Old-World Publishing in the New Age

Through the web, we can self-publish pretty much anything at any time. This doesn't guarantee, however, that anyone will read it. Actually no venue can guarantee that. Old world platforms such as newspapers, trade publications and journals do have a circulation among their audiences that effectively guarantee a certain number of page views. On the other hand, all-electronic open access journals can serve as such amplifiers as well. Some blogs have become so popular that their number of page views exhibit viral-like growth. So why should anyone publish on the old-world platforms?

That's a loaded question, and truly one that has many possible good arguments to support it. I'll rest on providing one answer by example.  I recently published a Comment in C&EN. The piece was quite a bit longer than my usual blog post. As such, it would have been appropriate for my EveryWhereChem blog only if I broke it up into about three posts. There is one more key difference. I was able to work with an editor who helped me to focus the piece while allowing me to retain my "voice." My prose was probably a bit too breezy, but she embraced it and made it better. Trouble is that editors need to be paid and one might argue that authors do too! While this and other quality control mechanisms are not exclusive features of the old-world publishing model, they are certainly a large part of the service that authors and readers enjoy from them. They also serve as curators of the pieces that they publish. And this means that a good editor can exert a meta-level quality control that adds value to the readership. There's also a role for blogging as otherwise I wouldn't be writing this too. My postmodern view of the so-called traditional publishing venues is that they remain valuable even if we aren't sure how to monetize it as readily as we once did.

My C&EN Comment focused on Mentoring and the key role if fills in advancing young scientists into their careers. Most new faculty learn the job on the job. As the demands and the tenure decision pressure have grown, it is nearly impossible to figure out the job without help. This is where mentoring can play a big role.  The New Faculty Workshop is one attempt to institutionalize mentoring across all of the chemistry research- active departments. I wrote about my experience at last year's New Faculty Workshop in two earlier posts on July 6 and July 16. The next workshop being held on July 31-August 2, and I'm looking forward to meeting the newest cohort of young faculty.

Check out my my March 24th Comment in C&EN on “Mentoring New Faculty—It Really Works!” and John Schwab’s letter to the editor on May 19th reiterating the “Importance of Mentoring” in response to my Comment.

Stability within field induced barrier crossing (#APSphysics #PRE #justpublished)

Suppose that a 5' foot wall stood between you and your destination. In order to determine if and when you got to the other side, all you'd have to do is stand at the top of the wall and check when you got there. (Presumably falling down to the other side from the top would be a lot easier than getting to the top.) If, instead, there was a large mob of people trying to get across the wall, we'd have to keep track of all of them, but again only as to when each got to the top of the wall. This kind of calculation is called transition state theory when the people are molecules and the wall is the energetic barrier to reaction. The key concept is that the structure—that is, geometry—of the barrier determines the rate, and this geometry doesn't move.

If the wall were to suddenly start to slide towards and away from where you were first standing, then it might not be so easy to stay on top of it as you tried to cross over. Certainly, an observer couldn't just keep their eyes fixed to a point between the ends of the room because the wall would be in any one spot only for a moment. So is there still a way to follow when the reactants have gotten over the wall—that is, that they are reactants—in the crazy case when the barrier is being driven back-and-forth by some outside force? My student Galen Craven, our collaborator Thomas Bartsch (from Loughborough University), and I found that there is indeed such a way. The key is that you now have to follow an oscillating point at the same frequency as the barrier but not quite that of the top of the barrier. In effect, if the particle manages to cross this oscillating point, even if it hasn't quite crossed over the barrier, you can safely say that it is now a product. There is one crazy path, though, for which the particle follows this point and never leaves it. In this case, it would be like Harry Potter at King's Cross station never choosing to live or die. That's the stable path that we found in the case of field induced barrier crossing.

The title of the article is "Persistence of transition state structure in chemical reactions driven by fields oscillating in time." The work was funded by the NSF, and the international partnership (Trans-MI) was funded by the EU People Programme (Marie Curie Actions). It was released recently as a Rapid Communication at Phys. Rev. E. 89, 04801(R) (2014). Click on the PRE Link to access the article.

The Academic Juggle: Hallows or Horcruxes

Every day, entering the office, I face the question of whether to write papers or grant proposals amidst the flood of other tasks. Yes, we all have to deal with managing time lines. But the question is akin to the one that Harry Potter faced when trying to decide between chasing after horcruxes or hallows. The horcruxes represent the immediate problem. The hallows offer the possibility of solving this and any other problem. In the fictional case, the hallows are also the temptation to become evil. Focusing on them would likely be done at the expense of ridding the world of the latest evil, Voldemort, and would also lead Harry to become evil. This is the Faustian bargain revisited. Like Goethe before us, let's remove the unfair rule that one isn't dammed just for playing. The question then centers on how we should balance our time on the short-term versus the long-term. That is, without papers, you won't earn the next grant, but if you never write grants, then you won't have funds to do the research that you will document in your next journal article.

