From Around the Web

Here are some interesting tidbits that I found while exploring the blogosphere/Web when I should have been in lab finishing up my reaction:

1) "The Simple Dollar" is a great site by Trent Hamm. I chose to highlight his quick primer on estate planning.

Many of these things--like the master document with personal letters--I have had on my to-do list for a long time now and I just have not gotten around to it. If I croaked tomorrow, my parents would have a huge mess to sort out and wouldn't have a clue where to find my financial accounts. And yes, this would fall to my parents as I am single and quickly approaching the age where I have a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice on the same day a year apart or dying in a terrorist attack than finding a mate.


2) "In the Pipeline"--a blog by Derek Lowe is a good site for the chemist and non-chemist alike. In this post, he highlights the recent announcement by Merck that they are closing down their natural products program.

The announcement makes me a little sad. When I was in grad school, I worked for a professor who was an organic chemist---but he applied it to natural products. Natural products (compounds found in nature from sources like marine sponges, plants or insects) were the rage in those days. In fact, in 2003, Chemical and Engineering News published an article about which companies had programs devoted to natural products.

I love natural product synthesis. Yes, I know--I am biased as my dissertation was on one such compound. But I love the challenge inherent in the synthesis of these kinds of molecules. Take a look at some of the structures in the CE&N article. Mother Nature makes some of the most beautiful and complex structures.

However, I am under no illusions. While attempting to synthesize these molecules, we expand our knowledge of organic chemistry and possibly broaden the methodologies in our synthetic arsenals. We may even be able to identify new biological targets or a new signal pathway based on a natural product's activity.

But the fact is Taxol and Vancomycin are the exceptions rather than the rule. Many natural products suffer from poor bioavailability, metabolic instability, or toxic side effects not to mention the sheer synthetic effort that must be applied to a large majority of them (read: too expensive to make; cost of drug would be astronomical).


3) For those needing an introduction to chemistry, here is my pick for Viral Video of the Day--I found it on The Chemistry Blog and embedded it here. It is an hysterical ad commissioned by the EU's Marie Curie Actions research program. BTW, this is my first attempt to embed a movie, so if you have problems viewing it, let me know.

Chemistry Can Be Fun - video powered by Metacafe

EDITED at 2:37AM 5/19/08:

Apologies to Mitch at The Chemistry Blog. While writing this post, I had several tabs open in IE to blogs that carried the video/linked to the video and as a result, I credited the wrong one. This error was corrected in the above post.

Respecting Jerks

Some definitions from dictionary.com:

Jerk: (Slang.) a contemptibly naive, fatuous, foolish, or inconsequential person.

Respect: esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

So can you respect someone who is a jerk?

This is a question I have struggled to answer for a long time. I, like so many others, have horror stories about my professors and people I worked with during my time in academia. Some were great chemists, others not so much. My grad advisor is one such person.

On first meeting him, my impression was that he was an OK guy who was quiet--maybe even a little shy. He is well published in the field of organic chemistry having worked on both methodology and natural product synthesis. His "pedigree" as it is called in organic chemistry, includes one of the "rock star" chemists known the world over.

In fact, he attended my college alma mater and we were awarded the same overall best senior chemistry major award some 20 years apart. I was excited when I was accepted by the major research university where he was employed and that he seemed to take a personal interest in recruiting me.

That excitement quickly changed to disappointment once I joined his lab as a first year grad student. He was moody and given to fits of throwing things when angry. Big things like large vacuum pumps. He never offered an encouraging word and had a nasty tendency to blame the chemist first when chemistry wasn't working instead of thinking how the chemistry itself might be flawed (I guess looking back that shouldn't be a surprise to me as he was the one who thought up the synthetic routes, etc.). He played favorites and made it clear to people when you weren't one of them. He claimed to want to help women in the field and then did every thing possible to run them down. He was and is still extremely two-faced. I could go on further but it is probably best to say that he is not one of my favorite people.

The more I learned about him, the harder it was to respect him. It didn't matter if he was a great chemist--he sucked as a human being. I initially made excuses for his behaviors but now, with some time passed, there are no excuses for the things he inflicted on his students. He is one of the biggest jerks (I typically use other colorful descriptions of him in private but since Blogger has standards and all....) I have ever known.

This week, I was speaking with some co-workers who had previously worked together before joining our current company. They were speaking of their former boss. Apparently, this former employer had many wonderful qualities including being arrogant, rude, condensing, racist and sexist.

I was stuck by a statement of one of my co-workers. He said even though he hated the guy, he still respected him because he did his job well. I asked him about the apparent disconnect--if all those "wonderful" qualities didn't spill over into his work and he said at times, yes, it did, but he treated everyone the same crappy way and that he usually knew what he was talking about when it came to business.

I asked how anyone could respect a jerk and another co-worker suggested that women tended to view people as a whole while men tended to compartmentalize which made it easier for men to respect jerks.

Interesting hypothesis. So can you respect a jerk?

Welcome!

Welcome to the laboratory of the Mad Chemist Chick. I have a few minutes while waiting for a reaction to go to completion. Why don’t you put on these safety glasses, pull up a lab stool and sit for a while?

So before y’all start with “Oh, I really hated chemistry in high school” or “Chemistry is sooooo boring”, let me just say that this is not intended to be a blog on everything-you-did-NOT-want-to-know-about-chemistry-and-were-
afraid-to-ask-for-fear-of-an-hour-long-lecture-on-it. I will post about everything from politics to what color polish I want to use during my next pedicure. But science and chemistry---in particular organic chemistry (Gasp! Not organic!) will appear in some posts---y’all have been warned.

You are probably wondering “Who is this Mad Chemist Chick?” Well, even as a kid, I always enjoyed science. One year my older sister (hereafter called DS) received this combo biology/chemistry set for Christmas. DS, having always been interested in Nature, took the microscope and slides and went off to hunt some poor bug to put under its lens (Side note: she is in grad school now working on her Ph.D. in biology). In the meantime, I had started poking around with the chemicals in the set and promptly burned a hole in the carpet. I have been hooked ever since. (BTW, they have long since removed all the good stuff from chemistry sets for fear of a lawsuit. Very sad.)

Fast forward a few years. After majoring in chemistry in college (with a biology minor), I went on to obtain a doctorate in organic chemistry and participate in a couple of postdoctoral fellowships. While in academia, I had the opportunity to both perform research and teach college level courses which I enjoyed but my dream had always been to work in drug development. To that end, I recently left academia to accept a job as a research chemist at a pharmaceutical company---and I love it. You will have to stick around to hear the rest. ;-)

As you enter the laboratory of the Mad Chemist Chick, there are a few things you should know. First, always wear protection. Things get a little messy around here—explosions can happen. Second, feel free to contribute to the discussion—I always enjoy meeting new people and learning new things. Third, you will have to be patient with me. This is my first blog and I am still trying to figure things out and find my style.

Hope you enjoy your stay!