New synthetic material (chameleon-like !) linked to opal ?

A new material could give a Chameleon a run for its money - it can rapidly change colour to match that of any in the visible spectrum.

The synthetic material can be likened to an opal, a mineral that owes its variety of colours to its layered structure: regions with a high refractive index, in which light travels slowly, are interleaved with regions with a low refractive index. Light waves with a wavelength - or colour - similar to that of the space between layers are scattered in a way that gives opal its iridescent sheen.

The chameleon-like "opal" developed by British and Canadian chemists has a similar layered structure. But their material goes one better than nature. It can rapidly shrink or swell to change the distance between its layered regions, changing the colour of light that it scatters (video).

Source :Newscientist, 23 December 2008.

Mystery of chirality from the elementary building blocks of matter resolved ?

The inception of chirality from the elementary building blocks of matter is one of the great mysteries of the origin of life. I think now this mystery is resolved and can be explained by Richard Rosenberg’s experiment, i.e., by changing the magnetization direction in relation to the high intensity X ray beam created an excess of one chirality over another. More…

A dipeptide as memory molecule ! ........

Ehud Gazit and his colleaugues at the University of Tel Aviv, Israel, have developed a novel approach for treatment of Alzheimer's disease. They have developed a compound made from two non-physiological amino acids (α-aminoisobutyric acid and D-tryptophan), that appears to improve the cognitive abilities of a murine model of the disease and reduces the formation of the precursors to amyloid plaques in their brains. I hope this interesting research, may lead to a hope for the Alzheimer patients......

A faster, cleaner and greener way to synthesize N-heterocycles…….

As for as my knowledge goes many of the drugs ( more than 200 brand-name drugs) are nitrogen-containing ring-shaped structure (N-heterocycle). Manufacturing these drugs depends on the ability to synthesize N-heterocycles, but most synthetic reactions take a long time (multiple steps) and produce toxic waste byproducts along with use of hazardous chemicals such as hydrazine hydrate or acid hydrazides etc. Driver and his coworkers have devised a chemical reaction that creates a carbon-nitrogen bond, such as in the N-heterocycle, using an azide. Driver's reaction reduces the number of steps needed to synthesize the N-heterocycle molecules along with this, the more advantage of this reaction is 'nitrogen gas' as the only by product. Its really interesting indoles, pyrroles, carbazoles and benzimidazoles have been synthesized in very good yields. Congrats Dr. Driver and I hope this group,will come with more N-Heterocycles via this azide route.…..