Fetzthechemist’s Weblog

I read a post on MyChemical Journey that reminded me that I have a viewpoint on H1N1.

http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com/2009/10/parental-controls.html

Unlike that blogger’s father, I believe H1N1 is a real virus that many people have gotten with serious consequences. As serious as the dire warnings of early summer and the continued media coverage? No, not even close. H1N1 is proving to be an average influenza strain so far. The number of serious illnesses from it and deaths attributed to it are only a fraction of the annual average of the various seasonal flus. It has no terrible symptoms, such as the severe aches that can be part of suffering through some strains of flu.

That it could spread so quickly is only a reflection that this is the first virus outbreak in which there has been ready worldwide access to the DNA testing to clearly follow any viral spreading. The bird and swine flus of earlier years could not be, the instrumentation was not cheap and universal. With that in mind, ascribing illness and deaths to H1N1 is more accurate. Even recently, anyone dying of pneumonia would not have had the root cause identified – the virus that started the problem leading to the pneumonia. Now that can be done and has been. That does not mean that H1N1 is more virulent or deadly. It only means that epidemiologists can assign causes better.

In reading reports of the 1919 Spanish flu outbreak, virulence and quick spreading would make H1N1 a tame beast. In an age where travel by ship or by train were the main ways people carried illnesses globally, yje Spanish fle spread rapidly. Virologists are afraid of that sort of strain. Thus, the crying of Wolf! this summer. But people get skeptical and gaded when there is not really a wolf.

Interesting post, to me, over on Carbon Based Curiosities.

http://www.coronene.com/blog/?p=1105

Basically, the post and discussion are about whether sexual orientation matters within the workings of science. From all I have seen, it does not. Yeah, there will be the jomophobic ones who make it matter if they can, but that is no different than that there are homophobes everywhere and involved in everything.

Scientists are rather bipolar as far as work and personal things. They usually have a sharp division between the lab and elsewhere. In the lab, they respect talent and detest hacks or the arrogant. Their persona as scientists often shows little of their character outside of science. Einstein was a great scientist, but was also quite the Casanova outside of the physics.

In the discussion context, it was about the selection of NSF graduate fellowships. I’d rather not get into what criteria are discussed, but sexual orientation never gets into it. Gender and race cannot, absolutely. These are federally sponsored fellowships afterall. But in all the analogous discussion I have been part of – choosing invited speakers or session chairs for conference, editorial board members, whatever, the personal lives only get touched upon in one aspect. Is the person reliable, easy to work with, and team oriented? On committees, people do not want to choose and then have to work with difficult people. If you are straight and difficult, you’ll get passed on. If you are gay and reliable and easy going, you might get chosen. In other words, be a jerk and get passed over.

OK, I’ve been working on a book chapter. It will be part of a very large work, a multivolume set. I have been awaiting approval from certain authors to use some of their figures. Got that and now submitted the chapter.

Each section has chapters on allied topics. The overall editors chose a section editor from amongst the chapter authors. They chose me. Now I must approve whether my chapter is good enough to include. Well, yes, that is why I submitted it.

Scientific bodies are not always put together for effectiveness or efficiency.

 Are you updated?

One thing I try to ingrain in people is that opportunities are like automatic doors. They open and close on their own accord. Unlike automatic doors, however, career opportunities are not triggered most of the time by things you do and can plan on the door opening. You might send out resumes or network regularly, but the main part of any opportunity happening is on the receiving end. My analogy of the day is that if you sow seed on fertile ground, something might sprout, but you are blindfolded and there are lots of patches of infertile ground. There are only a few oases of fertile ground. You cannot peek very often – you rarely get good tips from your network about good opportunities. But you can learn to sow further out around you, increasing your chances of sprouting some seeds.

One of the big errors people make in a job search or even when not looking and something ideal pops up, is to not be prepared to move at that moment. They put off updating a resume. Or they have only one resume and it only fits a narrow range of jobs. Or their references are not at the ready to give good words. As in any networking, you do not want to appear to always asking and receiving. Take the time to include a more personal tone to any communication. If you find an article or bit of information that might be useful to someone in your network, take note and pass it on. Being helpful gives you a more balanced appeal.

