It’s Continuity Dinner time: reserve and refresh

The December Board of Directors meeting is also our Continuity Dinner, a fancier than usual affair to celebrate the year’s achievements, recognize certain members, announce the Distinguished Service Award (conferred in March), and pass the gavel to the incoming section officers. And then there is the Henry Godt Memorial Lecture, lightly and briefly (we promise: briefly) recapping the past year, which is given by a surprise speaker.

There will be a General Meeting of the Section to vote on ... well, come and find out. And there are almost always some new and old members whom we see only at this event. So come!

Please join us: Thursday, December 12
Branica-Frontenac, 10411 Clayton Rd, St Louis, MO 63131 (map), in the Plaza Frontenac complex at Clayton Road and Lindbergh Blvd
5:30 pm social hour with cash bar
6:30 pm dinner, meeting, and Continuity events

Cost of dinner is $24. Please register by Dec 9 at goo.gl/6WkWJH and mail your check to:

Vic Lewchenko
354 Larkhill Ct
Webster Groves, MO 63119

Reminder! Reminder! Reminder!

(picture the title flashing with intermittently excited neon and argon fluorescence emissions)

Nominations for two of our featured section awards are still being accepted into December. The Chemical Science and Technology Award recognizes outstanding contributions by a non-PhD chemist, and the High School Chemistry Teacher-of-the-Year Award recognizes ... just what it says.

• Nominations for the Chemical Science and Technology Award are open until December 20. You can find all the details on eligibility, nominating a candidate, and recent winners right here.
• The High School Chemistry Teacher-of-the-Year Award is accepting nominations through December 10. For details on eligibility and the nomination process, as well as citations for recent winners, check here.

If you know of a deserving colleague, or perhaps your child’s teacher who stands out and merits recognition, don’t pass up this opportunity to give them their chance at a nice helping of fame and a little bit of fortune.

Kids & Chemistry ... reaching waaay out!

Kids & Chemistry had a busy October with two major outreach events:

Kids & Chemistry got a jump on Halloween and did a little chemistry with the Boy Scouts at their “Fright Fest” event on Saturday, October 12. About 760 Scouts and siblings (you read that right: seven hundred sixty) participated. The final event of their “Fright Fest” journey was to prepare “pumpkin slime” (orange gluep) and “boogers” (green gluep) and examine their properties. Scoutmasters and parents commented on how cute their kids looked in their safety glasses while participating. There are more photos, if you can fight the fright.

Sheryl Loux, coordinator for Kids & Chemistry, thanks Lisa Balbes, Ellen Aufenthie, Tye Walker, and Scouts’ event planner Kim Coleman for their help.

... and ...

Kids & Chemistry helped celebrate National Chemistry Week at the Saint Louis Science Center on October 26. The K & C group staffed three tables: Enzymes for Digestion and Cleaning, led by Sheryl Loux; Starch Scavenger Hunt testing which foods and materials contain starch, led by Chris Glass; and Crushing Cans exploring states of matter, led by Don Sartor. There was a DNA poster displayed with hands-on models of DNA.

Approximately 600 parents and kids participated with us at our tables. Sheryl J Loux, K & C coordinator (sjloux@gmail.com)would like to thank volunteers GSM Sundaram, Pegah Jalili, Ann Feil, Jeff Cornelius, Shadi Ansari, Nilantha Bandara, Melinda Hillig, Don Sartor, and Chris Glass.

Merit Badge Clinic

The the 9th Chemistry Merit Badge Clinic was hosted by Jost Chemical Company, and attended by a full house of 48 scouts.

The scouts participated in an introduction to the four classical fields of chemistry (by Ziad Ramadan, 2013 St Louis Section–ACS Chair) and a safety presentation (by Mark Mans, Jost Chemical). They then rotated through four 45-minute stations (each run by two professional chemists), during which they made a cartesian diver, learned about separations, MSDSs, abrasives, emulsions and mixtures, and took a tour of a working chemical manufacturing plant. During lunch, the boys took part in interactive demos put on by the SLU chemistry club and met individually with approved merit badge counselors.

Career Management Seminar on presentation skills

Presentation Skills is a risky topic to do a presentation about: the scrutiny is withering. But two presenters will do just that as the meat of the November Career Management Seminar on November 7. The venue is a new one for the series, so be sure to take note of the location: the Innovative Technology Enterprises (ITE) center at UMSL (which is not actually at UMSL: see map).

Guests may park across the street from the building. Parking is free and there is no need for a parking pass.

Event outline:

• 6:30 pm: Food and drink
• 7:00 pm: Oral Presentation Tips presented by George Gokel, Professor and Director of the Center for Nanoscience at University of Missouri–St Louis
• 7:30 pm: Poster Presentation Tips presented by Brent Znosko, Professor at Saint Louis University
• 8:00 pm: Q & A and networking

No charge to attend, but please register by November 6: registration, directions and parking info here.

Contact ycc@stlacs.org if you have any questions.

Board of Directors

St Louis Section–ACS Board of Directors meets the second Thursday of each month, usually at the Glen Echo Country Club (map and driving directions). Meetings are open to all members, and all are encouraged to attend. Elected officers and chairs of major committees vote on questions put to the Board; others in attendance have voice but no vote.

If you want to attend for dinner, please contact the section Chair at least a week in advance. Usual cost of the dinner is $24 ($12 for post-docs and unemployed members). Members wishing to become active in section activities are welcomed for their first dinner as guests of the section.

Date: Nov 14
Social hour: 5:30 pm
Business meeting: 6:30 pm (suspended for dinner when served)
Future meetings: Dec 12 (Continuity Dinner; see special reservation info above); Jan 9

Saint Louis University

Seminars are on Fridays at 12 noon in Carlo Auditorium, Tegeler Hall, unless noted otherwise. Refreshments follow. For more information, contact Jim Edwards, jedward5@slu.edu.

Nov 1
Gary Patti, Washington University
Metabolomics: New paradigms for old reactions

Nov 8
Yoonsang Cho, Saint Louis University
Structure-function studies of a pro-inflammatory cytokine MIF

Nov 15
Stephen Weber, University of Pittsburgh
Integration of sampling and separations: The pursuit of rapid, online, low-volume, high-sensitivity analysis

Nov 22
Dmitri Nusinow, Danforth Plant Science Center
Circadian regulation of physiology

University of Missouri–St Louis

Mondays at 4 pm in 451 Benton Hall, unless otherwise specified. Refreshments 15 minutes prior to seminar time. For more information, contact the Chemistry Department, 314.516.5311.

Nov 4
Matthieu Sollogoub, Université Pierre et Marie Curie–Paris, Sorbonne Université
Regioselective reactions on cyclodextrins

Nov 11
Jeffrey Johnston, Vanderbilt University
TBA

Nov 18
Daniel Quinn, University of Iowa
TBA

Washington University

Seminars are in McMillen 311 at 4 pm unless otherwise noted. For information, contact: Liviu Mirica, mirica@wustl.edu.

Nov 7
Mei Hong, Iowa State University
Elucidating the structure and mechanism of the influenza M2 proton channel using solid-state NMR

Nov 14
Theodor Agapie, California Institute of Technology
Synthetic cluster models of biological and heterogeneous active sites for oxygen evolution

Nov 21
Jonathan Sweedler, University of Illinois
Analytical tools for understanding brain chemistry