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Berkeley Chemistry Department Visiting Days for Prospectives 2008
I’ve unfortunately been suckered into representing my boss (Heino Nitsche) for the prospective visits this spring. My boss is unavailable due to teaching, and I will be doing the typical office meet-and-greet for him. So, if anyone wants to chill in his office with the best cheap wine I can afford before the poster session please register to meet with Heino Nitsche during your visit at Berkeley. I promise it will be a very relaxed atmosphere. Even if you don’t have any interest in the Nitsche group, I have no problems being open about any other group you may be interested in or grad school at Berkeley in general.
Visit Days for 2008: February 29th, March 7th, March 14th, March 21st.
Mitch
Chemistry Personal Statements for Graduate Schools
Although most undergraduates are fretting over acceptance letters1, there has been recent interest in personal statements2,3,4. Below is an outline of what I would consider a typical chemical personal statement. With slight modification, it can also be used as a general outline for all bright-eyed science undergraduate personal statements.
1st paragraph:
- Why you are in science.
- Why you enjoy chemistry.
- Why this or that specific sub-field of chemistry is interesting to you.
2nd paragraph:
- Your accomplishments in the chemical field (research experience, poster presentations).
- Favorite experiment/class and why. A lot of details on why it’s your favorite.
3rd paragraph
- Briefly discuss your ability to work with diverse people and/or outreach experience. (This may sound silly, but remember academic scientists are becoming more-and-more like bureaucrats and buzz words like that tend to ring well in their ears.)
- List relevant clubs and organizations you belong to. If you were an officer, write about that.
4th paragraph
- List how your skill-set/experience would be applicable to the institution you’re applying to.
- List some professors you would like to work with.
- Finish with some broad statement including the institution’s name.
In my personal opinion, personal statements should only be one page; you really should be able to summarize yourself that succinctly. If you have a blemish on your record, I’m not convinced it should be mentioned in a personal statement. Negative statements about yourself will stick out more than all your positive ones; so it’s upon you, to make sure your negatives are even worth discussing.
If you have further advice for the eager undergraduates, leave a comment. 
Ref. 1: Anyone heard back from schools yet?
Ref. 2: My Grad School Application Essay
Ref. 3: how to write grad school app essays
Ref. 4: Personal Statements
Mitch
Generic Website Upgrades
As most readers have noticed we’ve done a massive revamping of the website since Jan 1st 2008. Site upgrade posts are the most boring, so I’ll do everyone a favor and write it in outline format.
- An unfortunate circumstance of the upgrades have been the inability to migrate all comments made prior to Jan 1st 2008 to the new site. The old comments are still archived at Chemical Forums Blog.
- The ‘anonymous’ blogger mebecker1 has joined the staff of the blog. (read postings)
- We have a new domain name. No longer http://blog.chemialforums.com we are now http://www.chemistry-blog.com.
- I’ve been digging into WordPress source code and have done some rewrites. Such as…
- Each commenter now has a unique color for their name based on a formula using the non-identifying portion of their ip address. So, if someone magically broke the formula, they still would end up with a useless portion of the ip. Trolls like to post comments under several names, and this ensures “anonymous-honesty” in some sense.
- I’ve also added to the MySql database a visit counter field. It has been placed on every blog post and every page automatically. You can see our top viewed posts/pages here: Blog Stats
- I passed the visit counter into our RSS feed as well: Chemistry-Blog Feed
- I’ve removed all non-refer tags; all links from commenters will pass pagerank. So, including your website when you comment will be very beneficial for you. This might be dangerous, or awesome.
- Wrote several pages explaining who we are and other information. Bloggers, Frequently Asked Questions.
If anyone has any other suggestions for additions just leave a comment, I can program most anything. If you just want to see your comment color leave a comment.
Mitch
You know you’re a Chemist when…
… The Mercedes symbol looks like an eclipsed conformation.
… The first thing you reach for in the morning are your prescription safety glasses.
… All your shirts have holes.
… All your scars are not from bar fights but from chemical burns.
… Someone offers you acid, but its not what you expected.
… Describing sexual positions you use SN1, SN2 and all your friends know what you are talking about. (Theoritically)
… Kids ask you how Santa fits through a small chimney and you reply, “Duh, tunneling effect.”
… You buy a sleeping bag but its not for camping trips.
… You BBQ with the Bunsen burner.
… You say its the size that matters, but you’re really talking about molecular radii.
