Mar 2005: ACCN, the Canadian Chemical News

l’actualité chimique canadienne canadian chemical news ACCN

Leading bright students to the chemical industries National chemistry week

Public Understanding of Chemistry Taking an active role in education

MARCH MARS • 2005 • Vol. 57, No./no 3

ACCN

MARCH MARS • 2005 • Vol. 57, No./no 3

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

Ta ble of Contents/Ta ble des matièr es

Guest Column/ Chroniqueur invité . . . . . . . . . 2 Fruits of Chemistry Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

Letters/Lettres . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Feature Ar ticles/Ar ticles de fond

12 Proof Positive

Promoting a positive reaction to the chemical industries Michael Bourque

Personals/Personnalités . . . . . . 3

News Briefs/ Nouvelles en bref . . . . . . . . . . 5

14 Top of the List

Can we attract Canada’s top students back to the field?

Chao-Jun Li, MCIC

Chemputing . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Picture Perfect Presentations Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC

Chemfusion . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Catching the Hare Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

CSC Bulletin SCC . . . . . . . . . 28

16 17

REMEMBERWHEN

22

Reaching Out

National Chemistry Week La semaine nationale de la chimie Reports on inventive applications of science education

Local Section News/ Nouvelles des sections locales . . . 28

Student News/ Nouvelles des étudiants . . . . . . 28

Careers/Carrières . . . . . . . . . 29

Events/Événements. . . . . . . . 33

Cover/Couver ture We’ve got her attention. Now, how do we keep it? A child marvels at a chemistry demonstration Photo by Ian MacDonald at “The Chemistry Show” hosted by The University of Calgary.

GUEST COLUMN CHRONIQUEUR INVITÉ

Editor-in-Chief/Rédactrice en chef Michelle Piquette Managing Editor/Directrice de la rédaction Heather Dana Munroe

FRUITS OF CHEMISTRY

Graphic Designer/Infographiste Krista Leroux

Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

Editorial Board/Conseil de la rédaction Terrance Rummery, FCIC, chair/président Catherine A. Cardy, MCIC Cathleen Crudden, MCIC John Margeson, MCIC Milena Sejnoha, MCIC Bernard West, MCIC

D

o you remember the ditto machine?

I sure do. I don’t know what I would have done without it back in 1973 when I first started teaching. It offered the only quick, cheap way to produce handouts for students.

I vividly recall the first ditto I ever produced. I had just graduated with a PhD in chemistry and was keen on communicating my knowledge to students. The only problem was that I didn’t have very much knowledge to communicate. Or at least not the type I thought I should be communicating.

Oh, I was pretty good at atomic structures, chemical bonding, reaction mechanisms, and even thermodynamics—all fundamental concepts that any chemistry student should master. But I knew precious little about “real-world” chemistry. That had not been part of my chemical education. I knew how to interpret complex spectra but had no idea why carrageenan was added to ice cream. I knew how to make carbon 13-enriched glucose in the lab but would have been stymied if someone had asked me to make lipstick. I discovered that when friends and relatives learned I was studying chemistry, they were more likely to ask me questions about toothpaste or shoe polish than about the nuances of the Schrodinger wave equation.

I decided that when I finally got the chance to teach, I would always try to weave these everyday applications into my courses.

Luckily, my very first year I had the opportunity to develop a new course that was to feature dyes, cosmetics, cleaning agents, medications, synthetic fabrics, and the other common fruits of chemistry. These were just the kinds of things I was interested in, but curiously, “Chemistry in the Modern World” was to be offered only to nonscience students! The pedagogical mentality at the time suggested that such “fluff” was fine for arts students, but there was no room for it in “real” chemistry courses. Science students were to struggle with phase diagrams and molecular orbitals, not with ways to remove

2 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

lipstick stains from collars. My view was that these real-world examples should be part and parcel of any chemistry course, and that furthermore, students should realize chemistry is a living science. So I took to starting each class with a “ditto” handout about some current chemical happening.

One day it may have been about the benefits of a newly introduced medication, and the next it may have mentioned the wonders of a novel plastic. The more I pursued this practice, the more I became captivated by the scope of chemistry. I also began to realize that there is always a “but.” That new drug may perform well most of the time, but sometimes there are severe side effects. That new plastic may have fantastic properties, but there are environmental concerns linked to its production. Any realistic discussion of chemical issues had to involve an appropriate risk-benefit analysis.

And that is just the approach that my colleagues, Ariel Fenster, MCIC, and David Harpp, FCIC, and I now take as we offer applied chemistry courses to over 1,000 students from all disciplines at McGill University in Montréal, QC, every year. In fact, we have given these four courses to almost 15,000 students over the past 24 years.

Much has changed since my initial attempts to offer a relevant chemistry course. “Dittos” have been relegated to the dustbin of technology. Today, our lectures are available on the Web at www.oss.mcgill.ca. But I still recall those old dittos with a certain degree of fondness—after all, they did spark many a fruitful discussion.

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 à votre disposition sur ligne dans la banque de données Canadian Business and Current Affairs.

ISSN 0823-5228

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

www.accn.ca

LETTERS LETTRES

Another Fallen Hero

PERSONALS PERSONNALITÉS

Industry

Dear Editor, Martha Langford’s article (ACCN, January 2005) on Shawinigan Chemicals reminds me of another fallen hero, Canadian Industries Ltd. (CIL). In the 1960s, CIL was Canada’s largest producer of chemicals and related products, with about 32 plants all over the country making explosives, fertilizer, paints, polythene, and bulk chemicals such as sulfuric acid and caustic soda. It was partowned by ICI (U.K.), but it was a registered Canadian company with shares traded on the stock exchange. Its head office in Montréal, QC, was an award-winning 34-storey building known as CIL House. The company gave me my first job and I remember the enthusiastic atmosphere at the sod-turning for the $3 million Central Research Laboratory in McMasterville, QC, in April 1961.

In 1988, CIL became a wholly owned subsidiary of ICI (ICI Canada) and most of its plants have been closed or sold off. The CIL logo can still be seen on some brands of paint and lawn fertilizer, but CIL House and the Central Research Laboratory are only memories. As far as I know, the full history of CIL has not been written, but it was a leading company in Canada for many years and it would provide a worthwhile project for an industrial historian.

I acquired about 20 issues of the house magazine, CIL Oval, from between 1955 and 1966. They evoke nostalgia for a time when chemistry and the chemical industry had better public images than they do now. The central theme of CIL Oval was the company’s pride in the many ways in which its products were improving the lives of Canadians. Recently, I donated my copies to the University of Toronto Library, but they were returned to me because they had a musty smell. Actually, the smell is not too bad and otherwise, the back issues are in good condition.

I would be happy to donate them to any other Canadian university library that may be interested.

Malcolm Baird, FCIC

Peter Hackett, FCIC Peter Hackett, FCIC, has been appointed president and CEO of Alberta Ingenuity.

Alberta Ingenuity supports science and engineering researchers and researchers-in-training at Alberta universities, public colleges, and technical institutes, as well as in industry.

Hackett is an internationally recognized chemical physicist and research leader. He has been vice-president of research at the National Research Council Canada (NRC) since January 1997. His portfolio included biotechnologies, information and telecommunication technologies, manufacturing technologies, molecular sciences, and national measurement standards.

Hackett was the lead NRC executive behind the creation and design of the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) at the University of Alberta. He is also a member of the Board and of the Executive Committee of the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE), based in Calgary, AB.

Distinction Jillian Buriak, MCIC, has been chosen to attend the 2005 Forum of Young Global Leaders. Buriak is a chemistry researcher at the National Institute for Nanotechnology of the National Research Council (NINT) and professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta. This new global undertaking brings together outstanding leaders, aged 40 years or younger, who have committed to devote part of their knowledge and energy over the next five years to collectively work towards a better future.

The Young Global Leaders include leaders from each of the seven geographic regions and from the worlds of politics, business, society, learning, arts, and culture. Each year, around 200 Young Global Leaders are nominated to serve for a period of five years, ultimately forming a community of 1,111 by 2009. The Forum of Young Global Leaders was created by Klaus Schwab in 2004 and acts in close cooperation with the World Economic Forum in their joint commitment to improving the state of the world. Following a distinguished academic career in Europe and the U.S., Buriak returned to Canada in 2003 to head the Materials and Interfacial Chemistry Group at NINT. For more information on the Forum of Young Global Leaders, visit www. younggloballeaders.org.

University L’Université de Montréal est fière d’annoncer la venue, en janvier 2005, au département de chimie, en qualité de professeur adjoint, de Radu Iftimie. Iftimie a reçu son Ph.D. de la University of Toronto sous la direction de Jeremy Schofield, MICC, puis a effectué des études post-doctorales à N.Y. sous la direction de Mark Tuckerman. Ses principaux intérêts de recherche portent sur l’étude théorique des réactions chim iques en phase condensée via les nouvelles méthodes de la mécanique statistique et de la chimie quantique, en vue d’applications en biochimie et en sciences des matériaux.

Eric Mead, FCIC, (left) is presented with the 2004 SIAST Outstanding Service Award by SIAST president, Bob McCulloch.

