Chargers Logo Used To Spice Up Synthetic Chemistry Research

In an outstanding sports-nerd move, chemists at the Scripps Research Institute—located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego—have managed to slip the Chargers logo into the research abstract of an upcoming Journal of the American Chemical Society paper.

As you can see in the diagram above, the Chargers-aided process of anodic oxidation converts xiamycin A to dixiamycin B, a compound with outstanding chemical components that will inevitably underperform.

This isn't the first time that this sort of graphic goofiness has made into this particular journal. Back in 1955, a grad student of Melvin Calvin—who discovered the Calvin cycle—slipped a tiny stick-figure fisherman into a diagram of an experimental instrument for studying photosynthesis:

Those wacky chemists!

[ JACS, h/t Muwen K.]