Interesting pastimes

A particularly remarkable detail in Ryan Cross' profile of Professor David Liu: 

In 1999, fresh out of graduate school, Liu joined Harvard as an assistant professor. He was just 26... 

One or two failures are expected from someone with a natural tendency to push boundaries—both professionally and personally. Early in his career, Liu was banned from MGM Grand casinos after a night in which he made too much money playing blackjack. Soon after, he began informally teaching a group of card-counting Harvard undergraduates. Over the course of four years, they developed nearly optimal solutions for winning the game. 

“We went everywhere in the U.S.,” Liu says. “It was an amazing experience.” He still keeps a case full of poker chips from their travels.

The number of Ivy League/elite university card-counters must be quite high. I wonder how many people come out ahead?  

This week's C&EN

A few articles from this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News:

• Cover: "Fighting ocean plastics at the source" (by Alex Tullo) 
• Cool profile of David Liu (by Ryan Cross)
• For those who enjoy being skeptical about "let the good times roll" economics news, this article by Alex Tullo is pretty fun.
• Really liked this article on the chemistry of raincoats by Bethany Halford.  
• This North Carolina Chemours/water pollution story sure doesn't look good (article by Cheryl Hogue) 
• Some d00d yapping about zombie projects

2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 538 positions

The 2018 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 April 40, 2017, the 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 585 positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Try the open thread.

Want to talk about starting your new group? That open discussion is here.

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

Postdoctoral position: organic/medicinal chemistry, York University, Toronto, ON

From the inbox: 

Postdoctoral Fellow – Synthetic Organic & Medicinal Chemistry  

A post-doctoral position is available in Professor Orellana’s research group at York University (Toronto, Canada). The successful candidate will support a medicinal chemistry effort by conducting hit-to-lead optimization, and will be responsible for the multi-step synthesis, purification and characterization of small drug-like molecules. 

For a full description please visit: http://orellangart.wixsite.com/orellanagroup/join-us  

Interested candidates should submit application materials (CV, research summary and references) directly to aorellan@yorku.ca

Best wishes to those interested.  

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 24 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 24 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.

View From Your Hood: greenhouse edition

Credit: abbeycjackson

By Twitter user @abbeycjackson:

"View of some of the Duke greenhouses from the lab window. I feel pretty bad for the poor succulents."

(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.) 

Job posting: synthetic organic chemist, Newark, DE

From the comments, positions at FMC:

FMC Agrochemical Solutions has multiple Ph.D. (Synthetic Organic Chemist) positions open in Newark, DE. These positions are analogous to medicinal chemistry positions, but compounds are optimized and developed for ag use (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides).

Link here. Interesting chemistry, interesting challenges. Best wishes to those interested. 

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs List: 142 positions

The Medicinal Chemist Jobs list has 142 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.)

14 new positions at Organic Chemistry Jobs

Over at Common Organic Chemistry, there's 6 new positions posted for April 10 and 8 new positions posted for April 8.

The Process Chemistry Jobs List: 135 positions

The Process Chemistry Jobs List has 135 positions.

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

Want to chat process jobs? Try the open thread. 

Jacksonville student injured in chemistry demonstration fire in February

From Anne Schindler of First Coast News:

A chemistry experiment gone awry resulted in at least one severely injured student at Westside High School on 103rd Street. 

First Coast News has confirmed that the February accident resulted in extensive second-degree burns and hospitalization of the male teenager. 

The Duval County School District does not appear to have told the general public or even parents of other students who witnessed the accident. But litigation is likely pending – which could end up costing taxpayers countywide. 

According to information obtained from sources and the sole public record that district officials have released, the incident happened at Westside High School on Feb. 28 during a class science experiment. 

According to people familiar with the case, it occurred in the lab of chemistry teacher Asante Dean. 

Dean has been chair of the school’s science department since June of 2015, according to his LinkedIn page, and has taught at the school since June 2013. 