Some researchers love to write articles because it is part of their process to do the research, diving deeply into the details that you have to get 100% right or else the logic of the paper falls. Some researchers love to write grants because they enjoy thinking about the possibilities that have yet to be explored without having to worry about the details that might muck it up. Still others enjoy neither because they dislike the toil of writing let alone the fact that it takes you away from actually doing the research. Or perhaps you prefer to do something else entirely, like writing blog posts? Regardless, you have to choose between hallows or horcruxes, not just the one time as Harry did, but every day.  It is the daily need to make a conscious choice over the prioritization of articles, grants, and everything else that makes being an academic researcher both challenging and exciting. We're not Harry Potter. We don't have a wand. We can't make (unexplainable) magic. We don't have the glasses. O.k., maybe we do have the glasses. But we do get to choose our own adventure as we as advance the limits of our understanding.

Failure is an option

Most of the time, baseball batters strike out. Many football passes end in incompletions and sometimes interceptions. Dunks sometimes bounce out. Goals get scored past goalies. Yet the players still remain on the field. That's because without the possibility of these failures, they wouldn't be able to make great plays. The lesson is that the players on the starting squad aren't there because of their lack of failures, but rather, because they make enough outstanding plays to make up for their comparatively infrequent failures.

So why is it that we tend to expect that our research scientists (and professors) be infallible? Except for public performances (like when we are teaching or lecturing), we do have the opportunity to edit and refine our work before it is embedded in the literature thereby avoiding some failures. Nevertheless, typos, misplaced theories, erroneous results, incorrect analyses, and other such failures manage to be written by us. But this is not the worst offense. I would put forth that the biggest problem is that we don't have more magnificent and more frequent failures. After all, such bright failures can only arise if scientists launch truly ambitious programs that just went too far outside the box. But the risks are too great for most scientists to make such bold leaps. If she or he fails, then there will surely never be funding for another idea (no matter how conservative.)

The trouble with highlighting examples to give this blog topic substance is precisely the fact that failures are not  reported and the victors rarely want to discuss the torturous path it took them to get there. Here lies the fundamental problem inhibiting the next generation of truly innovative research. At present, the funding models are too conservative. Review panels focus on preliminary results —read several papers already published— and proven accomplishment —read established lab with over 10 years of operation. It's hard to fault them because the risks for both the individual researcher and the individual sponsor are great. It's simply too risky to include failure within the realm of possible outcomes even when the potential is high. The true loser of this game is society because the growth of science is partly stunted. The solution has to be for institutions and funding agencies to provide a safety net for researchers that stray far outside the box. And failure has to be an option.

Seeing chemistry through an Olympic lens and beyond

If science were an athletic pursuit, then chemistry would be a sport. Each of our chemistry departments would be like a team in the Olympics (think Nordic skiing). In chemistry departments, each faculty member competes in a given event such as organic chemistry (think biathlon), analytical chemistry (think cross-country) or computational chemistry (think jumping). To be successful we must conduct our scientific programs to be world (or better, international) class. The commitment that each faculty member must put in towards success is priceless. She or he must work countless hours, read and write papers, read and write grants, and sharpen their skills to see what has never been seen before. Scientists don't do this alone, of course. They build research groups of students and professionals that are critical to doing the work and advancing the ideas while at the same time they are being trained towards their own career objectives. The sacrifices are consequently not borne exclusively by the principal investigator. Looking at the winter Olympics over the past couple of weeks, it is clear that while any given athlete wins a medal, there is a corresponding team of people that is essential to the success and who share in the excitement of victory.

Just like Olympic events, some areas of chemistry are more "exciting" than others at any given moment. From time to time, new events such as materials or sustainable chemistry come along and they receive special attention (both in terms of funding and presence in the hot journals). That means that depending on your event (or research area), there are varying amounts of support available. But you can't work any less hard if you are to be the best in any given event. And there lies the problem. You have several teams of chemists in a department, all undertaking world-class research, but some have more money than others to do it. It's clear that Olympic sporting committees face the same problem. A few figure skaters, for example, are pulling in millions of dollars in endorsements while some of the bobsledders practically had to pay their own way to Sochi. So in the Olympic spirit, it is essential to look for ways to fund all the scientific events and their "athletes" well so that we are competitive across the board. The payoff for investing in science (and chemistry in particular) goes beyond the medals as the solutions that we create literally transform the human condition.

Keep your outline to yourself! (A random walk through how I run my lab, Item 3)

The best talks (presentations) are the ones that look completely unrehearsed, but for which the speaker's extemporaneous talent somehow causes them to hit every high and low dead on. That can only be achieved with tremendous preparation. To that end, I encourage my students to practice their presentations often. I ask them to present at least once, often twice, in one of our research group weekly meetings, to present it in front of my research group (without me present) at least once more, and to send me the slides several times for feedback. Depending on the importance of the venue, I also ask them to practice it in my office. In that setting, I often video record them. This ensures that they are not as relaxed as they would be in a one-on-one setting. It also gives them a recording that they can use to self-analyze their performance. Repetition alone is not enough because inherent mistakes will persist unless they are checked. As such, it is important that every practice presentation be followed by a lengthy critique.

