Posts
May 02, 2013
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2:24 PM | The rise of big data, big brother
I recently read an article off the newsstand called The Rise of Big Data. It was written by Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger and it was published in the May/June 2013 edition of Foreign Affairs, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). I mention this because CFR is an influential think tank, filled with powerful insiders, including people like [...]
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...courtesy of Slate business/economics blogger Matt Yglesias*:Now since we are in fact living in a 401(k) world, here's some advice. You've got to save a lot of money for retirement. More than you think. More than you want to. And you need to put that money in a broadly diversified, low-fee fund. And you have to keep it there. Don't panic when the market plunges and sell. In fact, unless you're planning on retiring in the next decade, don't even check how it's doing. Just buy and hold and
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1:40 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 5/2/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 30 and May 1, there were 6 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 1 (17%) was academically connected.North Wales, PA: Achiewell is looking for a M.S. chemist:Chemist (Research) for Achiewell, LLC in North Wales, PA. Conduct organic synthesis to determine the lab-scale & industrial manufacturing setup & process for specialty chemicals, conduct QC-QA analysis using GC-MS & LC-MS, & conduct application tests to ensure
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11:39 AM | Selection during pregnancy
Carl Zimmer writes about a new paper in Trends in Genetics where the authors argue that natural selection during pregnancy is an important driver of recent evolutionary changes: Women nourish their fetuses by raising the level of sugar in their blood. That’s a dangerous game, because it threatens to throw off their own delicate balance [...]The post Selection during pregnancy appeared first on Evolving Economics.
May 01, 2013
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7:25 PM | Friends, back up your (thesis) data
I am a tad bit stonkered that no one else has mentioned this story, but it apparently is true, and happened recently.(h/t Bruce Schneier, who got it from Geeks are Sexy, who got it from Reddit, naturally.)(I have altered the photo to make it a slight bit more private, not that it matters a damn. I'm so sorry, dud(ette).)Seriously, though, it pays to back up your data.
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...it might as well be here, too. (h/t Stuart Cantrill and Gavin Armstrong)A pretty amazing feat by the IBM team. A long time ago, I wrote:...it is my unfounded speculation that the future of chemistry does not lie in the life sciences, but in the physical sciences. I think that's still true.
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2:01 PM | Process Wednesday: decantation
From "Organometallics in Process Chemistry" [1], a comment on decanting in a chapter on removing metals on scale:Decantation, also known as siphoning, can be used in place of filtration to separate the process stream from solid metal particles. Decanting is useful for gross separations, as in the case of removing water from Raney nickel, but it can be impractical to perform on scale. Decanting requires time to allow metal to settle below the suction (siphon) inlet. Fine metal
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1:10 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 4/30/13 edition
Between April 25 and April 29, there were 29 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 7 (24%) were academically connected. New York, NY: D.E. Shaw Research has put out yet another one of its drug discovery ads -- what is different, I sense, is that they're finally looking for senior medicinal chemists:Extraordinarily gifted scientists with expertise in computer-aided drug design or protein structural modeling are sought to join a New York–based interdisciplinary
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12:28 PM | Ivory Filter Flask: 4/30/13 edition
Between April 23 and April 29, there were 11 new academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. The numbers:Total number of ads: 11- Postdocs: 0- Tenure-tractk faculty: 5- Temporary faculty: 3- Lecturer positions: 3- Staff positions: 0- US/non-US: 11/0Manhattan, NY: Bard High School Early College is once again looking for an assistant professor for its program for high school kids. You would in September 2013 -- isn't this a little late?Um, that's an visiting faculty
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11:02 AM | Why we should break up the megabanks (#OWS)
Today is May Day, and my Occupy group and I are planning to join in the actions all over the city this afternoon. At 2:00 I’m going to be at Cooper Square, where Free University is holding a bunch of teach-ins, and I’m giving one entitled “Why we should break up the megabanks.” I wanted [...]
April 30, 2013
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3:27 PM | Posts are coming...
