There and Back Again

[cekivi]

So, some people were wondering where I disappeared to in the last two or so months. In short, @mystifeid, @Timber Wolf, @Ruruwawa, and @alone sniper  lots of work and a fun vacation! 

My thesis was due to my external examiner on June 30th so June was a lot of writing. Then I had to take care of some family business before fleeing to Alberta for a well earned vacation. Hiking in the mountains is great! Then I came back to Ontario to prepare for and defend my thesis. On the bright side, I'm a "Dr." now  

And to answer your question @mystifeid while I can do organic chemistry my PhD work concerned the synthesis and applications of inorganic materials known as "metal-organic frameworks". They are basically exactly what the name implies: frameworks (so 3D structures) made from metals and organic bits  

[Timber Wolf]

Sounds like you've been very busy, Dr. @cekivi!  It's nice to have you back.

[Lrrr Ruler of OP8]

Wow sounds fun, welcome back! 

[Patrick Carlson]

Welcome back Dr. cekivi! Congrats! 

[Scyzara]

Happy to have you back, Dr. Cekivi! And big congratulations! 

[JAFO]

Congratualations, Dr Cekivi!

[Thrasador]

6 hours ago, cekivi said:

So, some people were wondering where I disappeared to in the last two or so months. In short, @mystifeid, @Timber Wolf, @Ruruwawa, and @alone sniper  lots of work and a fun vacation! 

My thesis was due to my external examiner on June 30th so June was a lot of writing. Then I had to take care of some family business before fleeing to Alberta for a well earned vacation. Hiking in the mountains is great! Then I came back to Ontario to prepare for and defend my thesis. On the bright side, I'm a "Dr." now  

And to answer your question @mystifeid while I can do organic chemistry my PhD work concerned the synthesis and applications of inorganic materials known as "metal-organic frameworks". They are basically exactly what the name implies: frameworks (so 3D structures) made from metals and organic bits  

Like these MOFs in this bad-assed invention that in the future may solve the fresh water crisis in developing countries?

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/new-solar-powered-device-can-pull-water-straight-desert-air

[cekivi]

Those are the ones @Thrasador

Sadly, mine MOFs are not quite as useful but it is still a fascinating topic to research!  

[alone sniper]

Wow. 
Looks like you was busy for a while.
Welcome back Dr Cekivi !

[Thrasador]

I too am a scientist, and have always loved science in general. That's why I tend to stay on top of cool scientific inventions like that one....even though I hated organic chem, and MOFs are not my field of study. Clearly they are pretty cool though! You should just explain that article when people ask what you do....they would be like...."Ooohhh that's cool!"

It's probably fun to be called "doctor" now Dr. Cekivi!

[deathbydanish]

16 hours ago, Thrasador said:

Like these MOFs in this bad-assed invention that in the future may solve the fresh water crisis in developing countries?

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/new-solar-powered-device-can-pull-water-straight-desert-air

Maybe as a further evolution I can envision something like that being the basis for a bit of small scale terraforming in drought prone areas. I can tell you its not all that fun to deal with constant low humidity and the threat of heat stroke especially now during the summer season.

[Fuarian]

So have you been in the loop of the game or?

[SnowWalker]

Congrats Dr Cekivi.

[cekivi]

15 hours ago, Thrasador said:

I too am a scientist, and have always loved science in general. That's why I tend to stay on top of cool scientific inventions like that one....even though I hated organic chem, and MOFs are not my field of study. Clearly they are pretty cool though! You should just explain that article when people ask what you do....they would be like...."Ooohhh that's cool!"

It's probably fun to be called "doctor" now Dr. Cekivi!

It is an excellent example. I usually default to explaining my own work but the water collecting MOF would be a super cool alternative

What's science do you do? Also, it'll take some getting used to being called "Dr."  

[cekivi]

7 hours ago, deathbydanish said:

Maybe as a further evolution I can envision something like that being the basis for a bit of small scale terraforming in drought prone areas. I can tell you its not all that fun to deal with constant low humidity and the threat of heat stroke especially now during the summer season.

Whether the MOF would be effective for irrigation would be an open question. You'd still be very limited in what plants could survive with such a low daily water output (recall, you only get a few litres per day). The true utility of the material would be its ability to provide safe, potable water in drought prone areas without requiring any major infrastructure changes. 

[Thrasador]

7 minutes ago, cekivi said:

It is an excellent example. I usually default to explaining my own work but the water collecting MOF would be a super cool alternative

What's science do you do? Also, it'll take some getting used to being called "Dr."  

Since I have always barely understood math, I went for the least math intensive science....and I still struggled in Quantative Chemical Analysis. No, not Biologist....that's too low, may as well become an English teacher, if you are a "Biologist." I went with Biochemist because of our technology being mostly pharmaceutical drugs and stuff involving DNA. I figured that would be a useful skill set....

Yeah  that invention they way it is set up now....each person could have their own and get enough water to survive....

[cekivi]

5 hours ago, Fuarian said:

So have you been in the loop of the game or?

I've been keeping track of developments but I haven't been able to sit down to play the game since the last pre-wintermute update. So about 2 months or so. I did get to play vicariously by watching my girlfriend play  

[cekivi]

Just now, Thrasador said:

Since I have always barely understood math, I went for the least math intensive science....and I still struggled in Quantative Chemical Analysis. No, not Biologist....that's too low, may as well become an English teacher, if you are a "Biologist"." I went with Biochemist because of our technology being mostly pharmaceutical drugs and stuff involving DNA. I figured that would be a useful skill set....

