Year has gone by with very sad atmosphere

It is really heart breaking to think that the situation in Europe has been so cruel for one year now. There is no words to describe how sorry the rest of the world is and we will try to do everything to help people in Ukraine. However, since this is a science blog for general audience, I thought to update how this all has affected the research in our case. Note, this is not to complain or compare it with people suffering directly from the war, this is more like an example how everything is affected.

1. The number of discussion in the coffee table about the situation is countless. Peoples feelings have floated from desperation to even depression. Some of us has been able to somehow help via donations etc. but many of us just feel hopeless as we cannot change the situation.

2. Energy crisis, yes we have also been prepared for powercuts. There was announcement that there can be power shortages that are informed in advance but also those that can occur unexpectedly. That was shocking news to us, since many of our really expensive equipment, like NMRs and mass spectrometries cannot tolerate unexpected powercuts, they need to be run down in a controlled manner taking hours. Luckily, the winter has been relatively mild in temperature (not the amount of snow) this year, and so far we haven't suffered power shortages. But in the worst scenario, we should have closed down some of our activities. 

3. Prices has risen and budgeting-wisely, we have faced situations where we need to prioritize to some experiments and leave out something that was planned when the fundings were received. Of course, quite rarely science goes as planned, so in that sense, this is nothing that cannot be handled, but it annoys of course that we need to pay much more for something that was cheaper in that past.

4. Delivery of reagents and solvents has been delayed and in some cases, we have waited for months for something to arrive. This means delays in the overall research outputs, and with short-termed funding, we are not able to deliver results that has been planned in the research plan originally. Again, nothing new, that is pretty much the soul of the science, but again, annoying when you cannot keep up with your plans.

Of course there can be many other things, these just came to my mind with a quick thought. At the end I would like to congratulate Ukrainian chemical supplier Enamine, how well they have fight their ways out of the horror and find the ways to continue their trade.

Let's just hope the will be an ending soon and piece in the world! 💝