Persepolis – An Enlightening new Project

An Enlightening Reactor

I n recent years, the reaction vessel by which chemists perform organic reactions has undergone major changes. No longer limited to round-bottom flasks, we can perform experiments in microwave ovens, flow reactors, and 96-well plates. Each of these technologies has enabled breakthroughs in organic synthesis not easily achieved using conventional flasks. In the rapid development of photoredox te...

An Enlightening Counterexample

Persepolis: the Complexity of Simplification

If a person were to hastily flip through the pages of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis, using only eyes to judge, the book could easily be put off as just another piece of literary fluff. Their inner literary critic might utter a perplexed gasp and their mind might reel with the wonder at how they happened upon something that was surely intended for the children's comic book section. ...

Enlightening the adrenal gland.

The secretion of glucocorticoid hormones is tightly regulated by the circadian clock and by negative humoral feedback loops, both acting on the hypothalamic-pituitary gland-adrenal axis. However, a new study Ishida et al., 2005 [this issue of Cell Metabolism) shows that light can influence the adrenal's glucocorticoid output by a more direct pathway.

Enlightening and flexing memories

by Professor Stefan Hecht, who is a member of IRIS Adlershof, in collaboration with the University of Strasbourg & CNRS (France) and the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia), have shown that a carefully chosen blend of a small photoswitchable molecule and a semiconducting polymer can be used to fabricate high-performance memory devices that can be written and erased by light. Such multilevel (8...