mississippichem

Yeah, I think I said this in the other thread about this. Show me the [ce]^{75}As [/ce] of the DNA oligomer then I'll believe it. Until then, mass spec doesn't mean much. Great, there's arsenic somewhere in your sample... As you stated, on stability grounds, I doubt they will ever find arsenate subbed out for phosphate between the ribose sugars.

Have you used any other reagents to selectively protect a primary hydroxyl ( selectively against a secondary)? benzyl, dimethyl silyl, O-t-butyl? I was wondering because this is quite interesting, taking advantage of a small steric and electronic difference to get good selectivity. I'm not an organic chemist but I end up making organo-ligands all the time for my metal complexes. I'm really interested if this selective protection can be done with organo-silyl protecting groups. I like those groups because they are easily hydrolyzed off which is crucial when I have a metal center with a pH sensitive redox equilibrium, usually vanadium (III), ruthenium (III, IV), or osmium (II, III). Yes, good chemistry talk is hard to come by here. The best I get is usually with Horza here and confused freshmen biology majors who need help with general chem. I jump at the chance to talk synthesis or p-chem (which is my true love) with pros. This is the part of the thread where the chemists come out.

My novel compound was actually a ligand that was then used in the synthesis of another compound that was a mixed meal anti-cancer complex. It worked well in cell trials, (it cleaved DNA selectively by forcing one of the base pairs [at a specific site] into a high energy excited state by producing a singlet [spin configuration] oxygen species*) but was too toxic for rats. Folks in that lab [i worked there for a semester] are now tweaking the drug to try and get less toxicity. *no kinetic studies were conducted but similar mechanisms have been established in the literature and spin transition rules are indicative of the fact that a singlet oxygen species was involved.

I synthesized a novel compound last year; under professor supervision. I designed the synthesis and confirmed the structure independently though. Nothing revolutionary, but a new compound none the less.

What's the name of this compound?...Ferrous Wheel

If you're a conservative engineer, I would call you a good engineer. Conservative is the only way to be in engineering. Last words of a bad engineer: We can keep this under-budget and still make our deadline. We'll have to cut some corners but it will work, trust me.

That would make our lives too easy. We can't have that now can we? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The guy interviewed by O'reilley seems to be one of those atheists that doesn't know why he is one, he just knows he's right. The American Atheist Association should have sent a representative more akin to Dawkins or Hitchens. A no holds barred scientific or logical debater that wouldn't let O'reilley get away with a premature victory announcement. Any freshman STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] student could have "tool-bagged" O'reilley on the tides question and switched the tables of the debate to question O'reilley why he thinks a God is necessary to explain the tides. I would've asked for a sheet of paper and continued on to write: [math]F_{g}=\frac{-GMm}{r^{2}}\hat{r}[/math] Then asked O'reilly: I can explain the tides, can you? I guess that makes me God.

If it has an existence at all, I imagine that the extra [ce]H^+[/ce] would not have a full order sigma bond due to carbon's lack of available p-orbitals or lack d-orbitals to expand the hybrid, as you stated. It might exist very quickly as a van-der Waals complex under low molecular KE conditions. Van der Waal's complexes can seem to violate standard valency rules. Another, more extreme example is the oddity [ce][PbHe_{21}]^{2+}[/ce] ion. It is only metastable but can exist for long enough to conduct IR in a solid Argon matrix (cold as hell). And yes, thats [ce] He [/ce] not [ce] H [/ce]. Jahn-Teller distortion of said trigonal bi-pyramid would determine whether the [ce] CH_{5}^{+}[/ce] was an excited state bonded complex or a Van der Waals complex. if it undergoes Jahn-Teller distortion than we're dealing with partial order bonds here. Problem is, I doubt it lasts long enough to get a good IR and there is no way to get a good electron-diffraction pattern which would be ideal for discovering Jahn-Teller distortion.

I like the term naturalist and I use it to describe myself sometimes. Anything is possible in my paradigm as long as it doesn't involve any higher power or supernatural events. Materialist is nice as well because we believe that "what you see is what you get" when it comes to the universe. Edit: for the record, I voted for option #2. not believing in any of the listed deities or powers.

Wow, do you work in organic synthesis? I do coordination chem, so I'm easily tripped up by these carbohydrate reactions . I was wondering if there is a way to selectively activate the 6-hydroxyl to a tosyl? Will tosyl chloride sterically prefer that position?

Can you attempt to use your theory [varying speed of light] to explain the way anything works? NO...of course not. But I'd love to see you try. Seriously though, math is the purest science of all. If you don't understand this, you've no business arguing about the speed of light. Every discovery science makes is somehow facilitated by math. Have you ever seen a physics textbook? Most of the prose is filler between proofs and equations, or it serves to further explain what the equations are saying.

-Two electrons can be moved from the As=O bond to the As-O bond. The single and double bond effectively "switch out". If those [math] \pi [/math] electrons were moved to an As-O bond where the oxygen is linked to a hydrogen (As-O-H), then oxygen would be stuck with three bonds. There are actually many resonance structures but most of them are of significantly higher energy and make minimal contributions to the resonance hybrid. -Moving any of the single bonds would disconnect atoms from the molecule which violates the definition of a resonance structure. Breaking bonds and allowing charge separation falls under the umbrella of Dewar Structures. -Remember oxygen is a very electronegative element, and would usually prefer a negative formal charge or oxidation state.

