Early pollution

While spending a lovely Sunday of Labor Day weekend with my family, I sat down in a bookstore and flipped through a copy of "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky. I was struck by this passage about the devastation of early industrial chemistry:

This science gave birth to a broad range of industries, some of which also poisoned people. The Leblanc process, invented by eighteenth-century French surgeon Nicolas Leblanc, treated salt with sulfuric acid to produce sodium carbonate.* Along the way, it also gave off hydrogen chloride fumes and calcium sulphide. The calcium sulphide released the classic "rotten egg" smell of sulfur to add to the black clouds and cinder of industrial centers. Hydrogen chloride fumes were worse.  

The gas from these manufactories is of such a deleterious nature as to blight anything within its influences, and is alike baneful to health and property. The herbage in the fields in their vicinity is scorched, the gardens yield neither fruit nor vegetables; many flourishing trees have lately become rotten naked sticks. Cattle and poultry droop and pine away. It tarnishes the furniture in our houses, and when we are exposed to it, which is frequent occurrence, we are afflicted with coughs and pains in the head. 

- hearings at the town council of Newcastle upon Tyne, January 9, 1839

Yikes.

*Anon points out the obviously correct, that treating salt with sulfuric acid does not make sodium carbonate, but sodium sulfate. It appears that Mr. Kurlansky gave a somewhat incomplete description of the Leblanc process, with the missing intermediate step of treating the sodium sulfate with coal and calcium carbonate.) 

Daily Pump Trap: 9/15/15 edition

A few of this week's positions on C&EN Jobs: 

Laurel, MD: The FDA is looking for a deputy division director for the Division of Residue Chemistry within the Center for Veterinary Medicine. (Someday, I'm gonna learn all the FDA centers.) Offered salary: 107,325.00 - 139,523.00. 

Bristol, PA: AstaTech searching for a QC chemist. Glassdoor salaries looking middlin' at best.

Jesup, GA: Rayonier Advanced Materials desires a Ph.D. chemist for a senior scientist position; it's cellulose-related and they're looking for an organic chemist - interesting. 

Dugway Proving Ground (Utah, I think): Jacobs routinely advertises these "project chemist" positions. I applied for one once, didn't get anywhere. 

Diamond Bar, CA: The South Coast Air Quality Management District (Los Angeles area) is looking for air quality chemists. Salary: $5,147.00 - $7,657.00/monthly.

"John": What is this position?

Ivory Filter Flask: 9/15/15 edition

A few of the academic positions from C&EN Jobs this week:

Bowling Green, KY: Western Kentucky University looking for an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore is looking for postdocs; the pay is remarkable at $8,500/month (works out to $102,000/year.) Dude!

Think about that - the Department of Energy can pay almost 3X the NIH minimum for a postdoctoral fellow in biology. Lots of different ways you can take that little market signal.

Furnace, PA: Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus is looking for an assistant professor of chemistry.

Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University looking for an assistant professor of organic chemistry as well as an assistant professor of analytical chemistry.

Stevens Point, WI: The University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point is looking for an assistant professor of analytical chemistry.

Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts - Amherst is searching for, well, a lot:

We seek applicants who will develop or continue vigorous research programs at the interface of organic, analytical, and physical chemistry with materials or biological sciences.  Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, materials organic and bio-organic chemistry, spectroscopy of macromolecules and biomacromolecules, and the use of physical methods to study and characterize molecules and materials at interfaces. 

I think it's missing a "nano".

The list: The joint ChemBark/Chemjobber 2016 Faculty Jobs list is getting longer, with the last official update on September 11, with 255 total positions. 

This is just to say

This is just to say

that I'm not dead

and that there are some posts coming today, I promise.

Forgive me.

It's been a busy day. 

This Paul Hodges post makes no sense to me

This post isn't about chemistry, or chemists. But it is about political/economic predictions (oh, goody!). You don't have to click on the link - I won't be offended. My thoughts are below the jump.

What would you ask an ACS presidential candidate?

Also in this week's C&EN, the presidential candidates make their statements: 

• Here's G. Bryan Balazs' statement. 
• Here's Allison A. Campbell's statement.

