Our next meeting will be Monday, March 18, 7pm, Chemistry building, Gonzaga University.
The Chemistry building can be found by first finding the funny turn of the century building to the left of the church, going behind this building to about the center point, where you will find a walkway heading away from the building. At the end of this walkway there are two buildings, the Engineering building on the left (Wrong One) and the Chemistry Building on the right (Right One). We are in the first classroom on the left as you go in the door.
Our speaker will be Dr Susan Lomax of the National Gallery of Art. Her talk, which sounds very interesting to me, will be on the Applications of Chemistry to Works of Art. I have always been a nut for PBS presented stories on art fraud detection.
Suzanne Quillen Lomax received her Ph.D in organic chemistry in 1984 from the University of Maryland. Dr. Lomax has been in the Scientific Research Department of the National Gallery of Art since 1986, investigating the identification and aging behavior of artists' materials. Her areas of interest include the identification of synthetic organic pigments and modern paint binders. In addition, she has performed extensive analyses on traditional 15th and 16th century artists' paint binders.
Scientists have been associated with museum conservation laboratories for many years. Only recently, however, have art curators and conservation begun to appreciate the contributions that scientists can make in the preservation and restoration of the art objects. At present, about a dozen museums in the United States have conservation science departments.
Art conservation frequently requires specific information about the component materials of a painting or object prior to treatment. Due to the complex stratification of paintings, most questions that arise concern the nature of their components. Microscopic cross sections of a painting are frequently taken and viewed with the polarizing microscope to understand the different layers that make up the object. Pigment identification is frequently employed to determine if the pigments are in keeping with the time period of the object, as well as to understand the artist's materials and methods. Such tasks are performed using polarized light microscopy and X-ray diffraction of powdered samples or X-ray fluorescence, which is well-suited to this talk due to it's noninvasive nature. To study the identity of binding media, the conservation scientist uses gas chromatography (GC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and infrared spectroscopy. GC is used to identify oil-containing binders, as well as for the identification of waxes and various low molecular weight resins, HPLC can be used to identify proteinaceous binders and organic dyes. Ultraviolet radiation can be used to examine the varnish layer of a painting as well as to identify areas retouched in previous conservation treatments. Infrared reflectography is frequently used to examine underdrawing on a painting. In addition, X-rays are often used to determine where lead white has been used on a painting, as well as to reveal damaged areas beneath the painting's surface. This talk will focus on the application of these various techniques to the examination of paintings and sculpture. Examples will be presented from the National Gallery of Art collection.
We have three other pieces of news today.
First, the election. The usual suspects were reelected again (with a little rearranging of the deck chairs), so you now have Jeff Moore to serve you as Chair, Dave Cleary to assist him as 2nd Banana, and moi to keep pounding out these rags a couple of times a year and to write a few checks when needed (the speakers aint free, folks).
Second, we have a letter from our new Chair(man).
To: Inland Northwest Local Section Members
About three years ago a colleague of mine and former chair, Tony Mazzeo, asked me if I would be interested in becoming more involved with the local ACS section. I said, "sure," and he explained it to me like this: " you spend a year as a treasurer/secretary, a year as chair elect, then a year as the local section chair. Not really a whole lot of work involved. You attend the meetings and take the invited speakers out to dinner." No problem I thought at the time. Plus, I had vision. I had joined the ACS for training opportunities. I was determined to stay abreast with the latest in my field. I considered myself a professional, and if my local section didn't offer me these things then I was going to get involved, stand up and be counted and make some changes myself. Three years later, I've been trained by the ACS as a Local Section Career Coordinator, Public Relations Chair, and Leader of the local Section. I've been actively involved in planning this year's regional meeting which I'm sure will be a great success. I'm finally in a position where I can make a difference. I went to training where I developed an action plan. I developed some simple goals for the local section, and I was ready to implement them.
Then, life happened. I just recently accepted a job offer in Indianapolis working for Elan Biopharmaceuticals. This of course put quite a dent in my plans to change the Inland Northwest Local Section. Thanks to modern technology, I will still be actively serving as the local chair for 2002 especially in my role as host to our regional meeting in June. Unfortunately, I won't be here in the physical sense, but I will be here in spirit. Also, Elan has graciously agreed to send me out to attend our meeting in June. So, I'll be presenting in the Pharmaceutical Engineering Symposium as well as representing other interests in the meeting.
Well, enough said. Good luck to the Inland Northwest Local section in 2002 and don't be afraid to stand up and be counted. Get involved!
Jeff Moore, Inland Northwest Section Chair.
And, the third thing on the agenda is, of course, our old friend NORM 2002.
You will be happy to note that this will probably be the last time I will be hitting on this topic, since the next time this newsletter comes out (in the fall) NORM 2002 will be history. NORM will be held on the Gonzaga campus from June 20-22 (that is a Thursday to Saturday gig), ending up on Saturday afternoon with a boat ride on Coeur d' Alene lake. Friday we have access to the Coeur d' Alene golf course at somewhat reduced rates. So if there are some golfers out there who have always wanted to play the floating hole, maybe this is your chance. We have planned two and a half days of symposiums and general sessions, and will have as a keynote speaker at our Thursday evening banquet Dr John Turner, who will give a talk about hydrogen as an alternative energy source. For those of you in the Fuel Cell business in town, this will probably be an interesting talk.
We of course would love for all our members to come to this affair. After all, we are putting it on for the 7000 chemists (who knew?) In Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Alaska, Utah and of all places, Hawaii. If you do come to the party, we will be giving local members special tags, identifying them as local members, so that our visitors can nail you in a hallway and ask you where your favorite restaurant is, or where they can find a phone (there is only one in the conference center) or what do you do on a weekend in Spokaloo. Even if you don't want to attend the conference, you can attend the banquet or the boat ride. The conference is about $75, the banquet will be about $30 (at the West Coast River Inn), and the boat ride will be fairly cheap if you can drive to the boat, or $20 if you need a bus ride.
And, of course, we can always use some help. So far this thing has been getting done through the efforts of Joanne Smieja, Jeff Moore, and Jeff Rahn, with me throwing rocks every now and then. Dave Cleary has been going around with a begging bowl trying to shake some sheckels out of the local companies to help support this effort. Thanks to his fine efforts, we project that this conference will only put our section about $3000 in the hole.
If any of you have a pent up desire to present a paper at a real ACS conference, this is the place. It will be either 10 years or till Hell freezes over before our section hosts another such conference. Please go to our web site (www.gonzaga.edu/inlandacs/norm) for more information on the conference, and also on how to enter an abstract into our electronic abstract submit system.
The next page is a flyer for our conference. If it is possible, please post it on a bulletin board where you work.
57th NorthWest Regional Meeting (NORM 2002)
This is an invitation to submit papers for the conference and to come to the party. NORM 2002 will be held from June 20-22 at the Schoenberg Conference Center on the campus of Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington. It is being hosted by the Inland Northwest section of the American Chemical Society.
The technical program will feature symposia in the areas of
* Bioremediation * Less Common Modes of Bonding in Organometallic Complexes * Medicinal uses of Northwest Plants * Monitoring and Health Assessments of Contaminated Sites * New Approaches to Teaching General and Organic Chemistry: Web-assisted Learning in General and Organic Chemistry * Pharmaceutical Engineering * Physical and Materials Chemistry General sessions will include * Analytical/Environmental chemistry * Biochemistry * Inorganic chemistry * Organic chemistry * Physical/Theoretical chemistry. * Chemical Education * General Poster Session * Undergraduate Poster Session
Papers are invited for all Symposia, General Sessions and Poster Sessions. For further information, including how to submit abstracts, please visit our meeting web page:
www.gonzaga.edu/inlandacs
Electronic Abstract Submission is extended until March 29th.
Questions concerning the Technical program and Abstract Submissions can be sent to Joanne Smieja at smieja@gonzaga.edu .
Registration for the conference will open in Mid March.
We are scheduling two plant tours, one of SIRTI, a local research facility, and the other of Hollister-Stiers, a local drug company. There will be a small vendor exhibition and a professional glassblowing presentation. There will be an evening banquet with a keynote speaker, and Teacher and Industrial awards will be presented.