Time off for menstruation is a good idea. Period. | Careers | Chemistry World. Really!

I want time off for balding and shaving!

This is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry! What a woke society!

Time off for menstruation is a good idea. Period. | Careers | Chemistry World "Menstrual leave can improve working conditions for all employees"

The Royal Society of Chemistry is tainted by DEI/racism ideology too!

Or why does the RSC spell black American with a capital B? Appalling!

"The analytical chemist on growing up Black in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s and his journey through NIST, academia and the AAAS presidency ..."

Chemistry World Daily Newsletter

In situ with Willie May "The analytical chemist on growing up Black in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s and his journey through NIST, academia and the AAAS presidency"

Royal Society of Chemistry: Why pharma companies are rushing to flatter Trump by abandoning DEI policies. Really!

What a laughable article by the Royal Society!

As if DEI policies were not extremely whimsical!

"... On the surface, these firms have no obligation to conform to Trump’s political whims. GSK is a UK-based company, and even though Pfizer has its headquarters in the US, it is a corporation, not a federal agency. ..."

Why companies are rushing to flatter Trump | Opinion | Chemistry World "Pharma firms are among many pausing diversity programmes and promising domestic investment"

The Royal Society of Chemistry is a hard leftist outfit

Did you know? 

Nice try to confuse general government spending cuts with cuts to chemistry!

"The situation facing chemists and other researchers in Argentina is continuing to worsen under the country’s hard right President Javier Milei, who assumed the country’s helm in December. The sharp cuts to higher education, science budgets and professors’ salaries persist, despite an estimated 1000 academics taking to the streets on 2 October to protest. ..."

Chemistry World Daily Newsletter

Argentina’s researchers face continued catastrophe under Javier Milei "The president of Argentina, who has been in office less than a year, has continued cuts to higher education and science budgets"

Humphry Davy’s notebooks reveal love of nitrous oxide, poetry, as well as a darker side. Really!

It is a sign of our time to make every effort to drag famous white individuals into the mud of racism. Here is another case perpetrated by the Royal Society of Chemistry!

This obsession with certain kinds of racism is disgusting! Some of the statements in this article are quite absurd! This article makes also an appalling attempt to associate or link Davy in some fashion with contemptible practices/experiments by other chemists of his time.

How shocking! Davy remained quiet on the question of ending the slave trade! Davy supposedly believed Africans are incapable of self improvement (was this not a very common prejudice of the time?).

"... The Davy Notebook Project began back in March 2019, when a pilot project recruited volunteers via the citizen science platform Zooniverse to transcribe five of Davy’s notebooks. ...

A darker side to Davy ...

Davy and race

Beyond the suggestions of Davy’s egotism and ill-temper, the notebooks project is also raising much more serious questions about Davy’s legacy. ... to look at Davy and his attitudes to race. ...

some of the volunteers uncovered ‘derogatory language’ relating to Black Africans in a notebook that Davy used as a teenager. ... – he talks about them as being “almost incapable of improvement ”.’ ...
Her research has shone a spotlight on the fact that a significant portion of Davy’s wife’s fortune came from the slave trade. She notes that while many of Davy’s contemporaries were beginning to call for the abolition of the slave trade – a major political concern of the era – Davy himself is ‘almost totally silent’ on the issue. ... some of Davy’s close peers are known to have carried out horrendous experiments on the causes of skin colour that involved bleaching and burning the skin of Black people. While there is no evidence that Davy himself was involved in such experiments, he was perceived at the time as an expert on skin pigmentation and his views were sought by other researchers whose own work would be deemed wholly unethical today. ..."

Davy notebook project paints complicated picture of influential chemist | News | Chemistry World

Playing with plastic toy building bricks creates microplastic and nanoplastic pollution. Really!

Scaremongering by headline practiced by the Royal Society of Chemistry! That is really scary!

Plastophobia is a serious disorder! Please seek immediate medical help!

In the future will we make children toys from e.g. Bamboo? How much Bamboo would need to be planted etc. etc.