If you are actively searching, you ought to have your references in line. Update them on your situation and possible prospects, that way they have some forewarning of a request for a reference. They might even think of things to say in your favor. Have at least three versions of your resume – a generic one and two more focused towards different areas that you are aiming at. A fourth version is even better, one that is a quickly edited template that you can cut-paste-rewrite to customize for an application.

Cover letters also ought to be ready, varied, and customizable. These allow you to include a tone more reflecting your personality and attitudes, so spend time saying more than “I am interested in your position. Here is my resume.”

If you use job boards, like Monster, Dice, Hotjobs, et cetera, update your information and resume there on a schedule. This not only gives potential employers fresh information, but it puts your profile back into the latest listings.

If you are not actively searching, but have not yet found that ideal job, then at a minimum let your network know that you might be interested if a job appears that is within your targeted area – be it location, type of work, or whatever are your criteria. That way they can keep their radar on for a job that might be better for you. Without that information, the job might attract any notice and you’d never know of it.

Even if you are not actively looking, you still need an updated and ready resume just in case your ideal job does pop up. If not, you risk missing it because you had to prepare one and a cover letter even if you had an already full schedule.

Having gone through undergrad and grad school in the ’70s, I had to take analytical courses where you learned about wet chemistry – titrations of all sorts, precipitation reactions to remove interferences or in the single case of Ag(I) actually using it for chloride, iodide, cyanide determinations, organic derivatization for colorimetric analusis (dinitrophenylhydrazines for ketones and aldehydes comes to mind), et cetera. My research advisor in grad school, Lockhart B. Rogers, had come through in the 30s, so that was the analytical of his first learning and he made sure we knew it on cumes and included a section in one of his courses that was strictly that sort of thing.

Over the intervening thirty years, I see more emphasis on purely instrumental analysis as the learning. I know if you teach one thing more, something else must drop off the curriculum…..except professors ought to still require grad students to know some of that for cumes. But I see less and less chemistry in the knowledge base of younger chemists. I find that both sad and worrying. All that sort of knowledge helps tie all those seemingly arcane factoids of general chemistry into part of a cohesive understanding of all of chemistry. Inorganic and organic chemists learn their area, but in analytical they are mainly at a users-level in understanding. If analytical chemists are losing their knowledge of the chemistry, the applications get narrowed and the problems inherent get lost and there is a reliance on less valid information.

What to do? I guess at every point, a good chemist ought to still be learning the applicable chemistry to whatever she or he is doing. It is not just all about button pushing.

Being a chemist, I dabble a little at cooking. My cooking skills are a little beyond basic or rudimentary. Following recipes is a lot like doing organic or those labs in school where you follow a set of directions using certain ingredients. I prefer making simpler dishes – a lot are those things commonly called comfort food. Among my favorite areas, especially in autumn and winter, are soups and stews. I made a batch of split pea and ham soup a couple of days ago. Next up might be beef and barley soup. Other common ones are beef stew, New England clam chowder, chicken noodle, cream of mushroom. Ones that are less common are a cream of roasted garlic, a gumbo that is an amagam of half a dozen recipes I got throughout Louisiana – including okra (that’s why it is called gumbo!( and file’, a smoked sausage, potato, and cabbage soup, and chili (like many, chili is a common stew, but my recipe makes it special). I have two or three good recipes books for soups and stews and usually try a few in the colder months.

When growing up, my dad’s older sister called today Armistice Day, the original origin of Veteran’s Day was to honor those killed in World War I. It grew quickly into honoring all war death and then all who had served in the military. In our house it was not a big deal. My dad was in the Army for much of my youth, so it was a day where we went to see a parade where he work (whatever “Fort” he was stationed at at that time). Memorial Day was a bigger event, I think because it was in late spring or early summer weather. The bases often had more elaborate events. When at Fort Ord, there was a mock invasion with landing craft, tanks, mortars, and for a kid of elementary school age in the era before the Vietnam War got a blackeye, that was very cool.

