Common Organic Chemistry is resolving some technical difficulties, but has ported over the list to Google Drive for now. There are 7 new positions for December 21.
Don't forget to check out the Common Organic Chemistry company list, a very helpful resource for organic chemists looking for potential employers.
Via the New York Times, this interesting news:
Hospitals all over China have almost everything necessary for a mass vaccination drive: Millions of doses. Refrigerators to store them. Health care workers trained to administer them.
Everything, that is, except proof that any of their vaccines work.
Unlike their Western competitors, the Chinese companies have not disclosed data from late-stage clinical trials that would show whether their vaccines are effective, and regulators in China have not officially approved them.
That has not deterred local governments across the country, which have begun an ambitious vaccination campaign. The goal is to inoculate 50 million people — roughly the population of Colombia — by the middle of February, before the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel.
I am very interested to see how well the Chinese vaccines work, and how their regulatory systems perform. You could tell an interesting story of the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, being appropriately documented, as being sufficiently effective to be deployed across the developing world. It would, in the right scenario, herald the Chinese pharma industry as being able to produce world-class vaccines, and their regulatory systems as being as rigorous as Western countries. I think it's still too early to tell, but the choice to be relatively mum on the performance of the Sinopharm vaccines doesn't bode well...
UPDATE: This post was overtaken by events. Via the New York Times this morning:
A Chinese pharmaceutical company said on Wednesday that an early analysis of clinical trial results showed that one of its coronavirus vaccines was effective, an announcement that sent a positive signal for the global rollout of Chinese vaccines but lacked crucial details.
The company, a state-controlled firm called Sinopharm, said that a vaccine candidate made by its Beijing Institute of Biological Products arm had an efficacy rate of 79 percent based on an interim analysis of Phase 3 trials. Sinopharm said it had filed an application with Chinese regulators to allow the vaccine to be used broadly.
It will be interesting to see how this will all play out.
From the American Chemistry Council:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), rose 1.1% in December on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis, unchanged from November and October. On a year-over-year (Y/Y) basis, the barometer fell 1.1% percent in December.
The unadjusted data show a 0.7% gain in December following a 1.8% increase in November and a 0.7% gain in October. The diffusion index was stable at 71% in December. The diffusion index marks the number of positive contributors relative to the total number of indicators monitored. The CAB reading for November was revised upward by 0.24 points and that for October was revised upward by 0.89 points. These were highly volatile months for the data. As always, the December data are provisional and subject to revision.
"With eight consecutive months of gains, the December CAB reading is consistent with recovery in the U.S. economy," said Kevin Swift, chief economist at ACC.
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.
In December, production-related indicators were positive. Despite strength in housing activity, trends in construction-related resins, pigments and related performance chemistry were mixed. Reflecting strength in manufacturing, resins and chemistry used in other durable goods were strong. Gains in plastic resins used in packaging and for consumer and institutional applications were positive and suggest further growth in retail sales. Performance chemistry for industry continued to expand. U.S. exports were positive, while equity prices increased, but at a slower pace. Product and input prices were modestly positive. Inventory and other supply chain indicators were positive.
Good news, let's hope it continues into the new year.
The 2021 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 242 research/teaching positions and 27 teaching assistant professor positions.
Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.From the inbox:
The Rabuffetti group at Wayne State University (http://www.rabuffettigroup.wayne.edu) has an open postdoctoral position in inorganic nanomaterials chemistry. This research project aims to establish principles to guide the discovery and design of luminescent nanothermometers for applications that range from biosensing to sustainable energy conversion. The project involves two major tasks: (1) solution-phase synthesis of thermosensitive, light-emitting nanocrystals; and (2) systematic investigation and understanding of their temperature-dependent luminescence response.
Required qualifications:
Interested candidates should send Prof. Rabuffetti (far@wayne.edu) (1) a one-page cover letter detailing relevant research experience, research interest, goals and expectations for the position, and preferred start date; and (2) a curriculum vitae including a list of publications and contact information for three references.
Best wishes to those interested.
The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List has 48 positions. It is curated by Lilian Josephson (@lljosephson).
From Dr. Josephson: This year we will try to utilize the list further by circulating among the professors, as well as using the hashtags #facultychemEjobs and #MeettheCandidatesChE2020.The Academic Staff Jobs list has 88 positions.
