Nov/Dec 2005: ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News

l’actualité chimique canadienne canadian chemical news ACCN

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE • 2005 • Vol. 57, No./no 10

0010101110101001011010011001001010111010100101101001100100101011010100101 1010011001001010111010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011 0101001011101001100100101011010100101110100110010010101101010010111010011 0010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010 1101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011 1010100101101001100100101011101010010110100110010010101100101001011010011 0010010101110101001011101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011101010 0101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101 0111010100101101001110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100 1100100101011101010010110100111001001010111010100101101001100100101011101 0100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011001010010110100110010 0101011001010010110100110010010101100101001011010011001001010111010100101 1010011001001010110010100101101001110010010101101010010110100111001001010 1101010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001010110101001011010011 00101011101010010 0010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010 10010101101010010110101 1101001100100101011101010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001010 01100100101010 1101010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001010110101001011010011 0010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101110101001 0110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101 1001010010110100110010010101010101001011010011001001010110101001011010011 0010010101100101001011010011001001010110101001011010011001001010111010100 1011010011001001010110101001011010011001001010110101001011010011001001010 1101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110 0100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101 1010011001001010111010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011 0101001011010011001001010111010100101101001100100101011110101001011010011 001010111010100101 0010010101100101001011010011001001010110010100101101001100100101011101010 01001010110101001011010 0101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011101010010110100110010010 01100100101010 1011010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101001101010010110100 1100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100 1011010011001001010011101010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001 0101101010010110100110010010100110101001011010011001001010110101001011010 0110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101110101 0010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010100111010100101101001100100 1010110101001011010011001001010101010100101101001100100101011101010010110 1001100100101011101010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101 0010101101010010 010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001010111010100101101001100 10010101101010010110101 1001010111010100101101001100100101011010100101101001100100101011010100101 01100100101010 1010011001001010110101001011010011001001010111010100101101001100100101011 1010100101101001100100101011010100101101001110010010101101010010110100110 0100101011001010010110100110010010101101010010110100110010010101101010010 1101001100100101010101010010110100110010010101110101001011010011001001010 0110101001011010011001101011010100101101001110011010110101001011010011001 1010011010100101101001100110101110101001011010011001101011101010010110100 1100110101110101001011010011001101011010100101101001100110101101010010110 1001100110101101010010110100110011010101010100101101001100110101101010010 1101001100110101101010010110100110011010110101001011010011001101011010100 1011010011001101011101010010110100110011010111010100101101001100110101110 1010010110100110011010011010100101110100110011010011010100101101001100110 1011010100101101001100110100110101001011010011001101011101010010110100110 0110100110101001100110100110101001011010011001101011101010010110100111001 1010011010100101101010100101101001100110101101010010110100110010110101001

α

Computational Chemistry

σ

ϑ γΓ

ιωΣξ ενϕ ζλµ φ δ ψφ Ω λ

χ βσςδ

7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering First Nanochemistry Textbook Green Chemistry Summer School

θ Ω ϖ τΦ η µ ε

2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

ς

ACCN

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE • 2005 • Vol. 57, No./no 10

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

Ta ble of Contents/Ta ble des matièr es

Feature Ar ticles/Ar ticles de fond

Guest Column/Chroniqueur invité . . 2 Life is Chemistry Terrance Rummery, FCIC Personals/Personnalités . . . . . . . 3 News Briefs/Nouvelles en bref . . . . 5 Chemfusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Aim High Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

16

The Rubber Handbook Enters the Computer Age Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC, and Leonard G. Walker, MCIC

18 Modélisation moléculaire : théorie et/ou expérience Rôle du scientifique modélisateur

Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Pain and Profits

Armand Soldera, MCIC

Chemical Shifts . . . . . . . . . . . 12

20 R E M E M B E R W H E N

Chemputing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC CIC Bulletin ICC

. . . . . . . . . . 22

CSC Bulletin SCC . . . . . . . . . . 28 CSChE Bulletin SCGCh . . . . . . . 31 Student News/ Nouvelles des étudiants . . . . . . . 34 Local Section News/ Nouvelles des sections locales . . . . 35 Careers/Carrières . . . . . . . . . . 36 Events/Événements . . . . . . . . . 37

GUEST COLUMN CHRONIQUEUR INVITÉ

Editor-in-Chief/Rédactrice en chef Michelle Piquette Managing Editor/Directrice de la rédaction Heather Dana Munroe Graphic Designer/Infographiste Krista Leroux Editorial Board/Conseil de rédaction Terrance Rummery, FCIC, chair/président Catherine A. Cardy, MCIC Cathleen Crudden, MCIC John Margeson, MCIC Milena Sejnoha, MCIC Bernard West, MCIC

LIFE IS CHEMISTRY Terrance Rummery, FCIC

M

y term as ACCN editorial board Chair will end in December, and I want to thank board members and the magazine’s staff for their contributions and service. ACCN has continued to improve in quality and content over the past several years, and Board members and staff are to be congratulated for this steady progress.

The high quality of the CIC’s magazine is all the more remarkable in that only one staff member is involved full-time, and the majority of articles are contributed by volunteer writers. I thank the latter, past and future, for sharing their scientific and engineering knowledge with us.

I am pleased to announce that Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, will assume the editorial board chair in January 2006. I am sure you know Joe from his highly informative and entertaining column featured monthly in ACCN. Looking to next year, the board has instituted some changes. This current issue has Marvin Silbert’s final column on “Chemputing,” and we want to thank Marvin for his informative articles over the past several years.

In 2006, a new section on regulatory affairs, of special interest to our industrial and government-employed members, will be included in several issues. Also, the focus on our monthly theme will be reduced to two to four articles per issue to provide more space for coverage of other topics, for example current news, career information, and individual research stories.

Of the ten themes planned for next year, one I think particularly important has the tentative title, “Chemistry—from the Central to the Shrinking Science?” The first aspect, “central science,” refers to the importance of chemistry as the bridge between physics and biology, and the crucial role chemistry plays

in understanding everything from inorganic materials synthesis, function, and design to the understanding of human life itself. As is clear in articles and documentaries ranging from astrophysical studies on the origins of life to the pursuit of life-saving pharmaceuticals through molecular medicine—life is chemistry.

“Shrinking science” will discuss the extent to which falling enrolment in chemistry has resulted in the closure of at least one chemistry department in England. At a time when too many of our brightest young people are going into non-scientific disciplines—many because they think science and engineering courses are too difficult and demanding—we need to spread the word that science is fascinating, challenging, and rewarding. And we need to start this communication in elementary school—by senior high school, and even more junior levels, it is often too late. Failure to attract the brightest minds to science will certainly negatively impact the quality of our lives in the years to come.

Any and all thoughts you have on this subject, and of course on the other stimulating ACCN articles you will have the pleasure of reading in the future, are welcome as letters to the editor.

Send your thoughts to editorial@accn.ca.

Terrance Rummery, FCIC, is currently ACCN editorial board Chair. He is a former CIC board

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 constituantes qui soutiennent la revue.

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

Chair and has degrees in engineering chemistry and physical chemistry from Queen’s University.

At retirement, he was the president of the Research Company of Atomic Energy of Canada.

2 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

www.accn.ca

PERSONALS PERSONNALITÉS

Industry The Energy Innovation Network (EnergyINet) has selected Michael Raymont, MCIC, as chief executive officer. Raymont is EnergyINet’s first full-time CEO, and will replace interim CEO, Eddy Isaacs, ACIC, who was instrumental in the launch of this unique national energy and environmental innovation network. EnergyINet is a Canadian not-for-profit network that brings industry, researchers, and governments together to pursue technologies and innovation that can provide Canadians with an abundant supply of affordable and environmentally responsible energy.

“As EnergyINet and its members know, new technologies are critical for Canada to meet the soaring energy demands of the future,” said Pat Jamieson, chief of technology, Nexen Inc. “Michael Raymont has a terrific technology development background, combined with significant experience in building national, collaborative networks and leading technology businesses.”

Hudlicky addresses the problems of pharmaceutical synthesis through the application of green chemistry. His work has dramatically minimized pharmaceutical waste and given the harmful compounds new life as analgesic, anaesthetic, and antitumour products, specifically as valuable compounds used in the treatment of cancer, bio-infection, and diabetes.

Government

Mark Lautens, MCIC University of Toronto’s Mark Lautens, MCIC, was one of the recipients of the 2006 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards from the American Chemical Society. The purpose of the award is to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry.

Ian Smith, FCIC

University Alfred Bader, FCIC, received an honorary doctor of science degree from Simon Fraser University on October 6, 2005, during the university’s fall convocation ceremony. Bader is a chemist and founder of Aldrich Chemicals (now Sigma-Aldrich), the world’s largest supplier of many thousands of chemicals that have profoundly changed research.

Bader is also internationally recognized as an art historian and art dealer. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and a frequent lecturer on the history of chemistry and art. Known for his generous philanthropy, Bader has made major grants to chemists and students of chemistry and art history in many parts of the world.

Tomas Hudlicky, MCIC, of Brock University’s department of chemistry is the recipient of the Brock University Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity. This award recognizes a faculty member who demonstrates outstanding research achievements, contributions toward the training of future researchers, and consistency in scholarly or creative performance.

Alper received this year’s award in recognition of his outstanding leadership as Chair of the board of directors of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), formerly the Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP).

Ian Smith, FCIC, is director general of the National Research Council Canada (NRC) Institute for Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg, MB. He has been elected president of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB). The IUPAB is a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU) family and its membership comprises national adhering bodies from 50 countries. Its function is to support research and teaching in biophysics. Smith has sat on the council of the IUPAB for 12 years and is only the third Canadian to head an ICSU scientific union.

Distinction The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) recognized Howard Alper, FCIC, professor of chemistry and vice-president research at the University of Ottawa, as the winner of the 2005 CARL Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship.

The award is presented annually to an individual at a CARL-member institution who has made a substantial local, national, and/ or international contribution to academic research librarianship.

Jian Pei, assistant professor in computing science at Simon Fraser University, received the Young Innovator Award, recognizing an individual under the age of 35 who has made a significant contribution to developing innovative science or technology, and has played a main role in the development of a new innovation or research breakthrough.

Pei is one of the world’s most cited authors in the area of data mining and knowledge discovery, and his work is used extensively by large companies with applications ranging from assisting insurance companies in identifying patterns among millions of claims, to helping retail stores decide which products should be grouped together.

Mario Pinto, professor of chemistry and vice-president of research at Simon Fraser University, received the Frontiers in Research Award recognizing an individual or small team whose innovative research has led to major new advances in scientific or technological knowledge. Pinto has opened the fields of chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and health research. His research into the art and science of synthesizing

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 3

PERSONALS PERSONNALITÉS

complex carbohydrate molecules is unlocking the secrets of molecular functions, enabling scientists to model complex interactions.

Roy Pottier, MCIC, of the Royal Military College of Canada’s department of chemistry and chemical engineering received the European Society of Photobiology (ESP) medal on September 6, 2005, at their annual conference in Aix-les-Bains, France. This medal is given every second year for outstanding and long-lasting scientific contributions in the field of photobiology. Pottier, a photochemist, has devoted much of his research career to the development of the fields of photobiology and photomedicine, which involves the use of visible light to activate biological processes.

The award specifically honours Pottier’s contribution, along with that of Jim Kennedy of Queen’s University, for the development of Photodynamic Therapy with 5 Aminolevulinic Acid (ALA-PDT). This is a lightactivated treatment that is used for treating skin lesions such as certain types of skin cancer. It is now a standard treatment in most hospitals in Europe and North America.

In Memoriam

Erratum The CIC offers an apology to H. G. McAdie, FCIC, who was mistakenly included in the list of 50-year members in the September 2005 issue of ACCN. McAdie has already passed this milestone and was saluted with his peers in 1999.

Vedene Smith, FCIC, died peacefully in his sleep on September 30, 2005 in Kingston, ON, after a long battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife Regina and daughter Stefanie.

Smith received a BA degree in 1955 from Emory University, MSc and PhD degrees in 1957 and 1960, respectively, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Fil. Lic. and Fil. Dr. degrees from the University of Uppsala where he was named Docent in quantum chemistry in 1967. He joined the department of chemistry at Queen’s University in 1967 as an associate professor, was promoted to full professor in 1970, and became a professor emeritus of chemistry in 2000.

Smith established an international reputation in the field of theoretical chemistry for his extensive research program in the area of quantum chemistry, namely the application of quantum mechanics to predict and explain the shapes, energies, and other properties of molecules and to determine their energies of interaction. During a very active and distinguished career, he produced over 360 refereed papers, supervised 28 graduate students (MSc and PhD) and 29 post-doctoral fellows and research associates. He delivered numerous invited lectures around the world.

Smith served as chair of the CSC in 1996–1997. He was also a member of the board of directors of the CIC from 1996–1997 and served as chair of the CIC from 2000–2001.

David M. Wardlaw, MCIC Queen’s University

4 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

IRMACS collaboration and visualization coordinator, Brian Corrie, is seen on screen as well as to the right of the screen.

He is joined by IRMACS executive director, Peter Borwein (left).

Pushing Collaborative Research—to the Max Move over creators of Max Headroom, Matrix , and Metropolis. What researchers can accomplish at Simon Fraser University’s IRMACS Centre rivals the high tech feats of the most memorable futuristic films. The $14 million centre’s acronym stands for Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences. The centre is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary research among scientists whose primary lab tool is the computer.

“The IRMACS research centre will develop new and improved products and services that will enhance the competitiveness of British Columbia,” says Premier Gordon Campbell.

“Our investment in research leads to important innovations that drive our economy, create jobs, and make this province a great place to do business.” IRMACS Centre, a newly

Photo by Carol Thorbes

constructed 2,500 square metre space atop the Applied Sciences Building, has eight labs, five meeting rooms, and a presentation theatre seating up to 100 people. All are equipped with easily upgradeable computational, multimedia, Internet, and remote conferencing (including satellite) technology. High-performance distributed computing and clustering technology and access to WestGrid make the centre unique in western Canada.

“The IRMACS Centre is one of the most technologically sophisticated environments available to researchers in mathematical and computational sciences,” says Minister for Advanced Education, Ida Chong. “We are pleased to support a research centre, which in turn, supports so many scientists engaged in leading-edge research.”

The centre’s reconfigurable rooms and open spaces, and universal access to computers using one account and one sign-on make collaborative research limitless, regardless of geography or discipline. With its wrap-around,

high-resolution projection display that gives viewers a virtual 3D experience, the centre’s presentation studio can connect researchers worldwide to discuss and manipulate structures in 3D. Plasma computer displays with touch-screen interfaces allow lecture and meeting notes to be captured in real time and later distributed in standard file formats.

“In our labs we have 200 researchers in such diverse areas as genetics, telecommunications, and health informatics communicating with colleagues around the world,” explains Peter Borwein, SFU mathematician and executive director of IRMACS. The facility is funded in part by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund (BCKDF), and by Simon Fraser University.

Simon Fraser University

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 5

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

Comparison between the bound biotin crystal conformer and the docked pose for biotin.

The X-ray structure is shown in purple.

Chemical Computing Group Releases New MOE Version 2005.06 Chemical Computing Group, Inc. (CCG) has released the latest release of the Molecular Operating Environment (MOE™) software for computer-assisted drug discovery and design. MOE 2005.06 contains new features and developments to its wide range of computational applications, including tools for bioinformatics, cheminformatics, high throughput discovery, protein modelling, and structure-based design. Version 2005.06 is the result of CCG’s continuing research and development efforts. Some notable features in this release include: • Pharmacophore Elucidation; • Automatic 2D Depiction; • Ligand-Receptor Docking; • Integration with MOPAC, GAMESS, and Gaussian.

CCG’s president and CEO, Paul Labute, comments, “Life science companies will be able to deliver high-end computational

methodology throughout their organizations.

Information and ideas can now be shared between biology, medicinal chemistry, and computational groups. By allowing researchers from various parts of the organization to interact with each other more easily, research efforts can be optimized.

CCG’s consistent research and development program has resulted in an improved package that will increase flexibility for scientists.” CCG is a developer and worldwide provider of scientific software and computational applications for life sciences based in Montréal, QC. MOE applications are built on the Scientific Vector Language (SVL), a chemistry-receptive programming system designed specifically for life science application development. Computational chemists, medicinal chemists, and biologists use MOE in pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and universities worldwide.

6 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

Chemical Computing Group, Inc

Simulating Molecules at Merck Frosst Scientists at the Merck Frosst Centre for Therapeutic Research use computational chemistry methods to speed up the process of producing compounds with desirable properties. Molecules can be designed and visualized on a computer screen and docked into the active site on a virtual enzyme, before the real compound is made. Computer simulations then allow the compound to be assessed virtually before spending the time and experimental resources to make it. The strong predictive ability of these methods has prompted considerable interest in the technique, and it is now applied routinely in many programs.

Christopher I. Bayly, MCIC, is a research fellow who heads the computational chemistry group at Merck Frosst. He says, “It is very exciting to be able to help the discovery of new medicines by applying theoretical chemistry methods. Also, the real-world challenges of the drug-discovery environment are a terrific driver to improve on the existing theoretical methods we use, or even devise new ones, in order to solve specific problems.”

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

methods have been advanced within Merck Research Laboratories worldwide, building a strong base of state-of-the-art computational chemistry tools together with the associated expertise within the company as a whole.

Using these advanced computational methods together with the experimental biology and medicinal chemistry to validate hypotheses makes a powerful combination, placing Merck Frosst Canada & Co. at the forefront of drug design.

Merck Frosst Canada & Co.

2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Computational chemists at Merck Frosst draw from an extensive database of small molecules, both real and virtual, to find candidates for specific biological targets. They apply force field and electronic structure calculations to small molecules to determine molecular properties such as energies, geometries, and reactivities.

Structure-based design studies are based on experimentally determined protein structures for the therapeutic target or a close analog.

These studies apply force field methods such as the Merck Molecular Force Field (MMFF®) and AMBER® in the context of molecular dynamics and free-energy calculations, as well as conventional gas-phase minimizations. At Merck Frosst, a new method (called AM1BCC) for quickly generating atomic charges for pharmaceutical compounds was developed for use with such calculations; generating atomic charges had previously been a bottleneck in the process. The AM1-BCC method is now being used by many computational chemistry groups in the wider scientific community.

When the structure of the therapeutic target is not known, more abstract methods such as similarity/dissimilarity searching and pharmacophore mapping can be applied.

A wide variety of these computational

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly to Yves Chauvin of France and Americans Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis.”

These Nobel Prize Laureates in chemistry have made metathesis into one of organic chemistry’s most important reactions.

Fantastic opportunities have been created for producing many new molecules. Imagination will soon be the only limit to what molecules can be built!

In 1971, Yves Chauvin was able to explain in detail how metatheses reactions function and what types of metal compound act as catalysts in the reactions. The “recipe” was known. The next step was, if possible, to develop the actual catalysts. Richard Schrock was the first to produce an efficient metalcompound catalyst for metathesis in 1990.

Two years later, Robert Grubbs developed an even better catalyst that is stable in air. It has found many applications.

Thanks to the Laureates’ contributions, synthesis methods have been developed that are more efficient, simpler to use, and more environmentally friendly. This represents a great step forward for green chemistry—reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production. Metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the benefit of man, society, and the environment.

Nobelprize.org

UN Chemicals Meeting— Attention All Users At the United Nations (UN) talks this past September in Vienna, Austria, representatives of global business worked through the International Chamber of Commerce to support a risk-based approach to managing the use of chemicals. Following up on the UN’s 2002 Johannesburg summit on sustainable development, the UN environment program has organized several meetings to identify a roadmap for better international management of chemicals by 2020.

In a statement to negotiators, Ernie Rosenberg, president of the U.S. Soap and Detergent Association, urged governments to carefully consider the far-reaching impact of possible decisions on the ability of companies to continue to produce and innovate the important products necessary to protect health and the environment.

To learn more, please visit www.uscib.org/ index.asp?documentID=3363.

United States Council for International Business

Pickering Unit 1— Back in Action Ontario Power Generation synchronized Pickering Unit 1 to the electricity grid on Tuesday, September 27, producing its first electricity since its shutdown on December 31, 1997.

Further testing and commissioning activities will continue on the reactor for the next few weeks. The project required 12 months to complete, involving 1.9 million hours of work, 40,000 separate tasks,and a workforce numbering 3,000 at the peak of construction.

Project costs at the end of August were $995.2 million. The final cost of the project is expected to be $1.02 billion or two percent over budget. The reasons for the increase were difficulties and costs in securing skilled labour at the beginning of the project in the summer of 2004 and a delay this spring to conduct feeder tube inspection. The project’s safety record has been excellent and without a single lost-time accident.

Canadian Nuclear Association

Photo courtesy of Merck Frosst & Co.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 7

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

Summer School participants Maria Elisa Luque, Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Natalia Lorena Pacioni, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba.

Green Chemistry Summer School is International Draw The third annual summer school on green chemistry was held in Montréal, QC, on July 6–14. McGill University and chemistry professor Chao-jun Li, MCIC, hosted 57 graduate and post-doctoral students representing 17 countries for a week of lectures, discussions, poster sessions, and laboratory experiments. The ExxonMobil Foundation was the primary sponsor of the program, with additional support from the CIC, the American Chemical Society (ACS), and McGill University. Two ACS units, the Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) and the Education Division, organized the summer school.

Following overview lectures on green chemistry by GCI director Paul T. Anastas and on green engineering by Eric J. Beckman of the University of Pittsburgh and

Joan F. Brennecke of the University of Notre Dame, students were introduced to a variety of specialized topics, including supercritical fluids, energy, and the sustainable design of chemical products.

Li provided examples of his research during a presentation on green chemistry in organic synthesis. Bacterial polyesters were described by Robert H. Marchessault, MCIC, of McGill University. John C. Warner of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, discussed toxicology and his research on noncovalent derivatization. James E. Hutchison of the University of Oregon focused on green nanoscience and green chemistry education, as did Mary Kirchhoff of ACS’s Education Division.

Berkeley W. (Buzz) Cue (retired from Pfizer) discussed the role of green chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry, including drug manufacture and fate of drugs in the environment. Applications of biocatalysis in green chemistry were emphasized by Carlos D. Gonzalez of the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay. Carnegie Mellon’s Terrence J. Collins presented information on persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic substances and highlighted the link between sustainability and ethics. GCI’s Kathryn Parent organized a series of laboratory experiments that gave students hands-on exposure to green chemistry techniques.

A proposal-writing workshop, led by Robert H. Rich of the ACS Petroleum Research Fund (PRF), introduced students to the skills needed to develop successful funding proposals and engaged student teams in drafting and critiquing proposal abstracts.

A session on career management offered practical advice on job seeking, networking, and career options in chemistry. Two poster sessions provided a venue for students to discuss their research.

At the conclusion of the summer school, most students also participated in the “Chemistry in Context” workshop presented by textbook authors Catherine H. Middlecamp and Dwaine and Lucy P. Eubanks. This ACS text, designed for undergraduate students not majoring in science, introduces chemistry on a need-to-know basis in the context of environmental and health issues; and it includes a significant green chemistry component.

Workshop participants conducted inquirybased experiments, considered assessment

8 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

strategies, and explored the use of the Internet as a teaching tool.

The 2005 summer school was the third in a series that began with the Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute on Green Chemistry in Montevideo, Uruguay, in July 2003. This program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, drew 55 students from five countries in the Americas. Carnegie Mellon was the site of the 2004 summer school, which was funded by PRF. Sixty-two students, representing 23 countries, participated in the weeklong program. Interest in the program has grown each year, with 105 students applying for the 60 available slots in 2005.

The student response to the program was very positive, with one student noting, “It has fundamentally changed the way I look at science.” Another participant stressed the importance of applying what was learned during the program, “I teach a couple of labs that were modified into a greener perspective. Students loved it, so I wanted to find out more about green chemistry to transmit it to the next generation of scientists.” Students also appreciated the organization of the summer school. “I was well taken care of. I will let my mom know,” a student said.

Reprinted with permission from Mary Kirchhoff, Chemical & Engineering News

Bioinformatics computer cluster helps virtual supercomputer A University of Saskatchewan (U of S) computer cluster was called into service as part of a virtual supercomputer project to trace the motion of tens of thousands of atoms in an effort to figure out how proteins fold.

According to computer science professor, Tony Kusalik, this is the third time the U of S has been involved in a Canadian Internetworked Scientific Supercomputer (CISS) project. Lasting 48 hours in mid-September, CISS-3 tackled a job from researchers at the Universities of Calgary and Toronto and, at one

Photo by Mary Kirchhoff

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

point, there were 3,547 concurrent jobs running on some 4,000 computers in 27 locations across the country.

The problem, described as the “Holy Grail” of modern biology, was understanding how proteins fold. Proper folding is essential to a protein’s function while misfolding can lead to disorders like Alzheimer’s and “mad cow” disease. The results are expected to have applications in biotechnology, basic biomedical research, and pharmaceutical science. Kusalik said he has not heard the outcome of the project but “in cases like this, no news is usually good news.”

The computer cluster used in CISS-3 is in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research Laboratory, and is one of about a half-dozen clusters on campus. By combining many clusters, researchers can access the kind of computing that is beyond the capabilities of one research group or institution.

In a previous project, in November 2002, the CISS set a Canadian benchmark by completing 3.5 years’ work of computation in a single day.

Participating in projects like the CISS not only enhances the university’s reputation, but is a requirement, said Kusalik. In funding the purchase of computer clusters, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) requires that 20 percent of operating time is set aside for outside users.

In addition to virtual supercomputer projects, there are a number of efforts underway in Canada to set up grid computers. These, explained Kusalik, use the free time on linked computers to work on jobs fed into the grid by participants. An example of an existing grid computer is the SETI@home project that uses down time of home computers to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Colleen MacPherson, University of Saskatchewan

DID YOU KNOW all issues of ACCN prior to 2005 are free to view on the Web at www.accn.ca?

Click on issues and back issues to revisit your favourite issues!

Teaching Nanochemistry— by the Book

biology and medicine, this twelve-chapter book will appeal to graduate and advanced undergraduate students. It has been written so that it can be easily adapted for introducing the rudiments and principles of nanochemistry to undergraduates in their freshman to higher years. It is well illustrated with graphic representations and images of the synthesis, structure, and form of nanomaterials, and contains problem sets and other pedagogical features such as further reading, case studies and a comprehensive bibliography.

It also presents a blueprint for NanoLab— undergraduate experiments that give handson experience to the student wishing to appreciate the practical side of nanochemistry, described in each chapter of the book.

University of Toronto’s Institute for Optical Sciences

From the author of the highly cited paper, “Nanochemistry: Synthesis in Diminishing Dimensions” (Advanced Materials 1992, 4, 612–649), comes the first teaching textbook on the subject entitled, Nanochemistry: A Chemical Approach to Nanomaterials.

This 636-page textbook, containing around 400 illustrations and images, is published

by The Royal Society of Chemistry. It is coauthored by Geoffrey A. Ozin, FCIC, and André Arsenault of the Materials Chemistry Research Group, department of chemistry, University of Toronto.

This is the first textbook for teaching nanochemistry. It adopts an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to teaching the subject. The book presents a basic chemical strategy for making and manipulating nanomaterials and describes the physicochemical principles of materials self-assembly over “all” scales. It demonstrates how nanometre and micrometre scale building blocks, with a wide range of shapes, compositions, and surface functionalities, can be coerced through chemistry to organize spontaneously into unprecedented structures, which can serve as tailored functional materials. Suggestions of new ways to tackle research problems in nanoscience and speculations on how to think about assembling the future of nanotechnology are given.

Designed for teaching the underpinnings of nanoscience through the eye of the materials chemist and cross-cutting the traditional boundaries of chemistry and physics, materials science and engineering,

Lancement à l’UQAM de l’ouvrage Art et biotechnologies Louise Poissant, professeure à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (l’UQAM) et Ernestine Daubner, chargée de cours à la Concordia University, ont lancé le 20 septembre 2005 à Montréal un livre intitulé Art et biotechnologies, rédigé sous leur direction et publié aux Presses de l’UQAM. Art et biotechnologies regroupe des articles d’une vingtaine de théoriciens et d’artistes internationaux qui présentent dans cet ouvrage des recherches et des réalisations artistiques situées au croisement de l’art, de la science et des systèmes artificiels. Ils y abordent les questions et les doutes posés par les découvertes et les développements découlant des biotechnologies comme les traitements médicaux, l’accroissement de la production agricole, la cartographie complète du génome de plusieurs espèces et la reconfiguration de l’humain sur mesure.

