Is grad school in chemistry bad for your mental health? Part 2 at Not The Lab

In part 2 of our dialogue, Vinylogous speculates as to what might contribute to poor mental health in graduate school. A wonderful sample snippet:

I think it’s fairly obvious that advisors are in a power to be abusive, and though many aren’t, a large number are. And oblivious advisors can be as hurtful as malicious advisors. If a student has undiagnosed depression, it may show in their recommendation letters in the form of descriptions of laziness or lack of enthusiasm. Advisors have huge career-altering power. A set of nasty letters from a former boss can sink your chances at good jobs, and there’s really no system to avoid this if you happen to accidentally piss someone off.  

On the other hand, some professors are very keen on their students' happiness and treat them with respect. I've seen professors who go by their first name and invite their lab to gatherings at their house as well as professors who want formalities (including scheduling appointments with a secretary to even have a ten minute talk) and aren't interested in their students beyond a working capacity.

Go over there and read -- it's really good.

I have to talk to some middle schoolers about chemistry -- what should I do?

A couple of months ago, I volunteered to give a talk on "Career Day" at a local middle school (I'm not a masochist, I had my own reasons for wanting to do this.) The staff member just called me and told me that I'm up for it, in a week. Here are the parameters:

• I have 30 minutes. 
• It's 10-20 middle schoolers. 
• It's a classroom, not a laboratory. 

It's been suggested to me that I do a demonstration and I give a brief presentation on my career path. I'd like to do both, obviously, with 10-15 minutes saved up for an ask-me-anything time period. 

I would like to do a chemistry experiment that's short, exciting and demonstrative of reaction chemistry. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to provide all the PPE safety/gear needed for a real demonstration (like thermite or something.) I'm going to cover my career path and be painfully honest about my circumstances. 

So, readers, any suggestions?

UPDATE: My goodness, so many suggestions -- thank you so much! 

Daily Pump Trap: 1/8/13 edition

Good morning! Between January 3 and January 7, there were 60 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 18 (30%) were academically connected and 32 (53%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Cambridge, MA/Zeroes!: It's been a while for the zeroes tag. Look at that -- Vertex is hiring a Ph.D. medicinal chemist, with zero to 3 years of experience. There's only one problem...:

Details, details...

Unknown, unknown: AbbVie is hiring 2 M.S. analytical chemists for cGMP-related work. Naturally, the listings are not showing up on AbbVie's new careers website.

Rockville, MD: The US Pharmacopeia is hiring a chemical medicines scientific liaison; you know, they don't pay too bad. M.S./Ph.D. plus 5/7 years of experience with USP tests needed.

Who is BASF and AMRI looking for?: When jobs are thin at C&EN, I'm going to be looking at the Chemical Week 75 and their constituents. Today, we're going with BASF and AMRI. For the search term "chemist", BASF shows 8 positions in the US and AMRI shows 3 positions.

Ivory Filter Flask: 1/8/13 edition

Good morning! You knew this was coming -- between December 18, 2012 and January 7, 2013, there were 39 academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 39
- Postdocs: 4
- Tenure-track faculty:  26
- Temporary faculty: 3
- Lecturer positions:  3
- Staff positions:  3
- US/non-US: 35/4

New York City, NY: Pace University is looking for an assistant professor to teach general chemistry and biochemistry. I would love to know how difficult it is to live in New York City on an assistant professor's salary.

Annadale-on-Hudson, NY: Bard College (just up the Hudson?) is looking for a visiting assistant professor of chemistry. This bit about moving to a new facility -- that's not about Hurricane Sandy, right?

Newark, DE: The University of Delaware is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist for an organic laboratory coordinator.

Moscow, ID: The University of Idaho is looking for an assistant professor of chemistry, with a specialization in experimental physical chemistry (radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry.)

Gorges: Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY) desires an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Is graduate school in chemistry bad for your mental health? Part 1

Dear Vinylogous Aldol:

Thanks for agreeing to do this little dialogue with me! It will be fun, educational and will hopefully raise some issues that aren't talked about very much in the chemblogosphere (not because of any particular taboo, it just hasn't really come up (that I recall.))

I'll start with a vignette (for which the details are hazy -- my subconcious defending itself?):

After weeks and weeks of long hours and frustration in the lab in either my 2nd or 3rd year of graduate school, I remember walking into my apartment bathroom, smashing the mirror with my fist and sitting on the edge of the bathtub. I seem to recall yelling at the top of my lungs "What am I going to do!?!?" about whatever reaction sequence of my total synthesis that simply was not going anywhere.

I can easily say that was one of the darkest periods of my time in graduate school. I am not sure if I was depressed -- I'm a synthetic chemist, not a clinical psychologist. Close to ten years later, it's mostly an unpleasant memory, with little recall of the details that set me off. But I can remember sitting on that bathtub edge, the deep despair of a project that wasn't going well and the feeling that my entire life was an utter failure. Now, of course, I don't feel that way at all. I can leave my work at work (mostly, anyway), and my self-worth is not entirely reliant on the yield of my last reaction. But there was a lot of pain in between then and now.

So the topic question for our discussion is "Is graduate school in chemistry bad for your mental health?" My answer? Yes, graduate school in chemistry can be bad for your mental health. Science can lend itself to isolating workers from healthy habits, from friends and from family. For people who see themselves as competent and at least as good as their colleagues, bench research in chemistry can rub failure in their faces and deliver fierce blows to self-confidence. You can see yourself as falling behind, not pulling your own weight, never giving a good group meeting and just simply not up to snuff.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. If you're someone who already has a strong support system, if steely discipline got you through your undergraduate career, if you already have healthy habits and life skills, graduate school will probably not affect your psyche too negatively. But if you don't, grad school can be brutal on your self-image.

There are famous examples of the negative effects of mental health in graduate school; Jason Altom's suicide at Harvard is prominent, and a reminder that mental health crises can happen at august institutions and with the most impressive CVs. It's an extreme example, but its components (a tough project, coworkers who were concerned but somewhat unaware, a seemingly implacable adviser) are known to us all.

We can take this discussion lots of places. Most of it will be driven by you, commenters and (hopefully) other bloggers. Personally, I'd like to talk about project frustration (and how it is necessary, and both the thing that can both kill us and teach us), depression (how to spot it, how to address it in ourselves and others) and how much professors and the university's resources might be able to help graduate students and postdocs. I'd like to talk about what good mental health looks like, and how we might be able to get there or maintain it.

So what do you think, Vinylogous? Is graduate school in chemistry (which you're participating in right now) making you crazy? You seem pretty rational (for a blogger, anyway), so I'm guessing not. What do you think -- do I have it all wrong? I'm looking forward to what you have to say on Tuesday.

So I think I'm done talking -- I hope your week is going to go well. Apart from the potential bout of stomach flu I might be having (and if so, I'm staying home, like I might not have done in grad school), I'm looking forward to a week in the lab and in the plant and talking to you.

Cheers, Chemjobber

Have some good news? Let's have it!

So it's been a while since we've done one of these. Have some good news, job-wise? Have some other good news? Let's have it!