Readers, I plan to send the candidates a 4-question questionnaire. In the past, we've asked the following 4 questions: 

1. Which ACS program do you think best helps the job-seeking ACS member? How would you improve it?
2. Is it ACS policy to get more students to study in STEM fields, specifically chemistry? If so, how do we reconcile the fact that wages for chemists are stagnant or falling? Does this argue against the idea of a STEM shortage and the need for more STEM students?
3. Each ACS president candidate, for at least the past decade, knows the challenging job market facing ACS members and inevitably speaks of "growing jobs" in the US. Specifically, what tangible steps would you take to increase the number of chemistry jobs in the US, and is this something you think is really achievable?
4. How would you describe ACS' response to the Great Recession and the increase in unemployment amongst its members? How should ACS respond to similar situations in the future?

Readers, what questions would you ask? I intend to keep #2 and #3 (or, at least, to have similar questions.) Knowing whether or not ACS presidential candidates buy into the "STEM shortage" is important to me, as well as what steps they actually will take. 

This week's C&EN

A few stories from this week's C&EN:

• Cover story on citizen participation in environmental monitoring by Steven Gibb. 
• Folks seem pretty excited about this new super-small-crystals X-ray crystallography paper (article by Stu Borman.)
• If you're a fan of MasterChef, here's a story about chemist who was on the show (by Jyllian Kemsley.)
• Formosa plans another cracker complex in Louisiana (story by Alex Tullo)
• Here's what I don't understand: is there strong global demand for polyethylene? or are all these new plants basically going to be built and then sit idle? 
• ACS members are very, very excited about thorium in nuclear reactors.
• The indefatigable Linda Wang writes on graduate school and stress. Check out Vinylogous' comments. 
• Also, check out stress relief techniques from current and former grad students. 

Should we see the nuclear industry as a stable source of engineer/chemist jobs?

It's apparently Nuclear Week here. From the inbox, a chemist position at the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station: 

Chemist (1575) 

Summary: Develops, implements and administers assigned Chemistry programs. Provides chemistry related technical support for the operation, maintenance, testing, and modification of assigned systems. Carries out assignments requiring the development of new or improved techniques and procedures, resulting in the development of new refined equipment, materials, processes, products, and/or scientific methods.

Best wishes to those interested.

A related question: what do people think of the nuclear industry as a long-term source of jobs? Cracked (yes, I know) has an interesting article on life at a nuclear power plant with this paragraph:

Speaking of which, the people are also old. Most of the plants opened around the same time, so once everyone was hired and all the positions filled up, there was no need to bring in additional people. Then, after Three Mile Island happened, we stopped building plants, which means we stopped creating new positions for new people. Therefore, most of my coworkers are decades older than me. In the next couple of years, 38 percent of the industry's 120,000 workers are set to retire, giving the 90-plus plants a baby boomer crisis of a worker exodus. 

I am always skeptical of the promise of retirement-related job growth.

Cons:

• Just because Baby Boomers are retiring does not necessarily mean that new entry- or mid-level jobs are created.  
• Also the retirement wealth lost in the Great Recession means that a lot of retirements were delayed - I suspect that trend continues. 
• The U.S. Navy tends to naturally produce a lot of nuclear-trained engineers and operators - I suspect, though I do not know, that they probably produce more than the civilian industry can absorb. 
• BLS indicates that nuclear engineer job growth is predicted to be 9% for the 2012-2022 time period, which is less than the 11% predicted for all occupations. 

Pros: 

• It is my amateur understanding of the situation that NRC regulations tend to require high staffing ratios for engineers and operators? 

Readers, your thoughts? 

The hazards of uranium and plutonium

In my most recent issue of the Journal of Chemical Health and Safety, a fascinating article by Los Alamos National Laboratory authors Michael E. Cournoyer, Stephen A. Costigan and Bradley S. Schake entitled "Why is weapons grade plutonium more hazardous to work with than highly enriched uranium?" [1] For those of you (like myself) who do not work with actinides, this was fascinating reading (emphasis mine): 

The long-term storage of uranium ingots can form a pyrophoric surface caused by reaction with air and moisture. This is due to the formation of powdered hydride and hydrogen... In many reported incidents, flashing of the fuel or explosions occurred when the containers were opened. The flashing was believed to be the spontaneous ignition of uranium or uranium hydride which became suspended due to the mechanical disturbance of opening the container. 