L’ouvrage de 379 pages comprend, entre autres, des articles présentés dans le cadre du colloque « Art et biotochnologies » qui s’est tenu au Musée d’art contemporain, en octobre 2004, et également un DVD compilant près de mille œuvres produites par plus d’une centaine d’artistes.

Université du Québec à Montréal

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 9

CHEMFUSION

Aim High

B

Synthetic opiates deliver surprising side effects

arry Kidston didn’t think that studying chemistry was enough of a high.

So in 1976, the University of Maryland graduate student filled a syringe with a drug he synthesized, and eager for euphoria, plunged it into his arm. Kidston had apparently come across a paper written in 1947 by Albert Ziering, a researcher at the HoffmannLa Roche pharmaceutical company, who had been working on synthetic narcotics with a view towards developing pain killers that were less addictive than morphine. Ziering had examined compounds that were variants of Demerol, a synthetic opiate already in use. By making a subtle change in the structure of the molecule, he had hoped to come up with an improved drug. But it seems the novel substance, 1-methyl-4-phenyl-4propionoxy-piperidine (MPPP) was no better than Demerol, and it was never marketed.

Kidston knew that making a controlled substance such as Demerol was illegal. If caught, he would trade in his lab coat for prison garb.

But MPPP was a different story. Since it had never been introduced into the marketplace, it was not a controlled substance. And for someone with a background in chemistry, it wasn’t hard to make.

At first, the results were just as expected.

Kidston was overcome with the type of exhilaration normally associated with opiates. He continued to inject himself with the drug over a period of several months.

Whenever he needed more, he just brewed up another batch in the lab. Then one day the fun came to an abrupt halt. After injecting himself, he noticed a burning sensation followed by some terrifying symptoms. All of a sudden, his limbs felt leaden. Within three days, he could hardly move. Kidston was hospitalized, but the doctors were perplexed.

“Catatonic schizophrenia” was bandied about, but the drugs prescribed only made him worse. A neurologist suggested that the symptoms looked like Parkinson’s disease,

although this would have been a real rarity in someone so young. At a loss, the doctors tried treatment with L-Dopa, the classic Parkinson’s medication. It worked!

L-Dopa enters the brain where it is converted into dopamine, the neurotransmitter that is in short supply in Parkinson’s disease. Somehow, Kidston’s synthetic drug had destroyed the brain cells that produce dopamine. One would think such a disastrous experience would end any quest for a chemical high, but no. Two years later, Barry Kidston died of a cocaine overdose. An autopsy revealed a substantial loss of dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra part of his brain, a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. But why had he been happily high for months before being brought down by a new batch of the drug? Investigators were stumped, but found the case was interesting enough to merit publication. Several major journals rejected the paper, saying that it was only a single case report, but eventually it was accepted for publication in Psychiatry Research, where it lay buried until 1982.

That’s when George Carrillo, a 42-yearold drug addict, showed up in a hospital emergency room, barely able to walk or talk.

His hand trembled as he tried to explain that the symptoms appeared soon after he injected himself with some “new heroin,” purchased on the street. A week later, his girlfriend appeared, similarly afflicted. Doctors William Langston and Philip Ballard, the attending neurologists, were mystified. This looked like Parkinson’s disease, but they had never seen it present in this fashion. Parkinson’s is extremely rare in people under 50 and does not come on all of a sudden! Could this be some sort of novel variant induced by the “new heroin?”

Dr. Ballard heard about a third young heroin addict who had mysteriously “turned to stone.” This was enough to issue a public warning about potentially tainted heroin,

10 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

Joe Schwarcz, MCIC a warning that brought three more cases to light. A sample of the “new heroin” was sent for analysis, and one of the toxicologists who received a sample along with the accompanying case report recalled reading about an unusual case of Parkinson’s in Psychiatry Research. When Dr. Langston heard this, he looked up the paper and saw the reference to Ziering’s original account.

A quick trip to the Stanford University library turned up the 1947 volume of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, but Langston was shocked to see that Ziering’s paper had been cut out!

It was clear now that some enterprising chemist was cooking up MPPP and selling it as “new heroin.” But MPPP had undergone drug testing and had never been connected with Parkinson’s disease. As Langston pursued the chemistry of MPPP, he came across something interesting. Apparently, if Ziering’s original synthesis was not followed exactly, a contaminant, called MPTP, was produced. When MPTP was injected into monkeys, it triggered the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease!

Now the mist cleared. Both Kidston and the clandestine California chemist had done some sloppy work and produced batches of MPPP that were contaminated with a Parkinson’s causing chemical. But they also may have cast light on the causes of Parkinson’s disease and perhaps explained why the disease is more prevalent in agricultural areas.

MPTP has a striking chemical similarity to some pesticides! The cloud that hangs over Barry Kidston’s misuse of chemistry may yet turn out to have a silver lining.

Popular science writer, Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, is a chemistry professor and the director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.

He hosts the Dr. Joe Show every Sunday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Montréal’s radio station CJAD and on CFRB in Toronto. The broadcast is available on the Web at www.CJAD.com.

Book Review

PAIN AND PROFITS— THE HISTORY OF THE HEADACHE AND ITS REMEDIES IN AMERICA Jan R. McTavish, Rutgers University Press, ISBN 08135-3441-0

T

he headache is one of the most common ailments that most people will suffer from in their lifetime.

It is hard to imagine that there are many people who have not suffered from at least one headache. In Pain and Profits, Canadian author Jan McTavish sets out to illustrate that the history of the headache “in the last 150 years had a small but lively role in helping to establish, shape, and sustain the various jurisdictions and relationships among the medical professions, pharmaceutical interests, and the public at large, leading to the creation of the modern headache remedy industry …” In this, the author succeeds. She has been teaching the history of science to undergraduate students for the last decade. She taught in the history of social sciences department at the University of Winnipeg before taking a professorial position at Alcorn State University in Mississippi.

Pain and Profits is just over 170 pages.

It is organized into an introductory section and by eight chapters, which start with a description of the headache in the late 1800s and its treatment in Chapter 1. Headaches at this time were largely treated using a myriad of compounds and cures “from the vast repertoire of nature’s resources” and the human imagination. Chapter 2 is devoted to the drug supply at the turn of the 19th

century and Chapter 3 describes doctors and the drug trade in the 19th century. After the civil war, patent medicines (or nostroms) began to emerge. Doctors at that time relied on advertising and to a certain extent relied upon the advertising of drug manufacturers.

This was a time when two opposing groups evolved in the early drug industry. Groups such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Pharmaceutical Association had codes of ethics, which opposed the aggressive commercial success of the manufacturers of nostrums. It is interesting to note the overlapping role of medical doctors and pharmacists in both groups.

Chapter 4 follows the development of synthetic drugs at the turn of the century. It is in this chapter that chemists can follow the early synthesis of organic compounds from coal tar by Perkin, Kolbe, and Fischer. By the 1880s, industrial organic chemists in Germany were unequaled in the quest and commercialization of numerous compounds.

German chemists produced three antipyretics in the late 1880s known as Atipyrene, Antifebrin, and Phenacetin. Chapter 5 describes the development of synthetic drugs, the role of druggists and doctors with respect to the emerging pharmaceutical industry. Names such as Smith and Kline, Parke-Davis Hoersh, and of course Bayer, appear. The Bayer Company and its role in “drugs as big business”

is certainly a topic worthy of one chapter in this book. The complications of patent laws at the time and a world war shaped the role of the Bayer Company and its headache drug, aspirin. Toward the end of the book, McTavish correctly points out that there was no “Eureka!” moment in the study of headaches or a cure. That is to say only the “ordinary headache was seemingly conquered or at least fought to a draw—by aspirin.”

This is a well-researched book with more than 50 pages of references and notes for each chapter. A fairly comprehensive index of terminology is also provided for the reader. McTavish expertly grabs the attention of the reader from the beginning and holds it throughout the book. Apart from being historically thought provoking, the author keeps the reader entertained. Anyone interested in the history of medical science and the pharmaceutical industry will appreciate this effort. Pain and Profits should appeal to most readers. The author has an easy writing style and a clever approach for weaving each chapter of this story in her book. Above all, McTavish has succeeded in telling an interesting account of this common ailment that almost any reader can appreciate.

Douglas Goltz, MCIC, is an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Winnipeg.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 11

Chemical Shifts The minimalists’ transistor— a styrene molecule and a negative charge While it is straightforward to make conductance or resistance measurements of bulk materials, it is understandably much more difficult to measure the conductance through an individual molecule—not least because the “electrodes” that need to be attached are typically much larger than the molecule under study. Those measurements are important, however, for a variety of fields—from conducting polymers to organic light-emitting diodes. Robert Wolkow and his co-workers Paul Piva, Janik Zikovsky, and Stanislav Dogel at the University of Alberta together with collaborators Gino DiLabio, MCIC, Jason Pitters, MCIC, and Moh’d Rezeq at the National Institute for Nanotechnology (Edmonton, AB) and Werner Hofer at the University of Liverpool, U.K., have reported such single molecule conductance measurements on styrene, and were further able to observe a dramatic change in conductivity depending on the presence of a nearby negative electric charge (Nature, 435 (2005) p. 658). The experiment makes elegant use of the ability of a scanning tunnelling microscope to image—with atomic resolution—the tunnelling current from the silicon substrate (one electrode) through the deposited styrene molecules (the conductor) to the STM tip (the other electrode). Contrary to popular belief, the STM does not “image atoms,” but rather shows where on the surface there exist easy ways for electrons to tunnel to the STM tip, which is essentially a spatially resolved conductance measurement. The University of Alberta group uses a highly n-doped silicon substrate, then terminates most of the “dangling bonds” on the cleaved surface with hydrogen. Ultimately, this leaves a more or less featureless surface on which the few remaining dangling bonds light up as beacons, since they have acquired a negative charge. Upon exposure to styrene, the styrene molecules attach to the negative charge by electrostatic interactions, and to each other by π-stacking interactions—thereby forming neat rows that would also light up under the STM tip if electrons were allowed to flow through them.

Now, when these rows of styrene molecules are imaged under low negative bias, not much is seen on the STM image other then the negatively charged dangling bond (see Figure 1). When, at the other extreme, the bias is very large, all styrene molecules happily help conduct electrons from the surface to the tip and the entire row lights up. At intermediate bias an interesting observation is made: the conductivity then depends on how close the styrene molecule is to the negative charge—the closest styrene molecules having a much higher conductivity compared to those near the end of the row. The sloping conductance effect is observable even at room temperature and indicates that the static electric field originating from the charge significantly increases the conductivity of nearby molecules. The observation has attracted considerable attention because this system contains all the basic ingredients of a single-molecule transistor—the charged dangling bond takes the function of the base, whereas the silicon substrate and the STM tip act as emitter and collector.

12 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

The researchers could furthermore make the sloping effect disappear completely when the dangling bond is reacted with TEMPO and reappear when TEMPO is removed. One can therefore consider the row of styrene molecules a chemically triggered single-molecule electrical sensor.

Modelling of the field-induced conductance increase was done by calculating the styrene molecular orbitals and their associated energy. The highest lying orbital is largely located on the styrene molecules closest to the negative charge and becomes the gateway to electron conduction when the sampling bias is small. When a larger bias is applied, all MO’s contribute to the conductance and the imaged charge density appears evenly distributed along the row of styrene molecules.

Figure 1. Scanning tunnelling microscopy images of a silicon surface. The bright lines indicate rows of styrene molecules recorded using three different biases (a–c). Panels (d) and (e) show that the current depends on the distance between the styrene molecule and the charge (indicated by arrows in panel (a)).

Obedient solvents switch polarity on demand.

Imagine turning chloroform into dimethyl formamide with carbon dioxide as the only reagent, and then reversing the process with nitrogen gas. This is essentially what Philip Jessop, MCIC, Canada Research Chair in green chemistry at Queen’s University, and graduate students David Heldebrant and Xiaowang Li, ACIC, have done. Their publication (Nature, 436 (2005) p. 1102), co-authored by collaborators Charles Eckert and Charles Liotta from the Georgia Institute of Technology, describes the equivalent of this reaction in which the polarity of a solvent is tuned from very non-polar to highly polar by the addition of gases. These so called “switchable” solvents have two main components, an amidine base such as DBU (1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]-undec-7-ene) and an alcohol such as hexanol. Upon exposure

to one atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the mixture is converted into a carbonate salt (Equation 1), which is a polar ionic liquid. The process is reversed by simply purging with nitrogen, releasing CO2 and regenerating the DBU/hexanol mixture. In order for the solvent switch to be effective, the choice of alcohol is critical. Smaller alcohols such as methanol lead to solids after treatment with CO2, so more lipophilic alcohols like hexanol need to be employed for the reversible preparation of this interesting ionic liquid.

G-protein coupled receptors— stand up and be counted.

Despite the remarkable advances over the past decade in chemical biology, there are still large gaps in our knowledge of cell signalling. Part of the reason for this is the lack of available methods to image the cellular proteins and other constituents in real systems. For example, much of the information on cell signalling is extrapolated from artificially generated phospholipid membranes loaded with the proteins and chemical signals that are believed to comprise the signaling system.

A team of researchers led by John Pezacki, MCIC, and Linda Johnston, MCIC, at the Steacie Institute of Molecular Sciences (NRC) in Ottawa has recently shown that receptors and cellula r proteins can actually be visualized in live cardiac cells called myocytes. Heart beats in all mammals are stimulated by the binding of catecholamine to beta adrenergic receptors in these cardiac cells. The NRC team, including Anatoli Ianoul, Donna Grant, Yanouchka Rouleau, and Mahmud Bani-Yaghoub, was able to actually visualize the location and clustering of these receptors using near field scanning optical microscopy (Figure 2). This technique allows researchers to “ see” fluorescently labelled proteins on a length scale impossible with traditional optical microscopes. The size of the smallest feature that is observable is limited only by the size of the probe tip, which is on the order of 50 nm. In addition, by measuring the fluorescence intensity and comparing this to standards for single receptors, the NRC team is also able to quantify the number of receptors present in a single cluster.

The other advantage of NSOM is that fluorescence at depths of less than 100 nm is undetected, so that only molecules in the membrane are observed.

In their paper (Nature Chemical Biology, 1 (2005) pp. 196–202), Pezacki and Johnston studied the association of the β2 isoform of the β-adrenergic receptors (β2AR) on clonal cardiac cells derived from embryonic rat hearts. β2AR receptors are part of the GPCR (G-protein coupled receptor) super family of proteins. These proteins are major targets for both drug and gene therapy, and thus have been

well studied. However, the question of how a rapid, accurate signal results from a system in which signalling molecules and proteins have to diffuse through a sea of other proteins and ion channels that make up the cell membrane remains unanswered. One hypothesis is that signalling is aided by pre-organization. In their recent study, the NRC team has shown that the β2-adrenergic receptors do indeed preassociate in clusters supported by intercellular lipid rafts known as caveolae. These caveolae are rich in a protein known as caveolin-3. By fluorescently labelling both the β2AR and caveolin-3, Pezacki and Johnston were able to show that 15–20 percent of the β2AR was localized in caveolae. The β2AR that was not co-localized with caveolin-3 was clustered into domains on the order of ca.

150 nm. By quantifying the fluorescent signal observed, the number of receptors per cluster was determined to vary from between 12–72 for clusters in the range of 120–160 nm.

Interestingly, the NRC team showed that the preassembly of the β2AR into clusters occurred before the signalling molecule (in this case catecholamine) was introduced, implying that these receptors preorganize prior to stimulation so that they are in some way prepared for the hormone-induced signal cascade. In addition, the clusters did not change after exposure to the stimulant, so large-scale changes in the cluster are not required for the adrenergic response.

This study is the first to provide concrete evidence of the number of receptors pre-organizing in individual signalling clusters, known in the literature as signalosomes. This research adds weight to the argument that pre-organization of the key components of the signalling mechanism into individual clusters is responsible for the rapid response to chemical signals that is needed for efficient functioning of our cellular machinery.

Figure 2. A 3D composite of topography data (height or z-scale) and NSOM fluorescence data of cardiac myocytes stained to illustrate the β2-adrenergic receptors.

Cathleen Crudden, MCIC, and Hans-Peter Loock, MCIC, are both associate professors of chemistry at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 13

CHEMPUTING Logs Off

Marvin Silbert, MCIC, seated at the helm of the Chemputing Centre of Canada

T

his will be the final issue of “Chemputing.” What resulted from a chance encounter, has continued through 17 years. Although “Chemputing” originated in Toronto, it did get around.

Some of the reviews were prepared in Edmonton, St. John’s, Washington, and Dubai.

The dialogue with readers was truly a Mare usque ad Mare and beyond to Singapore, Japan, and the U.K. It was quite a thrill one day in the middle of Montana, to be introduced to someone who knew who I was because he read “Chemputing.”

How did “Chemputing” start? In 1988, the Third North American Chemical Congress

was held in Toronto. While browsing around the exhibit hall, I met Margaret Nearing who was the editor of ACCN. I made a stupid comment. “Margaret, it’s 1988 and there are no computer reviews in ACCN.” Margaret came back with, “I’ve been waiting for someone like you to volunteer.” I looked for a place to hide. Unfortunately, it was a booth exhibiting Lotus products. I told them what had transpired and they said I should go for it. I forgot about it until there was a knock on the door two days later. A courier handed me Lotus 1-2-3 and Freelance. I was hooked.

I had found Eldorado and “Chemputing” was born. People often kid me about all the

14 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC freebies I get. I can assure you that there aren’t all that many and the time and effort that goes into each review vastly exceeds the purchase price.

Over the years, “Chemputing” has been fun and I have learned a lot. I hope many of you were able to gain something from reading the column. Being a chemist and chemical engineer, I missed something in most of the reviews I read and set out to fill those holes for computer users in my own profession.

“Chemputing” tackled the problems I needed to solve with my own work. In doing so, it entered into many areas that no other computer column dared to touch. It even beta tested new software. We are going out in style with a double review related to the topic of this month’s issue, computational chemistry.

“Chemputing” addressed the question that comes up when the computations are done and it’s time to start publishing. How do you get around that enormous cost of converting your thesis or whatever into a PDF file? I have frequently been asked to say something about that single reference that almost everyone goes to somewhere in their quest to get the data for their computations. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics has entered the computer age and we had a chance to try it.

As I get ready to push the start button to log off, I would like to thank you for your support over the years. I would also like to give a special thanks to all the editors I’ve frustrated along the way. As my final words, I will say this for the last time. Keep those virus programs up-to-date and don’t open any strange attachments. Don’t be afraid of any computer—just tell it who’s the boss.

CHEMPUTING

Thrifty PDFing

I

frequently get calls from readers who want to make their reports, manuals, and theses into PDF files. Having become used to the Adobe Reader being free, they get stopped cold in their tracks when they discover the price for the full version of Adobe Acrobat that is needed to do the conversion. Why would anyone go to the effort of converting those reports, manuals, and theses into PDFs when MS Word has become the de facto standard for preparing such documents? Anyone who might receive those files most likely has Word. This type of documentation tends to be loaded with symbols, Greek letters, and figures. In spite of any claims by Microsoft, Word does not do a very reliable job of embedding those special fonts with the file. They may not appear if the other computer doesn’t have those characters installed. Add to this the problem that the layout will always have some variation unless both computers use identical printers and versions of Word.

Converting to a PDF essentially guarantees that anyone who receives that file will see it the same as on the original computer.

Adobe is the best-known program to convert documents to PDF. It is also the one with all the bells and whistles. What people don’t seem to know is that the process for writing PDF files is within the public domain. There are many PDF writers, some of them even free, that can reproduce all those odd-ball characters and keep everything the way it should be. If you want your document to look professional, the PDF should also show your table of contents on the left of the screen as a set of bookmarks that can

Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC be clicked to take the reader to the various topics. When you want those bookmarks, (and for most technical documentation, you likely do) the list of available PDF writers drops drastically. After some extensive searching, I found an interesting piece of shareware called MakePDF that is made specifically to work with MS Word. It embeds all the special characters and makes the table of contents into a set of bookmarks.

I located it through www.snapfiles.com, my favourite source of low- or no-cost software.

MakePDF has its own Web site at www. docauto.com/. It can be downloaded and when you have installed it, you have ten days to try it. If you like it, it will cost you US$40 to keep it going. If you don’t like it, you have only lost a bit of time. When installed, the MakePDF commands are added to the Word toolbar. This simplifies tuning up the security or conversion options to meet your needs.

I started by doing a side-by-side comparison between Adobe Pro 6.0 and MakePDF using a 3.0 GHz Pentium IV system with 512 MB of RAM. I chose a 5.0 MB Word document with 114 pages stuffed with headings, subheadings, symbols, Greek characters, and figures—all the stuff you might expect in a technical document. I was quite surprised to see the difference in running times. Adobe took ten minutes to make the PDF. MakePDF took a minute. I prefer my bookmark list to show only the main headings and leave it to the reader to expand them when needed.

MakePDF did it that way. Adobe expands the list and I had to go back to contract it.

Were there any differences between the

two PDFs? They looked the same on screen and printed the same. To be sure that the various symbols and characters were there, I e-mailed the file to a colleague who did not have my special fonts. We went through it over the telephone to confirm they were all there. There were a couple minor points.

The Adobe version let me click the Table of Contents page list to go to those pages, but that’s really superfluous when you have the bookmarks. I also found that Adobe would not edit MakePDF bookmarks, but why would that be necessary?

My only problem was with the “prompt for folder” option. When it was ticked, MS Word locked up at the end of the conversion.

Brenda in Tech Services told me to untick that option. This is a problem resulting from something that went into the SP2 upgrade of Windows XP after MakePDF was released.

I fully understand that one, having been hit by it several times with other software. This problem will be fixed when the next update is released and there will be no charge for upgrading. In the meantime, I just move the directory to wherever it’s needed.

I frequently make PDFs from complex Word documents. I have both Adobe Pro 6.0 and MakePDF on my system. I prefer to make them with MakePDF.

You can reach Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC, at Marvin Silbert and Associates, 23 Glenelia Avenue, Toronto, ON M2M 2K6; tel. 416-225-0226; fax: 416-225-2227; e-mail: marvin@silbert.org; Web site: www.silbert.org.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 15

THE RUBBER HANDBOOK ENTERS THE COMPUTER AGE Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC, and Leonard G. Walker, MCIC

T

he Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (a.k.a. “The Rubber Handbook”) has to be one of the most widely used data sources. As we old-timers did in our day, today’s students still purchase one early on in their studies. I checked around and was surprised to find how many of us old-timers have kept that same edition into retirement without a thought of upgrading it, despite all the changes it has gone through. The Chemical Rubber Co. became CRC Press and is now part of the Taylor & Francis Group. The handbook has not only kept pace with an ever-increasing amount of data, it has also entered the computer age. We had an opportunity to compare the latest CD and on-line versions (2004–2005 85th edition) with the traditional hardcover version (2005–2006 86th edition).

Installation from the CD was straightforward and offered two choices. If you have 200 MB of free disk space, you can install everything on the hard drive. If you don’t, you can install the bare minimum, but must then insert the CD whenever you want to run it. The on-line version is located at www.hbcpnetbase.com. While it is available to individuals, it is really for libraries, chemistry departments, and corporate use. Access requires a password that is supplied as part of the annual subscription fee. The CD and on-line versions appear to be identical.

We both remember lugging our Rubber Handbooks back and forth every day when we were students. It sure added weight to an overloaded briefcase. A month ago, a group of us Toronto old-timers got

16 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

together for our regular pub lunch. We brought the new version with us on a notebook that weighed no more for having the handbook installed, along with Perry’s Handbook, Standard Methods, and another dozen reference books. As more and more chemical professionals work with computers, they will find having all these valuable references at hand to be a real convenience.

The software versions of the handbook are complete, constructed from a series of PDF files linked through a table of contents. Finding things is essentially the same as with the hardcopy. Unlike many other reference books, there are no restrictions about printing individual tables or pages from that CD when you need them. If you have the full Adobe, you can crop a page to make a table into a full page slide or use the editing features to add comments, coloured blocks, and/or highlighting around specific values. You can also copy and paste into other applications, e.g. MS Word. It’s a lot neater and much more convenient than what we did in the old days with a photocopier and coloured pens.

Being a software-based system, there are search routines to help you find individual parameters or properties. As neither of us reads manuals, we messed up our first few searches, but found the process simpler once we got the knack. One of the problems encountered when doing a review is that tendency to choose a simple material to test the search capabilities. We started with “benzene.” A multitude of aromatic species include benzene in their names, and as expected,

As more and more chemical professionals work with computers, they will find having all these valuable references at hand to be a real convenience. a massive list came up. While we didn’t find a simple way to limit the search to the word benzene by itself, the search could be done using the CAS registry number instead of the name. If you don’t know it, that could be your first search.

One look tells you there are a lot of new tables and a lot of updated tables in each new edition of the handbook. Many were also dropped. Some have been spun off into their own handbooks, such as the mathematical and statistical tables. With so much information in existence, there is a finite limit to what can fit between the covers and the choice becomes a difficult editorial decision. Everyone has their own opinion, usually based upon whether they won or lost in the latest edition. M. D. S. was pleased to see their latest values for the half lives of 87Br, 88Br, and 89Br agreeing with those in his PhD thesis, forty years ago. L. G. W. was unhappy to see that the data for an undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory on optical rotation that he set up many years ago had been dropped. We both agreed that it would be valuable to have the current edition, but neither of us was prepared to give up our well-worn and trusted copies. Our

compromise recommendation would be to keep your old one and buy a new one every decade or so. The CD offers a very convenient, useful, and lightweight way to do that.

As the CD does not have the size limitations the hardcopy must face, we have been assured that it will keep any tables that might be squeezed from future hardcopy versions.

The authors are a pair of Toronto old-timers who purchased their first handbooks half a century ago. Since meeting, they have joined forces in a number of chemical endeavours ranging from Toronto Section activities to finding better ways to maximize the efficiency of condensers at electrical generating stations.

L. G. W. provides computer training to seniors at the Life Institute at Ryerson University and M. D. S. has been computer review editor for ACCN.

DID YOU KNOW? The Distinctions Between Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Computational chemistry is a branch of theoretical chemistry. Its major goals are to create efficient mathematical approximations and computer programs that calculate the properties of molecules (such as total energy, dipole and quadrupole moment, vibrational frequencies, reactivity, and other diverse spectroscopic quantities and cross-sections for collision of molecules with diverse atomic or subatomic projectiles) and to apply these programs to concrete chemical objects. The term is also sometimes used to cover the areas of overlap between computer science and chemistry.

The term theoretical chemistry may be defined as a mathematical description of chemistry. The term computational chemistry is usually used when a mathematical method is sufficiently well developed that it can be automated for implementation on a computer. While very few aspects of chemistry can be computed exactly, almost every aspect of chemistry can be described in a qualitative or approximate quantitative computational scheme.

In theoretical chemistry, chemists and physicists together develop algorithms and computer programs to predict atomic and molecular properties and reaction paths for chemical reactions. Computational chemists, in contrast, may simply apply existing computer programs and methodologies to specific chemical questions. Computational studies can be carried out in order to find a starting point for a laboratory synthesis. Computational studies can be used to explore reaction mechanisms and explain observations of laboratory reactions.

Several major areas may be distinguished within computational chemistry: • the computational representation of atoms and molecules; • storing and searching for data on chemical entities; • identifying correlations between chemical structures and properties; • theoretical elucidation of structures based on the simulation of forces; • computational approaches to help in the efficient synthesis of compounds; • computational approaches to design molecules that interact in specific ways with other molecules (e.g. drug design).

Wikipedia

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 17

MODÉLISATION MOLÉCULAIRE : THÉORIE ET/OU EXPÉRIENCE Rôle du scientifique modélisateur

Armand Soldera, MCIC

L

’histoire des sciences a toujours été ponctuée par une perpétuelle interaction entre l’expérience et la théorie. L’expérience devançait généralement la théorie. Toutefois, comme dans le cas de la relativité, c’est le cas inverse. Cette intimité entre les deux manières d’aborder un phénomène, s’est vue quelque peu dérangée par une très nette croissance de la puissance des ordinateurs, et de ce fait du perfectionnement des codes de calcul. En effet une nouvelle discipline, la modélisation moléculaire, se taille une place de plus en plus importante dans un département de chimie. Est-elle alors une science expérimentale, ou plutôt reliée à la théorie? En fait, cette simple dichotomie n’a pas de raison d’être; et cet article tend à montrer un concept unificateur (si cher aux physiciens, et philosophes) entre la modélisation moléculaire, la théorie et l’expérience.

