Letters

The importance of mentors

The biographical sketches for ACS national awardees typically mention earned degrees and institutions, but seldom mention the mentors, not even of those who earned Ph.D. degrees. I am particularly struck by the coverage of Christy Hanes, whose Ph.D. mentor, Richard P. Van Duyne, is given accolades for his inspiration (C&EN, Jan. 24, page 39). Yet earlier in the article, Haynes is quoted as saying she was initially inspired toward the chemistry profession by her high school chemistry teacher and then by doing undergraduate research at Macalester College. Neither high school teacher nor undergraduate adviser is given any credit by name.

This is contrary to the spirit of ACS, particularly in view of the council's action at the Philadelphia national meeting to adjust membership requirements for high school chemistry teachers to encourage them to become active in ACS. I urge C&EN writers to take the time to identify mentors of chemists--including young chemists, those being honored, and those who have died. Those mentors, after all, helped to make it all happen.

Paul R. Jones
Ann Arbor, Mich.

What a novel idea

In recent years, the use of catchy titles and adjectives that hype up the true content of articles published in my discipline (organic synthesis) has gone through the roof.

Consider descriptors such as new, novel, efficient, concise, facile, and practical, among others. I could not resist checking SciFinder for the total number of these words contained in the titles (through the end of 2004). The number of hits is staggering: "novel"--592,132; "efficient"--408,629; "facile"--451,665; "practical"--710,862; and "new and novel"--107,665. The list could go on. This proliferation would suggest that even if 1% of such claims were true, there would be no problems in organic chemistry left unsolved.

Such claims are in stark contrast to the actual content of articles so advertised, which, for the most part, are less inspiring than the literature published 20 years ago, and these articles certainly do not deliver the claims stated in the titles. In my opinion, it would be prudent if the editorial boards of major journals agreed on a policy that would ban the use of these descriptors. The truth is in the eye of the beholder, who must be more than disappointed these days by reading the current literature while perhaps drinking Budweiser, the purported "king of beers."

Tomas Hudlicky
St. Catharines, Ontario

Biofuels:
A stopgap solution

Both the article "Fuel Cells Rally" (C&EN, Jan. 31, page 18) and the letter "Biofuels versus hydrogen" by F. David Doty (C&EN, March 14, page 6) overlook a very important point in their discussion on fuels for the future.

Neither hydrogen fuel derived from fossil sources nor biofuels (such as ethanol and biodiesel) are sustainable with regard to global warming. Both produce significant amounts of CO₂, as indicated by Doty, which is not acceptable. Biodiesel and bioethanol, while being sustainable with regard to fossil fuel equivalents, both produce CO₂ and can be considered a stopgap arrangement to address the inevitable petroleum oil shortage, but they do not address global warming. The only sustainable energy sources are solar and fusion/fission energy.

For example, using today's photovoltaic technology, only a "postage stamp" 100 by 100 miles on the Arizona map would be required to generate the entire 100 quads of energy used by the U.S. ("Carbon Management: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable," NRC NAE Press, 2001). Of course, there are logistical issues with this simple energy balance, such as energy storage and distribution. However, it is clear that a sustainable fuel system would be hydrogen fuel generated by electrolysis of water using solar, fusion/fission, and windmill energy. This solution allows fuel to be made with nearly zero impact on global warming.

Carbon sequestration methods can help reduce CO₂, but they are problematic and expensive and do not address the problem of CO₂ generation. Bioethanol fuel can replace oil, but it will contribute little to the global warming solution, especially when developing countries reach their anticipated energy consumption rate within 50 years. Biodiesel plants have a future, not in fuel but as a valuable chemical feedstock of fatty acids and as a biorefinery for future biobased materials and chemicals.

So, where should we put our scarce research funds?

Richard Wool
Newark, Del.