These hazards are more severe with plutonium. In addition, plutonium expands up to 70% in volume as it oxidizes and thus may burst its container. Case studies show that mechanical wedging resulting from this expansion can even breach a second metal container, resulting in localized contamination release and possible exposure of personnel.

Chemist [picks up phone]: Hello?
Safety officer: Do you have any plutonium in a can?
Chemist: Uh, yes?
Safety officer: Well, you might want to let it out!

Also, this interesting section:

"The spontaneous ignition of uranium can usually be avoided by storage under dry (without moisture) oil. Plutonium stored under oil has been reported to spontaneously ignite. Plutonium should be stored as pure metal (Pu) or in its PuO₂ form in a dry, inert or slightly oxidizing atmosphere... 

...For plutonium metal, complete exclusion of oxygen and./or rapid heat removal are the effective ways to extinguish fires. Sand can also be used to smother plutonium fires. Magnesium oxide sand is probably the most effective material for extinguishing a plutonium fire. Magnesium oxide cools the burning material, acting as a heat sink, and also blocks off oxygen. Because of reactivity and criticality concerns, water may not be the appropriate extinguishing agent." 

Just in case, you know, you had some plutonium lying around...

1. Cournoyer, M.E.; Costigan, S.A.; Schake, B.S. "Why is weapons grade plutonium more hazardous to work with than highly enriched uranium?" J. Chem. Health. Saf. 2015, 22 (4), 2-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.jchas.2014.10.004

3D printers can't print nuclear weapons - but they can cause a lot of public confusion

Imagine my bemusement when I saw this Washingon Post article on Twitter, titled "You can print your own guns at home. Next it will be nuclear weapons. Really.", written by LSU political science professor Daniel C. Tirone and his graduate student, James Gilley. Here's the relevant paragraph:

When should we expect to see WMDs that can be printed at home? 

...Most important, laboratories have already printed at the molecular level using base atoms — which can lead to printing nuclear materials. Such printing will probably migrate out of the lab within 20 to 30 years. These trends will accelerate with improved printer resolution and advances in the types of materials used. Within the past two decades, 3-D printers have gone from being formidably expensive laboratory instruments to desktop boxes that cost less than $1,500. Prices will keep dropping as the technology advances, so private users will one day be able to afford more complex printers that can produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

After some conversation on Twitter where chemists (including Barney Grubbs) began to critique the author, the article was changed to read the following:

...Most important, laboratories have already printed at the molecular level. Continuing progress in this area could allow for subatomic printing using the basic components of atoms – which can lead to printing nuclear materials. Such printing will probably migrate out of the lab within 20 to 30 years. 

You will be wildly amused to discover that the link to "printed at the molecular level" links to an article in a student newspaper describing UIUC chemistry professor Martin Burke's flow synthesizer in rather breathless terms as a 3D printer of molecules.

Where to start?

First, Tirone and Gilley's prediction is very, very unlikely to come to pass. It belies a complete lack of understanding of the science behind 3D printing. I think Prof. Grubbs has done a much better job explaining it than I ever could, so I think folks should go over there for his explanation.

I have a different question: why does 3D printing make people speculate so wildly?

This is not the only case. Prof. Lee Cronin's work making 3D printed reactionware set off a lot of press about the 3D printing of medicine. I learned about Cambrian Genomics' technology because a Wall Street Journal interview with a manufacturing expert described them this way: "They built a machine that 3-D prints DNA."  Nope, not so.

I think the answer may be that 3D printing seems both futuristic and tangible enough that people can imagine the different things that can be done with it, even if they are not economically feasible or even scientifically plausible.

The Burke team did indeed reference 3D printing in both the HHMI and UIUC press releases. They did not make the claim that the Burke synthesizer was a 3D printer, but that did not stop the popular press from running with this incorrect analogy. Should we ignore the inevitable misunderstandings, or should we prevent them from happening in the first place? What words should evince caution before they are used by public information officers and principal investigators? "Cure" is one - I think I have a case that "3D printer" is another.  

