Chemistry

Incorporating a fluorescent probe into a polymeric matrix gives a sensor array that can recognize eight different analytes

In the “Get a job, Ken!” series, I’ve so far retold my experience coming up with research ideas, writing the ideas down as formal research proposals, assembling the different pieces of the faculty job application, and submitting everything. In this post, I move beyond the waiting, waiting, and waiting that happens after submitting to the next step: interviews. After the submission deadline, most interview offers are extended sometime between October and February. They begin with a phone call or email from a department or search committee chair and conclude with a scheduled phone interview or in-person interview. The waiting period—between the submission deadline and receiving an interview—can be daunting. Every single unknown number on my cell phone screen prompted sudden excitement and then, most of the time, disappointment.  I’ve never hated telemarketers more. Eventually, I did receive my first call–a thrilling experience–and by the end of my job search I had one phone interview and several on-site interviews. Below I describe my experience and share my (and others) advice on the interview process. Phone interviews Not every University holds phone interviews, but those that do use it as a preliminary screening method. It’s a strategy for interviewing a greater number of candidates and testing “fit” before extending offers for an on-campus interview. Think of it as a asking someone out on a quick coffee date before committing to a full evening together. An on-campus interview is a lot of time/effort/money to commit to someone and it’s reasonable to take measures to test “fit” prior to jumping in. The good news for job candidates offered a phone interview is that, by reaching this stage, they can be assured that the search committee has looked through his or her application and feel confident about the viability of their research proposals. The interview stage—whether by phone or on-campus—is more about assessing a candidate’s speaking skills, ability to run a research program, and departmental “fit.” Between my experience with phone interviews and the anecdotes I’ve heard from others, here’s a short list of example phone interview questions: Who would be your primary funding sources? What major pieces of equipment will you need and how much do they cost? Do you have a project that you would bring with you from your time as a post doc? Where do you see your research program in 5 years? 10 years? Who from our department/university might you be interested in collaborating with? When would you be available to begin work? Are there any factors that we have not spoken about that would be important in your decision to come to X if we were to make an offer? How do you feel about teaching general chemistry? Do you have any questions for us? The last question was especially important. Nothing says, “I’ve done my homework on your university/department” like asking one or two insightful questions. For example, I’d usually prepare a question about the department’s facilities, asking something like: “The department has a solar cell testing station. Would I be able to add electrochemical impedance capabilities to the system?” It helped show my seriousness about the job and genuine interest in the department while also suggesting something I could contribute. It’s a good idea to start thinking about possible answers for interview questions as well as questions to ask the committee early. While most phone interviews are scheduled ahead of time, I’ve heard stories of people surprised with an on-the-spot phone interview. On-site interviews If the phone interview ends favorably then—congratulations—the next step is an on-site interview. On-site interviews are intensive. To help me organize the story of my on-site interview experiences, I’ll break the process down into five sections: a rough timeline, food, meetings with faculty, meetings with students, and post-interview follow-up. A Rough Timeline Many people tried to p

Investigation of the radical migration from the sulfur atom in the radical cation of glutathione, an important antioxidant

Some of you may have seen this James Hicks article in The Scientist, where he shows a graph that seems to correlate high notices of retractions with low NIH grant success rates. Interesting idea, right?Unfortunately, Nature reporter Richard Van Noorden (the collector of some of the data used in the graph) notes that Professor Hicks did not use the most relevant data for his retractions (i.e. US retractions, funded by the NIH) for his graph. When you do, the correlation is not nearly so clear.I agree with Richard that the hypothesis is sound (i.e. as it gets more difficult to get funded, the incentive to cheat goes up), but it remains unproven.

TAKE a vast windowless hall. Squeeze in hundreds of garish booths vying to produce the loudest and most obnoxious music possible. Then add thousands of busy people and bake at a high temperature for several days. Visiting a large conference or trade show can be an unpleasant experience, as Babbage can attest from many years of writing about technology. Precisely how unpleasant, though, no one has measured until now. At Google’s annual I/O conference for developers in San Francisco this week, scientists are finally trying to turn sharp elbows, raised voices and sweaty brows into cold, hard data.The Data Sensing Lab, a project of O’Reilly Media, has deployed over 500 sensor motes at key locations around the Moscone West centre. Each phone-sized mote is a self-contained computer based on a cheap Arudino micro-controller and linked with low power ZigBee digital radios. Some measure temperature, pressure, noise, humidity and light levels. Others are tracking air quality, the motion of crowds or how many mobile phones are being used nearby. Together, they form a network producing over 4,000 streams of data that are uploaded to Google’s Cloud Platform software for analysis.The network is an example of the "internet of things", where physical objects are digitally interconnected and communicate without human intervention. At a shidig like I/O, this could one day mean rooms pre-emptively activating air conditioners when they detect delegates arriving, or organisers rating speakers by the level of mobile phone use during their presentations.At the Google event, the Data Sensing Lab showed live visualisations of people flowing out of seminars and forming an eager cluster around a stand showcasing Google Glass wearable computers. It also highlighted the noisiest area (the keynote by Larry Page, Google's co-founder) and the quietest (a pop-up shop selling Google-branded products). All the data will be made freely available online after the conference wraps up.If the internet of things is going to expand as some enthusiasts predict, ultimately comprising trillions of objects and encompassing entire cities, practical experiments like the one at Google I/O will be invaluable. Each sensor mote at the conference cost about $50 to build and it turned out that “you really need density to build good insights,” says Michael Manoochehri, an engineer at Google. Nevertheless, deploying such networks outside the rarefied atmosphere of a tech gathering will be expensive, not least because nifty sensor motes could simply be pinched. There are also unresolved issues around standards for machine-to-machine communication and interaction, as well as the perennial privacy bogeyman.“But the real problem is the data,” says Mr Manoochehri. Even his small network is creating gigabytes-worth. Crucially, he adds, more and better brains are needed to work out how to answer questions as fast as they can be asked.