Eric Mead, FCIC, was recently presented with the 2004 SIAST Outstanding Service Award. Mead is a chemical technology instructor at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST)

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 3

PERSONALS PERSONNALITÉS

Kelsey Campus in Saskatoon, SK. The SIAST employee awards program recognizes outstanding contributions that support SIAST’s vision and values—contributions exemplified

by Mead’s commitment to the program and its students during his 30-year career with SIAST. While Mead challenges his students academically, he also offers a high level of support that keeps them coming back as grads—both for visits to the classroom and to the backyard barbecues he hosts for staff and students.

Mead has served as vice-chair and chair of the CIC and as vice-president and president of the CSCT. Through his involvement with the society, he was a key player in the introduction of the Chemistry Students Symposium for Western Canadian students, which has been hosted by Kelsey. Mead also served as the CIC’s representative to the Canadian Technology Accreditation Board and chaired three accreditation site visits.

Ian Smith, FCIC, receives the Star of Romania.

The country of Romania honoured an NRC scientist for teaching Romanian radiologists how to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems. Ian Smith, FCIC, director general of the NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics, was awarded the Star of Romania at a special reception at the Romanian Embassy.

For almost a decade, Smith helped to organize seven-day MRI training workshops that have resulted in the certification of almost 1,000 trainees in Romania. He brought together scientists from across Europe and North America, including a couple of Nobel Prize winners, to run the workshops. The group also collected 1,000

4 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Detail of the Star of Romania kilograms of medical and scientific books for Romania, many of which were donated by the University of Manitoba. Funding for the Romanian initiative was received from international sources.

Smith was instrumental in helping get Henry Mantsch, FCIC, out of the country into a productive research environment.

Mantsch joined the NRC shortly thereafter and moved to Winnipeg to help establish the Institute for Biodiagnostics. He is currently the science counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin.

“I am honoured to receive this reward,” said Smith. “It was a great privilege for me to have worked with so many fine scientists in Romania over the past decade. It is they who deserve this reward for overcoming such tremendous obstacles to improve conditions in their country.”

The Canadian Association for Girls in Science (CAGIS) is an association run by girls for girls. It began in 1992 when Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko, then age 9, noticed that her friends lacked an interest in science and research. In response, she decided to start a club dedicated to science, technology, engineering, and math. During the past 11 years, thousands of young girls from age 7 to 16 from across Canada have joined, whether as part of a local chapter or as a virtual member.

In addition to ongoing exchanges via the Web site, monthly meetings with scientists help keep members in the know.

CAGIS has been awarded the 2004 Michael Smith Award by NSERC. It was one of the two organizational winners for outstanding achievement in the promotion of science

CAGIS wins Michael Smith Award. in Canada. Named after the late Canadian biochemist and Nobel Laureate, the prizes are sponsored annually by NSERC. For more on CAGIS and its founder, please turn to p. 22.

Peter Wilson, MCIC, is the recipient of the 2004 AstraZeneca Canada award in chemistry for his outstanding contributions to the field of synthetic organic chemistry.

Wilson is a professor of chemistry at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The award recognizes the work that Wilson’s research group has undertaken at SFU to synthesize complex natural products that have potent anti-inflammatory, anti-HIV and neuroprotective properties. His research efforts concern the invention of new and efficient synthetic methods for drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry.

In Memoriam The CIC extends its condolences to the family of Drew Fisher, MCIC.

Underwater Hockey Puck It’s a deceptively simple sport featuring a puck weighing 42 to 49 ounces similar to the one used in ice hockey. Two teams attempt to “flick” the puck into the opponents’ 10-foot -wide goal using one-foot-long wooden sticks. The playing area is 40–49.5 feet wide and 69–82.5 feet long.

Octopush derives its name from the era when the sport was played with eight players to a team.

The sport has a hitch—the players need to be exceptionally good at holding their breath. The game is played nearly 7–10 feet underwater, which is why each player is equipped with a diving mask, snorkel, and fins. The game is fast, furious, and an excellent way to keep fit.

Octopush was invented 50 years ago by English diving instructor Alan Blake. It is particularly popular in Southern Hemisphere countries, although the 1998 World Championship matches were played in San Jose, CA. Octopush is poised to gain in dynamism, precision, and variety, thanks to a newly developed puck. The new puck is the brainchild of veteran octopush player Charles Simms, who was able to incorporate all his experience into the design.

“I was mainly concerned with improving the grip between stick and puck,” Simms said. “Being able to guide and control the puck close to the stick is essential for successful play. At the same time, the puck must slide very smoothly on the pool tiles to allow fast, accurate, passing.” Bayer MaterialScience supported Simms in his development work.

The traditional octopush puck features a lead core and a top and underside consisting of an elastomer-modified acetal copolymer. Use of Bayer’s Desmopan™ 385 thermoplastic polyurethane is a new feature. It was chosen mainly for its good gripping properties, its very good wear and cut resistance. Desmopan 385 also doesn’t swell when wet and displays good resistance to chlorinated water.

Another innovation is the procedure for connecting the plastic parts. The top and bottom of the puck are clipped together, and the narrow TPU edge is moulded on so that it forms a flush overlap with the top and underside. Snap connectors are used for mechanical fastening.

“This design featuring edges made from soft, elastic TPU ensures that the puck doesn’t damage the tiles if it hits the pool floor at an angle,” says Simms.

Ontario’s Ethanol Mandate Ontario has introduced legislation that will require that gasoline sold in Ontario contain an average of five percent ethanol by 2007.

The Premier’s press release says, “Ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel, so this means cleaner air. It’s made from agricultural crops, so this will be a major boost for rural communities.

And it’s great news for ethanol producers, who can now move forward on new investments and jobs, helping to make Ontario a leader in the emerging bio-economy. Ontario’s 2007 target for ethanol would be equivalent to taking 200,000 vehicles off the road or reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by about 800,000 tonnes. It has the potential to spark 3,000 new jobs and as much as $500 million in new investment in rural Ontario.”

If this legislation is passed, effective January 1, 2007, each wholesaler’s annual gasoline sales must achieve an average of at least five percent ethanol content. This may be accomplished by the actual blending of ethanol or through the trading of renewable fuel credits (yet to be developed). The province also wants to encourage innovative, state-of-the-art technologies such as cellulose-to-ethanol production, which use the non-food portion of crops.

BayerMaterialScienceNAFTA Industry Canada

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 5

6 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

SPARKing Student Interest

Interactive Pets Motivate Students

A student writing program puts a fresh spin on science.

A unique program that sees students writing news articles about research is helping to bring science to the mainstream. SPARK—an acronym for Students Promoting Awareness of Research Knowledge—was started at the University of Guelph 15 years ago to give students an opportunity to learn how to write research news. NSERC added momentum to the successful program over five years ago and has helped launched SPARK at more than 20 research-intensive educational institutions across Canada.

SPARK is also the communications arm of the Advanced Foods and Materials Network (AFMNet), the only food-related network in the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence program. AFMNet is a $22.3 million network dedicated to developing commercially viable, socially acceptable, value-added products and processes from agricultural resources.

The network’s successful proposal outlined close involvement with the SPARK program in order to raise the profile of science and research across Canada.

Last year, AFMNet employed SPARK students to coordinate and write a national research magazine that highlights AFMNet research activity across the country. The finished product, Advance, features news articles about some of the network’s 87 researchers from 24 universities across Canada who specialize in biochemistry, engineering, physics, food science, nutrition, health, law, and society.

AFMNet’s focus on collaboration and networking will help identify gaps in existing research personnel and capacity, and will support the training of highly qualified individuals destined to become leaders in industry, academia and government.

Visit www.uoguelph.ca/research/ communications/spark/index.shtml for more information about SPARK. Visit www.afmnet.ca for more information about AFMNet. Visit www.afmnet.ca/Publications/ ResearchMagazine/English/Advance. pdf to view a copy of Advance.

When Monica Sturgess noticed that students in her first-year class were not doing the required course readings, she enlisted the help of some ViPs—not very important persons, but virtual interactive pets.

The virtual interactive pet is an on-line, selfgrading quiz that Sturgess developed with the help of the eLearning Innovation Centre (eLINC) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) Surrey.

Students in the TechOne foundations of teamwork and communications course complete the quiz and get graded instantly. Moreover, for every test they complete, they receive a reward—such as an on-line game or video clip.

“You don’t know what you’ll get, that’s the fun part,” Sturgess says.

Peer pressure is another incentive to get a high mark in the quiz, she says. When students log on, they see their scores—and their classmates’ scores—depicted as an icon whizzing around the screen. The higher the score, the larger the icon.

The icons were developed by SFU Surrey students. Agnes Misiurny developed the original icons, while Adam Bognar and Travis Kirton developed the current ones.

Sturgess says the name virtual interactive pet came about because initially, “the idea was to create a tamagotchi-like character that students had to take care of. A tamagotchi is a virtual pet that originated in Japan. This year, it evolved instead to a different type of image, but I felt the pet name still fit with the new evolution of the ViP because it is still something that students have complete responsibility for scoring themselves. Their reward is to play with it—in this case, to play the game at each level they achieve.” ViP helps motivate students to learn core course concepts, Sturgess says.

