Nov/Dec 2008: ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News by Chemical Institute of Canada

l’actualité chimique canadienne canadian chemical news ACCN

november/december | novembre/décembre • 2008 • Vol. 60, No./no 10

enetics G intersecting

chemistryand biology

ACCN

A publication of the CIC | Une publication de l’ICC

novembre/décembre | november/december • 2008 • Vol. 60, No./no 10

Ta bl e o f C o n t e n t s | Ta bl e d e s m a t i è r e s

Guest Column Chroniqueur invité . . . . . . 2 The Importance of Biotechnology Lorne Hepworth

Ar ticles

letters lettres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

News Nouvelles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Small but Mighty: Microbial Communities and a ‘Second Wave’ of Genomics Robert Beiko

Q & A with Chris Wilds: Canada Research Chair in Biological Chemistry Compiled by Chris Rogers

Industrial Briefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chemfusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

Recognition reconnaissance . . . . . . . .

Saskatchewan: Growing beyond agricultural roots

Photonics: A Bright Partnership between Chemistry and Physics

Jackie Robin

Robert H. Lipson, MCIC Events Événements . . . . . . . . . . . .

careers carrières . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Environment Canada Considers Banning Silicones in Canada Michael A. Brook, MCIC

Guest Column Chroniqueur invité

Editor/Redactor Terri Pavelic

The Importance of Biotechnology

anadians’ support of biotechnology, and their recognition of the technology’s ability to help answer some of the most pressing challenges facing the world, is strong. After years of working toward greater acceptance of the technology, recent polling shows close to 80 percent of Canadians see benefits from agricultural biotechnology as important because of the role public acceptance will play in successfully implementing solutions to challenges such as, global food shortages, changing consumer demands for food, and concerns about energy and the environment. Today, we are challenged to feed a world population of 6.7 billion people. So challenged, in fact, that already nearly one billion people don’t get enough food. Imagine the challenge in 2050, when the population is expected to have reached 9.2 billion. We also see consumer demands are changing. People in countries like India and China are developing a greater appetite for meat (which requires more crop production for feed), while people in North America are clamouring for food options that deliver bigger nutritional bang for the buck. All this, and we haven’t even touched on the challenges related to energy and environment. Fortunately, plant biotechnology holds promise in each of these areas. As world demand for food grows, anticipated biotech breakthroughs will increase the amount of food available, potentially by as much as 25 percent worldwide. Especially exciting in this regard, given that forecasts are predicting one in five countries will face water shortages by 2030, is the research into drought resistance. Field-testing of drought resistant genes in corn, canola, and soy is already underway in Canada and it is expected these crops will be on the market within four years. Over and above the drought resistance,

Graphic Designer/Infographiste Krista Leroux

Lorne Hepworth these varieties will deliver yield increases up to 20 percent from the same amount of land without requiring higher inputs. Not all biotechnology advances are aimed at improved farm production. Research is also underway to help the consumer by removing allergens from foods. Research such as this tackles the food shortage issue from another angle by making more of what’s produced suitable for eating by removing allergic reaction. Genetic research also has a role to play in meeting changing world appetites, particularly in the area of better nutritional attributes and enhanced health benefits. Canola, a true Canadian biotechnology success story, is a well-accepted example of what biotechnology can do in this regard, and there is much more on the horizon to be excited about. Take, for example, increased omega 3 in oils for better heart health, boosted lycopene in tomatoes for antioxidants associated with reducing the risk of cancer, or potatoes with 30 percent more protein and the ability to absorb less oil. Of course, agriculture isn’t just about putting food on plates and our efforts in biotechnology are focused on ensuring full advantage can be taken of other areas where farming can deliver solutions. Already biotechnology has contributed to changes in agricultural practices that are better for the environment. Significant research efforts looking at ways plant biotechnology can contribute to alleviating our reliance on petroleum and non-renewable fuels is currently underway and there is also exciting research into developing plants that will help remove toxins and clean our soil. No wonder Canadian support for biotechnology is robust. It’s science that’s making a difference today and which promises to make a difference tomorrow. Lorne Hepworth is president of CropLife Canada

L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

Editorial Board/Conseil de rédaction Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, chair/président Cathleen Crudden, MCIC John Margeson, MCIC Milena Sejnoha, MCIC Bernard West, MCIC Editorial Office/Bureau de la rédaction 130, rue Slater Street, Suite/bureau 550 Ottawa, ON K1P 6E2 613-232-6252 • Fax/Téléc. 613-232-5862 editorial@accn.ca • www.accn.ca Advertising/Publicité advertising@accn.ca Subscription Rates/Tarifs d’abonnement Non CIC members/Non-membres de l’ICC : in/au Canada CAN$55; outside/à l’extérieur du Canada US$50. Single copy/Un exemplaire CAN$8 or US$7. L’Actualité chimique canadienne/Canadian Chemical News (ACCN) is published 10 times a year by the Chemical Institute of Canada / est publié 10 fois par année par l’Institut de chimie du Canada. www.cheminst.ca. Recommended by the Chemical Institute of Canada, the Canadian Society for Chemistry, the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering, and the Canadian Society for Chemical Technology. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the official position of the Institute or of the societies that recommend the magazine. Recommandé par l’Institut de chimie du Canada, la Société canadienne de chimie, la Société canadienne de génie chimique et la Société canadienne de technologie chimique. Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement la position officielle de l’Institut ou des sociétés qui soutiennent le magazine. Change of Address/Changement d’adresse circulation@cheminst.ca Printed in Canada by Gilmore Printing Services Inc. and postage paid in Ottawa, ON./ Imprimé au Canada par Gilmore Printing Services Inc. et port payé à Ottawa, ON. Publications Mail Agreement Number/ No de convention de la Poste-publications : 40021620. (USPS# 0007-718) Indexed in the Canadian Business Index and available on-line in the Canadian Business and Current Affairs database. / Répertorié dans la Canadian Business Index et accessible en ligne dans la banque de données Canadian Business and Current Affairs. ISSN 0823-5228

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letters lettres

News Nouvelles

Importance of Association Dear Editor, I’m glad that some discussion has been started in the area of professional associations. A point that I was trying to make is that there should have been one Canadian professional association of Chemists and not a collection of provincial associations across the country with somewhat different structures and mandates and levels of recognition. I do understand about provincial legislation powers. I just don’t agree with the need for all these separate bodies and guarded jurisdictions. Too late now I suppose, an opportunity for leadership that the Chemical Institute of Canada missed, in my opinion, some years ago. Why have provincially-registered professional associations to ensure that the public good is protected, especially in the environmental area, when such concerns are both Canada-wide and international in scope? One national association with recognition in each province would have done the job very nicely. I agree with Roger Cowles (October 2008) that the whole profession gains by having a strong association—it just needs to be Canadian, not provincial. Terence Peel, MCIC

What Do You Think? editorial@accn.ca

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U of S researcher Susan Taylor of WCVM with her two Labrador Retrievers, Blue and Breeze.

Genetic mutation responsible for Labrador retriever ailment A genetic mutation responsible for exercise induced collapse (EIC) syndrome in Labrador retriever dogs has been identified by a research team from the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) and the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Labradors affected by EIC can lose control of their hind limbs after intense exercise sessions. The dogs’ legs can give out and in some cases the dogs may die. EIC affects three to five percent of Labrador dogs. The team found a mutant form of the dynamin 1 gene as highly associated with EIC. This gene is responsible for keeping communication between nerves functioning. The mutated form of the protein appears to have diminished function. During intense

exercise and excitement, the communication between nerves (synaptic transmission) is interrupted and causes the collapse. The team has also created a genetic test for the gene and has determined that up to 30 percent of Labrador retrievers are carriers of the mutated gene. “After 13 years of working on this problem, we now have the definitive answer about the syndrome’s true cause for Labrador breeders and owners. This discovery will have a huge impact on the Labrador breed worldwide,” said Susan Taylor, a professor of small animal internal medicine at the WCVM. The research into EIC began after an affected dog was referred to the WCVM in 1995. “This is very exciting because it is the first naturally occurring mutation of this gene identified in any mammal,” says James Mickelson, professor of veterinary sciences and a genetic researcher at the University of Minnesota. “Its discovery could offer insight into normal as well as abnormal neurobiology in both animals and humans.” University of Saskatchewan

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News

News Nouvelles

QuestAir and Terasen Gas partner for clean energy

The company was on hand at the CMW exhibition on September 25 to showcase its products to the Canadian market. “We are delighted to welcome Weicon to our community,” said Kitchener mayor Carl Zehr. “Weicon has a track record of innovative products and success and its location in Kitchener is complementary to our forwardthinking manufacturing community.” “The processional buiness support offered in Waterloo Region, excellent infrastructure, and quality lifestyle for future employees were the critical factors in our decision to locate here,” said Weicon’s North American vicepresident Kevin Jungel. “The region is in close proximity to the Greater Toronto Area and strategically located in one of the most important manufacturing corridors in Ontario.”

QuestAir technologies Inc., a developer of proprietary gas purification systems, and Terasen Gas Inc., a supplier of natural gas and propane will be working jointly on projects to produce supplies of biomethane from organic waste. This clean energy source would be injected into Terasen Gas existing pipeline system for distribution to homes and businesses. QuestAir will be supporting Terasen Gas Request for expressions of interest in biogas projects under the terms of a two-year nonbinding memorandum. Information sharing will take place between the two parties regarding market development, government policy, and technology on purifying biogas to a quality suitable for injection into Terasen Gas pipelines. QuestAir has also agreed to help identify potential biogas opportunities in BC and will participate in stakeholder workshops planned for BC this fall. The new partnership supports the BC energy plan’s objectives. The plan hopes to increase the province’s production of clean and renewable energy, while reducing emissions from waste methane, which is 31 times more powerful in warming the atmosphere than CO2. “This is another step in our plan to deliver alternate energy sources that can be used by our customers to heat their homes and businesses and provide fuel for water heaters, fireplaces, and barbecues,” said Doug Stout, Terasen Gas vice-president, marketing and business development. “Capturing an untapped, waste energy source is one component of our commitment to meet the BC government’s clean energy objectives.” “We are delighted to be working with Terasen Gas,” said Andrew Hall, president and CEO of QuestAir. “The utility has taken a leadership role in facilitating the development of a biogas market in BC through its recent announcement of a request for expressions of interest for biogas upgrading projects.” This is not the first time QuestAir and Terasen Gas have collaborated. The two joined forces with Metro Vancouver on a $1.1 million biogas upgrading project at a wastewater treatment plant in Vancouver.

Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc.

QuestAir

Left to right: Nicole Gorsuch, Dow’s performance fluids marketing manager; Keilly Whitman, director of the EPA’s GreenChill partnership, and Steven Stanley, global director of Dow performance fluids.

Dow chemical Received award for GreenChill contribution Dow chemical has received an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its support of the GreenChill program. GreenChill is an alliance of grocery stores and the

German chemo-technical manufacturer opens headquarters in Kitchener Weicon Inc. has opened up its North American headquarters in Kitchener, ON. Weicon is a German manufacturer and distributor of chemo-technical products and specialty tools. This is Weicon’s second international office. It currently runs a middle east office out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Weicon distributes a wide range of products from adhesives, sealants, and lubricants to stripping tools for industrial production.

refrigeration industry which is intended to promote advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases. Dow creates a heat transfer fluid used in secondary fluid refrigeration systems. These systems are energy efficient refrigeration technologies that are gaining rapid acceptance among retailers. Dow Chemical Company

L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

w w w . p a c i f i c h e m . o r g

Pacifichem 2010 December 15â&#x20AC;&#x201C;20, 2010

Call for Symposia Round two opened August 1, 2008 and closes November 30, 2008.

he Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) is the host society. Howard Alper, HFCIC, O.C., University of Ottawa, is the Congress Chair and Steven Holdcroft, FCIC, Simon Fraser University/National Research Council (NRC) is the Technical Program Chair. Other sponsoring societies are the American Chemical Society (ACS), Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ), Chinese Chemical Society (CCS), Korean Chemical Society (KCS), New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (NZIC), and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI).

Guidelines for submitting proposals and more information on the Congress can be found on the Pacifichem 2010 website at www.pacifichem.org.

Technical Program

Promoting scientific exchange in the Pacific basin for a healthy and sustainable future.

