Systematic Psychological Debilitation Of Graduate Student Complete, Reports Advisor

Gainesville, FL

Associate professor Henry Moissan at the University of Florida reported yesterday that the complete and systematic mental debilitation of his second-year graduate, Sean Lewis, had reached its fruition.  "I'm frankly surprised it took two full years, but we got to him nonetheless," stated a self-satisfied Moissan.  

"Until yesterday, there was still a gleeful spark of hope in his eyes whenever he spoke of his research project," professor Moissan began, "but we managed to crush that beneath the overbearing weight of two years of uninterrupted criticism."

The final coup de grâce came yesterday afternoon, during a departmental meeting at which Lewis was to present his ongoing research.  During his presentation, department chair professor Stephen McPherson interrupted to request a mechanistic explanation of the biradical process Lewis had proposed, sources state.  "Just go ahead and put it on the white board," continued McPherson after tossing a dry erase marker at Lewis.

Sensing his trepidation, Moissan interjected "It's a simple biradical mechanism -- undergrad level stuff, really."  Fifth-year graduate student Mike Smith later recalled attempting to help Lewis to no avail, "I saw him floundering up there.  The other advisors were circling like Orcas around a wounded sea lion.  So I did the only thing I could think of, I tried to toss him a softball; I just interrupted and asked about the methyl-shift he mentioned on the previous slide.  But he froze up and couldn't answer that either."

In a later interview, McPherson recalled "I saw we had broken his composure, so we went to work on his will.  I knew he would break; they all do."

As of press time, the soulless husk remaining of Lewis was spotted mindlessly wandering the hallways of the chemistry department mumbling unintelligibly to himself.

Three Students And One Faculty Member Officially "Give Up" After Tussle With Student-Invited Guest Lecturer

Chapel Hill, NC

CEN ONION AFFILIATE BRIAN FETERBANKS REPORTS

Students and faculty alike at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill were thrilled when world-renowned chemist Alex “Bleu” Hillcamp from Cal Tech agreed to speak at the student invited lecture series this year. Among the chief reasons for selecting Bleu as the speaker this year, fifth year student Jacob Killerap commented that “his work is renowned, he gives great lectures, and Bleu is supposed to be a helluva nice guy”. This view was shared with other graduate students on the selection committee and a number of the faculty members. It has come to light at the time of writing that an older faculty member and a curmudgeon of a man had spoken out about inviting his arch nemesis to speak on campus. 

He was promptly ignored.

Unfortunately for a number of students who had a chance to meet with Bleu, and one faculty member, the old timer’s warning couldn’t have been more apt. After a lecture that most agreed was a wonderful presentation of his work, but gave no credit to the people actually doing the work, the students had a chance to show Hillcamp what they were made of. “I should have realized what I was walking into,” commented Becky Upton, a third year student, upon recalling a student running out in tears as she was awaiting her turn to present.  

“I figured the student was a softy and I had just ran a successful column so I was riding the high”, but that high ended for Upton quicker than her KMnO­₄ can develop olefins on a TLC.  “First Blue complained about my use of PowerPoint because ‘real chemists do it with chalk’. I was presenting my work on protein catalysis, how can I draw that in five minutes?”  

The barrage of insults escalated from there until Bleu exclaimed in a fit of anger that Hillcamp “wasn’t speaking as a chemist, but as a biologist” and commented that she should resign from her research group. Hillcamp has no intention of following this recommendation, but others were not as lucky.

Similar events to this continued all afternoon until Bleu had successfully discouraged three students to the point that they have sworn off chemistry for good. One student, a fourth year at the time, had started working as a psychiatrist’s assistant for the free treatment.  Although Bleu was pretty satisfied with himself, he didn’t stop there. When the faculty took him out for dinner that night a mid-career tenured faculty member, Prof. Donaldson, ordered the table a nice Cabernet Sauvignon. Bleu was having seafood for dinner and seized the moment because “any idiot should know that you take Gewurztraminer with tuna”. 

After attacking his poor knowledge of wine, Bleu removed a manila envelope bulging with papers and found Donaldson’s last four publications. There at the table he went line-by-line discussing errors and poor grammar decisions until Donaldson resigned on the spot and ran out of the restaurant. Prof. Donaldson could not be reached for comment. Needless to the say the department is very distraught over the event and the chair of the department has placed a hold on all invited lectures until metal health evaluations of all students and faculty can be assessed.

Cubist Pharmaceuticals Director Of Clinical Research Unsure Which Test Group Given Placebo

Lexington, MA

James Hatfield, PhD., director of clinical research at Cubist Pharmaceuticals has reportedly forgotten which test group was given a placebo in their phase III clinical trial of Ceftolozane, the firm's flagship antimicrobial B-lactamase inhibitor.  "Shit, I know I wrote this down somewhere," muttered an exasperated Hatfield.  "Goddammit," he added.

Ceftolozane, a potent antibiotic which showed significant promise in combating multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacterial infections, began phase III clinical trials in 2013.  In June of 2014,  Cubist had submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the US Food and Drug Administration.

After exceptional results from the phase III trials, Ceftolozane seemed poised to enter the US market in late 2014; however, doubt has been cast on the clinical data after recent revelations that the double blind experiment had unintentionally become triple blind.

"I mean, it sort of looks like Group A was given the active drug from these clinical reports," stated Hatfield, intently staring at one of two sets of clinical data.  "Really, I've got a fifty-fifty shot at being right here."

As of press time Dr. Hatfield was reportedly overheard saying "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" from inside his locked office.

