On word choice, or, witness the power of Twitter

I'm on Twitter now, tweeting mostly chemistry-related stuff with occasional bit of randomness and feminism thrown in for good measure.  Mostly I'm just lurking and using it to find things to read.  You can find me at @CrankyOldBiddy if you're so inclined.
Anyway, today I happened to read a tweet about an article in the MIT Technology Review.  The post was an interesting article about how workers' performance is increasingly quantified.  However, it was titled "The Measured Working Man".  Um, WTF?!?!  Nothing in the article was sexist, but then they had to go and give it an old fogey sexist title that would've been out of date in the 70's  So I tweeted right back that I am an alumna and loyal reader and I thought their title was sexist.  The editor responded that "Working man" is a "historical phrase" and that "working person" would not have the same impact.  I was busy and didn't respond, but someone else chimed in that there was no need to use an outdated sexist phrase for historical reasons when "worker" would get their point across just as well.  Lo and behold, the editor changed it online and in the upcoming print edition and apologized. 
I am a stickler about policing sexist language, partially because I am now extremely sensitized to microaggressions and "othering".  I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty low priority.  However, it's also one of the easiest things to change, as this twitter exchange illustrates, and as time goes by the offending phrases become quaint and out of date.  So why not take baby steps whenever possible, so we can all focus on bigger and better things?

A catalyst chemist's viewpoint on the VW #dieselgate scandal

I've been tweeting about #dieselgate, so Chemjobber asked me to write a guest post, which will probably get more views than any of my normal blog posts, with the possible exception of when I test a Cook's Illustrated recipe.  I'm cross posting it here.

I worked on new zeolite catalysts for diesel deNOx for several years.  The revelation that Volkswagen designed the catalytic converters on their TDI diesel automobiles to cheat on smog tests was absolutely shocking and depressing to me. 

To understand what they did, and why they did it, here’s a highly simplified short primer on automotive emissions control.    In the United States, gas-powered cars have what is known as a three-way catalytic converter and use a combination of Rh, Pt, and/or Pd loaded onto a porous ceramic monolith through which the exhaust passes.  Other additives, such as cerium oxide, may also be present to maximize catalytic performance.  Three-way refers to the three things the converter does – oxidize CO to CO₂, reduce NOx to nitrogen, and oxidize unburnt fuel and soot to CO₂.  Oxygen sensors and fuel injectors cycle the system back and forth between “lean” (excess O₂) and “rich” (excess fuel) to make sure that NOx gets reduced and CO, soot and unburnt fuel get oxidized.  In addition to the catalyst chemistry and fuel injector systems, there is a great deal of engineering technology present to maximize the performance under sub par conditions such as cold starts, etc.

 However, the three-way catalytic converter technology is not suitable for application on so-called ‘‘lean-burn’’ engines that operate at high air/fuel ratios, including diesel-powered cars.  The high air-fuel ratio makes it harder to reduce the NOx emissions.  Prompted in part by the shift to cleaner diesel feeds, which are less likely to poison catalysts, and more stringent environmental standards, there’s been lot of research done in the last 15 years on developing better catalysts for diesel deNOx.  So, what are the options for diesel/lean DeNOx?  It would be advantageous to develop a diesel analog of the three-way converter, in which fuel injection strategies and a bit of extra fuel can be used to reduce NOx.  This is called hydrocarbon-selective catalytic reduction (HC-SCR).  We’re not really there yet.  Several workaround technologies are in use. 

1.     NOx storage-reduction (NSR, also called Lean NOxTraps/LNT) uses alkali earth metals such as Ba to bind NOx as nitrates, which then get reduced when the fuel injection switches into a richer mode.  Pt/Ba/Al₂O₃ is a common formulation. Periodically, the catalyst gets poisoned by sulfur and must be regenerated, just like the catalyst bed in a drybox. 

2.     Ammonia-SCR: In ammonia selective catalytic reduction (NH₃-SCR), urea is sprayed into the exhaust stream at high temperature.  It decomposes to ammonia and helps reduce NOx to N₂.  A separate tank in needed to store the urea and, of course, it will need to be refilled on a regular basis.

Both NSR and NH₃-SCR also require the use of additional catalysts to actually do the DeNOx.  Currently, the state of the art for NH₃-SCR is copper on zeolites,* but Pt has also been widely used, particularly in the NSR systems.  In addition to the catalytic converter, diesel engines contain a diesel particulate filter (DPF) to collect soot.  The soot can be burned off at high temperature. 

Volkswagen is sort of vague on exactly what types of deNOx technologies they use, but from what I’ve read, it sounds like the smaller cars had NSR and the larger ones had a combination of NSR and NH₃-SCR using Cu-zeolites (Cu-CHA).  It is unclear whether the Cu-zeolites were used in all cars, or just the ones with SCR.  When the cars are being driven, the steering column vibrates and the deNOx parts of the catalytic converter were not turned on.  Urea was not sprayed into the exhaust pathway, and the feedback loop necessary for proper NSR was probably not turned on either.  When the car was being smog tested, the steering column was stationary and the catalytic converter was turned on.  I suspect the DPF technology was still being run properly, because soot is a much easier problem for a layperson to notice. 