Daily Pump Trap: 9/10/15 edition

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

Silver Spring, MD: It's fascinating to me that FDA's Center for Tobacco Products is holding a career fair on October 14. They've probably done this sort of thing before, but they've never advertised it on C&EN Jobs or ACS Careers.

Marinette, WI: Tyco Fire Products looking for a B.S. chemist to be fire retardant researcher.

Memphis, TN: St. Jude's Children's Hospital is a frequent poster at C&EN Jobs, but this is the first organic chemistry position I've seen in quite a while. Looking for someone to run their chemistry core, looks like.

"Denver, CO area": Boulder Scientific looking for a Ph.D. process chemist.

Geismar, LA: I did not know (although I would have suspected) that BASF has cGMP/compliance folks working for them; they're looking for one.

Boston, MA: Experienced radiochemistry M.S./Ph.D. position at inviCRO.

Long Island, NY: Brookhaven National Laboratory is looking for a senior materials scientist; Ph.D. plus seven years experience desired.

Orlando (?), FL: The St. Johns River Water Management District is looking for an entry-level water quality chemist.

Pullman, WA: Interesting natural products extraction chemist position with a startup (6 month window.) w00t.

Ivory Filter Flask: 9/10/15 edition

A few of the academic positions posted on C&EN Jobs this week:

Spartanburg, SC: Converse College is looking for an assistant professor of physical chemistry.

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University is looking for an assistant or associate professor of biological chemistry. 

Huntington, WV: Marshall University desires an assistant professor of organic chemistry.

Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State is looking for 2 professors; "candidates with research interests in chemical biology, experimental physical chemistry, and/or soft materials are of particular interest."'

Huntsville, TX: Sam Houston State University searching for an assistant professor of inorganic chemistry.

The List: As of September 10, there are 248 positions on the joint ChemBark/Chemjobber 2016 Faculty Jobs List. 

OK, what gives? Intel drops its sponsorship of the Science Talent Search

Via Carmen Drahl, the New York Times is noting that Intel is dropping its support for the Science Talent Search (article by Quentin Hardy): 

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, is dropping its longtime support of the most prestigious science and mathematics competition for American high school students. 

The contest, called the Science Talent Search, brings 40 finalists to Washington for meetings with leaders in government and industry and counts among its past competitors eight Nobel Prize winners, along with chief executives, university professors and award-winning scientists. 

Over the years, the award for work in so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — has made national headlines and been an important indicator of America’s educational competitiveness and national priorities. 

[snip]   

Dropping support for the high school contest is a puzzling decision by Intel, since it costs about $6 million a year — about 0.01 percent of Intel’s $55.6 billion in revenue last year — and it generates significant good will for the sponsoring organization. Intel has also increased the size and scope of the award, giving more than $1.6 million annually to students and schools, compared with $207,000 when it began its sponsorship in 1998.

 [snip]  

Gail Dundas, a spokeswoman for Intel, could not say why it was ending its support, but she said the company, which has struggled with a shift to mobile computing devices but is still one of the tech industry’s most influential names, is “proud of its legacy” in supporting the award... 

A couple of comments:

• First, why is Intel making this move? It doesn't make a ton of sense from a financial perspective. 
• The article makes reference to Google perhaps being interested in sponsoring the fair. Over the years, the sponsorship of the fair has gone from Westinghouse to Intel; if it goes to Google, it probably follows the arc of economic history in the US...
• Do we pay too much attention to high-end science fairs? I wonder if we do, although I suspect that the 20-year predictive value of the Science Talent Search for R1 tenured professors and future physicians and scientists is probably quite high. 

Readers, what say you? 

Huh, Amgen researcher let go for data manipulation

Via Retraction Watch, a Wall Street Journal article by Jonathan Rockoff on an Amgen researcher who was fired for data manipulation: 

A scientific paper that captured widespread attention because its subjects were massive grizzly bears—and hinted at a new approach to treating diabetes—was retracted Tuesday after one of the authors was said to have manipulated some of the data. 

