Back tomorrow, I hope

A tough week for posting on the blog, for which I am sad. Better luck tomorrow, or next week. 

Job posting: senior analytical chemist, Denver, CO

From the inbox: 

Senior Scientist: Functional Foods Chemist 

Location: Denver, CO 

We are seeking a hands-on analytical chemist experienced in quantitative and qualitative analysis of botanical extracts, dietary supplement ingredients, and foods. This position will play a key role in the production and analysis of functional foods infused with cannabis and other botanicals and nutraceuticals. 

This scientist shall add value by continually evaluating our manufacturing operations with the goal of implementing new and improved processes and bringing new products to the market. The ideal candidate will have at least three years of applicable cannabis, food, or pharmaceutical experience with a focus on ensuring product quality, safety, and satisfaction. Must possess high attention to detail, strong organization skills, and excellent communication.  Will operate in a safe, detailed, and accurate manner. He/she will need to operate in a startup environment and be flexible to take on new and added responsibilities per the business’ growth needs.

LC/MS experience, B.S. in chemistry desired. Full ad here. Best wishes to those interested.   

Call me naive...

The news of insider trading always stumps me. From STAT's Ed Silverman:

Last Aug. 17, Jason Chan started his job as a director of biostatistics at a small biotech called Akebia Therapeutics. Just two days later, he began buying Akebia stock based on information he learned about study results for a key drug while attending meetings. 

Within days, his wife and a friend to whom he owed money also began buying shares. 

The US Department of Justice charged Chan on Tuesday with securities fraud. And the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Chan alleging insider trading and wants him to return $68,000 in illegal profits as part of a scheme that netted his wife $115,000 and the friend another $105,000, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in federal court in Boston.

Maybe I am completely naive and fooled and the SEC can barely catch all the people who are insider trading, but it sure seems like a whole lot of people get caught doing that. What are they thinking?!?! 

Daily Pump Trap: 6/16/2016 edition

A few of the positions recently posted at C&EN Jobs:

Riddle me this: Why has Cyalume Technologies (West Springfield, MA) been looking for a research chemist for ~3-4 years now? As I have thought this entire time, the job looks interesting for somebody? 

Wenatchee, WA: AgroFresh (late of Dow, yes?) is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist.

North Charleston, SC: Ingevity (used to be MeadWestvaco, looks like) is looking for an experienced analytical chemist. 

Cary, NC (?): The National Council for Air and Stream Improvement is a forest products trade organization; they're looking for a principal scientist to track "emerging health effects, epidemiology, and exposure assessment studies for substances relevant to the forest products industry, including fine particulate matter, ozone, metals, and other substances regulated in air, water, and soils." Bet you'll be popular.

Tarrytown, NY: ARMGO Pharma is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist.

Laurel, MD: FDA is searching for a research chemist; you'll be "experience[d] conducting research in analytical chemistry method development and validation for use in pharmacokinetic/toxicokinetic studies and developing analytical methods utilizing mass spectrometry, high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), and gas chromatography." Looks like a 2-year position, with possible extensions? Pay is decent-ish? at 92,145.00 - 119,794.00.

And the waitress is practicing politics: I don't know why I think of "Piano Man" when I see a PharmAgra Labs ad at C&EN Jobs, but I do. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 6/14/16 edition

A few of the academically-related positions posted recently on C&EN Jobs:

Gainesville, FL: The University of Florida is searching for a laboratory lecturer for classes in physical, biophysical and analytical chemistry.

Pensacola, FL: Pensacola State College is looking for a M.S. chemist to be a chemistry/biology instructor. Offered salary: 34,828.00 - 40,828.00. Starts in August 2016.

Imagination wanted: The International Institute of Nano and Molecular Medicine at the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO) is looking for postdoctoral fellows. 40-50k offered, looking for "A PhD in Chemistry, with laboratory experience in chemical synthesis and imagination." Huh.

