Looks like the major law firms in the USA are pitching staff overboard. These corporate Zepplins have hit hard times as the money dries up. According to Law Shucks, this year 2,289 people have been laid off from the top tier firms as of this posting.
It’s prob’ly a good time to getcher self a cheap deevorce, seein’s how there oughtta be a bunch’a hungry attorneys scratchin’ in the gutters.
A friend who is presently on sabbatical has started a blog about his academic experiences in primarily undergraduate institutions (PUI). It is called Sabbatical Epistles. He mentions a key phrase that is being batted around; it is Transformative Research. According to the NSF, transformative research is-
research that has the capacity to revolutionize existing fields, create new subfields, cause paradigm shifts, support discovery, and lead to radically new technologies.
The context of the use of this phrase was that research funding at PUI’s will increasingly be put to the merit test of transformative research. As such, research into chemical synthesis at PUI’s is especially at risk of not qualifying for funding. I suppose the concern is that multistep synthesis projects for undergrads requires lots of time and skills that undergrads do not have.
Who is against transformative research? It is like motherhood and apple pie. Everybody wants to fund or be part of this kind of effort. We should always ask that research funds be put towards this end. But there is more to it than just an affirmation of meritocracy.
What I sense is that the golden age of undergraduate research programs may be fading into some darker period of scant interest. The scientific establishment continues to grow larger with each passing year. And in parallel, major research universities continue to add programs, courses, grad students, faculty, bricks and mortar, and administration based on the allocation of grant money. Big institutions depend on grant money to a large extent.
As grant money gets tighter, program requirements will increasingly filter the small fish from the big fish. Large institutions have many alumni in influential positions and in the end, the programmatic mind-set of large research institutions in conjunction with the definition of success as understood by administrators of first tier schools will win the day.
There is a pecking order to this. A kind of snobismus. And undergraduate research is not too high in the pecking order. In relation to undergraduate research in the area of synthesis, in most schools this is the only opportunity for an undergrad to get some advanced experience in the synthetic arts. If you have tried to hire a synthetic savvy BA/BS, you know they are hard to find. In my experience, most synthetikkers want to go to grad school. They want more.
Just in case anybody is listening, I want to make a pitch for continued and stronger funding of undergraduate research. As a student, it changed the course of my life in terms of growth and development. As a former mentor of undergraduate researchers as a post doc and prof, I can say that nearly all of my students are now either PhD’s or MD’s. They are all contibuting greatly to the benefit of our society in industry, teaching hospitals, and academia. I am proud of them and I’d do it over in a heartbeat. The pedagogy isn’t in dispute, I suppose. But the method of funding is.
JOC will no longer appear in my mailbox. I decided to let go of this icon of my earlier years. Organic Process Research & Development will “arrive”, but this time I have taken a web subscription for $40/year. In the interest of domestic harmony, the rate of paper accumulation will drop somewhat. The trouble with this form of access to the literature is that I can’t take a journal to the local taco joint where I lunch on occasion.
The recent subscription, the Journal of Loss Prevention, is quite interesting. Lots of articles on the dynamics of explosions and fires as well as studies on calamaties, disasters, and general industrial mayhem. I can dig it.
Both imagination and knowledge are an important part of chemical process safety. A process safety person should have a solid chemistry background to grasp what is happening in a reactor or piece of equipment. Imagination comes in to play when trying to anticipate failure modes leading to initiation and propagation of incidents.
It isn’t possible to anticipate all possible failure modes in a chemical process. And not every failure leads to an incident or casualty. What is possible is to collect as much information as you can for a group to do a process hazards analysis.
A properly facilitated group can unearth many possible failure modes and root causes. Once identified, an effort to remove initiation sources or uncouple possible propagation pathways can be made. The first and best goal is to eliminate a hazardous condition. Management and engineering controls should always be secondary to elimination of a hazardous condition.
AIChE is a great source of information for process safety.
Update: The web subscription is quite agreeable to use.
It is interesting to watch the GOP setting up a 2010 slam dunk like a bunch of beach vollyball players. After the House Dems served the bail-out bill across the political net, the House GOP tapped the ball vertically to give the Senate a chance to scramble under it and slam it in the face of president Obama who’s standing next to the net, doe-eyed with optimism.
While Obama is making nice with the GOP by trying to be cooperative, the House Dems load the bill with goodies like ravenous college students load their scuffed melamine plates at an all-you-can-eat salad bar. To the delight of the GOP, they now have a plausibly deniable excuse for being uncooperative with the Obama administration. And the Housed Dems have served it up on a garnished platter.
The GOP leadership exclaims with alligator tears dripping onto their tailored suits, “How can we possibly accept the imposition of such tremendous debt on future generations of Americans? We believe, like Ronald Reagan, that tax cuts are the best stimulus for America.” Harumph, grunt, snort.
The Dem world view is to embrace new ideas and use government as a lever for doing good. The GOP world view is that government is bad, except for defense of property, and the economic Darwinism of the market should determine how civilization is shaped. Liberals tend to be eclectic and less focused on tangible goals. Conservatives tend to be doctrinaire and acquisitive. Obviously, there are exceptions.
President Obama is foolishly assuming that GOPers are just like Dems at heart. If only they could sup together they could find common ground. What the Obama Dems have failed to grasp is that the GOP wants to annex that common ground for their own new subdivision.
The GOP is plainly setting up for a turnaround in the upcoming 2010 midterm election. They are priming their huddled supporters for a campaign of Limbaugh bile and Hannity disaffection with the Obama administration, in the same manner that Gingrich did in 1994 to the Clinton Administration by riling up the bible-belt like a nest of hornets.
