Posts
April 02, 2013
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11:43 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 4/2/13 edition
Hello! Between March 28 and April 1, 29 new positions were posted on the C&EN Jobs database. Of these, 10 (34%) are academically connected.Milwaukee, WI: Cambridge Major has posted 7 positions recently, including a nice set of positions open for assistant chemists (B.S., 3-7 years exp, M.S., 0-4 years.) I hear mostly good things about Cambridge Major.Bethlehem, PA: Saladax Biomedical is a new name to DPT; they're looking for physical scientists who have experience on biological problems
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3:29 PM | Ivory Filter Flask: 4/2/13 edition
Good morning! Between March 26 and April 1, there were 17 new academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs. The numbers:Total number of ads: 17- Postdocs: 2- Tenure-track faculty: 11- Temporary faculty: 2- Lecturer positions: 2- Staff positions: 0- US/non-US: 11/6New York, NY: Looks like the Rockefeller University is hiring tenure-track professors in chemical biology.Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Purdue University - Indianapolis is hiring for an assistant professor in
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Via Deborah Blum, the story of a really dumb postdoc:A researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin has been charged with stealing a possible cancer-fighting compound and research data that led to its development, all to benefit a Chinese university. Huajun Zhao, 42, faces a single count of economic espionage, according to a federal criminal complaint, an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Zhao was arrested Saturday and held without bail over the weekend
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11:08 AM | Guest post: Divest from climate change
This is a guest post by Akhil Mathew, a junior studying mathematics at Harvard. He is also a blogger at Climbing Mount Bourbaki. Climate change is one of those issues that I heard about as a kid, and I assumed naturally that scientists, political leaders, and the rest of the world would work together to solve [...]
April 01, 2013
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323% increase in ACS member salary also notableBy ChemjobberAs of April 1, 2033, 0% of American Chemical Society members were unemployed, the lowest level recorded since 2016, when ACS unemployment dipped into the negative numbers, according to the society's Membership & Scientific Advancement Division (M&SA). What's more, the median salary for American Chemical Society members rose this year by 323%.This remarkable lack of unemployment and incredible increase in member salaries is
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3:00 PM | Do people really still badmouth DOE?
In this week's C&EN, Rick Mullin writes about Design of Experiments in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry and gives a very interesting and helpful quick history of the concept and the field. The article veers into a very interesting set of comments between chemists and chemical engineers towards the end:Drug companies also have identified the need to gain better control of their development and manufacturing process. The FDA guidance not only encourages the application of statistical
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2:33 PM | W.R. Grace got into the MPLC business?
From this week's C&EN, Marc Reisch covers a really odd lawsuit:W.R. Grace & Co. has sued Teledyne Technologies in federal court for infringing four patents covering flash chromatography, a quick chemical purification process widely used in pharmaceutical research. Grace seeks unspecified damages and an end to the infringement of its patents. Teledyne Isco is the Teledyne unit that makes flash chromatography systems that compete with those of Grace’s Alltech Associates subsidiary
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1:16 PM | Economics from a biological viewpoint
One of the earlier advocates of using evolutionary biology in economics was Jack Hirshleifer, a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hirshleifer was author of The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory, which includes evolutionary analysis of cooperation and conflict, and some discussion of the unification of law, [...]The post Economics from a biological viewpoint appeared first on Evolving Economics.
Hirshleifer, J. (1977). Economics from a Biological Viewpoint, The Journal of Law and Economics, 20 (1) 1. DOI: 10.1086/466891
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11:40 AM | Giving isn’t the secret
I don’t know if you read this article (h/t Radhika Sainath) on a hyperactive professor and Organizational Psychology researcher, Adam Grant, who always helps people when they ask and has a theory about giving. He claims that generous giving is the answer to getting ahead and feeling and being successful. Well, as a “strategic giver” myself, let [...]
