Removing triphenylphosphine oxide

I have had this silly problem in trying to get rid of triphenylphosphine oxide from my reaction mixture.  It’s stuck with my final product and can be a pain.  Some tricks I’ve seen are the use of dissolving mixture (O=PPh3 and product) in ether and run through short pad of silica.  This would be great if my product weren’t so polar – instead my product does not elute with ether.  Another trick was from this Lipshutz paper in 2003 where they used Merrifield resin to scavenge the phosphine.

 

OL paper

Anyone having issues with Scifinder? TRY CAS STRUCTURE EDITOR

Scifinder is a great tool for looking up literature precedence for reactions.  The frustrating part is when I get that message:  ”A Java plug-in is required for structure drawing. Refer to the Help.”

In my head I am already saying “I just downloaded that last week!!!”

Apparently there is a new CAS structure editor program you can download – it is pretty much the same thing that comes up in the web based Scifinder version.  The annoying part is that you have to open this program separately from Scifinder and save the file then put the file on the Reaction Structure search option in Scifinder (only .cxf file is supported).

CAS structure editor download link

 

 

***Recently, it has come to my attention from a good friend that you can just click on the apple symbol if you use safari and the second option down it says, “Software Update…” and this will enable the CAS structure editor on the web-based Scifinder version.

Good presentations

Here’s an editorial on the importance of presentations.

Francis Collins interview

I didn’t know that the unemployment is ~2% for biomedical PhDs.

Nature Q&As

You can pick your nose but you can’t pick your PI’s nose

“Mutual respect, good communication, and shared expectations” – those are all good things in an advisor.

 

ASBMB note

Reviews are usually highly cited

Here’s an interesting article suggesting that reviews are the majority of the articles that are highly cited and not original research papers and most of these original research papers are funded by NIH.

 

Nature article

A side note…

the title of the article is:

NIH funding: It does support innovators

in my mind I read:

NIH funding: It does support invaders

Graduate education in chemistry

Here’s an interesting C&E N article on improving chemistry graduate education. The main conclusion was that the graduate programs need to be better at helping the PhD graduates find jobs after graduation.

Mentoring style

Here’s something from Nature on the different styles of mentoring out there.

Importance of basic science

There is a growing popularity of interdisciplinary research funding, and it seems that many people are forgetting the basic science because basic science seems to be getting less and less money. I would like to point out in Larry Overman’s interview, he talked about how MRI and atmospheric ozone depletion were discovered from basic science and not from interdisciplinary research. So even though many people are trying to become interdisciplinary scientists because that is the trend right now – let’s not forget the importance of knowing one subject really well and being able to contribute to the benefit of society that way one day.

Overman’s interview

The academic chemistry tree

I thought this site was interesting for people who were wondering what their academic chemistry tree is – it is not complete but I guess over time more people will notice and add the info.

 

chemistry tree link