 |
| Credit: Tim |
Science funding mechanisms are too slow in normal times and may be much too slow during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fast Grants are an effort to correct this.
If you are a scientist at an academic institution currently working on a COVID-19 related project and in need of funding, we invite you to apply for a Fast Grant. Fast Grants are $10k to $500k and decisions are made in under 48 hours. If we approve the grant, you'll receive payment as quickly as your university can receive it.Link here. Best wishes to those interested.
The industry response to COVID-19 is inadequate. All biopharmaceutical companies should be responding with all resources to combat this health emergency. Donations from these very valuable companies do not go far enough. The biopharmaceutical industry has a large braintrust of talent that is not working on this problem as companies have deprioritized or even abandoned infectious disease research. Medicinal chemists, structural biologists, enzymologists and assay development and research biology departments at EVERY pharmaceutical company should be put to work until COVID-19 is no more.
I am asking for a brief furlough (3 months) to assist in research work on COVID-19. Being released to the post-COVID world is no solace to even the incarcerated. As a successful two-time biopharma entrepreneur, having purchased multiple companies, invented multiple new drug candidates, filed numerous INDs and clinical trial applications, I am one of the few executives experienced in ALL aspects of drug development from molecule creation and hypothesis generation, to preclinical assessments and clinical trial design/target engagement demonstration, and manufacturing/synthesis and global logistics and deployment of medicines.
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Rowan University chemistry professor and his wife killed two birds with one stone this week, by doing something good and temporarily curing boredom.
Jim Grinias is an assistant professor of chemistry at Rowan and his wife Kaitlin is a chemist at a pharmaceutical company, and they were both catching cabin fever.
"You know, after being stuck in the house for a couple of weeks, we both had the itch to get back in the lab a little bit," Grinias admitted. So they dropped off their son at grandma’s house for a couple of days and got to work making hand sanitizer, using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recipe and raw materials that were donated by the school.
"It was 200 proof ethanol, so effectively 100%, as pure as you can really buy. And then we had some hydrogen peroxide and then glycerol, which is a thick goopy liquid that is a thickening agent," Grinias explained.
As a result of the number of people that are now sequestered at home away from work and the laboratory, the Division of Organic Chemistry has decided to immediately release all of our video content that has been for members only. The nonpublic content includes 33 NOS Lecture Videos from NOS2013, NOS2015, NOS2017 and NOS2019; and 5 archived Virtual Symposia from 2018–2019.
Additionally, we want to take this opportunity to remind you of our other collections of video content such as the Eminent Organic Chemistry Videos (timeless interviews of 20 organic chemists by Jeffrey Seeman in 2008) and our small collection of historic organic chemistry lectures by Berson, Woodward, Wotiz, and Heck.There's quite a few good ones here - go take a look.
 |
| Credit: Calculated Risk, annotated by Chemjobber |
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 701,000 in March, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and efforts to contain it. Employment in leisure and hospitality fell by 459,000, mainly in food services and drinking places. Notable declines also occurred in health care and social assistance, professional and business services, retail trade, and construction.
This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry. Note that the March survey reference periods for both surveys predated many coronavirus-related business and school closures that occurred in the second half of the month.For the chemical manufacturing subsector, in February 2020, 850,400 people were employed. In March 2020, 847,400, a loss of 3000 jobs. Note that this number does not represent chemists only, rather employees of companies in the chemical manufacturing subsector.
We are making further significant adjustments to our GDP and employment estimates. We now forecast real GDP growth of -9% in Q1 and -34% in Q2 in qoq annualized terms (vs. -6% and -24% previously) and see the unemployment rate rising to 15% by midyear (vs. 9% previously). However, we have upgraded our expectations for the recovery after midyear, with a 19% qoq annualized GDP gain in Q3 (vs. 12% previously). Our estimates imply that a bit more than half of the near-term output decline is made up by year end and that real GDP falls 6.2% in 2020 on an annual-average basis (vs. 3.7% in our previous forecast).It's gonna be a big hole.
 |
| Credit: American Chemistry Council |
The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), fell 2.6 percent in March on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis following a downwardly revised 0.1 percent gain in February. On a year-over-year (Y/Y) basis, the barometer fell 1.3 percent in March.
The unadjusted data shows an 8.0 percent decline in March following a 1.1 percent decline in February and a 1.2 percent gain in January. The unadjusted decline in March is the largest in the post-World War II period. The diffusion index slumped to 27 percent in March. The diffusion index marks the number of positive contributors relative to the total number of indicators monitored. The CAB reading for February was revised downward by 1.13 points and that for January was revised downward by 0.38 points.