Just the Facts, Give one example. Do you have any quantitative evidence or proofs to back this? I'll even settle for a phenomena indirectly caused by a varying speed of light. Do you even have any weak anecdotal evidence? That would be an improvement. Can you read English? If so, read your last couple of posts in speculations. You've yet to answer one criticism brought to you by myself, other posters, mods, and or experts. Don't try to link that website either, I've read through the links you've posted to the "thunder bolts" website and their defense of these outlandish theories is about on par with yours, somewhere between hilariously bad and profoundly stupid. Don't start that persecuted scientist rant either. Some of the guys you are debating here on this forum have "-D-R's-" in front of their names, and you should respect their expert opinions as such. Not as an appeal to authority, but because the chances of you being right where they're wrong are about the same order of magnitude as the chances of observing light propagating faster than c; slim to none.

There are only two resonance structures that don't involve an oxygen atom taking a +1 formal charge. Do electronegative elements enjoy being electron deficient?

What kind of plasma? H, He? Funny that it doesn't show up on my mass spectrometer when I run a blank samples. If space were full of plasma then astronomers probably couldn't conduct any stellar spectroscopy as the signal would be all background noise from accelerating charged particles radiating all over the place. Please produce one shred of spectroscopic evidence that the universe is full of plasma.

Yes, you've got the general idea. Don't take me too seriously on the equation/language comment. I just get a bit uneasy explaining somethings in prose because there is a lot of room for misinterpretation or misleading syntax on my part. The last thing I wish to do is mislead. Have a look at the "Gibb's energy" Wikipedia article though. You may not fully comprehend the math, but there should be some "low hanging fruit" that is well within your reach and is interesting enough to make it worthwhile. Interesting for me anyway; I'm in chemistry, I've been told we delight in the dry and mundane by more than one physicist

Washington D.C. -> Washington Da Capitol. EPIC!

A good question with a lengthy answer that risks me hijacking the thread so here are some links: fundamental thermodynamic relationship Gibb's free energy enthalpy Basically if something is thermodynamically favored, then the universe "wants" this action to take place. That borders on a gross oversimplification though. One really needs the math to comprehend it well. Language is hot air, equations speak concisely.

I just got pwned I've always wanted to say that; didn't think it would be me.

Short answer, yes. A lot of the photon initiated reactions result in homolytic cleavage of bonds (one electron of the bond goes with one molecular fragment while the other electron goes with the other fragment). Most common chemical reactions are thermally driven though and bonds are cleaved heterolytically, (broken into + and - ions). There are many exceptions. Many thermo-initiated reactions result in a homolytic event. Spectroscopy and computation have just now, in the last twenty years or so, become sensitive enough to really study the mechanisms of many photochemical and homolytic reactions. The advent of single molecule EPR spectroscopy as well as the advent of DFT in the chemistry world have done wonders. Photochemistry is a field that I think will become more and more valuable as time goes on and energy needs become more dire. There is a lot of rich and interesting QM in photochemistry as well. *Just because a reaction is photo-initiated doesn't mean it isn't thermodynamically favored though.

Yeah the photons can induce a chemical change, but that's just the result of an electron absorbing a photon, reaching a higher energy state to facilitate a chemical reaction, and then emitting a photon as the new molecule relaxes to the ground state through various channels. Some bonds are so weak they can be broken just by excitement to a higher vibrational level.

You're right, the test should be: God exists: a. True b. False If you marked "b" the test is complete and you have a perfect score. Deliberating over the speculative properties of a non-existent being is quite futile and inconsistent in itself.

I had to bite a bullet there as well. I wish the first question would be re-worded to say "which is of these scenarios is most likely?" a. Though a negative can't be proven, the existence of a god is highly unlikely as there is scant or no evidence to suggest that a god exists. b. There is no way a human can know whether or not a god exists. c. God exist In their version of the test I had to pick "God does not exist". Then that forced me to bite a bullet later on in the test about God being able to pull a moral polarity switch resulting in reciprocal good and evil. In my example above I still would've picked "a"; I'm a hard atheist, but not so hard that I can claim the nonexistence of something without adding the "but ultimately I don't know, this is just what the data strongly doesn't suggest" caveat. Saying God doesn't exist without acknowledging that that decision is based on a lack of evidence and not affirmative evidence opens one up to getting logically "called-out" in philosophy debates. I'm a hard atheist but I will never believe in the non-existence of a god with the same blind fervor that religious people believe in one. My choice is an intellectual one, and absolutes are hard to come by. That was the only bullet I bit though. I took no direct hits.

We're all in cyberspace right now having a conversation.

As swansont pointed out, I was not asserting that science has succeeded to date in all of its endeavors. Your argument that I am cherry picking the accuracy record for religion is only superficially relevant. Yes, the theistic explanation has been overturned countless times but even more significant is the fact that not one purely theistic, spiritual, or metaphysical explanation can be attributed to any physical phenomena; and all said "spiritual phenomena" like ghosts, faith healing and the like conveniently lack physical explanations. Saying that I can't make a scientific argument against a metaphysical claim may appear to be fair, but it really just shields the weaker argument from being found lacking. Theism doesn't make any testable hypotheses. This has already been discussed in the thread, but it's worth noting that just because theism lacks a critical logical pillar (testability), doesn't mean it gets a free pass on that part of the exam. That's how theism doesn't fight fair. It tries to make physical claims without physical evidence, then when theism gets called on it they claim that atheists are holding the bar too high and are comparing theists against an unfair standard. In debates, theism is allowed to creep into the realm of science, but when science encroaches on theism there is always faith or metaphysics as an out.