Incidentally, biology and biochem in particular were my least favourite undergraduate courses due to all of the memorization! My memory is like Swiss cheese sometimes! So, after 1st year, I switched into chemistry since it was the subject I enjoyed the most (I was originally in biomedical science), it involved the least memorization, and the most practical skills. What can I say? I like making things in the lab and chemistry is more forgiving than trying to keep something alive  

[Thrasador]

4 minutes ago, cekivi said:

Incidentally, biology and biochem in particular were my least favourite undergraduate courses due to all of the memorization! My memory is like Swiss cheese sometimes! So, after 1st year, I switched into chemistry since it was the subject I enjoyed the most (I was originally in biomedical science), it involved the least memorization, and the most practical skills. What can I say? I like making things in the lab and chemistry is more forgiving than trying to keep something alive  

Scientifically we have total opposite science brains. I am "Good Will Hunting" incredible at memorizing scientific information, but I am "Forest Gump" when it comes to applying math to my science. I am basically a data sponge. Biologist is just not a very marketable degree....unless you are a hippy and want to study some new "gnat" you discovered in the woods for six months (I am not/do not).

[cekivi]

1 hour ago, Thrasador said:

Scientifically we have total opposite science brains. I am "Good Will Hunting" incredible at memorizing scientific information, but I am "Forest Gump" when it comes to applying math to my science. I am basically a data sponge. Biologist is just not a very marketable degree....unless you are a hippy and want to study some new "gnat" you discovered in the woods for six months (I am not/do not).

Now that is a sentiment I can agree with! I had a friend who did a MSc in biology. He spent 18 months studying worms... 

Sure, my chemistry may not work 95% of the time but once it works it always works! No need to worry about keeping something alive long enough to study it. It's even worse when you're studying something with a short lifespan. You have to be in the lab at exactly the right time to measure/harvest what you're interested in otherwise you miss your chance. Then again, @Scyzara's a biologist so to each their own  

[cekivi]

The nice thing with chemistry is there is only as much math as you're interested in doing. On one extreme there's chemical physics and theoreticians who essentially only do math and on the other there's me who doesn't need to do anything more complex than some algebra and multiplication to make sure my reagents are in the correct ratios

[Thrasador]

13 minutes ago, cekivi said:

The nice thing with chemistry is there is only as much math as you're interested in doing. On one extreme there's chemical physics and theoreticians who essentially only do math and on the other there's me who doesn't need to do anything more complex than some algebra and multiplication to make sure my reagents are in the correct ratios

Yeah...screw that advanced math. I got a B in "Calculus for Life Sciences." I don't know HOW I got a B, and I still can't do calculus...so, yeah...

I would have failed pChem or Inorganic Chem. I took as little math as humanly possible, and took mostly conceptual science classes that had little to no math, and were mostly memorization, as I was fully aware of my strengths and weaknesses by that time in my schooling....

My advanced classes that I could pick my last two years were things like Virology, Biochemistry of Cancer, Genetics of Eukaryotic Microbes, Molecular Genetics, and Immunology.....

Those were pretty much all memorize a bunch of crap, and vomit it on the test....my speciality!

[Scyzara]

26 minutes ago, cekivi said:

 Then again, @Scyzara's a biologist so to each their own  

*pulls both off their high horses and puts them on donkeys*

 Pff.. what you're describing about hippies collecting gnats in the forest is not even remotely what average biologists are doing. It makes as much sense as saying  'Chemists are odd white-haired guys developing explosives who are only happy if something in their lab blows up at least once a week'. 

You two (at least @Thrasador) seem to be pretty unaware what biologists are actually doing. Less than 2% of all biologists are working in the field of ecology (where they may really run around outdoors and collect whatever organisms in a small portion of their time). The remaining 98% are working in the lab, either doing basic molecular biology research (e.g. regarding transduction cascades, metabolism, chronobiology, epi-genetics, etc.) or they're working somewhere in the biomedical field, researching the molecular basis of cancer development, autoimmune diseases, pathogenic infections and whatever other disease you can imagine.

I for one e.g. made two B.Sc.s (General Biology & MolecularBiology) and then specialized in virus immunology (t cell reactions in chronic viral infections) during my M.Sc. in Biomedicine. And now I'm using this background knowledge to manipulate blood brain barrier endothelial cells (lentivirally-delivered Crispr/Cas9  plasmids to knock out different S1P receptors ) for an in vitro model of the blood brain barrier. Which is relevant e.g. for the development of multiple sclerosis, stroke or Alzheimer's Disease. Not exactly collecting gnats. 

That being said, I'm working together with people from whatever background you can imagine (medical doctors, pharmacologists, biochemists, biologists, informaticians and technicians who don't even have academic degrees at all) and it certainly taught me how much it's worth to utilize each other's strengths instead of looking down upon each other.  I may not know as much about drug kinetics as our pharmacologists, but while they might help me in this field, I can e.g. help them with the genetic backgrounds of their mice or blood FACS analysis. And our technician is able to pipet qPCR plates both faster and more accurate than both of us.

In the end, it's not about the name of your degree, but about what you're capable of doing. And the different fields of science with their different specializations all contribute one way or another, at least in my field of work.

[JAFO]

1 minute ago, Scyzara said:

*pulls both off their high horses and puts them on donkeys*

[JAFO]

<off-topic mode>

3 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

'Chemists are odd white-haired guys developing explosives who are only happy if something in their lab blows up at least once a week'. 

Have you ever read Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark? It's entertaining, informative, and at times utterly hilarious. Highly recommended.

</off-topic mode>