“They get to sharpen their academic writing practices and it encourages self-direction and responsibility, as it gives them 100 percent control over a portion of their term grade (20 percent). It is also self-grading, so instructors don’t spend time in marking, but can oversee how students are doing on a weekly basis and easily identify any low-performing students in order to get them back on track.”

Photo by Ian MacDonald

Terry Lavender, Simon Fraser University News

Photo by Edgár Nemere

New Penaltie$ for Polluters The Ontario government will introduce legislation that will ensure polluters face immediate consequences for their actions.

“Our commitment to safe, clean, liveable communities means holding polluters accountable for spills,” says Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The proposed legislation would impose environmental penalties of up to $20,000 per day for individuals and $100,000 per day for corporations. Unlike fines, which are handed down by the courts, these penalties would be assessed by Ministry of the Environment officials within a few days of an unlawful spill.

The province says the new system encourages companies to make greater efforts to prevent spills and provides additional incentives to clean them up quickly. When a penalty has been imposed, polluters could still face prosecution.

The proposed legislation would also hold corporate officers and directors more accountable. A conviction could result in sentences ranging from fines against a company to up to five years of jail time for its directors and officers. The legislation would also create a special community clean-up fund. The province and municipalities would use the fund to clean up spills and repair environmental damage.

Camford Chemical Report

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 7

NEWS BRIEFS NOUVELLES EN BREF

Canada Tops U.S. in Chemical Productivity In November 2004, the Conference Board of Canada released a report called “Performance and Potential 2004–05—How Can Canada Prosper in Tomorrow’s World?” The study compared productivity in a range of industries between Canada and the U.S. Overall, Canadian per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was 84 percent of that in the U.S. in 2003. Much of this difference is attributed to productivity in Canada being only 82 percent of that in the U.S. However, in 10 out of 29 industries studied, productivity was higher in Canada—one of these industries was chemicals. Productivity in the Canadian chemical industry was 6 percent higher than in the counterpart U.S. industry.

In both countries, chemicals are a big industry. On the basis of GDP, it is the largest industry in the U.S. and third in Canada. The Conference Board found that of all Canadian industries, the chemical industry made the most dramatic improvement in productivity relative to its U.S. counterpart. Between 1987 and 2002, productivity increased at an average of 3.9 percent per year in Canada vs. 1.6 percent in the U.S. For the basic chemicals subsector, the difference was even more pronounced. Canadian productivity in this subsector grew 5.4 percent per year in Canada vs. only 1.4 percent in the U.S. The pharmaceutical subsector in Canada has also been a strong performer in recent years.

You can download the study, after first registering with the Conference Board, at www.conferenceboard.ca/pandp/.

Industry Canada

8 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Building Boom Favours Research Labs A recent survey by CanWest has found that Canadian universities are building research facilities faster than classrooms, despite significant growth in enrolment.

The results, published in the National Post, show that full-time enrolment in Canada increased by 130,000 students over the past three years, to 784,000. Yet at 15 of 20 universities surveyed, research labs are being built faster than teaching space.

In some cases at a ratio as high as eight square metres for research space to one square metre for classrooms. The story suggests that both provincial and federal funding, specifically earmarked for research, is driving the building boom.

University of Saskatchewan (U of S) provost and vice-president academic, Michael Atkinson, said universities are following the money. “Things do have to balance out,” he said. “We can’t lavish funds on these projects and forget about classroom space and libraries. We’ve always tried to balance it, but we have to go where the money goes.”

The survey notes that the building boom at the U of S heavily favours research with 24,486 square metres of research space, including the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, built since 2000, compared to 4,562 square metres of teaching space. And the trend is likely to continue. The 20 universities surveyed reported 164 new academic buildings or additions either constructed or planned and of those, only nine involved faculties of arts and social sciences. The fine arts or contemporary arts account for just four. The total cost of these projects is $341.2 million.

“We’re not talking anything like balance or parity,” Atkinson told the National Post about the bias against the arts.

“I think people in these places can legitimately complain. We’ve tried to selectively recognize strong performance and try to make adjustments to our own capital plan to help. You simply can’t compete with these [government] infusions of cash.”

University of Saskatchewan

CHEMPUTING

Picture Perfect Presentations

I

seem to be the odd man out. Essentially every computerized presentation given today uses PowerPoint. People even get to the point of saying “PowerPoint projectors” or “PowerPoint presentations.”

For my water treatment courses, I prefer the superior graphics capabilities of Lotus Freelance (ACCN, January 1989) over the mediocrity of PowerPoint. Freelance enables me to make the system flowsheets and sketches I need to describe equipment and processes. Lately, I find that I need something more. Some people can’t visualize the equipment from a flowsheet. They need to see photos. Adding these makes the presentation much more meaningful. It also introduces some new problems—with both PowerPoint and Freelance.

These are vector graphics programs. When you include photos, you are adding bitmapped graphics. It’s simple enough to add them, but one look with Windows Explorer shows that the file size goes sky high. Add a couple dozen photos and a modest presentation can jump from less than 1 MB to over 50 MB. Just try e-mailing that to anyone. My first attempt to control the file size was to imbed a link to the graphic rather than the graphic itself. Both programs offer that option. A complication took me by surprise when I opened Freelance. It took over five minutes to load as it searched all over my hard drive to find the pictures and bring them into the presentation. That process would have to be repeated every time I presented the course or made any modifications to the slides. I needed a better method.

To get around the problem, I decided it was best to accept that vector graphics programs are designed to handle vector graphics (i.e. flowsheets and sketches) and bitmapped programs are designed to handle bitmapped

graphics (e.g. digital photos). If you ask a vector-graphics program to cope with bitmapped graphics, you get huge files. If you ask a bitmap graphics program to handle vector graphics you get the jaggies with any line that isn’t pure horizontal or vertical. With this in mind, I’m sticking with Freelance for all my flowsheets, sketches, tables, and bulleted text. When I come to a page where I want to insert a photo, I use one of two options. Both involve converting my slides to PDFs with Adobe Acrobat, using that same version 6.0 Pro that I used last month to archive files.

My first option is to produce my Freelance slide with all the captions, etc., and a space for the photo. After I have made this into a PDF, I go to the Acrobat menu and select Tools, Advanced Editing, Forms and the Button Tool. This gives me a crosshair that I can move to set the location and size of the button. Watch that word “button” as it can be any size up to the full size of the page. Once I have made that button, I go into its properties and under the Options tab, select Icon for the Layout. This brings up a browse button that lets me select any graphics file or even a Word document and insert it into that button.

Once it’s in place, there are a number of settings to play with, such as borders. It’s even possible to select an action for it to perform when you click the mouse on the figure. I have a flowsheet of a waste treatment system for a plating plant. The last component in the chain is the filter press. Somewhere on the Web, I once found an animated GIF file that runs through the operation of a filter press.

I made an invisible button that fits within the block for the filter press on the flowsheet by selecting the Layout as Label Only with the border and fill colours as No Color.

When I click on the filter press, up comes the

Marvin D. Silbert, FCIC

animated graphic. The only weakness with this first option is that if you modify the Freelance drawing, you will overwrite the file and have to go through the above steps again.

The second option is the one I choose most frequently. I use Freelance to set up all the vector-graphics pages and set up the all my bitmapped graphics separately with Aunt Abigail’s Photo Album (ACCN, May 2003).

I can put one or several photos on the page, set the background colour and add captions or borders. Aunt Abigail can then print it as a PDF. It’s a simple matter with Acrobat to insert that page into the main PDF made from the Freelance file. If you do anything that modifies the main file and write over it, you still lose the photo pages you have added. But in this case, you can recover them intact from Aunt Abigail.

Acrobat also offers a number of editing features to mark up a slide or page. From the menu bar go to Tools, Advanced Commenting and Drawing for a wide choice of arrows, boxes, and even clouds. If you want boxes with text in them, select instead Text Field and you can have a wide variety of box and text styles and colours from which to choose.

It seems that there is almost nothing that Acrobat can’t do. Can the viewer tell whether a presentation was created using Acrobat or PowerPoint? Only if they watch you start it up. The slides look the same, but the files are a lot smaller.

You can reach our Chemputing editor, 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.

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 9

CHEMFUSION

Catching the Hare The splendours of oxidizing agents

M

y high school chemistry classes were not impressive. We memorized lots of formulas and drew loads of pictures of experimental set-ups. We became very adept at drawing condensers, Erlenmeyer flasks, and Bunsen burners with a template. But we rarely got a chance to actually perform an experiment. In fact, I only recall one. We heated a mix of manganese dioxide and potassium chlorate to produce oxygen, which we collected and tested with a glowing splint. The ability of oxygen to support combustion was driven home as the splint burst into flame. Potassium chlorate, KClO3, we learned, could liberate its oxygen content when heated in the presence of manganese dioxide, which served as a catalyst. It was an “oxidizing agent.” I was so impressed that I snitched a bit of the chlorate to experiment with at home, carrying it in my pocket.

Not a smart thing to do.

Although I don’t think I realized it at the time, our experiment was very similar to the one Joseph Priestley performed in 1774 that led to the discovery of oxygen. Priestley heated mercuric oxide, HgO, and collected the gas produced. “What surprised me more than I can well express, was that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame ...” Priestley, though, didn’t recognize the gas as an element, calling it “dephlogisticated air,” in light of the prevailing belief that flammable materials contained phlogiston, a substance without colour, odour, taste, or weight that was given off during combustion.

