"The lady running the sobaya was extremely nice, and seemed very taken with my halting attempts to converse in Japanese. “Iie, jozû desu!”—”No, you’re quite skilful!”—she would say when I commented on how poor my Japanese was. My friend told me (if she’s to be believed,...
The advantages of HMF synthesis in aqueous media are as follows: (1) water is a cheap and environmentally friendly solvent; (2) the process is simple and easy to scale up; (3) water dissolves polar sugars and HMF in high concentrations; and (4) the water elimination of fructose to form...