Words at Work

by Tom Mason
LUTETIUM TANTALITE – IT’S A mouthful for sure, but it’s also a particularly useful compound. The fact that lutetium tantalite is the most dense stable white material known to exist makes it ideal as a phosphor substance – the material that glows on the hands of an alarm clock or a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee. [...]

Photocages have big potential in the world of pharmaceuticals

by Tom Mason

What is you could turn a chemical reaction off simply by flicking a lightswitch? That’s exactly what chemists are doing with a technology called photocages.
In chemical parlance, photocages are molecules that can be attached to another molecule and then removed again by irradiating them with light. [...]