“Phlogisticated” substances were those that contained phlogiston, and on being burned, produced “dephlogisticated” air, which is what Priestley thought he had isolated.

10 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Joe Schwarcz, MCIC

Although Priestley usually gets credit for the discovery of oxygen, he certainly was not the first person to produce the gas.

Michael Sendivogius, a Polish alchemist, found back in 1604 that heating saltpeter (KNO3) produced what he called “the elixir of life.” Some historians even believe that Cornelis Drebbel, who, using wood and greased leather, designed the world’s first submarine in 1621, explored the possibility of heating potassium nitrate to supply his crew of 12 rowers with breathable air.

Two years prior to Priestley’s experiment, Carl Wilhelm Scheele in Sweden produced oxygen from mercuric oxide. He recorded his observations, but did not publish them until several years later. Priestley, on the other hand, carefully documented his work and published his results promptly. Antoine Lavoisier correctly interpreted Priestley’s experiment as having produced a new element, but did not attribute much credit to the Englishman. This, in spite of historical evidence that Lavoisier’s experiments with oxygen were prompted by a meeting with Priestley. When taken to task on this issue, Lavoisier commented that, “those that start the hare do not always catch it.”

While there is controversy about who discovered oxygen, there is no doubt that it came about by heating some oxidizing agent. This then fueled the idea that oxidizing agents could enhance combustion. Potassium chlorate, for example, made matches and sparklers possible. Other uses were discovered as well. Sodium chlorate proved to be a good source of oxygen for combination with chlorine to yield chlorine dioxide, a better bleaching agent

for paper than plain chlorine. Amazingly, sodium chlorate even turned out to be an effective weed killer. But a weed killer with an occasional side effect. It caused farmers’ pants to explode!

Ragwort is a weed that was a huge problem in fields where dairy cows grazed in the early years of the twentieth century in New Zealand. Some of the alkaloids the plant contains can cause liver failure and kill cattle. So it was with relish that farmers began to spread sodium chlorate on their fields after learning that the chemical was effective in destroying ragwort. What they didn’t realize was that sodium chlorate was a strong oxidizing agent, which, when combined with combustible materials like cotton or wool, could cause violent explosions.

Even laundering pants exposed to chlorate left enough of a residue to produce dramatic effects. In one widely reported case, a farmer’s pants were drying in front of a fire and exploded with a loud report. He had enough presence of mind to hurl the remnants out of the house where “they smouldered on the lawn with a series of minor detonations.”

I guess this could have happened to the pants I had on when I snitched the chlorate.

Luckily, we didn’t dry our clothes in front of a fireplace.

Popular science writer, Joe Schwarcz, MCIC, is 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.

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 11

PROOF POSITIVE Promoting a positive reaction to the chemical industries

C

hemical. Just the word itself can evoke strong feelings and images. The media often report on “toxic” chemicals, usually accompanied by a skull and crossbones symbol. Chemical soup, blobs, spills, and the like are easy to understand, and interesting to report on. Chemicals are never mentioned as essential building blocks, but rather as substances that are added or harmful. At the same time that the word “chemical” can raise fears, the word “chemistry” often produces a completely different—and positive—reaction.

Chemistry is linked to science, discovery, research and development, and even the Nobel Prize.

Unlike a number of other industries, the chemical industry must overcome the instinctive, often negative, reaction to its product. So, we are coming out of our shell. The Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association (CCPA), which represents over 90 percent of industrial chemical production in Canada, has in the past year introduced a new brand for the industry and for its flagship initiative, Responsible Care®.

The first step was to create a name for the industry built on the excellent reputation CCPA enjoys with its stakeholders across the country. Many thought a “re-branding” was not necessary, since research undertaken with our key stakeholders indicated that our image was already good. The ethic to continuously improve prevailed, and so we took the first step with the slight change of the brand name to “Canada’s Chemical Producers.” While we are still the CCPA, our brand now better reflects our members, not the association. Our tagline, “Chemistry—a part of everyday life,” replaces our old tagline, “Pioneers in Responsible Care.” This allows us to talk about our roots in chemistry and the importance of our products to modern life. We’ve also updated the brand for Responsible Care.

Michael Bourque

Our sister association in the U.S., the American Chemistry Council, re-branded from their previous moniker, “the Chemical Manufacturers Association.” They chose to highlight the “business of chemistry” in their name and in their tagline, “Good chemistry makes it possible.” This approach is designed to encourage people to think about the link to chemistry, and has been very successful south of the border.

BASF launched a re-branding campaign last March. They are known as “BASF—The Chemical Company.” This is the beginning of a trend to explain what chemicals are, how they are developed, and the care taken to ensure the safe manufacturing, transportation, and end use of chemical products. BASF has proven to be particularly adept at explaining the benefits of their products.

We thought long and hard before we took out the reference to Responsible Care in our tagline. We are justifiably proud of our role in creating Responsible Care, particularly now that it is practised in 52 countries. At the same time, we felt it was time to start talking about the science and the products. We also felt comfortable that Share especially your CIC memories Responsible Care could stand on its own, if we introduced and a supporting statement that explained itsmemorabilia essence. with ACCN. To really understand what Responsible Care meant to our Send your amaterials to of industry members, we conducted interviews with number employees. One person expressed iteditorial@accn.ca this way, “You know, it’s not mail them to the a program to meet expectations or orregulations.

It’sNational to go Office. beyond what’s required.” That is why we changed the tagline to, “Beyond Please label each piece what’s required,” from the previous, “A total commitment.”

Now with your name, a caption, the meswhen someone sees the logo on a train or truck, hopefully and your complete address sage is clear.

to ensure its safe return to you.

12 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

If we are going to tackle perceptions about chemicals, we need to tell the full story The chemical industry is often blamed for incidents that occur across a range of situations—on the roads, in manufacturing facilities that are not owned and operated by our members, and by companies operating in communities like Sarnia, ON (a.k.a.

Chemical Valley). For this reason, we are increasingly driven to differentiate ourselves and to draw attention to what makes us better, and that is Responsible Care.

Responsible Care is not a voluntary program. Yes, it requires companies to willfully participate, but once they commit, they cannot pick and choose which aspects they will abide by. It contains key provisions such as mandatory performance reporting, mandatory dialogue to understand and meet stakeholder expectations, mandatory personal commitment by the CEO, mandatory three-year verification, and public reporting by critics, local citizens, and experts.

Our members deserve to stand out from the crowd for the effort and resources they

ACCN

put into being the best performers in terms of health, safety, and the environment. Our efforts to ensure the CCPA and Responsible Care brands support their hard work make sense. If we are going to tackle perceptions about chemicals, we need to tell the full story of who we are, what we make to enrich the lives of Canadians, and the responsible

way in which we do business. We are Canada’s Chemical Producers.

Michael Bourque is the vice-president of public affairs at CCPA. He notes that if he was a calf, he’d be less enthusiastic about branding.

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

REQUEST FOR READER RESPONSE What do you think of our name: L’Actualité chimique canadienne/Canadian Chemical News(ACCN)?

Does it suit the magazine?

Does it represent our readers?

Would you change the name? Why? What would you change it to?

Send your reply to Action will not necessarily be taken but

your opinion counts!

editorial@accn.ca MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 13

Wonders never cease.

Chemical wonders especially.

Can we remind the public of how wonderful chemistry can be? Can we attract Canada’s top students back to the field?

TOP OF THE LIST

T

he word “chemistry” has been an inspiring term for generations dating back to the ages of alchemy. It used to resonate deep in the hearts of people on the same level as words such as “wonder,” “creativity,” “magical,” and “marvelous.” Rightly so.

Chemistry managed to do this by playing a key role in creating the modern economy, fulfilling basic needs such as feeding the world’s populations, leading to various medical wonders that save millions of lives and improve people’s health, producing essential materials to fulfill the modern and the futuristic needs of humankind—such as in the exploration of space, the development of electronics, the search for global energy sources, and much more. In fact, almost every major modern scientific achievement affecting our lives is somewhat related to chemistry. It follows suit that chemists were once society’s heroes. Not so long ago, the field of chemistry enjoyed picking from the best and brightest students.

Despite all of chemistry’s great achievements, chemistry lost its lustre—suddenly and unexpectedly. Chemistry no longer automatically attracts the best and brightest students. It’s no longer at the top of their list. Entire chemistry departments have been eliminated from some major universities in the U.K. due to a lack of student interest.

The American Chemical Society, boasting to be the largest scientific organization on earth, now faces serious debate about the possibility of changing its name. Society in general seems to shun chemistry. To a certain extent, when the general public hears the words “chemistry” or “chemical,” the first response is often unease and nervousness.

Somehow, society has lost faith in the industry. Everyone in our chemistry community asks the same question, “What went wrong?”

When we look around, chemists are still creating as many “miracles” as in days past. Chemistry is still making great contributions to

… there is indeed enormous creativity, beauty, and logic associated with chemistry.

14 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Chao-Jun Li, MCIC the enhancement of the quality of life, but the public is not appreciative. Chemists still lead many innovations in industry, but students are not responding. How can we get back to the top of their list?