I’m still puzzled why they’d take the risk and cheat the system this way.  Fine of $37,500 per car are nothing to scoff at. I’m also sort of dumbfounded that TDI owners didn’t notice that they never needed to fill their SCR tank, but perhaps VW just told them that it would not need to be filled very often. Did the catalytic converter technology not hold up to everyday driving, or did it just decrease the performance and mileage and they thought they’d sell more cars and happier owners if they bypassed it without telling people?  At first, I cynically assumed the latter explanation, especially since only a few states do routine smog testing.  But after thinking about it some more, I’m starting to wonder if the technology itself was not quite ready for prime time.  Some people have speculated that the temperatures required might be higher and cause more engine wear and tear.  I think it may depend on what catalyst is being used.  The Cu-zeolite catalysts work best above 300C, but many NSR Pt catalysts perform quite well at 200-300C.  But it may be that the Cu-zeolite technology just isn’t ready for prime time.  Back when I worked on HC-SCR, the performance of a fresh catalyst was very good, but it would get deactivated over time. The commercialized system and the use of NH₃-SCR were supposed to solve a lot of the problems that we observed, but perhaps that is not the case.  If you only turn on the catalytic converted once in a while, this won’t be a problem.  I’ve been working in another area of catalysis since 2010, so I haven’t been keeping up to date on the literature, so it could be that VW is just getting greedy and the catalytic converters work just fine.

Anyway, at the moment there are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.  Hopefully more details will come to light soon.

Quinoa and Black Bean Veggie Burgers

Joe and I are on a veggie burger kick.  Because of the peculiarities of my diet, most of the store bought ones are off-limits to me, because they get their protein from either gluten or soy, so we've been making our own.  The actually taste a lot better than storebought, and you can't beat the price.
I've adapted the recipe from one I found on-line.  You can adjust the ingredients to suit your taste and what you have at home. 

1 can black beans

1-2 cups cooked quinoa

2 eggs

splash of water or milk

oats, ground flax or bread crumbs (maybe 1 cup)
1 cup grated cheese (optional)

salt and pepper

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 clove garlic, chopped (optional)

1 small can chopped green chiles (optional)

Drain beans and mush them up a bit with a fork or potato masher.

Beat eggs with a little bit of water or milk.

Mix eggs/beans/seasonings/quinoa/cheese together.  Add enough oats/flax (or breadcrumbs) to get the right consistency.   It should be kind of wet but hold together.  Put mixture in fridge for an hour or more to let it absorb the liquids.  Form into patties and cook like hamburgers.  (If you want them firmer, put them in a 350F oven for 10-15 minutes after pan-frying them.)
Makes about 10 large burgers or 15 medium ones.  They freeze well.

F*&^ You, ACS 2016 Awards

The 2016 American Chemical Society (ACS) national awards were posted recently. 
Of the 77 people who received awards,* a grand total of of 5 were women.  One of those was an award specifically for a women, and another was for high school teaching.  So a grand total of three women got a research based award that was not gender specific.
I am really livid about this.  As you might guess from the sheer number of awards, it's not just the future Nobel laureates getting them. No.  There are a lot of prizes for a specific subdiscipline, awards for industrial chemists, and awards for grad students and assistant professors.  As a result, many of the awards go to people who are good chemists but not necessarily at the top of their fields.  Even with the abysmal hiring record for women in the 90's-early 2000's, I can still think of a lot of women who are as deserving or even more so than the people who got the awards.  Even the most backwards chemistry departments have more than 5% women faculty, and in industry and in some of the more diverse department the number is much higher. 
Fuck you, #2016ACSawards.

On a better note, here's an epic all-Cornell takedown of the recent Williams/Ceci study that claims women have an advantage in STEM hiring decisions.
https://theconversation.com/lets-face-it-gender-bias-in-academia-is-for-real-44637

*Some awards went to teams, so the total number of recipients is higher than the number of awards.

