Posts
April 17, 2013
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8:08 PM | Sex sells rotovaps and pipettes?
IKA has been ramping up the "sex appeal" factor in its advertising, ranging from stupid commercials to booth babes riding motorcycles at ACS National Meetings to this 2013 catalog, noted by @ianatonks. The screenshot at left is taken from it.Suffice it to say that I personally don't find this to be an effective tactic at selling laboratory equipment. I also can't find a long-term basis to think that this will bring good sales results. Personally, I find it insults my intelligence (not that I
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Yesterday, the "Gang of Eight" group of senators released the comprehensive immigration reform bill summary (not the bill itself, but a plain English summary of the bill). Here's an interesting set of tidbits from page 7 of the summary itself (emphases mine):On the employment green card categories, the bill exempts the following categories from the annual numerical limits on employment-based immigrants: derivative beneficiaries of employment-based immigrants; aliens of extraordinary ability in
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From the second edition of Practical Process Research and Development by our mentor-by-literature Neal Anderson, a little tidbit about charging solids and gases:In general charging liquids and solutions is easier and preferred over charging solids. One concerns with charging solids is that not all of the solids may be transferred to the reactor. Charging of liquids is usually completed by chasing residual liquids with a small charge of solvent; for instance, a solution maybe
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April 16, 2013
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3:10 PM | A terrible crime
I don't have much to add to Derek Lowe's post on the bombing in Boston yesterday. Condolences to and prayers for any and all affected by this terrible crime.
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A couple weeks back, I mentioned a postdoc opportunity in Israel. GG wrote in with a long and detailed description of life in Israel as a chemist and a postdoc. I've put the bulk of it under the jump -- hope you enjoy. "Since the discussion of doing a postdoc in Israel started up from cost, I want to assure you that Israel in not as expensive as you think. The most expensive place is the central Tel Aviv area and just a few kilometers outside the official Tel Aviv limits an apartment will
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2:50 PM | ACS NOLA Career Fair numbers
As reported to the ACS Council for the 2013 Spring ACS National Meeting:ACS Career Fair (Onsite):Job Seekers: 863Employers: 38Number of Jobs: 131Recruiters Row Booths: 10Virtual Career Fair (Online):Job Seekers/Attendees: 552 Employers: 11Number of Jobs: 169Looks like the number of available positions jumped from what was listed on the C&EN Jobs database. Good news, I think.
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2:44 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 4/16/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 11 and April 15, there were 12 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 6 (50%) were academically connected.Cleveland, OH: Laird Technologies is looking for a B.S./M.S. chemist with polymer experience; 2-5 years preferred. 48-72k offered.Pasadena, CA: Steinfl and Bruno LLP is looking for an experienced patent agent, Ph.D. in chemistry needed.Nimes, France: Proteus S.A. is a company specializing in industrial biocatalysis. They'd like a Ph.D.
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2:20 PM | Faculty jobs from Andre The Chemist
Andre The Chemist is beginning to blog on non-C&EN Jobs assistant professor positions he's seeing in The Chronicle of Higher Education and at HigherEdJobs. Check it out! (Personally, I'd take the position in Fiji.)
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2:17 PM | Ivory Filter Flask: 4/16/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 9 and April 15, there have been 6 new academic positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. The numbers:Total number of ads: 6- Postdocs: 0- Tenure-track faculty: 4- Temporary faculty: 0- Lecturer positions: 2- Staff positions: 0- US/non-US: 6/0Houston, TX: The University of St. Thomas is searching for an assistant professor in inorganic/organometallic chemistry.Philadelphia, PA: Drexel has an autism research institute; they're
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10:22 AM | Tax haven in comedy: the Caymans (#OWS)
This is a guest post by Justin Wedes. A graduate of the University of Michigan with degrees in Physics and Linguistics with High Honors, Justin has taught formerly truant and low-income youth in subjects ranging from science to media literacy and social justice activism. A founding member of the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA), the [...]
April 15, 2013
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I was privy to a local official's comment to a group of young people recently that, if everyone who is expected to retire does retire, then half the relevant workforce would be retiring in the next two years.Ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (deep breath)HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Look, anyone who's telling you that there are going to be a lot of jobs because there are a lot of old people trying to retire is selling you something. Don't buy it:I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that baby
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From the New York Times: The scientific equipment maker Thermo Fisher agreed on Monday to buy a rival, Life Technologies Corporation, for $13.6 billion. The deal will help the company expand its market share in the production of genetic sequencing machines, a fast-growing area used by scientists and drug companies to create specialized medicines for patients. Thermo Fisher Scientific, based in Waltham, Mass., is offering shareholders $76 for each of their shares in Life
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2:38 PM | Women entrepreneurs in industry
A pretty neat little article by Susan Ainsworth about women entrepreneurs in this week's C&EN. I think my favorite short article is the profile of Beth Bosley (emphasis mine):After carving out a 20-year career in the specialty and fine chemicals industry, Beth Bosley, 49, identified a market need that matched her technical skills in the specialized area of inorganic boron hydride chemistry—and wasted no time acting on it. Three years ago, she launched Ambridge, Pa.-based Boron
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From this week's C&EN:As an American Chemical Society member for about 30 years, I have been mystified by the continual assertion that the U.S. faces a general shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals. What objective data, such as from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, actually support this assertion? Nevertheless, there seems to be limited official response from ACS regarding the present employment situation and how much worse it may become in
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John Brockman has wheeled out another good bunch of experts for the newest Edge question “What’s the question about your field that you dread being asked?” One response by Richard Thaler is particularly interesting, who fears being asked “When will there be a single unified ‘behavioral’ theory of economic activity?” For those who know Thaler’s work [...]The post A unified behavioural theory of economic activity appeared first on Evolving
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When I first met Chris Wiggins of Columbia and hackNY back in 2011, he immediately introduced me to about a hundred other people, which made it obvious that his introductions were highly stereotyped. I thought he was some kind of robot, especially when I started getting emails from his phone which all had the same [...]