According to a colleague, it is a real concern that the very best students are gravitating to studies in business, medicine, computer science, and law. Certainly, one reason is the “economic factor.”

These professions are often perceived as higher paying relative to the efforts invested. However, this is not the only reason for our profession’s lack of attractiveness. Many chemists earn much more than the average salary for these professions. Humans are emotional beings and people frequently are moved not only by economic factors, but also by noble causes. We often tend to identify ourselves with role models, some of whom even hold hero status in our society. Vivid media images of explosions, fires, and accidents related to chemical products are a major factor influencing the decrease in public interest in chemistry. Often the only chemical compounds known to the general public are the ones associated with health or environmental problems—PCBs, DDT, CFCs, etc. Balancing this limited knowledge base with the vastness of chemistry is an enormous task for chemistry and its interface with the public.

What can we do? The word “chemistry” is innocent enough.

Changing the name is not a solution. Chemistry can accomplish many good or bad things. The solution, as simplistic as it may seem, is to create a positive image with the public—and thus with students making choices. The key is to maintain the good things while eliminating, preventing, or minimizing the bad things.

One major challenge in attracting students back to chemistry is to re-acquaint both the public and students (including the very young) with the joys and fascination of working in our profession. Let’s remind them of all the wonderful things chemistry can do to improve life. McGill University’s Office for Science and Society has made a great impact on this front. However, much more effort is required from chemists on a global scale. In fact, the U.S. National Science Foundation now requires every funded project to have an outreach component on science devoted towards both children K–12 and the general public.

As a personal experience, having grown up in a small village in China, chemistry was the least attractive of all subjects to me in high school. Most of the people in my village had never even heard of it. In fact, I was completely devoted to becoming an artist or a mathematician because I was fascinated by the creativity and beauty associated with the arts and the logic of mathematics.

In my limited knowledge as a 15-year-old, I thought chemistry lacked these qualities. It is only when I was exposed to chemistry in college that I became completely enthralled with the subject. I discovered that there is indeed enormous creativity, beauty, and logic associated with chemistry.

Education can only take this problem so far. What will really improve our image is to find innovative ways to eliminate and prevent the adverse components of chemistry. At the same time, we must continue advancing chemistry forward through innovations in our research. Problems that we must tackle include: • How to make chemicals (including materials) and processes inherently safer; • How to make things more quickly, easily, cleanly, and efficiently so that they are both more economical and less wasteful; • How to prevent the formation of all unwanted by-products and waste; • How to design compounds that will not go astray in properties;

• How to design chemicals that will be innocuous after their desired function has been fulfilled.

The emerging field of green chemistry was created to answer these questions.

Engineering plays an active role in addressing these problems. Whether it is a reaction vessel or the way reactions are run, they have all borne the same signature since the early stages of chemistry. Is there a better design? This question led to the development of green engineering. For example, as a result, several companies have devised desktop spin-disk-flow-reactors that possess the same processing capacity as traditional industrial scale reactors.

Personal economics are also an important factor to consider. Traditionally, we have pressured our best students to model themselves along our career path models.

Anything else has been regarded as inferior.

There are real opportunities for innovative degree programs involving chemistry. For example, the combination of a chemistry degree with a business degree is one of the hottest sells on the job market. Similarly, most of the important medical breakthroughs are created or catalyzed by people who were trained as chemists. Chemists are leading the fastchanging face of the electronics industry and have spearheaded many of the innovations in the next great technology—nanotechnology.

In law, there has been a shortage of patent

attorneys with chemistry degrees (who are highly paid, incidentally). Finally, there are many scientific and technological innovations that have led to new industrial sectors, which started from chemistry. These “chemists” should be regarded as highly as any other chemists and the high salaries of “chemists” in these fields are a source of great pride for our profession. I strongly urge the chemistry community to embrace these challenges, and to encourage our young to pursue hybridized career paths. Courses and programs such as “How to become a chemistry-based entrepreneur” and “Chemistry and law,” etc., will be very attractive to young people making career choices and eventually lead to the insertion of chemically knowledgeable people into other professions.

It is hard to imagine that any scientific or technological innovation could occur without chemistry. Hopefully, the combination of education, research innovations, and our own reforms will put the name “chemistry” back at the top of the list where it rightly belongs. Chemistry will shine once again.

Chao-Jun Li, MCIC, is a professor of organic chemistry and a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in green chemistry at McGill University in Montréal, QC. He received the 2001 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (Academic) in the U.S.

88th CANADIAN CHEMISTRY CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION Undergraduate Student Poster Competition Are you working on a research project and want to share your results? Do you have a paper to present at a Canadian Society for Chemistry Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference and would like to present it again in poster format? Are you interested in presenting a poster for your first time? Here is an opportunity to show your peers and chemical professionals what you can do.

DEADLINE:

April 16, 2005 w w w. c s c 2 0 0 5 . c a MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 15

REMEMBERWHEN 16 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

National Chemistry Week La semaine nationale de la chimie N

ational Chemistry Week continues to be the CIC’s main focus for outreach to students and the general public. Each year, groups of volunteers get together at malls, in science centres, and at educational institutions to publicize information about chemistry during the week in October following Thanksgiving.

And each year, these volunteers reach thousands of people.

• Sarnia’s LANXESS Inc. and Imperial Oil chemical employees presented 10 two-hour sessions for grades 7 and 8 students from four schools. Thunder Bay’s Lakehead University students and professors visited high schools throughout their city.

• The Calgary Local Section hosted its NCW Poster Competition. Students from kindergarten to grade 9 submitted posters on the general theme of “Science Around Us.” Over 138 posters were received from 24 different schools in the city.

• The University College of the Cariboo hosted an Open House and Career Day. A hands-on chemistry display, a hydrogen rockets competition, and a “Wonders of Chemistry” show were some of the activities carried out.

• The University of New Brunswick organized a variety of events. Coffee with the Proffee has been held for the past few years, helping to create a connection between students in the chemistry program and their professors. A student employment experience discussion was held for the first time, allowing students to share their summer employment and co-op placement experiences with their peers.

• Malls and science centres are important venues for meeting the public. Displays were set up in many cities across the country such as Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Toronto. Calgary’s event attracted over 120 volunteers of all ages.

• Competitions are well established in many of the high schools: puzzles, contest, and facts of the day acquaint students with chemistry. University College of the Fraser Valley invites students to the college for a lab skills contest—now in its ninth year.

• Chemistry shows are fun for children while teaching them about chemistry. Handson experiments help make chemistry come to life in the minds of young and old.

• And of course, the annual National Crystal Growing Competition. This competition remains popular across the country.

Details on these activities and more can be found on the National Chemistry Week Web site at www.cheminst.ca/ncw.

Anyone interested in getting involved as a volunteer or who is looking for presentations for local events should refer to the Web site for coordinator information. Public Understanding of Chemistry has expanded outside of this oneweek National Chemistry Week event, so don’t be discouraged if you missed out on this week of activities.

THANK YOU TO ALL THE VOLUNTEERS WHO CAME OUT!

NATIONAL CHEMISTRY WEEK October 15 to 22, 2005

LA SEMAINE NATIONALE DE LA CHIMIE du 15 au 22 octobre 2005

www.cheminst.ca/ncw MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 17

18 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Photos by Ian MacDonald

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 19

The National Crystal Growing Competition Public Understanding of Chemistry The 2004 Sponsors Gold BASF Canada Inc. Merck Frosst Centre for Therapeutic Research

Silver Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd. H.L. Blachford Ltd. Nexen Chemicals NOVA Chemicals Corporation Rhodia Canada Inc. Rohm and Haas Canada Inc. Syncrude Canada Ltd.

Bronze ATOFINA Canada Inc. Canada’s Chemical Producers’ Association Canada’s Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies Cognis Canada Corporation John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd. Meloche Monnex Recochem Inc. Seastar Chemicals Inc. Syngenta Crop Protection (Canada) Inc. Torcan Chemical Ltd.

20 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

T

he National Crystal Growing Competition is organized for high school students and their teachers.

Anachemia Science supplies the chemicals so that everyone starts off on an even footing.

Teams compete to grow the largest and bestquality crystals. Judging is done regionally with the top entries from each region competing for the first place at the national level. Members of the national first-place team and the school they represent receive awards thanks to BASF’s sponsorship. These include T-shirts and certificates for the individual winners and cheques for the school towards its science program.

The CIC would like to thank all the local judges as well as George Ferguson, department of chemistry, University of Guelph, national judge, for their assistance in judging these crystals.

The 2005 National Crystal Growing Competition winners are:

Best Overall Crystal · First place: Jean-Phillipe Jacques and Catherine Gagne of Polyvalente des Abénaquis in Saint-Prosper, QC, with an overall crystal rating of 68.1 percent. · Second place: Christopher Boudreau of École Monseigneur-Labrie in Havre-SaintPierre, QC, received a 64.4 percent rating. · Third place: Natasha Rajan and Edmond Chen of Harry Ainlay High School in Edmonton, AB, received a 58.9 percent rating.