From international political economy professor Daniel Drezner, a comment on being paid honoraria for speaking in China:1) From a personal perspective, as the occasional visitor to China, I can confirm the wads of cash thing -- but it's a bit more complicated than Barboza suggests. First of all, for U.S. academics at least, the payment isn't in renminbi, but in U.S. dollars. Renminbi is sometimes dispensed for things like per diem reimbursements, but not for honoraria. After all, officially, the RMB is still not convertible to dollars outside of the country, so it wouldn't be very nice to get paid in a currency that is technically useless outside the People's Republic. There are two other qualifiers here. First, at least with respect to academic honoraria, it's not just China that pays in cash -- so does Japan, for example. Second, speaking as an academic who's received the occasional honorarium, it's friggin' awesome. At some point, someone takes you aside and gives you an envelope stuffed with bills. I know it's impolite to say, but every time it happens, I feel like I'm an earner in Tony Soprano's crew. It's soooooo much more satisfying than getting a check (as is the norm in the U.S.) or receiving a bank transfer three months later than it should be and only after haranguing someone a few times (as is the norm in Europe). Having just worked in the United States, I haven't had the pleasure of being paid in cash. (I've been paid in work experience and donuts -- why do you ask?) Whenever I go to the ATM to pull out a couple hundred bucks when we go on vacation, I always feel a little weird. Readers, what's the best way you've been paid?

Photosynthetic oxidation of water is one of the central processes of life on Earth, but it is still not completely understood. Now, a German-American team of scientists has set out to observe the intermediate stages of this complex catalytic reaction using ultrashort snap shots taken at light sources including BESSY II in Berlin and the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford.... Kern, J., Alonso-Mori, R., Hellmich, J., Tran, R., Hattne, J., Laksmono, H., Glockner, C., Echols, N., Sierra, R., Sellberg, J.... (2012) Room temperature femtosecond X-ray diffraction of photosystem II microcrystals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(25), 9721-9726. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1204598109 Room temperature femtosecond X-ray diffraction of photosystem II microcrystals

Tweet of the Week: There is not enough coffee for both me and America. — Dr24Hours (@Dr24hours) May 13, 2013 To the network: Grand CENtral: Guest Post: “#Chemclub” by Andrew Bissette Newscripts: In Print: Shall We Play A Game? and Amusing News Aliquots The Haystack: Biotech, Pharma, & VCs Offer Rare Disease Patient Groups Some Advice The Watch Glass: “We can now make a few milligrams of anything” and Inspection, with Mustache and Membranes in Immunology and Making of Breaking Bad Related Posts:This Week on CENtral Science: Whale Fossils, Oscar Noms, UC…This Week on CENtral Science: Harlem Shake, Natural gas, andThis Week On CENtral Science: Richard's Lionheart,…This Week on CENtral Science: #SheriSangji, China's…This Week on CENtral Science: #scioDC , World's…

MEDICAL implants, such as stents and catheters, bring a risk of infection. Specifically, their smooth surfaces encourage the growth of bacterial films—and such sheets of connected bacteria are far more resistant to disinfection than are isolated bugs. The trick, therefore, is to stop these films forming in the first place and, as he describes in Biomacromolecules, Marek Urban at Clemson University in South Carolina thinks he may have a way of doing so.Dr Urban and his colleagues are employing viruses called bacteriophages as microbiological landmines. A bacteriophage (or “phage”, for short) is a virus that attacks bacteria—in the process, causing them to explode. Like most viruses, phages are host-specific, so Dr Urban chose phages known to attack Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, the types of bacteria that most commonly cause problems in hospitals.He attached his phages to sheets of polyethylene or polytetrafluoroethylene, two polymers often used to make implantable medical devices, by exposing the sheets to a chemical called maleic anhydride while simultaneously bombarding them with microwaves. That caused acids to form on the plastic surfaces, and those acids bonded readily with chemical groups called amines on the phages. The upshot was that the plastic became covered in a layer of phages.He then laid the pieces of plastic, phage-side down, on nutrient-rich culture gels impregnated with E. coli and S. aureus. This, he hoped, would mimic conditions inside the body. That done, he left the pieces of plastic in place for six months, as an implant might be left in a body. As he hoped, the phage-coated areas of plastic blew up the bacteria, successfully inhibiting their growth. Even low concentrations of phage did this.Whether the technique will work in real bodies remains to be determined. But if it does, then one of the risks of surgical implants will have been usefully diminished.

Ancient Ivory: Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold