Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008 might go to Zhong L Wang, George Whitesides, Akihisa Inoue, Galen Stucky or Louis Brus

We all know that Nobel Prize follows a pattern. It is rare that a subdivision gets the price in consecutive years (except for Biochemistry since biochemists in the selection committee are -evidently- louder than the others). For example, chemistry nobel prize was given to Organic chemistry in 2005, then Biochemistry in 2006 and Physical chemistry in 2007. If you go to earlier years you see lots of Biochemisty: Biochemistry in 2002, Biochemistry in 2003, Biochemistry in 2004. Another Organic Chemistry award was in 2001 when the old Organic chemists needed to be recognized. The last time Nobel prize in Chemistry went to Materials Chemistry was in 2000. I'm not even going into nationality patterns (i.e. 2007 was the year for Germans - Physics and Chemistry both!)

Here's a quick list:
2007 - Physical Chemistry
2006 - Biochemistry
2005 - Organic Chemistry
2004 - Biochemistry
2003 - Biochemistry
2002 - Biochemistry
2001 - Organic Chemistry
2000 - Materials Chemistry
1999 - Physical Chemistry
1998 - Physical Chemistry
1997 - Biochemistry
1996 - Materials Chemistry

Nanoscale materials did not get a nobel prize since the bucky balls got it in 1996. I feel like it is time for some nano something gets the prize. It will be hard since there's not a trio or less that invented this field but I still think it's doable.

Take mesoporous materials for example. Jeffrey S. Beck of ExxonMobil for his MCMs, Galen Stucky of UCSB for his SBA-15 (also happens to be my postdoc advisor ;) and Thomas J. Pinnavaia of Michigan State comes forward. MCM-41 and SBA-15 are the landmarks of this mesoporous country. A nobel prize can very well be divided into these three guys.

But I think some others will get it if nano is awarded (though mesoporous is perfectly nanoscale). I've done a Web of Science search on who published most in nano (in the US) and I selected the following:

356 papers - Professor Zhong L. Wang of Georgia Tech
225 papers - Professor Paul Alivisatos of UC Berkeley
221 papers - Professor Chad Mirkin of Northwestern
195 papers - Professor Richard Smalley of Rice (1996 Nobel prize winner)
193 papers - Professor Charlie Lieber of Harvard
159 papers - Professor Mostafa Al-Sayed of Georgia Tech
157 papers - Professor Peidong Yang of UC Berkeley
145 papers - Professor Moungi Bawendi of MIT
136 papers - Professor Hongjie Dai of Stanford
134 papers - Professor Thomas E Mallouk of PennState
105 papers - Professor Louis E Brus of Columbia

Most in this list have advisor-student relationship and Louis Brus for example comes very early in the ladder.

There are other big shots in materials and chemistry in general, such as George Whitesides and Akihisa Inoue.

So, my guess is that 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to one of these three sets:
1) Zhong L. Wang, Charlie M. Lieber and Louis E. Brus
2) George M. Whitesides, Galen D. Stucky and Akihisa Inoue
3) Louis E. Brus, George M. Whitesides and Akihisa Inoue

Any other bets? Please do tell.

Faculty salaries by departments

HigherEdJobs.com's partner organization The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) did a comprehensive survey on the earnings of new and old faculty, and got the following results (the list has only selected entries for a complete list please visit the survey page):

Discipline	Professor	Associate Professor	Assistant Professor	New Assistant Professor	Instructor
Architecture	$93,591	$72,024	$58,808	$56,695	$46,345
Communication, Journalism	$80,514	$61,745	$51,401	$50,469	$42,420
Education	$79,281	$62,672	$53,075	$52,128	$43,639
Engineering	$107,134	$82,857	$72,734	$71,802	$55,364
Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics	$82,094	$62,564	$51,621	$49,802	$40,638
Legal Professions and Studies	$129,527	$94,444	$79,684	$78,901	$63,174
Liberal Arts and Sciences, Humanities	$81,626	$61,707	$49,876	$49,832	$41,788
Biological and Biomedical Sciences	$86,146	$64,836	$54,610	$54,209	$41,938
Mathematics and Statistics	$81,818	$63,728	$53,800	$53,787	$40,971
Philosophy and Religious Studies	$81,464	$61,686	$51,183	$50,059	$40,228
Physical Sciences	$85,294	$64,835	$54,782	$54,359	$42,403
Psychology	$80,546	$62,491	$52,825	$52,153	$42,896
Economics	$93,616	$75,533	$66,948	$69,577	$50,414
Visual and Performing Arts	$76,293	$60,204	$49,821	$48,004	$41,608
Nursing	$81,573	$67,550	$56,717	$55,527	$49,822
Accounting	$104,292	$89,504	$83,271	$98,141	$55,856