Molly 2015

Molly's my little badass.  She is going to get herself eaten one day if she is not careful.
The cats are currently under house arrest due to coyotes.   I saw a coyote in the yard two weeks ago and have heard them yip yapping a lot nearby.  I've also seen a few by the road and on the pictures from my wildlife camera.  Lucy was on the deck when the coyote was in the yard and was all nervous and fluffed up.  Molly was about 15 feet closer to the coyote and was just watching it with interest, like a badass.  I brought the cats in and had to deal with non-stop begging from Molly to go back outside.
Somewhere along the line, Molly has turned into Luna's reincarnation.  Sure, she's a fluffy, affectionate goofball like Rugrat, but her core personality is very much like Luna.  She's a one-person cat and mopes when I'm out of town.  She has a great deal of confidence that she is the queen of the yard and gets a lot of enjoyment from sitting outside watching her territory, and wanders the neighborhood and visits the neighbors yards a lot.  One time she got stuck 25 feet up in a tree at midnight in the rain.  She was not nervous at all after seeing the coyote two weeks ago, but I have seen her come in very skittish.  Nonetheless she seems to be a thrill seeker.  This is reminiscent of Luna staring down dogs and then strutting into the house like she just had a most awesome experience, or exploring quite a wide swath of her new neighborhood at age 15.  I do not doubt that Molly has had multiple coyote encounters and may have also seen the neighborhood bobcat.  Knowing Molly, she might've even hung out with it.  It's not aggression, just extreme self-confidence. 
It's been interesting to see Molly's personality develop.  Unlike most cats I've owned, she had a very long adolescence and her personality is still changing at age 3.  My vet said that cats reach emotional maturity at 3, and that Maine Coons develop more slowly than shorthaired cats, but Molly is the first cat I've had where the changes were still noticeable past age 2.  I don't know how she got to be so much like Luna in the last year and a half.  The simplest explanation is that is just how she is, and that's why she and Luna got along so well.  These traits became apparent to me once Molly was not longer a kitten.  But there is a superstituous and anthropomorpic side of me that thinks that there is more to it than that.
Luna was 17 years old when I got Molly.  Rugrat's death had been very hard on Luna and her health was declining rapidly.  Somehow, this quiet little kitten cheered Luna up a lot and she bounced back a bit.  At the time, Luna like to sleep on an armchair, and Molly soon began hanging out on the cat tree next to Luna.  Eventually they started sharing the armchair, which was really unusual since Luna did not like to have her personal space encroached upon.
After Luna died, Molly still sat in the chair and would always leave a space open on Luna's side.  It was like she was saving a spot for Luna, or like Luna was there in spirit.  After a year or so, she stopped leaving a space, and then stopped sitting on the chair.  Around the same time, she started reminding me of Luna.  It's like Luna is in Molly now, and that's why she doesn't need to leave a spot for her.  It is kind of comforting to think that Molly picked up some of Luna's spirit, either by becoming friends and spending Luna's last few months together, or by something more difficult to explain.  I'm not religious anymore, but things like this remind me why people take comfort in religion.

This post is not about Tim Hunt

I've been slacking off in being a #ladyscientist.  I've been too busy writing proposals, teaching my summer undergrad, going to NERM, and watching the Womens' World Cup to be #distractinglysexy  in at least two weeks.  LOLno.  But those are the reasons I haven't blogged about Tim Hunt's incredibly dumbass comments.  In the meantime, others have done an admirable job blogging and tweeting about it.  So my blog post will actually be about a discussion that was prompted by it.
NERM was in Ithaca this week.  For those of you who aren't chemists, it's the Northeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society.  Anyway, I had dinner with two MIT classmates - S, who worked with me when she was an undergrad and I was a grad student, and AV, who is also an inorganic chemist but worked for a different advisor as S and I.  Both AV and S are professors now.  We were discussing the Tim Hunt comments, and our own experiences, and ended up reflecting on our time at MIT. 
I had a very good experience in grad school at MIT, and did not notice any sexism until I started interviewing for faculty positions.  I have since wondered if I was just clueless and didn't notice the more subtle stuff, but I sure as heck started noticing stuff once I left MIT.  I mentioned this to S and AV, and they said they noticed the same thing.  AV thought it was because it was totally normal there for genius to occur in unexpected, nonstereotypical packages.  My theory was similar to AV's - we were all expected to be competitive; getting results in the lab mattered a lot of more than anything else.  No one cared if we were ladylike or not.  I was able to be a total fucking honey badger.  S said she got the impression that inorganic chemists noticed gender less than organic chemists, and encountered more bad experiences when she went off to grad school and postdoc than she had experienced at MIT.  It probably also helped that this was in the early days of the internet, so we were sheltered from hearing about incidents at other schools or idiot comments from dinosaurs.

Fuck You, Disney!

I'm on a roll, and I'm procrastinating on some research proposals, so here's the "Fuck You!" of the day.
Disney took a break from raking in money and selling annoyingly sexist toys to kids and just laid off a bunch of programmers and replaced them with H1B employees from an Indian outsourcing company.  Yeah.  I'm not anti-immigration, or even anti-H1B.  I think it's a great way to hire highly specialized science and tech folks, many of whom are educated here in the states and have PhDs.  It's not supposed to be a way for Disney to get rid of a department and bring in a whole new cadre of programmers who do the same thing but cost slightly less. 
While Disney was doing that, several of my students were unable to get H1B visas since the outsourcing companies had taken most of the slots for the year.  So fuck you, Disney!  If I weren't boycotting you already I'd start now.