The paper attracted news coverage around the world after its publication in August 2014 in the journal Cell Metabolism, whose cover featured the image of a grizzly bear clutching a fish between its jaws. The paper discussed how a grizzly bear’s metabolism adjusts to hibernation, and the key role of a certain fat protein. 

Biotech company Amgen Inc. was working on the bear research to get a better grip on the biology behind diseases like obesity and diabetes. 

But Amgen said it found late last year, in reviewing the computer files of one of its researchers, that some experimental data cited in the Cell Metabolism paper had been changed in a way the company said made some of the results look stronger.

[snip] 

 ...The paper had 12 authors, six of whom had worked for Amgen while conducting the research. The senior author was Kevin Corbit, who said he was dismissed by Amgen for fabricating research “on another matter.” Dr. Corbit said he fabricated that data to help a co-worker in what he said was an isolated incident and a regrettable decision.

He said he stands behind the grizzly-bear paper, and that he believes that “if independent experiments were conducted, as dictated by proper scientific discourse, the work would be reproduced.” He says his co-authors have no involvement in any dispute over the work.

Retraction Watch frequently covers retractions from academia and the legal consequences when falsification on federally funded research has been found to take place; usually, the scientist is barred from NIH funding for a period of time. This Amgen case seems to me to be a rare instance where there have been industry consequences for reproducibility issues (broadly speaking).

(I don't think this can accurately speak to differences in the quality of research between academia and industry.)

Readers, can you think of more examples where industrial scientists have been let go for retractions and the like?  

The costs of irreproducibility

Also in this week's C&EN, Andrea Widener talks with Leonard P. Freedman, the president of the Global Biological Standars Institute, "a nonprofit organization that advocates for the use of standards and best practices in research." Interesting calculations they've made in a PLoS Biology paper:

The authors started with previous estimates of the amount of irreproducible preclinical research, which soar as high as 89%. To be conservative, they decided to use 50% for their calculations. Industry, academia, and nonprofits spend $58.4 billion on this research each year. Half of that—$28.2 billion—was their estimated cost of irreproducible research. 

It’s a fairly simple calculation, Freedman says, but the number is a good starting point for discussion. “The intent was to be a little bit provocative, but also to be as accurate as we could be.” After the paper came out, some critics said the authors overestimated the problem. But Freedman says even if the estimate is high—and he’s not convinced it is—the problem is still worth the research community’s attention. 

“Is it $28 billion? Even if it’s $10 billion, it’s an enormous number,” he says.

Gotta say, I'm a little skeptical of that 89% number, or the 50% number. But Freedman is right - even if it's 5 billion dollars, it's probably too much.

[That said, I think there's an argument to be made that the "opposite" view is important - how much irreproducible science should we accept in the peer-reviewed literature? I am prepared to argue that the correct number is not "absolutely zero." Sure, it's probably not $10 billion, either.]

Training the next generation of scientists may be the best way to avert problems that lead to irreproducible research. The current model of a principal investigator mentoring graduate students doesn’t always lead to the changes needed to improve the quality of research, Freedman says. For example, he met a fifth-year cell biology graduate student who didn’t know about a simple assay that could solve the problem of cell misidentification. “We really need to reexamine how we are training students,” he says. 

Many researchers consider irreproducibility a problem just in academia, but Freedman says pharmaceutical companies also need to take it seriously. As drug companies cut back on internal R&D, more and more of their basic research is coming out of academia. So are future drug company employees. 

“If I were still in pharma,” he says, “I would be pretty concerned about these issues.”  

So far as I can tell, pharma is concerned about these issues, isn't it? I presume there's a fair bit of work around validating biological targets, etc. It's sort of an odd statement, too - wasn't the Nature paper that kicked off a lot of the irreproducibility fuss written by a former Amgen research head?

(Also, Isn't it time for people to retire the "I once met a young 'un who didn't know about My Favorite Technique, so We Are All Doomed" trope?) 