Core Areas of Chemistry: analytical, inorganic, macromolecular, organic, and physical, theoretical, and computational Multi-and Cross-Disciplinary Areas of Chemistry: agrochemistry, biological, environmental, and materials and nanotechnology Challenges and Opportunities for Chemistry: alternate energy technology, chemistry outreach to the community, health and technology, and security

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;

News Nouvelles

iCo Therapeutics provides results

Ontario’s plan paying off Ontario’s innovation agenda was set up to attract world-class talent to the province and make it the best place in the world to conduct leading-edge research. The initial commitment from the province was to invest $3 billion over eight years. Recently, Ontario has invested in Shoo Lee, a newly appointed paediatrician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital and head of the neonatology division at the University of Toronto. Ontario has donated $15 million to Lee to help him create a permanent home for the International Centre for Neonatal-Perinatal Research. The centre coordinates a number of research units across the globe dedicated to the health of newborn children. These research units serve two-thirds of the world’s population. Lee is a world-renowned neonatologist and health economist. He received his medical degree from the University of Singapore, completing his paediatric at the Janeway Children’s Health Centre in Newfoundland and neonatal fellowship training at Children’s Hospital Boston. He has a PhD in health policy (economics) from Harvard University.

iCo Therapeutics Inc., a Vancouver-based company focused on redosing or reformulating drugs with clinical history for new or expanded indications, announced a series of positive experiments involving the systemic bioavalibility of amphotericin B following oral administration. iCo-009 is iCo’s oral formulation of Amphotericin B, a broad spectrum antifungal drug, which currently can only be delivered by intravenous infusion. Results indicate that oral administration of iCo-009 results in blood levels that are comparable to a known IV Amphotericin B product currently on the market. “These studies are encouraging as they help us gain further understanding of the potential of iCo-009 and the underlying drug delivery technology,” said Andrew Rae, iCo’s president and CEO. “To show comparable blood levels to existing commercial versions of Amphotericin B, which are administered via IV infusion, is exciting to us as there is a clear commercial medical need for an oral antifungal with the strength and breadth of action of Amphotericin.” iCo

Chemtrade plant to open late 2008 Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund, which provides industrial chemicals and services to customers around the world, announced that its regen/sulphuric acid plant in Beaumont, TX, can expect to be back online by late 2008. The plant was recently shut down following a furnace explosion on August 21, 2008. The plant was originally scheduled to be back online and operating by mid-November but has been delayed by longer than anticipated time to submit and receive permits from regulatory authorities. “Efforts to complete the permitting process are in progress, but are taking longer than we expected. We have begun repairs to the facility wherever feasible and are ready to begin further work once permitting has been completed,” said president and CEO of Chemtrade, Mark Davis.

Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation

L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

Chemtrade

Ontario government supporting alternative energy research The government of Ontario has invested approximately $5 million to support research in the cleantech sector. Cleantech is a sector which focuses on environmental solutions with economic potential. Two projects that will be receiving funding are: a new hydrogen-based energy technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, led by Greg Naterer of the Univeristy of Ontario Institute of Technology, and a project by Olivera Kesler at the Univeristy of Toronto to develop workable, cost-efficient fuel cells that can run on both traditional fuels and on renewable fuels such as hydrogen, biogas, and ethanol. “Our remarkable team is grateful for the provincial government’s funding commitment to our research,” said Naterer. “We have taken important steps towards making sustainable, low-cost hydrogen production a reality, while building on Durham region’s strengths in the energy sector. The groundbreaking advances will benefit the Ontario economy and our environment beyond anything we can now imagine.” Research and innovation has a major role to play in helping us reach our targets for greenhouse gas reductions and transforming Ontario into a green economy. Becoming a leader in green technology will translate into better jobs for Ontarians and healthier, stronger and more successful communities all across the province,” said minister of the environment John Gerretsen. The funding support for these projects was giving as part of the McGuinty government’s five-point plan for growing Ontario’s economy. Ministry of Research and Innovation

ACCN

Recherchés

articles en français! editorial@accn.ca

News Nouvelles

IndustrialBriefs DuPont Co. has named Ellen Kullman its chief executive officer. Kullman, 52, will take over January 1 from Charles Holliday who is retiring after 10 years with DuPont. Kullman has been responsible for four of DuPont’s five segments and has been DuPont’s executive vice-president. Canaire Inc. announces the appointment of Guy Bujold as its president and chief executive officer, effective October 1, 2008. Bujold’s career includes many senior executive positions in the Government of Canada, among them, the president of the Canadian Space Agency. Canaire Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation funded by the Government of Canada to facilitate the development and use of research networks and applications and services that run on them. iCo Therapeutics Inc. reports interim results from its ongoing iCo-007 clinical trial. The phase 1, open-label, dose escalation study is evaluating the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of a single intravitreal injection of iCo-007 in patients with diffuse diabetic macular edema (DME). The safety evaluation committee has approved advancement to the third cohort of the study. Green Fluorescent Protein

Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded The 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded jointly to three chemists “for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, GFP.” The three chemists receiving the award are Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA and Boston University Medical School, MA; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, NY; and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, CA. GFP has become one of the most important tools used in bioscience. GFP researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread. Shimomura was the first to isolate GFP from the jellyfish Aequrea victoria. He discovered that this protein glows bright under ultraviolet light. Chalfie showed the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for various biological phenomena. Tsien extended the colour palette beyond green, allowing researchers to give various proteins and cells different colours. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Ferus Inc. a company providing a dedicated supply of cryogenic fluids as well as the logistical services to deliver those products, announced that it is building a state-of-the-art carbon dioxide liquefaction plant in Fort Saskatchewan, AB. The facility’s location will allow Ferus to deliver liquid carbon dioxide to developing energy resources in north-western Alberta and north-eastern British Columbia. Operation of the facility is expected to commence in summer 2009. Labtronics Inc. announced the release of Nexxis SDK, a software development kit that supports third party applications with Nexxis Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) for routine analyses. This will simplify the process of integration between Nexxis ELN and external applications. Programmers can now automate Nexxis ELN with a number of tasks. Marc A. Rosen has been appointed president of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC). Rosen served as founding dean of UOIT’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science from 2002–2008. He was EIC president-elect from 2006–2008 and was a member of EIC’s Honours, Awards and Fellowships Committee for 2004–2006 and a member of an EIC Ad Hoc committee on advocacy. Donald Wallace has been named the executive director of the new Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy. The creation of the centre was approved by the Professional Engineers Ontario council in June 2008 to better serve and protect the public interest by engaging the engineering profession in developing public policy. Wallace was associate provost, policy and planning at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and held senior positions at York University. Wallace has a PhD in political science. Enerkem Inc. has announced the appointment of two new vice-presidents. Denis Arguin, has been appointed vice-president, engineering and implementation. He was director of process technology at Minerals Technologies Inc. (MTI) in Pennsylvania. Maire-Hélène Labrie, vice-president, government affairs and communications. Labrie has held positions for the Government of Canada in the Department of National Defense, Industry Canada, and Privy Council Office. Enerkem Inc. develops and produces next generation biofuels.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News

Chemfusion Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

Caution:

cosmetics

osmetics are under attack. It’s not the first time. Back in 1770, the English Parliament passed an act declaring that marriages could be pronounced null and void if the man had been “led into matrimony by false pretenses through the use of scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, bolstered hips, high heels, or iron stays.” It isn’t quite clear what iron stays were, but the reference was probably to devices that steadied those features of the female anatomy which sometimes have a tendency to droop. Whether any men actually sought a divorce based on their disappointment that the goods may not have been as advertised remains a historical mystery, but it is safe to assume that cosmetic manufacturers were not happy with the situation. They probably were not thrilled with Queen Victoria either when she publicly declared that makeup was improper, vulgar, and acceptable only for use by actors. Today, cosmetics are being assaulted again, but for a different reason. They are being accused of harbouring potentially toxic ingredients, and regulatory authorities are being taken to task for not doing enough to protect the health of the public. The personal care product industry is huge, netting some $250 billion a year in global

retail sales. Unlike pharmaceuticals, no premarketing testing of the safety of cosmetics is required, a fact often vociferously pointed out by cosmetic critics who infer that such lack of regulations puts consumers’ health at risk. Actually, governments don’t exactly maintain a “hands-off policy.” Canada has a “hot list” of some 500 chemicals that cannot be used in cosmetics, and before any item is marketed, its list of ingredients has to be submitted to Health Canada for approval. Furthermore, Health Canada has the power to order the removal of products from stores if it decides there is any risk involved. Regulations are less stringent in the U.S. where the Food and Drug Administration has to prove that a product is dangerous before ordering it off the shelves. One of the reasons that governments have not taken a heavy-handed approach towards requiring pre-market testing of cosmetics is that the industry has a very effective selfregulating program. The U.S.-based Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel is an industrysponsored group of experts that includes representatives from the FDA as well as consumer organizations, and is charged with the responsibility of compiling and scrutinizing research that is relevant to cosmetic ingredients. The panel’s in-depth reports are used by industry when decisions are made about product formulation. Oh, I can see some of you rolling your eyes right now at the mention of industry self regulation. The fox is in charge of the hen house, you may be thinking. Not so. No industry wants to harm its customers. At the very least, including ingredients that turn out to be harmful is bad for business, especially in the U.S. with its litigious society and plethora of “personal injury” lawyers advertising for prospective clients. Cosmetic companies know that the best way to make money is by selling products that are safe and effective. Admittedly, there is a fly in the ointment here, in that safety and efficacy are open to interpretation, as is the degree of acceptable risk associated with any consumer product. Yes, no matter how much care is taken, there is always some risk. Indeed, cosmetics can be responsible for some acute adverse effects, but these are usually readily recognized. It is the hypothetical links of some chemicals in cosmetics to cancer, or to endocrine disruptive effects, that are difficult to evaluate and provide gristle for the alarmist mill.

L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

The most serious acute effects include skin irritation and allergies. Sodium hydroxide in some hair straighteners, or methacrylic acid in artificial nail products can be potent skin irritants if improperly used, and a host of chemicals ranging from fragrance components and preservatives to emulsifiers and colorants can cause allergic dermatitis. While the vast majority of consumers never encounter any such problems, a significant number do. An estimated 50,000 people a year visit emergency rooms in North America for cosmetic related problems, most of which turn out to be minor. “Hypoallergenic” cosmetic manufacturers avoid the most obvious sensitizers such as lanolin, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, and fragrance components like cinnamic alcohol, geraniol, limonene, or linalool. Without a doubt, the scariest allegation is that cosmetics may contain carcinogens. Indeed, some do. It is important to realize, though, that the definition of a carcinogen is a substance that is capable of causing cancer in some animal at some dose. It does not mean that it is known to cause cancer in humans. Still, elimination of any carcinogen is desirable, and methods to remove the dioxane impurity have been developed by major cosmetic manufacturers. Cosmetic formulation is a continuously evolving process, keeping in step with the massive amount of research in the area. When new findings reveal a problem, the industry moves to address it. After all, consumer confidence is what puts money in the bank. Recent research linking parabens, a common preservative, to the aging of skin cells, or the association of some moisturizing creams with the promotion of skin cancer in mice after exposure to ultraviolet light merit further investigation, as does the possible hormonal effect of phthalates, chemicals used in some fragrances and nail polishes. While the relevance of these risks to humans is debatable, there is one major established cosmetic risk that is avoidable. Applying mascara in a moving vehicle causes loads of eye injuries! Maybe we should consider passing a law to prohibit it.

ACCN

Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, is the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. He hosts the Dr. Joe Show on Montréal’s radio station CJAD and Toronto’s CFRB. The broadcast is available at www.CJAD.com.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;

SMALL BUT MIGHTY: Microbial Communities and a ‘Second Wave’ of Genomics A Microbial World

ince the 19th century, a great deal of effort in microbiology has been invested in assessing the identity and function of singlecelled organisms. Laboratory experiments have revealed the remarkable capacity of these organisms for synthesis and breakdown of a wide range of important chemical compounds, including some that are essential to all life on Earth. A short list of vitally important microbes could include members of the genus Streptomyces, which produce a wide range of antibiotic compounds; organisms such as Dehalococcoides ethenogenes that can degrade toxic compounds including perchlorinated ethenes (PCEs); and symbiotic organisms such as Rhizobium that can covert inorganic nitrogen to ammonium and provide this product to their plant hosts. While these functions are often the focus of our interest in a given species or strain, microorganisms are much more than simple molecular factories: their small size belies the complexity of their inner biochemical workings and ecological roles. The study of microorganisms has been transformed by the genome sequencing revolution. Before genome sequencing, manually intensive biochemistry or targeted gene probing experiments were necessary to

10 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

Robert Beiko elucidate the specific functions of an organism. But the ready availability of cheap and rapid genome sequencing now allows the entire genetic complement of an organism to be laid bare: with genomic DNA in hand we can use techniques from the discipline of bioinformatics to search for genes with known function. In doing so, we can probe important synthetic and degradative pathways and examine the genes that are involved in processes such as cell division and respiration. Once individual genes in the genome have been assigned probable or known functions, we can begin to reconstruct the biochemical network of the microorganism, a map of the compounds that are taken up, broken down, assembled, and released by the cell. Sequencing and comparative genome analysis has yielded some surprising revelations about microbial function and evolution, including: Superficial similarities in shape and function can conceal enormous genetic diversity. The classic example of this is the low overlap in gene content between different strains of the enteric bacterium Escherichia coli: hundreds of genes found in one strain will not be present in another. Why are organisms with similar ecological roles so different at the genetic level?

