Christmas Break, Links, Survey

As we reach the end of Just Like Cooking "Year 1," I wanted to first and foremost thank everyone who dropped in to say hello. I hope you enjoyed it, maybe even learned something, and that my posts prompted some discussion among you and yours.


Brief Survey: What would you like to see as the Blog moves forward? More "everyday chemistry?" More reactions? More structures? More media diatribes? More "deep questions?" Or something I haven't mentioned? 


Please let me know in the comments...thanks!


In case you're up late during the holidays, and want something chemmy to sink your teeth into, here's some link love:


Synthesis of Halichondrin C (seriously, isn't Kishi like 125 years old? Still kickin' though!)
Scalable Enantioselective Total Synthesis of Taxanes (well, we're a few C-H oxidations away from curing cancer here, but it's a stab in an interesting direction)
Paul's "Chemmy" Nominations, 2011


Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all readers. Happy New Year, too!

Pharma Mascots - Cartoon Stand-Ins for Disease

Credit: Time Magazine

While glancing through some magazines yesterday, I came across a troubling ad for Abilify (aripiprazole). It’s not the drug that irks me, but rather the imagery - in the ad, depression takes the form of a sad, hovering blue bathrobe, stalking the nervous patient down the sidewalk.

I get it. Abilify helps a lot of people with severe depression feel normal enough to get outside and live. But the picture carries a menacing subtext: Without this med, depression will cover you and weigh you down, like a thick, fuzzy robe of gloom.

Credit: mucinex.com

This is, of course, nothing new. Marketers make their livings playing on our subconscious reactions to colors, smells, and situations. But pharmaceutical marketing takes the message one step further. Many people recognize the signs and symptoms of disease: sore joints, skin discoloration, cough, fever, blurred vision. But do they know about the underlying condition, or anything about the drugs* used to treat it?

Well, cartoons to the rescue! Nowadays, each med gets its very own mascot, a stand-in for all the aches and pains brought on by the specific problem. For Uloric (febuxostat), a gout flare treatment, a man carries an Erlenmeyer flask full of green liquid meant to represent uric acid (which is actually a white solid). His obviously stunted gait and heaving effort evokes gout’s painful inflammation. Pristiq (desvenlafaxine), an antidepressant marketed by Wyeth before the Pfizer takeover, showed a sad, small wind-up doll, meant to show the effort needed to “get going” when depressed.

Credit: lamisil.com

Lamisil (terbinafine) needed a mascot to represent a fairly common locker room ailment – foot fungus. The myco-avatar? Meet Digger, a small, spiky, yellow critter who represents discomfort and skin discoloration. His long claws are meant to simulate the scratching and burning brought on by infection.

Finally, Mucinex (guaifenisin) gives us Mr. Mucus, a hefty green glob used as a mucus analogy. He is, perhaps, the most over-the-top mascot, in that his only function seems to sit around as chronic congestion might.

Do these disease caricatures actually help someone, say, decide between two alternative treatments? Or appreciate the risks and side effects behind a certain treatment? Or are they just cute graphics to put on T-shirts and coffee mugs?

*In case you’re wondering, I didn’t forget: here’s the structure of the drugs

Update (12/24/11) - Added guaifenisin, generic name for Mucinex. The same generic drug is indeed found in several OTC medications.

The Ad's the Thing - Science Draws 'Em In

Regular readers of Chemical & Engineering News might have noticed a rather rare, eye-catching advertisement in the October 17, 2011 issue. Takasago, a Japanese fine chemical supplier, took out two side-by-side full-page ads (p.40-41) to illustrate the catalytic ability of their new RUCY hydrogenation complexes. The layout suggests two pages of a scientific lab notebook, complete with hand-drawn structures, a font resembling personal handwriting, a table of reagents, even a digitized signature! (I hesitate to believe this is this scientist’s real signature; legal repercussions aside, many Japanese and Chinese scientists sign documents with a stylized kanji or ink stamp). 

A synthetic chemist captures the thrust of the ad immediately: high-turnover catalysts with high selectivity translate directly into time and material savings. But you don’t have to look far these days for “real-live” (staged) science at its best, selling everything from soaps to microprocessors.

Billy Mays: Oxidant Superstar
Source: billymaysfacts.com

I’m reminded of the old dishwashing detergent standard, where a model with long rubber gloves dips a soiled plate into each of two basins, one containing the competitor’s soap, and one with New! and Improved! versions of the blue solution on the right. The grime falls reliably off the desired plate, but the scientific take-home message? Surfactants, formulation, perhaps even enzymatic degradation. It may be exaggerated to make a buck, but the pitch subtly makes you aware of the scientific development underlying the product. The same message pushes through with rust cleaners (solubility, transition metal ligation), or home fragrances (aroma chemistry, vapor pressure, sublimation). Billy Mays (RIP) and his OxiClean never made peroxide bleaching seem so efficient . . . or so sexy.