This list is curated by Sarah Cady and @nmr_chemist. It targets:The Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center is the only institution of its kind in the United States, and the largest in the world. It currently houses over 77,000 different fruit fly strains, most of which are in high demand. In 2019, the center shipped 204,672 vials of flies to labs in 49 states and 54 countries, said Annette Parks, one of the center’s five principal investigators.It is “one of the jewels we have in the community,” said Pamela Geyer, a stem cell biologist at the University of Iowa who has been ordering flies from the stock center for 30 years.Other model organisms can be frozen at particular life stages for long-term storage; lab freezers the world over hold mouse embryos and E. coli cultures. But fruit flies can’t go on ice. Caring for the creatures means regularly “flipping” them: transferring them from an old vial to a clean one that has been provisioned with a dollop of food. Quarantined with other members of their strain, the flies mate and lay eggs, which hatch, pupate and reproduce, continuing the cycle.
Of course, these folks have been working hard through the pandemic. Best wishes to them, and all of us.
Via CNBC, the rules for upcoming stimulus payments:
The pandemic recovery bill includes direct payments of up to $600 to eligible adults, plus $600 per child dependent.
While the adult benefit is half the size of the first stimulus check, the amount earmarked for qualifying dependents was raised by $100. At the full benefit amount, a family of four could potentially receive $2,400.
Those qualifying for the maximum stimulus payment include individuals earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income, or $112,500 as head of household and $150,000 as a married couple filing jointly.
Payments are reduced at the same rate as the CARES Act checks. For every $100 earned over these income thresholds, payments are docked $5. However, the AGI caps are lower this time.
Individuals with $87,000 in income and married couples who file jointly earning $174,000 will not receive any payment. Therefore, fewer people will qualify for payments, and for those who do receive a check, some will be getting a lot less than the first round of payments.
Wishing you and your family a healthy and very Merry Christmas and a happy 2020. Back on Monday.
A Chemjobber Christmas tradition, updated for 2020. Send a PDF to your family - try it, it works!
December 23, 2020
Dear family member:
This holiday season, your relative is in his or her fifth/sixth/seventh/_______ year of graduate school in chemistry. This is an unusual year, due to the pandemic. Many of you are wisely avoiding seeing your graduate student, but you may be discussing things via virtual visits. This is a delicate time in their lives -- please make interactions smooth for all by following these simple suggestions:
Please send lots of fresh fruit and vegetables -- they are in short supply.
Do not have pizza delivered, it is an all-too-common part of their diets.
Sleep is a rare commodity in graduate school; please avoid early morning FaceTime sessions if possible.
In attempting to communicate with your graduate student, please avoid asking the following questions:
When are you going to finish?
What can you do with your degree?
Will you be the kind of doctor that helps people?
Does the vaccine have microchips in it?
How about a startup? I hear machine learning is hot.
There's a clinical chemistry department at my hospital -- can you get a job there?
Why do you need a postdoc? Haven't you gone to enough school?
MEGABIOGENE has opened a facility nearby -- can you get a job there?
Is COVID-19 a hoax?
STEM jobs are really in high demand, aren't they?
Have you thought about data science?
I see [insert high school rival here] has finished medical school -- how much will they be
making?
Can you make hydroxychloroquine?
Have you thought about teaching? I heard professors have a stable job.
When are you going to finish?
In following these simple suggestions, I trust that you, your graduate student and your family will have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Very sincerely,
Chemjobber
The 2021 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 238 research/teaching positions and 23 teaching assistant professor positions.
Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.The Chemical Engineering Faculty Jobs List has 47 positions. It is curated by Lilian Josephson (@lljosephson).
From Dr. Josephson: This year we will try to utilize the list further by circulating among the professors, as well as using the hashtags #facultychemEjobs and #MeettheCandidatesChE2020.The Academic Staff Jobs list has 80 positions.