… You have blisters from playing with your molecular model kit
… You are fed up of people saying alcohol, when they mean ethanol
… You hear the word ‘Molar’ and teeth are the last thing on your mind.
… You habitually wash your hands BEFORE and AFTER using the restroom
… When someone says ’sodium’ you don’t think about salt, but you think about a clay-like metal that goes well with a big lake.
… You know what saline water is composed of
… You hear “ABS” and you think about acrylnitril-butadiene-styrol copolymer instead of anti-lock breaking system.
… You hear that someone had a bicycle crash and you think that he couldn’t handle working with Naphthalene.
… You stare at the bottle of water and begin to wonder how you would separate all those ions.
… When a friend offers you a glass of amaretto after dinner, you have a sip and say “Ahh, Benzaldehyde…”
… You look at a hexagonal-shaped cookie and think of benzene, not a hexagon.
… I and Me can be iodine and methyl when read…
… OH is a hydroxy group, not Ohio (and I even live in Ohio)
… The stick figures you draw are carbon and not people. (Unless you are CBC)
… when you are humming “dilution is the solution to pollution” while looking at a urinal.
… You put a vodka shot in a 100 ml beaker.
… You use two stirring rods as chop sticks.
… You use the magnetic stirrer as a mixer for your drinks.
… You use the chemostat as an aquarium.
… You use the fume hood as a closet.
… You don’t say table sugar but call it sucrose, and you call common table salt as sodium chloride.
… Someone says, “I love U” and you think they are talking about Uranium!
… You use coke not for drinking, but for cleaning pennies
… You realize your most visited site is not a pornographic one: it’s Chemistry Blog or Chemical Forums!
… You understand these jokes and laughed at them.
Now its your turn to contribute! Leave your jokes in the Comments Section.
Originally compiled from Chemical Forums
Edit 1: Biologists get into the game — You know you’re a biologist when…
Mitch
ACS New Orleans 2008
It’s that time again to start planning for Spring ACS. I will be attending and looking forward to meeting whoever else would like to do the usual “meet-up”. The meet-ups are generally very successful and always entertaining.
I will be presenting on Monday in the chemical education section in the oral symposium titled “Using Social Networking Tools to Teach Chemistry”, along with 2 other colleagues from my group. The symposium looks quite good, we’ll have Jean-Claude Bradley from Drexel, and a spattering of Nature, RSC and Chemistry Central people. Robert Belford will likely talk too, probably on his work with wiki-hyperglossaries if I had to guess. If anyone ever wondered where chemistry and the internet will intersect in the next 5-10 years this will likely be the symposium not to miss.
If you will be attending the conference and would like to meet, drop a line in the comments section. I’ll post details on where the meet-up as the conference draws near. Likely, Paul will be there as well once he returns from his self-imposed exile.
Mitch
New Isotope Discovery: Borhium-260
The discovery of a new isotope of Bohrium, by Nelson et al. (I’m a coauthor as well), was published yesterday in PRL. In total, 8 events of 260Bh were reported. Unfortunately, the new isotope is not long-lived enough to be of practical chemical interest. A summary of the decay properties is summarized in the Nuclear Trading Card format shown below.
The yellow color signifies the observation that it decays by alpha emission 100% of the time. The nuclide decays into 256Db, which is long-lived enough for chemistry, and the results taken with this paper and others updates the known decay properties of Dubnium-256. The updated trading card is below.
In this case the red signifies an ~30% electron capture branch. I hope you enjoy the announcement of a new member to the Bohrium family, and have fun with your new nuclear trading card.
Note 1: Link to article: Lightest Isotope of Bh Produced via the 209Bi(52Cr, n)260Bh Reaction
Note 2: Comments, if any, should be posted at the ACS-DNCT Blog
Mitch
Whether to be a coauthor or not
I received the following by email, and was granted permission to share it. Identifying information has been removed.
Mitch,
I’m in a difficult situation and not quite sure how to handle it. Several months ago, I approached a friend of mine from graduate school to work on a collaboration together. I am an experimentalist while he is a theory guy. His recent work is always top notch, and really is the best there is in the field, his calculations always come within hundredths of an eV to experimental results. This is exactly what I needed in order to set to rest one of the lingering controversies within my small field.The gist of the situation is that the work my PhD advisor and I have published contradicts an others in the field. This has led to rather acrimonious comments on both sides and even several published letters in journals criticizing each others work. Unfortunately, my theory friend has come up with an answer that agrees near exactly what my competitors reported. He has already started writing the paper and needs me to write several experimentalish paragraphs for the paper.