"It’s one of the most popular and creative toys around, but playing with plastic building bricks could create something much less desirable in households and childcare settings: large amounts of micro- and nanoplastic particles. While it remains unknown whether such plastic particles pose any risk to health, the findings add yet another source of emerging indoor pollutants and the researchers recommend caution to avoid inhaling or swallowing them. ..."

Playing with plastic toy building bricks creates microplastic and nanoplastic pollution | Research | Chemistry World

Royal Society of Chemistry: Affirming identity in chemistry classrooms. Really!

What! Even the Royal Society promotes this propaganda and demagoguery! Disturbing!

Affirming identity in chemistry classrooms | Opinion | Chemistry World Showing students that science can be inclusive

Royal Society of Chemistry: Researchers in Brazil welcome Lula’s return to power. Really!

Incredible, besides Nature journal, also the Royal Society of Chemistry in political electioneering, propaganda and demagoguery!

"Scientists, researchers and academics across Brazil are celebrating the victory of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Leading up to the runoff election on 30 October, there was strong support for Lula from the country’s research community."

Researchers in Brazil welcome Lula’s return to power | News | Chemistry World 

Royal Society of Chemistry: Challenging diversity in favour of equity

Disturbing that this Royal Society spreads such propaganda and demagoguery! Not for the first time!

Can anyone actually explain what "equity" in this context is? Short answer: It is purely in the eye of the beholder like beauty!

So much baloney! Such a regurgitation of false ideology driven narratives! E.g. many Indians were very actively participating in the development of facial recognition technology.

"... the 71st Lindau Nobel laureate meeting. Each year, the conference brings together young scientists from all over the world with Nobel laureates of a dedicated discipline, chemistry in this case. Many of them experienced the conference as one of the most diverse they ever attended. Indeed, many attendants belonged to structurally marginalised groups in science, such as People of Colour, people from the Global South or LGBTQ+ people. However, diversity did not go far beyond the selection of participants. ...
Diversity has been a buzzword in the past couple of years and I appreciate the broader awareness about the injustice of discrimination. ...
Biased facial recognition technology, inherited from its mostly white, young male programmers is a common example. ..."

Challenging diversity in favour of equity | Opinion | Chemistry World Why a seat at the table is not enough

Royal Society of Chemistry: Diversity in science is essential for an equitable society

Same indoctrination and demagoguery everywhere! Very annoying, very tiring!

Equal opportunity irrespective of the person is not not enough anymore!

"... Diversity and equal opportunity should be the baseline of any business ...
Inequality runs through every facet of society [they forgot to add systemic racism], so prevention must be at the forefront of any business. ...
Diversity also fosters more diversity, and inspires creativity. ...
corporate social responsibility  ...
Inequalities persist in all workplaces, in all sectors and science and technology is no exception. ..."

Diversity in science is essential for an equitable society | Sponsored | Chemistry World Leveraging diversity at every level: tackling inequalities in STEM

China has overtaken the US when it comes to the highest-impact research. Really?

Very doubtful! Sure, Chinese scientists are as good or sometimes better than any other scientists. However, I suspect the metric and/or the scope of the study (e.g. which areas of science) etc. is flawed.

You wonder almost why the Royal Society of Chemistry publishes such an article without any reservation and with such a title!

The Scientometrics journal, in which this study was published, has an impact factor of 3238. That is very high and indicates little impact or does it meant the journal is obscure?

Citations count by itself can be a very flawed and primitive metric! What if Chinese scientists preferably (e.g. politeness, courtesy) or for other reasons cite other Chinese colleagues more often than other scientists? What if the Communist Party of China ordered or expects such preferential citations?

It appears the citations itself where not analyzed in terms of who cites who (e.g. self citations or was the citation actually relevant) etc.

When you look at the chart below (Fig. 2 of the study), you wonder what caused the sudden and sharp rise of the China curve between 2015-2019.

"China has surpassed the US to become the world leader in producing the highest-impact scientific research, according to new analysis based on the Web of Science (WoS) database and published in the journal Scientometrics. Experts argue, however, that China’s greater publication output and citations doesn’t necessarily mean that it is generating more high-quality science than the US and other nations.

