Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Jessica Frey penned the December 2014 column.

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With the first part of the academic year in full swing for many, discussions about teaching, new jobs and prizes are rife.

The importance of educating the next generation of scientists should never be underestimated and, writing at Endless Possibilities, Katherine Haxton muses on the start of a new year and the cyclical nature of updating and improving her teaching materials. She finds it frustrating that many lecturers are probably all trying to source the same sort of examples, such as NMR spectroscopic data or activation energies, and suggests that these resources should be pooled and shared, perhaps through a password-protected website.

More irreverently, Twitter users have been sharing their ideas on how to #explainsciencebadly, including, “the Earth is orbiting the Sun because it can’t find a place to park”; Vittorio Saggiomo collects a few of the best over at Labsolutely. What will your contribution be? Returning to more serious topics, after surviving the steep learning curve and challenging research, finding a job after finishing your PhD can be tough, as Tom Branson at Chemically Cultured writes. He reflects on his experiences and gives some advice for other job-hunters out there, including looking at volunteering and considering what you want in the future.

And of course, who isn’t talking about this year’s Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, our celebrated scientists at the top of their game? At Everyday Scientist, Sam gives a nice overview of the achievements of Betzig, Hell and Moerner, as well as reminding us that the Simpsons predicted Moerner’s Nobel recognition back in 2010! Finally, Fluorogrol finds ways for the rest of us to console ourselves over our lack of Nobel-worthy efforts at Better Living Through Chemistry.

Written by Jessica Frey, who blogs at https://brightonscientist.wordpress.com/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the December 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Kay Day penned the November 2014 column.

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Bloggers dip their sticky fingers into the foodie chemistry of honey and hot spices.

Summer is the time of year for barbecues and picnics, and the chemistry of food has clearly been on the minds of many in the blogosphere over the last few months. Leidamarie Tirado-Lee has written a fascinating blog post for Helix Magazine at Northwestern University about the molecules that make food spicy. She admits to having almost developed an addiction for spicy food over recent years, despite being a late convert to the wonders of chilli peppers.

Tirado-Lee explains how capsaicinoids — the compounds in chilli peppers that cause the burning sensation — interact with the nerve cells on our tongue that normally respond to physical heat. These molecules effectively trick our brains into thinking we’ve been burned and, in response, our brains trigger the release of lots of lovely endorphins, which generate a natural ‘high’. As she says, “next time you need a little pick-me-up consider giving in to the power of the chilli pepper and discover why chilliphiles have come to love the burn!”

Going from the hot to the sweet, Andy Brunning at the Compound Interest blog has been pondering the chemistry of honey. He tells us that honey has such astonishing preservative properties that the oldest known sample was about 3,000 years old when it was discovered (in an Egyptian tomb) — and it was still edible! After explaining how those clever bees produce honey, Brunning highlights the relevant sugar chemistry, pointing out the differences between sucrose, fructose and glucose. He then goes on to tell us how honey’s low water content and carefully balanced acidity make it so good at inhibiting bacterial growth that it can even be used as a wound dressing.

Written by Kat Day, who blogs at https://thechronicleflask.wordpress.com.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the November 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Sylvain Deville penned the October 2014 column.

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Perseverance, soft skills and self-reflection are needed for a career in science.

Between 1996 and 2011, fewer than 1% of scientists published a paper each year, but their names appeared on just over 40% of all papers. It’s a long and winding road to join that 1% and writing at Aidan’s Aviary, Aidan Horner lists all his rejections, from publications to positions, in his negative CV. This is a useful reminder that one can go through many failures before success. Never give up, never surrender.

Odyssey, at Pondering Blather, realizes that a good scientific training alone is not enough and that a lot more is needed to set up and run a successful lab, including managing (lab budgets and people), teaching and grant writing. How and when to teach such soft skills is a critical issue and is largely underestimated and poorly recognized. Among these skills, peer-review is still essential to the advancement of science, and Alexis Verger at An Infinity of Hypotheses, offers his reviewer oath. Whether peer-review should be anonymous or not prompts much debate, but the rest of Verger’s coda, including ‘Review unto others as you would have them review unto you’, should be engraved on the floor of every lab.