For starters (new ass. prof.s), the lowest paying department is Communications Technologies/Technicians and Support Services, and the highest: Accounting

For a complete list please visit the source

2007-08 NATIONAL FACULTY SALARY SURVEY ©2008 by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). All rights reserved

"Graphene is the strongest material ever measured"

The July 18th issue of Science has an interesting report on Graphene. Lee et al., (from Hone group at Columbia) report that the intrinsic strength goes up to _int = 130 gigapascals when they scan the single layer of graphene. Carbonaceous materials keep getting more interesting.

Magnetic Boron Nitride and CrO2 Nanorod Devices

This past week wasn't free enough for me to read around to find out what cool things were out but I realize now that there wasn't much exciting stuff either. Except these:

• Magnetic Boron Nitride! Barone et al. (Peralta group at Central Michigan) did a theoretical study and suggesting that BN must have tunable electronic properties.
• CrO2 nanorod devices: Song et al. (Jin group at U Wisconsin Madison) synthesized this awkward but known metal oxide in single crystal nanorods and then used it in devices. Evidently CrO2 is ferromagnetic, has a (relatively) high curie temperature of 395 K and predicted to be half-metallic. Good data but not so interesting to read if you're not into this stuff.

Photo reduction of Graphene Oxide with nano-TiO2

In the articles ASAP of ACS Nano, Williams et al., (from Prashant V. Kamat group - he is also the senior editor of Journal of Physical Chemistry) describes a neat way of reducing the o.6 nm thick graphene oxide with photo activated nano TiO2 (2-7 nm). Graphene is becoming very attractive to many and surely this is another example of that. In the picture, GO means graphene oxide and GR means graphene.

UC Merced - Materials Science & Engineering - due August 1, 2008 - Asst. Prof.

Rank:
Assistant Professor - Tenure track

Deadline:
August 1, 2008

Start date:
As early as July 1, 2008

Department:
Materials Science & Engineering

Institution:
University of California at Merced (map)

What they're looking for:
"Individuals with research interests in the development of industrial-scale nanomaterials synthesis, processing, or device fabrication methods are particularly encouraged to apply. Areas of interest also include nanostructured materials, biomaterials, and energy materials."

Contact:
Dr. Valerie Leppert, Chair of the Search Committee at vleppert@ucmerced.edu

Rumors:
None. Please submit the rumors you heard down in the comments using anonymous alias.

Details:
Click for more details

Korean university pays $100,000 for a Science or Nature article

According to my korean friends, one of Korea's national universities announced yesterday (July 1st) that they will pay a bonus of $100,000 (yes, a hundred thousand US dollars!) per Science or Nature article that their faculty published. Other publications will be rewarded as well but for less dollars, i.e. $2000. Don't think about applying that fast, as I've been told "it's hard to get in there".

Cutting graphene with in-situ formed iron (Fe) nanoparticles

Datta et al. (from Johnson group of UPenn) utilizes iron nanoparticles (~15 nm) and the catalytic formation of methane from carbon and hydrogen in the scission of the thin graphene layer. Iron nanoparticles are formed by spraying iron nitrate (Fe(NO₃)₃.9H₂O) onto the graphene and cooking it under reductive Ar atmosphere (Ar + H₂). This is an important step in graphene related technology though it very much resembles the 2006 carbon nanotube seeds study (noted for placing Rick Smalley as the first author since it was published soon after his death). In the images, FLG is Few-Layer Graphene and the scale bar is 800 nm.

Mars, Martians and (dry) ice

Though not so much as Sergey, Larry and Richard trio are obsessed, most of us has a crush on a potential Martian trip. For now, the little but sophisticated machines are enjoying the whole glory, Phoenix being the latest, with a price of their life. We have a reason to be excited, however, that is, Mars is the closest to being a second Earth and also closeby. It has almost the same length of a day (24 hours and 37 minutes) but roughly twice long of a year (687 Earth days).

A Martian expedition, which presumably will yield a colony, doesn't only mean more space for excess population but also the Martian resources may prove to be lucrative. The "Red" planet has huge amounts of iron (III) oxide and that of CO₂ (both beneath and above the surface) good enough to make steel if energy is provided. Lower gravity may enable larger spacecrafts to be built and take off contrary to Earth and thus, real space exploration (if not the wars) may start.

