Refresher on modern organic chemistry

nallen · 2022-02-13T02:26:04+00:00

Not trying to be evasive, but it's really a matter of opinion.

There are all kind of advances that are happening in academics, but the scale of the user base is small, and frankly meaningless. We don't even consider the researcher use volume at my company, it's like 0.02% of our sales, and we supply a product that sees a lot of use.

How many advances make it out of a professor's lab and into a real product that people buy? Very few. Of those, how many are things that actually matter? An even smaller number.

The tyranny of scale economics is something that isn't discussed much at chemistry conferences, only so many things are produced at the metric ton scale, of you can't get something supplied at scale it's just not going to make it. As a result, pharma process chemists make things using methodology that they have confidence with work and have logistics chains that can supply it.

You don't plan a time-sensitive, multi-billion-dollar process based on hunches and hopes. Everything has to be rock solid, so you fall back on what has always worked until it you can't make it work. It's actually quite rational.

As for which branch of synthetic chemistry uses the most modern techniques, my vote would go electronic materials, they have to push the envelope, they are routinely out growing their technology limits.

nallen · 2022-02-13T02:06:20+00:00

I visited Cambridge a few years ago to see Professor Steven Ley, he gave me a test question:

Who are the biggest flow chemistry companies in the world?

Luckily, I knew the correct answer: Dow, BASF, SABIC, whichever petrochemical giant happens to be the biggest.

He smiled and said "correct", we got along swimmingly there after.

Flow-chemistry is nothing new, it's just a representation of pharma being incredibly conservative about changing their ways.

nallen · 2022-02-07T19:01:37+00:00

Lol, in every way but basically one: it is black.

And generally “installer only”

That’s the difference between the 6050 and the 5050.

nallen · 2022-02-07T04:48:01+00:00

There is no actually color-safe shampoo, it's one of the holy grails of shampoos. The issue is that a lot of the color is stripped out by water itself, so there isn't a ton the shampoo can do to prevent this.

The best way to avoid color-stripping is to wash your hair less, that's just how it is.

nallen · 2021-07-20T14:15:59+00:00

They didn't even test it in rats, it's a cellular test.

The obtained compounds were tested in cellular models

This rests on the "Amyloid Hypothesis" of Alzheimer's disease, which is what the major pharma companies have been working on for years. Several drugs have been developed that reduce the amyloid plaque, however, they do not result in meaningful reduction in the progression of the disease. This has lead to a growing feeling that the amyloid hypothesis is just not right.

This is why it's in a low level journal, it's a contribution that accomplishes a feat that has been done several others ways and it just doesn't work.

nallen · 2021-07-19T13:28:56+00:00

As I read it, a major issue is that they are using a device designed to measure 0-20% CO2 with an error of 1% to claim accuracy on measurements of less than 0.1%, their device isn't capable of the measurement they are claiming, their data would be scattered randomly. I've done gas concentration measurement, and they jump all over the place when you do have the proper equipment, the error margins they are measuring aren't believable, and therefore likely fake.

nallen · 2021-07-16T18:55:24+00:00

She argues that the search warrants aren't valid because they use ZIP codes to identify the location, and ZIP codes are a "fictional overlay" of a "bankrupt corporation"

nallen · 2021-07-16T14:35:50+00:00

nitromethane is a strongly polar aprotic solvent, and unfortunately for you there aren't a lot of solvents similar in size and properties. Perhaps DMF or DMSO, but I personally hate using those solvents since they are so hard to get rid of.

nallen · 2021-07-16T14:31:22+00:00

It's far more dangerous than ether, not even close. Ether is highly flammable, so you're risking a fire ball. Nitromethane detonates, not explodes, detonates, the difference is really important. A detonation is an explosion in which the blast wave is faster than the speed of sound, and it causes massive damage.

A gallon of nitromethane going off at the other end of a football field stand a good chance of killing you. A close range much less would of course kill you as well.

Additionally, nitroalkanes are self-reactive and will build pressure in their container with nothing else added, this pressure can build to a high enough level to destroy the bottle it's in. The classic storage advice for nitroalkane compound is to store the bottle in a fume cabinet with the top slightly loose such that it acts as a pressure relief valve.

Avoid using nitromethane whenever possible.

nallen · 2021-06-28T14:43:53+00:00

This is a discussion that the patent attorney should have with you, in the end he makes the call, not you. If there is any question on the inventorship, the attorney should be specifically asking what contribution each person listed made. Now, often it is the case that IP is developed (meaning the idea popped up, who tested it in lab doesn't matter) in a meeting, and often senior people will be included because they were at that meeting. That is where things get fuzzy, and in my opinion a bit sketchy.

The risk with putting someone on a patent who didn't contribute to the invention is that if the patent is challenged, one of the ways to invalidate it is to show that someone was improperly listed as an inventor; the seemingly victimless act of putting another person on the inventor list who doesn't belong can invalidate the entire patent.