Finally, Acclimatrix, writing at Tenure, She Wrote, ponders which kind of mentor she wants to be. Funny? Hard? Motherly? Badass? “I want to create a strong lab culture […] that results not only in strong bonds, but strong science,” she writes. Don’t we all? The PI plays a critical role in driving the group and mentoring the students, and reflecting on what you want to achieve surely pays off in the long term. “I’ll let you know how that goes,” Acclimatrix wrote last year. Time for an update?

Written by Sylvain Deville, who blogs at https://sylvaindeville.net.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the October 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Matthew Hartings penned the September 2014 column.

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Mourning a loss and celebrating the everyday.

The public hearing over the laboratory accident that claimed the life of Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji concluded on 20 June 2014. Jyllian Kemsley and Michael Torrice broke the story for Chemical and Engineering News on Twitter. Writing at The Safety Zone blog, Kemsley aggregated chemists’ responses and wrote a myth-busting post detailing and correcting misconceptions that some chemists had about the events that led to Sangji’s death. The chemistry community owes a debt of gratitude to Kemsley and Torrice for their outstanding coverage of this tragedy.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Paul Bracher and Chemjobber initiated lively discussions about the outcomes of the legal proceedings. A major thought running through these conversations was that university-employed chemical researchers are not protected from workplace hazards in the same manner as industrial chemists. This raises the question of what protection graduate students and postdocs are entitled to, if they are not considered employees of a university? While these issues remain for us to sort out, my thoughts turn to Sheri’s family and friends who will always live with her loss.

During this time of introspection, chemists also came together to celebrate the small victories, the setbacks, and the spinning wheels that constitute life in the lab. Doctor Galactic hosted #realtimechemweek in which chemists shared their ‘everyday’ on Twitter. The highlight of this celebration was the post announcing ‘Tweets of the Week’. While we normally celebrate publications and grants, it is good for us to celebrate the mundane and acknowledge the risks that accompany being a chemist.

Written by Matthew Hartings, who blogs at https://sciencegeist.net/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the September 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Marshall Brennan penned the August 2014 column.

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Recent advertising strategies in which ‘anti-science’ is equated with ‘all-natural’ have rubbed some scientists the wrong way.

Yoghurt maker Chobani earned the ire of the scientific community with a slogan that appeared on the lids of their new low-calorie Greek yoghurt. Piper Klemm was the first to tweet about the controversial catchphrase: ‘Nature got us to 100 calories, not scientists. #howmatters’. Hundreds of tweets on the topic soon followed, as well as numerous blog posts by scientists decrying the belittling of science in advertising.

Writing at In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe offered a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the reason for the overwhelming response to the slogan, pointing out that despite Chobani’s desire to advertise an ‘all-natural’ product, mass-produced yoghurt requires a lot of food science. In fact, Chad Jones and John Coupland describe the chemistry involved in detail in a podcast at The Collapsed Wavefunction.

Chobani’s ‘natural vs scientific’ strategy of promoting foodstuffs isn’t new; bloggers have called out Finagle a Bagel on its ‘Bakers, not scientists’ campaign, and Whirlpool on their ‘Don’t drink from the Periodic Table’ ads. Paul Bracher‘s ‘chemophobia’ archive at ChemBark offers a compilation of examples where science and chemicals are demonized by advertisers.

These discussions highlight that such marketing strategies not only cater to, but also inform the public’s paranoia surrounding the term ‘chemical’. In his piece on The Blog, Joe Schwarcz addresses the confusion of ‘chemicals’ and ‘dangerous chemicals’. Science education — and communication — at all levels has never been more important than the present, where terms like ‘GMO’, ‘GIF’ and ‘chemical’ are misunderstood and feared as a result. It’s now time for the chemistry community to use these events as learning and teaching opportunities.

Written by Marshall Brennan, who blogs at https://colorblindchemist.wordpress.com/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the August 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, fluorogrol penned the July 2014 column.

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Bloggers shed light on the highs and lows of synthetic chemistry.

Resisting the temptation to tackle this retrosynthetically, let’s start at the start. Every project begins with an idea and, blogging at amphoteros, Andrei Yudin outlines the supervisor’s joy in bequeathing a crazy idea to a grad student: “as long as none of them violate any laws of thermodynamics, they will be eventually reduced to practice (and improved!) by our capable graduate students and postdocs.”

Tasked with turning that idea into reality, the student dives into the literature in search of precedent. Dr Freddy of Synthetic Remarks picks up the tale with a rundown of the quirks and deficiencies of certain experimental protocols that provoke widespread angst amongst synthetic chemists. Both his post and the follow-up at Derek Lowe‘s In The Pipeline prompted numerous further examples from readers. We’ve all been there.

With that minefield traversed, it’s into the fumehood. There, sooner or later, we all must face what Brandon Findlay of Chemtips calls “the black tar phase” — that one stubborn reaction that simply refuses to be tamed. He draws out the lessons learned in his struggle with an uncooperative transformation, ultimately advising: “pick what works and discard the rest.”

At long last, the final stage arrives. You’ve navigated the literature. You’ve beaten the black-tar phase. You’ve done your experiments, controlling for the possibility that the light at the end of the experimental tunnel is a train. The spoils of publication are yours. The Baran lab‘s communal blog, Open Flask, regularly fills in the backstories to their published chemistry, with Young Brando‘s light-hearted look at a recent paper neatly encapsulating the whole process, from idea to reality.

Written by fluorogrol, who blogs at https://betterlivingthroughchemistry.ghost.io/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the July 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Tom Branson penned the June 2014 column.

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What does it take to be a real scientist?

We read about the end results and look at the pretty graphs. But what was it actually like in the lab? The journey behind the data is often lost and the formal tone of a journal article cannot come close to conveying the love, suffering and fun that went into producing those results. However, bloggers and Twitter users are gradually breaking down that barrier and revealing a behind-the-scenes view of real chemistry.

A very open and engaging story of the work behind a Nature Materials article ($) was blogged by Sylvain Deville. ‘The Making of a Paper‘ takes us from the initial grant proposal, to the excitement of preliminary results and the pain of getting scooped. The Baran Lab also shares the stories behind their publications. Honestly stating “we had no idea we’d turn to electrochemistry” shows the success of an unexpected direction.

Elsewhere, the @RealScientists rotation-curation Twitter account continues to regale us with the daily activities of different scientists. Someone new is brought in each week to run the feed and showcase their own small slice of science. Previous curators include analytical and physical chemists and, at the time of writing, an evolutionary biologist has been delighting us all with the wonders of sex chromosomes.

It’s impossible to mention real science without talking about the Twitter phenomenon that is #RealTimeChem. This banner brings together chemists from all over the world and its creator, Dr Jay, is organizing the second annual RealTimeChem week. Your fellow chemists will be sharing more of their experiences and lab frivolity through blogs and tweets, and everyone can join in.

Written by Tom Branson, who blogs at https://chemicallycultured.blogspot.com.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the June 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Tien Nguyen penned the May 2014 column.

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Flawed plastics testing and the chemistry of cranberries.

A toddler eyes the camera sternly while drinking from a sippy cup underneath the headline of a Mother Jones article that reads, ‘The Scary New Evidence on BPA-free Plastics’. Sounds alarming. But it turns out that the research is actually three years old, which John Spevacek at It’s the Rheo Thing points out, “hardly qualifies as new,” and further, that “none of this evidence qualifies as evidence”.

The original research tested plastics for oestrogenic activity after subjecting them to unrealistically abusive conditions. This included exposure to UV light with unnaturally high energy and using an autoclave instead of a dishwasher. A test they had to run, suggests Spevacek wryly, “since dishwashers aren’t available in the Austin, Texas area.” Scare journalism based on misinformation is all too common, but those of us paying attention are grateful when someone with Spevacek’s expertise takes the time to succinctly uncover faulty data.

Let’s talk about a substance we don’t have to be afraid of — cranberries. High-school senior Meera Mody writes about the chemistry of this fruit on What’s UR Rxn?, a group blog (Twitter feed here) run by students at Detroit County Day School who make personal everyday connections to chemistry topics.

Mody notes that cranberries were used hundreds of years ago by Native Americans to treat infections, and modern studies have explained their antibacterial activity. Mody writes that “the phenolic ingredients in cranberries largely give them their healthy reputation” because polyphenols can bind to and remove excess iron, which reduces cellular oxidative stress. With a knack for relating chemistry in a clear and engaging way, these self-identified ‘chemjournalists’ are ones to watch.

Written by Tien Nguyen, who blogs at https://mustlovescience.com.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the May 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, Vittorio Saggiomo penned the April 2014 column.

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Chemists are people too.

What is behind that amazing paper you just read? A great idea, hard work and, possibly, good writing skills. But that’s only a small part of the story. That paper is soaked (hopefully metaphorically) with the blood, sweat and tears of the postdocs and students who have worked tirelessly on the project. Beneath that aseptically written scientific paper there is an army of young researchers for many of whom their daily job is an emotional rollercoaster. From the excitement of a good result, to the umpteenth failed experiment and the depression of a rejection.

Many researchers can relate to the feelings of doubt, anxiety and stress shared by Beth Haas who blogs at Casual Science. Beth’s words “I am good at what I do, and I am so very lucky to do something I love” should be engraved in every fumehood, to be gazed upon when dark periods descend. Dr. K. of Trockeneisbombe offers her point of view on work-life balance, which is that putting your life on hold is definitely not a good idea; friends and hobbies are important. And the one-year-old blog post from See Arr Oh at Just Like Cooking about the mental toll of grad school should be required reading for all researchers working in academia.

And finally, the fight against chemophobia continues in the blogosphere. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is perhaps nowadays better expressed as ‘infographics are worth a thousand words’. James Kennedy‘s poster on chemicals in an all-natural banana has gone viral, reaching the mainstream media. Other eye-catching infographics can be seen on the blog Compound Interest, ranging from the chemistry of smartphones to chocolate.

Written by Vittorio Saggiomo, who blogs at https://www.labsolutely.org/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the April 2014 article]

Editor’s note: As we continue to invite bloggers out there in the wild to compose our monthly Blogroll column, John Spevacek penned the March 2014 column.

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How cold is cold, and how big is a drop of liquid?

As I write this column on a cold mid-January morning, North Americans are finding out that the phrase ‘cold snap’ is terribly outdated and that we should be using ‘polar vortex’ instead to describe the cold air that dropped temperatures as much as 30 °C below normal. Nevertheless, using the speed of gas molecules — and even cars — to prove his point, Matt Strassler who blogs at Of Particular Significance suggests that maybe it really wasn’t that cold after all. Although you can’t disagree with the arguments he makes, the desire to put on an extra sweater before venturing outside remains very real. The discussion in the comments is also worth reading. Matt’s point, however, is that the cool-down was just a drop in the bucket.

Speaking of drops, Mike, who writes at the Amboceptor blog, recently took a look at what makes up ‘a drop’ and fractions-of-a-drop when they are described in experimental procedures. Focusing on a diagnostic test for typhoid that was first reported in 1910, Mike finds that descriptions such as ‘full-sized drop’, ‘half drop’ and ‘quarter drop’ led, unsurprisingly, to irreproducible results that prompted some testy debate in the medical literature of the day. The post concludes by noting that, “those of us with access to space-age technology like micropipettes should count our blessings.”

Lastly, pitch-drop experiments have been discussed extensively this past year, but Michael de Podesta of the Protons for Breakfast blog offers some unique thoughts about them. These include how timescales vary with the observer and how “although all the forces are all constant, the response is not. This is like many processes in nature, but it seems an especially apt analogy for climate change”. And polar vortices too.

Written by John Spevacek, who blogs at https://www.rheothing.com/.

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[As mentioned in this post, we’re posting the monthly blogroll column here on the Sceptical Chymist. This is the March 2014 article]