There is widespread sharing of DNA between even the most distantly related organisms. While it has long been known that some traits such as antibiotic resistance can be shared between different types of pathogen, mapping the evolutionary histories of sequences has revealed that all manner of biochemical and structural genes can be passed back and forth. Indeed, not even the core machinery of DNA replication and gene expression that is essential to every living organism is immune to transfer. Even the best-studied organisms have a substantial number of genes with still-unknown functions. Since the assignment of probable gene function depends on the availability of a similar gene from another organism whose function has been experimentally verified. But most genomes have hundreds or thousands of uncharacterized genes that are similar to no other known gene, or are similar only to other genes of unknown function. Many of these genes are likely to be important, but we have very little idea about what their function might be. In some cases we can guess the function of a set of similar genes by comparing the organisms in which they are found: for instance, a set of uncharacterized genes that is present only in thermophilic (heat-loving) organisms may play a role in adaptation to high temperature. In spite of the benefits already realized from massive genome sequencing, many factors limit the usefulness of sequencing genomes in isolation. First and foremost among these is the fact that a majority of microorganisms, often estimated at 99 percent or greater of all known species, cannot be cultured alone on a Petri dish or in other medium. Microorganisms in nature exist as consortia of species, ranging from the very simple (between five and 10 distinct species in highly acidic mine drainage communities) to the overwhelmingly speciesrich (with estimates exceeding 1,000 species for soil and planktonic ocean communities). This restriction on sequencing means that we get a very strongly biased view of microbial biodiversity. Even among the small minority of organisms that can be cultured, sequencing one isolate and treating this as “the genome” of a species will miss the wide genetic variation that exists within many populations.

Metagenomics: The New Wave To overcome these limitations, a new set of techniques has emerged to focus on

communities of microorganisms: instead of isolating, culturing and sequencing the genome of a single member of the consortium, metagenomic (also referred to as community genomic or environmental genomic) approaches sequence DNA directly from an environmental sample. Using ‘shotgun’ techniques that are commonly used in whole-genome sequencing, small fragments of DNA (between 50 and 1000 nucleotides in length, depending on the sequencing technology used) are pulled at random, yielding a broad but incomplete crosssection of the genes that are present in the sample. As with sequenced genomes, bioinformatic approaches can then be used to attach probable functions to the short DNA ‘reads’. However, sequencing from an environmental sample adds another challenge: while the source of all genes is obvious in a traditional sequencing project, metagenomic techniques

most genomes have hundreds or thousands of uncharacterized genes break the link between DNA sequences and their originating genome. Again, bioinformatics can help by searching for ‘signatures’, patterns in DNA sequence that are characteristic of certain groups of organisms. For instance, a sequence that has a significant overrepresentation of C and G residues relative to A and T could be indicative of a high-G+C organism such as Streptomyces. By assigning DNA sequences to organisms, one can obtain an indication of the diversity of species present in the sample, and gain clues about the presence or absence of certain potentially important species as well as the genetic diversity that exists within each species. By profiling functions from all species in a sample, metagenomic techniques can also illustrate the division of labour that may exist within a microbial consortium, highlighting cases where one species may depend on the product of another for survival. Metagenomics also has its drawbacks: since genetic data are sampled in proportion to their frequency in the original sample, rare genomes may be undersampled or not represented at all. Techniques for assigning sequences based on signatures are imperfect and may not detect cases where a gene has been recently transferred from one organism to another, since the gene sequence

will still retain the signature of the originating genome. Finally, unless the consortium is very simple or the sequencing effort large, some functions of the consortium will not be evident among the sequenced DNA fragments. Nevertheless, by combining empirical observations from a metagenomic sample with reference information about gene functions and biochemical pathways, we can learn a great deal and infer more about the identity and function of the key contributors in a given habitat or industrial process.

Case study: The Metagenome of a Wastewater Treatment Community The number of published metagenome studies is small but growing rapidly, and the projects that have been considered to date illustrate the long-term potential of this approach. Metagenome studies have targeted microbes in the world’s oceans, microbial biodegradative processes such as cellulose degradation in termites, and mapped microbial biodiversity in the world’s most extreme environments. An illustrative example can be found in the microbial consortium that treats much of the world’s wastewater. Sewage tends to be very rich in phosphate, which can cause eutrophication (massive algal ‘blooms’) if released into the environment. Phosphate removal is consequently an important step in sewage treatment; different techniques may be used, but a low-impact approach involves the use of a microbial enhanced biological phosphorous removal (EBPR) community. Discovered in 1959, EBPR microbes take up phosphate from wastewater and use enzymes to assemble these into long polyphosphate chains. Subsequent removal of these organisms from the water produces purified effluent with a much lower risk of eutrophication. While EBPR has been used commercially for over 35 years, the system was a ‘black box’ in which the key species and biochemical processes were largely unknown. The 1990s and early 2000s saw a series of breakthroughs largely driven by the revolution in molecular techniques: of particular importance was the demonstration that Accumulibacter phosphatis was the key driver of polyphosphate assembly. But this organism cannot be grown independently from other members of the consortium, which suggests a reliance on species in the ‘flanking community’ for certain nutrients or processes.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 11

Since A. phosphatis could not be sequenced in isolation, and since other members of the community were clearly important both for their supporting and competitive roles, metagenomics was the ideal solution to shed light on the workings of the EBPR community. In 2005-2006, two EBPR communities from opposite sides of the globe were sequenced in an attempt to identify and confirm the key metabolic pathways that drive the EBPR process, and to characterize some of the flanking species that interact with A. phosphatis. Since A. phosphatis was the dominant organism in both samples (80 percent in a U.S. sample, and 60 percent in an Australian one), the amount of genetic information recovered for this species was sufficient to completely map out its metabolic network. The authors of this study were therefore able to identify the key transporters that bring phosphate into the cell, as well as the genes for polyphosphate synthesis and other supporting biochemical pathways. Additionally, functions not directly relevant to the EBPR consortium were identified with A. phosphatis, including pathways for the fixation of inorganic nitrogen and carbon dioxide. While the less-abundant microbial species could not be completely mapped, genes involved in processes such as nitrate reduction were assigned to other organisms in the sample, suggesting that important EBPR processes are not confined to the dominant organism alone. Interestingly, the composition of the flanking communities appeared to be highly variable between the U.S. and Australian samples; whether organisms found in one sample are completely absent from the other is unknown.

Challenges and Future Prospects The EBPR example shows the potential for discovery and verification of important metabolic processes in microbial communities.

An understanding of such communities depends not only on the identification of the core biochemical pathways of interest, but also requires an in-depth understanding of the other genes present in the key organisms, and the roles that may be played by other members of the community. In the case of the EBPR metagenome project, we still know very little about the ways in which A. phosphatis depends on other members of the community, but clues can be found in the sets of genes that are present or absent from its genome. Deeper sequencing of this community in different operational states will highlight members of the community that rise and fall together, and the identification of genes from the flanking community (including those of unknown function) will allow us to build hypotheses about community ecology that can be tested using molecular methods. Many challenges and open questions remain in metagenomics. While DNA sequencing is getting faster and cheaper, characterizing soil communities with thousands of species will be a tremendous challenge which will require new strategies. Metagenomic technologies need to be complemented with other profiling techniques, such as ‘metatranscriptomics’ (assessing which genes are expressed by characterizing RNA rather than DNA) and ‘metaproteomics’ (examining the suite of proteins that are present in a sample). While the most common species in a sample are likely to be of vital importance to the overall community, rare members should not be ignored; current techniques tend to miss a majority of their genes. Immense challenges remain on the computational side as well, not only in the assignment of function and likely species to short sequence reads, but also in the storage and management of massive amounts of sequence data that are generated by these projects. A single metagenomic project (the Global Ocean Sampling expedition) doubled the number of known proteins; this expanded set of data offers new opportunities to understand microbial life on Earth, while demanding innovative new algorithmic approaches to the analysis of DNA. In addition to illuminating the fine details of biological processes such as EBPR, metagenomic techniques will close the gaps in our understanding of global biodiversity by highlighting the microorganisms that multicellular species, including humans, depend on. By bringing the microbial world into full focus, metagenomics will allow us to better understand and make use of the microbial communities that are all around us.

References • U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, “How Sequencing is Done” http://jgi.doe.gov/education/how/ • Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA), “What is metagenomics?” http://camera.calit2.net/education/what-is-metagenomics • García Martín H., Ivanova N., Kunin V., Warnecke F., Barry K.W., McHardy A.C., Yeates C., He S., Salamov A.A., Szeto E., Dalin E., Putnam N.H., Shapiro H.J., Pangilinan J.L., Rigoutsos I., Kyrpides N.C., Blackall L.L., McMahon K.D., Hugenholtz P. (2006). “Metagenomic analysis of two enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) sludge communities”, Nature Biotechnology, 24, 10 (2006) pp. 1263–1269.

Robert Beiko is Canada Research Chair in bioinformatics and an assistant professor in the faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. 12 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 13

QA &

Q & A with

Christopher J. Wilds, MCIC

Compiled by Chris Rogers

Canada Research Chair in Biological Chemistry

CCN recently had a chance to talk with Christopher J. Wilds, MCIC, Canada Research Chair in biological chemistry at Concordia University. Wilds’ work involves the modifying of DNA to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapeutics in patients with certain resistances to these therapies.

Q: How would you describe your research? In a nutshell, my research utilizes organic chemistry to assemble novel DNA molecules that are used to probe various biochemical processes such as HIV-1 replication and resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapy. One such process that we are currently interested in is DNA repair. Some of the clinically-used chemotherapeutic agents, namely bifunctional alkylating agents, act upon the DNA in cancer cells by basically locking the two strands together. This in turn prevents the DNA strands from coming apart, thus inhibiting replication and ultimately the cancer cells die. But, as it turns out, some people develop a resistance to these therapies because the cells are capable of reversing this damage. As a result DNA replication continues and cancer progression persists.

Q: Can you explain the main thrust of your research team? The main goal of this project is to understand the mechanisms by which cells recognize and repair the damages (desired) induced by current chemotherapies, which makes them ineffective as drugs. We first prepare interstrand cross-links that mimic what lesion the drug would introduce in the cell between two single strands of DNA via organic synthesis. The construction of these lesions, starting with the organic synthesis of nucleoside dimers, forms one major focus of my research. We then assemble short DNA duplexes incorporating these novel lesions utilizing an instrument called a DNA synthesizer. This is followed by investigating the structural changes introduced by these lesions on the duplex. These structural changes could serve as a signal to the repair enzymes that this is a site where there is damage. Finally, we use DNA repair enzymes to examine whether these enzymes are capable of reversing the damage.

14 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

Q: What kind of insights have you made? We have successfully constructed DNA duplexes containing interstrand alkyl cross-links between the O6 atoms of 2’-deoxyguanosines and have shown that a repair protein is able to repair the duplex when the alkyl chain is 7 carbons long but not when the length is reduced to 4. The latter is very stable and we propose that the protein’s access to the damage site is limited. Using this observation, ideally if one is to inhibit the repair protein in question with such DNA molecules either alone or in combination with current therapies, this would serve to increase the effectiveness of the current drugs used in the combat of cancer. The understanding of the processes of recognition and repair of DNA lesions by the repair machinery is a multi-team effort involving several research disciplines such as organic synthesis, biochemistry and enzymology.

Q: What are the specific things which take place in your lab at Concordia? Currently, we have the capacity to synthesize mimics of clinically relevant interstrand cross-links. Of the several novel dimers we have prepared to date, one of them is an analogue of a cross-link that is formed by hepsulfam. Simply stated we connect the two heterocyclic bases of DNA specifically at the O6 atoms of two guanines with an alkyl linker using a procedure known as the Mitsunobu reaction. We can construct symmetrical or non-symmetrical dimers depending on the orientation of the linkage we wish to introduce in our crosslinked DNA molecule. Once we have made this dimer building block we incorporate it into a DNA duplex via solid-phase oligonucleotide synthesis using a DNA synthesizer which allows us to assemble relatively small DNA molecules in a sequence specific manner. DNA synthesizers have been used for over two decades by several research groups who introduce various modifications into DNA for a number of purposes including antisense, antigene and diagnostic applications. We have taken this one step further by synthesizing complete duplexes that contain modifications that happen to contain cross-linked DNA bases. We use a number of techniques such as polyacrylamide gel

electrophoresis (PAGE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to purify these cross-linked duplexes for DNA repair studies as well as structural studies such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography.

enzyme that has not been shown to directly repair interstrand cross-links before and this is the first report of it being able to do so.

