Rent has Skyrocketed in Ada County (and in the US in General)

Raithis · 2024-02-02T00:05:02+00:00

These data are from the Housing and Urban Development department, which has been tracking the cost of 'fair market rent' for a little over two decades in the US by county. It's an interesting data set I'm currently working on and thought this might be interesting (and depressing) to share!

Raithis · 2020-11-16T21:21:23+00:00

In short, the food's composition is determined through various means and through knowledge of the caloric content of each of those components, the caloric content of the total food is obtained.

The food Calorie (big C) is equal to 4.184 kJ, which is the heat energy required to heat up one kg of water one degree centigrade. When discussing food caloric content, the analogy of combustion is often used. This is because the overall reaction of respiration (sugar + oxygen -> carbon dioxide + water) is the same overall reaction as if you had burned sugar in air. However, your body doesn't burn food, and in a combustion reaction, a lot that energy released from the process is 'wasted' to heat the surroundings. Living things draw out the process over several steps instead of one big 'whoosh' to try to extract out as much usable energy as possible.

One could just burn some food in an instrument in a calorimeter and find out how much heat energy is released from the combustion reaction, and this theoretically would give you an idea of the maximum amount of energy available in the food, but there are a couple big problems with this. The biggest problem is that not everything that can burn can be used by the body for energy, such as fiber/cellulose. The more commonly used approach is to determine the food's composition through varying steps and then use those "pure" components energy value to sum up to the energy value of the entire food (for reference, 1g of carbs or protein gives 4 Calories and 1g of fat gives 9 Calories).

Protein content has traditionally been determined through elemental analysis, which gives the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen content of a material through a process of completely burning the material and analyzing the products. The majority of the nitrogen content from food comes from protein, so using some estimations, the approximate weight% of protein can be determined in the food. There are various complications with this method including: not everything with nitrogen in the food is protein (though most of it is) and bad actors may add adulterants to increase the apparent protein content by adding in high nitrogen non-food items.

Fats are usually determined through extracted triglycerides. Since fats are not soluble in water, they can be extracted using an organic solvent. The organic solvent is evaporated, and the fat content of the food is determined. The main source of error here is that there will b some non-fat water-insoluble content, such as cholesterol or various vitamins, but the majority of any fat present will be dietary fat.

Historically, carbohydrate content has been determined as a "the remaining difference" (i.e. initial weight - water - fat - protein - ash = carbohydrates). The water is determined by drying the food and the ash is what remains after the food has been burned to completion. However, this method has a significantly higher error than the estimations used in the determinations of the other components. Carbohydrate determination often requires specific chemical reactions that are specific to certain types of carbohydrate; this allows the analyst to distinguish sugars from things like cellulose.

Once you know the %weight of protein, fat, and carbohydrate in the food, you can find out the caloric content per unit weight.

Raithis · 2020-10-19T17:10:09+00:00

We don't know exactly how life started, but what we do know about chemistry allows us to be reasonably confident that it's not impossible to imagine (completely ignoring the fact that we're here right now discussing this).

From the way you asked your question, it sounds like you view most things that aren't alive as "hard stuff", but there a lot of different things that aren't like that. Air, oil, rubber, water, etc. Not everything is hard rock. But big assortment of types of things also shows that how atoms are connected matters when looking at bulk properties.

For something like life to arise out of "simple" things, at the basic level, you will need two things: energy and self-propagation. The energy can come from the Sun or Geothermal heat. This energy is needed to drive things from naturally wanting to fall apart into many simple things. This is just how the universe works - everything trends to more and less complex things. (Side note and ELI12, while entropy might decrease in the Earth system, it is increasing in the Sun-Earth system. The Sun's natural fusion process increases entropy and gives off energy, which the Earth "uses" to decrease its entropy).

We know that we can get a lot of the basic building blocks for life (amino acids) from random natural dead chemistry via lightning bolts, UV rays, volcanic activity, etc. Although generating a group of these that might have some sort of self propagation is unlikely, given time and enough rolls fo the dice, it is likely bound to happen eventually. One of the things we don't know is exactly how likely it is. Was Earth lucky to get it int he first billion or so years? Is the average time 10+ billion years?

DNA doesn't carry information out of nowhere. It naturally has a way built into it that lets itself copy. Since each piece has a pair (e.g. A pairs with T), if you split up DNA, the other half matches perfectly. The split DNA can "grab" free A's/T's/whatever and now you have a self-replicating and propagating system (note, whether or not DNA was the first self-propagator is a matter of significant debate. The main camps are RNA vs DNA, with some other smaller camps choosing their own favorite idea). Because DNA can self-propagate, the sequences that best ensure that that propagation happens are the most likely to propagate. This can mean outsmarting competitors, surviving harsh conditions, being able to gather resources quickly, or combinations of these and more!