I'll start: my alma mater did not embarrass themselves this bowl season!

(Apologies for the happy music*; back to my normal pessimism and and an excellent dialogue with Not the Lab on "Is Graduate School in Chemistry Bad for Your Mental Health?" on Monday.)

*UPDATE: Milkshake notes the original lyrics were a lot less cheery. 

Is lead the cause of all of our troubles?

Pretty picture, bad molecule.

Kevin Drum is a political blogger for the progressive magazine Mother Jones; he's written a very interesting article about the drop in violent crime in the United States that we've seen over the last 30 years. Mr. Drum examines every alternate hypothesis (poverty, demographics, the Levitt/Dubner Roe v. Wade hypothesis, the end of the crack wars, etc.) and discards them in favor of his hypothesis: that the removal of tetraethyllead from gasoline is responsible for the drop in violent crime. Mr. Drum goes further and argues for a broad policy of lead abatement in older, poorer neighborhoods as a means of both improving public health and long-term economic output (I'm not kidding.)

I'll be very interested to see how far this article and its hypothesis will travel. It could just be the obsession of one Internet-famous blogger, or it could be the starting gun for a variety of interesting policy shifts. But I want to lay down a couple of markers:

Is there a difference between inorganic and organic lead? Mr. Drum does a little bit of sleight of hand (for this nitpicky chemist, anyway) and seems to equate alkylated lead in gasoline (tetraethyllead) with inorganic lead in house paint (lead carbonate, etc). It's probably because the public health folks tend to measure just for lead concentrations in the blood without reference to the source. (Also, how are different lead compounds metabolized?) (See update below.) 

The connection between low [lead] and neurotoxicity and the public health consequences: To quote Drum:

For starters, it turns out that childhood lead exposure at nearly any level can seriously and permanently reduce IQ. Blood lead levels are measured in micrograms per deciliter, and levels once believed safe—65 μg/dL, then 25, then 15, then 10—are now known to cause serious damage. The EPA now says flatly that there is "no demonstrated safe concentration of lead in blood," and it turns out that even levels under 10 μg/dL can reduce IQ by as much as seven points. An estimated 2.5 percent of children nationwide have lead levels above 5 μg/dL.

The most influential study that I am aware of (Lanphear et al., 2005) argues that the largest drops in IQ are seen with the lowest concentrations of lead. I'd love to know if this has been confirmed -- it seems like a really big deal. In case you think it doesn't really matter, one of the broader trends that we're seeing is young families with children moving back into urban cores and occupying older homes. While there's common defenses (lead abatement is supposed to be done with certified contractors, the classic "all the lead paint's been painted over a zillion times" line), I suspect that the actual effective treatments are more costly than the public health folks (and Mr. Drum) would like to admit.

A new front in the chemophobia wars: I found this quote in Mr. Drum's article from an economics professor rather chilling:

[Professor Smith] has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once—as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be—the cause is a molecule. (emphasis mine)

I am familiar with Professor Smith and generally like his thoughts. I might even believe that this is a true-ish statement. That said, I find that last thought to be potentially disastrous for chemistry in the hands of an already chemophobic media and public.

UPDATE: A commenter challenges my question about the accuracy of treating organic and inorganic lead the same. A quick search of Google indicates that the commenter is correct, as you can see below, and that tetraethyllead is combusted into inorganic lead compounds.

So it's probably purely inorganic lead that folks are exposed to on a routine basis (the text notes that most actual tetraethyllead acute/chronic exposure is occupational.)

UPDATE 2: I suppose that I should actually say whether or not I agree with Kevin Drum. I agree with him that exposure to lead is bad, and I've read enough of the medical literature to conclude that (as I have noted in the past) I will do whatever it takes to avoid exposing my family to environmental lead (e.g. wiping down the old house I used to live in, monitoring blood lead levels in my children, selecting housing based on potential lead exposure, etc.) I see the avoidance costs as relatively low, and the benefits to my kids (a potential couple of IQ points, mebbe) as worth it.

Whether or not we should embark on nationwide urban lead abatement (and whether or not it will pay off) is a different story, and I am somewhat less convinced. That said, I could imagine worse places to spend the relatively small amount of money ($20 billion) that Mr. Drum is proposing. 

Daily Pump Trap: 1/3/2013

Good morning! Between December 27 and January 2, there were 47 new positions posted on C&EN Jobs. Of these, 6 (13%) are academically connected and 35 (74%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Hamilton, MT: GSK Biologicals is looking for a postdoc in vaccine formulation; those job requirements sound pretty darn specific.

New Orleans, LA: A confidential employer is looking for a QC/QA person; looks to be petrochemical-related, with the call for drilling fluid expertise.

Rolla, MO: Brewer Science is looking for a B.S./M.S. chemist, preferably with some organic synthesis laboratory experience. They're a specialty coatings company for the microelectronics industry; polymer science experience is helpful.

RTP: BASF is looking for an experienced B.S./M.S. chemist for a business analyst position; agrochemical and regulatory experience desired.

Little Lost Lamb: Are you a chemist? Do you like chemistry? Well, why not be a boiler room superintendent in Taylorsville, Mississippi?

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 188, 586, 2,308 and 17 positions for the search term "chemist." For LinkedIn, 108 positions are posted for the job title "chemist", with 5 for "organic chemist, 10 for "research chemist" and 17 for "analytical chemist."

Unemployment rate for December 2012 at 7.8%, U6 at 14.4%

Credit: Calculated Risk

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the national unemployment rate for December 2012 was 7.8% and the broader U6 rate is 14.4%. The national unemployment rate for November 2012 was revised up by 0.1% to 7.8%. Both rates for December are the same for the current November values.

155,000 non-farm payroll jobs were created; the number of long-term (more than 6 months) unemployed "was essentially unchanged at 4.8 million and accounted for 39.1 percent of the unemployed."

Chemical manufacturing employment is up 4,300 positions to 799,600 employed.

Thanks, as usual, to Calculated Risk for the graph. 

Upcoming dialogue: "Is graduate school in chemistry bad for your mental health?" with Not the Lab and Chemjobber

Daily Pump Trap and another post are going to be up soon, but I wanted to mention that Vinylogous Aldol of Not the Lab and I were doing to have a "Slate Dialogues"-style conversation about the following topic:

"Is graduate school in chemistry bad for your mental health?"

Topics will include perseverance, stress, that one crazy guy/gal, are organic chemists awesomer or stupider than analytical chemists?, academic culture, work/life balance, resentment, etc. 

Tune in on Monday AM for the first post here (January 7, 2013), with the 2nd post over at Not the Lab on Tuesday. 

T6 screwdrivers

A small list of small, useful things (links):

• See Arr Oh asks how much winter vacation you've gotten.
• Not the Lab talks about water/salt chemophobia. 
• Bengu Sezen has found a job! 
• The average US Baby Boomer is 55 today. 
• Deborah Blum writes about dumb poisoners; also, the saddest mug shot you will ever see. 

Readers, welcome back to work -- did I miss any links? 

Dealer says to user: hey, you wanna lay off my product?

