/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2008-08-25T07:19:55-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/25/how_not_to_do_it_water_aspirators.php You need access to vacuum if you’re going to work at the bench in chemistry. In fact, you need more than one kind. Reasonably hard vacuum (well, by our standards, which is laughable by the standards of the physicists) is... 73513@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How Not to Do It 2008-08-25T07:19:55-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/12/19/scrape_off_some_attitude.php There is a pecking order in chemistry. That’s because there’s one everywhere. If it’s a human endeavor, staffed by humans, you’re going to have hierarchies, real and perceived - who you did a post-doc with, what huge company you're a... 72958@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-12-19T06:56:37-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/11/20/and_it_goes_like_this.php I had a hard drive failure the other day, which naturally got me to thinking about backing up data, and about the times I’ve been more paranoid about it. I wrote my PhD dissertation back in those far-off days (1988)... 72880@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-11-20T09:13:08-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/10/25/looking_backwards.php A colleague reminded me the other day of a project that he and I had worked on back at the Wonder Drug Factory seven years ago. "Seven years ago", I thought. . .I was the project leader on that one,... 72807@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-10-25T21:03:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/10/18/understanding_dawns.php My graduate school lab, like most of them, had an assortment of people from different countries. That kept things at all sorts of hours, since we’d get the occasional Japanese post-doc who never really seemed to get off JST and... 72788@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-10-18T21:36:06-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/08/26/cheer_up.php This is the first post from the new Blogging Room of Stately Lowe Manor here in Massachusetts. The internet is hooked up, the lights are on, and I'm surrounded by boxes no matter where I turn. I had a few... 72644@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-08-26T20:59:45-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/08/23/_jobs_that_dont_exist.php The FASEB folks have collected a large amount of data on training and employment in the life sciences (start here), and see the discussions over here at the AAAS). Many of the conclusions are not going to surprise people, but... 72622@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How To Get a Pharma Job 2007-08-23T07:25:27-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/08/13/pilferage.php One of the comments to my brief post earlier today brought back some memories. Back in graduate school, we were a comparatively well-off group. That is, we graduate students lived off grant money after our first year - no more... 72595@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-08-13T20:26:18-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/04/17/the_doctorate_and_its_discontents.php The doctorate-or-not discussion is roaring along in the comments to the last post, and they're well worth reading. I have a few more thoughts on the subject myself, but I'm going to turn off comments to this post and ask... 72223@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-04-17T11:15:17-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/04/15/doctorate_or_not.php There's been a lively discussion in the comments thread to this post about the differences between hiring PhD and associate-level chemists. Anyone who's interested in the topic should have a look, because there are a number of issues in play:... 72217@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Life in the Drug Labs 2007-04-15T20:26:53-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/03/07/fish_nor_fowl.php The grad-school advice topic from the other day got me to thinking about another issue in that line. Everyone knows about how hot all the mixed chemistry-biology stuff is (and has been). Chemical biology, biological chemistry - call it what... 72105@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ How To Get a Pharma Job 2007-03-07T22:55:54-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/03/06/decisions_decisions.php I've had an e-mail from someone going off to grad school in chemistry. He wants to eventually do drug discovery work, and is wondering which way to go: I have it narrowed down to two departments. One is a large,... 72097@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-03-06T10:28:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2007/02/08/depraved_and_deprived.php Here's another one of those topics that is a bigger concern in academic labs than in industrial ones: stealing supplies from each other. The difference is easy to understand, and can be summed up (as a terrifying number of things... 71987@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2007-02-08T21:56:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/10/19/levoglucosan.php Three days before: go to the local supermarket and ask to buy a case of corn starch. Ignore the puzzled looks, which come your way since you don't look like you own a Chinese restaurant. Pay for the stuff out... 67672@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2006-10-19T19:26:52-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/10/15/german_anyone.php Back when I was a first-year graduate student, I had to do something that I'm not sure that folks today have to worry about: pass a German test. Mind you, it wasn't much of a test - you got a... 67360@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Graduate School 2006-10-15T21:27:45-05:00