View From Your Hood: smiling observer edition

Credit: @LeitchLab

Via Twitter, from the laboratory of Professor Dave Leitch: "This observant observatory watches us all day. What makes it smile? We think it’s happy about our latest results. And that the rain is gone. #EmojiIRL #UVic #ViewFromMyHood @Chemjobber @chemistryatuvic @UVicScience"

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in (with a caption and preference for name/anonymity, please) at chemjobber@gmail.com; will run every other Friday.)

TIL: Radon health mines

Via the New York Times, this amusing summary of people who use radon as a health cure at "Roadside America":  

...A half-dozen defunct gold and uranium mines south of Helena, Montana, attract ailing tourists, who bask in radioactive radon gas and drink radioactive water to improve their health. Each summer, hundreds of people, many of them Amish and Mennonites, come to the radon health mines to relax and treat arthritis, lupus, asthma and other chronic cripplers. 

With colorful names like the Sunshine Health Mine, Free Enterprise, Earth Angel, Radon Tunnel, and the Merry Widow, the mine shafts tout radon levels as much as 175 times the federal safety standard for houses. Yet, visitors claim miraculous recoveries and disease remissions in the damp, cool passages. Some have arrived in wheelchairs, then walked out on their own. 

The health mines opened in the early 1950's when little was understood about the health and hazard aspects of atomic radiation. One claim is that the gas stimulates the nerves and helps the human body heal itself. 

The typical vacation at a radon health mine lasts a week or two. Visitors are recommended to sit in the mine two or three times a day, until they hit the maximum annual exposure level designated by the state. The permitted total visit is determined by the radiation level of the particular mine. The average visitor is 72 years old. The mines appeal to "plain people," such as the Amish or the Mennonites, because of the "natural" healing aspects, the lack of commercialization, and the relatively low cost-per-hour for treatment sessions...

I think I've exposed myself to sufficient levels of ionizing radiation for one lifetime by being a reasonably frequent air traveler and a summer or two working with radioactive phosphorus. I don't think I'll be heading into the radon mines for this...

Job posting: Alchemie, Customer Success Specialist, Troy, MI

From the inbox, a position at chemical education software startup Alchemie: 

As part of the Alchemie team you will be interacting with two groups of customers, college faculty and their students. In this position you will demonstrate our Mechanisms app and Epiphany data platform to professors, through on-line demos and in-person meetings, with a goal of increasing adoption of the technology as an active learning platform for college classrooms. You will work with both faculty and students in on-boarding the technology and answering their questions as issues arise. Your subject matter expertise will be used to create new content, both by authoring new problems for mobile applications and in creating support material for student use. As part of our content team, you will also work with our researchers to produce literature for peer-reviewed publications and for our own technology blog. 

This position will put you at the forefront of educational technology, as we position Alchemie for growth by building Augmented Reality applications and advanced assessment analytics for chemistry and other STEM courses. 

We are looking for a person with strong interpersonal and communication skills, with a gift for writing and creative problem-solving. You will work side-by-side with software developers, data scientists, content specialists, and marketers to build the Community of Practice for the Alchemie technology suite. 

Requirements: 

Chemistry or Chemistry Education degree, with a minimum of a BA/BS
Instructional experience – either through peer-led tutoring or classroom experience (organic chemistry instruction is not a requirement, but is a strong plus)
Strong technology skills, especially with Google Apps and Microsoft Office Suite
Aptitude to learn new technology platforms, such as CRM software...

Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.  

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 285 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 285 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

15 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 15 new positions posted for January 12.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 262 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 262 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Rest in peace, Sheri Sangji

Ten years ago today, Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji died of her injuries sustained while running a reaction with tert-butyl lithium in the laboratory of Professor Patrick Harran at UCLA. My thoughts and prayers are with her friends and her family.

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 538 positions

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 538 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

On January 16, 2018, the 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 489 positions.

Interested in how this is tracking overall? Check out these sweet graphics done by Andrew Spaeth.

Want to chat? Here's a link to the current open thread.

Here's a link to the November 2018-January 2019 open thread. Here's the October/November thread. Here's the pre-September thread, here's the September/October thread.

Otherwise, all discussions are on the Chemistry Faculty Jobs List webforum.