Speaking of CO₂, Phoenix got some ice deposits uncovered with its tiny arms (see the picture on the left - courtesy of NASA and University of Arizona) and the cameras captured the disappearance of ice by evaporation. This ice is mainly solid carbon dioxide although there are hopes for water. In any case, the discovery of ice is what they were after -as simple as it sounds but a very important step- and that's what they have found.

There's still so much more to be done before we blast off shuttles full of homo sapiens and maybe we should think about our current planet a little more than the distant, reddish, unknown, cold beast called Mars.

Nanowire growth via VLS mechanism - Si NW on Au catalysts

(What is) "hirsch index" and "impact factor"? and is it fair?

Better metrics for an individual's value on Nature's network got me thinking. How fair is to evaluate an academic with some numbers that may or may not reflect the individual's quality?

Perhaps there's no better way to assess the "impact" of a research or the author other than counting the number of articles that cite it. And the journals. How do we tell Science or Nature is better than all others?

Instead of going into existential criticism of academic affairs I should explain impact factor and hirsch index really briefly and leave the judgment to you:

Impact factor (IF) = Number of total citations / Number of articles

We can calculate IF for a journal or a professor. But when calculating for a professor you need to exclude his/her own papers that cite the previous ones.

The leading journals in materials and nano science (according to IF) are
1. Science and Nature ~ 30
2. Nature Materials ~ 19
3. Nano Letters ~ 10
4. Angewandte ~ 10
5. Advanced Materials ~ 8
6. JACS ~ 8

Hirsch index is named after its inventor Dr. Jorge Hirsch, a UCSD professor of Physics. The idea is -roughly- getting a median of all highly cited papers. For example if you have 10 papers and 4 of them has 4 or more citations then your h-index is 4. For the number of citations you need to look in Web of Science, SciFinder and Google Scholar.

In a sense, hirsch index provides more fair evaluation then impact factor but relying on it might be dangerous, as it's suggested for tenure evaluations and other critical investigations:

"Based on his calculations, Hirsch suggests that, for physicists, a value for h of about 12 might be a useful guideline for tenure decisions at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the National Academy of Sciences."

The last thing an academician wants is to be measured by numbers.

Catalysis and solar cells by carbon nanotubes

Not long ago we (Alec, Kim and me) were talking about growing single wall carbon nanotubes (aka SWNT) with different patterns on the same tube. This would bring additional coverage of the absorption spectrum since slight changes on the width and chirality rewards you with a different absorption band.

We know that a slightly different approach appeared in Nano Letters earlier this year where Jessica Trancik (that's her photo on the left) introduces defects to the CNTs with ozone and achieves good catalytic activity on I₃^- reduction comparable to platinum systems.

Though not a new thing, we started growing carbon nanotubes (single wall!) on 4 nm magnetite nanocrystals. Varying the catalyst size could mean diversifying the product and we're giving it a serious try.

There's only so much more to do with SWNT if only things can happen as you wish..

Digging up Martian soil for water

No. They are not the first steps of man on Mars.

Phoenix finally dug up soil and poured into its mini-ovens as Reuters report says. It wasn't easy as they had hard time breaking up the sticky soil (though they cannot understand why it's sticky).

Leading institutions in Chemistry 1997-2007

According to ScienceWatch.com's recent post (June 8, 2008) (a Thomson Scientific - Reuters website) the World's TOP TEN in Chemistry for the past 10 years is as follows:

Rank	Institution	Papers	Citations	Citations Per Paper
1	SCRIPPS INSTITUTE	2,178	71,251	32.71
2	HARVARD	2,773	90,094	32.49
3	CALTECH	2,217	70,748	31.91
4	YALE	1,766	53,603	30.35
5	MIT	3,734	99,650	26.69
6	NORTHWESTERN	2,888	74,379	25.75
7	UC BERKELEY	5,271	127,846	24.25
8	UC SANTA BARBARA	2,225	50,948	22.90
9	STANFORD	2,729	62,003	22.72
10	UNIV UTRECHT, The Netherlands	2,469	50,244	20.35

Go Gauchos!

Gold nanowire rush: Battle between Younan Xia, Charlie Lieber & Shouheng Sun and Peidong Yang

June 07, 2008 was one of those days of scientific déjà vu. Three papers (2 JACS, 1 Nano Letters) that have very similar results were published. All were about very thin Gold nanowires (1.6 - 9 nm in diameter) with high aspect ratios.

