Rzepa has published a theoretical study of potential stable molecules containing a bond to helium.1 The work was inspired by the post on this blog pertaining to potential hypervalent carbon species that mimic the SN2 transition state. Rzepa first reported some of his results on his own blog (see this post and previous ones). The upshot is that structures like 1 appear to possess real bonds to helium!
1
As always, Henry has deposited his structures (see here) and so I have not reproduced any structures.
As an aside I am greatly inspired by this paper as offering an example of how non-traditional media – our two blogs – led to new science, and one that was published by a very forward-thinking publisher (Nature), who recognizes the value of new technologies that facilitate (and not degrade nor supplant) the traditional scientific communication media.
References
1) Rzepa, H. S., “The rational design of helium bonds,” Nature Chem., 2010, 2, 390-393, DOI:10.1038/nchem.596.
Henry Rzepa responded on 25 Jun 2010 at 2:10 am #
Steve notes the non traditional nature of how this science was done and communicated. An invariable question which almost everyone asks is wheter a blog is a publication? A follow-up might be what is the difference between a blog and a published article?. Since I was lucky enough to get to do both on this particular topic, I thought I would share some of my experiences by comparing the two modes.
I have to say that I find Steve’s blog always a fantastic source of inspiration.
Egon Willighagen responded on 05 Jul 2010 at 4:10 am #
I would argue that you pose the wrong question. A blog is a publication: you made your writing public. The interesting difference lies in the peer review model. A blog uses an informal, voluntary post-publication review model, much like a conference contributions, while a journal article uses a required, pre-publication peer-review model.
A second difference lies in the audience for each medium: a journal has a different audience than a blog. The latter can choose the audience, the former not so much. The traditional journals have a high subscription price, so that only a particular audience will be able to read it. One audience is the experts with an employer to afford high journal subscription prices; a second audience is the ‘public’ where popular magazines are targeted at. A blog, however, does not come with high publication costs of the medium, and therefore do not require to be targeted at one particular audience. Any small audience will do. Again, this leads to more freedom in the blog nature. (Actually, if you observe most blogs, you will see that the different blog items in one blog already target different audiences.)
The combination of these two factors explain the high variability on blog natures, making most analyses of blogging in science futile if not done carefully.
@Steve, I would therefore argue too, that I am surprised by your inspiration to see some preliminary results published in a blog. Science has had a long tradition of publishing non-peer-reviewed preliminary results. What I do find surprising, is that so many scientists find the energy for read all those loosely designed, free format, multi-audience blogs.
But, I do most certainly agree that it is very welcome that more and more peer-reviewed papers cite blog posts. What we now only need, is a (Chemical) Preprint Server where (selected) blog posts can be submitted for archival and indexing.