Q: Besides synthesis, what else do you do with these substrates?

We are examining a number of related substrates that can evade repair by these DNA repair enzymes. One option is to

Q: What are you working towards?

directly inhibit the enzymes that reverse damage so that the existing therapies can remain and continue to be effective via a combination therapy. The other more challenging path is to design new drugs that will not be recognized and repaired by the repair machinery. It is hoped that both routes will slow down the progression of cancer, which is a multi-team effort both nationally and internationally.

Although primarily synthetic, my research over the last two years has progressed to studies investigating direct repair of our cross-linked DNA molecules here at Concordia where I co-supervise a student with my colleague Judith Kornblatt. We are capable of studying direct repair of DNA containing single O6 adducts as well as the cross-linked duplexes by E. coli repair proteins. Preliminary biophysical and structural work such as duplex stability and investigation of structural deformation of the DNA induced by these lesions are also conducted in my lab at Concordia. It is my hope that we can determine the structures of these cross-linked duplexes with repair proteins in the near future.

Q: What have you found? We have recently demonstrated in collaboration with Anthony Pegg (Penn State University) for the first time that human alkyl guanine transferase can repair interstrand cross-linked DNA duplexes containing an alkyl linker of 7 methylene groups, whereas the protein is not able to repair a 4 carbon crosslink, and this work was recently published in the journal Biochemistry. The enzyme, alkyl guanine transferase, specifically reverses alkylation damage at the O6 atom of guanine. It is known that this enzyme can remove relatively small alkyl substituents at the O6 position. We showed for the first time that an O6-2’deoxyguanosine alkyl interstrand cross-link could be repaired by this particular enzyme. It is a substrate that would be relatively challenging to repair because the alkyl chain connects the two strands together and for the enzyme to repair it, the damaged base has to be flipped out of the duplex into the enzyme’s active site. The thing about our cross-linked DNA is that there is a lot of cargo at the damaged site since it has the other strand attached to it. To us it is a very interesting finding because it is an

Christopher J. Wilds, MCIC, and Francis McManus examing some recent DNA repair data. Gang Sun (in the background) is preparing a modified nucleoside for future experiments.

Top row (left to right): Gang Sun, Christopher J. Wilds, MCIC, Francis McManus, Nadia Schoonhoven. Bottom row (left to right): Amardeep Khaira, Derek O’Flaherty, Anne Noronha, Sebastian Murphy.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 15

Saskatchewan T

Jackie Robin

Growing beyond agricultural roots

16 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

o an outside observer, it may seem Saskatchewan has virtually rocketed from the status of a ‘have not’ province to one of the most vibrant economies in the country. How did a humble, agriculture province rise to this new status? Shaun Dyck, Economic Development analyst at the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA), says the answer lies in the incredible diversity that has developed in Saskatchewan. This diversity is key to sustaining long-term economic growth. World-wide jumps in the price of oil and natural gas as well as new markets in mining kicked these sectors into high gear. The rise in agricultural and mineral commodity prices is also driving industrial growth in the province, with a direct effect on metal manufacturing, food processing, and construction. Another element in the mix is biotechnology and life sciences, sectors with deep roots in Saskatchewan. More than 30 percent of Canada’s enterprise in agricultural biotechnology is found here. Ag-biotech offers improved crop varieties to producers, while reducing pesticide use and other input costs. Bioproducts and bioprocessing, functional foods, natural health products, genomics, and diagnostics are all finding commercial niches, thanks to Saskatchewan’s life science cluster. This cluster encompasses the Universities of Saskatchewan and Regina; three research parks (Innovation Place, Regina Research Park, and the Saskatchewan Forest Centre); along with provincial and national research

institutions and technical training centres. A network of support industries, from business consultants to equipment providers, has joined the cluster. Proximity of these groups encourages exchange of ideas and eases commercialization. Companies benefit, whether they are start-up firms or international success stories. “It has helped us immensely to have the knowledge base at the University of Saskatchewan and Innovation Place. The National Research Council – Plant Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI) has been making sure the products we manufacture are of top quality for our clients’ needs,” says Zenneth Faye, executive manager for Milligan Bio-Tech Inc., a company in Foam Lake that produces canola-based biodiesel, engine conditioners, and lubricants. He points to the importance of diversification as a means of stabilizing business. For Milligan Bio-Tech, research is the key. “Investing in research is giving us the ability to be diversified in our business model.” Jack Grushcow, president of Linnaeus Plant Sciences Inc., who also leads the Industrial Oilseeds Network, is enthusiastic about the financial support and research opportunities available here. His company is developing next-generation oilseeds; in particular, nonfood oilseeds well-suited as substitutes for petroleum in high-value products like hydraulic fluids, lubricants and fuel additives. “Saskatchewan offers me a fantastic workforce; it offers a place where I can do innovation; it offers an incredibly supportive and forward looking provincial group that wants this to happen.” Grushcow points to NRC-PBI as a world-class institute for molecular biology application and research. “It has a talent pool not available anywhere else in Canada.” The payoff for the province is when the research comes to fruition and the products are developed and marketed here. Dyck says growth in the life science sector means more construction. “In addition to the significant increase in residential, commercial, and industrial construction, there has been a lot of activity due to large infrastructure projects, such as the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization’s International Vaccine Centre (InterVac), the addition at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) [of the BioMedical Imaging and Therapy (BMIT) beamline], and the Health Science Building expansion. This has

helped increase employment in the province, attracting new people to the region.” Beyond the construction phase, research activities at the CLS, VIDO, and other R&D support institutions have attracted interest in the capabilities of this province and drawn high calibre researchers from around the world. Murray McLaughlin, director of business development at the CLS, believes the synchrotron opens the door to new possibilities in Saskatchewan. “In my view, the Canadian Light Source has really helped bring Saskatoon to the forefront of innovation in a number of areas beyond the agriculture sector. A lot of the synchrotron’s analytical capabilities are of direct benefit to emerging areas such as environmental science and materials research.” In the last few years, with oil prices high and commodity prices low, Saskatchewan’s biofuels and bioproducts industry flourished. Fueled by a popular rush towards sustainable energy and a desire to add value to agriculture, innovators began developing alternative energy sources and other bioindustrial products. Extensive research resulted in a wide variety of bioproducts and continues - even as oil and commodity prices fluctuate - in an exciting race to find viable, renewable solutions. Ron Kehrig, VP biofuels and bioproducts for Ag-West Bio, says the rise in transportation costs also make it desirable for manufacturers to locate here, closer to biomass sources. Biofuels have had a positive impact on rural development, with biorefineries and bioprocessing plants sprouting up in towns like Foam Lake, Arborfield, Unity, and Belle Plain. Attention is turning toward second-generation biofuels, and biorefineries where cellulosic-based fuels and other bioproducts use non-food crops and crop residues or forestry feedstocks. Life sciences affect every level of the economy, from producers through to trades and the service industry. Personal incomes are rising, in turn stimulating sales in the retail industry. Thanks to this symbiotic mix helping to diversify the economy, Saskatchewan has grown from its agricultural roots to become a healthy and hardy province.

Network with fellow science and engineering professionals. Exchange cutting-edge information. Participate in the enhancement of your profession. Engage the next generation.

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Chemical Institute of Canada and Constituent Societies

Jackie Robin is the communications director at Ag-West Bio Inc.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 17

A Bright Partnership between Chemistry and Physics

nterest and activities in photonics world wide have exploded over the last decade because of its commercial potential, and because of the synergy it inspires between the chemistry and physics communities. Loosely speaking, photonics is the science of generating, manipulating, and detecting photons and, as such, may be considered the purview of the physics community. However, inherent in photonics research is the need for new and novel materials. Consequently, many of the most exciting advances in photonics are coupled strongly to advances in nanomaterial syntheses and applications. Enter the chemists! Of course this is a simplistic division of labour which also ignores the important contributions coming out of many engineering and biomedical departments. The economic arguments for the growth of photonics-based research are compelling. The Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association (OITDA) of Japan predicts the optoelectronics market to reach ≈ US$1 trillion by 2015. Furthermore, recent studies carried out by the European Union1 and Britain2 have concluded that photonics research and investment is critical if they are to maintain their industrial competitiveness, and grow their workforce. Figure 1 shows the predicted breakdown of the photonics market by 2015. Perhaps it is not surprising that the display and lighting markets are largest at 28 percent, followed by the communications industry. However, Figure 1 also makes clear that photonics is expected to be pervasive in many areas that affect and enhance the public good. As shown in Figure 2, photonics also provides

18 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

Robert H. Lipson, MCIC

a near ideal platform for the transfer of academic research to the industrial sector. The photonics community in Canada has become highly organized in response to these trends. The Canadian Photonics Consortium is the representative voice of the entire Canadian photonics community. Membership includes large and small companies, large and small academic institutions and consortia, and government laboratories and agencies at both the federal and provincial levels. Their stated vision is “to establish Canada as the place for business success in optics and photonics.”3 A number of photonics clusters have been established in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, as have several major research centres including the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) in Edmonton,4 the National Optics Institute (INO),5 and the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre.6 Even a cursory web search reveals an impressive degree of photonics activities taking place at numerous academic institutions in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. The Ontario provincial government has been a particularly strong supporter of photonics through their Ontario Centres of Excellence program (OCE).7 The program mandate is to facilitate economic growth through support for industrially relevant research and development, and to open new market opportunities and the commercialization of leading edge discoveries. The Ontario Photonics Consortium (OPC) was funded by the older provincial Ontario Research and Development Fund in 2000.8 This

initiative brought together chemists, physicists and engineers from Western, McMaster, Waterloo, Toronto, and Ottawa universities. The consortium was synthesized from three overlapping themes (Fig. 3); the first dealing with fundamental science in the area of photonic band gap materials (Western, lead PI Ian Mitchell); the second with photonic devices (McMaster, lead PI Peter Mascher) and the third also from McMaster (lead PI, Wei-Ping Huang) dealing with large systems. While the objectives of the three theme areas are quite distinct, it was also recognized that innovations and breakthroughs in any one of the three areas would positively impact the others. The remainder of this article touches on some of the exciting collaborative research in

Environment Sensing 8% Solar Energy 7%

the photonics/nanomaterials field which has been realized at Western as a result of the opportunities made possible by the OPC.

Plasmonics Plasmonics is the study and applications of the transfer of energy between the light and electrons. Mitchell (physics) and Kim Baines, FCIC, (chemistry) with undergraduate student Michelle Watroba have initiated a collaboration to test optical scattering theory by examining the light scattering properties of 2-D lattices formed by gold-coated silica nanoparticles arranged into an array on a lithographically-defined PMMA substrate. In related work, physicist Silvia Mittler, MCIC, working with chemist Zhifeng Ding,

Medical Care Welfare 4%

Communications 17%

Processing 8%

Optical Memory 14%

Input and Output 14%

Display / Lighting 28%

Figure 1. Expected international breakdown of the market share in the photonics field by the year 2015.

ICT

Automotive Health Care

Manufacturing

Agriculture and Food

MCIC have characterized the electrochemistry of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of monomeric calix[4]arenes and heterodimeric calyx[4]arenes capsules filled with ferrocenium on Au surfaces for data storage purposes. This molecular guest host systems can be filled with a variety of guest molecules. Au nanoparticles coated with these calix[4]arene heterodimer capsules leads to distinct surface plamon resonances whose spectral position depends on the dielectric constant of the guest molecule. More recently, François LagugnéLabarthet (chemistry) has been developing novel surface spectroscopies including TipEnhanced and Surface–Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for the detection of biomolecules on surfaces. Part of his overall strategy involves fabricating lithographic patterns of Au on glass whose inter-structure gap spacing can be varied between 30 and 50 nm. This control can be used to optimize SERS spectra which can provide insight into the structural conformations of molecules, and/or their interactions with surrounding molecules or biomembranes.

Biophotonics Peter Norton, MCIC, (chemistry), Nils Petersen (NINT), and graduate students Jessica McLachlan, MCIC, and Natasha Patrito, MCIC, and post-doc Claire McCague have developed a method for the modification of the surface of poly(dimethylsiloxane), PDMS, to enhance its ability to serve as a platform for cell adhesion in microfluidic devices. Such cell arrays allow the study of cell-cell interactions, cell motility, and cellular responses to various spatial and geometric perturbations.

Novel materials Alternative Energy

Life Sciences Quantum Communication

Nanotechnology

Environment

Optical Communication Biophotonics

Laser-based Material Modification

Sensors

Micro-Nano Photonic Systems

Figure 2. A flow chart indicating how lab-based photonics can impact the industrial sector.