The real Ajay Bhatt....or Arthur Fonzarelli?
Source: The Oregonian

Don’t think that all these ads just shill for chemistry. Intel’s “Science Rock Star” campaign a few years back featured a strutting, smiling Ajay Bhatt (or his doppelganger), the co-developer of USB technology, proverbially fending off female fans and doting admirers while signing laptops and drinking from his Intel mug. Tongue-in-cheek, maybe, but this ad shines a light on the glaring contrast between the public worship of performers, and the relative ignorance of scientific figures. 


Update (12/24/11) - Added RUCY picture from C&EN

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

Coming soon: More blogging.  Ciertamente.


(Although this is a lame excuse to buy time, try to think of it as my shameful placeholder until I can resume more science writing...just to tease, think startups, oxetanes, and science linkage)


((I'm also hard at work on more Haystack stuff...stay tuned!))


(((This parenthetical notation would drive a math major to Bedlam)))

Jobs I Could Do (And Those I Couldn't)

(An homage to Chemjobber)

I’ve spoken to lots of colleagues about the job market lately, and one of my favorite questions to ask them is always “Well, what would you do if you weren’t doing this?” Let me preface this discussion by saying that I love being a chemist; it’s the job for me. But, like everyone else, I have interests outside the lab: music, sports, food, and writing. Could one of these be my calling down the road somewhere?

As it happens, we’ve been in the midst of a move for some time now, and I’ve interacted with (too) many real estate agents. I walk away from most of these meet-‘n’-greets and fill-in-the-blank lease forms thinking “I could definitely do that job!”

Intense synthetic chemistry training draws on lots of skills: data mining, critical thinking, historical sense, motor memory, adaptation, public presentation, logistics, etc. Job promoters would call these transferable skills, and they open up a wide palette of career opportunities.  Below, I’ve run a thought experiment to see where I could contend, and where I might fall apart.

Could Do

Real Estate Agent – Really draws on the data mining and ability to forge contacts. Can you predict how a neighborhood will look in a few years? Memorize some tax and housing codes? Fill in lease and mortgage statements with names and dollar figures? Buy a GPS? You’re in!

But, how will they accept my tenure talk?
Credit: imdb.com

Struggling Musician – Some might say “Don’t you have to have talent and drive for this, and luck?” That sounds like an assistant professorship! You don’t make enough, you’re constantly self-promoting, and your most creative moments have to spill out in a 3-5 year period in your late 20s to early 30s (chemistry timeframe, people, I get that biologists are longer in the tooth).

Mel Brooks, he of Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs, once described his songwriting process for stage productions as humming into a tape recorder when the moment struck him, and having an amanuensis transcribe it into a song later (from It’s Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks, by James Robert Parish). Food for thought.

Line Cook – Synthetic chemists ‘cook’ all day, and we use a much larger catalog of ingredients. Plus, I’ve read Kitchen Confidential, so I can answer Jimi’s question “Are You Experienced?”

Professional Gambler – Hey, it’s what you do with chemistry careers now anyway! (Bah-dump-CHING!)

Seriously, though, much of this involves critical thinking, learning about odds tables, house advantage, best times to play, and, if possible, how to beat the system. It also involves calculated risk, such as calling the bluff of that one-eyed, gruff man across the poker table from you.

Film Critic – OK, many readers have written a dissertation, right? How do you start? Read some literature, get a sense for where the field has been and where it’s going, learn central themes and players, then develop opinions about the work. Write.



"Boron? Yeah, like their whole show!"
"The movie's great: just change everything after the title!"
"Vitamin C? More like 'C you doing anything but this!"
Credit: Jim Henson Productions

Well, what do critics do? Watch a bunch of movies. Learn historical context and chart how actors and directors work together over time. Learn central themes. Develop opinions. Write. Dovetails nicely, wouldn’t you say?

Couldn’t

Jobs that start with ‘Phys’ – Physician: what many scientists try first, perhaps due to parental input and a sense of social responsibility. For me, I couldn’t stomach the various fluids of every hue and smell that emanate from sick individuals. Trust me; I was an EMT once, long ago…

Physicist: Too much math. Anything that uses all the Greek letters, base e, imaginary numbers, and ever-stronger graphing calculators and computing clusters is where I get off the boat.

Phys-Ed Teacher: I was never a runner. To me, coordinating exercises for 20-30 young kids for an hour sounds like herding cats.

Let's see: loop[object bullet, n=0-25, IF fired(true), init stop(n)]
Credit: cinema sifter

Computer Programmer – Artists can “see” forms, shape, and color, like photographers can. Business types see emerging markets and opportunity, and musicians hear notes and rhythms where we cannot. I have personally tried (and failed) to be a programmer more than once, and I simply don’t think like they do. Iteration, nesting operations, classes, functions, describing how you want the program to function is, to me, “thinking about thinking.” Just not in my toolbox.  (On the other hand, check out these perks, courtesy of our bud CJ)

Readers, do you have any thoughts about your future career paths, and whether or not they include chemistry? I’d love to see some comments, or hoof it to Chemjobber and discuss there.

The Chemistry Popularity Conundrum

Last week (October 16-22) was National Chemistry Week in the US. Did you celebrate? By all rights, it could have been the biggest one yet, since we’re deep into the tenth month of the International Year of Chemistry (#IYC2011). Did you see any news specials? Did Time or Newsweek run an exposé?

