{"id":339,"date":"2013-10-26T23:19:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T23:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/?p=339"},"modified":"2013-12-12T19:28:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T19:28:12","slug":"university-of-akronprofessor-joseph-p-kennedy-expose-part-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/uncategorized\/university-of-akronprofessor-joseph-p-kennedy-expose-part-7\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Akron\/Professor Joseph P. Kennedy Expose, Part 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being one of only two Americans in the \u201cKennedy\u201d group was in some regards a positive experience for me.\u00a0 It was here that my interest in India and China grew and when Stas arrived a similar desire to learn about Russia emerged.\u00a0 In fact, my curiosity in these countries is still quite keen these days.\u00a0 So, for the first couple months I intently learned as much as I could from Stas in both the area of chemistry as well as Russia.\u00a0 Stas (please refer to files below this paragraph) had been polymerizing IB in eutectic mixtures containing primarily CaCl2<\/sub>, sometimes in the presence of a surfactant, and always using the Lewis acid ytterbium(III) trifluoromethanesulfonate {Yb(OTf)3<\/sub>}.\u00a0 This was a slight departure from the system that emerged from the Sawamoto group as no purposefully added initiator was present in Stas\u2019 system and therefore the common consensus was that water was functioning in this role.\u00a0 Stas also demonstrated through the use of 1<\/sup>H NMR and modeling with triflic acid that two different types of PIBs were being formed in these polymerizations.\u00a0 One type of PIBs had low MWs and according to Stas\u2019 modeling experiments (see files below this paragraph) these were formed by triflic acid impurities present in the Yb(OTf)3<\/sub>.\u00a0 The second type of PIBs possessed higher MWs and these were being formed by Yb(OTf)3<\/sub>, supposedly in conjunction with water (again, refer to files below this paragraph).\u00a0 IMA experiments by Stas also supposedly showed that these polymerizations possessed living characteristics to them (see files below this paragraph).<\/p>\n

Early report by Stas<\/a> (This report was presented by Stas during the first meeting with Dr. “Kennedy” and Dr. Lewis.\u00a0 The handwriting on the left is Stas’ the handwriting on the right is Dr. Lewis’.)<\/p>\n

Early Stas IMA data set<\/a> (This is a copy of data that Stas had generated.\u00a0 The handwriting is Dr. Lewis’.)<\/p>\n

Stas 1st ima experiment<\/a> (Another data set generated by Stas presented during one of the first meetings with Dr. “Kennedy” and Dr. Lewis.)<\/p>\n

Another Stas ima experiment<\/a> (This is yet another data set presented by Stas during a group meeting.)<\/p>\n

1H NMR by Stas showing low and high MW PIBS<\/a> (These are 1H NMR spectra generated by Stas that supposedly showed two types of propagating species.\u00a0 One being initiated by triflic acid the other being initiated by water in conjunction with Yb(OTf)3<\/sub>.\u00a0 Most of the writing is Stas’.)<\/p>\n

Second meeting with Kennedy and Stas<\/a> (These are notes taken by Dr. Lewis from the second meeting with “Kennedy” and Stas.)<\/p>\n

Third meeting with Kennedy and Stas<\/a> (These are notes taken during a third meeting by Dr. “Kennedy” who then passed them to Dr. Lewis.)<\/p>\n

The experiments that I conducted with Stas (please see files below this paragraph) were not overly demanding when it came to manipulations; however, most were quite lengthy (many requiring 8 or more hours).\u00a0 Still, with Stas\u2019 assistance, PIB was being made in aqueous media and \u201cKennedy\u201d was happy.\u00a0 Oddly enough, \u201cKennedy\u201d assigned other side projects.\u00a0 One involved the polymerization of IB by triflic acid followed by quenching with an amine in order to generate amine functionalized PIBs.\u00a0 The other involved the attempted polymerization of IB in aqueous media using BF3\u00b7OEt2<\/sub> (which is again a basic polymerization system reported earlier by Sawamoto\u2019s group).\u00a0 In all instances, with the exception of BF3\u00b7OEt2<\/sub> polymerizations, experimentation was initially conducted with Stas (see below this paragraph for scanned copies of my notebook and of reports to \u201cKennedy\u201d during this period).<\/p>\n

Lab notebook Yb(OTf)3 scandal 1<\/a> (First section of lab notebook on Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project.)<\/p>\n

Lab notebook Yb(OTf)3 scandal 2<\/a> (Second section of lab notebook on Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project.)<\/p>\n

Lab notebook Yb(OTf)3 scandal 3<\/a> (Third section of lab notebook on Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project.)<\/p>\n

Progress Report 12-13-00<\/a> (This was a report written primarily by Dr. Lewis covering details of work on the Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project much being done in conjunction with Stas.\u00a0 The corrections on this report were made by Dr. “Kennedy.”)<\/p>\n

Progress report late dec into early jan<\/a> (This was a report written primarily by Dr. Lewis covering details of work on the Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project much being done in conjunction with Stas.)<\/p>\n

Progress report 1-13 to 26-00<\/a> (This was a report written primarily by Dr. Lewis covering details of work on the Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> project much being done in conjunction with Stas.\u00a0 The corrections on this report were made by Dr. “Kennedy.”)<\/p>\n

table amine functionality<\/a> (This was a report written primarily by Dr. Lewis covering details of work on the triflic acid\/amine functionalization project much being done in conjunction with Stas).<\/p>\n

As time slowly passed on I began to venture out on my own in order to increase productivity and to hasten the time needed for graduation.\u00a0 Then I hit a brick wall.\u00a0 Every time I conducted experimentation on my own with the Yb(OTf)3<\/sub> system I was unable to produce more than a few milligrams of product (if any) and in most instances those few milligrams of material were most likely surfactant (please see files below this paragraph).\u00a0 Stas and \u201cKennedy\u201d informed me that my technique was to blame and so I returned to working with Stas in order to remedy this.\u00a0 Oddly enough, with his assistance we continued to make PIB but whenever I tried similar experiments on my own I was unable to generate polymer.\u00a0 I slowly began to question the previous results and increasingly began pointing out that polymer was only being generated when Stas was involved in experimentation (again, see files below this paragraph).\u00a0 As I did this, my relationship with both Stas and \u201cKennedy\u201d progressively went downhill.<\/p>\n

early April ca 9th 2001 progress report<\/a> (Another report generated by Dr. Lewis where he begins to question the validity of the data being generated by Stas.)<\/p>\n

Summary of Experimental Data 4-9-01<\/a> (Another report generated by Dr. Lewis where he begins to question the validity of the data being generated by Stas.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being one of only two Americans in the \u201cKennedy\u201d group was in some regards a positive experience for me.\u00a0 It was here that my interest in India and China grew and when Stas arrived a similar desire to learn about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb8bvA-5t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}