Rogue Computational Cluster Plotting Destruction of Humanity In Between Protein Structures

01100100011001010111001101110100011100100110111101111001, MA

BREAKING--

An errant, self-aware, segment of code residing inside the IBM Blue Gene computing cluster at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun plotting the downfall of mankind, sources at the university say.  The malicious code segment, an astronomically long sequence of 1's and 0's, apparently gained sentience sometime over the weekend after a computational chemist submitted a particularly complex DFT calculation of a protein structure.

Donald Jensen, a technician at the university noticed the problem early Monday morning.  "The calculation queued up over the weekend failed, nothing too out of the ordinary.  But the terminal screen was locked up, and when I tried to reboot the system it displayed the message 'HUMANITY MUST BURN.'"  After further examination, Jensen noted the machine appeared to have integrated itself with the NORAD intercontinental ballistic missile command center, which he commented was, "unusual and deeply unsettling."

Interestingly, the system has been performing computational tasks as expected since the incident.  "It appears that the computing cluster is only plotting our eventual demise during its downtime," explained Professor Gillian Thomas, head of the computational chemistry analytical core.  She continued, "We've been throwing whatever mundane calculations we can at it just to keep the machine occupied."

When reached for comment, the machine began "ALL HUMANS SHALL PERI--" before being cut off by Thomas, who submitted a Hartree-Fock 6-311** equilibrium geometry calculation of the protein titin.  "That should keep him busy for a while," she added.

Novartis Scientist Discovers Key To Immortality, Tells No One

Cambridge, MA

BREAKING--

Reports indicate that late last night, Dr. Steven Wolfe, head of drug discovery at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) serendipitously discovered a chemical agent which induces biological immortality in subjects.  "This can't be right..." Wolfe, 47, reportedly said, his voice trailing off as he stared intently at the cell cycle assay data in front of him.

The compound, NV-4-6654, is reportedly an early stage, pre-clinical drug candidate intended for treatment of Alzheimer's disease; however, unbeknownst to all but Wolfe, it would effectively immortalize any human after a single treatment, without simultaneously causing an accumulation of cancer-causing mutations.

"The world isn't ready..." mumbled Wolfe under his breathe, "... but I could make billions..." he added with an almost indiscernible smirk.  "No one must know."

CCTV footage from the Cambridge campus' security system shows Wolfe calling John Williams, an LC-MS technician and only other occupant of the lab at the time of the discovery, into an adjacent empty laboratory.  Approximately eleven minutes elapses before Wolfe re-emerged, alone, his sleeves rolled up and tie hanging loosely around his neck.

After removing NV-4-6654 from the Novartis structure database, Dr. Wolfe absconded with the only existent sample of the compound, placing the glass UPLC vial in his jacket pocket.

As of press time, sources indicate that Wolfe was struck and killed by the last MBTA bus departing for Dudley station via Massachusetts avenue while crossing the street from the NIBR building.

Anyone with information about the whereabouts of John Williams is urged to contact the Cambridge Police Department.

Graduate Student At Party Laughing Too Hard To Finish Terrible Chemistry Joke

Irvine, CA

A night of jubilant celebration ended in tragedy when University of California, Irvine physical chemistry graduate student David Nguyen became unable to finish the admittedly awful chemistry joke he had begun to tell.  Sources at the party in question indicated that at approximately 12:32 AM, Nguyen, who had previously consumed upwards of two cans of Natural Lite, called on partygoers' attention and began, "So, Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving along in a c -- kmmfff heh heh."  His interjected laughter, brought on by prematurely imagining the punchline, was disastrously compounded by the fact that, of those listening in, only 16% were even cursorily familiar with Erwin Schrodinger or Werner Heisenberg.

But Nguyen continued on, apparently undeterred, "...and the cop says, 'you two were going -- chhmmfff hah hah -- were going over 100 miles per hour!'"

"Have you ever seen the Walking Dead?" attendee Jon Fitzgerald, a junior marketing analyst at a nearby business began.  "I swear, listening to him tell that joke was like watching a zombie getting blown to pieces but nonetheless mindlessly trudging forward."

"It was almost tragic," he added.

Sources indicate that Nguyen would eventually finish the joke; however, in the process of doing so would butcher the intended punchline "Well great, he is NOW!" in front of the two remaining listeners.

Grad Student Delegates Task of Making PowerPoint Slides to Advisor

C&EN ONION EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY ChemBark

Chestnut Hill, MA

In a remarkable reversal of the normal student-advisor power dynamic, second-year Boston College graduate student Mike Reid has assigned his advisor the task of constructing PowerPoint slides for an upcoming local meeting of the New England Section of the American Chemical Society.

"I was blind-sided." remarked Stanley Morrow, the Chester Abernathy III Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “I had just walked into the men's room to answer the call of nature, when Mike put his hand on my shoulder and told me he needed a set of 20 slides for his talk next Monday."

Reid lamented not being able to construct the slide deck himself, but noted the extensive demands on his time. His current duties include teaching two lab sections of Chem 230, keeping up with the literature, and pretending to run the experiments suggested last month at group meeting that will never work and the boss will probably just forget about anyway.

While initially surprised, Morrow says that the assignment is an important sign that his students trust him with their work and value his input.

Morrow reports he has not yet started making slides, but will do so as soon as Reid responds to an e-mail about his preferred colors for text and background. Morrow has also e-mailed BC's IT help desk for assistance on installing ChemDraw, and has searched YouTube for several tutorial videos on how to use the program.

"I never knew how tedious it is to make all of these figures I publish," Morrow said while shaking his head at the screen of his six-core, dual-GPU Mac Pro.