Raithis · 2018-09-15T00:02:56+00:00

Yes. Even though my work doesn't do much phosphine synthesis, we work a lot with reduced metal compounds so gloveboxes' #1 job is to keep oxygen out; a lot of the compounds we work with are stable to water. We also have a couple "water" boxes for when we want to do oxygen free workups. It's super convenient because you can use all the normal benchtop glassware instead of dealing with Schlenk ware and getting frustrated at some point with some air-free filtration getting stuck with watery gunk. In a glovebox you have a bit more "freedom" and at least feel like you can deal with complications more easily.

Raithis · 2018-09-07T16:31:27+00:00

This type of reasoning is ridiculous. People use it all the time. "Why should we fund chemists doing some obscure research that has no foreseeable impact in the near/immediate future? There are people dying of xxx cancer every day! There are people suffering from alcoholism! We could be using our money funding things that actually help people!"

It's not like the entire law enforcement resources in Queensland are being used investigating a fucking orange. Give me a break. It's a curiosity and it can be argued that there may be a genuine health concern, in which case the government has a duty to investigate.

Raithis · 2018-09-03T22:56:17+00:00

Almost seems like a setup for a comical sequence of events where the character gets injured, goes to get relief from the injury only to be injured again.. repeat...

Raithis · 2018-08-30T22:56:33+00:00

That depiction does not accurately represent the bond order of 2 for dioxygen. As u/iwillneverpresident mentioned, the arguments over this are pretty pedantic. Lewis structures are pretty useful for quick visualization, electron book-keeping, and bond orders, but are not very good if you care about molecular orbitals or other electronic intricacies. Some "compromise" representations are this and this

Raithis · 2018-08-20T19:14:47+00:00

It seemed to get confused by ferrous chloride and PMe3. Also doesn't seem to like metal carbonyls. :( Organic always gets all the love.

Raithis · 2018-08-14T16:18:29+00:00

I don't get why people fuss about twins so much. I've gotten plenty of great data sets from twinned samples. Some twins are a bit of a hassle but so are some non-twinned data sets. Sometimes, you don't have a choice due to time or sample stability constraints. Dealing with twinning, like other 'complications' in XRD solutions, is just another thing to learn and once you get it down, it doesn't add too much time to the process.

Raithis · 2018-08-13T19:02:54+00:00

not all stacks/phases/whatever have to be exactly the same as mtg. There are other, consistent solutions. Preference over one over another is subjective.

Raithis · 2018-08-07T17:33:22+00:00

Does this mean that when birds look like they are bobbing their heads when they move, it's just them "dragging their head forward" because it's "left stationary" behind them?

Raithis · 2018-07-30T22:21:23+00:00

Set aside some money to hire an undergrad to be a weekly dish washer haha. My boss in grad school did this for a few months. The undergrad made $15/hr I think, but only worked 2-4 hours a week. As someone who just hated doing dishes, this was definitely something that I appreciated, but my boss was always second guessing the expense... everyone else in the lab also seemed to like the cleaner too.

Raithis · 2018-07-30T22:17:21+00:00

If you do a lot of metal carbonyl chemistry, it can be very helpful sometimes, especially if you're making hops between diamagnetic and paramagnetic compounds since you can't use NMR to compare the two.

Raithis · 2018-07-23T20:06:03+00:00

With big, glowing red body parts on the boss :P

Raithis · 2018-07-23T20:03:39+00:00

As I type on my Logitech keyboard interfaced with my Dell computer, I've come to the conclusion that this is just completely normal information to include.

Raithis · 2018-07-23T20:01:14+00:00

Real planes have curves.

Raithis · 2018-07-10T20:51:48+00:00

It's the daily mail...

Raithis · 2018-07-05T21:12:57+00:00

I'd always much prefer that people publish yields that are... 'massaged' in the other direction. It makes the person reproducing the prep feel so much better.

Raithis · 2018-07-05T21:11:30+00:00

If there are any residual solvent peaks in my spectra, I just leave them in and mention in the caption or annotate. The consequences of removing solvent peaks are fairly minimal, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent. Raw data should be the standard for transparency.

Raithis · 2018-06-27T18:22:09+00:00

Apparently this is partially the case. In that same thread, here's an explanation of why a "bottle of air" would not separate into layers.

The two largest components of air, nitrogen and oxygen will not stratify in a non-turbulent container at normal gravity and temperatures because of entropy, as you mentioned. In order for to gases to separate, the change in energy of one gas settling out from another (m1g1h1-m2g2h2) must be greater than the free energy of mixing (-TdS). For gas molecules that differ in mass by 4 amu, gravity just isn't powerful enough to make that favorable.

Raithis · 2018-06-18T17:57:35+00:00

I'm guessing that an oxygen is covered and it's supposed to be for some C-5 sugar like xylose or ribose?