Novel materials, fabrication techniques, and applications of photonic crystals (PCs) are core areas of research at Western. Lipson, Baines, and co-supervised student Yun Yang are examining the possibility of fabricating PCs by optical lithography in photoresists made from Si- or Ge-containing polymers. Instead of patterning carbon-based resists usually used as masks for subsequent etching into high index substrates such as Si, Baines’ group is able to synthesize a series of photosensitive polymers having Si and Ge backbones. The

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 19

indices of refraction of Si- and Ge-based films are sufficiently large that their use photoresists can in principle lead to photonic band gap structures in a single fabrication step. Lipson and graduate student Cheng Lu, MCIC, have studied the synthesis and optical properties of thin films of β-BBO (β-BaB2O4) which are amenable to contact lithography. The BBO thin films could also be reoriented for enhanced nonlinear efficiency by seeding the precursor gels with an organic molecule prior to thermal treatment. In different experiments, new routes to thin films of solid state VO2 have also been developed using sol-gel methods that are highly resistant to oxidation for long periods of time. VO2 undergoes a phase change from semiconductor to metal near 70˚C on the picosecond time scale. The films produced at Western are being examined by OPC PI Dwayne Miller at the University of Toronto using femtosecond electron diffraction to better understand this remarkable transition. Ding, in collaboration with T.-K. Sham, MCIC, (chemistry) and Xueliang Sun, MCIC, (materials engineering) has found an electrochemical avenue to prepare strong blue luminescent nanocrystals (NCs) from multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The new carbon NCs prepared at Western are very attractive due to their promised applications in optoelectronic devices, biology labelling, and biomedicine.

Photonic Crystals Lipson, Mitchell, and Lu have developed novel optical lithography techniques that are

expected to ultimately be used for fabricating PCs. In one approach near-field Diffraction Element Assisted Lithography or DEAL was devised to fabricate two-dimensional lattice patterns in a photoresist. Specifically, a diffraction element was used to prepattern the coherent output of a laser prior to its capture in a photoresist. The pattern symmetry and spacing can be readily modified by changing the diffraction element and the distance between the element and the photoresist. In a second approach, a Babinet-Soleil compensator was inserted into the path of one of the three beams used for noncoplanar beam interference lithography. This birefringent element could change the phase of the beam so that either a positive two-dimensional pattern or an inverse-like structure is generated in a photoresist over large areas (>1 cm2) without disturbing the mechanical geometry of the setup. PC sensors have drawn much attention because of their high sensitivity and compact structure. Jayshri Sabarinathan (engineering) has developed a PC waveguide based pressure sensor which has many applications in MEMS and microfluidic applications. Sensing is performed by measuring the transmission variation through the PC waveguide due to the changes in the refractive index of the region surrounding the PC. When pressure is exerted on the waveguide it mechanically deforms the waveguide and alters the transmission characteristics of the waveguide. The changes in light intensity due to the relative displacement of the PC waveguide with respect to substrate can be correlated to the fluid pressure.

Conclusions The examples above constitute only a very small subset of those activities that continue to develop even though the formal activities of the OPC have concluded. They show that photonics studies are a platform for strong collaborations between chemists, physicists and beyond. The work has strong fundamental and applied relevance, and therefore, it is expected that the resultant partnerships are more long term than short. In this regard, the future of photonics and the synergy it generates between the chemistry and physics communities is bright indeed.

Citations 1. http://www.photonics21.org/ 2. http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file39193.pdf 3. http://www.photonics.ca/ community.html 4. http://nint-innt.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/about/ index_e.html 5. http://www.ino.ca/fr/accueil.aspx 6. http://cpfc-ccfdp.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/ home_e.html 7. http://www.oce-ontario.org/Pages/ COEPhotonics.aspx?COE=PH 8. http://opc.mcmaster.ca/

Robert H. Lipson, MCIC, is a professor of chemistry at the University of Western Ontario and the senior editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry.

www.cheminst.ca • www.cap.ca The Division of Surface Science is a joint division of the Chemical Institute of Canada and the Canadian Association of Physicists. Did you know that you can be a joint member of the CIC and CAP with 30% rebate on both registration fees? Think about it when renewing your membership next time!

20 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

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november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 21

Environment Canada Considers Banning Silicones in Canada

Michael A. Brook, MCIC

Cyclic Silicones Out the Door The Government of Canada is in the process of virtually eliminating cyclic silicones, among other chemical substances. The Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) felt it was important to present its posi‑ tion regarding the government’s decision and the process leading up to it. Our Society strongly supports the responsible use of chemicals and believes that all scientific facts must be assessed to ensure the correct decisions are made. We invite you to read the full letter sent by CSC president Pierre Beaumier, MCIC, on July 16, 2008. It is available at www.cheminst.ca/public_position. This report was submitted to Environment Canada in July of 2008.

n the middle of May 2008, the Canada Gazette published recommendations from Environment Canada that call for the ‘virtual removal’ of 3 cyclosiloxanes D4, D5 and D6 (D = Me2SiO, thus D4 is an 8 membered ring, (Me2SiO)4) from commerce in Canada. Based on their analysis of the open literature, unpublished documents and computer models, it is Environment Canada’s assessment that the three cyclosiloxane molecules D4-D6 are “persistent, bioaccumulative, and inherently toxic to non-human organisms.” This conclusion is at odds with extensive peer-reviewed literature. These 3 silicones are used in their own right, particularly in personal care products, either individually (previously D4 was most commonly used, but over the last decade has been supplanted by D5) or as mixtures (cyclomethicones). They are lipophilic carriers that have a “dry and silky” rather than a greasy feel. In addition, as a consequence of the manufacturing process for silicone polymers, the 3 compounds are present in small quantities in most silicone polymers including oils, gums, greases, elastomers (rubbers), and organofunctional compounds such as surfactants. The absolute concentration associated with the term ‘virtual removal’ is not defined in the government documents, but if it is set at a low level, resulting legislation could have the effect of removing silicones from nearly all applications and markets in Canada—medical devices excepted. Silicones have been available commercially since the 1940’s because of their unusual properties, which cannot be attained by traditional polymeric materials. For example, silicones are electrically resistive (spark plug wire coatings), thermally stable (O-rings and surface coatings in automotive air bags), flexible and fluid over a wide range of temperatures (flattening agents in paints), water repellent (shoe polish, potting materials for automotive circuits), surface active (defoamers in foods and beverages, bubble stabilizers in polyurethane foams) and have low surface energy (adhesive label backings): over 1,000 medical devices alone, comprised wholly or partly from silicones, are registered

22 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre

with Health Canada. In their brief, Environment Canada notes there are over 6,000 cosmetic and personal care products that are made from or contain cyclosiloxanes. Given the potentially enormous implications such a ban would have for Canadian quality of life, including economic activity, what is the basis of this proposal? Unlike many compounds in commerce—polymers in particular—silicones have been extensively investigated for both their impact on the environment and human toxicity. Many of these studies arose because of concerns about the safety of silicone gel breast implants: these devices were not available in the US and Canada from 1992–2006, but were recently re-regulated following analysis of the extensive scientific investigations undertaken during the last two decades. The government proposal excludes medical devices from consideration because the three silicones are considered to be safe and non-toxic to humans at normal exposure levels: at high levels of exposure, D4 can be a reproductive toxin to rats. The No-Observed-Adverse-Effect-Level (NOAEL) was found to be 700 ppm for male rats and 300 ppm for females.1,2 The burden placed by silicones on the environment is affiliated with the chemistry used to polymerize/depolymerize silicones, which occurs under equilibrating conditions. The equilibrium constant for the polymerizations of this type are very close to 1 (Figure 1),3 and equilibrium is readily established by acid and base catalysts (including clay minerals). As a consequence, cyclic oligomers remain in the reaction mixture at the end of the polymerization. While most of the low molecular weight materials including cyclics can be removed from higher polymers under vacuum, complete removal is not possible. As a consequence, essentially all silicones and products made from them that are sold in Canada will contain small amounts of D4-D6.

Environmental processing of silicones The environment is exposed to volatile D4-D6 in air, and silicone polymers containing D4-D6 in landfills (particularly elastomers such as caulking materials), and in water, where they will normally make their way to, and be found in higher concentrations at, wastewater treatment facilities: D4 dissolves in water at concentrations estimated to be about 30-60 ppb: D5 and D6 are less soluble. Silicones do not affect the operation of wastewater plants, consistent with other evidence that silicones are non-toxic to bacteria, and that microorganism-mediated hydrolysis/ oxidation is occurring at such sites.4 When finished silicone products come into contact with catalysts, the equilibrium (Figure 1) can be shifted back to cyclics5 and in the presence of water, particularly at the very high concentration of water found in the environment,6 is further pushed through hydrolysis back to the monomer Me2Si(OH)2 (dimethylsilanediol). Cyclics are not products of the environmental depolymerization process of silicone polymers.13 In soil, depolymerization of the silicone to monomer can occur in as little

as 1-2 weeks.7-10 Although water is required for hydrolytic depolymerization, the reaction is much faster in drier soils where direct contact between silicone and clay is not hindered by a layer of water.11,12 Microbes in composted sewage sludge are able to depolymerize silicones including cyclosiloxanes to dimethylsilanediol: thus, both biotic and abiotic mechanisms for silicone depolymerization have been demonstrated.14 The second stage of remediation of silicones by the environment involves oxidation. All naturally occurring silicon-derived compounds on the planet are fully oxidized as a consequence of the much higher bond strength of Si-O bonds (ca. 128 kcal mol-1, 536 kJ mol-1) compared to Si-C bonds (ca. 88 kcal mol-1, 369 kJ mol-1).15 The oxidative degradation of silicones in the environment, as shown with studies using 14C labelled D4, is mediated both by microorganisms16,17 (and mammals18,19), but primarily by abiotic chemical reactions involving hydroxy radicals. The complete breakdown of Me2Si(OH)2 to SiO2 and CO220,21 occurs reasonably rapidly, typically within a few months to years.22 The reaction cascade involves photooxidation in the presence of “suitable chromophores” such as nitrogen oxides.23 The role of the nitrogen oxide is to facilitate formation of hydroxy radicals HO•), which is the environmental oxidant.22 The “tropospheric lifetimes”24 ranged from ca. 2.5 days for Me3SiOH, 9 days for MM (Me3SiOSiMe3), 10 days for D5 to ca. 30 days for D3.24 D4 is similarly understood to be completely degraded in the atmosphere SYNTHESIS Si OH

-H2O OH

Cyclic oligomers XY (usually acid, base or clay)

n-x

Cyclic oligomers

[

O ]x

High(er) Molecular Weight Linear Polymer

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

Oxidation

Hydrolysis

Si OH

SiO2 (SiO4/2)

Figure 1. The polymerization/depolymerization equilibrium of silicone polymers.

within 10 to 30 days. The degradation of silicones to silica is not associated with lower atmosphere aerosol formation (smog).25,26 D4-D6 efficiently volatilize during use, and from water and soil interfaces after disposal in the environment: the compounds undergo oxidative degradation to silica in air. Depolymerization and oxidation also occur in soil: degradation occurs in sediment as well, although significantly less quickly. Thus, in the environment there is an efficient, closed loop, “silicon cycle.” Silicones, including cyclosiloxanes D4-D6, produced by human industrial processes from silica are efficiently restored to silica through hydrolysis and oxidation. Both steps are effectively driven by thermodynamics and by biotic and abiotic processes that facilitate conversion from SiC to SiO bonds. These data should reassure Canadians, including the government, that the environmental burden posed by D4-D6 is small in the first place, and readily met by normal environmental regenerative processes.