The new study, carried out by a three-person research team from the US, Europe and China, shows that Chinese research ranked as high as or higher than US work in the top 1% of scientific studies in 2019, after passing the EU by this measure in 2015. ..."

From the abstract:

"The top-1% most-highly-cited articles are watched closely as the vanguards of the sciences. [????] Using Web of Science data, one can find that China had overtaken the USA in the relative participation in the top-1% (PP-top1%) in 2019, after outcompeting the EU on this indicator in 2015. However, this finding contrasts with repeated reports of Western agencies that the quality of China’s output in science is lagging other advanced nations, even as it has caught up in numbers of articles. The difference between the results presented here and the previous results depends mainly upon field normalizations, which classify source journals by discipline. Average citation rates of these subsets are commonly used as a baseline so that one can compare among disciplines. However, the expected value of the top-1% of a sample of N papers is N / 100, ceteris paribus. Using the average citation rates as expected values, errors are introduced by (1) using the mean of highly skewed distributions and (2) a specious precision in the delineations of the subsets. Classifications can be used for the decomposition, but not for the normalization. When the data is thus decomposed, the USA ranks ahead of China in biomedical fields such as virology.[I bet there are plenty of other, very relevant fields of research where the USA ranks higher e.g. AI & machine learning] Although the number of papers is smaller, China outperforms the US in the field of Business and Finance (in the Social Sciences Citation Index; p < .05). [That result is almost laughable]Using percentile ranks, subsets other than indexing-based classifications can be tested for the statistical significance of differences among them."

China has overtaken the US when it comes to the highest-impact research | News | Chemistry World (behind paywall) 1.67% of papers by Chinese researchers were among the top 1% of the most highly cited articles in 2019, versus 1.62% of those with US authors

A discussion of measuring the top-1% most-highly cited publications: quality and impact of Chinese papers (no public access)

The Royal Society of Chemistry: Celebrating LGBTIQA+ people in STEM

Three articles in the latest newsletter of the Royal Society of Chemistry featured this subject. So annoying! What does LGBTQ have to do with science like chemistry, physics, mathematics? About nothing!

Oh, these queer people think they are so important, so special, and so relevant! This is a modern tribe, cult, or caste! When will this circus finally be over! They are already running out of letters or the more letters they use, the more unwieldy! Human fads and follies on display! 😄

Pride in science | Opinion | Chemistry World Studies have shown that sadly not every queer scientist feels safe at work.

Invisible diversity in science and universities Many queer scientists still feel they need to hide their full identity at work. Note: In this article, ‘queer’ is an umbrella term for all LGBTQ+ categories

The daily struggle of LGBTQ+ scientists Workplace equality for gender and sexual minorities remains a pipe dream in Stem

Pseudoscience: The gender pay gap is not going away

The Royal Society of Chemistry is a purveyor of phony ideologies and phony data reporting! The Royal Society compares apples with with eggs! Men and women do not work in exactly the same jobs and exactly the same employers etc.

Yes, phony ideologies are not going away! Repeat them again and again!

"... For most of November and December the average woman in the UK effectively works for free. That is if you compare her annual salary to that of her male colleagues. ..."

The gender pay gap is not going away | Careers | Chemistry World Despite a variety of activities in industry and academia, women in chemistry continue to earn less than men

Royal Society of Chemistry: Marking the Anthropocene

Anthropocene is obscene! What human hubris on display, not much more!

Can humans stop or even accurately predict earthquakes, volcano eruptions, or other natural catastrophes? Can we change the daily weather? What about the almighty sun? And there are many more questions about humans and nature ...

"The idea for the Anthropocene came from a chemist – the Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who sadly died on 28 January this year. In 2000 he suggested that we are now in a new geological epoch, marked by the activities of humans. ..."

Marking the Anthropocene | Feature | Chemistry World The idea that we’re in a human-influenced geological epoch is gaining traction, but how will future geologists measure it?

Plastic recycling heading for the mainstream

Have we not already tried plastic recycling in Western countries for several decades? Will the results be different now? What is wrong with landfills until we have better ways to deal with our trash as a resource? What does this government mandated recycling cost?