Best Quality Crystal · Thaksa Sethukavalan, Pavithiraa Ravindran, and Anu Bhagat of Middlefield Collegiate Institute, in Toronto, ON, whose crystal had a 9.78/10 clarity. Its weight was 7.477g. The class from École secondaire Roger-Comtois in Loretteville, QC, also had a ranking of 9.78 for clarity and the crystal was only 0.006 g.

Best Teacher Category · Éric Fallu of École Monseigneur-Labrie in Havre-Saint-Pierre, QC, for an overall score of 72.3 percent.

Speaking of Crystals …

“The enthusiasm for this competition is high. We had to purchase extra material to accommodate all the teams. It’s a great program for them. Student teams check their crystal before and after school daily for the five weeks. This is a great accomplishment for them.”

Lyle Sadavoy Science teacher from Middlefield Collegiate Institute

« L’intérêt manifesté pour cette compétition est prodigieux; les élèves y participent en très grands nombres. Ils sont vraiment déterminés et s’impliquent à fond durant les cinq semaines où les cristaux se développent. Nos élèves ont très bien réussi durant ces dernières années et je suis très fier d’eux. » Hugo Samson Professeur de sciences à la Polyvalente des Abénaquis

« J’ai grandement apprécié mon expérience de croissance de cristal car c’est un peu comme un enfant, on l’aide à croitre en beauté pour qu’il soit le plus gros possible sans qu’il ne s’abime trop. C’est une expérience qui demande beaucoup d’attention, c’est ce que j’ai le plus aimé. » Christopher Boudreau Deuxième place, de l’École Monseigneur-Labrie

Homeschoolers of all ages are also getting involved in the crystal growing competition. Some of the younger students have even entered their crystals for judging, and no matter the outcome, they all seem to enjoy the experience! The mother of the youngest chemist, Duncan Silversides, aged 6, describes how they grew crystals:

Special Thanks “The spirit of friendly scientific competition is alive and well in Canada, if the continued involvement of schools around the country in the NCW Crystal Growing Competition is any indication. One of the proofs is the steady improvement in the quality of the crystals submitted year after year. Despite occasional challenges presented by Murphy’s Law, my involvement at the national level over the past decade has been one of great satisfaction. The time has come to move on to new adventures. Thanks to the CIC for this opportunity to be of service and best wishes to my successor.”

Chris Young, MCIC National Crystal Competition Coordinator The CIC would like to thank Chris Young who has participated as a local crystal growing competition organizer for many years in Ottawa, and Guelph, ON. Young has been the national coordinator since 1996. He is passing on this national role as of 2005 to Denis Bussières, FCIC, of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.

“What did we do?”

Well, take one 6-year-old boy who is upset about a very small seed crystal that dissolved. Add another 10 g of the chemical to the solution. Then realize that there is too much water in the jar and decide to pour out half of it before trying to saturate the remaining solution. All the while, the adult should be looking forward to suspending another miniature crystal with thread.

As the 6-year-old boy is about to pour the solution down the sink, grab a science dish and catch the solution. Put it on the kitchen counter under a ceiling fan for about eight hours. Then leave it sitting out overnight while the temperature goes up and down.

I don’t think this methodology is on the Web site.

But the seed crystals are gorgeous! We have lots to share, but I’m not sure if that’s within content rules or not.

Christine Nicholls

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 21

Reaching Out

REPORTS ON INVENTIVE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

GIRL POWER

JOIN CAGIS. JOIN THE FUN!

22 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Photos by Ian MacDonald

A

t the age of nine, Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko noticed an alarming trend among her female school peers.

“The girls hated science. They thought of scientists as old men with crazy hair,” says the psychology major. “I’ve never had that anti-science mentality with my mother being a scientist and my father an engineer. I wanted to change the view of people in my class.”

Determined, Vingilis-Jaremko invited a female researcher to speak about science. After the talk, another realization hit—if the girls in her class had these prejudices against science, surely many others did too. This led to the genesis of the Canadian Association for Girls in Science (CAGIS), a club for girls aged 7 to 16 dedicated to exploring science, technology, and math.

“One of our aims is to normalize science, not just physics and chemistry, but what’s all around us,” says VingilisJaremko, who oversees all national activities in her role as president. With 12 chapters across Canada, CAGIS boasts thousands of members and shows no signs of slowing down. The girls compare science notes in an interactive virtual clubhouse and attend monthly meetings. Part of its popularity stems from the fact that CAGIS promotes science in a “fun” way. Members meet monthly for 90-minute activity sessions to learn about science in the broadest sense.

“The girls go to the workplace of a woman in science.

They learn a bit about that area and then follow it up with a lot of fun hands-on activities,” says Vingilis-Jaremko.

“Unfortunately, sometimes science is taught purely out of a textbook, which can be boring for children. By doing it in this way, it really changes the image these girls have of science.”

Another message Vingilis-Jaremko tries to convey through CAGIS is that science can be a fun pastime for the curious, not an all-consuming profession. While her major is psychology, she studies everything from ecology to French. “I’m personally interested in so many different things that I didn’t even want to choose a major at first,” she says. “We try to tell the girls that it’s okay to have a number of interests; you can still be interested in the arts, in sports, and be in science at the same time.”

While she’s campaigned tirelessly to promote science, Vingilis-Jaremko isn’t one to pat herself on the back. When forced to reflect, however, she recognizes how far CAGIS has come. “The organization has been in existence for so long it’s hard to step back,” she says. “It happens slowly, step-by-step. Every next step is logical, but when you step back and look at it, it’s incredible.”

Karen Kelly, reprinted with permission from the University of Toronto Bulletin.

CAGIS always welcomes and supports the development of new chapters across Canada and encourages women and men in STEM to volunteer to host a CAGIS event for your local chapter. Visit www.cagis.ca for more information.

Call for Nominations to the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame The Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame was created in 1991 and is now part of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, ON. The objectives are to honour Canadians who have made outstanding contributions to society in developing science and engineering,and to promote role models that will help attract young Canadians to careers in science, engineering, and technology.

Nominations for induction to this Hall of Fame can be made by individuals and organizations. Nominations of exceptional chemists, past or present, will be considered. Two or three inductees are selected every year. Inductees will join the ranks of Gerhard Herzberg, HFCIC; J. C. Polanyi, HFCIC; Raymond Lemieux, HFCIC; and Michael Smith, HFCIC. Nominations should include as much supporting documentation as possible.

The Inductee Selection Committee consists of people from various disciplines, and hence the nomination should be prepared with utmost care and details.

Details about the Hall of Fame and the nomination process are available at www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/about/ hallfame/u_main_e.cfm.

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 23

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STUDENTS FIND SWEET INSPIRATION—IN THE LAB! Delicious decorations created by grad students at the University of Regina.

S

ince beginning our academic studies in chemistry and biochemistry as undergraduates, we have both found the University of Regina (U of R) to be a very special place. We both chose to stay at the U of R for graduate studies and find the department of chemistry and biochemistry offers the perfect mix of academics and community. Professors, lab instructors, administrators, technicians, and support staff have all contributed to establishing an academic environment that not only teaches the theoretical and technical aspects of chemistry—but also encourages creative thought, and more importantly, instills a passion for chemistry.

When given the opportunity to decorate for the departmental Christmas party, we knew tinsel and snowflakes would be far too plain for a department as dynamic as ours! We had already planned a “chemists-tree” for the lab, but for the party we decided we wanted to create something that everyone, even the theorists, could enjoy.

We were inspired to create a periodic table of the elements out of candy by one of our favourite books, The Elements by John Emsley. Frosting was used to write the symbol of the elements and to adhere candy to graham crackers. Candy was grouped and sorted in an attempt to pair candy with the element it best represented. For example, the noble gasses were paired with a bitter licorice candy, as both were unlikely to be consumed.

We were encouraged by Keith E. Johnson, FCIC, to send photos of our periodic table of the elements to ACCN for others to enjoy. Edible periodic tables could be modified to suit all types of occasions. If time and supplies are limited, a very nice recreation of Dalton’s table of elements could be constructed with minimal cost and effort. For more formal gatherings, crackers, meats, and cheeses could be substituted for graham crackers, frosting, and candy. As with research, the options are endless, and you are only limited by your imagination!

“

Carla Sanson and Evangeline Tosh University of Regina

24 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

HELPING HANDS— TOMORROW’S SCIENTISTS IN CRISIS TODAY Anyone out there in the science community thinking of a sabbatical of volunteer teaching in a far away place?

Think Lesotho.

G

reat scientists often start young. But what if you are growing up in a tiny landlocked country in Africa and your very survival is in question? Some Canadians want to change the situation in Lesotho. An incredible partnership has developed as a result.

Lesotho is a small mountain kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa. It is a deforested country, in its fourth year of drought, with almost no natural resources. Its inhabitants suffer from severe food shortages. Lesotho has the fourth highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world and over 50 percent of the population is under the age of 24.

It is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Since August 2004, several Ottawa, ON, schools have been teamed with schools in Lesotho. Calendars have been sold to raise awareness and a recent call to collect textbooks has resulted in a huge response from local public and separate schools and the Ottawa-area home schooling community. As this article goes to print, 10,000 books are on their way from Ottawa to build libraries in Lesotho schools.