Northampton, MA: Smith College's David J. Gorin is looking for a postdoctoral fellow.

Maastricht, NL: Maastricht University is looking for a lecturer in chemistry; it's a two year contract.

Providence, RI: Providence College is searching for a visiting assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Hillsboro, KS: Tabor College is looking for a 1-year visiting assistant professor of chemistry, starting August 2016. Seems to me this is Last Minute Lecturer territory! 

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles from this week's C&EN:

• Cover: 50 years of HPLC (by Celia Henry Arnaud)
• It's funny to think that HPLC was once a technology that had an infancy, or that people needed to convince folks to try it out. 
• Interesting article by Marc Reisch about the "Moore's Law" of HPLC columns. 
• This autonomously fueled molecular motor seems exciting... (article by Stu Borman)
• Acetate in the gut affects feeding behavior in mice? 
• Looking forward to the charlatans in the diet world getting hold of this one...
• The names of the 4 new elements (article by Jyllian Kemsley)
• I personally think that "tennessine" is a fitting tribute to the Volunteer State. 
• I don't claim to understand Brexit, but Alex Scott has a round-up of UK/EU chemical industry opinions on the matter. 

Weekend longreads: bosses have no power over phase changes

I have expressed my horror and fascination with the Takata airbag recall, and how it is really deeply about the chemistry of phases of ammonium nitrate (and water content, apparently.) A compelling long article at Bloomberg Businessweek by Susan Berfield, Craig Trudell, Margaret Cronin Fisk and Jeff Plungis is worth your time: 

Ammonium nitrate was about one-tenth the price of tetrazole, according to Upham, who also reviewed industry patents. But ammonium nitrate had a critical flaw that he says led other air bag makers to give up on it: Ammonium nitrate has five phases of varying density that make it hard to keep stable over time. A propellant made with ammonium nitrate would swell and shrink with temperature changes, and eventually the tablet would break down into powder. Water and humidity would speed the process. Powder burns more quickly than a tablet, so an air bag whose propellant had crumbled would be likely to deploy too aggressively. The controlled explosion would be just an explosion. “Everybody went down a certain road, and only Takata went down another road,” says Jochen Siebert, who’s followed the air bag industry since the 1990s and is now managing director of JSC Automotive Consulting. “If you read the conference papers from back then, you can actually see that people said, ‘No, you shouldn’t. It’s dangerous.’ ” 

When Lillie and other Moses Lake engineers met with their ASL colleagues in December 1998 to review a new design using ammonium nitrate, Lillie says they were told the phase stability problem had been solved. He rejected the design nonetheless. ASL wasn’t able to provide documented evidence of the safety of its product, he said in a January 2016 deposition, taken as part of a personal injury suit against Takata and Honda. “Never any evidence, never any test results, never any test reports, nothing to substantiate they had overcome the phase stability problem,” Lillie testified.

Sadly, the bosses at Takata ignored the bad news, and pushed forward. I hope to never be in the situation at the Takata engineers found themselves in, and if I do, I hope I have the courage to speak out.  

Busy morning, but...

Just for fun, you should check out this paper, and its Supporting Information. It seems... not quite right.

(ht @stuartcantrill, @notHF, etc. on Twitter. Looks like it was the Beeler Group at Boston University that originally tweeted it.) 

"If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same way."

Also in this week's C&EN, a brief profile of patent attorney Paul Dietze by Linda Wang. He got to his position by a not-entirely-conventional means, starting first as an assistant professor at UMBC:

Charting a new path: Dietze was not offered tenure at UMBC (CJ's note: this happened in 1993) so he applied to law school, an idea he had toyed with early on. Dietze worked as a review chemist for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and attended the University of Maryland School of Law in the evenings. He earned his law degree in 1998. 

Blending chemistry and law as a patent attorney: As a special counsel for Haynes & Boone, LLP, Dietze advises clients in the generic pharmaceutical industry on patenting issues. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I get to use my chemistry, and I get to use my law degree. It’s really a perfect blend of everything. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same way.”