It takes two to tango, fellas:

BEIJING (Reuters) - The last-minute U.S. deal over tax increases has fixed one problem, but the world's largest economy must get to grips with a budget deficit that threatens not a "fiscal cliff" but a "fiscal abyss", China's Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. The state news agency said in a commentary, issued in English on its website, that while the United States was clearly the dominant economic power, it "simply cannot live on borrowed prosperity forever", and its politicians seemed reluctant to tackle its total debt of about $16 trillion. 

"In a democracy like the United States, tax increases and spending cuts, the exact dose of medicine needed to cure its chronic debt disease, have long proved hugely unpopular among voters," Xinhua said. "So the politicians have chosen to kick the can down the road again and again. But as we all know, the can will never disappear. Sometime and somewhere, you might trip over it and fall hard on the ground, or in the U.S. case, into an abyss you can never come out of." 

China has a strong interest in a healthy U.S. economy. It sits on the world's biggest pile of foreign exchange reserves, worth $3.3 trillion, and as much as 70 percent of the holdings are invested in U.S. dollar assets, including U.S. Treasuries, according to analysts. The United States is also a major export market for China.

I confess to being trolled by Xinhua. 

Process Wednesday: flow artemisinin?

We've covered the process chemistry of artemisinin here before, but Bethany Halford of Chemical and Engineering News brings us some news from Germany about Peter Seeberger's flow route:

Since its report in January, Seeberger’s group has optimized the process, upping the yield from 39% to 65%, which allows them to purify the product via crystallization rather than chromatography. The ultimate impact of the continuous-flow process remains to be seen. Sanofi has no plan to adopt it for artemisinin production, but Seeberger has set up a company, ArtemiFlow, in Potsdam, Germany, aimed at making the drug. Seeberger and coworkers are in the process of finishing a reactor that will produce more than 1 metric ton of artemisinin per year, he tells C&EN. The company is also developing a 10-ton reactor. (emphasis mine) 

As of June, there didn't seem to be any plans to take this route into the plant, but it looks like things will have changed. It will be interesting to see how far Seeberger gets -- so far, there doesn't seem to be an actual website, as Artemiflow.com diverts to the Seeberger Group page.

[Is anyone else skeptical-ish about those numbers? I suppose "tens or hundreds of kilograms" is not very sexy. I'm terribly curious as to what kind of operation would be required (24-hour-a-day?) to reach a metric ton per year. (Well, not that much, really. 4 kg a day? 20 kg a week?)]

Best wishes to them.

#chemjobs-related Reporters of the Year, 2012

I wanted to take a moment and recognize a few reporters who told the story of the #chemjobs problem this year:

Brian Vastag, whose article on the front page of The Washington Post about the problems of early- and mid-career scientists was eye-opening. I was amused to hear it quoted (indirectly) by Jared Bernstein at a panel discussion on H1B visas and demand for STEM workers.

Susan Ainsworth, Linda Wang and Sophie Rovner, for their coverage of chemist unemployment in the November "employment outlook" of C&EN. Especially key is Linda Wang's searing portrayal of mid-career chemist unemployment. I also want to note how many #chemjobs-related articles that Susan Ainsworth has written this year (and how many readers of this blog have chosen to comment in those pages.)

These reporters have a much bigger microphone than I do. I tend to yell at reporters when they get things wrong; it makes me happy when I feel that reporters get things right.

It's my hope that 2013 will be a better year for jobs in chemistry than 2012. I hope it will be a good year for the blog as well. Thank you once again for reading, commenting and writing -- it makes it all worth it.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year to us all. 

wwwtp: structures + kid = wth?

So you've absorbed my science into your DNA? (hopefully not haploid.) My chemistry is so stupid a kid could do it? You've hired some really smart kids (literally?) Your kids like to draw on your walls?

Readers, can you make heads or tails of this ad? 

I do not think that means what you think it means

From a nice blogpost by political writer Josh Green on the late Jack Klugman's advocacy for the Orphan Drug Act (emphasis mine):

Hatch, too, finally relented. Thanks to Klugman, the Waxman-Hatch Orphan Drug Act became law in 1983. In an ending Hollywood might have scripted, it has been a remarkable success. The FDA has approved more than 300 orphan drugs, with 1,100 more under development. One of the first developed under the law was AZT, the early AIDS treatment. Two years later, Congress expanded the law to include biological and chemical drugs, which helped spur the biotech industry. 

Rurrr? I assume he means "biological drugs" or "biomolecules". Ah, well, can't win them all. 

A few favorite posts

I don't really have much to say about 2012, other than it was a tough year for #chemjobs, but a good year for this blog. Here are a few posts that I am especially pleased with:

• "MIT alleges Harvard recruiting violations in Nocera move" -- the one that got Paul. 
• "Why STEM should be TEsm" -- probably one of maybe 3 original policy thoughts I've had this year
• "From the archives of Herodotus" -- I keep trying to bring "Xerxes the project manager" back. 
• "Ms. Madeleine Jacobs: sympathetic but powerless?" -- not for the yelling, but for the chart
• "Diazonamide A" -- obvious reasons. 

Thanks for all the reading, commenting and e-mails. 

Does your date have good credit or bad credit?

The New York Times had an interesting article on people inquiring about credit scores on dates:

As she nibbled on strawberry shortcake, Jessica LaShawn, a flight attendant from Chicago, tried not to get ahead of herself and imagine this first date turning into another and another, and maybe, at some point, a glimmering diamond ring and happily ever after. 

Her musings were suddenly interrupted when her date asked a decidedly unromantic question: “What’s your credit score?”

Amusingly, a chemist shows up later in the article (I've deleted his name):

[Name removed], a 33-year-old chemist in San Francisco, said he worried that the vast disparity between his girlfriend’s credit score and his own low one could create tension in their relationship. When the couple leased a car in October, Mr. [Removed] had to leave his name off the contract because his poor credit scuttled his chances for the bargain interest rate that his girlfriend qualified for. 

Mr. [Removed] said he resented that his credit score, which he said was marred by a single contested cable bill, has limited his access to credit. “I always pay my bills so it’s pretty ridiculous that a billing error can ruin your score,” he said. His girlfriend declined to be interviewed.

I've always been under the impression that chemists probably tend to stay out of financial trouble and, in general, have good credit. My little anecdote about this was to see the very modest cars that my professors (no slouches in the earnings department, I suspect) drove. When I was at a large pharma company, I also noted the relatively modest vehicles in the parking lots. That said, graduate school can be a good time for people (including myself!) to get themselves into some small or large amount of debt, which can have repercussions down the road.

Naturally, though, asking a credit score on the first date is sort of stupid. While "what is your financial situation?" is incredibly important for any long-term relationship, at that moment, it's just sort of rude.

Labor law practitioner on #SheriSangji: Not rare for employer to face charges

From the C&EN story (written by Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice) on the preliminary hearing of evidence against Professor Patrick Harran (emphasis mine):

...When the hearing ended, O’Brien said he would submit motions to dismiss or reduce the charges against Harran. But he requested to do so in writing, noting that the facts in the case are “voluminous” and that the case itself represents a new use of California labor law. 