The problem is I didn’t approach my old PI about this collaboration and I will be effectively putting my name with our competitors when this gets published. This would also render a significant portion of my PhD thesis meaningless, although I’ve already graduated and have my doctorate. I am still planning to collaborate with my old PI but I don’t know how eager she will be when this paper comes out. I could ask to take my name off the author list, but since I was the one who approached my friend this seems dubious, plus if his calculations had agreed with my experiment I wouldn’t be thinking of taking my name off.
I’m not sure what to do.
~confused postdoc in America
My own advice would be to take your name off the author list. It sounds like your friend will likely submit the paper regardless of whether your name is on it or not as it addresses a significant controversy. I doubt you know all the ins and outs of the theory he is using to write the paper, and that in and of itself should prelude you from being on the author list.
Since you would of placed your name on the paper if it had agreed with your results, I don’t know…
If anyone in the audience can offer advice, I’m sure it would be appreciated.
Mitch
Nano Explosions
I’m not sure how Bethany Halford keeps pulling pretty picture duty. But she has some awesome ones in her latest article about the recent Materials Research Society “Science as Art” competition. A low-res teaser is shown below.
Courtesy of the Materials Research Society
Follow this link to see all the cool photos and read the piece: A Material World
Mitch
Disposing 20,000 Pounds of Metalic Sodium circa 1947
The video is a copy of a newsreel showing the US military disposing of several tons of metallic sodium by dumping it into a lake, after the end of WWII. It may just be me, but I seriously doubt any chemist advising the military thought this was a good idea for waste disposal. I’m sure they might of thought it was a fun idea, but a good idea…
Note 1: Brought to my attention by enahs.
Mitch
ACS Executive Compensations for 2006
ACS released the salaries of their top executives last week, and if you didn’t think non-profit work was profitable think again.
| Officers | Total Compensation + Contributions + + Expense Accounts |
|---|---|
| Madeline Jacobs (CEO) |
$933,533 |
| Flint Lewis (General Counsel) |
$321,031 |
| Brian Bernstein (Treasurer) |
$403,560 |
| Top Execs. | Total Compensation + Contributions + + Expense Accounts |
|---|---|
| Robert Massie (President-CAS) |
$1,051,079 |
| Robert Bovenschulte (President-Publications Division) |
$782,333 |
| Brian Crawford (Vice President-Publications Division) |
$481,040 |
| James Bryne (Retired President-Centcom) |
$461,213 |
| Peter Roche (Vice President-Finance CAS) |
$461,213 |
A show stopper in the report is the $168,350 Bonus Madeline Jacobs received which is ~31% of her base wage! Whether she actually did the work of 1.3 CEOs is not my decision, but this judgment seems rather exorbitant and is roughly three times what her AAAS counterpart makes.
An other interesting feature of the report is the $43,015 dollars we all paid for Brian Crawford to relocate. This corresponds to roughly 14% his base wage or 1.7 months of salary. A quick search at U-Haul says I can move a 4+ bedroom house in one of their 26′ trucks cross-country to D.C. for $2,724. I’m not sure what the other 40 grand was used for, but I helped unload my friends U-Haul the other day, and all it cost him was some sodas and a sandwich for me.
To see the report, follow the directions conveniently provided by C&EN
To access the information, please have your ACS membership number handy and follow these instructions: Go to www.acs.org. In the upper right-hand corner, log in. If you are already a registered user, enter your user name and password. If you’re a new user, follow the link and register (a process that requires your ACS membership number and takes less than a minute). Once you have logged in, you will see a link titled “Member Information.” Click on this link, go to the heading “Your Organization” at the bottom of the screen, and click on the link titled “Access the Compensation of ACS Officers and Key Employees.” You will immediately go to the introductory text; the Form 990 is available by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page titled “2006 Compensation Schedules.”
The file isn’t their IRS form 990, but a 2-page condensation. Their actual 2003 form 990 was 200 odd pages.
The funniest part of the file is the introduction where is says…
In evaluating the information contained on the following pages, please keep in mind that ACS is a large and complex organization.
Which either indicates that they think the compensation is rather high too, or at least that we will probably not understand why the staff at a non-profit chemistry club gets paid out millions. At least they got that one right.
Link to C&EN instructions: Executive Compensation Information Available
Mitch