We read in the introduction of this article:
" ... By 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic by weight than fish – if we don’t change our ways. This was the headline-grabbing conclusion of a 2016 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK environmental charity established by the solo long-distance yachtswoman. The 2017 BBC documentary series Blue Planet II, presented by David Attenborough further turned the tide of public opinion against plastic. ... "
This baloney is coming from two very biased sources!

" ... But turning single-use plastic into public enemy number one is a simplistic response to a very complicated issue. Often plastic is the right material for the job, both logistically and environmentally. ... "
At least the author of this article is quickly correcting the first impression!

" ... plastic waste recycling in the EU has increased by almost 80% – but overall proportions are still low. In the EU in 2017, 30% of all generated plastic was recycled, with levels varying significantly between countries. In the US, in the same year, just 8.4% of plastic generated was recycled. ..."

Plastic recycling heading for the mainstream | Feature | Chemistry World: Nina Notman talks to some of the companies launching chemical recycling technologies for single-use plastics

Ceramic could help slash lithium extraction costs by as much as 80%

Good news!

"Now researchers ... have added a layer of the ceramic Li6.4La3Zr1.4Ta0.6O12 (LLZTO) ... to the cell. As only lithium ions can pass through the LLZTO, the researchers could work with unpurified lithium chloride, leaving impurities behind in the molten salt. Better still, the researchers can even add aluminium chloride to the molten salt without risk of aluminium metal being deposited at the cathode. This conferred two key advantages: first, the melting point of the lithium and aluminium chloride mixture was much lower, allowing them to save energy by operating the cell at 240˚C rather than the usual 400˚C. Secondly, it allowed them to prevent the production of chlorine gas simply by using aluminium as the anode material, as any chloride ions oxidised simply produced more aluminium chloride."

Ceramic could help slash lithium extraction costs by as much as 80% | Research | Chemistry World: New technology removes need for high temperatures and toxic reagents

Platinum catalyst makes PVC production greener and cheaper

Good news!

"‘More than half of the mercury produced worldwide is used as a catalyst in vinyl chloride production,’ ... ‘A great deal of it, around 40 tons annually, evaporates and ends up contaminating the atmosphere"

"The preparation of the catalyst is straightforward. ‘We deposit the platinum impregnating activated carbon in an aqueous solution of chloroplatinic acid,’ ... Platinum atoms stay anchored to the carbon’s pores, and the catalyst was then activated by heating it. ... ‘To my knowledge, this is the first report of a highly active and stable platinum catalyst used for the synthesis of vinyl chloride"
Apparently, this catalytic process is not simple or easy!

Platinum makes PVC production greener and cheaper | Research | Chemistry World: A new single-atom catalyst could replace toxic mercury in the manufacture of vinyl chloride

Engineered yeast can remove heavy metals from wastewater

Good news! Unfortunately, article is behind paywall!

Engineered yeast can remove heavy metals from wastewater | Research | Chemistry World: Easy storage and rapid growth could see yeast compete with bacterial and chemical remediation

CFCs responsible for half of Arctic sea-ice loss

If there was any real measurable warming of surface atmosphere temperatures in the late 20th century, then it was caused by CFCs and not carbon dioxide!

I have my doubts that CFCs indeed contributed so much to such warming. Most likely any such reported warming is more attributable to measurement error or deliberate manipulation of data (e.g. heat island effect, Climategate scandal).

"On a molecule-by-molecule basis, halogenated organic compounds trap much more heat in the atmosphere than most other known compounds. For example dichlorodifluoromethane (CFC-12) has a global warming potential almost 11,000 times that of carbon dioxide. This means that, although ODS [ozone-depleting substances] might exist in much smaller atmospheric concentrations than other greenhouse gases, their impact can be just as significant. ... Polvani’s team calculated that one third of global warming during the second half of the 20th century was due to heat trapped by halogenated compounds. During this period, ODS were responsible for almost half of the warming and sea-ice loss witnessed in the Arctic." As usual numbers & figures are not provided! The result of this researuch is dubious!

CFCs responsible for half of Arctic sea-ice loss | Research | Chemistry World: Halogenated compounds responsible for one third of global warming in the late 20th century