May 2008

Table of Contents

Online Supplements

Issue Highlights

Editorial: What Price Quality?

Especially for High School Teachers: Connect the Dots

Classroom Activity Extension: Using “Blueprint Photography by the Cyanotype Process”

Classroom Activity Connections: Chemistry and Children’s Literature: Sun Up, Sun Down

JCE Featured Molecules: Molecular Models of Reactants and Products from an Asymmetric Synthesis of a Chiral Carboxylic Acid

(R)-2-methyl-4-pentenoic acid	(S)-2-methyl-4-pentenoic acid

Prussian Blue: Artists’ Pigment and Chemists’ Sponge

Biochemistry

• Reports from Other Journals: Research Advances: Toward a Faster Prenatal Test for Down Syndrome; Test for Headache-Causing Food Toxins; Newly Solved Structure Reveals How Cells Resist Oxygen Damage
• Got Bio? A Short Course Introducing Students to the Applications of Biochemistry
• Introduction to Protein Structure through Genetic Diseases
• Probing Changes in the Conformation of tRNA^Phe: An Integrated Biochemistry Laboratory Course
• UV Thermal Melting Curves of tRNA^Phe in the Presence of Ligands
• Metal-Catalyzed Cleavage of tRNA^Phe
• Fluorescence Spectroscopy of tRNA^Phe Y Base in the Presence of Mg²⁺ and Small Molecule Ligands
• Observation of DNA Molecules Using Fluorescence Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy. An Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Laboratory Experiment
• Size Exclusion Chromatography: An Experiment for High School and Community College Chemistry and Biotechnology Laboratory Programs
• A Simple Laboratory Experiment To Determine the Kinetics of Mutarotation of D-Glucose Using a Blood Glucose Meter
• A-DNA and B-DNA: Comparing Their Historical X-ray Fiber Diffraction Images
• Modeling Ion Channels Using Poisson–Nernst–Planck Theory as an Integrated Approach To Introducing Nanotechnology Concepts: The PNP Cyclic Peptide Ion Channel Model

Stereochemistry

• Reports from Other Journals: Research Advances: Newly Solved Structure Reveals How Cells Resist Oxygen Damage
• Stereochemical Control in Carbohydrate Chemistry
• Use of the Chemical Literature as a Template To Probe Stereoselective Reactions by NMR
• Acylation, Diastereoselective Alkylation, and Cleavage of an Oxazolidinone Chiral Auxiliary. A Multistep Asymmetric Synthesis Experiment for Advanced Undergraduates
• The Microscale Laboratory: Mosher Amides: Determining the Absolute Stereochemistry of Optically-Active Amines
• The Same and Not the Same: Chirality, Topicity, and Memory of Chirality
• JCE WebWare: Web-Based Learning Aids: Visualizing Metal Tris Chelates. Visualizations To Examine the Structure and Symmetry of Metal Tris Chelates: Symmetry Operations, Chirality, and Mechanisms (Bailar Twist and Rây-Dutt) That Racemize the Δ and Λ Isomers
• JCE Featured Molecules: Molecular Models of Reactants and Products from an Asymmetric Synthesis of a Chiral Carboxylic Acid

Bridge at Buchanty. In the article “Prussian Blue: Artists’ Pigment and Chemists’ Sponge”, Mike Ware tells the story of how the accidental discovery over 300 years ago of the artists’ pigment Prussian blue, iron(III) hexacyanoferrate(II), opened up a whole new area of chemistry—that of the cyanide ion. Photochemical production of the pigment is the basis for the cyanotype or blueprint reprographic process. Inclusion of redox-active species in the Prussian blue lattice can ‘fine-tune’ its color, by shifting the electronic charge transfer band in the visible absorption spectrum. Thus, photographic artists unknowingly employ coordination chemistry to tone the hues of their cyanotypes. Mike Ware took the cyanotype image on the cover, showing a young sapling mimicking the massive arch of the bridge above it, along the banks of the River Almond, a few miles west of the city of Perth, in Scotland. See the author’s essay “A Bridge for Two Cultures” for additional details.