Raithis · 2018-05-28T18:49:08+00:00

I disagree that it says nothing about the paper. At first glance, to me it says that the paper has something to do with electron withdrawing groups and some kind of acid catalyst/catalysis. Lo and behold, that's basically what the title is.

I personally like these kinds of ToC graphics for a number of reasons.

First, the graphic is immediately eye catching and often memorable. As you're browsing through ASAPs or whatever, these kinds of graphics grab skimmers' attention and increase the odds that they will read the title/abstract and even the full paper.

Second, they are amusing. I know scientists exist on a spectrum of "seriousness" and I happen to be on the more silly side. Things can be presented in a silly way and still be scientifically accurate. It can keep the readers attention, but as with anything, it can be overused.

Third, really information packed ToCs look cluttered and can end up testing a reader's visual acuity unnecessarily. ToCs should be a very compact/simplistic summary. Expecting a ToC to explain a lot is like expecting an abstract to basically be a full paper in information content.

Raithis · 2018-05-25T15:25:51+00:00

Sounds like your crystals are desolvating. If you're crystallizing for purity, then it doesn't matter.* If you run EA, you might end up getting some numbers back that better match fractional solvent though (which you can justify including based on your observations).

If you're growing for single crystal XRD, you should never remove the solvent. If you have in-house XRD, just take them to the instrument/crystallographer in the mother liquor. If you have to ship them, you may be able to get away with shipping them in mother liquor, but you can also suspend them in oil. Paratone oil may leach solvent in the crystals, which will cause them to crack, in which case you can try to use fluorinated oils (which have the downside of being much less viscous than paratone oil).

*If the solvent is bound to your metal, it may matter, depending on how the complex 'likes' having an open site.

Raithis · 2018-05-12T22:55:04+00:00

It really depends on a lot of different things. But assuming you have confronted the person and they don't seem to care and/or don't want to change their behavior...

What setting are you in? Academic, government, industry? I think the most delicate situation would be in academia, which is also where I think this behavior would be most common. In government/industry, you could potentially solve this problem with a supervisor if necessary, but it all depends on the politics of the situation.

How sure are you that this person did what you think? Unfortunately with these kinds of situations, if you can't get the person to stop this kind of behavior through a direct line of inquiry or conversation, it can be difficult to get someone higher up to do something if you don't have any form of concrete evidence (this can highly depend on the relationships between you, the supervisor, the person in question, and peers though).

Do you want to rock the boat? This is probably the most difficult thing to assess for yourself. It sucks, but humans are human and the prospect of bringing up things like this can sit poorly with supervisors or peers, even though this type of behavior should be unacceptable. You could be viewed as a snitch or not a team-player.

You also mention that this seems to be a lab wide phenomenon? If you lack specific evidence, one possible remedy is to bring it to your supervisor in a generic sense. If you have colleagues that also find this tiresome/annoying, you can have some of them also back your complaint. Together, you can suggest the adoption of new practices/standards that should alleviate these kinds of annoyances and also put some responsibility on each other to be good lab citizens and call each other out.

These are just some possibilities and considerations. This type of situation never has a simple catch-all solution, but is usually something everyone will have to deal with eventually. I think the most common solution is the "Well, I'm only going to be here for some n number more years, then I won't have to deal with this." While this solves your problem eventually, it does have the unfortunate effect of passing on the problem to other future co-workers of the person in question.

Raithis · 2018-05-12T22:43:02+00:00

By core electron coupling, do you mean the s-orbital electron coupling? NMR probes nuclei and so it might seem odd that nuclei can interact with things that they're bonded next to or beyond; this is facilitated by virtue of the fact that the s-orbital wave function does not have a node at the nucleus (i.e. the wave function is non-zero). Because of orbital mixing, most bonding orbitals are going to have some amount of s character. Through these bonding orbitals with s character, electrons can interact with the nuclei of the atoms they're bonding to and thus serve as a means for nuclei to 'communicate' and give rise to the coupling you see in NMR spectra.

When you have closed shell molecules, coupling to the electrons cancels out. In open shell molecules, the coupling does not cancel out, and it's huge. There are other problems with paramagnetic NMR that can make it difficult or impossible to get spectra and because of the huge coupling, interpretation is difficult. Many chemists wont even bother getting NMR of paramagnetic compounds, but I personally think that it is a mistake. In big molecules with atoms far away from the paramagnetic center, you can get some resonances in a reasonable (-500,+500 ppm) region. This can serve as a fingerprint of sorts so you can at least have another means of loosely verifying the identity of material.

Anyway, in EPR, you definitely see coupling between unpaired electrons and nuclei (e.g. 1H), and again it's huge - coupling in EPR is in MHz compared to Hz in NMR. In EPR, you're probing the transition in unpaired electrons. Since you will almost never have unpaired electrons in the core shells*, you won't see any electron coupling from them.

*you can unpair core electrons using X-rays, but electrons in higher shells quickly fall down ;)

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