In addition to books, schools need curriculum, resources, and inspired teaching methods. Currently in Lesotho, schools are run in an old style with rote learning and punishment for wrong answers.

Class sizes in many schools range from 75–100 children. Many teachers have had very little modern teacher training. The resource kits and learning aids, so plentiful in our western schools, are unheard of in the large open classrooms of Lesotho. How simple can you make a simple machine? How do you teach the scientific method when there is no tradition of trial and error? Clearly if the teachers are assisted, the classes will benefit.

Cathy Mawson is a mother of five from Ottawa, ON. She has offered to help. “I’m just a home schooling mom, but I know a lot about teaching children to love learning, teaching so that mistakes are seen as stepping stones to the truth, and where children are rewarded with smiles. They have so little, not even blackboards!”

Mawson plans to spend the month of March visiting seven selected schools. She will give workshops on problem solving and teaching science and math to about 100 teachers, with an emphasis on handson learning. Mawson sees the workshops as her work but knows meeting and interacting with the children will be her reward. Her agenda is to bring hope, to inspire the teachers and students to have fun learning. Her wish list includes chess sets, puzzles, dice, measuring tools, games, and blackboard paint. As a friend of Cathy Mawson, I offered to help by gathering materials for the teachers at her workshops. Her stories will be posted on the Web site when she returns.

Thanks to a generous science community, Cathy Mawson’s kits include CIC’s NCW chemistry experiment booklets, NRC periodic tables of the elements, University of Ottawa mineral charts, and pamphlets from Natural Resources Canada in folders from Statistics Canada. As she leaves with these goodies, I’m awed by her courage and inspired by her faith. One small effort can make a world of difference.

Please reflect on the future scientists of Lesotho. Money donated can be used to purchase local materials and boost Lesotho’s local economy where unemployment ranges from 60–70 percent. Consider getting involved yourself.

For more information, visit www.helplesotho.ca.

To make a donation, contact info@helplesotho.ca or Project Help Lesotho 29 Beechwood Ave., Suite 100 Ottawa, ON K1M 1M2 Nancy Laird MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 25

Dietmar Kennepohl, MCIC, C3’s past president, gets some hands-on (and nose-in) experience during a presentation by master winemaker, Howard Soon, at the 2004 conference at Okanagan University College, Kelowna, BC.

COLLEGE CHEMISTRY CANADA LA CHIMIE COLLÉGIALE AU CANADA

L

ooking for an excuse to visit Newfoundland this summer?

Interested in chemical education? Look no further! College Chemistry Canada (C3) is having its 32nd pretty-much-annual conference in St. John’s, NL, June 16–19, on the campus of the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). Other co-hosts are the Marine Institute (part of MUN) and College of the North Atlantic, where this year’s conference coordinator, Ian McMaster, teaches.

Never heard of College Chemistry Canada? In spite of numerous and ongoing efforts to get the word out, C3 seems to remain in the best-keptsecret category! C3 has been an independent Canadian entity since 1972, when it seceded from its U.S. parent organization, 2YC3, the Two-Year College Chemistry Consortium. C3’s raison d’être is to promote the teaching and learning of chemistry primarily at the post secondary level.

C3’s highest-profile activity is its annual conference, which is a professional development opportunity for teachers of chemistry. C3’s Canadawide membership hovers near 150 (there are a few members in the U.S., too), and up to half of our members might attend a conference—so it’s a smallish, “family” affair, which is kicked off by a wine and cheese reception Thursday evening. Submitted and invited papers and submitted posters are presented by both members and guests during the two main days (Friday and Saturday) of the conference, which also includes a banquet, the annual general meeting, and a fun run. Representatives of publishing companies and scientific supply houses are on hand to display their wares. On Sunday, there is an outing planned, so conference-goers can participate in an organized tourist activity to explore local attractions. At the St. John’s conference, you might want to plan to be a tourist on your own, as well, before and/or after the conference!

26 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

Ideally, the location of the C3 conference alternates between the east and the west. We’ve been in the west for three years (Vancouver, 2002; Mount Royal, Calgary, 2003; Okanagan University College, Kelowna, 2004), so are looking forward to eastern conferences this year and next (Niagara College of Canada, 2006). We have linked up with the CIC’s Chemical Education Division at CSC conferences a couple of times (Montréal, 2001; Vancouver, 2002), and are considering such joint ventures in the future.

In addition to the annual conference, C3 sponsors a couple of meritrecognition cash awards for students (an award presented at the discretion of the conference host institution; another general student scholarship) and one for teachers (for substantial contributions in the area of chemical education). A newsletter, C3 News, is published to advertise the conference and to provide a means of communication among members.

College Chemistry Canada, incorporated as a non-profit association in 1985, is governed by a board of directors and an executive. The board of directors consists of the executive plus a representative from each of five regions: BC/Yukon, Prairies (including NWT and Nunavut), Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces. Elections are held at the annual general meeting.

We invite you to visit our Web site at www.c3.douglas.bc.ca/index. html for more information. Please consider joining us in St. John’s this June!

John O. Olson President of C3, professor of chemistry, Augustana Faculty, University of Alberta, Camrose, AB

Photo by L. Shaw. Copyright: College Chemistry Canada 2004.

ChemEd CATCHES ON CHEMICAL EDUCATORS FIND SUPPORT AS THE ChemEd CONFERENCES SPREAD LIKE WILD FIRE

I

n the early 1970s, several prominent chemical educators, most notably the late Reg Friesen, began to discuss their belief that high school and college chemistry instructors lacked a regular vehicle for quality professional development. They felt that these teachers needed an ongoing opportunity to network with each other, to benefit from each other’s experience and expertise, to stay abreast of all the latest developments and techniques, and to grow toward excellence in instruction of this fascinating branch of science.

The result of their vision was the establishment of the international biennial ChemEd conferences. The first ChemEd was held in 1973 at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Since then, the event has grown and evolved to become the largest high school chemistry conference in North America. Held in the mid-summer of odd-numbered years at major universities across the continent, ChemEd has come to be regarded as chemical education’s premier event and a benchmark for professional development.

Both secondary and postsecondary teachers experience unparalleled access to the ideas, methods, techniques, and enthusiasm of master educators from across North America and abroad. The four-day gathering typically attracts between 800 and 1,000 delegates from all across Canada, the U.S., and approximately 40 countries from around the world. They benefit from a program brimming with not-to-bemissed lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on laboratory sessions, and come away enriched, motivated, and energized as they prepare for the coming academic year. Their students benefit immediately, and the long-term positive effects on society are real and widespread.

This summer, from July 31 to August 4, ChemEd 2005 will convene at The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, BC. This year marks the first time the conference has been held on the West Coast and will likely attract many first-time participants.

UBC boasts the most complete conference facilities of any university in Canada. Located in a world-class setting in one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, the campus allows delegates to enjoy a multitude of natural splendours during their stay.

My involvement with ChemEd began almost accidentally several years ago. I was a regular subscriber to the Chem13 News magazine and looked forward to the articles in each edition. I especially enjoyed reading about each successive ChemEd conference in the fall issue and often wondered about participating. While at a science conference in Vancouver, I had the good fortune to attend a workshop given by Irwin Talesnick, a professor from Queen’s University,

Kingston, ON, and a chair of several past ChemEd conferences. After the presentation, I asked Talesnick if a ChemEd on the West Coast was a possibility. His positive response led me to attend ChemEd 2001. The number of quality sessions offered and the expertise of the presenters were indeed inspiring. The conference proved to be all I hoped for and more.

While at York, I met several other teachers from Vancouver and we began a discussion of the feasibility of hosting the conference. Together, we formed the beginnings of the planning committee for ChemEd 2005.

We came away with a good measure of optimism and set to work immediately upon arriving back in Vancouver. By the spring of 2003, with the help and support of the chemistry department and the faculty of science at UBC, we submitted a successful bid to host ChemEd 2005.

Over the past two years, we have been very fortunate to gather together a planning committee of dedicated and focused high school, college, and university educators. All of us have been working hard to ensure that the summer of 2005 in Vancouver will be a memorable experience for every delegate.

In addition to the many valuable regular sessions offered during the four days, we are proud to have two accomplished educators speaking at the opening and the closing of the conference. Ariel Fenster, MCIC, of McGill University in Montréal, QC, will deliver the Reg Friesen Memorial Lecture to open ChemEd 2005. Fenster is known as an outstanding communicator whose contributions to teaching and to the popularization of science have earned him numerous awards. For nearly three decades, he has lectured extensively and will most certainly prove to be one of the highlights of this event. Penny Le Couteur of Capilano College in North Vancouver will present our closing plenary lecture. The author of numerous books, Le Couteur is the past president of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. She is well known for helping to make science an accessible experience for non-scientists and her book Napoleon’s Buttons; How 17 Molecules Changed History, has earned widespread acclaim.

More information about ChemEd 2005 is available on the conference Web site at www.nobel.scas.bcit.ca/chemed2005. We welcome all submissions from presenters and we look forward to seeing you on the West Coast.

