Curated playlist
GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulators
- NitrogenNitrogen, the gas in most of every breath, killed two shuttle technicians in 1981. It fills about 78% of Earth's air.
- LanthanumLanthanum is named for the Greek word for "lie hidden". Carl Gustaf Mosander found it in 1839 inside cerium nitrate.
- TestosteroneTestosterone rises in newborn boys to about puberty levels, then nearly vanishes within months. Nobody knows why.
- Alcohol (drug)Alcohol works by boosting GABA, the brain's main brake pedal. The liver then breaks down most of it.
- BenzeneChemist Friedrich August Kekule said he saw benzene's ring shape in a daydream of a snake biting its tail.
- AcetoneAcetone, the nail polish remover chemical, was once called the spirit of Saturn.
- MidazolamIn 2014, Oklahoma prepared to execute Clayton Lockett with an untested three-drug combination that included 100 mg of midazolam, a drug far better known in hospitals than in prisons. Partway through, Lockett apparently regained…
- ChloroformChloroform is a colorless, sweet-smelling liquid that once put patients to sleep on operating tables across Europe and the United States. In 1987, the last doctor in the Western world who still used it as an anaesthetic retired. That…
- KavaThe scientific name of kava, Piper methysticum, joins the Latin word for pepper to a Latinized Greek word meaning intoxicating. The everyday name tells a different story. It comes from Tongan and Marquesan, where it means bitter. Kava…
- Nitrous oxideNitrous oxide, also called dinitrogen oxide, dinitrogen monoxide, laughing gas or simply nitrous, is a colourless gas with a faint, slightly sweet scent and taste. By 2020, every billion molecules of air held 333 of its molecules, and that…
- PropofolPropofol is an intravenous anesthetic that looks like milk. Drawn into a syringe, it is an opaque white fluid, a color it owes to the soybean oil and lecithin that carry the active ingredient. Doctors use it to start general anesthesia in…