Upon accepting O’Brien’s request, Judge Lench ordered that motions and counterarguments be filed by Feb. 1, 2013, and she set the next court date for Feb. 15, 2013. 

Kirk McAllister, an attorney who is not involved in the case but is knowledgeable about this area of California law, says that a request to present written arguments is not unusual for a lengthy preliminary hearing. Harran’s hearing began in November and then was postponed until Dec. 17 for scheduling reasons. 

McAllister also says that felony labor code charges are not unusual for a workplace injury—even if they have not previously been filed against a university professor.

I think that's a helpful thing to know -- that employers do have felony labor code charges filed against them. That the employee was a lab technician and the employer is an organic chemistry professor is probably the most broadly newsworthy piece of this phase of the Sheri Sangji case.

Daily Pump Trap: 12/27/12 edition

Good morning! Between December 20 and December 26, there were 120 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 18 (15%) are academically connected and 74 (62%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Around the nation: Shimadzu has posted 7 positions around the country for their instrumentation divison.

Tullahoma, TN: An unnamed company is looking for a Ph.D. chemist for work on molecular imprinting and chemical sensing.

Commerce, CA: An unnamed company is looking for a cosmetic chemist for work on nails; B.S./M.S. (7 years, 5 years experience (respectively.) You gotta love this part of the ad: "As far as job description, this is what I have outlined. Please feel free to edit as appropriate."

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 202, 614, 2435 and 13 positions for the search term "chemist." LinkedIn shows 120 positions for the search term "chemist", with 2 positions for the search term "organic chemist", 17 for "analytical chemist" and 10 for "research chemist." 

Ooops

Hilarity ensues when a forklift meets a drum.

UPDATE: In the comments, slrls links to a hilarious but extraordinarily bloody forklift safety video. (It is not for the faint of heart.)  

NYT asks, college or a job for rural Montana kids?

Check out my rig! Credit: New York Times

From a Glen Ernst tweet, an interesting New York Times article on the effect the hydraulic fracturing boom is having on a small Montana town:

...At the end of a gravel highway in northeastern Montana, graduating seniors in Bainville are asking similar questions about their future. Should they get an education and pursue their interests? Or should they stick close to home and surf a wave of cash and jobs that will only grow as companies begin to build a new industrial rail terminal and worker camps, forever transforming this quiet farm town where residents say the population has doubled since the 2010 census found 300.

Dmetri Ross, 17, said he would join his father and uncle at an outpost of Nabors Industries in western North Dakota, working in a lab running tests on water samples and cement related to drilling. “I’d be happy to make a career out of it,” he said. 

...Nobody needed to recruit Shay Findlay. One day after he graduated from Sidney High School, he drove into town and started looking for work. He found a job on the first try, doing repair work on drilling pumps. 

He is 19 and on his second job now, earning about $40,000 a year and still sleeping in a bedroom in his parents’ basement decorated with his high school graduation picture and diploma. He bought a dirt bike and a flat-screen television, and took out a loan on a hulking black Chevy Silverado truck with personalized license plates — FDLSTIX — for his childhood nickname, Fiddlesticks... 

[On his friends going to college, elsewhere:] “They’re going to have to come back and look for work,” he said. “And there’s nothing but oil fields over here.”

It's pretty funny and emblematic of the New York Times to be concerned about these kids; I think it's a bit rich for them to routinely bemoan the lack of jobs for non-college graduates and then throw up their hands in terror when kids in small rural towns decide not to go to college in favor of those jobs.

At the same time, there are folks who could indeed benefit from school -- the young man who wants to follow his family into a water testing laboratory would probably benefit from an A.A. in chemical technology (maybe, anyway); one wonders whether such a thing might be available to him in western North Dakota. Distance education might be the thing that works for him -- hopefully, he'll get it  -- if he wants it.

Finally, there are folks who could benefit from these jobs -- the young man with the truck doesn't sound like he wants to go to school, and he's earning a decent wage and learning some decent skills. (He probably could use a lesson in personal finance, but UHK will teach him a lesson or two about borrowing money for a new truck, and that'll be that.)

Readers, what do you think?

Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Chemjobber readers!

Merry Christmas, everyone! 

#SheriSangji preliminary hearing: Day 6

Drs. Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice of C&EN have posted their summary of Day 6 (the final day) of the preliminary hearing of Professor Patrick Harran on charges stemming from the death of Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji in January 2009. It should be noted that a preliminary hearing is a determination of the quality of the prosecution's evidence in the case.

I don't plan on writing up a full review of the preliminary hearing until the first week of next year, when folks will have returned from winter breaks. But I will note a couple of really remarkable developments on Day 6. Cal/OSHA investigator Brian Baudendistel was questioned again by both the prosecution and the defense. The really illuminating questions, however, came from the defense's questioning of chemical safety expert Neal Langerman:

• The defense attempted to get Dr. Langerman to admit that Ms. Sangji demonstrated her ability meet Dr. Langerman's personal training standards to work with pyrophorics because she performed an experiment with Grubbs II catalyst in dichloromethane in a glovebag, and that Professor Harran watched her work and declared her technique "perfect." 
• The defense suggested that Professor Harran's postdoctoral fellow was the key person who was supervising and training her, and that it was reasonable for Professor Harran to rely on the postdoc in her training.

I surmise that Dr. Langerman was not particularly interested in going along with the defense's reasoning on this issue. You should go over there and read the transcripts that Drs. Kemsley and Torrice have provided to see if you agree. 

I find it surprising and perhaps objectionable that Grubbs II in dichloromethane has been described as "reactive" and "air sensitive". From the Chem 215 notes at Harvard authored by Myers and coworkers:

Ru-based catalysts show little sensitivity to air, moisture or minor impurities in solvents.

A variety of Google results tends to support the Myers position that Grubbs II is not particularly sensitive to air. Professor Doug Taber comes a little closer with his description that "Prolonged exposure to air and moisture deactivates the complex..." The couple of minutes that it would take to weigh out the complex and toss it into the flask doesn't count, I don't think.

What is ultimately more probative (and again, perhaps I am wrong) is that it would be difficult to immediately tell that air-sensitive technique with Grubbs II was either good or bad. Bad technique with tBuLi announces itself with a flame; bad technique with Grubbs catalyst might result in a mild color change and a poor yield.

Readers, am I nuts in thinking that this is a crazy comparison to make? The Sangji case is such a weird nexus between law and chemistry; God help us all if this makes it in front of a jury.

We're all here, right?

Of course, the appropriate Chemjobber headline would have been:

"World to End on Friday, Chemists to Suffer Most."

Seriously, though, a very Merry Christmas to you and your family.

See you on Wednesday (or in the comments.) 

Metal bowls

A list of small, useful things (links):

• Melody Bomgardner learns that electric batteries need to be aged, like olives. 
• This chemist and oceanographer argues that 5 years is the right amount of time for a Ph.D. 
• Deborah Blum has an interesting set of posts on Yasser Arafat and polonium. 
• John says that these ducks are getting bigger and bigger.
• Janet asks, are scientists responsible for policing their field?
• These reading lists from Not the Lab are great; I hope they continue.
• I love this photo of a separatory funnel from David. 
• Rich Apodaca on reshoring pharma. He also has a worthwhile (and amusing) look at the job market via C&EN Employment Outlook issues. 
• John Kuhn, NFL player, B.S. in chemistry holder. Also, Reddit names other pro athlete/STEM degree holders. 
• See Arr Oh wishes you a Merry Christmas, as do I. 