Chris Toth Co-chair, ChemEd 2005 MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 27

CSC BULLETIN SCC

LOCAL SECTION NEWS NOUVELLES DES SECTIONS LOCALES

CNC/IUPAC Travel Awards for 2006

Vancouver’s “Chemistry in Society” Lectureship

The Canadian National Committee for IUPAC (CNC/IUPAC) established a program of Travel Awards for young Canadian scientists in 1982. These Awards are financed jointly by the Canadian Society for Chemistry’s Gendron Fund and

by CNC/IUPAC’s Company Associates (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bruker BioSpin, Merck Frosst).

The purpose of these Awards is the help young Canadian scientists and engineers, who should be within 10 years of gaining their PhD, present a paper at an IUPAC-sponsored conference outside Canada and the U.S. Deadline for receipt of applications: October 14, 2005 Details of the applications procedures can be found at www.cnc-iupac.org.

Bourses de voyage du CNC/IUPAC pour 2006 Le Comité national canadien de l’Union internationale de chimie pure et appliquée (CNC/IUPAC) remet des bourses de voyage aux jeunes scientifiques canadiens depuis 1982.

Ces bourses sont subventionées par le Fonds Gendron (administré par la Société canadienne de chimie) et par les compagnies associées au CNC/ IUPAC (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bruker BioSpin, Merck Frosst).

L’objectif de ces bourses est de venir en aide aux jeunes scientifiques et ingénieurs canadiens, qui sont à moins de 10 ans de l’obtention de leur doctorat, afin de leur permettre de présenter leurs travaux lors d’une conférence commanditée par l’IUPAC à l’extérieur du Canada et des États-Unis.

Date limite pour recevoir votre application : le 14 octobre 2005 Informations supplémentaires : www.cnc-iupac.org

The David Harpp Trio. An interesting example of bilateral symmetry in Nature. Left: David Harpp, FCIC. Centre: Image formed by taking the left side of Harpp’s face, generating the mirror image, and combining the two. Right: Image formed by taking right side of Harpp’s face, generating the mirror image, and combining the two.

The inaugural “Chemistry in Society Lectureship” was held on November 14, 2004. It used some of the proceeds from the CSC 2002 Conference held at The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) that were generously donated to the Vancouver CIC Local Section. The concept of this lectureship was to enable the local section to invite world-class speakers to Vancouver to enhance the public perception of chemistry and its contributions to modern society.

The inaugural speaker was David Harpp, FCIC, professor at McGill University and co-founder of the Canadian Office for Science and Society. Harpp gave an extremely enjoyable presentation entitled, “Symmetry in Art, Nature, Numbers and Chemistry—A Visual Trip,” to over 90 people at the Vancouver MacMillan Space Centre. Examples of symmetry present in nature, mathematics, music and, of course, chemistry (such as enantiomers and crystal structures) abounded. Although a significant number of CIC members attended, it was gratifying to see that the majority of attendees were not chemists, but interested members of the public at large.

The following day, Harpp gave a second, slightly more chemistry-focused lecture at Simon Fraser University entitled, “Miracle Materials.” It addressed the history of plastics from the birth of polymer chemistry to the current state-of-the-art. This seminar set a lighter tone than the usual research-intensive lecture in a chemistry departmental setting. It was extremely well-attended and thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Both lectures were recorded using McGill’s “COOL” software and may be replayed (both video and audio) by accessing the Internet at www.cool.mcgill.ca/2004-fall/test.

Daniel Leznoff, MCIC Vancouver CIC Local Section Chair

STUDENT NEWS NOUVELLES DES ÉTUDIANTS

Student Chapter Merit Awards The Student Chapter Merit Awards are offered as a means of recognizing and encouraging initiative and originality in Student Chapter programming in the areas of chemistry, chemical technology, and chemical engineering. One award is given out per Society annually.

Deadlines: April 1 for the Canadian Society for Chemistry; April 1 for the Canadian Society for Chemical Technology; June 1 for the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering.

For more information visit www.cheminst.ca/students/awards/cic_chapter_merit_tor__e.htm.

28 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

CAREERS CARRIÈRES

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 29

CAREERS CARRIÈRES

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chemists, chemical engineers, and technologists every month at a very low cost.

32 L’ACTUALITÉ CHIMIQUE CANADIENNE MARS 2005

EVENTS ÉVÉNEMENTS

Canada May 9–11, 2005. 9th Annual Advanced Process Control Appliance for Industry Workshop: APC 2005, Vancouver, BC. Contact: Guy Dumont; Web site: www.ieee-ias.org/apc2005.

June 16–19, 2005. 32nd Conference of College Chemistry Canada, St. John’s, NL. Contact: Ian McMaster; E-mail: ian.mcmaster@cna.nl.ca; Web site: www.c3.douglas.bc.ca.

August 19–26, 2005. 20th International Symposium on Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds (ISPAC 20), Toronto, ON. Contact: Chris Marvin; Tel.: 905-319-6919; E-mail: chris.marvin@ec.gc.ca.

August 19–26, 2005. 25th International Symposium on Halogenated Environmental Organic Pollutants and POPs (Dioxin 2005), National Water Research Institute, Toronto, ON. Contact: Mehran Alaee; Tel.: 905-336-4752; E-mail: mehran alaee@ec.gc.ca; Web site: www.dioxin2005.org.

U.S. and Overseas June 20–24, 2005. 2nd International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry and the 9th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, Washington, DC. Contact: Robin Rogers; E-mail: rdrogers@bama.ua.edu.

July 10–14, 2005. 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, Glasgow, Scotland. Contact: Sarah Fitzpatrick; E-mail: sarah.fitzpatrick@concorde-uk.com; Web site: www.chemengcongress2005.com.

August 13–21, 2005. IUPAC 43rd General Assembly, Beijing, China. Contact: IUPAC Secretariat; Tel.: +1 919-485-8700; Fax: +1 919-485-8706; E-mail: secretariat@iupac.org.

REMEMBERWHEN?

August 16–19, 2005. 12th Canadian Semiconductor Technology Conference, National Research Council Canada and the Electronic Materials and Processing Division of the American Vacuum Society, Ottawa, ON. Web site: www.canadiansemiconductor.org.

S H A R E YO U R M E M O R I E S !

July 31–August 4, 2005. 18th Biennial Chem Ed Conference, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. Web site: http://nobel.scas.bcit.ca/chemed2005/welcome.htm.

Share your CIC memories and memorabilia with ACCN. Send your materials to editorial@accn.ca or mail them to the National Office.

Please label each piece with your name, a caption, and your complete address to ensure its safe return to you.

Step right up!

If you are an unemployed member of the CIC, you are entitled to three consecutive free advertisements in the Employment Wanted section of ACCN. Contact Gale Thirlwall-Wilbee, career services and student affairs manager. Tel.: 613-232-6252, ext. 223; fax: 613-232-5862; e-mail: gwilbee@cheminst.ca.

MARCH 2005 CANADIAN CHEMICAL NEWS 33

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The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering A new editor for the CJChE The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering (CJChE) is proud of its accomplishments over the past 48 years. From its modest beginnings, the CJChE developed into an outstanding journal, publishing original research, new theoretical interpretations and critical reviews in the science and industrial practice of chemical and biochemical engineering and applied chemistry.

In the last two decades, the CJChE has benefitted from dedicated and visionary editors such as Norman Epstein, FCIC, Campbell Robinson, FCIC, and most recently Pierre Carreau, FCIC. The CJChE and the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE) would like to thank Pierre Carreau, FCIC, École Polytechnique de Montréal, for his many years of hard work as the CJChE’s editor. Pierre and his assistant, Hélène Morin, have dedicated countless hours to the CJChE and have worked diligently to sustain and improve the quality of the journal. Their commitment and contributions are appreciated by all. The electronic publication of the journal began during this tenure (see www.cjche.ca/published_new.htm). If your library does not have a subscription to the electronic version, please encourage its purchase.

It is a time of renewal for the CJChE—it welcomed a new publishing editor, Michelle Piquette, in 2004. The CJChE and CSChE now welcome a new editor in 2005, Krishnaswamy (Kumar) Nandakumar, FCIC, PhD (Princeton), PEng, professor in the department of chemical and materials engineering at the University of Alberta. Kumar’s research interests centre around the computational aspects of fluid mechanics and transport phenomena. He has published many articles in leading journals and has moderated a panel discussion on ethics in science and engineering. For more information about Kumar, please see www.ualberta.ca/~kumar/.

The CJChE is now poised to build on its national and international reputation. In the years ahead, the CJChE’s goals are: to set up a Web-enabled electronic submissions and tracking system; to respond in a timely fashion to the needs of authors and readers; to continue to attract high-quality submissions; to expand its scope to include articles on modern developments in chemical engineering, thus cutting across traditional boundaries and reaching out to frontiers of chemical engineering research; and to interest younger researchers from across Canada and around the world to submit their best work to the CJChE.

Pierre Carreau, FCIC, and Krishnaswamy (Kumar) Nandakumar, FCIC

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g in m s. o c ail s s et e d oc or r f p s te n i io b s s is W e m b r su o u e n ch i -l at n o W

Kumar and his assistant, Sandra Peake, can be reached at: The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering University of Alberta Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering 584C Chemical and Materials Engineering Building Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2G6 Tel. 780-492-8423; Fax 780-492-8424 E-mail cjche@ualberta.ca

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www.cjche .ca

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