A few articles from this week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News:
- Cover: "2-D materials go beyond graphene" (by Mitch Jacoby)
- Looks like there will be lots of public comment on EPA regulations (article by Britt Erickson)
- The Trump Administration's FY2018 has a lot of cuts to science agencies.
- I found this idea of doing mechanochemistry to put oxygen-17 into compounds to be interesting (article by Jyllian Kemsley)
- Chemical crackers in the Ohio River valley? (article by Marc S. Reisch)
- I see Andrew Liveris went to Saudi Arabia recently... (article by Alex Tullo)
- The latest from the Senior Chemists Committee (by chair Thomas Beattie)
Here's the key sentence in the budget-cut story.
ReplyDeleteIn recent years, CSB’s recommendations have also been focused on the need for greater regulation of industry, which has frustrated both regulators and industry,” budget documents say.
"Industry" is the victim. Safety costs too much (except for safety walls).
Have budget increases improved outcomes for graduates? Many data sources say nope.
ReplyDeleteThe cuts may be a good thing if they end up acting as a way to temper PhD and maybe even lower level graduate production.
This is potentially true, and yet grad students will still be needed to TA lab sections since I don't see faculty doing it. So I don't see decreased budgets lowering production because there will still be plenty of grad applications to fill all those TA slots. It'll just move the sciences more towards the humanities model where funding isn't guaranteed after the first year which in turn will decrease the domestic student pool and increase the foreign students who are just happy for the opportunity.
DeleteI wonder if we're going to see armies of computational chemists working out of cubicles, avoiding the expense of running labs. Maybe that'll be the grad school fad of tomorrow, kind of like how everyone used to stick a protein on something completely unrelated to biochemistry (in an effort to chase after funding) back in my day 15 years ago!
DeleteDo chemical crackers drive 1969 Dodge Chargers with Confederate flags on the roofs?
ReplyDelete