Readers, did I miss anything?

UPDATE: Brandon, on selecting a Ph.D. thesis advisor. 

#AnnieDookhan is indicted on 27 counts, pleads not guilty

From the Boston Globe's newsblog, news of forensic chemist Annie Dookhan:

Former state chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded not guilty in Suffolk Superior Court today to 27 indictments for allegedly mishandling and tainting drug evidence, including one case where she claimed to have tested a drug sample that wasn’t even in her laboratory at the time. 

Dookhan, 35, is at the center of one of the largest law enforcement scandals in recent Massachustts history and her alleged misdeeds in the now closed state drug laboratory in Jamaica Plain may impact tens of thousands of cases and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. 

Today, Dookhan pleaded not guilty in Suffolk Superior Court to 27 indictments that allege she deliberately mishandled evidence she was supposed to verify were illegal drugs and for falsely claiming to have a master’s degree from UMass-Boston. 

Dookhan has been free on $10,000 cash bail when she faced a preliminary round of charges and has also been under a 6 p.m. curfew. Today, her attorney Nicholas Gordon, said in court that Dookhan’s social life has been impacted by the limitation and asked that it be set at 10 p.m., a request that was granted.

It will be interesting to see what Ms. Dookhan's legal strategy would be; seems to me that she's waiting for a plea deal that will not come quickly.

Podcast: Matt Hartings, See Arr Oh and Chemjobber talk ACS exec salaries

As promised, we're posting our little podcast about ACS executive salaries, our thoughts on "whither the ACS?" and our summary of our entire conversation:

See Arr Oh has so helpfully given us timepoints, and he and I have added our editorial comments:

0:03 - Intro - ACS Executive Compensation (note: the conclusion is at 27 minutes, not 35.)
0:37 - Meet the Crew, and Our First Blunder (only 37 seconds in! Sheesh...)
1:45 - They make what!?!
4:02 - What's the point of the ACS?
5:50 - ACS executive bonuses: "More than my base salary"
6:26 - Executive-Think
10:20 - What are these bonuses based on?
13:30 - Show Me The Data!
15:50 - Shouldn't the mid-career professional be a core mission of the ACS?
18:45 - Do Local Sections care?
20:14 - College Library Systems v. ACS Publications (a.k.a. the SUNY-Potsdam story)
22:58 - Where do CJ's dues go?
27:00-29:00 - Closing thoughts
29:14 - Bonus outtake

Research associates of the world, comment!

From the ACS grad report, this comment:

A second helpful change would be for funding agencies to be more receptive to requests for support of more senior research associates who are regular employees of research institutions. Such positions would help to provide a professional path forward for postdoctoral associates.

I suspect that these positions are paid somewhat better, are somewhat more stable than a postdoc and indeed carry some health insurance and other benefits. I would guess that there are a fair number of these positions, too. On Twitter, there were a couple of interesting comments from knowledgeable folks:

@seearroh @onesleepynerd @chemjobber Interesting convo, but you're talking soft money, perro, and that's a high stress proposition...
— Christopher J Cramer (@ChemProfCramer) December 20, 2012

@chemprofcramer @seearroh @onesleepynerd @chemjobber stressful beyond what you would imagine
— Lewis Lab (@Lewis_Lab) December 20, 2012

So they're stressful (but are they more stressful than a regular industry job? I could argue it both ways.) So does anyone have anything to add about academic staff scientist positions? 

Daily Pump Trap: 12/20/12 edition

Good morning! Between December 18 and December 19, 47 new positions were posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 3 (6%) are academically connected and 29 (62%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Wyandotte, MI: BASF is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. polymer chemist (5+ years for M.S. chemists, new Ph.D. grads eligible) for its high temperature polymer group.

Albany, NY: Well, it's been a while since we've seen an AMRI posting, and here we are! Two of them, a synthetic chemist position (B.S./M.S., 3-7 years exp.) and a more senior LC/MS position. You have to love this:

"The Research Scientist III is encouraged to display a degree of professionalism reflected in part by increasing the scientist's knowledge of analytical chemistry theory and practice through reading scientific journals and texts at times beyond the "normal" working hours."

(Normal working hours at AMRI are north of 60, right? That was the rumor.) Professionalism! 60-70k for a research scientist III at AMRI -- another data point.

East Chicago, IL or La Porte, TX: Tradebe Environmental is a hazardous waste company; they have 2 "field chemist" positions open. This is not typical chemistry, there's no doubt about it, but it is hard (and necessary) work. My understanding is that it's not particularly well-paid and there's an expectation that field chemists will move onto other positions within the company.

Hello there, Sheboygan, WI: I think it's interesting how many Sheboygan Falls, WI-area positions that Kelly Scientific Resources is posting; Sigma-Aldrich must consistently have turnover issues or something. (Maybe I'm wrong.)

Podcast: Matt Hartings, See Arr Oh and Chemjobber talk grad school

Last week, ACS President Bassam Shakhashiri and his President Commission on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences held a press conference and released a long report on the state of graduate school in chemistry. Matt, See Arr Oh and I did a Google Hangout, and we talked over some of the issues raised in the report. (Tomorrow, we're releasing a 2nd podcast where we talk about ACS executive salaries.)



See Arr Oh has helpfully provided some time points for you all; I've added some editorial comments.

0:03 - Intro
0:54 - Who we are, in a nutshell (diversity of opinions)
3:58 - Should grad students be TAs?
7:05 - Time To Degree - "Cap things at 5 years"
11:10 - CJ goes on a rant about the sunk costs of graduate school, and that they're sunk
16:14 - Adjuncts, or The Wheel of Pain
23:15 - Funding: Grads vs. Adjuncts
28:41 - Recruitment of international graduate students: top vs. mid-tier institutions
34:19 - Research Associates - the answer? Maybe not.

UPDATE: Part 2 (on ACS executive salaries, and concluding thoughts) is up here. 

A Chemjobber holiday tradition

As a public service, I'm rerunning this post. Feel free to e-mail/print out and give to your family. 

Day 5 of the #SheriSangji preliminary hearing; hearing on potential trial on Feb. 15, 2013

Drs. Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice of C&EN have posted their summary of Day 5 of the preliminary hearing of Professor Patrick Harran on charges stemming from the death of Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji in January 2009. It should be noted that a preliminary hearing is a determination of the quality of the prosecution's evidence in the case. Day 6 happened yesterday; a link to C&EN's write-up will be posted when it is up.

Biggest news first: preliminary hearings are done, and and a hearing before Judge Lisa Lench on whether or not a trial will proceed will be argued on February 15, 2013.