It seems to me that so many people who go through a difficult time and ultimately succeed seem to say similar things to "I'd do it exactly the same way." I don't understand it, but it reminds me of a passage from a favorite novel (Stephen King's "The Stand"), describing this process via an anecdote about a rhythm guitar player:

Then, somehow, over a period of eighteen months, he had gotten clean, and stayed clean. A lot of him was gone. He was no longer the driving wheel of any group, Most Likely to Succeed or otherwise, but he was always on time, never missed a practice session, or f---ed up an audition. He didn't talk much, but the needle highway on his left arm had disappeared. And Barry Grieg had said: He's come out the other side. 

That was all. No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just... come out the other side.  

Or you don't. 

I can't imagine what it is like to be an assistant professor and not be offered tenure, but I imagine that it is a devastating blow. I'm glad that Dr. Dietze came out the other side. 

"Everyone knows someone"

During a NPR story about Congress sending TSCA reform to the White House, a statement by an Environmental Defense Fund scientist, Richard Denison, is probably tendentious:

And I think that's because these issues touch everyone because they deal with our health. Everyone knows someone who got cancer at an early age or who wasn't able to conceive a child. And chemical exposures are increasingly linked to those problems, so I think what everybody felt it was time to upgrade this law.

In an irritable moment, I'll usually make an unfair generalization that 'the environmentalist is the natural enemy of the chemist.'* To suggest that childhood cancers and modern infertility issues are caused by "increasingly linked to" chemical exposure in the environment is a statement that 1) I suspect doesn't have much causal backing in the literature and 2) a strong accusation that will stick in the hearts and minds of the public. As long as folks like Dr. Denison keep making these statements, I'll keep thinking I'm mostly right.

[I would really like to know how Dr. Denison got invited onto NPR in the role of someone who was more or less an explanatory expert, as opposed to a subject matter expert who practices advocacy. If I ever go on a media program to talk about the STEM shortage myth, I will make my priors known immediately. ("Chemjobber is an industrial chemist, a blogger, and a skeptic of the position that America needs more scientists and engineers.") (I guess that announcing that he works for the Environmental Defense Fund is good enough for NPR.)]

*Update: I should probably narrow that to "synthetic** chemist."
**Defined broadly, as in "those who make new molecules/formulations"

Playing defense

Also in this week's C&EN, a great interview by Bethany Halford with science writer Deborah Blum (now the Director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT). I really enjoyed this comment from her on the difficulties with science communication between biology, chemistry and physics: 

That invisibility, Blum thinks, might also be what makes it so difficult for chemistry to capture the general public’s imagination in the same way that biology and cosmology do. “It’s so much easier with some of the other sciences to create a picture in people’s minds,” Blum says. “I think we are a species that responds to image really well, and it’s hard with chemistry.” 

Also, Blum says, chemistry is tied to environmental risk in a way that most other sciences are not. “I do think you have to be honest about that.” Nevertheless, she says, we can’t ignore chemistry just because it has inherent risks. It’s not so much that we have to admire every aspect of chemistry, Blum explains, but it’s important to recognize that chemistry is fundamental to the way we navigate the world. 

“I’m not trying to sell chemistry,” Blum continues. As a journalist, she says, that’s not her job. Rather, she sees it as her responsibility to share her fascination with chemistry. Sometimes that means highlighting when and how the science has gone wrong.

Deborah Blum points to something that is really true about chemistry; industrial chemistry has a legacy that is often less than positive, and it's difficult to give a sense of optimism about chemistry when the likeliest question that you get from folks is "is this stuff gonna kill me?" or "isn't there a natural way to fertilize our crops/cure our diseases/power our society?"

I agree with her that chemistry is fundamental to modern life - and maybe that's part of the problem? So many people are ambivalent about the trade-offs that are inherent to our modern, chemistry-powered life. Perhaps there is an aspect of escapism to physics (and maybe biology?) - that's just something that most chemical research just doesn't have.

Job postings: research scientist and contract research scientist, Living Proof, Cambridge, MA

From the inbox, a link to a Ph.D. research scientist position at Bob Langer's company Living Proof (scroll down):

Living Proof is seeking a Research Scientist to support Discovery activities for new product development in hair care. The Research Scientist will contribute to the innovation pipeline and be responsible for designing and developing new materials for hair care applications from concept through product launch. The Research Scientist will play a key role in a multidisciplinary team of scientist, and identify materials performance design targets through collaborations with Discovery team scientists, and industry experts to address unmet consumer needs. This position will report to the Director of Research. This is a paid, full time, position based in Cambridge MA. 

Key areas of responsibility include:

• Materials design based on target in vivo performance criteria
• Hands-on chemical synthesis, modification and scale-up
• Development and validation of materials synthesis, characterization, and performance evaluation protocols

Full link for this Ph.D.-level position here (scroll down). Also, a temporary M.S./Ph.D. research position, also with Living Proof (link here).

"I’d settle for a “THX BUT NO THX HAVE A NICE LIFE” text"

Good short little essay from Devon Maloney: 

I’M STILL IN THE RUNNING for a job I interviewed for in 2014. At least, I think I am? I never heard one way or another. After an initial phone interview, I hopped on a train, taking an eight-hour, round trip journey to meet my potential employer. I was even asked to write an essay—about as long as this piece—as a test run. But in the weeks that followed, despite promises of “wanting to move quickly on this” from management, I heard nothing. Every check-in email—my teeth grinding with each attempt to play the role of an exceptionally competent, but also totally laidback candidate—went unanswered. After a while, even the crickets should’ve started to feel guilty. I’d been ghosted. It wasn’t the first time—and it certainly wouldn’t be the last...

Solving the problem of non-rejection rejections would be a good start to civility in job applications. 

I'm not crazy, am I?

Credit: Doug Taber, Organic Chemistry Highlights

I like reading Doug Taber's "Organic Chemistry Highlights" every week. Weird question - is there anything weird about today's 2nd synthetic scheme?*

*there isn't some sort of notation that I'm not familiar with, is there?

Whiskey made in steel tanks?

Also in this week's C&EN, a letter from someone who tried Cleveland Whiskey (whiskey made in stainless steel tanks with pieces of charred wood soaking, rather than oak barrels): 

Having lived in the Kentucky area for more than 20 years, I have tasted many types of bourbon whiskey, from the low-cost Jim Beam to the middle-level Maker’s Mark and Woodford Reserve. On a recent visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum, I was served Cleveland Whiskey, which was covered in a recent Newscripts (C&EN, May 2, page 40). 

The flavor imparted was harsh and biting, with none of the smoky smoothness that comes from aging. Perhaps chemicals used during the bourbon whiskey’s aging process are getting into the spirit, because its makers have missed something during their analysis. When chemists evaluate alternate sources of raw materials, it is not usually the major components that provide the issue, but it is frequently a difference in a small residual material that is there or not there. 

Cleveland Whiskey still has a long way to go to achieve a drinkable basic bourbon whiskey. Maybe it will be better off competing with specialty niche products that cannot be compared to the smooth amber flavor of a well-aged bourbon. 

Michael Recchio
Louisville

Presumably Cleveland Whiskey is competing on price, and not on flavor, but I dunno. (I'm not a whiskey drinker, mostly.)  

This week's C&EN

A few of the articles from this week's issue of C&EN:

• Cover: Lisa Jarvis looks at the state-of-the-art of KRas (a protein that is often mutated in cancer cells.) 
• Great opening anecdote with Kevat Shokat
• Interesting article by Alex Tullo on efforts to find a replacement for a problematic polyurethane curative 4,4´-methylenebis 2-chloroaniline, or MOCA.
• Melissae Fellet writes on diesel engines, NOx and catalysts.  
• The latest from the Senior Chemists Committee. (article by Thomas Beattie)
• Fair number of letters to the editor this week. 

Sterilite clear plastic totes

Small useful things (links): 

• I am so happy to see that Materia is still writing on its blog All Things Metathesis; good post on tandem ruthenium catalysis by Philip Wheeler.
• The latest from The Collapsed Wavefunction podcast on cholecalciferol.  
• A couple of nice profiles at the ACS Network: 
• Phillip Hustad, Dow Electronics senior scientist
• Margaret Chu-Moyer, Amgen executive director
• John is back to posting regularly at It's the Rheo Thing - good stuff. 
• Good post about glyphosate by Kat Day.
• Loved this letter by Hans Bethe about America, courtesy of Ash.
• The latest from the Baran group.
• Th'Gaussling asks "how shall we train chemists to handle chemicals?"

The View from Your Hood: nice rainbow!

Credit: Anonymous

An anonymous submission from the Princeton chemistry department.

(got a View from Your Hood submission? Send it in (with a caption, please) at chemjobber@gmail.com; will run every other Friday.)

Eleven ways to say "accidentally" without saying "accidentally"

I suspect most experiments in the Brainerd Group happened serendipitously.
Credit: DVDizzy

From the inbox, a short article by Belle Dumé that leads to a funny sentence in a recent article in Science Advances (emphasis mine):

During our studies on conjugated D-A polymers with positively charged moieties in the side chains, we accidently discovered that incorporation of ammonium salts into certain conjugated D-A polymers can improve the interchain packing order and enhance their charge carrier mobilities. 

I suggest that, next time, they use the following adverbs rather than "accidentally":

1. fortuitously 
2. serendipitiously 
3. by circumstance
4. not by design
5. happily
6. as part of a Design of Experiments matrix (I kid, I kid!) 
7. inadvertent
8. by chance
9. by coincidence
10. as an unintended experiment
11. in the style of Professor Brainerd

Congratulations to Luo et al.; sounds like an interesting project. 

Process Wednesday: huh, that's a lot of "NEVER"s

Via a random Googling, I happened upon Dow's "Dow Answer Center" with a few helpful suggestions for handling acrylic acid:

• NEVER thaw frozen acrylic acid with steam!
• NEVER remove acrylic acid liquid from a partially thawed container!
• NEVER allow an incompatible material (peroxide, peroxide former, inhibitor or oxygen scavenger, strong bases, mineral acids, or iron oxide/rust) to come in contact with GAA or Acrylate Esters!
• NEVER sparge Nitrogen through MEHQ inhibited GAA or Acrylate Esters!
• NEVER blanket MEHQ inhibited GAA or Acrylate Ester tanks with Nitrogen!
• NEVER store MEHQ inhibited Acrylate Esters above 104 F (40 C)!
• NEVER store MEHQ inhibited GAA above 90 F (32C)! 
• NEVER deadhead pumps containing MEHQ inhibited GAA or Acrylate Esters!
• NEVER use steam to heat Acrylate Esters or GAA in storage!
• NEVER store MEHQ inhibited GAA or Acrylate Esters beyond the 1 year shelf life! Re-inhibiting with MEHQ and sparging with Oxygen will not extend the life!

While some of these are certainly understandable (gee, thawing acrylic acid with steam seems like a terrible idea), some of them (don't deadhead a pump with acrylic acid in it) is obvious only with some hindsight (if you're not used to dealing with pumps in the plant, anyway.) 

It's funny to me how safety literature is mostly of the "polite suggestions" variety, with strong words ("always", "never") reserved for material that has some pretty remarkable consequences. Considering that a random Googling of acrylate accidents reveals quite a few of them (including a plant explosion in Georgia that injured 6 and killed 1), following the 10 "NEVER"s seems like a good idea.