D’un point de vue traditionnel, face à des données expérimentales, des modèles étaient proposés. À partir de ces modèles, des théories étaient créées, dont les prédictions étaient corrélées aux résultats découlant des expériences. Les simulations moléculaires provenaient de ces modèles. Les premières données obtenues servaient de test aux théories, et permettaient donc de valider les modèles par confrontation avec les résultats expérimentaux. De ce fait, par ce processus, la modélisation moléculaire était plus spécifiquement l’apanage des théoriciens, car elle découlait de modèles théoriques.

Considérons le cas de la dynamique moléculaire. Cette technique vise à faire bouger les atomes grâce à l’intégration des équations du mouvement. Le potentiel d’interactions entre atomes, initialement utilisé, était celui des sphères dures, soit celui des boules de billard. Les résultats se retrouvaient sous forme d’une suite de données. Il est à noter que bien que le modèle ait été simple, de nombreux problèmes liés à une utilisation adéquate de ce code devaient être résolus : algorithme d’intégration, ensemble statistique utilisé… Cette approche d’utilisation de la simulation moléculaire

18 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

par l’emploi de modèles simples est encore le maître d’œuvre des physiciens : simulation de cristaux liquides par des potentiels de Lennard-Jones modifié... En fait, les atomes sont considérés au sein de regroupements, et non individuellement. Toutefois, avec la puissance accrue des ordinateurs (exemple de Mammouth à l’Université de Sherbrooke), des potentiels complexes rendant compte des interactions entre atomes sont spécifiquement utilisés.

Cette approche atomistique découle bien de concepts théoriques, et peut de ce fait être associée à la théorie. De quelle manière peut-elle être considérée comme une approche expérimentale? C’est le thème du paragraphe suivant.

La modélisation moléculaire reste donc encore associée à la théorie car elle est issue d’un programme informatique écrit par des théoriciens qui désirent appliquer leur modèle. La prise en compte de la complexité des interactions entre atomes se fait via l’utilisation de

potentiels compliqués, et requiert une forte puissance d’ordinateur. Une telle approche atomistique confère alors à cette technique une vision plus chimique. Peut-on alors spécifier que nous allons réaliser une expérience de modélisation moléculaire ? Si on se réfère à Léonard de Vinci, « Avant de faire de ce cas une règle générale, expérimente-le deux ou trois fois, et regarde si les expériences produisent les mêmes effets », la modélisation moléculaire peut être considérée comme une technique expérimentale. En effet, lors d’une expérience, tous les paramètres intervenant dans le mode opératoire doivent être spécifiés : vitesse de refroidissement, solvant de cristallisation… Il en est de même lors d’une simulation, mais dans ce cas les paramètres dépendent des algorithmes de calcul (intégration, pression…) et du champ de forces (données empiriques). Mais une autre question demeure, le système que l’on désire simuler est-il représentatif de la réalité expérimentale. Selon l’hypothèse ergodique, utilisée en thermodynamique statistique, la moyenne dans le temps devrait être égale à la moyenne d’ensemble; la moyenne résultante peut être alors comparée à la donnée expérimentale. Mais dans le cadre de la simulation moléculaire cette hypothèse est impossible à satisfaire. Il est donc impératif qu’une perpétuelle confrontation modélisation moléculaire—expérience se fasse, et soit au cœur même des interprétations des données issues des calculs.

Considérons le calcul de la température de transition vitreuse, Tg, de polymères. Les données de simulation font état de valeurs très élevées par rapport à l’expérience. La raison la plus souvent avancée réside sur le fait que les vitesses de refroidissement en simulation sont extrêmement plus rapides qu’en expérience (de l’ordre de 109 fois plus rapide qu’une trempe expérimentale). Lors d’une étude récente, nous avons simulé la Tg d’un certain nombre de polymères vinyliques en considérant exactement le même mode opératoire tant d’un point de vue simulation, que représentation juste de l’espace des configurations. En d’autres mots, la statistique associée aux configurations initiales doit être conforme à la réalité expérimentale, car une seule configuration ne peut à elle seule être représentative du matériau que l’on doit simuler. Grâce à cette étude systématique, une quasi-parfaite corrélation linéaire entre les Tg simulées et expérimentales a été

obtenue, et présentée dans la Figure. Dans ce cadre d’étude, la modélisation moléculaire est perçue comme une technique expérimentale. Mais qu’en est-il des résultats issus de la simulation? Cette analyse doit être perçue selon une optique théorique.

La théorie sous-jacente au modèle utilisé lors d’une simulation doit être connue. Il n’est certes pas important de connaître le langage C, mais la connaissance des articles se référant au code est primordiale. Les paramètres par défaut, issus de l’article originel par exemple, ne sont pas forcément applicables au système d’étude; le choix de l’ensemble de bases orbitalaires peut par exemple influencer les propriétés finales. Le cas de la dissociation d’acides dans l’eau est représentatif : le nombre de molécules d’eau nécessaires à la dissociation peut dépendre de l’ensemble de bases choisi. Après l’aspect du choix du modèle, il incombe au scientifique modélisateur de représenter la réalité selon les critères spécifiques de la simulation. Il doit de ce fait rendre une propriété expérimentale compatible avec la simulation, afin d’adéquatement représenter l’effet recherché. Considérons le cas du piezochromisme d’un composé azobenzène, ou stylbène, initialement placé dans la position cis. Si on tend à étirer le composé, il va y avoir changement de couleur correspondant au passage de la forme cis à la forme trans. Cette variation peut être appréhendée par simulation en considérant la variation d’énergie du système. La barrière de potentiel entre les deux formes cis et trans est alors identifiée au passage de couleur observé expérimentalement. Finalement, le scientifique modélisateur doit interpréter les résultats de simulation selon une analyse basée sur les mêmes principes que ses deux fonctions énoncées précédemment. En ce sens, il doit se poser la question de ce qu’il analyse spécifiquement. À ce moment-là la comparaison avec les théories ou les données expérimentales peut être entreprise.

La modélisation moléculaire se trouve donc à la frontière de la théorie et de l’expérience. Certes, elle reste encore un domaine fortement lié aux théoriciens. Mais avec l’augmentation toujours croissante des logiciels commerciaux, elle tend vers un public de scientifiques plus larges. Sa présence dans certains cursus universitaires tel celui du programme de baccalauréat en chimie de l’Université de Sherbrooke,

est révélatrice de cette imprégnation. Ce qu’il faut montrer aux étudiants est que la connaissance du système d’étude n’est pas suffisante pour lancer des calculs, il est impératif d’avoir une très bonne connaissance des modèles associés aux codes utilisés. Il est en effet très facile de faire tourner un code commercial de modélisation moléculaire, et d’obtenir des résultats rapidement. Il n’en demeure pas moins que la validité des résultats obtenus sera remise en question tant par les expérimentalistes, que les théoriciens.

D’autre part, il est du devoir de celui qui lance les calculs de savoir si la procédure employée correspond précisément au système d’étude. Ces tâches sont spécifiques au scientifique en charge de la simulation, et les problèmes énoncés doivent être résolus par lui. Le scientifique modélisateur existe donc bien. La tâche à laquelle il doit faire face est donc de rendre compte de phénomènes qui ne peuvent être explorés par l’expérience, et dont il peut exister plusieurs théories pour les expliquer. Il pourra alors guider la synthèse de nouveaux composés. Considérons le cas reporté sur la Figure. Le PαMS syndiotactique a été simulé, mais sa Tg n’a pas été indiquée sur la figure. En effet, nous ne possédons pas la valeur expérimentale. Toutefois, selon la relation linéaire entre les Tg calculées et expérimentales des polymères vinyliques découlant du graphe, nous prédisons une Tg(s-PαMS) de 202 °C. Un appel est lancé aux polyméristes de synthèse…

Pour conclure, il est une autre tâche à laquelle le modélisateur doit faire face, celle de faire le lien entre le microcospique et le macroscopique, continuité qui a été mise en doute entre autres par Laughlin. La modélisation moléculaire peut-elle ouvrir cette porte?

La question reste en suspens… Mais elle trouve là un autre défi qui lui donnera toutes ses lettres de noblesse.

Armand Soldera, MICC, est professeur agrégé au département de chimie de l’Université de Sherbrooke. Il est également professeur associé à l’Institut Supérieur des Matériaux et Mécaniques Avancés du Mans, France. Ancien ingénieur de recherche au Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, France, il s’intéresse depuis son arrivée au Canada aux liens entre le moléculaire et le macroscopique, et ce en tissant des liens étroits entre la simulation moléculaire et l’expérience.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 19

REMEMBERWHEN

Chemistry in Canada, February 1974

Brian T. Newbold, FCIC Reprinted from Chemical Canada 1970–1995

20 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

REMEMBERWHEN NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 21

CIC BULLETIN ICC

THE CHEMICAL INSTITUTE OF CANADA REPORT OF THE CHAIR 60TH ANNIVERSARY Looking Back and Looking Forward

2

005 marked the 60th anniversary of The Chemical Institute of Canada, an occasion to celebrate our past accomplishments and to plan for a successful future. A 60th anniversary logo was designed and reproduced on stationery and in publications such as L’Actualité chimique canadienne/Canadian Chemical News (ACCN) throughout the year. Each ACCN issue featured portraits of the CIC’s past, and the anniversary was celebrated at the opening session of the CSC2005 Saskatoon and CSChE2005 Toronto conferences.

This report summarizes some of the CIC/Constituent Societies’ accomplishments since 2004, grouped around the CIC’s main responsibilities as expressed in our Mission Statement.

1. To establish a strategic direction and synergy between the societies Now is a good time to think about the future. We develop our plans and approve our budget for 2006 at this meeting, but we must also turn our attention to long-range plans. Our last business plan covered the period 2002 to 2005 and needs to be updated to 2009.

A sub-committee is reviewing and revising the Institute’s by-laws to reflect the interdisciplinary changes that are occurring in the chemical sciences and engineering professions as well as ensuring consistency between the various societies.

2. To promote the common scientific and technical interests of the Constituent Societies The activities of the Constituent Societies are covered in detail in their reports. It is important that these activities continue to occur and be strongly supported.

Bernard West, MCIC Conferences The societies’ main conferences have been very successful forums from both a scientific and a financial point of view.

Workshops A number of workshops have been conducted by the societies. The CSCT’s laboratory safety workshops for commercial clients have been especially useful for training, for example personnel at the Bruce Nuclear Power Station, as well as a source of revenue.

International meetings A significant contributor to the recognition of the CIC overseas has been the involvement of several CIC members in various international meetings such as Pacifichem, the ChemEng worldwide meeting in Glasgow, IUPAC in Beijing, as well as the annual meetings of ACS and AIChE. 3. To enhance the image of the chemical sciences and engineering with all sectors of the public Government relations Influencing the federal government’s policies on research and innovation continues to be a major activity for the CIC. The CIC actively participates in both the Partnership Group for Science and Engineering (PAGSE) and the Canadian Consortium for Research (CCR). Both groups submitted briefs to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance in September 2005 and will be making presentations on Parliament Hill during the committee hearings.

CIC executive director, Roland Andersson, MCIC, is the new Chair for the Canadian Consortium for Research for a three-year term.

Canadian Chemical Landmarks Program The Canadian Chemical Landmarks Program, initiated by the CIC in 2004, is designed to acknowledge the unique achievements of chemists, chemical engineers, and chemical technologists. The program also promotes these achievements to the public, and makes local communities proud of their heritage.

The National Research Council Canada (NRC) at 100 Sussex Drive in Ottawa was the first designated landmark under the joint CSC/ CIC banner in 2004. The First Chemical Synthesis of Sucrose by

22 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

CIC BULLETIN ICC

Raymond U. Lemieux and Georg Huber in 1953, at the NRC Prairie Regional Laboratory in Saskatoon, was designated a landmark during the CSC2005 Saskatoon conference.

Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that the CIC and all three Constituent Societies generated financial surpluses in 2004.

5. To deliver common services to the individual members

Two landmark programs are tentatively planned for 2006; a joint one with the American Chemical Society (ACS) for Neil Bartlett at UBC and another for Shawinigan Chemicals.

4. To deliver common services to each of the Constituent Societies National Office operations The CIC National Office staff provides the year-to-year continuity to the various boards, conference organizing committees, and other governance-related groups. The AmSoft database software has been upgraded and work will begin on new Web site software to improve communication amongst the membership and CIC/ Constituent Society working groups.

Both the CSC and CSChE conferences can be high-risk undertakings, due to political situations and differences in demographics from one venue to another. Conference management has been improved during the past four years, with the National Office interfacing with the Local Organizing Committees. This enables long-range planning of the conferences and consistency in the logistics.

Membership and finances 2004 had the best membership numbers since 1994, closing at 5,972. All three societies saw significant gains in membership.

2005 continues to show steady membership increases, at a time when other societies are struggling to survive.

In response to membership input, the CIC introduced a new category of membership for post-doctoral fellows with reduced fees beginning in 2005. In addition, the registration fee is also discounted for postdoctoral fellows for the CSC and CSChE conferences.

However, we recognize that societies cannot survive on membership dues alone. Products and services are vital to the financial security of not-for-profit professional societies. Financial challenges remain: ACCN advertising revenue has been below target for the past two years; and sponsorship of outreach activities continues to be a challenge as companies cut back.

Subject Divisions and Local Sections drive much of the CIC’s activity and programs. We are working hard to help them in their planning and operations. Following a number of meetings, establishment of task forces, etc., new transparent and predictable funding models were approved and introduced for 2005 to help them.

New initiatives The CIC is also working to revive the formerly active Economics and Business Management Division. Working in collaboration with the Society of Chemical Industry—Canada Section, the CIC Chair’s Event at this CSChE Toronto conference hopes to attract volunteer CIC members who would like to run annual activities and programs at either or both CIC conferences.

Professional recognition In addition to its normal activities and programs, the CSC is pursuing important projects such as the provision of accreditation services to international chemistry departments, and a sustained effort to have chemists more widely recognized as professionals within Canada. The latter is driven by provincial governments that are proposing Brownfield regulations but excluding chemists from the right to sign-off on environmental remedial work.