...but they are delayed about 4 hours. Apologies.In the meantime, here's a tidbit from Wired that shows two things, 1) things are better in the tech world, i.e. they're actually hiring lots of people, enough so that they're taking people outside their field and 2) STEM is definitely TE (emphases mine):“More than anything, an education in the physical sciences teaches you how to think,” says Cloudant co-founder and chief technology officer Adam Kocoloski. “Startups are all about solving
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12:59 PM | Hwang and Horowitt’s The Rainforest
A couple of months ago I linked to a piece by Ronald Coase about the state of economics. Coase wrote: Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary [...]The post Hwang and Horowitt’s The Rainforest appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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11:22 AM | Mathbabe, the book
Thanks to a certain friendly neighborhood mathbabe reader, I’ve created this mathbabe book, which is essentially all of my posts that I ever wrote (I think. Note sure about that.) bundled together mostly by date and stuck in a huge pdf. It comes to 1,243 pages. I did it using leanpub.com, which charges $0.99 per [...]
April 29, 2013
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4:25 PM | Podcast: Brandon Findlay, Chemtips
Brandon Findlay writes the Chemtips blog; he's a recently defended Ph.D. chemist from the University of Manitoba. We recently recorded a podcast, where we talked about chemistry at Canadian university, his blog and his favorite organic chemistry techniques -- hope you enjoy!Timepoints:1:10: Brandon's educational biography3:00: Brandon's research6:00: Canadian universities and their specialities8:20: Where do Brandon's colleagues end up?9:17: The geography of Canadian industrial chemistry12:00:
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3:26 PM | A kindred spirit!
Remember this pretty frustrating article of advice from hiring managers to job seekers? Well, someone else found it frustrating as well:I suppose that the panelists in the Employment Outlook article thought they were offering helpful advice to those seeking employment in the chemical industry (C&EN, Feb. 18, page 63). However, behind the comments phrased as advice are some clear messages: From Aegis Sciences’ Kara Allen: If you don’t have all of the background and skills our
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3:10 PM | This week's C&EN
In this week's C&EN:1st quarter results from chemical firms beat expectations, by Melody Bomgardner. That's in the same general trend as the ACC's Chemical Activity Barometer, I think. C&EN's writeup of the West, Texas fertilizer facility explosion, by Glenn Hess and Jeff Johnson.CJ's core prediction: The plant people did not know how much ammonium nitrate they have. The American Chemistry Council is suing to take BPA off of California's Proposition 65 list for reproductive
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This is a guest post by Kaisa Taipale. Kaisa got a BS at Caltech, a Ph.D. in math at the University of Minnesota, was a post-doc at MSRI, an assistant professor at St. Olaf College 2010-2012, and is currently visiting Cornell, which is where I met here a couple of weeks ago, and where she told me about [...]
April 28, 2013
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Okay, I'm going to give you the shortest course ever in energy abundance: Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow. Let me say it again: Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow.
Now, here is what it does NOT depend on: supposed, but often unverified, fossil fuel reserves in the ground; hypothetical, sketchy, guesstimated, undeveloped, undiscovered resources imagined to be in the ground by governments or by energy companies and often deceptively referred […]
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11:40 AM | Good news Sunday
Sunday mornings tend to provoke me to write the most whimsical posts of the week. I’ve usually gotten enough sleep for the first time in seven days, unless I’m hung over from Saturday late-night karaoke (but I usually like to do that on Fridays), and I can actually remember some of my dreams. Especially on [...]
April 27, 2013
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12:49 PM | Ask Aunt Pythia
I’m gratified to find a few new questions in Aunt Pythia’s in box this morning – I really thought I’d have to retire her persona, since I plumb ran out of questions last week, and that was making me sad. Thanks for the questions, friends! And please don’t forget to: Submit your question for Aunt [...]
