TLC

An all girl hip-hop/r&b group discovered by singer Peri "Pebbles" Reid in Atlanta in the early 1990s. Consisting of Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, TLC is the best selling girl group of all time.

The group's first album, 1991's Oooohhhh....on the TLC Tip sold 4 million copies and spawned such hits as "Ain't to Proud to Beg" and "Baby, Baby, Baby."

Early in their career some people criticized the group for their over-the-top fashion sense (they used condoms as fashion accessories) and their somewhat manufactured sound. Under the influence of Pebbles and her then-husband L.A. Reid (part owner of LaFace Records), the girls didn't have much creative control over their image or the terms of their oppressive recording contract.

TLC's followup album CrazySexyCool spawned three back to back #1 hits, including the infectious "Waterfalls." The album sold over 10 million copies and the girls became bonafide superstars.

Unfortunately personal and professional problems still plagued the group. Lisa Lopes was found guilty of arson after an admitting to setting a fire in her boyfriend's home after an argument. Tionne experienced severe health problems from sickle cell anemia which caused the group to cancel several tour dates. Chilli kept busy with acting projects and the birth of her son. They had to file for bankruptcy protection after finding that they were almost $4 million in debt. In addition to this the group was fighting to get out of their contract with Pebbles so they could renegotiate their contract with LaFace.

Rumors of a break-up swelled but eventually things worked out for TLC. They said goodbye to Pebbles as a manager and re-signed with LaFace under better terms. The groups latest album Fanmail is a platinum hit and was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards.

TLC is an acronym for thin-layer chromatography. The most common use of TLC is for determining the purity of drug substances in the pharmaceutical industry. TLC has been used for this purpose for many years, but in most cases it is now preferable to use high-performance liquid chromatography.

A plastic or glass plate is coated with the stationary phase for this type of chromatography. A small amount of the sample solution to be analyzed is "spotted" near the bottom of the plate using a capillary tube or a micro-syringe. The sample solvent is allowed to evaporate, and the starting position is marked. The plate is then placed in a developing chamber with the bottom edge in contact with the mobile phase solvent. The solvent traverses up the plate, carrying the components of the sample mixture with it. Under ideal conditions, compounds will be separated into distinct spots on the plate by the time the solvent has traversed two thirds of the way up. The plate is then removed from the developing chamber and allowed to dry.

At this point the components of the mixture are separated, but will usually be invisible to the human eye because most pharmaceutical substances as well as most TLC stationary phases are white. In order to see the separated spots, it is common to spray the dried plate with solutions of iodine, sulfuric acid or ninhydrin. These substances react with many organic compounds to form substances more readily visible to the human eye. Alternatively, TLC plates containing fluorescent material in the stationary phase can be used. This type of plate is viewed under ultraviolet light in order to see the separated compounds as dark spots on a bright background. When compared to a known substance, the migration distance and size of the spots of the separated sample give useful information about its identity and purity.

See also: chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography.

TLC is most often understood as a TLA for Tender Loving Care. It arose sometime in the mid-1900s in the field of nursing; a good nurse should be tender and compassionate when caring for their patients. It expresses the idea that sometimes all that is needed to make someone better is for someone to take care of them in a sensitive fashion, rather than operate, medicate, and perform tests on them.

Newbies just need some TLC while they adjust to the culture of E2.

These days there are a lot of businesses in the health, educational, and non-profit fields that carefully pick a name so that they will be able to acronym themselves as TLC in order to bring to mind feelings of tenderness and compassion; Talk, Listen, Connect, The Love of Christ Ministries, Teens Living For Christ, Teaching, Learning, and Computing, Teach, Learn, and Communicate, Inc., Transgender Law Center, etc. etc. There are many too many to be worth noding (or even listing) all of them.

Of course, there are many things that TLC stands for that you may have come to this node in order to learn about; here are some other meanings:
The Learning Channel
Total Lung Capacity
The Learning Company
Toyota Land Cruiser
Tastes Like Chicken
Trilateral Commission
Tables, Ladders, and Chairs Match