The CSCT is also involved with community colleges across Canada through student symposiums, and has successfully run two to three short courses annually since 1999.

End Note It has been a very busy year for all our volunteers and professional staff. Everyone deserves our thanks for their work through some significant changes as well as added programs and meetings. The continued increase in membership is a clear sign that we are serving the needs of our members.

Bernard West, MCIC CIC Chair 2004–2005 October 16, 2005

Chemical Education Ideas? Need Funding?

The Chemical Education Fund (CEF) is looking to support original and innovative chemical–related educational projects.The Fund, a registered charity of The Chemical Institute of Canada, provides support for worthwhile scientific programs and educational activities, particularly those with an educational component.

The CEF has sponsored student conferences, science fairs, chemical outreach programs, a Summer Institute and more.

For information about the CEF and for the funding application form, visit www.cheminst.ca/funding/cic_cef__e.htm Proposal submissions must be submitted by the December 15 deadline for review by the CEF directors in early January. When funds permit, the directors are willing to consider initiatives at other times throughout the year. For more information contact: Ed Capes, FCIC, Chair, CEF directors at 613-692-9336 or Gale Thirlwall-Wilbee at 613-232-6252, ext. 223 or gwilbee@cheminst.ca.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 23

CIC BULLETIN ICC

CIC BOARD OF DIRECTORS’ NOMINATIONS (2006–2007) The Nominating Committee appointed under the terms of CIC By-law Article X, Section 1, has proposed the candidates listed below to serve as The Institute officers for 2006–2007. Further nominations are solicited from the membership for the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair.

They must be submitted in writing, must have the written and signed consent of the nominee to serve if elected, and must be signed by no fewer than 25 members in good standing of The Institute (CIC By-law Article X, Section 3 (d)).

The deadline for receipt of any additional nominations is Monday, January 23, 2006. If any elections are required, ballots will be mailed in February. Those elected—whether by ballot or acclamation—will take office following the annual general meeting of The Institute on Monday, May 29, 2006, in Halifax, NS.

Chair 2006–2007 Catherine Cardy, MCIC Environmental group leader Imperial Oil Catherine Cardy graduated from Mohawk College in 1974 with a technician diploma in chemical engineering. Her first position was as a biochemistry technologist at McMaster University’s biochemistry department for four years and she held a similar position at The University of Western Ontario for five years. During this time, she co-authored five papers in the area of hormone research.

In 1983, she started a successful career with Imperial Oil where she held various

En vertu de l’article X, section 1, du règlement de l’ICC, le Comité des candidatures propose la candidature des personnes listées ci-dessous aux postes d’administrateur pour 2006–2007. Les membres sont invités à soumettre d’autres candidatures pour les postes de présidente et de vice-présidente. Celles-ci doivent être présentées par écrit, être accompagnées du consentement écrit et signé par le candidat à remplir la charge s’il est élu, et doivent être signées par au moins 25 membres en règle de l’Institut. (Article X, section 3 (d) du règlement de l’ICC).

La date limite pour soumettre d’autres candidatures est le lundi 23 janvier 2006. Advenant qu’un scrutin soit nécessaire, les bulletins seront postés en février. Les personnes élues par scrutin ou par acclamation entreront en fonction après l’assemblée générale annuelle de l’Institut, qui aura lieu le 29 mai 2006, à Halifax (Nouvelle-Écosse).

positions from research analytical laboratory technologist to environmental group leader with Imperial Oil’s Environmental, Health and Safety Group (as of September 2004). In 1993, she received her BSc in chemistry from the University of Waterloo.

Cardy became involved in The Chemical Institute of Canada in the late 1980s at the Sarnia Local Section. In 1995, she became a board member of the CSCT at the national level, and then became vice-president in 1996 and president in 1998. She organized the 25th CSCT Anniversary symposium in London, ON, in 1998 where area college students had the opportunity to listen to the career technologist’s papers. The success of this led to the current annual student symposia sponsored by the CSCT. Cardy continues to be present at most symposia as a judge.

In 2000, the first National Workshop for the CSCT in Toronto, ON, was planned and continues each year. Cardy has been very active in National Chemistry Week, and was nominated as part of the CSCT Board to sit on the Canadian Technology Accreditation Board (CTAB) to represent technology programs.

In 2002, Cardy received the Norman and Marion Bright Award for her continued support of chemical technology.

24 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

Vice-Chair 2006–2007 Christian Detellier, FCIC Professor of chemistry and dean of science University of Ottawa Christian Detellier obtained his Licence en sciences chimiques from the University of Liège, Belgium, in 1972 and his Doctorat en sciences chimiques in 1976 in the field of physical organic chemistry. He spent one year at the University of Orsay as a post-doctoral fellow of the Institut Français du Pétrole, France, with Henry Kagan, working on asymmetric catalytic synthesis. He returned to Liège as an assistant, before taking a one-year position as

visiting professor at the University of Ottawa in 1980. He then joined the University of Ottawa department of chemistry as an assistant professor in 1981, was promoted to associate professor in 1984, and to professor in 1991. He was assistant dean in 1992–1994, Chair of the department of chemistry from 1994–1997, and is currently dean of science (1997–2006).

The major theme of Detellier’s research is molecular organization, particularly the design of new types of organo-inorgano nanohybrid materials, based on naturally occurring layered minerals. He has served on numerous peer review committees, including the NSERC research grant selection committee (1994–1997), the NSERC AGENO committee (2003), the NSERC scholarship and fellowship committee (1991–1994), the FQRNT post-doctoral fellowship committee (2005), and he was a member of the Comité directeur du Québec de la Fondation canadienne pour l’innovation from 1998–2003. He was on the international steering committee of the International Conference on Solution Chemistry (ICSC) (1988–1995), and on the organizing committee of several international conferences, including the 11th International Clay Conference in Ottawa in 1997. He organized the 21st IUPAC International Conference on Solution Chemistry in Ottawa in 1990 and served on the editorial board of Supramolecular Chemistry from 1992–2000, and of L’Actualité chimique canadienne / Canadian Chemical News (ACCN) from 1991–1995. He is author or co-author of more than 120 research papers.

Statement of policy We are used to hearing again and again that, “Chemistry is the central science.” And we take it for granted. Is it still true in 2005? What is the place of chemistry and of chemical engineering in a world changing faster than ever, a world that follows the technological developments, sometimes with difficulty, and almost always with ethical issues? Perhaps chemists are now living their Copernician revolution. They were central. They are satellites.

The CIC is an old and venerable, respectable institution. The CIC has evolved over the years, increasing the interactions among its three constituent societies, stressing the interconnections between chemical technologists, chemical engineers, and chemists. These close interactions should not only continue, but increase. In the coming years, the professions based on chemistry will need to be closely associated with other professions—from science and engineering obviously—but also from law and management for example. They will need to continue to establish strong links with environmental, biological, or materials sciences and technologies.

Strategic directions and synergism among the three Constituent Societies will need to involve also other groups. In the last few years, the CIC has strongly supported policies linking academic, government, and industry research with commercialization. This strategic direction has to be maintained and amplified.

Et l’ICC? À l’évidence, la place du français est minime, sinon inexistante. Sur le site Web, on ne peut cliquer que sur « English ».

Comme société nationale, nous devrons fonctionner davantage dans les deux langues du pays, et accroître notre représentation dans les régions francophones du pays. Des efforts seront faits en ce sens dans les toutes prochaines années.

FROM BIG TO SMALL

A brief report on the 32nd Canadian High Polymer Forum

The 32nd Canadian High Polymer Forum was held in Aylmer, QC, August 19–21, 2005. The conference was organized by Ian Manners, FCIC (University of Toronto), Yue Zhao (Université de Sherbrooke), and Jianfu Ding (NRC). The organizing committee put together an excellent program that consisted of the Xerox Forum Lecture (sponsored by the Xerox Research Centre of Canada), nine invited lectures, 24 oral presentations, and 46 poster presentations. Attended by over 90 scientists and students from all regions of the country, the conference has been a great success. The mission of the conference continued to focus on the communication among polymer scientists in Canada for exhibiting their frontier works in the field of polymer science and engineering. More importantly, graduate students and post-docs were given an opportunity to display their current research before an excellent audience.

Christopher Ober of Cornell University delivered the Xerox Forum Lecture at this meeting. In his impressive lecture entitled, “Making Things Small—Using Polymers in Nanofabrication,” he brought a micro-world to the audience and demonstrated how to build-up nanostructures and nanodevices from polymers (the giant member out of the organic molecule family) through the use of new materials that enable new nanotechnologies such as the 2-photon lithography. The presentations given at this meeting covered a wide range of topics of polymer science and engineering, including polymer synthesis, polymer self-assembly, morphology, device fabrication, and exploitation of new materials for such applications as information storage and processing, chemical and biosensing, energy generating, and controlled drug delivering. The invited speakers were Mitchell Winnik, FCIC, and Eugenia Kumacheva, MCIC (both from the University of Toronto), Anna Ritcey, MCIC (Université Laval), Robert Prud’homme, FCIC, and Julian Zhu, MCIC (both from the Université de Montréal), Steven Holdcroft, FCIC (Simon Fraser University and NRC), Hanadi Sleiman (McGill University), and Shiping Zhu, MCIC, and Harald Stover (both from McMaster University).

For more details about this meeting, please visit the conference Web site at www.callisto.si.usherb.ca:8080/hpf2005/, or contact either Yue Zhao (at Yue.Zhao@USherbrooke.ca) or Jianfu Ding (at jianfu.ding@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca). The next Canadian High Polymer Forum is planned for the summer of 2007 in southern Ontario. Additional information will be available in due time.

Jianfu Ding and Yue Zhao, MCIC

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 25

CIC BULLETIN ICC

PULP AND PAPER ENTERS THE 21ST CENTURY The Joint Chairs of the FAPPMMS Symposium, Theo van de Ven, MCIC, and M. A. (Tony) Whitehead, FCIC, of McGill University opened the session on molecular modelling.

Molecular modelling van de Ven gave a flow diagram relating modelling to industry, for water treatment, surfaces, bleaching, de-inking, and sheet forming:

Roger Gaudreault, MCIC, Alain Lemaire, Theo van de Ven, MCIC, and Tony Whitehead, FCIC, rejoice in the successful symposium.

A unique, brilliantly stimulating, and intellectually challenging symposium occurred in Montréal, QC, at the McCord Museum in the J. Roland Bombardier Theatre from August 24 to 25, 2005. Owners, managers, and research scientists from the pulp and paper industry met with university professors and their graduate students to spend two exhilarating days wedding the molecular modelling of atoms and molecules to the macroscopic problems of paper mills.

The tremendous potential of molecular modelling to solve problems in the pulp and paper industry, to cut costs, improve profits and save the environment, was demonstrated repeatedly in the two days of papers and lively discussion.

Marc-André Dépin, president and CEO of Norampac Inc., opened the meeting by outlining the main research challenges of the pulp and paper industry. He stressed that there is a future for environmentally friendly paper products and we can hope that they will always prevail over non-environmental friendly technology. He suggested that paper would continue to be a key substrate in knowledge distribution. However, he noted that it is necessary to improve pulp and paper industry processes to ensure a more efficient, chemically green, and financially viable industry.

26 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

Figure 1. van de Vens flow diagram Whitehead discussed molecular modelling for several systems and remarked how modelling ideas could aid experiment: from surfactants for explosives, transition states in oncological reactions, to surface adsorption and nano-structures. He showed the power of modelling and how to select the tools. He emphasized that knowledge must precede computing.

Chris Williams, Chemical Computing Inc., showed how wellestablished, computer-aided drug design approaches—from QSAR to molecular structure—applied to the pulp and paper industry.

Bleaching and yellowing inhibition Lubo Jurasek of McGill University considered the reactivity of lignin models with oxygen-centred radicals, computing the proton and electron affinity and O-H bond dissociation energy. Sylvain Robert

CIC BULLETIN ICC

of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, reported the inhibition of light-induced colour reversion of softwood TMP by fluorescence whitening agents from a molecular simulation. Celia Williams of the University of South Dakota interpreted PM3 molecular modelling of inter- and intra-molecular hydrogen bonding of sunscreen paper stabilizers and their use and utility. Lucian A. Lucia of North Carolina State University studied the host effect of surfactant/clay media on the aggregation behaviour of a porphyrin guest molecule, which combined many ideas about inclusions, colouration, and stability.

David Vercoe of the University of Tasmania modelled the interactions causing wood pitch deposition and modelled mill operations in the laboratory. Robert Pelton, MCIC, McMaster University, discussed the molecular simulation of polymer adhesion to a cellulose surface using the group contribution method of the UNIFAC program.

Adrian Villegas-Jiménez described a first principle PM3 and ab initio investigation of the chemical interactions of water on (10.4) calcite giving a molecular model for surface and rock exfoliation.

[(Si7.20 Al0.80)(Mg5.97 Al0.03) O20(OH)4]-0.77(Na0.49 Mg0.14)+0.77

Surface treatments

Lei Zhang, MCIC, described the absorption spectra of substituted phenols and phenol radical cations as possible models for lignin photochemistry and paper colouring with time.

Laura Kela of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, showed that cationic amylose stays closer to the cellulose and water reduces the total repulsive interaction between cationic amylose and the cellulose—water as a solvent does effect the interactions between cationic amylose and the cellulose surface.

Wet-end chemistry Karen Stack of the University of Tasmania discussed molecular modelling to understand pitch deposition and interactions with fixatives; pitch deposition costs the industry millions a year, depending on the tree source of paper and climatic conditions.

Figure 4. Dependence of pitch on tree and climate from Stack

Figure 2. New flocculation mechanism of Gaudreault Roger Gaudreault, MCIC, of the Cascades Research and Development Centre showed salt is needed for PEO (polyethylene oxide) and cofactors to associate and flocculate microcrystalline cellulose, using molecular modelling. He predicted a new mechanism for the PEO flocculation of MCC—the buffers traditionally used in paper mills actually catalyse the flocculation mechanism!

