ResearchGate Riposte

“Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time” -- Victor Hugo (French romantic Poet, Novelist and Dramatist, 1802-1885)

A recent comment (http://desulf.blogspot.com/2011/04/researchgate-social-network-for-serious.html?showComment=1310437389124#c3412084894660706137) on my ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net) post describes the site as a “waste of time.” It is a legitimate comment.  I visit many sites that others rave about and decide that they do nothing for me.  For me, those sites are a waste of time.

ResearchGate has not yet achieved its full potential.  But for me, the site has value.  Here are some of the things I like …

·         Conferences

·         Groups

·         Publications

Here are examples of each, along with notes on how I found them …

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Click Conferences

Click Engineering

[browse]

International Conference on Ionic Liquids in Separation and Purification Technology

Sep 4, 2011 - Sep 7, 2011, Sitges, Spain

Ionic Liquids as advanced fluids. Applications of Ionic Liquids in : Biorefining, Biotechnology, Chemicals and petrochemicals, Surface cleaning,...

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Click Groups

Click Engineering

[browse]

Note that the quality of group discussions depends on the time and effort that its participants are willing to provide for the benefit of the community.  There are lots of ResearchGate groups that aren’t worth the effort to follow.  That’s true of groups in other social media, such as LinkedIn.  And I won’t even mention the mindless drek you find on Facebook (Oops!  I just did.  My bad.)

If you want to find useful groups, browse, then join those that interest you … and then, contribute intelligent comments.

Here is one group that looks promising … whether it is worth YOUR time is up to you.

Chemical EngineeringCommon interest · 731 Members

Petroleum Engineering, Materials Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Engineering Physics and Chemical Engineering

This is an open group.

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Click Publications

“We suggest publications to you based on your research keywords – the more keywords you add, the more relevant our suggestions will be.”

Enter keyword in the search box:

dibenzothiophene

Partial results appear below …

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Magnetically separable polyoxometalate catalyst for the oxidation of dibenzothiophene with H(2)O(2)

Authors: Zhenxin Zhang, Fengwei Zhang, Qianqian Zhu, Wei Zhao, Baochun Ma, Yong Ding

Journal of colloid and interface science. 08/2011; 360(1):189-94.

Preparation of molecularly imprinted polymer by surface imprinting technique and its performance for adsorption of dibenzothiophene

Authors: Wan-Zhen Xu, Wei Zhou, Li-Hua Bian, Wei-Hong Huang, Xiang-Yang Wu

Journal of separation science. 06/2011;

CASSCF/CASPT2 and TD-DFT study of valence and Rydberg electronic transitions in fluorene, carbazole, dibenzofuran, and dibenzothiophene

Authors: Ivan Ljubić, Aleksandar Sabljić

The journal of physical chemistry. A. 05/2011; 115(18):4840-50.

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ResearchGATE … social network for the serious scientist

“Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?” -- Bill Watterson (American Author of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, b.1958)

NPR-National Public Radio (www.npr.org) is my preferred source for general news.  A couple of days ago it surprised me … it featured a piece on ResearchGATE (www.researchgate.com) – a social network aimed specifically at research scientists.

To quote from the NPR piece …

“A few years ago, while he was doing research at Harvard, Ijad Madisch could not figure out why his experiment wasn't working. His adviser didn't know what was wrong, nobody in his lab worked on the same stuff, and none of his researcher friends could help … That's when Madisch got the idea for a scientist network: ResearchGate — a sort of Facebook for scientists. Instead of sharing favorite photos and videos, researchers could use the Web platform to connect with each other and share information that doesn't get published”

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135513803/like-share-learn-facebook-for-scientists

Lest you think, “Oh, God, not ANOTHER way to waste my time,” Google® this …

Researchgate desulfurization

One interesting result, from ConocoPhillips, is …

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Unraveling heavy oil desulfurization chemistry: targeting clean fuels

Tushar V Choudhary, Stephen Parrott, Byron Johnson

ConocoPhillips Company, Bartlesville Technology Center, Bartlesville, Oklahoma 74004, USA.

Environmental science & technology. 04/2008; 42(6):1944-7.

Abstract

The sulfur removal chemistry of heavy oils has been unraveled by systematically investigating several heavy oils with an extremely wide range of properties. The heavy oil feed and product properties have been characterized by advanced analytical methods, and these properties have been related to the sulfur conversion data observed in pilot hydrotreating units. These studies coupled with kinetic treatment of the data have revealed that the desulfurization chemistry of heavy oils is essentially controlled by the strongly inhibiting three and larger ring aromatic hydrocarbon content and surprisingly not by the content of the "hard-to-remove" sulfur compounds. Such enhanced understanding of the heavy oil sulfur removal is expected to open new avenues for catalyst/process optimization for heavy oil desulfurization and thereby assist the efficent production of clean transporation fuels.

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Today’s tip to serious desulfurization researchers: Join ResearchGATE.

Another tip: add the Desulfurization Blog (www.desulf.blogspot.com) as a feed to your homepage.