Here's the leader board on this Gold (nanowire) rush:

The winner: Younan XIA!
"Ultrathin Gold Nanowires Can Be Obtained by Reducing Polymeric Strands of Oleylamine−AuCl Complexes Formed via Aurophilic Interaction"
Xianmao Lu, Mustafa S. Yavuz, Hsing-Yu Tuan, Brian A. Korgel, and Younan Xia
Received May 6, 2008 Published online June 07, 2008


Runner up(s): Charlie Lieber & Shouheng Sun
"Ultrathin Au Nanowires and Their Transport Properties"
Chao Wang, Yongjie Hu, Charles M. Lieber, and Shouheng Sun
Received May 7, 2008 Published online June 07, 2008


Third place: Peidong Yang
"Sub-Two Nanometer Single Crystal Au Nanowires"
Ziyang Huo, Chia-kuang Tsung, Wenyu Huang, Xiaofeng Zhang, and Peidong Yang
Received May 12, 2008 Published online June 07, 2008

Chemical Search Engine

For a long time I've been thinking about such idea, making a chemical specific search engine. Not just chemicals, also glassware, some key physical properties and other related tools. Isotopes of the elements were also added when I finally got down to it - thanks to the Google Custom Search tool. And yes, here it is:

Powered by

Elsevier spam

I received this email calling for manuscript submissions "in all fields of human endeavor" (!):

Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 09:34:35 +0100
From: "Elsevier Journals" <elsevierpublishers6@gmail.com>
Subject: Call for Manuscripts!
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

ELSEVIER:

BUILDING INSIGHTS; BREAKING BOUNDARIES

MANUSCRIPTS SUBMISSION

On behalf of all the Editors-in-chief of Elsevier Journals, we wish to communicate to you that we are currently accepting manuscripts in allfields of human Endeavor. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts reporting recent developments in their fields. Papers submitted will be sorted out and published in any of our numerous journals that best fits. This is a special publication procedure which published works will be discussed at seminars (organized by Elsevier) at strategic cities all over the world. Please maximize this opportunity to showcase your research work to the world.

The submitted papers must be written in English and describe original research not published nor currently under review by other journals.

Parallel submissions will not be accepted. Our goal is to inform authors about their paper(s) within one week of receipt.

All submitted papers, if relevant to the theme and objectives of the journal, will go through an external peer-review process. Submissions should include an abstract, 5-10 key words, the e-mail address of the corresponding author. The paper Length should not exceed 30 double-spaced pages including figures and references on 8.5 by 11 inch paper using at least 11 point font. Authors should select a category designation for their manuscripts (article, short communication, review, etc.).

Papers should be submitted electronically via email in Microsoft Word or PDF attachments & include a cover sheet containing corresponding author's name, Paper Title, affiliation, mailing address, phone, fax number, email address etc.

Would-be authors should send their manuscript to: elsevierpublications@live.com

Kind Regards,

James Moore (Prof.)

PS: Pls show interest by mailing elsevierpublications@live.com if your manuscript is not ready but will be ready soon

I was about to send a note to get my spot reserved but then I felt the need to check who was sending the email. The gmail address it was sent from (elsevierpublishers6@gmail.com) and the hotmail account (elsevierpublications@live.com) they were asking the manuscripts to were very suspicious.

Why would an eminent publishing house like Elsevier would send an email from free email services?

And also why would they bother to sort out the topic of the manuscript for a proper publication (knowing that they have pretty wide coverage of sciences they would solicit direct submissions instead of spending precious editorial review time for sorting out stuff)?

And why cannot they have a form for proper submission (it is a heck lot easier for the journals to get indexed data rather than a soup of information about the author)?

How about the "PS: Pls show interest by mailing elsevierpublications@live.com if your manuscript is not ready but will be ready soon"?

Also, the personal information font is made specifically bold so that nobody forgets all the details of their private self. Strange enough, James Moore was "Prof." instead of Dr. James Moore.

It sounded very fishy.

UPDATE: Elsevier responded to my inquiry about this email as follows:

Dear Cafer,

Thank you for your e-mail.

Please disregard the below email which you have received.

It has come to our attention that two fraudulent emails are being distributed widely in the scientific community. These spam emails use fake publisher email addresses and attempt to appear as official communications from the publisher. The title of the spam emails are 'Call for Papers', which attempts to lead the responder to make a payment, and 'Manuscript Submissions'. If you receive such an email claiming to be from Elsevier, please be advised that it is not. Elsevier is in no way involved with or related to these emails or their senders, nor are the email addresses official Elsevier addresses.

Elsevier is currently investigating this matter and is working with law enforcement to counter the spread and effectiveness of the spam.

If you come across the spam emails 'Call for Papers' or 'Manuscript submission' please do not respond to them. We kindly request that you forward the email to eesservices@elsevier.com.