R. P. Grasso of the Hercules Research Centre in the U.S. explained how the product variation arises from compositional changes during copolymerization. Cécile Malardier-Jugroot of the University of Calfornia at Berkley described self-association of poly(styrene maleic anhydride) chains in water at the nanoscale level where SMA sizes paper best at pH 7 and generates nanotubes and wires. She showed that true green chemistry, nanotechnology, and self-assembly are exhibited in pulp and paper. Canada’s oldest industry is still at the forefront of modern research!

Speakers were presented with a Certificate of Recognition and a set of Canadian placemats chosen by symposium coordinator Susan Stevenson.

This Canadian First Symposium was extraordinarily successful from the point of view of the sponsors, the CEOs, the industrial researchers and the university faculty and students. A close-knit community resulted, which bodes well for the future of integrating molecular modelling into the pulp and paper industry worldwide.

Cascades Inc., will publish the refereed proceedings of FAPPMMS in the next two months. The proceedings will include all the formal addresses, research papers, and the posters.

M. A. (Tony) Whitehead, FCIC McGill University

Figure 3. Kela’s water diagrams NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 27

CSC BULLETIN SCC

CSC BOARD OF DIRECTORS’ NOMINATIONS (2006–2007) 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 2006–2007. Members are reminded of the provision of By-law Article X, Section 3 (e), which states: “Further nominations for any officer position may be made in writing by any ten or more Voting Members of the corporation. Further nominations for directors to be elected by Divisions [or Regions] in any year may be made by any five members in good standing qualified to vote for the said director [i.e., a member of the Division(s) or Regions the director will represent].” Each nomination must be accompanied by the candidate’s written agreement to serve if elected, a curriculum vitae and a recent black and white photograph.

The deadline for receipt of additional nominations is Monday, January 23, 2006. 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, May 29, 2006 in Halifax, NS.

Dave W. Schwass, MCIC President 2006–2007 Senior environmental advisor NOVA Chemicals Corporation Dave Schwass, a native Albertan, graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a BSc in chemistry and joined NOVA Chemicals.

As senior environmental advisor, Schwass

Le Comité des candidatures, nommé en vertu des dispositions du règlement 14(i) de la Société canadienne de chimie (SCC), propose la candidature des personnes listées ci-dessous aux postes de membres du conseil pour 2006–2007. Il est rappelé aux membres que le règlement 15(f) précise ce qui suit : « Des candidatures additionnelles pour les postes d’administrateurs peuvent être soumises par écrit par au moins dix membres votants de la Société. D’autres candidatures aux postes de directeur à élire par les divisions (ou les régions) en n’importe quelle année peuvent être faites par au moins cinq membres en règle de la Société, pourvu qu’ils aient le droit de voter pour ces directeurs (c.-à-d. des membres de la ou des divisions ou régions que l’administrateur représentera). » Chaque candidature 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 en noir et blanc.

Les membres auront jusqu’au lundi 23 janvier 2006 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 immédiatement après l’assemblée générale annuelle de la Société qui aura lieu le lundi 29 mai 2006, à Halifax (Nouvelle-Écosse).

provides environmental leadership and support to NOVA Corporation’s research and technology, and olefins and polyolefins businesses. Previously, he was corporate environmental advisor; safety, health, environment and risk audit team leader; and senior environmental specialist within the chemical manufacturing, gas transmission, and international businesses. Prior to joining NOVA, Schwass spent time with both the federal and provincial governments and for a period had his own consulting practice. He is a certified auditor in both Canada and the U.S. in the areas of environmental, health, and safety in addition to being a professional chemist.

Schwass has been actively involved in the Canadian Society for Chemistry and has held numerous positions in the Calgary Section, been treasurer for the Calgary CSC2000 Conference, the Society treasurer (2001–2005) and a member of the Executive Committee since 2001. He is a charter member and past

28 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

officer of the Association of the Chemical Profession of Alberta, the vice-president of the Alberta Plastics Recycling Association, and a director of the Rockyview Gas Co-op Ltd.

Russell Boyd, FCIC Vice-President 2006–2007 Alexander McLeod professor of chemistry Dalhousie University Russell Boyd, a native of Kelowna, BC, graduated from The University of British Colombia (UBC) with the Lefevre Gold Medal. As one of the first recipients of a 1967 Science Scholarship, he received his PhD in theoretical chemistry from McGill University in 1971. An NRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Charles Coulson at the University of Oxford was followed by a Killam Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UBC.

CSC BULLETIN SCC

Boyd joined Dalhousie University in 1975 and rose through the ranks to become a professor in 1985. He served as Chair of the department of chemistry at Dalhousie from 1992 to 2005. He was named a Faculty of Science Killam Professor in 1997, and in 2001 became the seventh holder of the Alexander McLeod Chair of Chemistry, one of the oldest named professorships in chemistry in Canada.

His many professional activities include serving on numerous NSERC committees, and acting as editor for theoretical chemistry of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry from 1988 to 1998. He has been a member of the Scientific Board of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists since 2002. His service to the Canadian Society for Chemistry includes being a member of the Organizing Committees for the conferences in 1981, 1990, and 2006, Chair of the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Division, and director of Accreditation and board member from 1996 to 1999.

Boyd has published over 200 peerreviewed papers in computational and theoretical chemistry. The focus of his current research is on applications of contemporary computational methods to the study of biological systems. Citations of his papers place him in the top 0.4 percent of the world’s chemists. He is especially proud of the number of excellent young scientists who received a significant part of their training in his group.

Statement of Policy I am honoured to stand as a candidate for CSC vice-president for 2006–2007. During my time as a member of the Accreditation Committee (1987–1996) and as director of accreditation and Board Member (1996–1999),

I have known many dedicated individuals who have served our Society well in the same capacity. Thanks to the conscientious efforts of successive Boards, I believe the CSC is a very much stronger society than it was 15 years ago.

I will use my experience and knowledge of the chemistry community in Canada to work to strengthen the Canadian Society for Chemistry. Increasing the membership of the CSC must remain one of its priorities. In order to attract additional members, the CSC must reach out to young chemists in industry and government, as well as the academic community. We must convince an ever-increasing fraction of the chemistry community that the CSC is a dynamic society to which they want to belong and to which they are willing to contribute. Furthermore, the CSC must continue to develop good working relationships with other professional societies in Canada and abroad.

I do not pretend to have all the answers to the challenges facing the CSC, but I am willing to work with the membership and Board to achieve these objectives.

Gregory Jerkiewicz, MCIC Director 2006–2009 Full professor Queen’s University Gregory Jerkiewicz received his MSc and MEng from The Technical University of Gdansk, Poland (1984) where he also studied solid state physics (1983–1985). In 1985, he immigrated to Canada and settled in Ottawa, ON. He did his PhD studies (1991) under the late Brian E. Conway, FCIC. After his PhD, he spent the summer of 1991 at the Institute of Physics, The University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He joined the department of chemistry, Université de Sherbrooke, as a research associate in September 1991 and became assistant professor in June 1992. He was promoted to associate professorship with tenure in June 1997. In June 2002, he joined the department of chemistry, Queen’s University, where he became a professor in 2005. He has held a several research grants—NSERC Discovery and Strategic Research Grants, NSERC Research Tools and Instruments, Materials and

Manufacturing Ontario—Emerging Materials Knowledge, FCAR Young Researchers Award, MRN Hydrogen Research, etc. His research has resulted in 50 research papers, five book chapters, one review article, over 20 articles in edited volumes of conference proceedings, and ca. 200 lectures, seminars, and conference presentations. He is a co-editor of one book on surface electrochemistry and three volumes of conference proceedings on hydrogen electrochemistry and materials science. He received the 1997 Electrochemistry Award of La Société Française de Chimie.

His research results were selected among the top ten scientific discoveries of the year 2000 and were featured in the review Québec Science. In 2004, he received the W. A. E. McBryde Medal of the Canadian Society for Chemistry. He is an active member of several professional associations such as the Canadian Society for Chemistry, the Electrochemical Society, the International Society of Electrochemistry, and others. He is married and has a lovely brown Labrador called Mocha. In his spare time, he enjoys outdoor activities such as jogging, sailing, canoeing, and skiing, and he likes reading books related to modern history and political sciences.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 29

CSC BULLETIN SCC

CSC VISITS KUWAIT UNIVERSITY

CSC accreditation of undergraduate chemistry programs goes international In May of 2004, a message was received by e-mail from the vice-president of Kuwait University requesting that the CSC initiate an accreditation of their undergraduate chemistry program. This department had some history with the Canadian academic community, as both Tom Tidwell, FCIC, and Stan Brown, FCIC, had been visitors there in the past—one as an external examiner of a PhD thesis and the other as an assessor of their chemistry graduate programs. In view of the turmoil in that part of the world, it took some time for the CSC Board to consider this request and, at the November 2004 meeting, it was agreed that this should be tried on an experimental basis. John McIntosh, FCIC, recently retired from the University of Windsor and the current Chair of the CSC accreditation committee, and Jan Kwak, FCIC, dean of graduate studies at Dalhousie University and the immediate past Chair, agreed to be the site visit team. After completion of the necessary paper work, the site visit team left for Kuwait City on April 29, 2005, arriving 26 hours later on April 30. The site visit lasted three days, with a fourth day set aside for tourism activities.

Kuwait is a country of about 2.3 million people, only 45 percent of whom are actual Kuwaiti citizens—the rest are foreigners wo are there as workers. The country is about the size of New Jersey. As everyone knows, it sits on the Persian Gulf on a sea of oil. However, every drop of water consumed is actually the condensate from the steam generation of electricity. The wealth of the country is demonstrated by the fact that many places have green grass—sustained by distilled water! The culture is an amazing mixture of classical Arabic and modern Western traditions. Women, who just recently obtained the right to vote on some issues, can be seen in the traditional dress, completely covered in black except for the eyes. This garb is most common among the Bedouin women while jeans and T-shirts are more common among the younger generation. Kuwaiti men dress in the traditional dishdashas. The dominant religion is Islam and the life of the country is largely guided by its principles.

Kuwait University, like the rest of the city, was destroyed in the Gulf War (1990–1991). Organized looting of the university under the direction of faculty from Iraqi universities occurred with every piece of scientific equipment, every chemical, every book in the library, every lab bench being removed and shipped to Iraq. Thus, everything dates from 1991 or later. The university is located on several campuses. We visited the Safat campus, home to all the science, as well as several other faculties. It is growing so quickly that an entirely new campus is currently in the planning stages. The

30 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

chemistry department has 29 faculty including four women, most of whom have PhDs from the U.K., Egypt, or North America. Most are research active, frequently in collaboration with British or North American colleagues. The university has a policy of granting scholarships to their own best students to go away to obtain a PhD, with the understanding that a faculty position will be waiting for them on their return. Given the distance between Kuwait and any source of scientific equipment of supplies, instrument maintenance and advance ordering of supplies is crucial to everything. It is common to wait three months for an order to arrive!

The undergraduate programs are all taught in English, but the incoming students have had all their prior instruction in Arabic.

In addition, because the high school system there graduates two classes per year, there is an intake of students in both February and September. As a result all courses must be taught every semester. Finally, since lecture rooms are quite small (50–60) there are 39(!) sections of first-year chemistry. The teaching load on the faculty is quite onerous, especially in the first and second years. The programs of study leading to a BSc are in every way comparable to those in Canadian universities and easily meet the standards for CSC accreditation. Their budget for undergraduate equipment would make anyone in this country green with envy! Research grade instrumentation is plentiful (imagine liquid He in the desert!) with high field NMR, several types of X-ray diffractometers, and AFM to name only a few.

The faculty and everyone associated with the university went out of their way to ensure the visitors felt at home and introduced them to many aspects of Kuwaiti culture in an extensive social program.

An evening was set aside to visit a Diwaniya, a men-only gathering where conversation about any topic, frequently politics, occurs.

It was a sort of Kuwaiti Tim Hortons.

A traditional tent party was put on where the visitors were inducted into the mysteries of Kuwaiti dress. The last day was set aside to visit the souk and the many other interesting places that abound in this tiny country. In summary, the entire experience was enjoyable, interesting, and instructional for everyone involved. As a result of this experiment, another request for the CSC to accredit another program in the same part of the world has arrived. The CSC has truly gone international!

John McIntosh, FCIC

CSChE BULLETIN SCGCh

7TH WORLD CONGRESS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING Today’s breakthroughs and tomorrow’s challenges

The 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (WCCE7), held July 10–14 at the Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, Scotland, drew more than 2,000 participants from more than 80 countries. The program, organized by the U.K.-based Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), ranged from breakthrough technologies and social challenges, to the provocative and out-and-out fun.

Jackie Ying, executive director of Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, delivered the 2005 Danckwerts Lecture.

Ying described her work synthesizing advanced nanostructures for catalytic, membrane, ceramic, and biomaterial applications.

MIT professor, Gregory Stephanopoulos, delivered a keynote speech that focused on the special challenges of doing metabolic engineering in an area with knowledge of a plethora of genes.

All the focus wasn’t on new technologies, however. The future of fossil fuels and more traditional chemical processing, along with other pressing social issues were addressed as well. Malcolm Brindel, executive director for exploration and production with Royal Dutch Shell, pointed out that 2004 saw the biggest ever increase in world oil consumption, and that 40 percent of that increase was due to growing demand in China. Brindel spoke about process innovations to secure the energy needed against a background of growing concern everywhere, but especially in Europe, about climate change.

While there were light moments in some of the technical presentations, other events focused on fun and networking. Glasgow was the site for the first International Chem-E-Car competition, building on the contests conducted every year at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)’s Annual Meeting. Also, the Congress gala dinner included the Scottish speciality haggis, followed by a traditional Gaelic “Ceilidh,” featuring Scottish music and dance.

The 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (WCCE8) will be hosted in Montréal, QC, in the summer of 2009 by the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering.

A CD-ROM of World Congress manuscripts and abstracts is available from IChemE at www.icheme.org/shop.

Steve Smith, AIChE

Thought-provoking Oliver Sparrow, a futurist and secretary of the U.K.’s Challenge Forum, posed the question, “Will the chemical industry still be useful in 2025?” He believes that the growing complexity of knowledge and economies, as well as population growth and aging trends, will continue to translate into the movement of commodity businesses to the developing world. Meanwhile, the developed world will retain its edge in areas of complexity. “Innovation used to come from advances in fundamental understanding,” he said. “Now, in addition, it comes from all over the supply chain and from all levels of aggregation,” he continued.

