Fall Meeting
Our next meeting will be on Thursday, October 10, 7:30PM (slightly new time) at Gonzaga University. It will be in a new location on campus this year, since the old building is all torn up and being renovated, perhaps into a basketball stadium or a parking lot or something. We will be meeting in the Jepson Building Room #109. This building is the BusAd building, and is located just to the East of the Jundt Art Museum, which itself is located just to the East of the Schoenberg Center where we had our NORM 2002 meeting this year. Essentially, all this stuff is at the far West side of the campus, due South of Van Gorp street. This funny named street (I checked the spelling twice) dead ends at a grassy lawn area. The Jundt building is a short walk across the grass. Are you allowed to walk on the grass? Don't know. Parking is available on the street, sort of. There are school parking lots in the immediate area, but they are full of nasty looking signs that indicate you car will be steamrolled if you do not have the proper permits. If you are really confused, go to www.gonzaga.edu and look for their campus map.
The speaker will be Dr. Bruce B. Jarvis of the University of Maryland. His topic has been quite in the news lately, with at least two local newspaper stories on the subject quite recently: Toxigenic Molds in Indoor Air: An Increasing Health Risk?
OK, that maybe doesn't sound like something that would keep you away from a Mariner's game at first glance, but this mold thing is becoming quite a nuisance in a lot of houses, and is costing some people tens of thousands of dollars to get rid of.
There are increasing health risks associated with damp buildings and homes in which high levels of microbes are found. Although traditionally concerns have centered on microbial pathogens and allergenic effects, recent work has suggested that fungi pose the more serious risk. Evidence is accumulating that certain toxigenic molds are particularly a risk for human health through exposure, via inhalation, of fungal spores. Many of these fungi produce toxins (mycotoxins), some of which have been shown to cause animal and human intoxications, usually in an agricultural setting. The history, chemistry, and biology of mycotoxin-producing fungi will be presented, with special emphasis on those believed to be most important as threats to people living and working in water-damaged buildings. Of particular concern is Stachybotrys atra (S. chartarum), which has a long history of being responsible for animal toxicoses, and in recent years, being associated with pulmonary hemosiderosis (bleeding in the lungs) of infants exposed to spores of this fungus in their homes. S. atra produces a variety of potent toxins and immunosuppressant agents. This mold also produces a novel class of diterpenes of unusual structure and biological activity.
Bruce B. Jarvis received a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1966. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland at College Park in 1967, and is now professor and past chair (1993-98), Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He has published over 140 research papers. Current research areas include the origins and functions of natural products in fungi and plants, the chemistry of toxin-producing fungi associated with water-damaged buildings, and the development of anticancer agents from natural products.
Elections
We will be having elections early this year. As some of you know, our 2002 Chairman, Jeff Moore, left Hollister Stiers and took a new job with Elan, in Indianapolis. Since this would require quite a commute, he is willing to give up his job early. He did participate in our NORM 2002 conference, though, and we appreciate that very much.
So, to replace Jeff, Harry Davis of Gonzaga has agreed to run for Chair, Dave Cleary has agreed to continue on being 2nd Banana, and your humble servant will mount his normal intense campaign to retain his job of Secretary/Treasurer. Included in this newsletter are the Official Ballots, already addressed and stamped. You can vote for the offered slate, or you can write in your own candidates. Dave and I would be happy for somebody to actually do that, but this is Harry's first chance so lets give him a big vote of confidence. Harry has been running the Chemistry Week proceedings at the Children's Museum for the last few years.
If there really is anybody out there who wants a shot at one of these offices, please let us know. Either Dave or I would be happy to unload the heavy responsibilities and burdens of office onto any other unsuspecting schlemiel that would want one of these jobs. After all, somebody suckered us into them, so it is only fair ….. Anyway, think of all the brownie points you can score on your Curriculum Vitae with a job like this. It don't do me any good, since I never worked in chemistry and I am retired. But there might be some eager young pup out there who has been wondering if he meets the rigorous qualifications for the job, and can stand up to the responsibilities. Are you breathing? Are you a member of ACS? You are qualified.
There is one extra added benefit to these jobs that would be quite valuable to somebody who is still young and who works in industry. Jeff Moore, our previous Chairman, was able to take advantage of the quite extensive management training courses that ACS provides to its officers. Many of these courses are free, with travel and expenses included. Some of them the local section has to fund. Jeff would be one of the first to tell you that these opportunities have had a direct impact on his career path.
