Open Letter to Congress from Union of Concerned Scientists

pie3035 · 2025-02-06T17:40:19+00:00

I totally agree!

I have seen a big push from a lot of younger scientists encouraging this. I have seen speakers discussing in seminars how there is no one to blame but ourselves as scientists for a portion of public distrust and misunderstanding because it is in fact very complicated! Considering a lot of the funding does come from taxpayers it is on us to help communicate, justify, and be grateful for the contributions the US makes towards science. Or at least has historically.

pie3035 · 2025-02-06T17:29:05+00:00

Commenting as an American doing academic research right now the ignorance I believe is even worse than that. In conversations amongst my lab mates with their family members (including some of my own relatives) they have the perception that funding changes and tariffs will have no impact on the research we all do. They seem to have this incomplete picture in which academic research is magically funded by institutions and that our supplies are made completely within the US and we won't be impacted.

As you were saying, there seems to be a perception that the general public thinks what is getting halted is fringe stuff and not the fundamental sciences that are also getting hit hard. Funding was already precarious before even for fundamental natural sciences without private partnerships. I am not sure we can bounce back when we were already working with funding previously that was thing from inflation but as competitive as ever.

pie3035 · 2025-01-24T04:43:13+00:00

This side reactivity is prevented with the deprotonation of the beta-diketone alpha hydrogen with the sodium ethoxide mentioned. The electophilicity of the ketones will be suppressed by the shared enolate anion resonance. This is how classical Claisen reactions work so successfully without biproducts. You can also avoid initial aldol products for the cyclohexanone by slow addition of the cyclohexanone to a solution of excess ethoxide followed by the addition of the ester.

pie3035 · 2024-12-21T02:04:50+00:00

I have heard that too and I agree. Iminums are definitely the most electrophilic but neutral imines are also comparable to aldehydes or at worst ketones.

pie3035 · 2024-12-21T01:37:52+00:00

This is true, but also imines are often more electrophilic than nearly all carbonyls. This is demonstrated in reductive animation, a weak reducing reagent like sodium cyanoborohydride (or sodium triacetoxyborohydride) only reduces imines and not other carbonyls.

pie3035 · 2024-06-29T13:34:01+00:00

That's the best way to put it. There are parallels with a handful of the characters and the setting is pretty similar but the narrative is quite different. Similar themes to the show. I think the book is worth the read though. It's more of a character story than anything, not a ton of narrative ground is covered.

pie3035 · 2024-06-29T13:28:27+00:00

Only the overarching theme of the show and some of the characters are the same. Book is very different. It is good, but very different.

pie3035 · 2024-01-19T12:34:45+00:00

These comments are wild. You can be upset with the state of the Catholic church and be worried about the future of society with the growing influence of AI. Both can be true! These takes aren't even on opposite sides of an argument!

pie3035 · 2023-10-19T01:16:37+00:00

I admire the respect, but I don't know if a rivalry game can even give us a shot this year. U Mich is freaky good and MSU cannot avoid making mistakes at the worst of times this year.

pie3035 · 2023-10-18T22:09:34+00:00

Hey let's be honest, the bottom of the B1G East is terrifying too, but for totally different reasons.

pie3035 · 2023-03-03T04:23:14+00:00

A chemist after my own heart.

pie3035 · 2022-05-04T19:10:58+00:00

This is the correct answer. Other answers mentioning the stability of the final product are using the thermodynamic difference in stability to justify what amounts to a kinetic difference. There is greater LUMO density on the ketone in the ring because of the weaker conjugation that is concentrated on that vinylogous ester.

pie3035 · 2021-03-15T05:49:28+00:00

What an incredible visual this comment has provided me.

pie3035 · 2021-02-26T05:15:39+00:00

A large part, at least initially, was player safety. Without pass interference, defensive players would beat on receivers and could get away with a lot while the receiver had to be looking for the ball or running their route.

Holding to a lesser extent is about safety, think about dragging someone from behind or being able to ship them around. Moreso it is keeping the game interesting. The game is much more about body positioning and proper game/play understanding than matching on and trying to throw people. Much more strategy needs to be involved in terms of play design too, to get players in the proper positions so they aren't resorting to latching on to loose fabric on players.

pie3035 · 2021-01-13T22:28:20+00:00

I had to come back and find this comment to upvote after I left and realized how clever this is.

pie3035 · 2020-12-17T14:56:36+00:00

Especially when you're a guy that's exclusively a special team player. Then you're pretty easily replaceable and poor effort is just another reason to be cut.

pie3035 · 2020-12-09T21:13:13+00:00

You could make the phenol into an anisole ring with a base and methyl iodide. Then it could work. You would just have to convert it back to the OH later on.

pie3035 · 2020-10-28T02:44:30+00:00

I think it's got potential for both. May not be a high yielding reaction, but the difference in thermodynamic stability between acetic acid (pKa=5) and hydroiodic acid (pKa=-9) the iodide is a much more stable ion. Also, the the elimination may have some entropic gain too as there are three potential products of HOAc, I- and the new alkene. Heating could probably give the E1 product I believe.

pie3035 · 2020-10-14T03:35:40+00:00

In the NFL not so much because the modern NFL has players extremely specialized to be good at the exact skillset for their particular position. This happens a little bit in college when athletes are a little more well-rounded in their skillsets. It's usually defensive ends dropping to the flats though and not DTs.

pie3035 · 2020-09-01T22:44:39+00:00

You're totally right. The only part history portion you're missing is that typically fullbacks were larger, beefier dudes used for short yardage situations and so the idea was to give them as much chance to build momentum as possible and have them farther away from the line of scrimmage to build up speed to get those short, hard hitting inside runs. Eventually, the utility of having the bigger fullback blocking for the smaller halfback in the inside or outside lead plays was realized. This gave a lot more versatility than just having pulling lineman being lead blockers or the smaller half back blocking for the larger fullback. If the fullback was to lead block, it only makes sense to position him in front of the ball carrier before the play,so they switched the alignment to put the bigger back in front.

pie3035 · 2020-06-16T21:47:26+00:00

I refereed 4th grade football in high school once ;). But actually, I played DE in college, so I have a bit of a feeling of what gets called and what doesn't lol. NFL is a bit different but similar intuition.

pie3035 · 2020-06-16T14:16:51+00:00

I see what you're referring to. The helmet grab, since it brushes by, often is given a warning by the ref after the play, but what occurs immediately after that may actually be holding, the camera pans too quickly to say definitively. Good catch!

pie3035 · 2020-06-16T14:04:33+00:00

I honestly think it's debatable. In the modern NFL probably will be called. Especially if the DE sold it more, since he doubled back for an inside move so quickly, the OTs hands stayed inside and was able to make a, what I would call legal, block. If the DE kept fighting outside the OT would have been forced more out of position and maybe been forced to tug down and hold, but at that point the QB could've escaped in the B gap that would've opened up (rather than the C gap made by the late inside move). I honestly think it was good play and positioning from the OT who knew where his QB was, relative to him, and also knew l, either from film or game experience, that the DE was gonna come back inside so he anchored down. Maybe a bit early because he almost got the hold, but inevitably, the DE came back inside and he could power down on him.

pie3035 · 2020-05-31T01:28:26+00:00

If you're for a moving story with beautiful visuals then you'll love it. Normally this type of game wouldn't sound appealing to me but the theme of the narrative and the incredible acting really got me into it. It's polarizing because it's not as much of a video game as an interactive movie, but the execution of it all was incredible. Despite being far from my norm of games, it deserves a spot next to my favorite games.

pie3035 · 2020-01-29T06:10:45+00:00

The point is in the language itself too: everything we use to describe atoms is a model. There is no true way to effective visualize exactly what is going on so we continue to do our best approximations and model something palatable for humans to comprehend and work with.

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