Edward Cussler, a professor at the University of Minnesota, urged chemical engineers and chemical engineering educators to focus on enhancing skills for chemical product development, rather than chemical processing. In a presentation laced with humour, he asked, “If there are no new plants in North America, why are we teaching everyone to design plants?”

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 31

1.

WCCE8 will be led by Philippe Tanguy, FCIC, of École Polytechnique. Participating in the 7th Congress with an eye on the 8th were Philippe Tanguy; Gerry Phillips, MCIC, CSChE president; Roland Andersson, MCIC, CIC executive director; and Joan Kingston, CIC director of finance and administration.

2.

1. The WCCE7 gala dinner featured sword dancing as part of the traditional Gaelic Ceilidh.

2. The Irish seaside viewed from a tee box at the Lahinch golf course in Scotland.

3. Colin Grant, WCCE7 Chair, and HRH Princess Anne, Patron of the Congress, stand with CSChE representatives Barb Andersson and Joan Kingston.

3.

4. The first international ChemE-Car competition was a huge success. Undergraduate student teams from around the globe competed for the £1,000 first prize.

5. IChemE staff Andrew Furlong, Congress project manager, and Trevor Evans, chief executive, take a brief break by the “Armadillo” of the Glasgow Conference Centre.

6. Philippe Tanguy, FCIC (left), dines with other WCCE7 attendees.

7. Joan Kingston welcomes all to the CSChE booth.

8. CSChE president, Gerry Phillips, MCIC, Colleen Phillips, Barb Andersson, and CIC executive director, Roland Andersson, MCIC, enjoy the WCCE7 Welcome Reception at the spectacular Glasgow Science Centre.

32 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 33

STUDENT NEWS NOUVELLES DES ÉTUDIANTS

CREO ACHIEVEMENT AND CIC 3RD-YEAR AWARDS PRESENTED TO TOP VANCOUVER REGION CHEMISTRY STUDENTS A complete list of winners and their home institutions is shown below: Suamn Dhesi

B.C. Institute of Technology, Burnaby

Scott Lawson

Capilano College, North Vancouver

Tomomi Matsumoto

College of the Rockies, Cranbrook

Jeff Chan

Douglas College, New Westminister

Carly Sponarski

Langara College, Vancouver

McKinley Small

Selkirk College, Castlegar

Laiel Soliman

Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops

Laura Gronkjaer

University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford

Heather Crawford

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby

Yuen-ying Siona Carpenter The University of British Columbia, Vancouver Winners of the Creo Achievement Award in Chemistry who were presented with their prizes at the dinner meeting. From left to right: Scott Lawson, Heather Crawford, Yuen-ying Siona Carpenter, Terry Peel, MCIC (Creo representative), and Danny Leznoff, MCIC (Vancouver CIC Local Section Chair).

In order to honour top chemistry students and promote chemical education at public post-secondary institutions that teach chemistry or chemical technology within the Vancouver CIC Local Section, the Creo Achievement Award in Chemistry and the CIC 3rd-Year Chemistry Award were recently presented at the Annual Dinner Meeting.

Each department was invited to nominate a worthy student, preferably one who had completed two chemistry courses at the 2nd-year level to receive the Creo Award. The awardees were invited to attend the Local Section’s dinner meeting (see accompanying article), where they were publicly awarded their prizes by Terry Peel, MCIC, of Creo.

The Vancouver Local Section is grateful to Creo Inc., a Vancouverarea technology company that employs chemists, for its generous support of these student awards.

34 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

The CIC 3rd-Year Award in Chemistry was given to the top students in 3rd-year chemistry at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of British Columbia (UBC), respectively. Daniel Leznoff, MCIC, Vancouver CIC Local Section Chair, presented the awards to Ming Wai Emily Tsang (SFU) and Meghan Dureen (UBC) at the same CIC Dinner Meeting.

Congratulations to all the awardees on their outstanding achievement and we wish them the best of success in their continuing studies.

Daniel Leznoff, MCIC Vancouver CIC Local Section Chair

LOCAL SECTION NEWS | NOUVELLES DES SECTIONS LOCALES

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATORS REVEALED AT VANCOUVER CIC DINNER MEETING these vanguard scientist-translators who made an immense impact on modern Japanese chemistry. Readers can refer to “Chemical Tranformations: Translations and The Periodic Table in Japan,” Angew. Chem.

Int. Ed. Engl., 41, 739, 2002). Alexandrian scribes, alchemists’ notebooks, and the legions of current-day unsung scientific translators all received honourable mentions in terms of their influence on world knowledge mobility. The lecture concluded with a wide-ranging discussion, including how the effect of multiple translations through multiple languages could alter the original meaning (i.e., a broken telephone of knowledge transfer), impacts of scientific translations on political history, and the issue of authorship vs. plagiarism of translated texts.

Daniel Leznoff, MCIC Vancouver CIC Local Section Chair

Dinner meeting speaker Scott Montgomery (middle front) with Vancouver CIC Local Section members On June 9, 2005, members of the Vancouver CIC Local Section held their annual dinner meeting. After enjoying a buffet dinner at the Simon Fraser University Diamond Centre and presenting the Creo Achievement Awards in Chemistry and CIC 3rd-Year Awards in Chemistry, 40 members were treated to an excellent, entertaining, and thought-provoking lecture by Scott Montgomery. Montgomery is a geologist, independent scholar, and best-selling author of several books whose subjects intersect science, art, language, history, and culture. In his talk, entitled “Science and the Argonauts—Mobilities of Knowledge, Rights of Passage,” Montgomery shared his ideas regarding the importance of the unsung, but absolutely essential heroes of scientific knowledge transfer—the translators. The lecture was an exciting, eclectic mix of world history, philosophy, and linguistics, with chemical knowledge transfer at its heart. Readers can refer to “Science in Translation: Movements of Knowledge Through Cultures and Time,” by Scott Montgomery.

Montgomery described that the earliest Japanese scientists, regarded today as responsible for introducing modern chemistry to Japan in the 1800s, were essentially translators who imported chemical knowledge written in Dutch textbooks into Japanese. Imagine translating element names, atomic theory, or the periodic table into a language that had no words for these concepts! That was all determined by

SAVE TIME ~ RENEW ON-LINE Renew your CIC membership for 2005 at https://secure.cheminst.ca

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 35

CAREERS CARRIÈRES

QUANTUM INFORMATION, SYSTEMS AND MATERIALS TIER II CANADA RESEARCH CHAIR UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT and INSTITUTE FOR QUANTUM COMPUTING Applications are being invited for a Tier II Canada Research Chair faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Quantum Computing. The search is focused on experimental chemists with strong research accomplishments in the field of quantum information, particularly in the areas of ion traps and quantum dots, although promising candidates in all areas of overlap between quantum information and chemistry will be considered. Salary will depend on the candidate’s qualifications. Effective date of appointment: January 1, 2006. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, including women, members of visible minorities, native peoples and persons with disabilities; however Canadian and permanent residents will be given priority. This appointment is subject to the availability of funds.

The Department of Chemistry, http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/chemistry, is part of the Faculty of Science and has thriving groups in all areas of chemistry, including organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, polymer and materials chemistry, physical and theoretical chemistry, analytical chemistry and biochemistry. It is also launching, together with the Departments of Chemical Engineering and of Electrical and Computing Engineering, a new undergraduate program of Nanotechnology. Quantum information research implemented using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been established within the Department. The University of Waterloo is host to the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). Information about I QC personnel and activities can be found at www.iqc.ca. The IQC, at present, includes more than a dozen researchers from the Faculties of Engineering, Mathematics and Science. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to interact with scientists at the nearby Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the UW Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research.

Interested individuals should send a curriculum vitae, a (minimum) 10 page research proposal, selected reprints/preprints and arrange for three letters of recommendation from professional references to be sent to: The Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 The deadline for receiving applications is 15 December 2005 (late applications may be considered if position remains unfilled).

QUANTUM INFORMATION, SYSTEMS AND MATERIALS TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT and INSTITUTE FOR QUANTUM COMPUTING Applications are being invited for a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Quantum Computing. The search is focused on experimental chemists with strong research accomplishments in the field of quantum information, with emphasis on the areas of ion traps and quantum dots. Salary will depend on the candidate’s qualifications.

Effective date of appointment: January 1, 2006. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, including women, members of visible minorities, native peoples and persons with disabilities; however Canadian and permanent residents will be given priority. This appointment is subject to the availability of funds.

The Department of Chemistry, http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/chemistry, is part of the Faculty of Science and has thriving groups in all areas of chemistry, including organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, polymer and materials chemistry, physical and theoretical chemistry, analytical chemistry and biochemistry. It is also launching, together with the Departments of Chemical Engineering and of Electrical and Computing Engineering, a new undergraduate program of Nanotechnology. Quantum information research implemented using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been established within the Department. The University of Waterloo is host to the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). Information about IQC personnel and activities can be found at www.iqc.ca. The IQC, at present, includes more than a dozen researchers from the Faculties of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science. The candidates will also have the opportunity to interact with scientists at the nearby Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the UW Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research.

Interested individuals should send a curriculum vitae, a (minimum) 10 page research proposal, selected reprints/preprints and arrange for three letters of recommendation from professional references to be sent to: The Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 The deadline for receiving applications is 15 December 2005 (late applications may be considered if position remains unfilled).

36 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

University of Toronto FACULTY POSITION IN THERMOFLUIDS ENGINEERING. The Depar tment of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto invites applications for an academic tenure-stream position in the area of thermofluids engineering. The preferred candidate would be an experimentalist, who could make use of our very extensive laboratory facilities. Exceptional opportunities exist for growth in either of the Department’s strategic focus areas of biomedical engineering and alternative energy systems. Applicants must have a doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field, an outstanding academic and research record that normally requires a minimum of 2-4 years of postdoctoral research experience, and effective teaching ability. Duties will include undergraduate and graduate teaching, research, and departmental service. Salary and academic rank are commensurate with qualifications. Suggested start date is July 1, 2006. Applicants should include in their responses: a detailed curriculum vitae; a clear statement of their specific teaching and research interests; and country of citizenship/residency. Letters of application should be addressed to: Chair, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G8. The closing date for all applications to be received is December 1, 2005. The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to further diversification of ideas. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. http://www.mie.utoronto.ca

EVENTS ÉVÉNEMENTS

CAREERS CARRIÈRES

Canada Conferences May 9–12, 2006. Climate Change Conference, Ottawa, ON. Web site: www.csche2006.ca.

May 27–31, 2006. 89th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Halifax, NS. Web site: www.csche2006.ca.

October 15–18, 2006. 56th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Sherbrooke, QC. Web site: www.csche2006.ca.

October 28–31, 2007. 57th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Edmonton, AB. Web site: www.chemeng.ca/conferences/csche_annual__e.htm.

October 19–22, 2008. 58th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Ottawa, ON. Web site: www.chemeng.ca/conferences/csche_annual__e.htm.

August 23–29, 2009. 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering and 59th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Montréal, QC. www.chemengcongress2009.com/.

U.S. and Overseas December 15–20, 2005. Pacifichem 2005 Conference, Honolulu, HI. Web site: www.pacifichem.org.

June 26–29, 2006. Balticum Organicum Syntheticum 2006 (BOS06), Tallinn, Estonia. Contact: Krista Voigt, chemistry department, Queen’s University; e-mail: baderadm@chem. queensu.ca; Web site: www.bos06.ttu.ee/.

August 27–30, 2006. 11th APCChE Congress, Asian Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Web site: www.apcche2006.org.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 37

CAREERS CARRIÈRES

The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering (CJChE) publishes original research, new theoretical interpretations and critical reviews in the science or industrial practice of chemical and biochemical engineering or applied chemistry. The CJChE has an eighty-year successful history of producing high-quality, cutting-edge research.

The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering can now accept your manuscript submissions on-line.

REMEMBERWHEN

Published on a non-profit basis by the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering, the CJChE welcomes submissions of original research articles in the broad field of chemical engineering and its applications.

38 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE NOVEMBRE/DÉCEMBRE 2005

The CJChE publishes six issues per year. Each volume contains fully reviewed articles, notes, or reviews.

From the new on-line submissions site: (a) authors can submit their manuscript electronically (MS Word file, TeX file, or PDF file) and track its status as it goes through the review process; and (b) reviewers should be able to check out the manuscripts for review and then submit their reviews electronically.

www.cjche.ca/submissioninstr uctions.htm

Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering

Due Diligence

recommended laboratory procedures

Lead by Example

responsibility for safety policies

Healthy Workplace

training and information effective safety systems ISBN: 1-896564-00-3 94 pages August 2003 $29.50

Prevent Accidents and Illnesses

employer-employee relationships safety audits

LABORATORY LABORATORY HEALTH AND SAFETY HEALTHGUIDELINES AND SAFETY GUIDELINES 4th Edition are built on a foundation of trust with society. An integral part of that trust is the safe operation of facilities including laboratories, whether industrial, academic or government. The education of engineers, scientists and technologists must reflect that level of trust. We all share in the responsibility for safe and ethical research, chemical processing and analysis.”

- Eric Mead, FCIC Former Chair The Chemical Institute of Canada

1.888.542.2242

“The chemical field and profession

www.cheminst.ca/products

4th Edition

An invaluable resource for all laboratory personnel The latest edition builds on the experience gained over 20 years since the first edition was launched in 1982 by the Ordre des chimistes du Québec.

A team of chemical experts in health and safety from industry, government and academia have combined their extensive knowledge to cover a wide and complete range of topics.

Subject Areas • Responsibility for safety • Recommended laboratory procedures • Storage, handling and hazards of laboratory reagents • Safety equipment and procedures • Emergency procedures • Accidental spills of hazardous products • Management of hazardous wastes • Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS)

ADVERTISEMENT – For information/comments please see www.chem.ucalgary.ca/csc2000/milestones.htm

89e Congrès et exposition canadiens de chimie du 27 au 31 mai 2006

Demande de communications le 16 décembre 2005 – début des soumissions de résumés en ligne le 13 février 2006 – date limite pour remettre les résumés World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax (Nouvelle-Écosse) Canada Société canadienne de chimie • www.csc2006.ca • program@csc2006.ca

89th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition May 27–31, 2006

December 16, 2005 – On-line abstract submissions begin February 13, 2006 – Deadline for abstract submissions World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Canadian Society for Chemistry • www.csc2006.ca • program@csc2006.ca

PM40021620

Call for Papers