The defense has raised two basic objections in Day 5 of the testimony, which focused on Cal/OSHA investigator Brian Baudendistel and his cross-examination by Thomas O'Brien, the lead counsel for the Harran defense team:

• Ms. Sangji was an experienced chemist, and therefore knowledgeable enough to make chemical safety PPE choices on her own
• Professor Harran was not fully informed of his responsibilities/liability as an employer with respect to chemical safety. 

It seems to me that the latter is less objectionable than the former, which to be blunt, I find to be a pernicious myth. Now, of course, all the legal relationships between institution, PI, student and technician/employee are going to be formalized and codified. Where Professor Harran is in this previously gray area is basically the crux of any criminal penalty going forward.

In other news, the Los Angeles Times has indicated that the Baudendistel gambit by the Harran defense to remove his testimony does not seem to have worked for now. Jyllian Kemsley also thinks that it's been tabled. Finally, I should also point out the rather cynical ploy by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block in the AP wire report (assuming, of course, that the reporter got it right):

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block issued a statement praising Harran as a valued member of UCLA's faculty who is making great strides in the global effort to cure cancer.

It's funny how there are positive and negative ways to cast the nature of the research Ms. Sangji was doing at Professor Harran's direction. Sometimes, her research is referred to as work on a "diet drug", but at other times, Professor Harran is a cancer researcher. The answer is that Professor Harran was working on both anti-obesity and anti-cancer compounds; the ultimate goal of his (worthy, good) research is irrelevant to these legal proceedings. Assuming again that he was quoted correctly, Chancellor Block should ashamed at this blatant attempt to pee in the jury pool.

There's a lot more detail in Jyllian and Michael's post, so you should definitely go over there and read it.

Got a question for a hiring manager? Linda Wang of C&EN wants to know

Got a question for a recruiter or hiring manager, but afraid to ask? Let C&EN senior editor Linda Wang ask (anonymously) for you in a new employment story. Email your questions to: l_wang -at- acs/dot/org

What is Parabon's technology? I don't understand it.

Via Extreme Tech, a NSF press release for a drug delivery company that I just don't understand:

..."We can now 'print,' molecule by molecule, exactly the compound that we want," says Steven Armentrout, the principal investigator on the NSF grants and co-developer of Parabon's technology. "What differentiates our nanotechnology from others is our ability to rapidly, and precisely, specify the placement of every atom in a compound that we design." 

..."When designing a therapeutic compound, we combine knowledge of the cell receptors we are targeting or biological pathways we are trying to affect with an understanding of the linking chemistry that defines what is possible to assemble," says Hong Zhong, senior research scientist at Parabon and a collaborator on the grants. "It's a deliberate and methodical engineering process, which is quite different from most other drug development approaches in use today." 

...The Parabon and Janssen researchers intend for their new prostate cancer drug to overcome several existing cancer-treatment obstacles. The drug design combines a toxin with a chemical that makes cancer cells susceptible to that toxin. Additionally, the drug incorporates components that improve delivery to cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissue, and chemical markers that allow researchers to monitor the drug's arrival at tumors. For the new compound, total design time plus synthesis time will be a matter of weeks. 

..."Currently, most drugs are developed using a screening technique where you try a lot of candidate compounds against targets to 'see what sticks'," says Armentrout. "Instead, we're designing very specific drugs based on their molecular structure, with target molecules that bind to receptors on specific types of cancer cells. In plug-and-play fashion, we can swap in or swap out any of the functional components, as needed, for a range of treatment approaches."

Huh? I really don't quite understand what is going on here. What's worse is the Extreme Tech explanation for what is happening -- it makes even less sense. I'm going to highlight in bold the strangest sentences to this dumb chemist:

...While there are many applications in microelectronics, optics, and sensor technology where the ability to precisely engineer nanostructures would be invaluable, the ability to nanotailor drugs for treating cancer is ripe and low-hanging fruit...  

Cancer medicines are typically so expensive that a real price per molecule can be discussed using familiar numbers. For this reason insurance companies do not want to be caught paying for any extra molecules if the prescription only requires a certain amount. They also want to be sure that the drug company is providing the amount claimed. Platinum for example, is more expensive than gold even before it is turned into a medicine. To use it as a cancer treatment, any sample must be pure and the quantity known, and regulated as such. Beyond that it must be turned into a molecule that the body can properly absorb, distribute to the right tissue, metabolize, and excrete in a way that ensures sufficient time to function. Each of these steps can add an order of magnitude to cost — and that’s just for simple metal ion. 

...The DNA itself is not the drug. The DNA is the ferry that brings to bear the drug or other molecule of interest that is bound to it. The DNA also acts as the selector that tags the correct drug, the counter that determines its total number, and the matrix that stabilizes it in a permanent structure. Many cancers are currently treated with a medicinal cocktail, which for some reason is invariably prescribed as a combination of four drugs and designated with a four-letter word. The right blend for one patient is not the necessarily the proper one for the next, and neither is the dose. Excess drug and mismatch of inventory to demand is a problem no cancer treatment center wants to have, particularly when shelf life is limited. Hospital and pharmacy error is also a significant problem. On-demand DNA-based assembly suddenly makes many of these problems recede into the distance...

...The ability to program-in new functional molecules is nearly as limitless as one might have bar codes to track the vials in which store them. For drugs, your custom pill could also have all the other things that might be needed rolled into one. Drugs to treat the side-effects of the primary treatment, anti-nausea medicine, blood thinners, pain controllers, and whatever else.

For now, the methods that Parabon uses to create its starter molecules — the relatively short DNA strands to which a drug or other molecule is actually bound to — are synthesized by the trillions in identical form with standard methods, probably traditional PCR. This is not, in a strict sense, identified with the 3D printing methods of today. As the technology evolves, the “building of the house” may become more closely knit within the same platform to the “building of the city,” and PCR machines may evolve to become more like 3D printers. The extent to which this is already happening is tough to know, but we can be sure of one thing, it is definitely happening.

This is a big prank or something? Has this text been machine translated from the original Urdu?

If you look at the actual graphic that's involved, I think the idea is the following:

• Covalently bonding drug molecule to DNA
• Designing DNA macromolecular structures that contain a variety of DNA-drug hybrids, tailored to patient need
• This DNA/drug hybrid could be used as a delivery vehicle -- and could be synthesized on demand at the hospital.
• Parabon has invented a software program to help biologists design these drug hybrid macromolecules.  

Anyone have a better idea of what it is?

Naturally, this is the problem when science gets translated by people who don't fully understand what's going on. Metaphors get mixed, language "sounds about right", and people press "publish"/"send" instead of sitting down and actually reading the text. (Besides, DNA-drug hybrid technology has been known for quite a while, right?) 

Readers, do you have any idea what this technology is? 

Daily Pump Trap: 12/18/12 edition

Good morning! Between December 13 and December 17, there were 125 new positions posted on the C&EN Jobs website. Of these, 19 (15%) were academically connected and 89 (71%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Torrance, CA: Phenomenex, once again, has posted 5 positions to C&EN Jobs; I wonder what's going on there?