The truth is that the GOP does not share the aspirations annunciated by the Obama Dems. The GOP leadership are more like Mongolian horsemen and the Dems are like a bunch of sod farmers. The only hope the sod farmers have is that the Mongolians will fall off their horses again.
It’s too painful to watch.
Darkness as Metaphor
The photo credit goes to Marc Imhoff, Project Scientist for NASA’s Terra satellite, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Shown at night are Japan and the Korean Penninsula.
Golly, I wonder what yawning chasm of darkness cries out for light? Hint: It is run by a shrimpy Latter Day Stalinist.
According to the GEUS, the Geological Survey Office of Denmark and Greenland, it is possible to concentrate and isolate gold from the ore using borax and charcoal. This method has the immediate benefit of making mercury “redundant” in gold isolation.
Extraction of gold by amalgamation with mercury is a simple means of producing metallic gold in the field. After contact with gold enriched ore, mercury is evaporated into the air by direct application of a torch flame to the puddle of metal leaving purified gold metal.
It is thought that there are millions of miners who scratch out a subsistance living working a small patch of ground for gold. It’s called small scale mining. In the course of this activity, environmental contamination can accrue to the immediate area as well as the watershed at large. Sadly, the toxicological insult to the miners from exposure to mercury vapor can be severe.
This method is an inexpensive and simple alternative to the mercury process. Perhaps the chemistry community has something to contribute by way of education or improved methods of extraction.
8/25/10 Update. I have revisited this post and am compelled to comment further. While I am unable to offer a good chemical explanation for the effect of borax on gold ore, I can say that the use of borax as a flux for smelting goes back to the 19th century during the American gold rush period. The process described in the link appears to be a smelting process for enriched ore containing elemental gold, as opposed to sulfide, or sulphuretted ore. The function of a flux is to modify the flow and phase separation properties of host rock so as to partition away from the gold phase or layer. In other words, a flux modifieds the slag to help the gold to separate cleanly from the rock.
This morning I found out what a “lipid raft” is. All of these years I’ve been in the dark about order and disorder in cell membranes. I didn’t learn about this through any sort of noble quest; I was merely curious about a movie.
Molecular Movies is a website containing links to a marvelous set of animations about cells and molecules. I enthusiastically recommend that the reader visit this site. The movie mentioning lipid rafts is in “The Inner Life of the Cell“.
The most important reaction in chemistry is the one in which you transform chemicals into money. Some chemicals convert into a lot of money per kg, others not so much. The kind of money you want to focus on is profit. Just turning cash over at cost wears thin rapidly and is hazardous to your career. At the end of the day, after you’ve paid the raw mat vendors, payroll, and the feds, you want to have a steaming heap of luchre left over as profit.
At some point in the game, everyone in fine chemical manufacturing realizes that you can’t make everything in-house. There are good reasons to consider making as many intermediates as you can. When you buy an intermediate, the vendors price (cost + profit) becomes the cost you plug into the economics. Optimally, you might be able to make the material cheaper than buying it … eventually. But some raw materials are deceptively simple looking. A company can rack up a lot of brain damage and wasted time trying to make certain kinds of materials outside of your skill set.
We used to joke that at some point in process development, you have to shoot the chemist and get on with scale-up. Often, the decision to make-or-buy an intermediate gets to the table only after you try to make it. In process development, it is important to identify the make-or-buy decisions as early as possible. This can save valuable time. While you may end up spending more per unit mass for the material, not having to make it is equivalent to opening up extra capacity in your facility. Ideally, your want precious reactor/equipment hours spent on the highest value added steps. With each successive step, the value of the intermediate becomes greater.
If your make-or-buy decision revolves around a known item of commerce, then the economics and scheduling is relatively easy. You will have to settle on specifications, delivery schedule, shipment details, and pricing. If the material is not TSCA listed, then you will have to get the vendor moving early on a filing with the EPA, if they are in the USA. If you intend to import a non-TSCA listed fine chemical, not for pharma, ag, food, or other covered use, then the importer of record is responsible for the TSCA paperwork. This can take a few months of lead time.
But if the compound is novel and/or proprietary, then it is instantly much more complex. Not only do you have to deal with the EPA on TSCA filing, but you have to find a vendor who is willing and able to ramp up a new process. They will need specs, projected delivery information, an agreeable price, and quite possibly a lined-out process and analytical methods. If the vendor has available capacity, this might happen as quickly as 3-4 months. More likely than not, this can take 6-9 months.
If your raw material is part of a critical technology or major account, then you may have to consider dual sourcing. If one plant goes down or the quality or delivery drifts beyond what is acceptable, then you still have one facility that can deliver. And, if you have two vendors, you can start a dandy little bidding war between them for your business. Many companies require their purchasing managers to qualify two vendors for crucial materials. You can argue that you should always have two vendors, but many times the amount of business the material feeds into is too small to bother with.
Chemical manufacturing is much more than reaction chemistry. A chemist in manufacturing can find him/herself involved in many kinds of work. Regulations, chemistry, process safety, engineering, packaging issues, IP, marketing, and process economics add up to the knowledge set that a chemist needs to acquire while heading up the career ladder.
A business acquaintance recently said that his 10 year old son wanted to be an entertainment industry lawyer. What the …? Young Poindexter will be going to beach parties with busty young starlets when I’m in the old folks home with moss growing on my north side. Sigh.
Lamentations on Chemistry 