David Bradley Science Writer writes the monthly news column for three sections of the SpectroscopyNOW.com site - Spectral Lines, Resonants and X-factors.
The latest issue of our nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy webzine is now online - Resonants
| Good and bad cholesterol | |
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NMR can distinguish between lipoproteins in medical samples. Now, US researchers have used the technique to show that severely obese children have lipoprotein profiles indicative of the risk of early cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. |
| Nuclear gyroscope | |
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A property familiar to anyone who has spun a child's spinning top, precession, can be recreated at the atomic scale, according to US physicists. A nuclear spin gyroscope built from an alkali metal and a noble gas has been developed by researchers at Princeton University. The device could be used for highly accurate, but compact, aerospace navigation systems and for high accuracy geological and meteorological experiments. |
| Corpora non agunt nisi solute. Not! | |
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One of the sacred cows of synthetic chemistry seems to have gone mad. According to US organic chemists, they have found that they don't need to dissolve their reagents in a solvent to make a reaction proceed. Rather, they simply "vigorously mix" the starting materials in water pure and simple to form a suspension of tiny organic droplets and the reaction takes place. Their NMR evidence shows that organic and non-polar reagents are definitely not "dissolved" in the water, as any chemist, would expect, but that the reaction can proceed just as effectively if not more so despite this. |