Raleigh, NC: Agile Sciences has published an ad that's so specific that there must be something fishy going on there:

Required: PhD in Chemistry plus 3 years of experience in the job offered or as Researcher or closely related occupation. Special Skills required: Experience must include 3 years of postdoctoral research in organic synthesis. Must have experience synthesizing 2-aminoimidazole compounds and testing them for biofilm inhibition/dispersion activity. Must have experience with solution phase organic synthesis and molecular biology techniques. Must have published papers on the subjects of solid and solution phase organic reactions, performing circular dichroism in conjunction with 1- and 2-dimensional (COSY, TOCSY, ROESY) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and quenched molecular dynamics (QMD, using QUANTA/CHARMM) simulation.

I mean, there are so many "must haves" there. What is this about?!?

Albuquerque, NM: Sandia National Laboratories is looking for what seems to be a postdoctoral fellow in materials science (quantum dot something-or-other); they call it a "limited-term research associate" for 1 year, plus a discretionary 1 year. Sounds like a postdoc to me.

Las Vegas, NV: Clark County Water District wants a B.S. chemist for a testing position; looks like they'd take a new graduate. Salary of $45k minimum. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 12/18/12

Good morning! Between December 11 and December 17, there were 25 academically-connected positions posted on ACS Careers. The numbers:

Total number of ads: 25
- Postdocs: 2
- Tenure-track faculty:  17
- Temporary faculty: 0
- Lecturer positions:  3
- Staff positions:  3
- US/non-US: 18/7

Gary, IN: Indiana University - Northwest is looking for an assistant professor of chemistry to teach organic chemistry and biochemistry.

Valley City, ND: Valley City State University is looking for an assistant professor of chemistry to teach physical and analytical chemistry. The high this week in Valley City is 25°F, it looks like. Brrrr.

La Jolla, CA: UCSD's Laboratory of Bioresponsive Materials is looking for a postdoc in synthetic polymer chemistry; must have 1 first-author publication in a "well-renowned journal, (e.g. JACS or Angewandte)." Look, fella, if you were able to command that, you wouldn't be advertising this position. That said, thanks for being honest!

Gainesville, FL: Want to know what a chemistry librarian makes? With a MLS, the University of Florida will pay you (minimum) $45,417. Wooo!

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: The University of Saskatchewan is looking for a chair of rational drug design. Huh. 

From the inbox: 5 postings at ThermoFisher

A grateful reader posts 5 jobs at ThermoFisher in Fremont, CA (thanks, reader!):

Associate Scientist, Organic: B.S./M.S., 0-2 years synthetic experience
Senior Scientist, R&D: B.S./M.S./Ph.D, 8+ years in diagnostics experience
Senior Scientist, R&D: M.S./Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, 5-8 years experience, LC/MS-MS oriented.
Senior Scientist, R&D: M.S./Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, 5-8 years experience, LC/MS-MS oriented.
Scientist, R&D: B.S./M.S./Ph.D., 3 years minimum experience, looks like biological assay design. 

What is Andrew Liveris saying, exactly?

So we've talked about Dow's layoffs and retrenchments already; here's Andrew Liveris in this week's C&EN talking to investors (article written by Alex Tullo):

Dow Chemical’s chief executive officer, Andrew N. Liveris, isn’t as optimistic as he once was.

In 2009, Liveris had just guided the company through the financial crisis and Great Recession, all while digesting its purchase of specialty chemical powerhouse Rohm and Haas. The “new Dow,” armed with enormous economies of scale and its widest-ever breadth of technical expertise, seemed ready to conquer any market it coveted. Solar panels, lithium batteries, and polymers made from ethanol, though new to Dow, were targets every bit as legitimate as the packaging, paint, and construction materials that had always been at the firm’s core.

Faced with slumping revenues and earnings, Liveris is now cutting back. In October, Dow announced it will lay off 2,400 workers—5% of its workforce—and shut down 20 plants. And reversing its stance of only a few years ago, the company is cutting future-oriented spending by about $1 billion in total. Mostly this will come from capital projects, but R&D will not be spared the ax. Dow also plans over the next two years to divest underperforming businesses that together generate $1 billion in annual sales. (emphasis CJ's) 

At an investor forum in New York City on Dec. 3, Liveris tried to justify such measures to reporters, investors, and analysts. Dow didn’t change, he maintained. The rest of the world did by slowing almost to an economic halt. 

Even with the cuts, Liveris said he wants to keep Dow’s scientific staff intact. When asked whether he will lay off chemists, Liveris responded, “Not to my knowledge. We are pretty much redeploying people. Scientists are precious. You bring them in, you train them, you redeploy them.” (emphasis CJ's) 

He added that the company wants to attract more scientists. For example, Dow is moving researchers from a former Rohm and Haas laboratory in Spring House, Pa., to a newer, former Pfizer site in nearby Collegeville. “Finally, our scientists in the Philadelphia area are getting modern facilities,” he said, positing that Dow could “attract the best scientists on the East Coast.”

So. Couple of things:

• So we're not laying off chemists, but we're cutting underperforming businesses and R&D?
• We know that Dow has/will laid off 2000 employees; doubtless some of them are bench/R&D chemists (not necessarily equivalent). Have all the chemists affected been offered transfers to other Dow sites? 
• If you read the rest of the article, it's about how much Europe and China's slowdowns are affecting Dow (which, I suspect, is draws a significant portion (a majority?) from non-US business.) What does that say for US growth prospects in 2013? 

Hmmmmmmm. 

Hey, this labor market is weird!

From the letters this week at C&EN, an amusing set of juxtapositions:

I was nearly overcome with fear reading the Nov. 5 issue of C&EN. On page 11, I read of the “near-retirement ... of more than 6,000 physical scientists employed by DOD.” On page 26 is the statement: “Companies looking for highly skilled workers in the U.S. argue that more visa and green cards slots are needed so they can fill open positions.” Luckily, a short time later, the answer hit me as I read on page 50 that “in the U.S., unemployed chemists are still struggling to find jobs. The unemployment situation is especially dire for mid- to late-career chemists.” There are even tales of those forced to relocate to other parts of the U.S. or the world. 

Is a solution taking shape in the minds of C&EN readers? Perhaps something other than “reevaluating the security clearance system to open up more research jobs to foreign-born workers.”  

I personally am fortunate enough to not be in the situation of the unemployed—who are so artfully personified on the cover. However, if I were, I would find it quite insulting to read of a “scientist shortage” (page 11) without at least a cursory analysis from the editor. 

I haven’t seen this sort of self-contradiction since, well, the articles about the electric-vehicle market (C&EN, Oct. 22, pages 8 and 26). Please pull it together. 

Ken Doll
Peoria, Ill.

The non-interchangeable nature of scientists is a puzzle; if only there was a way for mid-career scientists to retrain for a new subspeciality. Hmmmm.

Fed, Aldrich stimulate economy by using paper currency as absorbent material

In a surprise move, Aldrich has announced that it is helping the Federal Reserve use its excess of US dollars by stuffing them into their containers in place of vermiculite. "As a part of the latest nominal GDP targeting program that Chairman Bernanke has announced, the Fed has given us several thousand pallets of dollar bills to be used instead of that weird gray absorbent rabbit pellet looking stuff. Hey, grad students, postdocs and other bench scientists are the most likely to actually put cash into the economy by spending it."