"The CAB signals recessionary conditions in U.S. commerce," said Kevin Swift, chief economist at ACC. "ACC believes a recession to be occurring when the barometer declines for three consecutive months and falls 3.0 percent or more from the peak. As of March, the CAB has declined for two straight months and fallen 8.9 percent from the peak."
The CAB has four main components, each consisting of a variety of indicators: 1) production; 2) equity prices; 3) product prices; and 4) inventories and other indicators.Well, that's not good news. Best wishes to us all.
Production-related indicators generally declined in March. Trends in construction-related resins, pigments and related performance chemistry were generally negative. Plastic resins used in packaging and for consumer and institutional applications were generally negative. Performance chemistry was negative and U.S. exports were weak. Equity prices collapsed, but are improving this week. Product and input prices declined. Inventory and other supply chain indicators were negative.
...In three to four weeks, there will be a major shortage of chemical reagents for coronavirus testing, the result of limited production capacity, compounded by the collapse of global supply chains when the epidemic closed down manufacturing in China for weeks....This linked to a press release from the American Society for Microbiology:
...One challenge that has come to light is the supply shortage for SARS-CoV-2 PCR reagents. We are deeply concerned that as the number of tests increases dramatically over the coming weeks, clinical labs will be unable to deploy them without these critical components. Increased demand for testing has the potential to exhaust supplies needed to perform the testing itself. This could include chemicals or plastics, for example, and could affect tests developed and offered by clinical or public health laboratories and/or (when they become available in the United States), commercial tests...So does anyone know what reagents are short? Are there chemical reagents (as opposed to biochemical ones, i.e. enzymes) that are in short supply? If so, it'd be great if we could figure this out...
More than three million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, sending a collective shudder throughout the economy that is unlike anything Americans have experienced.
The alarming numbers, in a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday, provide some of the first hard data on the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down whole swaths of American life faster than government statistics can keep track.
Just three weeks ago, barely 200,000 people applied for jobless benefits, a historically low number. In the half-century that the government has tracked applications, the worst week ever, with 695,000 so-called initial claims, had been in 1982.
Thursday’s figure of nearly 3.3 million set a grim record. “A large part of the economy just collapsed,” said Ben Herzon, executive director of IHS Markit, a business data and analytics firm....Here is the DOL report. How this will affect chemists is yet unknown, but I imagine there will be effects, and there will be evidence of this before June 30...
If you’ve found yourself in the work-from-home mode, it is an excellent time for your company to take a look at various safety and quality processes and protocols before you start the ramp-up after COVID-19. Midwest Chemical Safety can assist you in reviewing (or creating) and updating your safety documents such as:
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Let’s stay safe (and uninfected) out there!
Contact information here: harry@midwestchemsafety.com ; +1 217 971 6047
...In the U.S., the facility at Aberdeen, a city of 28,000, was built in 1974. The 450,000-square-foot factory and a sister plant in Omaha together produce 400 million respirators of myriad types annually. Within the next year, they will be producing many more.
When Rehder got that call from his bosses in January, he says, “basically, we were at that point where we needed to start every machine up. It happened pretty much instantaneously. That’s what this plant does.” The facility quickly organized offsite and online job fairs. Hires had to undergo training and pass a medical exam before starting work. The payroll now counts more than 700.
Rehder has also been bringing in new equipment to build additional assembly lines. The mask components are readily available because most of them, including the filters, are made in-house. The lines that assemble respirator cups, filters, nose clips, and nose foam are loaded with robots and other automation, while humans tend to packaging and other tasks that allow more easily for social distancing. No workers have yet gotten sick, Rehder says. At home, his wife has been patient—though, he jokes, “when we try to sit down and watch a movie and I get six calls in between, I get a couple of looks.”...Stay strong, Aberdeen, and keep making those masks....
As you know, New York State and the NYC metro area are ground zero for the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S. Health care providers are facing a critical shortage of personal protective equipment, especially of N95 respirator masks, but also of gowns and face shields.
Anything you can do to get the word out would be most appreciated.
Donated PPE may be shipped to:
Bellevue Hospital CenterBest wishes to the personnel of Bellevue Hospital Center, and best wishes to all of us.
Department of Medicine
462 1st Avenue - 16th Floor
New York, NY 10016