Toxicity to non-aquatic organisms At least hundreds of millions of kg of silicones in various forms have been imported into Canada over the last six-seven decades as finished products, or as starting materials for further processing. The record of safety of silicones is extraordinarily good. Silicones, including silicone oils, elastomers and volatile fluids, for example, D4-D6 which are used in a wide variety of personal care products, are handled by producers and consumers alike with no special precautions required. The lack of special precautions is based on experience with these materials. There is a long history of human exposure to silicones, including D 4-D 6, in developed economies including Canada, with no epidemiological research showing temporary or systemic effects of contact with silicones at their normally used concentrations.27 The Draft Assessment acknowledges (surprisingly—since D4-D6 have been of concern to Environment Canada since at least 1999) that there is a paucity of Canadian data for quantities released into the environment, in sewage sludge, in biota or in the general environment. This, in the author’s view, is unfortunate as it means decisions are going to be made based on

computer models and other data that may not be appropriately validated. Although Environment Canada called for public comment on their proposals, it is difficult to effectively respond as unpublished data and protocols were not made available. Of the empirical data analyzed, most is exceptionally reassuring: the environmental concentrations required for a toxic effect in most aquatic organisms that have been tested are higher than that of a saturated solution of the most soluble of the three cyclics, D4. D4 has been shown to accumulate in fathead minnows, reaching a steady state at about seven days. The organism can ‘steadily but slowly’ eliminate the silicone.28 During these studies, there was no evidence of mortality or other effects of contact with D4. The main concern in the Draft Assessment appears to be a study reported in 1995, the toxicity to four marine organisms exposed to D4 was measured:29 daphnids (Daphnia magna), rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), mysids (Mysidopsis bahia), and sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus). Environment Canada notes, “D4 exhibited significant mortality at 0.015 mg/L during the 21-day chronic toxicity study for the water flea, Daphnia magna, an important species of zooplankton in ecosystems. The chronic NOEC for Daphnia magna is 0.008 mg/L for survival and reproduction, and the lowest-observed-effect concentration (LOEC) for survival is 0.015 mg/L (Sousa et al. 1995).” But the authors of the study came to a different conclusion, “it can be concluded from the present work that, under natural environmental conditions, OMCTS (D4) would not be expected to adversely affect aquatic organisms such as fish and invertebrates exposed in the water column.” Reconciling these different opinions requires at least more data, particularly data relevant to the Canadian environment. Much of the concern about cyclic siloxanes expressed by Environment Canada is associated with their persistence in sediment. Related studies to those above were undertaken with silicone contaminated sediment to address this specific concern: PDMS will contain cyclic silicones. The benthic macroinvertebrates Hyalella azteca (amphipod) and larvae of Chironomus tentans (midge) showed no evidence of toxicity due to contact with PDMS over short and long term exposure.30

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 23

Historical Perspectives D4 was selected in 1984 as an early test case for regulatory examination of compounds of potential concern in the United States (under the Toxic Substances Control Act).31,32 As a consequence, there was a flurry of scientific data collection at that time to assess the potential of D4 to elicit harm to the environment. The factors considered were strikingly similar to those considered in the Draft Screening Assessment: delivery to air, water, soil, sediment; toxicity to organisms; ability of the environment to process D4. However, the conclusion drawn by the US regulatory agencies was “Based on all available evidence, the risk of OMCTS (D4) to aquatic ecosystems is characterized as very low.”33 The Canadian government has an obligation to protect the health of its citizens and its environment. Careful assessments of the known and potential risks need to be undertaken. It is appropriate to take a conservative stance and, in the case of new risks from new compounds, extra caution is warranted. Cyclic siloxanes do not fall into such a category. D4-D6 have been extensively investigated for their behaviour in humans, other organisms, and in the environment and shown to be essentially benign. There is a complete “silicon cycle”: silicones, including D4-D6, once in the environment, return to the more stable form of silicon— silica—and do so readily. Half-lives are approximately 1–2 weeks for cyclics entering the atmosphere by air—the most common route. This transformation is mediated by both biotic and abiotic hydrolysis and oxidation: the methyl groups on cyclosiloxanes are oxidized just like other organic methyl groups present in naturally occurring biological systems. Prudence dictates that potential environmental risks, from silicones or other manufactured compounds, should be monitored. Thus, a detailed study of the presence of D4-D6 in various geographic locations, and in different compartments of the Canadian environment should be undertaken. However, a careful and objective analysis of the data presented in the Draft Screening Assessments, in this report, and elsewhere, provide compelling evidence that presently D4-D6 pose neither a threat to humans nor to the environment and that no regulatory action is currently required. It is not possible to fully comment and analyze additional data on which Environment Canada’s proposal is based—they

were not made available. Removing D4-D6 from commerce would markedly reduce the quality of life of Canadians, including economic outcomes, with no significant beneficial change to the environment.

References 1. Meeks, R. G.; Stump, D. G.; Siddiqui, W. H.; Holson, J. F.; Plotzke, K. P.; Reynolds, V. L., Reproductive Toxicology, 2007, 23, pp. 192–201. 2. Siddiqui, W. H.; Stump, D. G.; Reynolds, V. L.; Plotzke, K. P.; Holson, J. F.; Meeks, R. G., Reproductive Toxicology, 2007, 23, pp. 216–225. 3. Chojnowski, J., In Siloxane Polymers; Clarson, S. J., Semlyen, J. A., Eds. (Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993), p 1-. 4. Watts, R. J.; Kong, S.; Haling, C. S.; Gearhart, L.; Frye, C. L.; Vigon, B. W., Water Research, 1995, 9, p. 2405. 5. Kantor, S. W.; Grubb, W. T.; Osthoff, R. C., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1954, 76, p. 5190. 6. Spivack, J.; Dorn, S. B., Environmental Science and Technology, 1994, 28, p. 2345. 7. Buch, R. R.; Ingebrigstson, D. N., Environmental Science and Technology, 1979, 13, p. 676. 8. Lehmann, R. G.; Varaprath, S.; Annelin, R. B.; A. Arndt , J. L., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, p. 1299. 9. Lehmann, R. G.; Frye, C. L.; Tolle, D. A.; Zwick, T. C., Water, Air & Soil Pollution, 1995, 83, p. 1. 10. Carpenter, J. C.; Cella, J. A.; Dorn, S. B., Environmental Science and Technology, 1995, 29, p. 864. 11. Lehmann, R. G.; Varaprath, S.; Frye, C. L., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1994, 13, p. 1061. 12. Lehmann, R. G.; Miller, R. L.; Xu, S.; Singh, U. B.; Reece, C. F., Environmental Science and Technology, 1998, 32, p. 1260. 13. Stevens, C., Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, 1998, 69, p. 203–207. 14. Grümping, R.; Michalke, K.; Hirner, A. V.; Hensel, R., Applied Environmental Microbiology, 1999, 65, pp. 2276–2278. 15. Brook, M. A., In Silicon in Organic, Organometallic and Polymer Chemistry; (Wiley: New York, 2000), p. 27–38. 16. Lehmann, R. G.; Varaprath, S.; Frye, C. L., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1994, 13, p.1753.

17. Lehmann, R. G.; Miller, J. R.; Collins, H. P., Water, Air & Soil Pollution, 1998, 106, pp. 111–122. 18. McKim, J. M., Jr.; Kolesar, G. B.; Jean, P. A.; Meeker, L. S.; Wilga, P. C.; Schoonhoven, R.; Swenberg, J. A.; Goodman, B. L.; Gallavan, R. H.; Meeks, R. G., Toxicoloigcal and Applied Pharmacology, 2001, 172, pp. 83–92. 19. Sarangapani, R.; Teeguarden, B.; Plotzke, K. P.; McKim, J. M.; Andersen, M. E., Toxicological Sciences 2002, 67, 159–172. 20. Lehmann, R. G.; Miller, J. R., Environmental Science and Technology, 1996, 15, pp. 1455–1460. 21. Atkinson, R., Environmental Science and Technology, 1996, 25, p. 863. 22. Lentz, C. W., Industrial Research and Development, 1980, p. 139. 23. Buch, R. R.; Lane, T. H.; Annelin, R. B.; Frye, C. L., Environmental Science and Technology, 1984, 3, p. 215. 24. Sommerlade, R.; Parlar, H.; Wrobel, D.; Kochs, P., Environmental Science and Technology, 1993, 27, p. 2435. 25. Carter, W. P. L., Air Waste, 1994, 44, p. 881. 26. Carter, W. P. L.; Atkinson, R., Environmental Science and Technology, 1989, 23, p.864. 27. Safety of Silicone Breast Implants; (Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press: Washington, 2000). 28. Fackler, P. H.; Dionne, E.; Hartley, D. A.; Hamelink, J. L., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, pp. 1649–1656. 29. Sousa, J. V.; McNamara, P. C.; Putt, A. E.; Machao, M. W.; Surprenant, D. C.; Mahelink, J. L.; Kent, D. J.; Silberhorn, E. M.; Hobson, J. F., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, pp. 1639–1647. 30. Henry, K. S.; Wieland, W. H.; Powell, D. E.; Giesy, J. P., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 2001, 20, pp. 2611–2616. 31. Hobson, J. F., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, pp. 1635–1638. 32. Walker, J. D.; Smock, W. H., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, pp. 1631–1634. 33. Hobson, J. F.; Silberhorn, E. M., Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1995, 14, pp. 1667–1673. Michael A. Brook, MCIC, is a professor of chemistry at McMaster University. His research focuses on polymer and materials synthesis, mostly using silicon chemistry.

24 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; 25

Recognition reconnaissance Tristram Chivers, FCIC, faculty professor and professor emeritus at the University of Calgary has been awarded the ASTech Foundation’s Outstanding Leadership in Alberta Science Award. His research benefits Alberta’s sour gas and petrochemical industries.

Wolfgang Jaeger, MCIC of the University of Alberta was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Jaeger has made important contributions to the knowledge of the bond, also known as van der Waals force, between molecules and/or atoms. His studies in this area have defined a new research area, namely the study of matter at the nanoscopic level. This year’s new Fellows were inducted at a ceremony held November 15, 2008, in Ottawa, ON.

Molly Shoichet, MCIC, University of Toronto, Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, has been elected to the Academy of Science of the

Royal Society of Canada. Election to Fellowship in the Society is the highest academic accolade in Canada that is available to scientists and scholars.

Judith Poë, FCIC, of the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto at Mississauga has been awarded two prestigious teaching awards. She is one of the recipients of this year’s Presidential Teaching Awards; the University of Toronto’s highest teaching honour. She has also been awarded one the province’s Leadership in Faculty Teaching (LIFT) awards that are designed to recognize and encourage teaching excellence at Ontario’s colleges and universities.

microextraction (SPME), an environmentally friendly, convenient and efficient technology for collecting and extracting samples for chemical analysis.

In Memoriam The CIC extends its condolences to the families of: Mark T. Fryer, MCIC Donald John Engel, MCIC F. H. Griffiths, MCIC

Janusz Pawliszyn, FCIC, has won the 2008 EnCana Principal Award from the Manning Innovation Awards. The award comes with a prize of $100,000. Pawliszyn won the award for his innovations in solid-phase

Ichikizaki Fund for Young Chemists The Ichikizaki Fund for Young Chemists provides financial assistance to young chemists who show unique achievements in basic research by facilitating their participation in international conferences or symposia.

Eligibility: • • • •

be a member of the Canadian Society for Chemistry or the Chemical Society of Japan; not have passed his/her 34th birthday as of December 31 of the year in which the application is submitted; have a research specialty in synthetic organic chemistry; be scheduled to attend, within one year, an international conference or symposium directly related to synthetic organic chemistry. Conferences taking place in January to March of each year should be applied for a year in advance in order to receive funding in time for the conference.

Deadline: December For more details:

31, 2008

www.chemistry.ca/awards

26 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

ON-LINE SERVICES We want to help simplify your busy schedule with our on‑line services, restricted to members only. Ensure your current e-mail address has been entered on your “Profile” page.

• Renew your CIC membership for 2009 on-line • Update your own personal profile • Perform an on-line membership search

To access on-line renewal and member services, go to https://secure.cheminst.ca/default.asp. For the protection of your personal information, the on-line membership services are restricted to CIC members only, and you will be asked to log on your own personal secure account with a username and password. The “username” is composed of the first letter of your first name and the five (or less for short surnames) first letters of your surname. The middle name is not used (e.g. “John A. Dalton” would become: jdalto). The “password” is your CIC membership reference number, which you can find written on all correspondence from the CIC, including your membership card (e.g. 223 or 27890). Once you have logged on the first time, you will be required to change your password to something other than your membership number. If you forget your password, you have the option to request your password to be reset to your membership number. If you experience any difficulty, call CIC Membership Services at our toll-free number 1-888-542-2242, ext. 230, or e-mail membership@cheminst.ca. The CIC values your privacy and encourages membership networking.

