Since I have gotten into the habit of quoting some of my posts in other contexts, I have started to also archive them using WebCite. One can quote the resulting archive as: Rzepa, Henry. Quintuple bonds. 2010-04-18. URL:http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=1722. Accessed: 2010-04-18. (Archived by WebCite ® at http://www.webcitation.org/5p5BtuzSH) There is one issue though.
Scientific data in chemistry has come a long way in the last few decades. Originally entangled into scientific articles in the form of tables of numbers or diagrams, it was (partially) disentangled into supporting information when journals became electronic in the late 1990s.[1] The next phase was the introduction of data repositories in the early naughties.
Previously, I had noted that Corey reported in 1963/65 the total synthesis of the sesquiterpene dihydrocostunolide. Compound 16 , known as Eudesma-1,3-dien-6,13-olide was represented as shown below in black; the hydrogen shown in red was implicit in Corey’s representation, as was its stereochemistry. As of this instant, this compound is just one of 64,688,893 molecules recorded by Chemical Abstracts.
Way back in the late 1980s or so, research groups in chemistry started to replace the filing of their paper-based research data by storing it in an easily retrievable digital form. This required a computer database and initially these were accessible only on specific dedicated computers in the laboratory.
The science journal is generally acknowledged as first appearing around 1665 with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London and (simultaneously) the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. By the turn of the millennium, around 10,000 science and medical journals were estimated to exist.
In an era when alternative facts and fake news afflict us, the provenance of scientific data becomes ever more important. Especially if that data is available as open access and exploitable by others for both valid scientific reasons but potentially also by those with other motives.
Back in 1994, we published the crystal structure of the molecule below (X=H), a putative anti-malarial drug called halofantrine . Little did we realise that a whole area of organo catalysis based on a thiourea catalyst with a similar motif would emerge a little later. Here is how the two are connected. In our original article we described how our interest was sparked by observing the following chiral HPLC behaviour.
A Semantic blog is one in which the system at least in part understands about (some of the) concepts and topics that are in the content. The idea is that this content can be more intelligently (is that the correct word?) and importantly, automatically searched, harvested, and connected to the same or similar concepts found elsewhere in other blogs and the Web as whole.
The title of this post indicates the exciting prospect that a method of producing a room temperature superconductor has finally been achived[1]. This is only possible at enormous pressures however; >267 gigaPascals (GPa) or 2,635,023 atmospheres. The system is made by milling a mixture of elemental carbon and sulfur, followed by adding hydrogen gas, compression to 4 GPa and finally laser-induced photolysis at 532nm for several hours.
A month or so ago at a workshop I was attending, a speaker included in his introductory slide a QR (Quick Response) Code. It is a feature of most digital eco-systems that there is probably already “an app for it”. So I thought I would jump on the band wagon by coding an InChI string. Here it is below: QRCode for an InChI string. Point your smart device at it, and see the InChI appear!