March 31, 2013
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There’ve been a couple of articles in the past few days about teacher Value-Added Testing that have enraged me. If you haven’t been paying attention, the Value-Added Model (VAM) is now being used in a majority of the states (source: the Economist): But it gives out nearly random numbers, as gleaned from looking at the [...]
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Current U.S. energy policy is, in fact, a hodgepodge of disconnected policies designed for specific constituencies with no coherent goal. The country has subsidies for fossil fuels, subsidies for nuclear power, subsidies for wind and solar, and subsidies for insulating and retrofitting buildings. We also have energy standards for some appliances and miles per gallon standards for automobiles.What never gets asked and answered definitively in the policy debate is this: What should our ultimate
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March 30, 2013
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1:02 PM | Aunt Pythia’s advice
Many thanks to Aunt Orthoptera for her fascinating, insect-related advice from last week. Aunt Pythia is psyched to be back, is psyched to refer to herself in the third person, and is psyched to continue her sex and dating advice far beyond what anyone asked for or wants. If you don’t know what you’re in [...]
March 29, 2013
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1:53 PM | A week of links
Links this week: An excellent review of Paleofantasy (which is still on my reading pile and likely to stay there for at least a few more weeks). Ross Douthat in the New York Times on the marriage premium, and Bryan Caplan’s thoughts. When the debate popped up a year ago, I wrote this piece. A [...]The post A week of links appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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1:53 PM | Wouldn't it be nice to get a "no"?
A reader talks about the lack of a response to a job application:I have not had good luck getting a response from companies. I was wondering when people would expect a response and if there are any tricks to getting said response. My perspective on responses: 1. After application -- no response expected (except automated junk)2. After phone / screening interview -- would expect a response here, don't usually get one.3. After on-site -- definitely expect
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From the inbox (thanks, NM), a New York Times story about radiologists in training, and a group of them that's been left in the lurch:At St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, a dozen radiologists in training, including Dr. Luke Gerges, 28, are suddenly stranded on an expensive road to nowhere. All received termination notices recently because their hospital is ending their residency program next year as part of a plan to replace its radiologists with a teleradiology company that reads diagnostic
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A reader asked an interesting question about the hiring process in Big Pharma, i.e. how it gets started, who decides, etc. Here's my response to him:I imagine that people (perhaps at the VP or director level) decide that they need more scientists. Following this, I suspect that job descriptions are sent to the HR folks for posting, and coordination is made to forward incoming resumes from HR and other employees to the relevant hiring committee. After short lists are made and phone
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March 28, 2013
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From the inbox, a really interesting comment from NJ on a long career as a chemist:I am a 50-year old industrial chemist. I am blessed with an excellent resume. I went to great schools, had pretty good grades, got a Ph.D. and have worked for desirable companies. I've been awarded patents, published papers, given presentations, etc. I'm a member of multiple professional societies. In short, I have a great resume. I also keep up on the literature. I'm a new employee’s worse nightmare: I know
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Via David Kroll, a very interesting set of comments about "alternative careers" from Gina Stewart, a Ph.D. organic chemist who is now an technological entrepreneur in lawn care:I obtained my Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, and my classmates are now my lifelong friends. While most of us weren’t aiming for academic research jobs to begin with, our stories illustrate a number of intriguing, challenging, and fulfilling nontraditional paths for science Ph.D.’s. One
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3:23 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 3/28/13 edition
Good morning! Between March 26 and March 27, 188 new positions were posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 5 (3%) are academically connected and 164 (87%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.Whoa: Just when you thought it was safe to scroll down, Kelly Scientific dumps 164 positions on C&EN Jobs. They're mostly relevantish, so that's nice.Greensboro, NC: Syngenta Crop Protection is looking for a Ph.D. analytical chemist for analytical work towards agrichemical formulations. 65-107k
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2:28 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 3/26/13 edition
Good morning! Between March 21 and March 25, there were 27 new positions posted on C&EN Jobs. Of these, 14 (52%) were academically connected. There were 2 (7%) positions from Kelly Scientific Resources.That's some bad ad, Harry: Allergan wishes to hire a B.S./M.S. research associate to perform some synthetic medicinal chemistry. Of course, you couldn't find it in the ad, which looks like this (edited for clarity):By contrast...: Gilead Sciences has a similar position and yet manages
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12:38 PM | WTF is happening in Cyprus?