Recognition reconnaissance

CSC Board of Directors Nominations (2009–2010) Nominations pour le Conseil de direction de la SCC (2009–2010) The Nominating Committee, appointed under the terms of CSC By-law Article X-Nominations and Elections, has proposed the candidates listed below for election to the Board of Directors in 2009–2010. According to the provision of By-law Article X, Section 3 (e), further nominations for any officer position must be made in writing and signed by no fewer than 25 voting members of the Society. Further nominations for directors must be made in writing and signed by five members qualified to vote. Each nomination must be accompanied by the candidate’s written agreement to serve if elected, a curriculum vitae and a recent photograph. The deadline for receipt of additional nominations is Monday, January 26, 2009. If any elections are required, ballots will be mailed in February. Those elected, whether by ballot or acclamation, will take office immediately following the annual general meeting of the Society on Monday, June 1, 2009, in Hamilton, ON. Le Comité des candidatures, nommé en vertu des dispositions du règlement 10 de la SCC, propose la candidature des personnes listées ci-dessous aux postes de membres du conseil pour 2009-2010. Selon le règlement 10(e), des candidatures addi‑ tionnelles pour les postes d’administrateurs doivent être soumises par écrit et signées par au moins 25 membres votants de la Société. Des candida‑ tures additionnelles pour les postes de directeurs peuvent être soumises par écrits et signées par cinq membres votants de la Société. Chaque candi‑ dature doit être accompagnée du consentement écrit et signé par le candidat, qui s’engage à remplir la charge s’il est élu, d’un curriculum vitae, ainsi que d’une photographie récente. Les membres auront jusqu’au lundi 26 janvier 2009 pour faire parvenir de nouvelles candidatures. Advenant qu’un scrutin soit nécessaire, les bulletins seront postés en février. Les personnes élues par scrutin ou par acclamation entreront en fonction immé‑ diatement après l’assemblée générale annuelle de la Société qui aura lieu le lundi 1 juin 2009, à Hamilton, Ontario.

Bruce Lennox, MCIC President 2009–2010 Department of Chemistry Chair McGill University Bruce Lennox is a physical organic chemist whose research activities focus on nanomaterials, sensors, and interfacial chemistry. He obtained his BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto. He began his academic career at McGill in 1987 after a PDF stint at Imperial College in London, UK. In addition to traditional courses, Lennox has also been involved in the development of new courses that cut across the traditional sub-disciplines of chemistry. Courses in advanced materials, nanoscience, and biological chemistry have resulted from this “horizontal” perspective of presenting advances and adventures in chemistry. His teaching emphasizes the importance of integration of the sub-disciplines of chemistry. His ongoing research applies physical organic methodologies to the study of nanoparticles and ultrathin organic films. This research has led to a number of successful collaborations with physicists, engineers, pharmacologists, and neuroscientists. He was appointed to the Tomlinson Chair of Chemistry in 2004. Lennox is very active in university and research administration, having served as department chair and on university research management committees within McGill. He

28 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

has also served on NSERC and NRC grant selection committees, and the scientific advisory boards of Nano-Quebec and the NSERC Nano-Innovation Platform. His interest in interfacing chemistry to other scientific disciplines has translated into considerable research work performed within NCEs and Quebec-based research centres. Most recently he has worked with colleagues to create research clusters in both green chemistry and nanochemistry. Lennox is the CSC 2008–2009 vice-president.

B. Mario Pinto, FCIC Vice-President 2009–2010 Vice-President, Research Simon Fraser University B. Mario Pinto was born in Sri Lanka and received his BSc degree and PhD in chemistry from Queen’s University. Pinto served as chair of the Department of Chemistry from 1999–2004, and is currently vice-president, research at Simon Fraser University. Pinto is a pioneer in the field of chemical biology, having developed novel NMR/molecular modeling protocols for protein structure determination and the study of ligand topographies essential for drug and vaccine design. His work also involves the synthesis of antiviral and antibacterial drugs, bacterial vaccines, and new methods of viral control. He is one of the founding members of the Centre for

Recognition reconnaissance Drug Research and Development (CDRD), has published over three books, and has presented at numerous national and international conferences. He received the BC Innovation Council Frontiers in Research Award, the BC Sugar Achievement Award, CSC’s Bernard Belleau and Merck Frosst Awards, and the Horace S. Isbell Award from the ACS. He is a Fellow of the CIC and the Royal Society of Canada. Pinto has been involved extensively with the CSC, including: member of the Vancouver CIC Local Section Executive Committee from 1988–1998, and chair in 1993; member of the CSC Board of Directors from 1993–1996; National Chemistry Week national coordinator 1993–1996; chair of the CSC conference in 1998; co-organizer of the Glycobiology Symposium at Pacifichem in 2000, and organizer of the Glycobiology/ Chemistry Symposium at the 85th CSC Conference in 2002. He has served on several NSERC, CIHR, and provincial and federal committees. Pinto is a champion for multi-disciplinary approaches to global problems and for establishing national and international linkages in research, technology, and education. For example, he has been instrumental in facilitating India-Canada collaborations in the areas of infectious diseases and population and public health.

value of participating in this society, and to demonstrate the tangible benefits of membership. Such efforts should include bridging initiatives with other professional societies, the promotion of regional and national consortia to exploit synergies as well as to achieve economies of scale, and to exploit the advantages of a broad-based education. The CSC must be more active in convincing the federal government of the value of discovery-based research, and must work with the Tri-Councils to present a cogent, non-divisive strategy for a research agenda that does not pit health researcher against scientist or engineer, or social scientist and humanist. The strength resulting from the diversity of Canadian scholarly research must be highlighted. Finally, the CSC must be a more prominent player on the global scene. International education for students at all levels should be a priority. Formal exchanges in Asia, Europe, and the Americas should be facilitated. I will work with the membership to promote the initiatives detailed above.

Directors 2009-2012

Statement of Policy The face of science has changed and it is critical that the discipline of chemistry be reaffirmed as a pivotal science. Modern science is truly interdisciplinary, exploiting exciting new knowledge in materials and environmental science, molecular and cell biology, chemical biology, immunology, virology, and genomics to probe deeper questions. At the core of many of these investigations is a chemist who provides critical expertise in the design of probe molecules for industrial applications, medical diagnosis, interference with aberrant processes, or therapy, and in the interpretation of complex phenomena. This reality must be communicated freely to the present and next-generation of chemists. Pedagogy must be adjusted to reflect the new reality, and students must appreciate how chemistry, the central science, figures prominently in many cognate disciplines. The Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) should use this principle to rejuvenate the society, to convince the next generation of the

of CSC symposia in organometallic chemistry and catalysis, and recently chaired a successful bid for Canada to host the XIX International Symposium on Homogeneous Catalysis. She serves on the Advisory Board for the International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry, on the Editorial Boards of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry and Organometallics, as chair of the “Bacon & Eggheads” science lectures for Parliamentarians, and recently completed a three-year term as associate director of the University of Ottawa Center for Catalysis Research & Innovation. Recent honors include a 2007 NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award (50 awards nationally), and the Strem Chemicals Award for Pure or Applied Inorganic Chemistry (2007).

Deryn Fogg, MCIC Director of Awards Professor of Chemistry University of Ottawa Deryn Fogg received a PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of British Columbia in 1995. Following postdoctoral work at MIT, she was appointed in 1997 as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Ottawa, winning that year’s Polanyi Prize in Chemistry. She is now a full professor. Fogg served as chair of the Inorganic Chemistry Subject Division in 2004–2006, and recently completed a six-year term on the Division executive. She has organized a number

Patricia Laws, MCIC Director of Education and Student Affairs Department of Chemistry Senior Instructor Dalhousie University Patricia Laws obtained a BSc chemistry honours degree in 1996 from Acadia University, a MSc in physical chemistry from Dalhousie University in 2000, and a Bachelor of Education in 2006 from Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2003, Laws was appointed as a physical chemistry lab instructor at Dalhousie University and was then appointed as the First Year chemistry coordinator in 2006. She was promoted to senior instructor in 2008. She is a co-author on the first year textbooks Concepts in Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity and Concepts in Chemistry: Energy and Equilibrium. Her current focus is on the development and implementation of online resources for first year students. She was symposium organizer for the Chemical Education Division for the CSC 2006 conference in Halifax and she coordinated the undergraduate student poster competition.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 29

Recognition reconnaissance

Michael O. Wolf, MCIC Director of Subject Divisions Professor of Chemistry The University of British Columbia Michael Wolf is currently a professor of chemistry and the director of the Laboratory for Advanced Spectroscopy and Imaging (LASIR) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He received his BSc from Dalhousie University in 1989 and his PhD from MIT in 1994. After a postdoctoral stint at the University of Texas at Austin, he took up an appointment at UBC where he has been since. His research interests are focused in the area of inorganic materials chemistry, molecular electronics and new materials for energy harvesting and storage. He has won the UBC Killam Research Prize and the CSC’s Strem Chemicals Award for Pure or Applied in Inorganic Chemistry. He was recently the chair of the Inorganic Chemistry Division, has organized a number of symposia at CSC meetings, and was the Inorganic Chemistry Program Chair at the Vancouver CSC meeting in 2002.

James Xidos, MCIC Director of Local Sections Department of Chemistry Instructor II University of Manitoba Born in St. John’s, NL, James Xidos completed his post-secondary education at Memorial University of Newfoundland. There he earned a BSc majoring in both chemistry and applied

mathematics (1995), and a PhD in the field of computational chemistry (1999). Xidos then went to Minnesota, where he first worked as a research associate at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1999–2001) and then as a programmer for the Computer-Aided Drug Design Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (2001–2004). His research endeavors have yielded a modest number of papers, conference presentations, and authorships in software packages. Eager to return to Canada, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manitoba in 2004 as an instructor II. The return to an academic environment allowed Xidos to focus his energies on his first love, teaching. Evidence of his dedication includes winning the University of Manitoba Science Students’ Association Teaching Recognition Award for teaching at the 3000–4000 levels (2006–2007 academic year). Xidos has also made significant contributions to the CIC. He has held the position of treasurer of the Manitoba and North West Ontario CIC Local Section since 2005. During the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition held in Winnipeg in 2007, he served not only as volunteer coordinator, but also as the organizer for the well-attended “Computational Chemistry in Chemical Education” symposium, and a workshop entitled, “Molecules on Display”.

professor in 2001 and currently holds this position. In 1983, McIntosh was elected Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada (FCIC) and received the University of Windsor Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to University Teaching in 1990. McIntosh has been very active over the years with the CIC/CSC through volunteer work both in the Essex-Kent Local Section and the Organic Chemistry Division. McIntosh chairs the CSC Accreditation Committee and is the current Director of Accreditation on the CSC Board of Directors.

Funding Chemical Education Call for Proposals Deadline: December 15, 2008

John McIntosh, FCIC Director of Accreditation (extended) Professor emeritus University of Windsor John McIntosh, FCIC, received his BSc in chemistry and physics from Queen’s University and a PhD in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career with the University of Windsor in 1968 to 1973 as an assistant professor, from 1973 to 1980 as associate professor, becoming full professor in 1980. He became an emeritus

30 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

The CIC Chemical Education Fund (CEF) is looking to support original and innovative chemical-related educational projects. The CEF has sponsored student conferences, science fairs, chemical outreach programs, a Summer Institute, and more.

For more information, contact info@cheminst.ca or visit

www.cheminst.ca/cef.

The Canadian Society for Chemical Technology

2009AWARD

The Norman and Marion Bright Memorial Award is awarded to an individual

who has made an outstanding contribution in Canada to the furtherance of chemical technology. The person so honoured may be either a chemical sciences technologist, or a person from outside the field who has made a significant and noteworthy contribution to it advancement.

Award: A medal and a cash prize.

Deadline

The deadline for this CSCT award is December 1, 2008 for the 2009 selection. Nomination forms and the full Terms of Reference for this award is available at www.chem-tech.ca/awards.

Recognition reconnaissance

Ch Challenges for a

anging World

The 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering(WCCE8) is being held in Montréal, QC,

August 23–27, 2009. The congress theme is “Challenges

for a Changing World,” and our Canadian team has put together an exciting program with help from our international colleagues. The Call for Papers opened on June 16, 2008 and will close November 30, 2008. Papers can be sent through Hermes Conference Centre via the WCCE8 Web site. Details are available at www.wcce8.org/call_for_ papers_instructions.html. The Congress program will include plenary sessions, oral and poster presentations, student programs and a full social program. A partial list of plenary speakers includes experts such as Shell Global Solutions president Greg Lewin; Yale University professor Mark Saltzman; and professor Gerhard Kreysa, president of DECHEMA. Major themes for WCCE8 are in place and the following topics will be explored: energy; green processing; new materials and processes; biotechnology; contemporary topics in chemical engineering; and chemical engineering and society. WCCE8 will also be featuring a program designed for industrial engineers. Examples of industrially-oriented topics that will be of special interest to engineers working in industry include: financing industrial research and development; process intensification for sustainable manufacturing; XTL (X to Liquid); and process safety and loss management. You can view the full technical and industrial programs at www.wcce8.org or sign up to receive more information on the congress at www.wcce8.org/onlineform.html. Montréal is a scenic and vibrant multi-cultural city with a European flavor, and is renowned for its cultural and artistic life with remarkable restaurants and an excellent hotel network. Montréal is easy to reach by air with direct flights from the U.S.A., Latin America, and Europe, and from Asia through the Vancouver and Toronto hubs. We look forward to receiving your paper and seeing you in Montréal in 2009.