This week's C&EN

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

• Looking forward to reading Ann Thayer's cover story on CRISPR. 
• There are going to be chemical plant relocations in China, post-Tianjin. (article by Jean-Francois Tremblay.) 
• I'll believe it when I see it. 
• I still don't buy any of the explanations that I have seen. 
• Jeff Johnson notes the new head of CSB, Vanessa Sutherland.
• First MOFs from proteins, by Stu Borman. 
• Thanks to Sarah Everts, I've learned what a kaliapparat is. 

Happy Labor Day!

This year, I dedicate this song to hardworking quality control chemists everywhere. Thanks for sending the CoAs (and the OOSes) down the line.

To my American readers, a very happy Labor Day to you and your family. To people in the rest of the world, happy Monday!

Readers, what is best in chemistry?

Mongol Professor: Hao! Dai ye! We published again! This is good, but what is best in chemistry?

Chemjobber: Dump-and-stir, quantitative yield, no column chromatography... and the rumble of your hood.

Mongol Professor: Wrong! Readers! What is best in chemistry?

(Apologies to John Milius, among others.)

Have a great (long) weekend! 

(More coming, likely.)

RIP Tower of Geniuses, Atlantic City, NJ

A rather wonderful long article by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker about questionable economic development attempts in Atlantic City, focusing on a large casino/hotel project called the Revel. Among the plans when the Revel went bankrupt, a purported institute for scientists: 

A mysterious character in tattered clothing and a handlebar mustache had been showing up a few times a year, engaging the staff in conversation about space travel and Elon Musk. He claimed to represent someone who was going to buy Revel. Hauke and his team were skeptical, but one day last summer, just before the casino closed, the man rolled up in a baby-blue Bentley convertible. Maybe he was for real. 

“My guy’s going to offer ninety million,” he said. His guy, he went on, was from Florida and intended to erect a “Tower of Geniuses” on the Revel site, a high-rise think tank, which would draw on NASA and the federal government’s aviation-research facility at Atlantic City Airport, just offshore. 

If not for zany schemes, Atlantic City would still be a sand dune. Within weeks, news broke that a little-known Florida developer named Glenn Straub, the owner of Palm Beach Polo Golf and Country Club, had offered ninety million dollars to buy Revel. Straub wanted to put up the aborted second tower and fill it with academics and scientists charged with solving the world’s problems: your Tower of Geniuses. Few in town took this seriously, but, as far as the bankruptcy was concerned, he’d established a baseline. Everything has a clearing price. The bad news was that Straub’s offer was less than four cents on the dollar—a chilling signal of how far Atlantic City had fallen and may yet fall. The good news was that the building—and you might even say the town—was worth anything at all.

A durn shame the Tower of Geniuses never came to be; looks like it was never to be and that the site is still mired in litigation. Say, I'll bet we could get some folks to relocate from Jupiter to Atlantic City someday?

(What sort of endowment would you need to run an effective small research institute of this sort, anyway? Would 1 billion dollars keep 100 working scientists around for ~20 years? I presume that it's reasonable to presume that a billion would throw off ~40 million bucks a year that could fund an operating budget, so you'd need what? 500 million to fix the physical plant of the Revel, etc., to build your Tower of Geniuses? Anyone got a spare 1.5 billion dollars sitting around?)

Does anyone do small talk well?

I really enjoy sharing a meal as a way of getting to know people, but it always seems like work lunches (the celebration of a work milestone, the celebration of the last day of a retiring employee and the like) are incredibly awkward.

There are the people who cannot stand the awkward silences of a group of people; they will fill those silences with their own talking. Introverts who are not prone to interrupting folks will find themselves listening to a monologuer, monologuing.

I am bad at finding things to talk about; I'm not interested in the weather, I figure most folks don't want to talk shop and I really don't want to talk about my family or my hobbies (I'm not super private, I just figure people are bored by that stuff.) I find that most people wisely avoid conversations about politics and religion, especially if the boss is present and or the group is large enough that it's no longer "a group of trusted work friends", but "a group of coworkers, one of whom may find offense."

Readers, do you have a suggestion for how to conquer the awkward work lunch? Good, perennially safe topics? Or are we stuck going to Olive Garden and listening to the boss' description of their bowling league?