In our house, we were ingrained to respect military people. Not nly was my dad one, but so were most of his friends. One days like today, we’d see Sergeant So-and-so in full dress uniform with all the insignia, patches, and medals. We knew early on what a Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze or Silver Star were. We knew about the Congressional Medal of Honor – one of the books I got back then for a borthday or Christmas was was stories of CMOH winners. They were more important than officers with the leafy clusters or birds or stars.

If I meet someone today who is in the military, they get that same respect. I know what sacrifices just being in the armed forces is and how it changes family and personal responsibilities and behaviors. Ironically, at times I hear some conservatives claiming the ground of patriotism, as if being liberal means a person cannot understand loyalty and faith in one’s country and its principles, as if duty, honor, and country were only felt by the right wing, My dad was a moderate conservative, a populist who grew up in a bigoted Jim Crow South and knew that his fellow soldiers were rated on their sense of duty, bravery, and discipline beyond any differences in skin color or heritage.

Veteran’s Day, to me, is about remembering those who forsake or forsook personal status to do something for everyone’s good.

I am in the midst of putting together a short course on water analysis. Over the years, I did different areas of this field, so a lot of the assembling is refreshing and gathering details. Some areas in water analysis are old old-school, wet chemical methods developed fifty or more years ago. A lot of methods for trace metals, cations, and anions based on precipitation, colorimetry, titrations with redox or pH indicators. Luckily, I actually did a moderate amount of those things by choice. My research advisor had gone through grad school and his early career was in that era, so he taught a lot of that in his classes. I think much of that science has disappeared or is only thought of as freshman-level lab stuff.

Another interesting aspect is that water can be a horrendous matrix if humic acids and such are in them (runoff and other waters). Humic acids are colored brown and absorb pretty much across the spectrum. They have some inherent fluorescence. There are many, many chemical functionalities. They smell bad when concentrated.

So the course is an interesting way to reconnect with a whole area of analytical chemistry – electrochemistry, flow injection, and some other arcane areas are part and parcel in water analysis.

When The Da Vinci Code came out, I thought it was an overhyped potboiler. I like action book sometime. I used to read Tom Clancy in his earlier days before fame dulled his pen. But the hype about Da Vinci Code was because it was percieved as being anti-Catholic. So I wanuted a couple of years, read it and the prequel Angels and Demons. A&D had not created much response, I guess because the Catholics were more heroic than villanous. The two are good reads with intricate plots and a lot of homework done on symbology and history to make the stories cohesive. So I awaited the sequel.

It is also well put together and flows. The only downside is that Dan Brown seems to spend more time, especially at the end, moralizing about virtues. But it is a good fit with the other two. The heroes this time are the Masons and some debunking of their myths are a main theme.

I live in the part of the San Francisco bay area that is where the members of Green Day lived and grew up. (It also was home to Les Claypool of Primus fame.) So I heard on and on about the local band that was making a splash, becoming famous, becoming a hit group, et cetera. The plaqce Billy Joe Armstrong’s mom works at now is just a couple of miles down the stree and I eat breakfast there once in a while. Rod’s Hickory Pit, the now-defunct restaurant where she used to work in Vallejo, has another place about a block from where I first lived here. Some of Green Day lived in my suburb, even.

Not being a jump on the bandwagon type as far as my musical tastes, I never went out of my way to listen to any of their records. I was the same way about Oasis, the “new Beatles”. The press hype just seemed too big to really warrant listening. I always expect disappointment on such band.

Well, on my recent trip to South Carolina, I was awake late suffering from the jet lag of being three hours earlier compared to California. Flipping through the hotel’s cable channels, I caught a repeat of Saturday Night Live, which I rarely watch – after the 70s and 80s versions with Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, et alia, the newer ones just seem lame most of the time. This show had Green Day as the musical guest. Their two or three sings were pretty good, at times reminding me of Brit Pop bands like Blur or Oasis (yeah, they are pretty good after my earlier procrastination on them, too).

So I went out and bought Dookie, American Idiot, and 21st Century Breakdown. I like them. They are a good listen despite the ever-present talk of them here.