NORM 2002
So that brings us to the NORM conference, held in Spokane this last June and sponsored by all of us in the section. It was successful, we think. We had about 325 people attending, but as of this writing I do not yet know if we made or lost money on the deal. I would be happy to break even or even lose only a couple grand. If you would like to see the final report, including the budget for the meeting, send me an email at demattia@acm.org (note that the domain name is an M not an S) and I will email back our report when it gets finished, sometime at the end of this month. If you don't have email, then send me a postcard by snailmail to the return address on this envelope.
There were six symposium and as many general sessions, with several invited speakers for the symposia. We had nine vendors at our combined poster session / vendor expo, and for once the vendors actually went away happy. We also had a glassblower demonstrating his craft at this session, making KaliApparats. Which, as you know, are the funny bubble things that are part of the ACS Logo. This combined session idea was so good that the ACS Rep who was here is going to try to push this idea to other small conferences. We had a very well attended dinner banquet, with something like 120 people paying hard cash for rubber chicken and our keynote speaker, John Turner talking about alternate energy methods. There were two tours, for Hollister Stiers and for SIRTI, although a third tour planned at the last minute never took off. We had a very successful job search session, and an unexpectedly good turnout of high school kids for Chemimagination (or whatever it was called). We had enough bread in the budget to give out free cokes and donuts and cookies, and that alone made the conference a success for many people.
Some of you might be wondering, why did we get involved with this thing in the first place, risking our lives, fortune and sacred honor? The last two, anyway? The answer is, there are like 11 sections in the North West Region of the ACS, and each one gets to host one of these things every year, and this year was our turn. Portland, Idaho Falls, and Seattle did it in the past, and Bozeman, Fairbanks, Salt Lake and Hawaii (Yes, for some reason tax deductible Hawaii is part of our region) will be doing it in the next few years. And, except for a small gift and a loan from the NORM organization (until a couple of years ago, I did not know that there Was a NORM organization) it is done by the local section, and funded by the local section. Which means if we have any overruns, we get to eat it. However, if we make a buck, we get to kick 20% of that back to the NORM guys.
The conference was in the Schoenberg Center on the Gonzaga campus, and is probably the last conference to be held there, since it is now converted to classrooms. The banquets and such were at the River Inn, and I cannot say enough how wonderful those guys were in setting up their ballroom for five different events over the two days. If I did not have a five bedroom house for just my wife and I, I would encourage all of our guests to stay there when they are visiting us.
Joanne Smieja and Jeff Rahn were the program chairs and put in the most work, Jeff Moore and I were the conference chairs and we mostly watched Joanne do all the work, and Dave Cleary was our money grubber, who took begging bowl in hand and went to visit all the local companies that we thought would be happy to contribute to the success of our conference. Regretfully, no such happy thoughts existed in our local companies, and we got pretty well stiffed. Hollister Stiers did contribute to the lunches for our two tours however, and I would like to publicly thank them for that.
It was an interesting experience for me personally, since I have never been a boss in my corporate life. Even though I only got to boss around three other people, I did get a taste of why most of my previous day job bosses turned into jerks when they got promoted. And the answer is mostly budget. You want to do a whole lot of really neat things, but you don't know even now two months after the end of the conference how much cash you are going to have to play with, since nobody registers for these things till the last minute. So you start with this literally $40,000 budget, and then you say, what if nobody comes to my party, and so you start whacking all these really neat events that are gonna cost a whole bunch of money and not make much if any income, thereby ticking off the other people in the committee who Did want to go golfing at the resort or whatever. While we all had an interesting time doing it, none of us expect to be part of the problem when we next get to host this thing in 2014.
And this, I promise you, is the LAST time you will hear me pontificate on this NORM thing.
National Chemistry Week
This year, on Saturday, October 26, we will again be doing a show at the Children's Museum for National Chemistry Week. Harry Davis is again heading this up. If you want to help out, you can reach him at davish@gonzaga.edu. They will also be doing some grade school visits. And don't forget, Mole Day falls on October 23rd, right during National Chemistry Week for once. If you have some grandbrats, haul them down to the Children's Museum that Saturday and let them see what you do for a living.