One thing I kept track of while I was away was the ongoing, intensely interesting situation in Cyprus. For those of you who have been following it just as closely, this will not be new, and please correct me if you think I’ve gotten something wrong. Background Cyprus banks have recently gotten deeply in trouble, [...]
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From T. Kevin Swift, the chief economist of the American Chemistry Council (emphasis mine):Economists get a look at future economic growth by tracking the sale of chemicals and the state of the chemical industry. Kevin Swift of the American Chemistry Council developed the index, and said it points to modest growth over the next six to nine months. "Generally expanding activity, into the third quarter, almost into the fourth quarter, signaling growth that would probably be about 2.5 to 3
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March 27, 2013
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Don't know how long it takes? In the middle of a very interesting article about homocoupling problems in Suzuki reactions, Miller et al. [1] busts out some very interesting, yet very basic measurements on dissolved oxygen in isopropyl alcohol / water solutions and removing that oxygen (emphasis mine):Having established the important role of dissolved oxygen in promoting formation of dimer 6, we sought to directly measure* and identify an upper maximum limit for dissolved oxygen. Three
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5:30 PM | I'm not dead
I have beenworking a lotand sleeping inand you have beenshorted a lotof blog posts.Forgive meback up and runninglater todayapologies to William Carlos Williams
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1:18 PM | Leila Schneps is a mystery writer!
I’m back! I missed you guys bad. My experience with Seattle in the last 8 days has convinced me of something I rather suspected, namely I’m a huge New York snob and can’t exist happily anywhere else. I will spare you the details (they have to do with cars, subways, and being an asshole pedestrian) [...]
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Underlying much of Ashraf and Galor’s analysis of genetic diversity and economic development is a Malthusian model of the world. The Malthusian model, as the name suggests, originates in the work of Thomas Malthus (pictured). Malthus had the misfortune of providing an excellent description of the world across millennia, just at the point at which the model [...]The post Using the Malthusian model to measure technology appeared first on Evolving Economics.
Ashraf, Q. & Galor, O. (2011). Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch, American Economic Review, 101 (5) 2003-2041. DOI: 10.1257/aer.101.5.2003
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March 26, 2013
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11:43 PM | Nerd Nite: A Drunken Venue for Ideas
MathBabe recently wrote an article critical of the elitist nature of Ted Talks, which you can read here. Fortunately for her, and for the hoi polloi everywhere clamoring for populist science edutainment, there is an alternative: Nerd Nite. Once a month, in cities all over the globe, nerds herd into a local bar and turn [...]
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4:00 PM | Ivory Filter Flask: 3/26/13 edition
Good morning! Between March 19 and March 25, there have been 20 new academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website.Total number of ads: 20- Postdocs: 1- Tenure-track faculty: 10- Temporary faculty: 1- Lecturer positions: 3- Staff positions: 5- US/non-US: 13/7Bonn, Germany: The University of Bonn wishes to hire an associate professor of organic chemistry.Hattiesburg, MS: The University of Southern Mississippi wishes to hire an assistant professor of organic
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2:40 AM | Hackprinceton
He-Yo This Friday, I’ll be participating at HackPrinceton. My team will be training an EEG to recognize yes and no thoughts for particular electromechanical devices and creating general human brain interface (HBI) architecture. We’ll be working on allowing you to turn on your phone and navigate various menus with your mind! There’s lots of cool [...]
March 25, 2013
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From Jim Austin of Science Careers, a terribly interesting graph by Prof. Ed Lazowska of the University of Washington, charting BLS projections from 2012 about job growth in STEM:Credit: Prof. Ed. LazowskaJust remember, when people talk about STEM, they're really talking about TE.
