Annabel Flook

why does something always goes to shit when i wanna get some nice kinetics data uuuuuugh

Yesterday Dr Andres Garcia-Dominguez delivered a standout talk at the St Andrews Centre of Magnetic Resonance.

Combining clever pulse sequences with sharp mechanistic thinking, he showed how NMR can support and challenge computation!
#NMR #CMR #PhysicalOrganic #Chemistry

Looking forward to it!

In March, PhD students Callum Cushnie and Roisin O'Dea proved it's not just about fast chemical reactions - they're fast on their feet too! They both successfully completed the Inverness Half Marathon with speed and precision worthy of any lab experiment. #InvernessHalfMarathon

Massive congratulations to PhD student Callum Cushnie for absolutely smashing the activation barrier at the Edinburgh Marathon yesterday - flying across the finish line at 2:59:56! Now that's what we call a fast reaction rate! #EdinburghMarathon #FirstMarathon

Security at Bristol airport asked me if i had a body in my backpack bc it was so heavy. I said 'I'm not supposed to say yes to that, right?'.

Apparently security did not like that...

An NMR spectrum embedded into an Adobe pdf with an automatically-generated description "A graph of a person's body"

Yeah... no

Reaction Monitoring Symposium 2025 The 6th Reaction Monitoring Symposium will be of interest to those studying chemical reactions and processes, in academia or industry.

Learn about cutting-edge reaction monitoring techniques and physico-chemical methods for revealing and understanding hidden complexities in solution-phase chemistry and catalysis:

Come and join us @uniofbath.bsky.social on the 28th January 2025 for our 6th Reaction Monitoring Symposium!

The AI Overview of the classic gothic novel REBECCA claims that in the story, humans are being harvested for their organs

I don't want to cast doubt on the impeccable dependability of google AI, but I don't remember this particular plot twist in du Maurier's REBECCA

Which challenges physics more: five-sided snowflake or penta-tertbutylcyclopentadiene?

It was just english with modifications to the actual sounds, so nothing too exciting, but definitely did the job!

Weird but, when I was growing up, my mum had a secret language that all the women in our family knew, so they would speak with this. I was taught it at some point and even still use it on the phone to my mum about sensitive stuff/presents etc in public

Annabel presenting her current project, titled "Need for Speed: Obtaining Kinetic Information from a Single Scan NMR Experiment" at the NMRDG Winter meeting.

I had a great time in London at the joint NMRDG and BRSG winter meeting over the last couple of days. It was also fantastic to present one of my current projects there and a huge thanks for all of the interesting questions and comments that followed!
@rsc-nmrdg.bsky.social

Synthesis and Suzuki–Miyaura Cross-Coupling of Alkyl Amine-Boranes. A Boryl Radical-Enabled Strategy Alkyl organoborons are powerful materials for the construction of C(sp3)–C(sp2) bonds, predominantly via Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling. These species are generally assembled using 2-electron processes that harness the ability of boron reagents to act as both electrophiles and nucleophiles. Herein, we demonstrate an alternative borylation strategy based on the reactivity of amine-ligated boryl radicals. This process features the use of a carboxylic acid containing amine-ligated borane that acts as boryl radical precursor for photoredox oxidation and decarboxylation. The resulting amine-ligated boryl radical undergoes facile addition to styrenes and imines through radical-polar crossover manifolds. This delivers a new class of sp3-organoborons that are stable solids and do not undergo protodeboronation. These novel materials include unprotected α-amino derivatives that are generally unstable. Crucially, these aliphatic organoboron species can be directly engaged in Suzuki–Miyaura cross-couplings with structurally complex aryl halides. Preliminary studies suggest that they enable slow-release of the corresponding and often difficult to handle alkyl boronic acids.

Another recent example I love is by the Leonori Group. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/.... In the SI (SI-p80), they run the reaction with a proton source and show a peak in the NMR for H2. When repeated with a deuterium source, you can see the 1:1:1 triplet for HD.

Something I find really cool is to use labelled compounds for isotope entrainment to help elucidate reaction mechanisms by NMR. You basically label a substrate and watch that label move through the system. @lloydjonesgroup.bsky.social wrote about this (with case studies) in doi.org/10.1016/j.pn....

Annabel and Roisin presenting about reaction monitoring by NMR

Congratulations to Roisin O'Dea and @annabelflook.bsky.social from the group who gave a great talk about how to get started with reaction monitoring using NMR to the newest chemistry cohort across Scotland at the latest SNUG meeting. #nmrchat

a screenshot of a tweet saying "but this is my emotional support spectrometer 🥺", and an image of an NMR spectrometer with a sign saying "Do NOT use the instrument to support yourself in ANY WAY"

throwback to my most popular post from the Other Realm

😂 true, and they seem to have some particularly ...unusual... coding solutions to their problems. Nothing quite like it to keep you on your toes!

I think it's neat that we get this total reaction spectrum basically for free. I am excited to see how other people will really maximise its utility, like you suggest with PCA.

Thank you!

Another fun one was I found a certain Bruker AU program for reaction monitoring still include a hidden ~5s hard coded read-write delay, which I only noticed when checking the audit trail timestamps.

😂 yes, definitely not the same problem any more. Interesting though that a series of 1D spectra can still take up a large amount of storage space, so I found it way more convenient to use
pseudo-2D experiments here as a space saver (and quicker to process).

That's really interesting! I'm not too familiar with the techniques, do you know why it's common practise for in vivo MRS?

Simple Parameters and Data Processing for Better Signal-to-Noise and Temporal Resolution in In Situ 1D NMR Reaction Monitoring In situ 1D NMR spectroscopic reaction monitoring allows detailed investigation of chemical kinetics and mechanism. Concentration versus time data are derived from a time series of NMR spectra. Each sp...

It's a little bit late, but I'm really excited for my first paper! For reaction monitoring by NMR, signal-averaging can be applied *after acquisition*, and results in better S/N *and* data density without the typical trade-off. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... #NMRchat #NMR @lloydjonesgroup.bsky.social

For any other #NMR enthusiasts out there, the team at Manchester put together the perfect advent calendar. Thank you!

www.nmr.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk/advent24/

This was incredible to see (especially after I missed seeing them already that month...)

😂 this is cool, although I don't think I have enough fingers to play half of these molecules on my piano!

Do you reckon this is still possible... I already talk to the spectrometer, so it would be nice to hear what it has to say back

I think about this a lot as I'm panicking in my shower.