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The author is not a physician. The content on this website does not, and is not intended to constitute medical advice. It should not be relied upon when making medical decisions. It is not intended as a substitute for advice from your physician or other healthcare provider.

May 7, 2010

Brominated Vegetable Oil (Making orange soda look more like OJ)

Category:

When you mix bromine with another molecule that has a carbon-carbon double bond, the bromine can add across the double bond.

bromination.png

The bromine atoms are very heavy - about 80 times as heavy as a hydrogen atom, or 7 times as heavy as a carbon atom. Bromination usually gives you a molecule that has higher density than the parent molecule.

April 29, 2010

Dapoxetine (No, it's supposed to do that!)

Category: Drugs

If you take or are close to someone who takes antidepressant medication, you're probably aware that one class, the SSRIs, is particularly prone to causing sexual side effects. These effects can run the gamut from inhibition of libido, to erectile dysfunction, to a diminished or complete inability to achieve orgasm. It's that last one that we take a look at today - a SSRI went on sale in Britain this week that is touted as inhibiting orgasm - on purpose!

June 4, 2009

Slentrol/Dirloapide (Got a fat dog?)

Category: Drugs

Wow. It's not just anticancer drugs for dogs, there are also "lifestyle" drugs. They think they're people!

June 3, 2009

Palladia/Toceranib (Dog cancer drugs)

Category: Drugs

A few months ago, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor anticancer drug for people, this month, one for dogs.

May 11, 2009

Ribosomal Free Love

Category:

Skip to ca. 3 mins for the magic. Using the dance idiom.


May 8, 2009

Dead Horses

Category:

Just as the swine flu story was starting to catch all our attention, 21 horses died. It was like plagues were breaking out everywhere! With a couple weeks' hindsight, people are breathing easier about the pig bug (perhaps prematurely), and we know the horses died of selenium toxicity from a supplement.

April 29, 2009

H1N1/Swine Flu/Antivirals Redux

Category: Drugs

Let's take a visit back to May 2006. The DJIA was above 11,000 and would continue to increase for more than a year. The Da Vinci Code was in theaters. Don Rumsfeld would continue to look very polished in his tab-collar shirts, but his kung fu would serve him for only six more months, when Bob Gates would replace him, following a mid-term election thumpin'. Americans passed the time by applying for VISA cards which literally allowed them to use their homes as credit cards, with which they would buy granite countertops.


But a specter was haunting America - the specter of H5N1, or "bird flu," which threatened to become a pandemic, just as H1N1, or "swine flu" does today. First, we review a link to a bird-flu era series about antivirals and second, a few good links relating to the present situation.


April 22, 2009

NNAL (Cancer pee?)

Category:

There are a number of tobacco-associated compounds that are formed by reactions of nicotine. Cotinine is a metabolite formed from nicotine in the body - it hangs around a relatively long time, so it is a good marker for recent nicotine exposure.

Any undergrads out there into SEM?

Category: Not Really a Molecule

Going through emails, I came across a request from ASPEX to link to a scholarship they're offering. $1,000 and "an opportunity to co-author a poster with ASPEX at Pittcon 2010." If you are an undergrad thinking of applying for this, going to Pittcon might be worth more than the $1,000. You couldn't ask for a better analytical chemistry meeting to attend, and this could be a great place to find a job or grad school advisor.

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