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6:33 AM | 'Cause I'm in a generous mood
Hey, UCLA administrators! You too, Center for Laboratory Safety. Remember when I said this?First, please quit calling yourselves "a model for other institutions." It would be a lot more effective to try to quote other people calling you that. It has happened, I think, and it would offer you a little more credibility than repeated self-praise. Los Angeles Counry Deputy District Attorney said this today at the preliminary hearing for Professor Patrick Harran (courtesy of Patch.com):Hum said
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April 26, 2013
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From Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice, a tweet from the LA Superior Court on Judge Lisa Lench's ruling in the preliminary hearing for UCLA professor Patrick Harran:Judge sending Patrick Harran to trial on #SheriSangji case, @cenmag story by @mmtorrice to come, bkgd @cenblogs ow.ly/ksMNH— Jyllian Kemsley (@jkemsley) April 26, 2013If you told me this was going to happen, close to 4-and-a-half years later, I would have never believed it.Follow-up tweet and a good reminder from Dr.
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This is part 1 of a 2-part podcast of Deborah Blum, author of the excellent and fascinating "The Poisoner's Handbook" talking with See Arr Oh and Chemjobber about her book and being a science writer. Part 2 is where Deborah talks about her life as a science writer and also the future of journalism -- it is hosted at Just Like Cooking.(Please excuse the change in sound quality at 7:36; we were having some technical difficulties with the phone.)1:00 What does Deborah's inbox look like after
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Drs. Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice of Chemical and Engineering News will be in court today for Los Angeles Superior Judge Lisa Lench's decision in the preliminary hearing on the charges against UCLA professor Patrick Harran. Professor Harran has been charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney with 3 felony counts of violating California labor law in connection with the death of his research assistant Ms. Sheri Sangji in December 29, 2008 due to burns from a failed syringe
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12:11 PM | A week of links
Links this week: Hodgson and Knudsen have set up a reading group for their book Darwin’s Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution. Chapter one has already kicked off. Another from The Umlaut – Conspicuous Frugality. Flip-flopping selection pressure in a modern population. Following from my post on Douglas Kenrick and [...]The post A week of links appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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The Alternative Banking group of OWS is still meeting every Sunday at Columbia from 3-5pm to discuss financial reform. We also often have pre-meeting talks open to the public. The normal meeting is open to the public as well, but it can get pretty wonky. This week’s pre-meeting talk is an update on Greece. Please [...]
April 25, 2013
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4:23 PM | EPI's report on STEM immigration numbers
The Economic Policy Institute is a liberal policy think tank; they've decided in recent years to take on H-1B visa and STEM immigration policy. They've come out with a fairly quantitative look at the STEM immigration debate recently and they've concluded three things (emphases by the authors):Our examination of the IT labor market, guestworker flows, and the STEM education pipeline finds consistent and clear trends suggesting that the United States has more than a sufficient supply of workers
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Pretty interesting postdoc, for a number of reasons:Postdoctoral Fellow - Antiviral polymer therapeutics via RAFT polymerisation for Hepatitis C treatmentEstablish the use of high-throughput techniques in the accelerated discovery of antiviral polymer-based prodrugs for the treatment of Hepatitis C Design, develop and characterise novel functional copolymersJoin CSIRO, Australia's leading scientific research organisationApplications are invited for an Postdoctoral Fellowship in a project
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3:20 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 4/25/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 23 and April 24, there have been 10 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 3 are academically connected."Georgia-Florida": Shimadzu is looking for a mass spectrometry field specialist; B.S. + 3 years experience desired. Company car!Torrington, WY: The Western States Sugar Cooperative is looking for another assistant QC chemist. I wonder what a sugar plant is like, anyway... (and yes, I've seen the CSB video.)Middleton, WI: United Suppliers is
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12:59 PM | Altruists and the knowledge problem
I have posted before about Gary Becker’s argument that the evolution of altruism can be explained by a version of his rotten kid theorem. In short, if an altruist cares about other people’s welfare in addition to their own and is willing to transfer their resources to others, an egoist’s action to harm the altruist [...]The post Altruists and the knowledge problem appeared first on Evolving Economics.
