John Trant

Eurogaming Bakeoff? I like it.

The baby, accomplishing absolutely nothing except frustrating all of us: "I did it! Great Job!"

Any university need a good VP of...well...anything? On top of the $300k salary, her expense account is mostly goldfish crackers and cookies, and she won't actually make anything worse.

Should increase enrollment if you go national with the campaign.

Get YOUR education at FIT BDSM!

Yeah...it was an odd thing to get upset about. Biology relies on other biology to live. I think it would die out fast as it wouldn't be able to live on glucose or amino acids. Ever tried to grow bacteria without chiral additives?

Yes. Exactly. I really think it was one unlikely event. It happened. We are here now to argue about it!

Carbon being chiral...and things in our universe being in 3 macroscopic spatial dimensions, chirality is inevitable. Self replication and self assembly require specificity. No way to get that without chirality.

Agreed. I think all life arose from a single self replicating event that went super critical. Once something started replicating, it covered everything fast and was able to evolve and differentiate fast. It was hard to go from 0 to 1. But from 1 to everything is faster.

likely not yet. But, when it happens, do you want to give the acceptance lecture and just rip into me for the entire thing? A Nobel roast.

We need to remind ourselves of the small victories. If you have successfully used a toilet today, Good Job!

Of course, I claim all of materials sciences and energy sciences for chemistry too. Where would those fancy nuclear physicists be without uranium hexafluoride? Or wihtout the materials to make sure they aren't covered in uranium hexafluoride? Eh?? EH!!!!

I often feel that this discourse is "If it has ANY application to the world, or is used as a tool by someone else, then it isn't chemistry." That's silly.

The other natural sciences study the universe as it is. Chemistry is the tool through which we make it squeal.

Yes. Chemistry is when things are more complicated than particles in a box, and before they start getting silly with intact immune systems. Everything in between, every molecule, protein, interaction, dynamic process...and the tools used to study 'em are chemistry.

The Table of Contents graphic for Ménard, A. D.*; Trant, J. F.* “Analysis of safety-related incidents reported at a major North American petrochemical processing facility between 2016 and 2020” ACS Chemical Health and Safety, 2025, 32, 186-193. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chas.4c00120. There may be an Ottawa Senators logo in the picture.

Technically, I think one needs to be cautious about company logos in pictures entered into the scientific literature. But, sometimes something sneaks through on a coffee mug.

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

#GoSensGo

It's ok. We all get a bye for...basically everything that isn't a human rights violation because it is 2025.

As someone who studies autoimmunity "boosting your immune system" is how you get multiple sclerosis, diabetes or die as your immune cells slowly kill every other part of you in an orgy of violence. However, this list is a way to boost your immune system in a targeted way without incurring ANY risks!

The answer to sny question about Hungary is [unpronounceable by IndoEuropean speakers]. Works every time.

If anyone can use AI, and that is an argument, then if you use AI, I am going to hire someone in Cameroon or Nigeria instead for pennies on the dollar to do the job. If all you have is AI, you have nothing.

We can point this Blue & Gold machine at any problem in the molecular sciences, including yours. And for team members...I promise that no two days are alike. And I promise you will never be bored.

So if you know some undergrads graduating soon who like to do ALL THE THINGS...point them this way. If you are or know an early stage company that needs some help with figuring out molecules...hi? Call me maybe?

It's quiet out here in the gaps. We aren't alone of course, but you really notice the crowds when you wander closer to any one "pure" discipline. And there are so many neato questions here just lying around. Like...its a feast for the chirophiliac (you can't take the synthetic chem out of me).

Because that gives us new tools to solve the problems we need to solve. It comes down to intentionally wandering off into the darkness, between the street lamps lighting the pools of the well defined disciplines, to find the piles of keys everyone else is leaving in this no-mans land.

I think all our projects are great in their own way. Some are bigger than others. Some are more...sexy than others...some might seem routine. But all build scientific capacity and capability and learning opportunities to tackle new problems we haven't done before.

So, this ChemRxiv is paper 1 showing off what we have been doing on the third...and second....and first (and sometimes the basement) floors of Essex Hall down here in Tropical Windsor over the past few years. And these 4 or 5 stories are just snapshots from the 80+ projects we are chugging on.

(Ok, that's a lie. What gets me up in the morning is that the Baby gets up at 7, and I better be there to help with "uppy" at 7, and have some Aussie Bites and yoghurt on deck. But you know what I mean.)

Doing this kind of work is just...so exciting. It's chaotic and humbling, and means I am always learning and staring up at a new effing sigmoidal learning curve. But...that's the fun. And sharing that with my awesome team is what gets me up in the morning and off to the lab.

And to do that means that all the people doing the various things need to understand what the other tools do. What the data means. And they need to get it fast. In real-time. As the info rolls in off the spectrometer, or the compounds off the prep HPLC, or the FEP+ calculations off the server.

Cause the answers arising from every single experiment informs everything else. A single off-trend displacement assay result tells you something about your comp. model. Or your synthetic chem. Or the cellular fate and stability of that CH3 you moved from C2 to C3 on that peripheral heterocycle.

All at the same time. Because they are all the same thing. It's molecules whacking into each other, wiggling, getting beaten up and broken down. Getting built up and conjugated. Flowing in, and out through other molecules/membranes. That's life. And it requires integrating every tool you've got.

Always asking the interdisciplinary questions from all disciplines at all times. No parallel play or multidisciplinary science. This is INTEGRATED molecular science. It's all the same thing. It's a complex interplay of sterics & electronics, kinetics & thermodynamics, specificity & selectivity.

But, like in this ChemRxiv, all of this comes from thinking about the problems at all these levels from the get-go. It involves thinking about the biophysics like a quantum chemist, or the synthetic chemistry like a toxicologist, or the PK like a nanoformulation scientist.