Happy ‪#‎CincoDeMayo‬! Here’s Some Avocado Science To Mark The Occasion: Http://wp.me/p4aPLT-p9

Ooh, I love fluorescent compounds! It's a great reward for the long process of synthesis.

How incredible is this compound I made??! It’s an NBD amine, which is fluorescent and used for labeling compounds for fluorescence assays.

In this video, mixtures of inks (likely printer toners) and fluids move and swirl. Magnetic fields contort the ferrofluidic ink and make it dance, while less viscous fluids spread into their surroundings via finger-like protuberances. (Video credit and submission: Antoine Delach)

Science fight in the current issue of J Immunology.

Full article: http://www.compoundchem.com/2016/01/30/rejectedelements/

Pandemonium >> Americium

PUMPKIN-SPICED FLUORESCENCE

Inside a pumpkin, seeds don’t need much chlorophyll—the molecule that helps plants convert light into food—because there isn’t a lot of light deep inside the fruit’s flesh. Instead of chlorophyll, the green seeds are chock-full of protochlorophyllide, a highly fluorescent molecule that glows orange-red under ultraviolet light and can be converted into chlorophyll a by an enzyme in the seeds. The enzyme reduces protochlorophyllide to produce chlorophyll when the enzyme encounters light, which occurs only after the seed has left the pumpkin and therefore needs to start producing its own food so it can grow. Helmut Brandl, a science communicator and professor at ETH Zurich, extracted this protochlorophyllide by grinding up pumpkin seeds and mixing them with nail polish remover (bottom row).

Submitted by Helmut Brandl

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Related C&EN content:

Happy Little Plant Cells

Look Deep Inside

Rosalind Franklin at work on the microscope.

“Conclusion: Big helix in several chains, phosphates on outside, phosphate-phosphate inter-helical bonds disrupted by water. Phosphate links available to proteins.” — Rosalind Franklin

Underlined in typewritten lecture notes, with handwritten annotations, as report (7 Feb 1952) on ‘Colloquium November 1951’. As given in Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA(1975), 128.  

All the planets as one

Periodic table showing the cosmogenic origin of each element.

Via APOD

Original source: Wikimedia Commons (Nucleosynthesis periodic table)

Natural volcanic glass

Locality:

Rother Kopf, Roth, Gerolstein, Eifel, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Sample of a almost white sandstone xenolith with a gemmy piece of natural blue volcanic glass. Very unique color for natural glass.

Volker Betz’s Photo

Terrarium Lamps by Nui Studio Light Your Space with Suspended Ecosystems