Thank you for your patience with this matter.

If responding to this e-mail, please ensure that the reference number remains in the subject line.

Please feel free to contact us with any additional questions or concerns at the e-mail address or telephone numbers shown below.

Yours sincerely,

Nobilie F. Niz

Elsevier Customer Support

E-mail: support@elsevier.com

Helping you get published: http://epsupport.elsevier.com/

Global telephone support is available 24/7:

For The Americas: +1 888 834 7287 (toll-free for US & Canadian customers) For Asia & Pacific: +81 3 5561 5032 For Europe & rest of the world: +353 61 709 190

We value your feedback! Please help us to provide the best possible service by completing a short questionnaire (approximately 5 minutes) via this link http://epsurvey.elsevier.com You can also provide feedback directly at customerfeedback@elsevier.com

To ensure delivery of our e-mails to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add support@elsevier.com to your address book or safe senders list.

Copyright 2005 Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.

UPDATE: The prestigious magazine, Times Higher Education did a story on this issue:

E-mail fraudsters target academics

24 July 2008

By Chloe Stothart

Most e-mail frauds are concerned with selling fake Viagra or persuading people to send their bank details to a beleaguered, fictional politician on the other side of the world.

But, in a new development, the fraudsters now want your research papers.

Click here to read the rest

Nano diamond

Diamond in nanosizes can be achieved by two methods:
1. Detonation nanodiamond
2. CVD growth (and here)

The robust nature of diamond makes its nano form attractive. As in the bulk form, nano diamond may enable mechanically stable structures and constructing mini devices, i.e. nano robots, would become more feasible and durable. Or simply, nanodiamonds can be used as vehicles for drugs into the harsh or selective environments within the living organisms.

New research on this matter was published -relatively- recently, having nanodiamonds clustering with doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) (an apoptosis-inducing drug that is used in chemotherapy) and carrying them into the infected living cells to cause the death of the cell.

NOTE: The picture -of course- is not a nano diamond, the real -not so pretty- nanodiamond can be seen here

Faculty pay scales

When reading this excellent article on women in science by Philip Greenspun, I found about this database of faculty stipends where you can search for the institution and get info on how much your professor make a year (roughly). I've been craving for this kind of information since it's not easy to know what you are getting into (before you lock yourself into an academic future).

Here are some interesting numbers (2006-7) listed most to least:

Assistant professors: Caltech $99K, UPenn $92K, Harvard $91K, Stanford $91K, MIT $89K, UChicago $85K, Northwestern $84K, Princeton $79K, Rice $78K, Yale $78K, Berkeley $76K, UTexas $75K, UCLA $72K, TAMU $67K, Rockefeller $67K.

Associate professors: Stanford $115K, Caltech $111K, UPenn $106K, Princeton $105K, Harvard $100K, MIT $100K, UChicago $98K, Northwestern $98K, Rice $91K, Rockefeller $90K, Berkeley $87K, Yale $87K, UCLA $84K, UTexas $78K, TAMU $76K.

Full professors: Rockefeller $186K, Harvard $177K, Stanford $164K, Princeton $164K, UChicago $163K, Yale $158K, UPenn $157K, Caltech $156K, Northwestern $147K, MIT $146K, UCLA $133K, Berkeley $131K, Rice $130K, UTexas $121K, TAMU $107K.

It looks like private institutions pay a lot higher than the public schools. Texas A&M scored last in all three levels but college station, tx is kind of like a place where you cannot spend much money anyway.

Photonic band gap materials

I was reading a review by Kalele et. al, and found out this very informative segment on photonic band gap materials:

"Photonic band gap materials are optical equivalents of semiconductors.

Behaviour of photons in such materials can be analogically correlated to behaviour of electrons in semiconductors. Colloidal particles can self-assemble to form a three-dimensional crystal having long-range periodicity.

Air gaps between the particles form a region of low refractive index, while the particles form a region of high refractive index. When photons are incident on these materials, they pass through regions of the high and low refractive indices. For photons, this contrast in refractive index is similar to the periodic potential that an electron experiences while passing through a semiconductor. If the contrast in refractive index is large, then the photons are either totally reflected or confined inside the dielectric material. The colloidal crystal blocks wavelengths in the photonic band gap, while allowing other wavelengths to pass through.

The photonic band gap can be tuned by changing the size of the particles.

Similar material can be prepared using core shell particles (120). Core shell particles are better suited for this application, as relative refractive index contrast in core and shell particles is more.

Band gap can be tuned from visible to IR range by changing index contrast (121)."