Dear Mr President

I know you're surrounded by well informed people with cultivated opinions. I know you are facing an unimaginably difficult task: leading this country through really difficult economic times, coping with foreign policy nightmares, and improving the function of our health care system.

As a chemistry educator many of my students are pursuing careers in health care. I teach people who want to be nurses, people who want to be physician assistants, doctors, and pharmacists. I teach in a place that is, at its roots, a rural community. We are geographically somewhat isolated, and people come from many more rural areas around here to get their health care.

Health care is increasingly becoming tough to find in those outlying communities, and our community is limited in its capacity to train nursing and other health care students because even our regional hospital is not all that large. At my college, the health programs are tremendously competitive, and the limit to producing new health care workers appears to be a lack of money to make it possible for the college and the supporting hospital to train very many people.

So I have people anxious to become nurses and doctors who love this part of the world and want to live and work in places like this. Yet the training for these people draws them into urban places, and debt after school often draws them into specialization or urban jobs so that they can not return.

If we are going to invest huge sums of money into reconstructing our economy, I would be delighted to see some of that money used to produce a system that can support the education of these people in a fashion that allows them to come back to small communities for their professional practice. This is what they want, and it is what our communities need, especially as the population of our country--most dramatically in these very same rural communities--becomes older and needs more care.

Pre-Med? Read on.

This message is from Kate.

Hello Fellow Pre- Med Students~

I hope that by this time you have heard of the MCAT. If not then you definitely need to talk to someone. If so then you have probably heard of the MCAT prep course that all recommend you take. The University of Oregon offers one over in the valley during the summer.

I have spoken with Diane Pritchard at U of O Bend about getting a course over here for we Bend-kids. She said that it is very possible, we would need about 10 to 12 students to make it go. The trouble lies in the fact that Diane has tried to do this in the past and after getting a good initial response then had everyone bail on her. So needless to say she is not super interested in doing all the leg work if no one is going to follow through.

That is where I come in. I am a Pre-Med student who doesn't want to drive to Eugene twice a week this summer to get ready for the test. Check out this link for the most up-to-date info on the course http://www.uoregon.edu/~als/services/testprep/textdocs/mcatuoprep.pdf

If enough folks are in Diane would make this happen for us. Course costs $625 I think, and well worth it I hear.

My email is kwillis@cocc.edu and let me know of your interest.

Have a great day and happy learning~ Kate

Cahn-Ingold-Prelog Rules

Ochem students: you may remember today's brief discussion of the rules for assigning priority to groups around a chiral center. I promised I'd get back to you about an issue that came up in relation to this. I was unsure of myself on an issue surrounding what I think we can call a more-complex example. Well, I am disappointed in the textbooks in my office. None of them provide an explanation that is adequate to deal with the structure we were looking at in class. But there is a straightforward (if not simple) way to solve the problem.

And, as usual, it was I who was misapplying the rules and not our esteemed author.

Guess where I found a good description, illustrated with examples, concise, accurate, etc.? My favorite web source: Wikipedia.

Chemistry and Cookery, the Column

I discovered today that Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, has a column available to read for free at the New York Times. Being an old fan I don't know how I missed this for so long, but I am quite happy to have found it! Links to the columns can be found most easily by starting at his website, Curious Cook.

oops.

Cyanide ion (CN-) and sulfuric acid produce HCN, a highly toxic gas. When inhaled, HCN interferes with celllular respiration and can lead to what amounts to molecular-level suffocation.

I am grateful to the writer and editors at the Oregonian for giving specifics on this accident. So often I see vague references in the media to spills or accidents involving chemicals, without actually naming them. As in, "a tanker turned over and spilled a toxic chemical...." ammonia? chlorine? xylene? The consequences of such spills can vary dramatically.

Good eye for the person who noticed the foaming, too. The evolution of the gas seems to have tipped him off to the fact that something was amiss.

Anybody know what they do with cyanide in a chip factory?

what I got for Xmas

My DNA is on its way to the lab.

SciFri

Do you think radio lacks because it can not deliver video content? I must respectfully disagree.

Science Friday (from Talk of the Nation, hosted by npr) has a fantastic website that includes a library of videos that may even rival those of TED. At the moment I am particularly taken with the Hungry Scientist presenting carbonated fruit. But there is much more to explore. The Hungry Scientist blog also deserves checking out.

Suddenly winter break seems way too short.