A few articles from this week's C&EN:
- Cover story: Jyllian Kemsley on psychedelics as anti-addiction tools.
- In a future where some of these drugs are legal, I wonder if they will actually have an effect on addiction medicine? Sure seems promising now.
- "Is there a crisis in organic chemistry education?" (article by Beth Halford)
- Lots of great comments from the ACS San Diego audience here; sounds like if there is a crisis, it's not a new one. That said, if indeed the MCAT drives a great deal of organic chemistry education (and I think that it does) and organic chemistry has been de-emphasized, it will be fascinating to see what organic chemistry education looks like in ten years.
- A new indium* catalyst to produce methanol from carbon dioxide - seems interesting. (article by Stu Borman.)
- "“Everything that’s in this paper could have been done in 1978,” he says." New phorbol route from Phil Baran, article by Bethany Halford.
- Interesting move by former Affymetrix employees to edge out Thermo Fisher for its purchase (article by Marc Reisch)
- Always helps to be able to get 1.6 billion dollars in financing. Te salud!
- Jyllian Kemsley's writeup of the laboratory injury at the University of Hawaii.
- Really interesting (and heartening) article by Deirdre Lockwood about work-life balance in the chemical and pharma industries - more to come on this one.
*fixed - thanks, uncle sam!
Indium C-J, not iridium... and maybe you should say indium oxide supported on zirconia so we have a clearer idea. Temperatures of 200-300C for this kind of system are very good.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Uncle. #headslap
Delete'“The fact is organic chemistry textbooks have not changed in 50 years. It’s the same approach,” said Jerome Haky, an organic chemistry professor at Florida Atlantic University who was in the audience.'
ReplyDeleteMaybe organic textbooks haven't changed because organic chemistry, at least the fundamentals, haven't changed in 50 years? Fancy metal reagents are all fun and shouty, but really the last big breakthrough in organic chemistry was Barton's work on conformational analysis. Maybe MO stuff, maybe....even that Corey invented decades ago.