CINTACS Newsletter of the Cincinnati Section of the  American Chemical Society  Vol. 39, No. 5 - February, 2002

CINTACS is published nine times a year (September through May) by theCincinnati Section of the American Chemical Society. All changes of addressshould be sent to Emel Yakali at Raymond Walters College, 9555 PlainfieldRoad, Cincinnati, OH 45236, phone 745-5686, FAX 745-5767, or email mc.acs@uc.edu.

SUBMISSION DEADLINES

The submission deadline will be approximately February 22, for the April 2002 issue.  Electronic submission is strongly preferred,except for original photos. All materials should be sent to:

Dr. Bruce Ault
Department of Chemistry
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221
Phone: 513-556-9238
FAX: 513-556-9239
E-mail: bruce.ault@uc.edu

Let’s give a big round of applause for our Editor, Bruce Ault.  He is very diligent, very persistent, and very dependable in getting the CINTACS to us each month.  Even when the deadline is at year-end he’s working to get copy!  A very much needed job - this probably makes the difference between poor and excellent attendance.  Thanks, Bruce!

We had a “different” meeting in December.  Margaret Ringenberg talked of her career as a female pilot during World War II as a Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilot and subsequent careers as a airplane pilot instructor and racer.  Attendance at the dinner was over 90, and at least 40 more people showed up for the talk.  At least 40% of the attendees were non-chemists.  We had a poster describing National Chemistry Week, which exposed our activities to another group of the general public.

This month we’re hosting a meeting of as many technical and scientific societies as we can find.  The topic is a general biochemical topic, but on the “cutting edge” of research - “What makes people grow old?”  Eugenia Wang is known around the world for her studies if the biochemistry of aging, and I’ve asked her to give a technical talk, but also to explain things in terms understandable by one who is technically inclined, but not conversant with details of biochemistry.  Do come to this meeting!

Thanks to Procter & Gamble and NKU for sponsoring and hosting this event.

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Featured Speaker

Professor Eugenia Wang
University of Louisville

"What Causes Aging? The Biochemistry of Aging"

The maximum human lifespan recorded in recent time is 122 years, that of Mme. Calmette, who died a few years ago.  Since the middle of the last century, the average human lifespan has increased from 50 to 78 for women, and 77 for men, in developed countries.  This extension of lifespan of close to 30 years is largely attributed to eradicating large-scale epidemics of infectious diseases, increased nutrition and sanitation, and improvements in lifestyle.  With this trend of increasing life span, the question then arises: can we follow the same path of improvement to gain the remaining 40 years to bring the average to the maximum lifespan?  The answer may lie in the realization that we are dealing now with diseases of the elderly, which are polygenic in nature and involve both genetic and environmental factors.  Thus, extending this last scope of 4 decades of lifespan requires clear information as to what genes and environmental factors are essential to lifespan determination.  To approach this question, we sugest that certain longevity-assurance genes are functionally instrumental to the ability of centenarians to live to the extreme end of the maximal human lifespan.  Centenarians, like the rest of us, are subject to common environmental risks, but they are able to combat these insults and survive.  The presentation will show how integrating information from human genetics, epidemiology, DNA chip technology and bioinformatic engineering provides a head-start in our quest for human longevity-associated genes.  Identifying these genes is a first step towards designing interventions to reduce age-dependent debility and disease, and maximizing functional human life span for the ultimate achievement of healthy graying with dignity.
 

About the Speaker

Eugenia Wang is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the School of Medicine at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.  She directs a laboratory of some 20 staff, supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging, NASA, and DARPA (part of the Department of Defense).  Prior to her present post, she was professor of Medicine, Anatomy and Cell Biology, and Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada, and also Director of the Bloomfield Center for Research in Aging at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research.  She teaches undergraduate and graduate students in areas such as the mechanisms controlling the aging process, including determination of human longevity studying centenarian populations.  Dr. Wang received her Bachelor of Science degree from the National Taiwan University, her M.Sc. from Northern Michigan University, and her Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University.  Afterwards, she did postdoctoral training and an assistant rofessorship at the Rockefeller University, before moving to McGill University in 1987.  Since 1981, Dr. Wang's research has involved investigating the molecular mechanisms controlling the process of aging, at both cellular and organismic levels.  Her recent work involves investigating gene-directed programs regulating the ontogeny of age-dependent diseases, and how genetic action in individual cells controls human longevity, integrating biochip technology, mathematical genomics, and pattern recognition theory to identify genetic and epigenetic factors as life-span determinants.

Program

5:30-6:15 p.m.
Registration

6:15 p.m.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Eugenia Wang, University of Louisville Medical School
“What Causes Aging?  The Biochemistry of Aging”
Otto M. Budig Theater, University Center

7:30 p.m.
Banquet, University Center Ballroom,  $14.00 (See reservation information below)
Sliced Top Round of Beef, Vegetarian Pasta Primavera, Chicken Almondine,
Oven Browned Potatoes, Savory Green Beans, Tossed Salad, Waldorf Salad,
Apple Crisp, Black Forest Cake, Rolls, Tea and Coffee.

Reception following dinner at the Herrmann Center located at the entrance to the university.

Reservations: Send your reservations to Robbin Rolfes <rolfes.rl@pg.com>, or if you have difficulty remembering this address, send to <cinacs@greeb.net>. If absolutely impossible to make reservations via the Internet, telephone 513-385-8363. Deadline for reservations is noon Monday, February 18, 2002. (It will save a lot of trouble if you use e-mail, but we don't want to discourage those who like the "olde fashioned" means of making reservations). Include your name, affiliation, and state if you're in one of the 1/2-price categories.  As a reminder, if you decide you must miss a meeting after you have made reservations, please e-mail or call to cancel. If you do not cancel, the Section will have to charge you because it will have been charged by NKU.
 

Directions: From Downtown, or Cincinnati and northern Kentucky suburbs, take I-71 or I-75 or I-275 to I-471 South.  Approximately six miles from the Ohio River, I-471 ends as it merges with U.S 27.  At the second stop light turn right onto Nunn Drive, the entrance to Northern Kentucky University.  From Nunn Drive turn left at the first traffic light.  Go past the parking garage and turn right at the next stop sign.  The University Center is the second building on the right.  Guests may park in any unreserved parking space in any lot.  Guest must have a handicapped parking sticker in order to park in a space for the handicapped.

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On Wednesday, March 6th, the Chemical Educators’ Discussion Group is invited to the turn-of-the-century classroom of Dr. William Jensen at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Jensen will share the history of the chemical apparatus on display and anecdotes on chemical history. He will also take us on a tour of the rare science book collection. Consider this meeting a pre-Spring Break treat to yourself. Bring along a colleague for added fun. The meeting begins at 6:30 PM with light refreshments and announcements. The program begins at 7 PM and should conclude by 9 PM. We will meet on the fifth floor of Rieveschl Hall, in room 520 Rieveschl. There is a parking garage directly under the building. Bring your parking ticket with you to be stamped.  On-street parking is available but limited due to evening school classes. Please RSVP to Linda Ford (linda.ford@7hills.org) by March 4th.

Directions: You are heading for the main campus of UC. From I-75, take the Hopple St. exit, turn left, and proceed up the hill toward campus. Hopple St. turns into Martin Luther King Drive. When you get to the top of the hill, turn right onto Clifton Avenue and then make a quick left onto College Court. This short drive will take you straight into the parking garage. From I-71, take the Taft Road exit and travel west toward campus. When you cross Vine Street, Taft Road becomes Calhoun Street. Stay on Calhoun until it dead ends into Clifton Avenue. Turn right onto Clifton and travel a short distance past several university buildings until you get to College Court. Turn right and travel back the drive to the parking garage. College Court is nestled between the DAAP building and Wilson Auditorium.

One thing that graduate students and aspiring patentees have in common is the need for originality.  Without a research problem that hasn't already been solved, a student's quest for a degree will hit a dead end.  Without claims to something new and nonobvious, a patent application will be rejected over prior art.  And prior art can have been published anywhere, in journals, in patents, and in the theses and dissertations of earlier graduate students.  A good literature search can discover most chemical research published in journals and patents, but theses and dissertations are much harder to find.

Why is that?  Theses and dissertations aren't written for broad distribution, they're simply a formal report to the faculty of research done during a student's stay at the university.  Most universities have a collection of theses and dissertations in their campus libraries.  Some students publish shorter descriptions of their research in scientific journals, but many do not.  Some universities (or organizations that provided funding for the research) file patent applications on the fruits of a student's research.  In either case, the publications cover the more successful or practical outcomes, not the full details of the work that was done to arrive at the publishable or patentable results.  For patent purposes, publications resulting from dissertations is not only incomplete, but too late to show the actual publication date of the dissertation, which is taken to be the day the campus library adds the dissertation to its catalog.

Where can we find out about theses and dissertations?  Traditionally, they have been collected from universities for abstracting in the Dissertation Abstracts International series published by UMI.  UMI claims to have collected citations to over 1.6 million dissertations published since 1861, with searchable abstracts of those published since 1980.  They began publishing abstracts of masters theses in 1988.  UMI has the full text of over a million theses and dissertations on microfilm.  The full collection is searchable online; the latest 2-years are searchable on a free website hosted by UMI's parent company, Proquest, at http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/.

Dissertations are also now being made available on the Internet by universities themselves.  A collection of links to thesis and dissertation websites has been made by Michael K. Engel, and may be found at http://www.mkengel.de/thesis/thesis.htm.  The following sites are listed on that site.  The most comprehensive collection seems to be in the Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations, http://www.theses.org/, a project headquartered at Virginia Tech.  The library includes collections from over 30 academic institutions around the world (including OhioLINK, which represents the state universities of Ohio).  Other universities have collections of dissertations and theses that are not part of this network.  Some of these collections are comprehensive, while others focus on a single discipline.  Many collections cover only the latest few years.  As usual on the Internet, finding the documents you want can be a slow process.  Each University must be accessed individually, each website will have a different interface, and the dissertations will be searchable at different levels (full text, abstract, keyword, titles only…)

Footnote:
This year, the Chemical Information Discussion Group is offering hints and updates on chemical information resources available to most chemists and techniques for using them.  Contributions from any ACS member are welcome, and so are requests for information you'd like to see in a future column.  If you have any comments, suggestions, or contributions, please email them to simmons.es@pg.com

The Retired Engineers and Scientists of Cincinnati - RESC for short - invite those with  technical backgrounds who are retired  and  would like to share fellowship while pursuing interests in technology, community, history and nostalgia, travel, and business or industry developments. Activities include monthly luncheon meetings from October to May.  Visit website  http://RESC-online.org  for the "big picture" of RESC.

Reservations are required for all events - Please phone (513) 353-2708.

Luncheon Meeting Schedule - at the Unity Center, 1401 East McMillan St.

February 19
Manned Mission to Mars

11:30 AM
Lyle Kelly & Janis Jaunberg of the Mars Society

A  P&G (Information Technology) retiree and a UC chemistry doctorate candidate/science fiction author will team in an illustrated presentation to bring us facts about Mars, why and how humans might go to Mars, and discuss projects toward that goal that are in progress.

March 19
Restoring a Frozen "My Gal Sal" B-17 Bomber

11:30 AM
Bill Beringhaus, RESC member, retired Principal Electrical Engineer, CG&E, who piloted a B-17 on 35 WW2 missions over Europe, will describe the efforts of a local team to restore a crashed B-17 after its 56 years in the icy waters of Greenland, for its use as a memorial.

April 16
South American Odessey

11:30 AM
Art & Ruth  Kupferle the husband/wife team of a retired Bell System Engineer (past Pres of RESC) and a retired Cincinnati school teacher, who have addressed RESC previously about their visits to many parts of the globe will describe the places, people, and history of the larger South America countries

May 21
88 Bells for Ohio’s Bicentennial (note)

11:30 AM
James Verdin, President, Verdin Bell Co. will describe how between now and 2003 his company will cast on location, by use of a unique mobile foundry in each of the 88 counties, a 230 pound bell bearing the name of  the county, the casting date, the Great Seal of Ohio, and the Bicentennial logo.

Note:  At the Quality Central Hotel in Norwood
 

Plant Tour Schedule

(Tours are limited to RESC Members and Member- sponsored Guests)

March  26
MILACRON - Plastic Technologies Group, Batavia,  Ohio

April  23
MAZAK (Manufacturer of Machining Centers),  Florence, Kentucky

May 16
TOYOTA  AUTO ASSEMBLY PLANT, Georgetown, Kentucky

On Saturday, March 10th, the chemical educators’ discussion group will be hosting a six-hour workshop at the University of Cincinnati. Five hands-on chemistry activities will be tested and discussed by middle school/high school teaching partners. All materials and lunch will be provided at no cost to the attendees. The intent is to bring together teaching “buddies” from the same school district to work and learn together and establish a professional link that will follow them back to their classrooms. A registration packet has already been mailed to teachers in the Greater Cincinnati area. If you have not received one, please contact Linda Ford at linda.ford@7hills.org. Questions concerning the workshop can also be directed to Linda.

Linda is still looking for volunteers to help during the workshop. You do not need to be in education to attend or to help! You just have to have a keen interest in broadening hands-on chemistry in Cincinnati classrooms.

Formatted and uploaded January 31, 2002, by acs@www.che.uc.edu