This list is curated by Sarah Cady and @nmr_chemist. It targets:Remember this guy? Prestige Ameritech is a US mask manufacturer, and he was refusing to sell masks without a 5 year supply agreement earlier this year. How is he doing these days? Via the New York Times, an update:
...Alarmed by the federal government’s lack of response but determined to pitch in, Mr. Bowen invested millions of dollars to build more machines and he hired 200 additional workers, allowing Prestige Ameritech to increase production to six million masks a month, up from 75,000 in March. “I did it all without a penny of government help,” said Mr. Bowen, whose company is one of the country’s largest domestic mask producers.
By next spring, he said, his factory will be producing 10 million masks a month. Still, Mr. Bowen worries he will be saddled with unsold product. “A few months ago my phone was literally ringing all the time and I was getting thousands of emails per day,” he said. “Right now my phone just isn’t ringing that much.”
The problem, Mr. Bowen said, is that the hospitals that were once so eager to purchase his N95 masks have begun buying cheaper products from China, which have become more widely available in the months since Beijing brought its pandemic under control...
Sounds like Mr. Bowen didn't get too many folks locked into a supply agreement. There was a lot of talk of "decoupling", and I imagine it will come before long, but it's not here yet...
Striking a compromise between two high-risk population groups, a panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Sunday to recommend that people age 75 and older be next in line to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the United States, along with about 30 million “frontline essential workers,” such as emergency responders, teachers and grocery store employees......A working group of the committee suggested that in addition to teachers, firefighters and police, “frontline essential workers” should include school support staff, day care employees, corrections personnel, public transit, grocery store and postal workers, and those in working in food production and manufacturing.But the group’s formal recommendation is not that specific. The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, emphasized that its recommendations were nonbinding and that every state should fine-tune them to serve the unique needs of its population.
Here's the CDC presentation. If they use the CISA definitions for manufacturing workers for critical infrastructure, that will cover a fair number of chemists under the "chemical" category. (including (theoretically) myself*, full disclosure.) Best wishes to all of us.
*I would very much like to get the vaccine, but I'm happy to wait my turn. I'd rather my parents (older, healthy) get it before me.
It's been a crazy week, but we've made it to Friday. Here's hoping that you have a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday.
Via the New York Times, a really interesting article about a French distillery, with some chemical manufacturing to boot:
Royalties go back to 380-some Carthusian monks and nuns residing in 22 charter houses spread across the globe, including Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain and the United States.
Remarkably, among them, only two monks know the full 130-ingredient recipe.
“The secret of Chartreuse has long been the despair of distillers, just as the natural blue of forget-me-nots has been the despair of painters,” reads an 1886 document referred to in a recent history of the company and order. Father Holleran spent five years overseeing the distillation process, ordering ingredients and planning its production schedules. When he departed the site in 1990, he became the only living outsider to know the liqueur’s ancient formula.
“It’s safe with me,” he said. “Oddly enough, they didn’t make me sign anything when I left.”...
...Inside the Grande Chartreuse, skilled monks receive, measure and sort 130 unlabeled plants and herbs into giant unmarked (or, in 2020, QR-coded) sacks. Then, at the distillery, five non-Carthusian employees work alongside two white-robed monks to macerate, distill, blend and age the liqueur. A computerized system also allows them to virtually monitor the distilling from the monastery.
Along its five-week distilling process, and throughout the subsequent years of aging, those two monks are also the ones who taste the product and decide when it is ready to bottle and sell. “They are the quality control,” said Emmanuel Delafon, the current C.E.O. of Chartreuse Diffusion...
Guessing it takes years of OJT to get the palate right to do QC on the stuff!
From an article by Melody Bomgardner:
The chemical industry is already in recovery mode from an unusually deep—but short—recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the US chemical industry’s main trade association.
The crisis certainly left a bruise. The ACC estimates that US chemical output fell 3.6% in 2020 after a 0.1% dip in 2019. The swing for specialty chemicals was much wider; the segment sank 10.8% this year compared to last year’s 2.5% growth. And there were layoffs: the chemical workforce shrank by 14,000 jobs.
Now, as the year winds down, the economic gears are turning again, and the chemical industry is starting to rebound. The ACC estimates that the US economy will grow 3.7% in 2021 and that chemical production will rise a similar 3.9%. Most industries that buy chemicals will ramp up production in 2021, though not all will make up the ground lost in 2020.
Well, here's hoping the rebound continues....