First Coast News requested the incident report, which teachers are required to file after any classroom accident. The school district refused to provide it, citing an unrelated public records exemption which applies to personnel records. 

District officials also declined to say if parents were notified – including those whose kids witnessed the accident. Asked for any notice sent home, school district officials cited FERPA -- a federal exemption designed to protect students academic and discipline records...

We will see if this ends up being related to an alcohol fire. We're about due for the first one of 2018... 

Warning Letter of the Week: "we made it, it's good" edition

An epistle from the Division of Pharmaceutical Quality Operations III to the president of Continental Manufacturing Chemist, Inc. in Madrid, Iowa: 

1.    Your firm failed to maintain adequate separate defined areas necessary to prevent contamination or mix-up (21 CFR 211.42(c)).
You manufacture several over-the-counter (OTC) drug products and medicated otic and oral care products under contract. These drugs include [redacted] Ear Wax Drops, [redacted] Oral Rinse, and fluoride toothpastes. You also manufacture numerous non-pharmaceutical materials in your facility, including a weed killer and adhesive remover. 

You did not utilize any quarantine markings or physical segregation of finished drug products from the lawn care and cleaning chemicals in your warehouse. You did not designate your quarantined finished drug products with quarantined status. During the inspection, your Vice President of Operations stated that your firm does not quarantine any finished products before they are released by quality because you “thought of the product as good once it was manufactured.”

Your response stated that your warehousing space is “tight,” and you have recently acquired additional off-site space to store packaging components. You also stated that you would implement a procedure by July 1, 2017, for labeling the status of finished drug products.

Just in case you were thinking about mixing the lawn care products and the toothpaste... 

2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 535 positions

The 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 535 positions.

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

On April 11, 2017, the 2017 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 588 positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Try the open thread.

Want to talk about starting your new group? That open discussion is here.

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

The Academic Staff Jobs List: 23 positions

The Academic Staff Jobs list has 23 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.

Funny biodiesel story

Also in this week's C&EN, an story of an unusual use of biodiesel: 

I read your article about biofuels in the March 5 issue with interest. Since I retired, I have volunteered aboard a WWII ship located on the Ohio River in Evansville, Ind.: LST-325. LST stands for landing ship, tank. This ship landed tanks and supplies at Normandy, in addition to other beaches of Europe. It is an operational museum ship that transits the rivers of the Midwest annually, opening for public tours. 

I think it was in 2011 when the ship was going up the Illinois River heading for Henry, Ill., [that] we stopped in Beardstown, Ill., to receive a donation of 10,000 gal [about 37,850 L] of biodiesel. We added it to about another 5,000 gal [about 18,900 L] of conventional diesel we already had aboard. When we returned to Evansville from this cruise, we had a few thousand gallons remaining in our tank. 

The ship was inactive for about a year, but when we tried to restart its engines in 2012, we had great difficulty. After 11 months of storage, as your article clearly states, the biodiesel was a gelatinous mess. We had to clean our tanks, all the fuel lines to our filters, and then on to our engines. After flushing with conventional diesel fuel, we finally were able to start our engines. 

There needs to be a warning label on biofuels indicating that they need to be used almost immediately. It should not be stored. 

Robert J. Hargrove
Macon, Ga.

I can't imagine the mess that must have been to clean out a 10,000 gallon tank with a gelatinous mass of biofuel; did they just solubilize the mess and pump it out? Yuck!  

This week's C&EN

A few articles from this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News:

• Cover: "Recycling Renewables" (by Melody M. Bomgardner and Alex Scott)
• Bet you didn't think you'd get to read about bat fungus this week. (article by Emma Hiolski)
• R&D spending in the chemical industry is up slightly (article by Marc Reisch)
• interesting glovebox/hood combo there
• The presentations at the "Science of Sexual Harassment" symposium at the spring National Meeting
• Photoredox reactions for chiral amines (article by Stu Borman)
• "Azidophenylalanine poses explosion risk" (article by Carmen Drahl) 
• I didn't realize there were problems with certain ballistic vests (article by Marc Reisch)