Here follows a necessarily incomplete set of suggestions on how to deliver a better science presentation:

1. Lead with an example that is cool and illustrative of the problem that you are solving in your work. (Make sure to tell the audience the problem that you are trying to solve!)
2. Tell the audience your solution of the problem early on. This is not a detective story.
3. An outline slide should consist of phrases unique to your presentation. There is no need to have a bullet called "introduction" because you are evidently already doing this. There is no need to have a bullet called "conclusion" because everyone in the room knows that you will eventually stop talking. Don't have a bullet called "method"; instead write the name or names of the unique methods that you are using. 
4. Don't wear anything that will distract the audience.
5. Don't wear anything that will distract you. 
6. Your presentation is an opportunity for you to teach the audience about the work that you have done. It doesn't matter if there are one or more Nobel Prize winners in the room. You are the only expert about your work in the room.
7. Busy slides are worse than no slides at all.
8. Each slide requires at least one minute of air time, if not more.
9. Colored text should be used sparingly and intentionally to highlight or associate text.
10. Animations should be used sparingly and intentionally to highlight or associate concepts or transitions in your presentation.
11. Text should be used as cues to you and the audience in an abbreviated form, and not in long narratives to be read. (Occasionally important quotes may be necessary.)
12. Text and figures should be large enough to be visible in the back of the room.
13. Each slide (particularly those showing data, a figure, or some other kind of result) should be shown for a reason. Make sure to include prompts or bullets for each such reason.
14. Appropriate literature citations should be included within each slide, not at the end. 
15. All images and movies not created by you should be appropriately credited with references. This includes the ones that you "borrowed" from Wikipedia.
16. Do not speak in a monotone; a little enthusiasm goes a long way.
17. Look at your audience. If they appear to be inattentive, then throw in some relevant metaphor to bring them back in at the next pre-planned point in your presentation. (That means that you should have such examples at the ready to be dropped in at various places in your presentation.)
18. Detailed equations, algorithms, methods and/or lab set-ups are cool and you worked really hard to make them. But nearly no one wants to see them in a brief presentation. Try to have at most one such slide so that you may indicate how it was done without losing your audience in a quagmire of details. Have extra slides at the ready in case someone asks for such detail during Q and A.
19. It's hard to keep anyone's attention longer than 5 minutes or so. This means that you need to stop once in a while to remind the audience where you are in the story you are teaching them.
20. Good lecturing is good teaching. Think about using techniques from research-based education research (DBER) in your presentation. (For example, active learning!)
21. Feel free to violate any rule above if it makes your presentation better as long as it is not intellectually dishonest to do so.

I welcome more tips to be added to this list through your comments!

(This is the third post in a series of items on how I run my lab. Check out the list here.)

The relaxation of striped spheres… ( #AIP_JCP #justpublished )

When was the last time that you took a bunch of pool balls, suspended them in a thick oil, and watched how they assembled? Pool balls being what they are, they will simply stack on themselves, though there is some question as to how efficiently they do so. If you start to shake the container, thereby maintaining some average kinetic energy (that is, temperature), they probably started to jiggle. They probably won't rotate much. Even if they do, it won't matter much because they collide with each other in the same way no matter what. So now take the balls and paint them with some pattern of red and blue paint, and suppose that there is a difference in the forces between the spheres depending on which colored surfaces are near each other. Now when they collide with each other, they have preferred relative orientation. The emergence of structure (or patterns in the positions and orientation) of the pool balls should presumably be very sensitive to how you painted them.

This is precisely the problem that Matthew Hagy and I have been studying over the past couple of years. Our pool balls are actually colloidal particles of a couple hundred nanometers in diameter. The paint corresponds to the charges encoded on the surface of the colloids. Opposite charges attract. Initially we studied Janus particles that literally have two faces, one hemisphere is positively charged and the other negative. (If interested, you can also check out my earlier blog post on the dynamics of Janus particles.) In the work that was just published in the Journal of Chemical Physics, we now consider the case in which the spheres are coated in stripes of alternating charge. This generalizes the surface pattern of the Janus particles to three, four, five, six, and more stripes. The funny thing is that very little happens to the packing of the particles because that property is so strongly dominated by the shape of the particles. But their motion, and the timescales in which they relax from a given deformation is highly sensitive to the number of stripes and perhaps also to how they are striped. In a sense, this says that if you want to maintain their behavior, you can fatten them up a little but you can't change their stripes.

The title of the article is "Dynamical simulation of electrostatic striped colloidal particles," and the work was funded by the NSF. It was released recently at J. Chem. Phys. 140, 034701 (2014), and featured on the cover!  Click on http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4859855 to access the article.