research is. I guess you can get some understanding about the electronic nature of pincer ligands, but no one in their right mind would ever use something like this for a Heck reaction. It is pretty though. It even weighs 10 times more than your substrate. I guess that makes for easy weighing. Let's say you use 10 mol% of the catalyst. You can just use the same mass as iodobenzene and you're good to go.

Busy as a bee

That is me and why I have not posted lately. I still plan to. Don't give up on me. I'm still finding a few minutes here and there to read an article or two. If only the days were 72 hours long. *sigh*

Anyway, there's lots of buzz about Apple's new Macbook Air. Lots of negative comments going around on the mac forums. I don't understand this. Sure, this computer is not for everyone. Sure, this computer could not replace a primary computer. But let's be honest. This is a computer for travelers. This computer is ideal for me. I can't wait to get my hands on one. In the last five years I can't think of a single time I have used my optical drive while on a trip. Rarely have I ever had to use an ethernet cable while on the road and in the last two years I have never needed an ethernet cable. Who's going to travel with bulky firewire peripherals in their carry on bag? All these arguments against the macbook air are ludicrous. Obviously made by people who don't go on frequent short trips. So I ordered one as soon as they were announced.

 I know this is a chemistry blog. So let's talk about chemistry. This is the first laptop with a mercury free LCD display. And the glass contains no arsenic.

methyl 7-chloro-6,7,8-trideoxy-6-(1-methyl-trans-4-propyl-L-2-pyrrolidinecarboxamido)-1-thio-L-threo-α-D-galacto-octopyranoside 2-(dihydrogen phosphat

Man, the name can't even fit in the title field! Maybe the structure will help. I caught me a nasty bug in my leg that's been growing ever since turkey day and this bad boy is trying to keep it in check. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's doing a very effective job. I may need to get it in IV form. More and more antibiotic resistant bacteria are making an appearance. Get out there and discover some new drugs. Please! By the way, this one tastes like shit. I am pumped so full of it I can taste it oozing out into my mouth.

Hope you all had a better holiday.

Let's Talk Turkey

It is only a couple days away from the Thanksgiving holiday here in America. I love it. A whole day dedicated to stuffing a bird then stuffing yourself full of fats, carbs, and tryptophan. We get to laze around on the couch watching football and make serotonin out of that gobbler. Yes, eating turkey is thought to increase the amounts of this wonderful neurotransmitter and make you sleepy. Of course tryptophan is also the starting material for the production of melatonin, another inducer of drowsiness. Personally I think it is more likely that all the beer and wine being consumed is what leads to thanksgiving day couch potato syndrome. By the way, a recent study reported in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture (that one is on everyone's daily reading list, no?) indicates that red wines have a significant amount of melatonin.

Gone but not forgotten

Albert I. Meyers
November 22, 1932 - October 23, 2007

I was deeply saddened to hear that Al has passed away. He has been an inspiration to me for a long time. A genuinely nice man, he always encouraged students and colleagues to fulfill their potential. I remember as a young graduate student giving my first talk at an ACS meeting how nervous I was. Afterward Al came up to introduce himself and tell me what a good job I had done. Thanks Al, that did more for my confidence than anything else in my career. Organic Chemistry lost a great one this week. Rest in peace, Al.

Happy Mole Day

Happy Holiday Everyone! I think we all need to take the day off and spread the good word about Avogadro. Is anyone else celebrating?