Postdoctoral position: Pierce Lab, NC State University

Via Twitter, a postdoc at NC State: 

A funded postdoctoral position in the research group of Professor Joshua Pierce at NC State University is available to work at the interface of synthetic chemistry and infectious disease drug discovery. The position is to support a project aimed at commercialization of small molecule anti-infective agents and is currently supported for one year, with the opportunity to extend this funding based on milestones. Candidates who have an interest in commercialization and transitioning to a start-up pursing these efforts are of particular interest. 

Candidates should have a PhD in Chemistry or Chemical biology, and experience with microbiology is preferred but not required. If interested, please send a CV and list of 3 references to Professor Pierce by e-mail (subject line: Postdoc Position Application) and additional materials will be requested as necessary. Review will begin immediately with a start date in the first half of 2019 preferred. 

Joshua G. Pierce PhD
Associate Professor of Chemistry
University Faculty Scholar
NC State University
jgpierce@ncsu.edu

 Best wishes to those interested. 

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 29 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 29 positions.

This list is curated by Sarah Cady. It targets:

• Full-time STAFF positions in a Chem/Biochem/ChemE lab/facility at an academic institution/natl lab
• Lab Coordinator positions for research groups or undergraduate labs 
• and for an institution in Canada or the United States

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

Want to chat about staff scientist positions? Try the open thread.

Bankers' boxes

A list of small, useful things (links):

• The latest from Stellen für Chemiker
• The latest from All Things Metathesis
• At Sustainable Nano, the holiday gift bow edition
• Nessa on her paper reading strategy
• Org Prep Daily, inorganic chemistry edition
• The latest from the Baran Lab
• New Year's resolutions for scientists
• Kat Day's 2018 roundup
• Prof. Francl, with a bit of fiction

An open invitation to all interested in writing a blog, a hobby that will bring 
you millions thousands hundreds tens of dollars joy and happiness. Send me a link to your post, and I'd be happy to put it up.

Have a good weekend!

There is no skills gap, 2019 edition

Via Twitter, Vox's Matt Yglesias on a favorite bugaboo: 

...The theory here was that high unemployment reflected a structural shift in the labor market such that jobs were available, but workers simply didn’t have the right education or training for them. Harvard Business Review ran articles about this — including articles rebutting people who said the “skills gap” didn't exist — and big companies like Siemens ran paid sponsor content in the Atlantic explaining how to fix the skills gap. 

But nothing was really done to transform the American education system, and no enormous investment was made in retraining unemployed workers. And yet the unemployment rate kept steadily falling in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 as continued low interest rates from the Federal Reserve let a demand-side recovery continue. Donald Trump became president, injected a bunch of new fiscal stimulus on both the spending and tax sides, and in 2017 and 2018 the unemployment rate kept falling and the labor force participation rate kept rising. 

Now along comes a new paper from Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance presented this week at the American Economics Association’s annual conference that shows the skeptics were right all along — employers responded to high unemployment by making their job descriptions more stringent. When unemployment went down thanks to the demand-side recovery, suddenly employers got more relaxed again....

You can read a draft copy of the paper here. (scroll down, PDF)

I think it would be interesting to see the written requirements for a principal scientist in medicinal chemistry at Merck or Pfizer over the last 15 years to see if the requirements did any significant shifting from 2003 to 2008 to 2013 to now. 

Got a career dilemma?

I'm always game for writing answer requests for advice in my column at Chemical and Engineering News. Please feel free to write me (chemjobber@gmail.com) if you have a career-oriented dilemma that you'd like me to write about in the magazine. Also, you can submit your questions with this handy web form. Thanks!

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 271 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list (curated by Joel Walker and myself) has 271 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions, but if you want to do the traditional "leave a link in the comments", that works, too.

Want to chat about medchem positions? Try the open thread.

Positions I'm not including: positions outside the United States, computational positions (this will likely change), academic positions (likely never.)

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List: 11 positions

The Analytical Chemistry Jobs List has 11 positions; this is curated by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Want to help out? Fill out this form. 

40 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 18 new positions posted for January 7 and 22 positions posted for January 5.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 258 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 258 positions.

Want to help? Here's a form to fill out.

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Chemistry arranged by purity

with apologies to XKCD