Djerassi-v-Trost. Clash of the Titans.

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The January 26, 2009 C&EN has an interesting letter to the editor. Carl Djerassi sent a letter critical of the manner in which Professor Trost cites authors in his references. According to Djerassi, Trost didn’t cite the discoverer of a natural product for which the Trost group had just reported a total synthesis. He took Trost to task in diluting the accomplishment of the workers who had isolated, characterized, and tested the compounds for biological activity by not citing the original work.

Trost’s treatment of Pettit is particularly egregious given the well-known fact in the chemical community that the spectacularly laborious decade-long efforts of one of the heroes of marine natural products chemistry—the person who personally collected the bryozoan, isolated the bryostatins, established their constitution, and pursued their anticancer activity against all odds—were terminated through a draconian closure of his laboratory by the new administrators of Arizona State University. [C&EN, Jan. 26, 2009]

Trost and Djerassi are two of the rock stars of organic chemistry. When such people “go nuclear” in their open personal criticism, it is so compelling that you can’t help but take notice. Far from being unseemly, I think this kind of thing is healthy for the field. Neglecting key early workers while trotting your own references up to the front of the line is a kind of misdemeanor racketeering of scholarship. If true, Djerassi has a good point.

But, I can sympathize with Trost to some extent. Eventually, past progress becomes part of the background. Do we have to cite Henry Gilman everytime we use BuLi to remove a proton? There must be some juicy backstory that has Djerassi riled.

Plea from China

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I don’t know what others are experiencing, but I am flooded with desperate email pitches from Chinese chemical manufacturers- “Please, let’s make cooperation!”  Everything from solvents to generic drugs.

A receding tide beaches all boats.

Update:  Just got an offer for bulk Vinblastine Sulfate. Golly, I think I’ll decline. The last thing a guy needs is a few kg of that stuff sitting in a cabinet.

Siccus Silicis. Oh yonder dessicated moon! Why dust thou taunt me?

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Big discovery. A few doors down at The Universe Today there is a report of findings showing that the moon is quite dry. This result is from an interpretation of radar soundings taken by the Japanese lunar probe SELENE.

Given the near proximity of the sun, and lack of any atmosphere, it would be astonishing that any water would be found on the moon, at least in the top few meters. Perhaps there are mineral hydrates in the regolith, but discrete surface water as ice or liquid in the shadows seems a bit of a stretch. Supposedly a trace of water was found by others near the polar regions where the sun angle is always low. 

Comets famously de-gas when they come near the sun. Maybe the moon was blowing a vapor trail too- 3 or 4 billion years ago.

The SELENE radar soundings were used to infer the presence of aqueous reservoirs well below the surface. The results failed to give any evidence of such bodies of water. Given the tumultuous history of the moon, as evidenced by the lava plains and impact activity it has experienced, there has been lots of opportunity for water to sublimate or cook off through fractures in the regolith in the past.

I like and appreciate the Universe Today site. But if I could offer some constructive criticism, they could do with more links to primary references rather than just recursive links to previous Universe Today articles. Actually, more than a few news sites do this.

On a side note, it is worth browsing the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) website to get a feel for the depth of their program.

Fiat Lux! Sen. Gregg’s Moment of Clarity

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Senator Judd Gregg has seen the light. He has had a moment of pure, crystalline insight and has witnessed truth and clarity unfold before his eyes.

Yeah, right.

You have to wonder what kind of pressures were put to bear on him to reject the nomination for commerce secretary. A personal call from Rush Limbaugh? A whisper campaign from conservative cells? Perhaps criticism from the official organ of GOP doctrine, Fox News, was just too much for him. Then again, he might be fickle.

This resignation reduces to one more soldier lining up in the GOP phalanx, preparing for extended battle with the Democrats. It is striking how uniformly GOP soldiers have rejected what many thought was axiomatic– that bipartisanship was, if not necessary, at least highly desirable for the good of the whole.

During the 2008 campaign, the concept of cooperation between parties was pulled frequently from its carrying case by candidate McCain and displayed like sacred icon of civics.

But McCain’s claim of bipartisanship was evidence of the true nature of his bohemian political composition. Bipartisanship and whatever civic merit it might represent is certainly not a plank in the GOP platform. Sen. McCain has shut his maverick hole and is now playing ball with his team.

Sen. Gregg will be rubbed with GOP annointing oil and when the delerium has cleared, he’ll sheepinshly fall into line with the rest.

Dooleysquatt Schwartz and Schmuck PLC

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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.

Transformative Research in Many Ways

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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.

Calamity, Interrupted

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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.