Hello everyone! I’m not really sure what happened to the rest of the fellow bloggers, but I have been going through some interesting incidents myself. Long story short, I am shipping out to the Mid-west in a couple of days with all of my belongings (road trip, yay). Between finishing my project at the current job and preparing for the move, life is pretty hectic around here. Among other exciting updates is that Jes (Ψ*Ψ) from CBC came visit me from the sunny Santa Barbara.* ANYWAY. Yes, Chemistry Blog… I found this gem on the science Reddit, and thought I really had to share. (Inorg. Chem., 2004, 43 (11), pp 3521–3527) Ahh, supramolecular chemistry win. Another chemistry news flash, the folks at GSI has formally submitted “copernicium” (Cp) as the name request for Element 112, in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus, to IUPAC on July 17. The Union will approve in six months, pending discussion in the “community”. So I guess we all need to talk about this. In my opinion, all is well, except now cyclopentadienyl “the bun” ligand needs a different name. I guess I’ll return to the blog full time (?) once I arrive and situate myself in the new town. Until then, hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! Noel *Then there as the Harry Potter premiere and the Final Fantasy Concert performed by the San Francisco Symphony… Composer Nobuo Uematsu himself was there and I seriously cried when I saw him. Via, source 1, 2

Hayton, from Santa Barabara, presented his recent work with uranium (VI) compounds. The chemistry of Uranium (VI) is dominated by the formation of Uranyl (UO2)2+. However, the Hayton group was able to synthesize and fully characterize U(OtBu)6 (1). The compound was reacted with aryl-alcohols in the hope of producing U(OAr)6 (2) compounds, shown below. Unfortunately, due to the presence of lithium from earlier steps he prepared (3) and after doing a better job ridding his reagents of lithium produced (4). The work highlights the difficulty in synthesizing stable uranium (VI) compounds, but perhaps if they didn’t use the electron withdrawing fluorine groups with their arylalcohols they might better stabilize the U+6. More Info: Synthesis and Characterization of Three Homoleptic Alkoxides of Uranium… Mitch