Credit: time.com

Probably not, but why not? When scientists cracked the human genetic code, front pages everywhere relayed the tense horse-race between Venter’s TIGR and Collins’s Human Genome Project. Whenever physicists flip the switch at the Large Hadron Collider, the public dreams of mini-black holes and cheating Einstein’s relativity. Chemistry, however, always seems to be the black sheep of the gang; DuPont’s slogan for nearly 50 years was “Better Things for Better Living . . .Through Chemistry,” until the final portion of the tagline was dropped in the mid-‘80s.

What creates the chemistry image problem? It’s true that many of the “pure chemistry” accomplishments of the last 30 years have gone largely unnoticed: ask someone at a local restaurant about triblock copolymers, organocatalysis, brevetoxin, or dye-sensitized solar cells. Applied chemistry fares a bit better, from polymers to paints, lasers to ligands, but the public still attributes many interface discoveries to other fields – drug chemistry gets lumped into “Health and Medicine,” or water-splitting tossed in with “New Energy.”

Don't let the test-tube on the front fool you.
Credit: amazon.com

The phenomenon even reaches general science books. On a whim, I opened up National Geographic’s The Science Book (bonus tagline – Everything You Need to Know about the World and How it Works) at a book store last week. A hefty volume, coming in at 432 pp., thus you might expect the “central science” to occupy at least 30% . . . right?

Wrong. Page count: biology, ecology, and sociology – 142 pages.  Physics, math, and ‘technology’ – 111 pages. Chemistry? 26 pages.

Total.

Does this all come down to poor public relations? Biology sells itself on some big questions: origin of life, evolution, ending disease, and genetic engineering. Physics moves out onto an even wider plane: does God exist?, fundamental particles, dark energy, string theory, and black holes. Ask most people about the word chemical, however, and their connotation is tangibly negative, associating the word with poisonous, pollution, ersatz stand-ins for “genuine” flavors or fragrances, artificial, corrosive, or toxic.

Prof. David MacMillan, Princeton

Not that none have addressed the issue – just recently, David MacMillan, editor of Chemical Science and accomplished organic chemist, called for increased outreach:    

‘One major thing chemists need to work on is their ability to promote their work to other scientists and the public. This is something we are really not good at in general and if we improved, it would really open doors for us and improve society’s perception of chemistry and its impact.'

ACS attempts much the same with their Chemistry Ambassadors program, and the Interactive Periodic Table of Videos surely adds some demonstration “Wow!” factor. But the days of science-themed programs (Mr. Wizard, NOVA, How it’s Made, even the tongue-in-cheek Look Around You) seem to have waned, and Mythbusters can’t save the whole genre single-handedly. Linus Pauling, Noam Chomsky, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, and Oliver Sacks have held down much of the science PR fort, but we still haven’t found the next great chemistry “populizer.” So, what are we to do?

Can these guys hold down the science program genre forever?
Credit: dsc.discovery.com

Well, I’m not the first to tackle this question. Luckily, many have gone before me: see Dr. Free Ride’s post on Scientopia (“navel-gazing” sounds so apropos) or the CHEMisperceptions Blog Roundtable from early 2011 hosted at ScienceGeist. Start there, and glance through the situations and stories these authors present. See where you stand.

And think. Just think.

Think about how you’ll answer the dreaded “So, what do you do?” question at the next holiday party. Think about a show you wish were on TV, DVD, or radio that covered breaking-edge reactions or materials, but isn’t. Think about how you might tell such a story. Think about what types of jobs you, as a chemist, might envision working in 10, 20 years . . . if they even exist right now! Think of the reactions, equations, elements, polymers, or drugs (heh) that really ‘get you up’ in the morning.

When you’ve thought awhile, narrow down your list to one or two things you truly enjoy. Write a short blog post or a newspaper article. Send an email. Take some pictures. Tell your kids. Teach a short course. Write a book. Produce a show. Anything you can do that creates new, high-quality content to help improve the stead of science in the world will do.

Idealistic?  Sure.   

Dreamy?  You got me.

Possible?

. . . I’d like to think so.

(Note: You don’t have to start from nothing - there’s quite a few folks already working on the problem. For general chemistry blogs, start at CENtral Science. Work your way around to Chemistry Blog, Discover Magazine, SciAm Blogs, and Popular Science. Chemjobber, The Curious Wavefunction, and ChemBark help capture some of the current chemical zeitgeist, while Totally Synthetic and BRSM cover my favorite topic, chemical synthesis. For health and medicine, try In The Pipeline or The Medicine Show. Want books? Napoleon’s Buttons, The Poisoner’s Handbook, Mauve, and Uncle Tungsten are a few favorites. On a personal note, although he’s not formally a chemist, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? helped me appreciate how one can use scientific curiosity to change the world.)

I'm Not Dead Yet

Good guess, but not where we're going...

Hello, readers . . .you may have noticed a lot of down time around here lately. Truth be told, we're planning a wee bit of "geographical displacement" brought on by "employment improvement" (Translation: a multi-state move is in the works).

More posts after the jump, I promise!