A spokesman for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors released a statement saying, "We thank Sigma-Aldrich for their help in releasing hard currency to the general public. It is unfortunate that Sikorsky would not sell us helicopters for our project on a larger scale, but we believe that our friends in Milwaukee will have a similar effect. We  have also instructed that we will not allow Federal Reserve Notes to be used as packing material in Aldrich brand tetrakis(triphenylphosphine)palladium, since we want our money to be spent and not hang around in the warehouses."

Pfizer just won what?!!?

I'm just going to leave this one here for your perusal (emphasis mine):

In 1849, two cousins founded Charles Pfizer & Company in a modest red brick building in Brooklyn, N.Y. Little did they know, the company would grow up to be one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, with the nation’s happiest employees.

The multinational pharmaceutical giant ranked No. 1 on CareerBliss’ third annual Happiest Companies in America list, which honors the 50 companies that are most dedicated to cultivating happy work environments.

Um, uh, no comment.

There just aren't enough hours in the day

This New York Times story about Russian author Nikolai V. Zlobin's book about America for Russians is both funny and poignant:

But of course much in everyday American life sounds bizarre to Russians, as Mr. Zlobin documents meticulously in his 400-page book, “America — What a Life!” 

It seems strange, 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, that ordinary Russians would still be hungry for details about how ordinary Americans eat and pay mortgages. But to Mr. Zlobin’s surprise, his book — published this year and marketed as a guide to Russians considering a move abroad — is already in its fifth print run, and his publisher has commissioned a second volume. 

With the neutrality of a field anthropologist dispatched to suburbia, Mr. Zlobin scrutinizes the American practice of interrogating complete strangers about the details of their pregnancies; their weird habit of leaving their curtains open at night, when a Russian would immediately seal himself off from the prying eyes of his neighbors. Why Americans do not lie, for the most part. Why they cannot drink hard liquor. Why they love laws but disdain their leaders.

I think attempting to explain any large country that's rather heterogeneous is a fool's errand. The United States is such a mess of ridiculous and weird subcultures -- imagine trying to explain the chemblogosphere to someone who is not a reader or a blogger! I can't imagine attempting to explain Amish culture or suburban American teenagerhood to someone who hadn't lived either of those experiences.

This article is a great reminder to me of all the difficulties that graduate students and scientists from other countries must have when navigating the United States and its strange customs. That they experience difficulty is expected; that most seem to transition to "doing fine" and manage to do good science is pretty amazing.

I don't think medchem will reshore to the US. Do you?

Credit: Boston Consulting Group

I've been watching the boomlet in articles this past year about the "reshoring" of manufacturing back from Asia to the United States with some interest. The latest in this trend is Charles Fishman's article in The Atlantic Monthly about General Electric bringing back some appliance manufacturing to its facility in Kentucky. There has been a bit of hubbub about Apple's commitment to spend $100 million to built an assembly line in the US. (The Financial Times notes that it is not much, compared to the billions that it's spent on its facilities at Foxconn City.) Also, Felix Salmon points out that a lot of the jobs coming back are paying $10-15/hr, as opposed to the $20+/hr that most folks imagine.

I think this is business and the media chasing "hot trends", as opposed to looking at the long-term picture. [I've made a ten-year dinner bet with an old high school classmate about the share of US manufacturing as a percentage of US GDP. He says it's going to be higher in 2022 than in 2012; I say it's going to be lower.]

So a couple of new-ish things to comment on:

• There is a lot of talk about the an American manufacturing renaissance due to hydraulic fracturing, all the natural gas/oil that is going to be produced and the cheap energy that's going to result. I think that's really real and why serious federal regulation of either 1) hydraulic fracturing or 2) carbon emissions will not happen during President Obama's 2nd term. There are just too many oxen to gore.
• Also, Ben Bernanke has just announced that the Fed will keep rates low for the foreseeable future until unemployment falls below 6.5% to inflation goes above 2.5%. This is a pretty bold step* and shows their commitment to lowering unemployment as much as possible. So it won't be hard for companies to borrow money for the foreseeable future. 

So here's my question: we all saw pharmaceutical manufacturing go overseas in the last 20 years, shortly followed by a lot of basic medicinal chemistry R&D. I suspect that some specialty chemical manufacturing will indeed see increases over the next ten years; to right is a graph from a Boston Consulting Group report that shows that chemicals might be on the cusp of returning to the US.** Is there any evidence that medicinal chemistry R&D is "reshoring"?

I don't see it at all, but I'd be interested in hearing a contrarian opinion. Readers?

UPDATE: The ever-awesome Rich Apodaca has some thoughts on how it could happen.

*and a big screw-you to net savers. That part is frustrating, if understandable. 
** That's probably driven by hydraulic fracturing more than anything else.

Unemployment rate down to 7.7%, U6 rate down to 14.4%

Credit: Calculated Risk blog

BLS reported last Friday that the unemployment rate was down to 7.7%, with the broader U6 unemployment rate down to 14.4%. Great news, it seems.

The chemical manufacturing subsector lost around 9,000 jobs (about 1% of overall employment) from October to November , but these numbers are noisy enough that it's not a trend.

These are also the numbers with Hurricane Sandy in them, fwiw. 

Job posting: Ph.D. inorganic chemist, Minneapolis, MN

From the inbox:

Location: Minneapolis, MN
Salary Range: $90,000 to $120,000/yr. base salary (depending on current salary level)

Requirements:
Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry or Physical Chemistry and AT LEAST 10 years of industrial experience. This person must know heterogeneous catalysis and have experience with testing, analyzing, evaluating and scaling-up catalyst processes. Candidates could come out of catalyst manufacturers or other operating companies such as refineries, petrochemical manufacturers, or plants that use hydrogenation. Hydrogenation experience is a major plus.

Job Description:
This person will work in a newly formed lab within a site of approximately 30 people. This company is a start-up company but in terms of stability, this company is much farther along than most start-ups. They have a manufacturing facility overseas that is producing material and they have plans to retrofit another site in Canada and build a pilot plant in the near future. This person will work in a growing small group responsible for the new pilot plant. This person will be working to scale-up new processes from bench to eventual pilot scale. The base material is biosuccinic acid which this company is going to be converting into other marketable materials. This company is based near Minneapolis and is aggressively expanding. Relocation assistance will be offered with this position if needed and this position is bonus eligible as well. If you are interested in this position, please send your resume to resumes@sunrecruiting.com.

Best of luck!

Daily Pump Trap: 12/13/12 edition

Good morning! Between December 11 and December 12, there were 21 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 5 (24%) are academically connected and 15 (71%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

A lone position: Consumer Reports (Westchester, NY) is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist to be a food scientist to run a project tracking metals in food. Looks to be a contract position for 2 years.

And that's about it: Other than Kelly positions, there was just that one position. The holidays suck for hiring -- sigh.

What is Merck looking for?: For the search term "chemist", there are 28 US positions listed at Merck's Careers site.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs show 219, 595, 2493 and 14 positions (respectively.)