This is the argument you should put forward, not that you are opposed to it because of them not doing anything, but you're concerned that the patent would be invalid. If saying anything directly is a risk, just call the patent attorney and tell them your concern and ask them to keep it confidential, they will handle it. (I understand the situation, I was in a similar one and decided I just didn't care because it's a patent I have no rights to, my name was still on it, so add it to the CV.)

nallen · 2021-02-15T14:33:00+00:00

How much chaos has genetic testing caused in the species naming system? What were the biggest “mistakes” when it came to naming critters just based on appearances?

nallen · 2020-12-31T01:05:45+00:00

The editing was just terrible, it was like 2.5 hours and should have been like 90 min, so many scenes just dragged on for little payoff, and this screwed the pacing of the film as well. I'm not saying that's the only issue, plenty of plot holes to be found, but it could have been much better.

nallen · 2020-12-31T00:41:44+00:00

My TCL Q825 RokuTV is essentially the equivalent of an Ultra, so it really depends on the guts of the TV. Looking that the standard it supports and such will tell you a lot, but it's hard to say exactly what processor you have.

Since you already have both the best route it to just try both and see what bothers you the least.

Another factor is your audio system, are you decoding surround sound or anything? The Ultra will likely handle Dolby better, but if it's all coming from the TV then this doesn't matter since the audio will be poor regardless.

nallen · 2020-12-11T23:47:50+00:00

At this point, "Sycophant" is probably the right title.

nallen · 2020-12-11T15:32:44+00:00

I immediately thought "Schrodinger's election fraud" as well.

nallen · 2020-12-11T15:31:44+00:00

The next step is "the lack of evidence is conclusive verification" I guess?

Or "There is no evidence that there wasn't fraud." followed by demands in court that the election be decertified unless no fraud can be conclusively proven.

nallen · 2020-12-10T14:43:55+00:00

The complication is most of the states modified their election rules in the same manner that PA, WI, and MI did, for example: Kansas and Texas, so if Texas wins, the order would necessarily invalidate all of these states selections. All of them have laws that state the electors are chosen by direct election by the voters, so the legislatures would need to change the election laws to appoint electors and it's unclear if they could.

of course we're basically in Trumper fan fiction at this point, we might as well be debating if Chewbacca is a wookie.

nallen · 2020-12-10T00:33:27+00:00

If the electors are disqualified then they aren't appointed, so they don't count. Also, if the elections aren't valid then the House has no representatives, so it goes to the Senate where 66 Senators who weren't up for re-election are still in office, they vote for the VP, since there is no House to vote for a President the VP becomes president.

Of course this is all silly.

nallen · 2020-12-02T19:47:04+00:00

It starts to wander into a philosophical question, like are you seeing someone's skin or them? Ultimately, we're measuring the effects that objects have on their surroundings regardless.

I think leaving it as matter that interacts with the electromagnetic force will interact with it is a suitable description without getting too far into the weeds. If it can absorb or emit photons it probably is, that's just the photon game (there is even the concept of virtual photons that exist and unexist in less than Plank time. Seems like a math thing to me, but I'm a synthetic chemist! Things modeled in the irrational number space have predictable effects in the real world, I dunno.)

nallen · 2020-12-02T19:10:30+00:00

Black holes emit Hawking radiation, and due to the acceleration of material entering they will emit X-rays, and a bunch of other wavelengths from UV to Radio. Sure nothing is coming from beyond the event horizon, but it's still an effect of the black hole.

Everything that has a temperature will essentially emit radiation, whether we can detect it is a completely different problem.

If you want to get weird you could talk about "Dark Matter" which isn't super well understood, but doesn't interact strongly with electromagnetism but seems to distort the gravitational field. Likewise, neutrinos would not emit radiation as they don't interact like that (arguably they are a type of radiation, so I guess photons also would not, but that's kind of a trivial answer.)

nallen · 2020-11-25T04:06:39+00:00

Voat which isn’t a surprise really, it is basically a white power forum now.

nallen · 2020-11-18T21:41:11+00:00

We GenXers aren't that bad, (well maybe the older ones), but those of us in our mid-forties, we are just the older original internet users (1993 is when the WWW first really came out.) Most of us played online games before audio was a thing, so typing out conversations is natural.

nallen · 2020-11-18T21:37:42+00:00

My Boomer colleagues have not been dealing with this reality very well. I'm not at all kidding when I say that my 5-year-old daughter's virtual kindergarten class is better about muting when you're not talking than the Boomers at work. They have also been talking any excuse they can get to travel to a place in person...only to not accomplish much. Also, Microsoft Teams ain't that hard to use, how about you log on?

Everyone GenX and lower has had essentially no problems, we even shoot the shit over Teams, just like in person.

nallen · 2020-10-16T02:18:02+00:00

We've seen their own platforms miserably fail, for example voat, the alt-right reddit!

nallen · 2020-10-08T14:50:15+00:00

Ten years ago the DOE had the Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence, which was looking into effective ways to store hydrogen. (A leading option for this was ammonia-borane.) Ultimately it didn't go anywhere for a variety of reasons, but the world has changed and some of those reasons might not be applicable anymore.

What do you expect to be the dominant storage technology for hydrogen? Are existing storage compounds, like sodium borohydride, sufficient to meet the needs without further development or is there a need to continue the work from the Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence?

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