April 14, 2013
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1:53 PM | No post this week
A combination of computer-assisted difficulties and feline health problems have conspired to prevent me from finishing the piece I planned for this week. See you next week.
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10:54 AM | War of the machines, college edition
A couple of people have sent me this recent essay (hat tip Leon Kautsky) written by Elijah Mayfield on the education technology blog e-Literate, described on their About page as “a hobby weblog about educational technology and related topics that is maintained by Michael Feldstein and written by Michael and some of his trusted colleagues [...]
April 13, 2013
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11:59 AM | Aunt Pythia’s advice
A couple of sad updates on Aunt Pythia. First, someone hacked my Aunt Pythia spreadsheet and added hundreds of bizarre and offensive questions (at least they seemed intended to offend, but luckily Aunt Pythia doesn’t offend easily), which I then erased in huge blocks. This means if you actually had a valid question in the [...]
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1:16 AM | A public-facing math panel
I’m returning from two full days of talking to mathematicians and applied mathematicians at Cornell. I was really impressed with the people I met there – thoughtful, informed, and inquisitive – and with the kind reception they gave me. I gave an “Oliver Talk” which was joint with the applied math colloquium on Thursday afternoon. [...]
April 12, 2013
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10:44 PM | A week of links
Links this week: E.O. Wilson’s argument that great scientists don’t need math has already received plenty of responses. Wilson’s argument reminded me of one of Paul Krugman’s critiques of Stephen Jay Gould’s popular work, which were “literary confection” as they lacked math. A free webinar with Geoffrey Miller and others on What Every Marketer Should [...]The post A week of links appeared first on Evolving Economics.
April 11, 2013
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From the inbox (thanks, th!), a variety of postings at Huntsman Chemical, including this senior scientist position:Huntsman currently has a challenging opportunity for a Senior Scientist - Global CoreScience for our Polyurethanes Division at our Huntsman Advanced Technology Division located in The Woodlands, Texas. Education and Work Experience Requirements: A minimum of a PhD in Chemical Engineering, Polymer Engineer, Chemistry, Material or Polymer Science or related science and
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3:28 PM | Now there's a problem pharma doesn't have: "Do we have to pay taxes on the food we give away?"
What's the problem with giving your employees free food? Well, if you give enough of it to them, it starts to look like non-monetary compensation:When outsiders visit Silicon Valley, the first thing they often notice is the food: Cafeterias brimming with free gourmet meals and snacks offered to employees of Google Inc and other technology firms. But not all is as it seems in the buffet line. There is growing controversy among tax experts about how to treat these coveted freebies. The Internal
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Here's a dream job for ya, courtesy of the Boston Craigslist science/biotech section:seeking organic chemist experienced with organometallic chemistry (Cambridge (MIT)) I am seeking an Organic Chemist with at least 5 years of experience with organo-metallic chemistry, in particular familiar with organoiron compounds and strongly magnetic organic compounds with ferromagnetic iron within, capable of binding to proteins, peptides, DNA and RNA. This is a short-term assignment involving
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2:31 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 4/11/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 9 and April 10, there were 4 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website.Ho-hum: 3 engineering positions, 1 senior analytical director posting. (Nektar, Huntsville, AL)A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 289, 763, 2555 and 12 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 94 positions for the job title "chemist", with 8 for "research chemist", 13 for "analytical chemist" and 2 for "organic
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Last night I went to an event at Barnard where Ina Drew, ex-CIO head of JP Morgan Chase, who oversaw the London Whale fiasco, was warmly hosted and interviewed by Barnard president Debora Spar. [Aside: I was going to link to Ina Drew's wikipedia entry in the above paragraph, but it was so sanitized that I [...]
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A good friend (and unemployed Ph.D. chemist) describes a recent scene:Truly depressing sight on Monday. I went to a job fair hosted by the BioSpace website. On line, it said 6 companies were going to be there, but that didn't bother me too much. I figured it would be like ACS conventions, you never know who going to be there until you show up. There's a number of biotech companies in the DMV so I couldn't believe only six companies would be there. How
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April 10, 2013
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From the inbox, an interesting position with Innocentive in Boston:The Innovation Program Manager (NMC) is responsible for helping clients achieve maximal value from the InnoCentive Open Innovation services. A key responsibility includes leading the execution of InnoCentive's Novel Molecule Challenge program. Additionally, driving Challenge posting volumes by providing pre- and post-sales Challenge consultation with InnoCentive clients is essential. The position is extremely rewarding for
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This New York article on the synthetic drug craze was somewhat interesting, if not a bit breathlessly reported.* But here is a statement from a New York-area physician that I felt was wrong:[Dr. Julie] Holland believes that it’s a foregone conclusion that the next decade will include a new generation of Big Pharma meds based on marijuana. “You’re going to have medicine for inflammation and metabolism tickling the cannabis receptors—they’ll act like cannabinoids, but aren’t going to
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2:55 PM | Process Wednesday: scrubbers
Venturi scrubber diagramCredit: betescrubbersIn a former life, I used to do kilo-scale chlorinations in a walk-in hood. Nothing fancy, just the relevant carboxylic acid, 1.1 equivalents of thionyl chloride, toluene and heat. (I always knew how effective the DMF catalyst was because of the sound it made when I would add it to the reactor; it was an intense spitting sound that sounded like a pro wrestler tearing phone books in two.)Of course, we had a scrubber to remove the off-gassing
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