Everybody learn how to click

Till February this year, 'Click Chemistry' was still able to appear in the Top Topic, of the Essential Science Indicators. It is 6 years after the phrase was used in the pioneer review on ACIE (2001, 40, 2004-2021. DOI: 10.1002/1521-3773(20010601)40:11<2004::AID-ANIE2004>3.0.CO;2-5), so I thought the time has gone when you can easily put your communication on Adv Mater or ACIE only by tagging it with the word 'click'; the field has become just as ordinary as what any average journal may oversee. Even Sigma-Aldrich has caught up to host a specific page for its click chemicals. But it is still heated in 2007, and there is recently a tutorial review on Chem Soc Rev (DOI: 10.1039/b613014n). Someone did some lbl polyelectrolyte capsules, something everyone should know for quite a while and Langmuir would probably refuse to accept, and he published it on Nano Lett (DOI: 10.1021/nl070698f), only because he clicked between the layers a bit.

So everybody is to learn something about how to click your reaction into an ACIE VIP paper or something like that.

ACS Feed Goes Wrong

ACS's feed burner goes wrong every now and then. It will feed you a whole pile of papers from a journal you never subscribe in a the name of one of your subscription, for example a pile of Bioconjugate Chem. papers in your Macromolecules subscription. This time as the snapshot shows, it feed me with JACS in my Nano Lett. folder, both of which I have subscripted.

Cell: Ouch! Nanowires: Oops!

Scientists have successfully had some cells lying on a nail bed consist of silicon nanowires. The silicon nails penetrates the cells but does not stop them from living, differentiating and functioning (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007. DOI: 10.1021/ja071456k).

Silicon nanowires are prepared by conventional methods and used without further modification except necessary sterilization. Mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells were directly cultivated on the nanowire substrate. Scary SEM images show that the cell bodies are penetrated by several nanowires per cell, but green fluorescent protein (GFP) tests show that the cells are still alive. If the substrate is coated with tissue culturing materials, the mES cells can differentiate into cardiac myocytes and start beating! By penetrating through the cell body, the nanowires can even deliver DNA carriers (PEI) into the cell. This research tells us that dangerous stuff in macroscale can be friendly in nanoscale.

Update: C&EN just released an account of this research: Cells On A Bed Of Nails.

Chinese graduate students

This is a poll for the post on my blog in Nature Network.

Which deficiency of Chinese graduate students do you hate most? Poor spoken English No sense of lab safety Poor lab skills and instrumental operation Lazy Weak basic knowledge Dishonest Other...

The doi.org delay

Sometimes new papers on journals from John Wiley & Son failed to link with doi.org in time. And when you click a DOI url you may see:

But if you search for this DOI in Wiley Interscience website you can get the paper: