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The (not so) Schön controversy
This title may sound like the one of an episode of the famous geeky sitcom The Big Bang Theory but it is not; it is in fact a far more interesting albeit less fun debate. First of all I want to make clear this post isn’t an attempt to further bash Dr. Schön err I mean Mr. Schön (sorry, I couldn’t help it) but the entire debate raises some interesting questions, specially those regarding the recent outcome of the controversy as well as the forthcoming aftermath, that are worth asking and of course, with some luck, answering.
A little background first: Jan Hendrik Schön (Germany, 1970) got a PhD in physics at the prestigious Konstanz University in his homeland; after that he got a job as a researcher at the even more prestigious Bell Laboratories located in New Jersey USA, where he made groundbreaking discoveries on conductivity, superconductivity, organic conductors and semiconductors. Ironically enough, his conduct was his doom (Sorry again, I couldn’t help this one either. ) Between 2001 and 2002 he published more than 60 scientific papers on these topics, 15 or so of which were published in Science and Nature. Similarities in the graphs led to other scientists to believe the data could have been manipulated which turned out to be the case! Little by little, both journals Science and Nature, as well as other important journals like Physical Review and Applied Physics Letters withdrew some of his papers; others remain under further investigation for their possible withdrawal. Dr. Jan Schön eventually had to come clean and confess his lack of scientific rigor and misbehavior. This and him being fired from Bell Labs could have been the end of the story but in no way was near it. In 2004 the University of Konstanz decided to withdraw his PhD degree to which Dr. Schön appealed on the grounds that his thesis work was performed without any data manipulation or any other sort of ethical misconduct on his part; finally today after seven years of back and forth lawsuits and appeals the state court ruled against him and the university stripped him from his degree. Dr. Schön is now Mr. Schön. Further details (since this post does not intend to be a repository of others nor to just inform you about the entire gossip) can be found in this Wikipedia article.
So what is this post about then? First of all I’d like to address the obvious questions: Was the University of Konstanz right or wrong about withdrawing his degree? Did they go too far? What are the implications for other scientists? There is still controversy among the scientific community about whether or not the University had any right to do it on the grounds of scientific misconduct on work that they did not fund nor had to do anything with. The matter is fairly obvious, the University of Konstanz does not want to be affiliated with Schön on any level since it will indirectly hurt their reputation. But is someone really thinking that this university is to blame? I hardly think so. Therefore on that side they could have let him keep his degree but on the other side one may postulate that credibility must be sustained throughout our careers just in the same way as MD’s can have their licenses revoked under malpractice. Granted, MD’s get stripped only from the right to legally exercise medicine not from their degree, meaning that in some cases they may recover that legal right instead of having to go to school all over again, although in the harshest cases this wouldn’t help either.
Definitely his conduct deserved strong actions from his employers and the scientific community, in the end almost 30 papers in very prestigious journals had to be withdrawn! He was trying to take the scientific community for a spin! And this is another thing I’m baffled about. Didn’t he ever think that such claims, such amazing claims, would attract the interest of a large number of the most prominent scientists working in the field of conductivity? As if there weren’t billions of dollars invested in those topics worldwide! If he was breaking new ground in organic superconductivity by proving some theoretical predictions, he would have gotten a Nobel prize for sure and that would have attracted a lot more people in trying to reproduce his findings in order to make their own little contributions therefrom. In fact this actually happened! Many laboratories throughout the world claimed to have failed in reproducing his results. I can only imagine those teams feeling frustrated for not being able to get the same numbers/trends in their experiments and clearly getting less and less frustrated when they found out they were not alone and that the number of their companions was growing larger. Had he published his results in some obscure, dubious-quality journal probably nobody would have ever found out, but then Lucent Technologies, the profitable company that runs Bell Labs would have not been happy in funding his research. This in turn raises yet other questions: How come nobody at Bell Labs was able to tell his results were all made up or even just tempered with? Private companies are not run as academic labs, publication of findings go through a lengthier process than in academia, which is normal since private research centers invest a lot of money in developing technologies which will generate enough profit to keep the company running and researching for as long as possible. They also have strict policies about data-recording and experiment-tracking procedures which apply to every researcher in the company; they are not subject to interpretation or to desire, they have to be followed to keep track of all the expensive research done within. The second question I got from this paragraph is about other frauds done in lesser journals which may go unnoticed because the work itself simply goes unnoticed by its own lack of merit. And from this, yet another question is raised and linked to another ongoing controversy: What is the future of peer-reviewing in journal publications? Surely no referee would have tried to reproduce his experiments and I’m sure a large number of data was requested by Nature and Science in order to deem the papers worth of being published (was his answer to this request “No problem!“?) Referees this quality were blindsided by reputations, Schön’s and Bell Lab’s; only until the final users (the readers) noticed similarities between data sets, and noise, in different experiments that the fraud rose to the surface, but noticing those similarities should have been the work of the referees! in fact that is their job! Aren’t they accountable by omission too?
This controversy is not a first, nor will it be the last. The most famous controversy of data tempering that comes to mind right now is the infamous experiment, or more accurately the infamous data selection in Robert Millikan’s experiment for measuring the charge of the electron. In this experiment only the “nicest” data points were used and although inclusion of the entire data set would have not affected the final value of the charge obtained, the statistical error would be increased to 2% instead of 0.5% as he presented it to the scientific community; a much “nicer” error. Of course I’m not trying to compare both cases which are completely apart; selecting data is not as serious as data manufacturing, but they are both just as unethical. Should have Millikan been stripped from his PhD degree and/or his Nobel Prize?
Mexico is not immune to this controversies either. In 2006 three papers authored by the famous Mexican Professor Eusebio Juaristi and his student Omar Muñoz-Muñiz in 2003, had to be withdrawn also on the grounds of irreproducibility from the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron Letters. There were serious errors in those papers which led to believe the student had incurred in scientific misconduct but apparently they managed to prove they were simply honest mistakes. Was Muñoz-Muñiz denied his PhD degree? No. In fact he now works as a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. Not a bad gig. I understand he had some problems getting into the National Researchers System which gathers us all researchers in Mexico as an independent entity at the same time that it collects data about the research done in the country. Data seems to be today’s secret word kids! Once again the whole ordeal could have been dealt with if a proper peer reviewing process had been carried out from the very start.
The conclusions: Ethical work, ethical reviews. Is it really that hard?
2011, International Year of Chemistry www.chemistry2011.orgGreen Chemistry and sustainable development
As I recently pointed out in an interview for a webinar titled The Future We Create, (sponsored by the Dow Chemical Co.) I believe we must clearly differentiate the concepts of Green Chemistry and Sustainable chemistry or we take the risk of confusing purpose and procedure; instead, having them both clearly defined we can use their definitions as a working frame in order to solve the ongoing environmental problems our society is facing.
While I consider them both a lifestyle in science, one of the utmost relevance, Green Chemistry is oriented towards the way we perform chemistry in order to achieve a sustainable chemical industry. Chemicals are part of the human revolution, understood as that in which the human race has transformed his own environment and surroundings to an amazing -and yet alarming- extent; so chemicals and their chemistry, are not going anywhere. Perhaps we haven’t performed this revolution in the best possible way; and by that I mean a way in which we could keep on transforming our world and our surrounding environment practically forever without actually damaging but blending with them, incorporating the natural cycle of renewable resources in our own transformations. Sustainability is the way by which a process can endure over a long period of time and it requires a balance between the intake of resources and the outcome of products and byproducts, which ideally should blend back into the environment, or even yet more ideally, help in the coupled equilibrium of the generation of the resources needed in the intake of the same processes that generate them in the first place. It is a matter of balance, but more importantly about cycles; cycles that couple with one another in an economically, socially and chemically productive way. Only with this approach will our current society endure for the generations to come and will gradually encompass a larger number of individuals, minimizing the population whose survival is in danger.
Sustainable chemistry is the philosophical approach, the ethical code if you please, with which the ongoing transformations can still be performed while the damage to the environment, namely our ecosystems, is brought to a minimum in order to maintain our industry and the benefits therefrom for generations to come and spread to a larger scale. But this is not only a mater of environmentalist nature, it is also an economical matter; Sustainable developement has to bring forward those who were already left behind; societies that now in the 21st century are still struggling with famine and disease and furthermore now face an even worse scenario when it comes to water. Also in urban areas sustainability can be the answer to job creations. Companies must increase their profits year after year, no doubt about it, but doing so in a sustainable and socially responsible way can ensure larger growths over larger periods of time while sacrificing the immediate profit for the long-term benefit.
Computational chemistry plays a key role in the paradigm shift towards a sustainable chemical industry. The QSAR approach allows us to analyze the physicochemical properties of a very large number of compounds in less time of what ordinary chemistry would take. Computational chemistry gives the researcher a deeper insight of the electronic effects of any given chemical process through the mathematical modeling and computing of various properties. Computational chemistry based QSAR, alongside with combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening methods are able to do the work of a thousand chemists in less than a year, saving resources, time and also making a larger exploration of the chemical space relevant to the process under study.
Nature has been sustainable on its own with no better example than photosynthesis. Photosynthetic organisms use CO2 as intake and transform H2O during that process into O2 which is expelled as a byproduct which is then inhaled by animal organisms which use it in their metabolism to produce CO2 as a waste product. The fragile equilibrium goes on and on provided other equilibria are kept in balance (physical conditions such as pressure and temperature).
Of course, as Kermit the Frog has previously stated:
But it should be! Right now it ain’t because we haven’t done enough efforts to perform a paradigm shift. in schools, in our jobs; our everyday lives. it will be very expensive yet the cost of negligence will be even higher and paid by the generations to come.
Many things have been written about sustainability; we should all read at least some of them…
Please share your thoughts and practical ideas for a sustainable future within the framework of your own green chemistry paradigm in the comments section.
2011, International Year of Chemistry www.chemistry2011.orgThe Future We Create (Part II, The webinar)
The Future of Sustainable Chemistry
As part of the ongoing events of the International Year of Chemistry, I was interviewed last month for a webinar titled “The Future of Sustainable Chemistry” which in turn is part of a broader series of webinars called “The Future We Create“. These events are sponsored mainly by the DOW Chemical Co. and organized by the 4goodmedia organization as a way to stir up the debate among a broad spectrum of scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians and pretty much anybody willing to pay attention, about important issues of our time. In this webinar, the role of chemistry as part of the solution to the sustainability problem, was explored. Here is my contribution to the event
The official site and full length video (about an hour long, 30 speakers) is available at Future We Create. I strongly recommend the talks of Peter Adler, Paul Alivisatos, Harry Gray and Martyn Poliakoff, which were some of my favorite.
Despite the popular belief, chemistry is not to be feared but to be learned. We can’t get rid of chemicals, every product we use, every service we hire, requires at some point to cross paths with the chemical industry. But the chemical industry needs to address the problems it generates in our environment on the long run and it is there where green and sustainable chemistry come not as a new branch of chemistry but as a way of doing chemistry.
Needless to say chemistry has transformed our world; and it can do it again.
2011, International Year of Chemistry www.chemistry2011.org
The Future of Sustainable Chemistry; The Future We Create (Part I, invitation)
I was recently invited to participate in a series called The Future We Create. This event is the third installment in an ongoing conversation (sponsored by Dow Chemical) to explore how chemistry can collaborate with other sectors and concerned citizens to solve humanity’s most important challenges. The title of this installment is The Future of Sustainable Chemistry which will be aired next Tuesday! An official invitation follows. Thanks and I hope you all tune in (I don’t know if the video will be available on their site after the broadcast).
In 60 minutes, The Future of Sustainable Chemistry will feature 30 experts from leading universities, government organizations, businesses, research institutes, and non-profits.The topics covered in the webinar will include:
· Defining Sustainable Chemistry
· Barriers to Sustainable Solutions
· New Potentials that Could Solve Global Challenges
· Collaborations, Working Across Sectors and BordersThe virtual conference will help participants from around the world gain a greater sense of the central role chemistry plays in all of our lives, as well as the direction it must take to catalyze a sustainable future.
You can register here: http://www.futurewecreate.com
It is sure to be a lively conversation. I hope to see you there!
Thank you all for reading and making this blog a successful one
2011, International Year of Chemistry
www.chemistry2011.org
Fresh new look!
A new look was needed in this site! and some more changes will be made in the next few days. A new page was added with the topics of the courses I’ve taught here at UAEMex, namely QSAR and Molecular Modeling. Another page was added for you all to leave questions which are hard to fit into other places of this blog. The idea behind this page is just to have a more organized site, since sometimes there are questions on odd places such as the About Me page or something like that.
This blog will slowly transform into a site for my incipient research group, however the blog will always be an important part of this site and will continue to be the front page, at least for now.
Have any comments or suggestions? please let me know in the comments section!
Natural Bond Orbitals Deletion analysis (NBODel) in Gaussian03 & Gaussian09
The Natural Bond Orbitals Deletion analysis provides an excellent approach to the assessment of bonding energy within a single molecular fragment or between many. It deletes specific elements of the Fock matrix (this means it sets their values to 0.000) and then re-diagonalizes it in order to find the difference in energy respect to the original matrix. About nine different kinds of deletions are available, which will be briefly summarized in the following section.
One of the main strengths of the NBO derived methods is their almost complete basis set independence, which allows us to obtain comparable numbers under different levels of theory.
Both G03 and G09 use the NBO3.1 program. The 5.0 version is sold separately by their creators, namely prof. Frank Weinhold, who can be contacted through their website. It’s not available for geometry optimizations (gradients), some people insist on trying to get a different geometry by eliminating a certain interaction and that is just not possible directly with the NBODel method It is indeed possible to perform NBODeletions along with optimizations in G09 (Thanks to prof. Weinhold for his clarifying message) but there are some restrictions: molecular coordinates should be in Z-Matrix format and the number of variables to be optimized should not exceed 50; prof. Weinhold also recommends to use print=0 in the $NBO keylist in order to prevent the output files to become too big. Be sure to start with a proper geometry (close to the desired minimum) since given the nature of this analysis some apretiable geometry effects are to be expected.
The general syntax for its usage includes the string pop=NBODel in the route section of the GaussianX input file. Then, at the end of the file, the following is required:
--End of Input File-- --blank line-- $NBO $END $DEL Interactions to be deleted $END
ENTIRE BLOCKS OF ATOMS
In this kind of deletion one is able to delete all the elements between specific groups of atoms, as if their orbitals (and hence their common Fock elements) did not overlap.
--End of Input File-- --blank line-- $NBO $END $DEL ZERO 2 ATOM BLOCKS 2 BY 3 1 2 3 4 5 3 BY 2 3 4 5 1 2 $END --blank line--
The first line after $DEL indicates how many groups of atoms will be set to zero and the following lines indicate how many atoms belong to each group (i.e. the size of each block which in this case are 2 and 3, respectively). After this line the groups of atoms are listed, in this example all elements from atoms 1 and 2 with those of atoms 3, 4 and 5 will become zero. The next three lines are used for symmetry, so all the interactions from (1,2)->(3,4,5) are deleted along with (3,4,5)->(1,2)
DELETIONS BETWEEN ENTIRE MOLECULAR FRAGMENTS (Intermolecular deletions)
If we want to assess the interaction energy between two molecules, the previous method would consume a lot of time in declaring the size of each block with every atom of each molecule in it, plus there seems to be a limit to the size of the block. In this kind of deletion one is able to delete all the elements between two or more molecular fragments.
--End of Input File-- --blank line-- $NBO $END $DEL ZERO 2 DELOC FROM 1 TO 2 FROM 2 TO 1 $END --blank line--
The delocalizations can also be calculated only in one direction (FROM 1 to 2), in the case above both interactions 1->2 and 2->1 have been deleted. The input for a trimer in which all three fragments interacted with each other would look like this:
ZERO 6 DELOC FROM 1 TO 2 FROM 2 TO 1 FROM 2 TO 3 FROM 3 TO 2 FROM 1 TO 3 FROM 3 TO 1
In short, the number of bilateral delocalizations to be deleted is equal to twice the number of edges in a graph depicting the intermolecular interactions (A post on topology in chemistry is now due).
Reading the output file
Almost at the very end of the output file the following section can be found:
>>>>>>>>>> Convergence criterion not met.
SCF Done: E(RHF) = -4728.57245403 A.U. after 2 cycles
Convg = 0.2354D-03 -V/T = 2.0012
——————————————————————————
Energy of deletion : -4728.572454034
Total SCF energy : -4728.604640956
——————-
Energy change : 0.032187 a.u., 20.198 kcal/mol
——————————————————————————
The warning about the convergence can be disregarded without any concern about the accuracy of the outcome and it will show in every $DEL calculation. The SCF energy displayed in the second line is the energy corresponding to the modified Fock Matrix, which is the same as the one labeled as Energy of deletion. The Total SCF energy corresponds to the original Fock Matrix; the difference between them is labeled as Energy change and the value is reported in both atomic units as well as kcal/mol.
Some common errors and possible solutions
–> Sometimes you get the following error message at the beginning of the calculation making it crash:
************************************************
** ERROR IN INITNF. NUMBER OF VARIABLES ( 57) **
** INCORRECT (SHOULD BE BETWEEN 1 AND 50) **
************************************************
I have found that changing the molecule specification section from Z-matrix to Cartesian coordinates, or vice versa, overcomes this difficulty. Also, if the Opt keyword appears in the route section the previous message will be shown. Opt is not available under the NBODel method (read the first paragraph for the proper correction).
–> Possible conflicts between NBODel and the usage of DFT methods:
In some revisions of Gaussian 03 there is a conflict when using NBODel and DFT methods. The IOp(5/48=10000) should be included to repair such conflict. This issue was solved in some revision of Gaussian 03 but I don’t know which, so try this if you have problems. Gaussian09 has taken care of the issue although still the usage of DFT to obtain NBODel calculations is not advised.
–> The following error is not self-explanatory:
NtrOpn-Old failed
Error termination via Lnk1e in ‘/../../path’
This particular error arises from the absence of the ‘$NBO $END’ line before the $DEL instruction. The previous line may or may not include additional keywords. If you are interested in computing some kind of deletion energy just leave the line as presented above in all previous examples. My guess is that the $DEL instruction does not calculate the corresponding NBO’s from which to make the deletion but it rather takes all the results from the $NBO instruction and works from there. Bottom line: don’t forget this line!
As with other posts tagged as ‘white papers’, this one will be updated and expanded every time new information is found. In the mean time, thanks to everyone for reading, commenting and rating, this keeps me going with the blog. Have you encountered problems with NBODel methods? share your experiences and solutions with the rest in the comments section.
Have a nice day!
Supramolecular Chemistry to celebrate a Supra-collaboration
For over twenty years, there has been an ongoing scientific collaboration between the Institute of Chemistry of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of the Babes-Bolyai University located in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It all began back in the early nineteen nineties when Professor Lara, then director of Instituto de Química, extended an invitation to Professor Ionel Haiduc, who at the time served as Vice President of the Romanian Academy, to spend a few months in Mexico for a research stay. Later on prof. Dr. Ioan Silaghi-Dumitrescu and his wife paid a couple of visits to our institution also during the nineties; their last visit together occurred in 2002 when prof. Ioan Silaghi-Dumitrescu was asked to teach a small course on molecular modelling. It was during this visit that I came to know about the Babes-Bolyai University and more importantly, it was when I met both Prof. Ioan Silaghi and his wife Prof. Luminita Silaghi, an acquaintance that shaped many aspects of my life in the years to come. Other Romanian guests came to work at IQUNAM, such as Dr. Ion Grosu, who worked as a postdoc with Prof. Roberto Martínez in the Organic Synthesis department. Prof. Cristian Silvestru also collaborated with the group of Dr. Raymundo Cea-Olivares in the field of Main Group Metal Chemistry. Prof. Raymundo Cea-Olivares has been to Cluj-Napoca a couple of times visiting the lab of the late Prof. Silaghi. I went for a research stay during my Ph. D. in 2005 and then went back to occupy a postdoctoral position in late 2008 which lasted until 2010; I also participated in the MolMod seminar in 2007 while working at a private research center, then thinking I wouldn’t go back to academia. Dr. Liviu Bolundut, a then Ph. D. student of Prof. Haiduc’s, came to work with Dr. Monica Moya also in the field of Main Group Metal Chemistry. The interaction between our two institutions has a sound history.
As part of the celebrations of this year, the International Year of Chemistry, I issued an invitation to Prof. Ionel Haiduc and Prof. Luminita Silaghi-Dumitrescu, to give a couple of lectures at IQUNAM about their current research. Fortunately, they accepted and found the time in their tight schedules to come. We were also fortunate enough to get the official approval by the corresponding committee at UNESCO of making these conferences part of the official celebrations of IYC 2011 (In fact, they were the ones who came up with the name of the event which is the name of this post as well.) The scope of this visit also included to encourage our scientific community to keep the collaborations alive with UBB. We had these conferences twice, first at CCIQS here in Toluca and also at the original facilities of IQUNAM on the main University campus in Mexico City. Both events were successful in attracting a large number of researchers but more remarkably a large number of young students who have read about their work and are aware of their reputation on their respective fields; the following picture of our guests with young students of UAEMex, serves as proof.
But I get ahead of myself, for in fact we did more than just having lectures and showing them our new facilities. During the course of their stay,which lasted a bit more than a week, Professor Cea-Olivares and I took them around to do some tourism. During their first weekend I took them to the Folkloric Ballet at the Fine Arts Palace and to the Anthropology Museum, both in Mexico City. We also went together to the Aztec ruins of the city center and the larger archaeological site of Teotihuacan, where Mrs. Iovanca Haiduc even got to climb the Sun’s Pyramid, a challenge to which I decided to pass this time. Prof. Cea-Olivares took them outside Mexico City into Cuernavaca and Taxco, the latter being an old silver mining town famous for its jewelry stores filled with Ag merchandise. We all had a great time traveling around, chatting and in general enjoying each others company.
At the Anthropology Museum with the Aztec Calendar
At Teotihuacan
But now back to science. Prof. Haiduc’s lecture was titled “News in Supramolecular Chemistry”, in it he talked about the basics of supramolecular chemistry as the branch of chemistry that deals with the non-covalently bonded chemical species; the chemistry of secondary interactions as defined by Allcock in 1972. A survey of the existing x-ray structures database was performed by Prof. Haiduc along with his colleague Prof. Julio Zukerman-Schpector in Brasil, in order to find some previously overlooked patterns in intermolecular arrays containing Te (II) or Te (IV) along with aromatic groups, revealed that the Te – Ar interactions through the Π electrons cloud are found more often than previously believed. The most remarkable feature of this array is the fact that the electron density in the formation of such interactions stems from the Te atom (through the stereochemically active lone pair) and into the LUMO of the aromatic moiety in the second molecule. This represents a fascinating coordination mode for Te organometallic compounds!
Prof. Luminita Silaghi-Dumitrescu talked about her research on heterotopic As ligands, some of which exhibit remarkable new coordination patterns stabilizing dinuclear complexes with late transition metals. I felt nostalgic reading the names of old friends and colleagues who collaborated in the work described.
Prof. Haiduc (who is currently President of the Romanian Academy) shared many anecdotes about his times as a PhD student at the Lomonosov Institute back in the Soviet Union under the supervision of Prof. Andrianov. From these anecdotes it is possible to extract the feeling of doing science during the Cold War period since he had to be weary of espionage, which by the way went both ways! He talked about secret research facilities and scooped papers. One could easily think that basic chemistry research would be far from the interest of high political powers who could find aeronautical research more interesting! A developed country is able to acknowledge the value of science in preserving a strategic position in the world. His old advisor, Prof. Andrianov, was considered a hero by the Soviet Party among other things for his work on Silicon based polymers which were used as lubricants in heavy machinery and vehicles during War War II. German tanks used regular carbon based oil which in the Russian winter became extremely viscous, practically became gels! while Silicon based oil could almost preserve its original viscosity at very cold temperatures.
In summary it was a great opportunity to learn from great chemists whose scientific reputations could easily overwhelm any scientist worth his salt! But it was above all things a great opportunity to meet once again dear friends from a dear country I once got to call home.
2011 – International Year of Chemistry
“Chemistry – Our life, our future”
Instituto de Química de la UNAM. 70th Anniversary
The Institute of Chemistry of the National Autonomous University of Mexico becomes 70 years old this month, and to kickoff the year round celebrations our institution has organized a series of lectures with the notable presence of Nobel Laureate, and former student of this institute, prof. Dr. Mario Molina whose presence has become ubiquitous within the Mexican scientific community events given his status. His presence is also relevant under the scope of the new branch of Instituto de Química, which is the Joint Center for Research in Sustainable Chemistry from which I write these lines. I have many fond memories of the time I spent there as a grad student; I specially miss the beautiful area on campus on which it’s located next to the buildings of other science institutes.
The lectures to be given are the following, click on them to download a small abstract from each:
Prof. Christer B. Aakeröy (Kansas State University)
“Supramolecular chemistry of co-crystals: From molecular dating to improved pharmaceuticals”
Prof. Wilhelm Boland (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology)
“Sequestration of plant-derived glycosides by leaf beetles: a model system for evolution and adaptation of chemical defenses”
Prof. Rathnam Chaguturu (University of Kansas)
“Strategies for Uncorking the Drug Discovery Bottleneck: A Latin American Perspective”
References
Prof. A. M. Echavarren Pablos (Institut Català d’Investigació Química)
“New Gold-Catalyzed Reactions of Enynes and Beyond”
Prof. Bern Kohler (Montana State University)
“Four billion years of fun in the sun: How ultrafast events protect DNA from deadly UV rays”
Hopefully this time I will get to do a follow up (I still owe a follow up on last December’s symposium on Green Chemistry here at CCIQS)
And now gather ’round for some history!
The Institute of Chemistry (Instituto de Química) was founded on April 5th 1941 with the mission of organizing the -then small- existent chemistry community in Mexico. Since three years before that, former President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated oil wells and refineries from foreign companies, there was a strong need for more specialized human resources in the different areas of chemistry who could develop our incipient petrochemical industry. Thus, one of the first tasks of Instituto de Química was to develop a method which could provide all tetraethyllead (IV), an organomettallic compound which was used as an antiknock additive in gasolines, way before it was banned for being highly toxic.
Tetraethyllead - now toxic, this was an important component in gasoline as well as in other fuels
One of the major historical contributions of Instituto de Química was the work of Dr. Luis Miramontes (1925 – 2005), who worked in the development of the synthesis of progestin, a synthetic hormone which was used in the first oral contraceptive*; an amazing achievement for a 26 year old doctor! Along with Dr. Miramontes, Dr. George (now named Jorge, although née György in Hungarian) Rosenkranz, from the pharmaceutical company Syntex and Dr. Carl Djerassi, who is called the father of the pill, this enormous scientific but specially social groundbreaking achievement was accomplished. It has long being argued that a Nobel Prize should have been awarded to this international trio of chemists, but nevertheless worldwide recognition is due.
Dr. Luis Miramontes ca. 1951
*Miramontes L; Rosenkranz G; Djerassi C. 1951 Journal Of The American Chemical Society 73 (7): 3540-3541 Steroids .22. The Synthesis Of 19-Nor-Progesterone
Many are the achievements of Instituto de Química on many different branches of science; from synthetic organic chemistry to natural products research. The institute has hold six Professors Emeritus so far and continues to be one of the leading chemistry research facilities not only in Mexico and Latin America but in the world. Keeping track of our history helps us maintain our identity as scientists as well as to preserve our cultural heritage, all which in turn allows us to find paths into the future so we may keep on doing the inspirational science our country, and the world, needs. Many are also the issues on which we have to work in order to keep it competitive and to bring it back to the cutting edge of science. The research staff of the institute is highly committed to achieve so in the next few years by developing both relevant scientific knowledge and human resources who can make further contributions to the advancement of chemistry, and science in general, whithin our country.
This year is a year of chemical celebrations: From the International Year of Chemistry (IYC 2011) to the 7oth anniversary of Instituto de Química, as well as the 95th anniversary of the Chemistry School also at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. So ¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Instituto de Química!
Thanks for reading, rating and commenting!
Main entrance of the institute and current staff (well, most of it anyway)
2011, International Year of Chemistry
Calixarenes design – Prezi
Last week I had a presentation at the Chemistry Institute in which I talked about the research I’ve been doing during the last year. Here I insert a link to my prezi presentation in which I make an outline of the project’s scope and goals, so not many results available yet.
Unfortunately wordpress.com doesn’t allow embedding of flash files so here is the link to my presentation (in Spanish, sorry) directly to the prezi website.
(Screenshot only)
I’ve been using Prezi lately (at www.prezi.com) and although I still can’t say I got the hang of it, I like the way this presentations flow way better than Powerpoint slides. With prezi you make a single slide in which all the information is contained and then you zoom back and forth (or just forth) through the topics you want to review. The presentation is created online, making it available for public/private use or online viewing; it may also be saved as a flash file which allows you to play it in almost any computer. If you know your way around mental maps, prezi is definitely for you!
Well, here is hoping to be hired once again by Instituto de Química at UNAM after this presentation.
“The Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman (ca. 1900)
Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
-Walt Whitman-
Science and awe go hand in hand. The more we learn; the more we know, the more in awe we grow. To learn is to discover, and to discover is to be reborn; for the fact of stumbling upon something new refreshes our capacity of being surprised and amazed like when we were little kids. This year is the International Year of Chemistry, so it is a perfect time for telling people who are not scientists to regard science as the human activity of the “awe”. Nowadays, and in some regards, it requires to be a “learn’d scientist” in order to be awed by a new discovery, but every single living scientist on the planet today was once awed, whether by nature or by a passionate teacher in a classroom. So let us remember what it was like to be awed and lets all look at nature with youthful eyes willing to unravel its secrets instead of taking them for granted.
In order to be a learned astronomer one must first gaze at the stars in awe and wonder…
2011, International Year of Chemistry