Ca l l f o r P a p e r s Closes November

30, 2008

32 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

Materials Science and Engineering Division Undergraduate Thesis Awards (2007–2008) The CSC MSED Undergraduate Thesis Award is given to the student whose thesis describes a project in the field of polymer science and engineering. The student must have made significant and original contri‑ butions to the research and the thesis is evaluated on the basis of scientific merit, creativity, and originality. For 2007–2008, there are two winners of this award: Leah Coumont and Davin Piercey. Each award is $500.

Leah Coumont

Davin Piercey

Leah Coumont is currently in her final year of an Honours Chemistry BSc at the University of Alberta. Her thesis outlines work performed in the lab of Jonathan Veinot, MCIC. The research involved the synthesis of three fluorene-based polymeric materials for optoelectronic applications. The materials showed enhanced stability towards formation of both keto-defect species as well as interchain aggregates. This stability allowed for a robust blue-emission. Coumont plans to continue this work in graduate studies.

Davin Piercey is also in his final year of an Honours Chemistry BSc at the University of Alberta, and performed his research in Veinot’s lab. His thesis, entitled “Synthesis of Fluorene Based Monomers for Application in Polymerization Reactions Aimed at the Synthesis of Thermally Stable Polyfluorene Based Blue Emitting Materials for Application in Opto-electronic Devices,” explores synthetic routes to new substituted dibromofluorenes. These fluorenes can be used as precursors to thermally-stable polyfluorene based materials.

Recognition reconnaissance

Student Chapter Merit Award Winners (2008) Les gagnants des prix du mérite des sections étudiantes (2008)

Alfred Bader Scholarships (2008) Bourses Alfred-bader (2008) Sponsored by / Parrainé par Alfred Bader, HFCIC A mark of excellence for achievement in organic chemistry or biochemistry by undergraduate students completing their final year of study in an honours program. Pour souligner l’excellence des realisations en chimie organique ou en biochimie d’étudiants du 1er cycle terminant leur dernière année d’études dans un programme d’études spécialisées.

The Student Chapter Merit Awards are offered as a means of recognizing and encouraging initiative and originality in Student Chapter programming in the areas of chemistry, chem‑ ical engineering and chemical technology. Awards are given out in each Society annually. Elena Dimitrijevic, ACIC

Les prix du Mérite des sections étudiantes sont offerts en vue de reconnaître et d’encourager l’esprit d’initiative et la créativité dans la program‑ mation des activités des sections étudiantes dans les domaines de la chimie, du génie chimique et de la technologie chimique. Des prix sont décernés par chaque société chaque année.

Canadian Society for Chemistry First Place University of Calgary Honourable Mention Mount Allison University

Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering First Place Lakehead University Honourable Mention McMaster University

Misty-Dawn Elizabeth Anne Burns, ACIC

Elena Dimitrijevic, ACIC, born in the former Yugoslavia, completed her BSc in the biopharmaceutical science program at the University of Ottawa. Initially intending to specialize in genomics, her first exposure to organic chemistry instantly encouraged her to pursue a career in medicinal chemistry. She was given the opportunity to work under the supervision of Robert Ben, MCIC, and André Beauchemin, MCIC, in the fields of bio-organic chemistry and synthetic organic chemistry as an NSERC USRA recipient during the summers of 2006 and 2007. The work conducted during these work terms resulted in two publications and a poster presentation at QOMSBOC in 2007. She completed her honours project in the Beauchemin lab, working in the field of hydroamination. After traveling through Europe for nearly three months, she will be returning to the world of chemistry by pursuing graduate studies in the chemistry department at the University of Toronto. Misty-Dawn Elizabeth Anne Burns, ACIC was born and raised in Middleton, NS, where she first discovered her love for chemistry through her high school teacher, Jodye Routledge. Following graduation from MRHS, Burns enrolled into the BSc program at Acadia University on a HarrisonMcCain Scholar-Bursary. By her second year of study she had become passionate about organic chemistry in particular. During her time at Acadia, Burns acted on many student organizations, including president of the Acadia Chemistry Club. Following her third year of study she was honoured with receiving the CSC Silver Medal. In her fourth year at Acadia, Burns completed an honours program in chemistry funded by an NSERC USRA. Her research was done under the supervision of Matthew Lukeman, MCIC, in the area of organic photochemistry. Upon graduation from her BScH at Acadia in May 2008 as a university scholar, Burns was also given the honour of receiving the University Medal in Chemistry as well as the Society of Chemical Industry Merit Award–Chemistry. Burns was also awarded an NSERC CGS to continue with graduate studies. She is currently continuing her research under the supervision of Lukeman.

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 33

Recognition reconnaissance

Society of Chemical Industry Awards

Stephen Dunn

Brian Wastle

Canada Medal During a successful career in the chemical industry including 25 years with Dow and over 16 years as vice-president, Responsible Care®, for the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association, CCPA, Brian Wastle, through his passion and leadership, has been a major contributor to the success of Responsible Care in Canada as well as internationally. A new generation of Responsible Care, integrating the principles of sustainability, was launched in October 2008, by CCPA. Wastle led this process on behalf of the CCPA Board. SCI’s Canada Medal, is a fitting acknowledgement of the significance of his positive mark on the Canadian chemical industry through his efforts in Responsible Care; which will be felt for years to come.

Kalev Pugi Award Stephen Dunn, director of Process Design and Development with Hatch Ltd., is a world authority on the development of innovative process technologies for both the metallurgical and petroleum industries. Like Kalev Pugi, whose distinguished career this award honours, Dunn always attacked difficult problems by first understanding the fundamental issues, then methodically

Larry Seeley, MCIC

Geoffrey Oziin, FCIC

developing practical, and usually innovative solutions, which he pursued with rigorous zeal to achieve a successful conclusion. These development programs have successfully enabled substantial energy savings, major reductions in environmental pollution and improvements in the clients’ product quality. Over a 25-year period, Dunn has pioneered enormous contributions to the development of novel solvent-based processes for the in-situ recovery of bitumen from Alberta oil sands.

from Bayer process liquor, controls about 25 percent of the world market in Gallium. The company also has technologies and plant for recovering Indium and Rhenium, having two facilities in Ontario, two in the U.S., and one in Germany. Seeley has been very supportive of the profession, having served as president of Canadian Metallurgical Society and currently as vice-president of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering.

International Award

Geoffrey Ozin, FCIC, who will receive the LeSueur Memorial Award, is a university professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. He has established an international reputation in the fields of materials chemistry and nanochemistry through the synthesis and characterization of new materials with novel structures and properties. His synthetic strategies have resulted in breakthrough developments in diverse applications including photonic crystals, nanomachines, host-guest nanomaterials, organic-inorganic hybrid materials, and advanced zeolites. These discoveries have direct applications in advanced industrial materials in areas such as photonics, electronics, bone implants, catalysis, and chemical sensors.

Larry Seeley, MCIC, winner of SCI Canada’s International Award, began his professional career with Falconbridge Limited, starting in process development and rising to senior management in both operations and technology to officer of the company and vice-president. In 1995, he led a management buyout of Lakefield Research Ltd as president, CEO, and principal shareholder; building this internationally recognized metallurgical and environmental service company from about 100 to over 900 employees with operations in Canada, Australia, Chile, Brazil, and South Africa. After organizing the sale of Lakefield to SGS, he founded Recapture Metals, which now, through recycling and extraction

2009 SCI Canada Annual Awards Ceremony and Dinner 34 L’Actualité chimique canadienne novembre/Décembre 2008

LeSueur Memorial Award

Thursday, March 26, 2009 Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel

www.cheminst.ca/sci_awards

Events Événements

Canada Conferences May 26–29, 2009. 2nd Georgian Bay International Conference on Bioinorganic Chemistry (CanBIC-2009) Parry Sound, ON, www.canbic.ca. May 30–June 3, 2009. 92nd Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Hamilton, ON, www.csc2009.ca. July 5–9, 2009. 13th International IUPAC Conference on Polymers and Organic Chemistry (POC09), Montréal, QC, www.poc09.com. July 20–24, 2009. 7th Canadian Computational Chemistry Conference, Halifax, NS, www.bri.nrc.ca/cccc7. August 23–27, 2009. 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, Montréal, QC, www.wcce8.org.

U.S. and Overseas Conferences December 12–15, 2008. 10th European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids, Strasbourg, France, www.isasf.net/strasbourg. August 1–9, 2009. IUPAC 42nd Congress and 45th General Assembly, Glasgow, UK, www.iupac2009.org. December 15–20, 2010. Pacifichem 2010, Honolulu, Hawaii, www.pacifichem.org.

ACCN

Did You Know ACCN

all issues of prior to 2008 are free to view on-line at www.accn.ca?

november/december 2008 Canadian Chemical News 35

careers carrières

Theoretical Organic Chemist The Department of Chemistry invites applications for a full-time tenure track position in any area of Theoretical Organic Chemistry at the Assistant Professor level. Physical Chemist in Nanoscience The Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary has recently implemented the only process learning driven Nanoscience program in North America (http://www.ucalgary.ca/nanoscience/). Physical chemists who could make a significant contribution to this new program and develop nanomaterials for a variety of applications in medicine and/or energy are particularly encouraged to apply for a full-time tenure track position at the Assistant Professor level. The successful candidate will be expected to teach both physical chemistry core and nanoscience courses. Individuals should have a commitment to excellence in teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and who have, or will develop, an imaginative and vigorous research program are encouraged to apply. Applicants must have a Ph.D. degree and postdoctoral research experience, or equivalent. Interested persons should consult the web site of the Alberta Ingenuity Fund (http://www.albertaingenuity.ca/) to learn more about the generous programs to support research that are available to supplement the internally-available support that this dynamic department can provide. The successful candidate will be expected to take up the position on July 1, 2009. Further information about the Department is available at http://www.ucalgary.ca/chem/. Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae, list of publications, summary of research interests, detailed research proposal and summary of teaching philosophy by January 1, 2009 to: Dr. B. A. Keay, Head Department of Chemistry University of Calgary 2500 University Drive N.W. Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4 Confidential Fax: (403) 284-1372 E-mail: info@chem.ucalgary.ca Candidates must also arrange for three confidential letters of reference to be mailed directly to the same address by that date. Consideration of applications will begin in early January 2009 for a preferred appointment of July 1, 2009.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. The University of Calgary respects, appreciates and encourages diversity.

Nominations are now open for

The Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering

2009AWARDS Act now!

Do you know an outstanding person who deserves to be recognized?

The Bantrel Award in Design and Industrial Practice is presented to a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada for innovative design or production activities accomplished in Canada. The activities may have resulted in a significant achievement in product or process design, small or large company innovation, or multidisciplinary designdirected research or production. The achievement will relate to the practice of chemical engineering and/or industrial chemistry whether in research and development, process implementation, entrepreneurialism, innovation, production or some combination of these. It may be via a well-known, long-standing reputation for translating chemical engineering principles into design and industrial practice and, through this, contribute to the profession as a whole. Sponsored by Bantrel. Award: A plaque and a cash prize.

The D. G. Fisher Award is presented to an individual who has made substantial contributions to the field of systems and control engineering. The award is given in recognition of significant contributions in any, or all, of the areas of theory, practice, and education. Sponsored by the department of chemical and materials engineering, University of Alberta, Suncor Energy Foundation, and Shell Canada Limited. Award: A framed scroll, a cash prize and travel expenses.

The Process Safety Management Award is presented as a mark of recognition to a person who has made an outstanding contribution in Canada to the Process Safety Management (PSM) Division of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering recognizing excellence in the leadership and dedication of individuals who have led Canada in the field of process safety and loss management (PSLM). Sponsored by AON Reed Stenhouse Inc. Award: A framed scroll and a cash prize.

The R. S. Jane Memorial Award is presented to an individual who has made new significant contributions to chemical engineering or industrial chemistry in Canada. Sponsored by the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. Award: A framed scroll, a cash prize and registration fee to the CSChE Conference.

The Syncrude Canada Innovation Award is presented to a resident of Canada who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of chemical engineering while working in Canada. Nominees for this award shall not have reached the age of 40 years by January of the year in which the nomination becomes effective. Sponsored by Syncrude Canada Ltd. Award: A framed scroll and a cash prize.

Deadline

The deadline for all CSChE awards is December 1, 2008 for the 2009 selection.

Nomination Procedure

Submit your nominations to: Awards Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering 130 Slater Street, Suite 550 Ottawa, ON K1P 6E2 Tel.: 613-232-6252, ext. 223 Fax: 613-232-5862 awards@cheminst.ca

Nomination forms and the full Terms of Reference for these awards are available at www.chemeng.ca/awards

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