Posts
May 07, 2013
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2:32 PM | Daily Pump Trap: 5/7/13 edition
Good morning! Between May 2 and May 6, there were 268 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 7 (3%) are academically connected and 254 (95%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.Uh, wow: It's always annoying when Kelly dumps a bazillion positions on the C&EN Jobs database, especially when half of them are for things tangentially related to chemistry. Hemopathologist, anyone?On the other hand: BASF has posted 5 jobs nationwide; 3 of them are in Ames, Iowa, including this
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2:20 PM | Ivory Filter Flask: 5/7/13 edition
Good morning! Between April 30 and May 6, there were 9 new academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs. The numbers:Total number of ads: 9- Postdocs: 1- Tenure-track faculty: 4- Temporary faculty: 1- Lecturer positions: 1- Staff positions: 2- US/non-US: 8/3Sewanee, TN: The University of the South is looking for a M.S. chemist to be a chemistry lab coordinator.Semper Paratus: The U.S. Coast Guard Academy (New London, CT) is looking for a one-year lecturer. M.S. in chemistry
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11:07 AM | The NYC Data Skeptics Meetup
One thing I’m super excited about at work is the new NYC Data Skeptics Meetup we’re organizing. Here’s the description of our mission: The hype surrounding Big Data and Data Science is at a fever pitch with promises to solve the world’s business and social problems, large and small. How accurate or misleading is this [...]
May 06, 2013
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2:21 PM | Chemical weapons and Syria
From this week's C&EN, the President of the United States is skeptical about current data about chemical weapons use in Syria (article by Glenn Hess):Although “some evidence” has surfaced that chemical weapons have been used in Syria’s prolonged and intense civil war, it isn’t enough to warrant action, President Barack Obama said last week at a news briefing. Obama said more facts must be known before he is willing to consider any kind of escalation or U.S. involvement in
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12:52 PM | Impatience and aggregate risk
Imagine two populations of asexually reproducing people. In the first population, each person has a 50 per cent chance of having no children, and a 50 per cent chance of having two children. If there is no relationship between the outcomes for each person (i.e. they face idiosyncratic risk) and the population is large, we [...]The post Impatience and aggregate risk appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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11:04 AM | In defense of neglectful parenting
As I promised yesterday, I want to respond to this New Yorker article “The Child Trap: the rise of overparenting,” which my friend Chris Wiggins forwarded to me. The premise of the article is that nowadays we spoil our kids, force them to do a bunch of adult-supervised after-school activities, and generally speaking hover over [...]
May 05, 2013
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2:28 PM | Do what I want or do what I really want
I’m on my way out to a picnic in Central Park on this glorious Sunday morning, and I plan to write a much more thorough post in response to this New Yorker article on overparenting that my friend Chris Wiggins sent me, but today I just wanted to impart one idea I’ve developed as a [...]
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Maybe it's the gloomy Seattle weather that has made investment manager Jim Hansen and his son and partner, Kevin, at Ravenna Capital Management immune to oil and gas industry hype about the supposed U.S. shale gas "revolution." More likely it is thorough research focused on making their clients money and keeping that money out of harm's way.The Hansens are patient contrarian investors whose time horizon is generally several years. They can't help you if you want advice on next week's or next
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May 04, 2013
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Aunt Pythia is yet again gratified to find a few new questions in her inbox this morning, but as usual, she’s running quite low. After reading and enjoying the column below, please consider making some fabricated, melodramatic dilemma up out of whole cloth and, more importantly: Please submit your fake question for Aunt Pythia at [...]
May 03, 2013
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Pretty sure you need to run that sampleagain, fella. Credit: WikipediaBack in the day, I used to get my data from a LC/MS named Chief Wiggum. I think he was one of a number of different Simpson-named instruments that we had.I'm pretty sure I've heard of HPLCs named after Disney characters as well. [Why is it that NMRs never seem to be named?] Sports teams, literary characters, etc. are probably all good candidates.Readers, what's the best naming system you've heard of?Have a great weekend!
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3:10 PM | Announcing: The Banholzer Award
If you didn't know it already, I actually like it when senior people in industry and academia say things that are true, even if uncomfortable and unpopular and annoying. Beryl Lieff Benderly gets some great quotes from Dow executive vice president and Ph.D. chemical engineer William Banholzer (who, incidentally, is on the Shakhashiri Commission):...But you'll notice that a history of postdocing is not among the characteristics that appear in Banholzer's description. "I don't think I
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2:09 PM | A very good thought on networking
I was commenting on Twitter how networking techniques/language made me feel a little uncomfortable, and the very incisive Bill Hooker had a good comment:I was uncomfortable with "networking" for many years, until a friend turned it on its head for me by his own example. This is the most connected guy I know: no matter what or who you need, he can get you there, or close to it. So how does he do it? Simple: he is always on the lookout for ways to help other people. He pays no attention, in
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Credit: Calculated RiskFresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the employment rate is down 0.1% to 7.5% for April 2013, with 165,000 new non-farm payroll jobs created. The broader U6 measurement of unemployment was up 0.1% to 13.9%.I believe the media will be fixated on the positive revisions for job creation in February and March, with a total of 114,000 new jobs added to the 356,000 that were already created. Chemical manufacturing employment was up slightly (900 jobs) to
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12:03 PM | A week of links
Links this week: Gender language and economic power – another economic paper with a spurious correlation? Culture and economic development. We haven’t yet reached our satiation point. A summary. It’s been a few weeks since the last, but here’s another Chagnon versus the anthropologists article. How many priming studies are safe to cite?The post A week of links appeared first on Evolving Economics.
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I just read this opinion piece written by Jillian York and published by Aljazeera.com. York discusses “How social network policies are changing speech and privacy norms” and she makes the point that there’s a big difference between our legal rights as citizens and the way Facebook has defined its policies, and by extension our “rights” inside Facebook. [...]
May 02, 2013
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Sounds potentially interesting:“The availability of jobs and advancement opportunities isn’t what it was 5 years ago. What can you do to stand out from the rest and advance your career? Well, when the going gets tough, the tough use their networks. Join Dr. Dennis Guthrie, who has over 20 years’ experience with Dow Chemical and Dr. David Harwell from ACS Careers as they profile the latest changes in the job market for chemists and explain how you most likely already know the person that
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Be your own special flower (gag)Credit: flickr user tlchua99Derek Lowe has a long look at E.O. Wilson's latest book Letters to a Young Scientist; it is worth reading. To me, Wilson's advice seems to be fairly standard stuff, including this advice:(DL) Here's how to pick an area to concentrate on: (EOW) I believe that other experienced scientists would agree with me that when you are selecting a domain of knowledge in which to conduct original research, it is wise to look for
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From Michael Price, a graduate of the program, and a writer at Science Careers:For 30 years, the Writing Seminars Department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has offered scientists and science-minded journalists the opportunity to hone their writing and communication skills through its master's degree in science writing. The program was one of the big four graduate science-writing programs in the United States... On Monday, the science writing program's director, Ann
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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.
