Prof. E. W. Dijkstra's Three Golden Rules for Successful Research

Following are three very important GOLDEN RULES by Prof. E. W.Dijkstra, a computer scientist, which every researcher should remember to succeed in their research.

1. Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always works as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be move forward.
2. We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness prevail.
3. Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you.

 (Reference: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD637.html).

How To Write A Scientific Paper

Disseminating new information to the scientific world by publishing your results in scientific journals is one of the main aspect of scientific process. It is a communication process of contributing ones results to the knowledge pool. Writing such a scientific paper is an art, which needs certain training, following some rules etc to make a story of results obtained to tell the overall theme of novelty to the scientific community.
 
I was searching for some tips or guidelines which could help to learn how to write a scientific paper and fortunately, found some of following interesting web links. I am not saying there are the perfect tips, but these of some of interesting stuffs with many interesting guidelines given there for young researchers to learn this skill of writing. I hope these are going to be useful for many students and researchers. 

• Writing a scientific research article
• Writing a scientific research paper
• Writing research papers
• The All Results Journals: 10 tips for submitting articles 

Apart from that, one can watch some of following video demonstrations on writing good quality research papers. 

The 6 Truths of Organic Chemistry

One of blog writer in "Chemistry Blog" namely Azmanam in his recent blog article entitled "How to Succeed in Organic Chemistry", has listed out some interesting points and called them as 6 truths of Organic chemistry, which every organic chemistry student must remember, are as follows.

1) Approach unknown reactions just like you should approach all reactions
– Identify nucleophile(s)
– Identify electrophile(s)
– Nucleophiles attack electrophiles
– Repeat
2) Weaker Acid Wins
– In and acid/base equilibrium, the equilibrium favors the side of the arrow with the weaker acid (the compound with the higher pKa)
3) Mind your charges
– Make sure the net charge of all compounds is consistent throughout a mechanism
4) The 2nd Best Rule
– The 2nd best resonance structure usually defines a functional group’s reactivity
5) When in doubt: Number Your Carbons!
– When coupling 2 molecules, if it not readily obvious where the various atoms go in the product, number the carbon atoms in the starting material and map those numbers on to the product.
6) Carbonyls: THE CODE
– There are only 3 elementary steps in a carbonyl addition mechanism.
1) Proton Transfer (always reversible)
2) Nucleophilic Addition to a Carbonyl (electrons go up onto oxygen)
3) Electrons Collapse Down from Oxygen (and kick out a good leaving group)

The steps can be in any order and repeated, but those are the only 3 steps needed for addition to acid chlorides, acid anhydrides, aldehydes, ketones, amides, esters, and carboxylic acids (including aldol and Claisen reactions).

My PhD Defence.

 

Ph D Defence from gshivashimpi77

Flow Chart of Functional Group Transformations.

Functional group transformation/inter conversion is the process of converting one functional group into another by several type of reactions like, substitution, addition, elimination, reduction, or oxidation etc., by the use of reagents and different reaction conditions.

Following are the simplified flow charts, which I found in a random Google search, showing flow diagrams of many common organic functional group transformations in aliphatic and aromatic class of compounds. 

1. Functional group transformations in Aliphatic systems.

2. Functional group transformations in Aromatic systems.