Abstract submission deadline 3/17/08
(http://oasys.acs.org/acs/236nm/oasys.htm)
Gestalt of porous media: Understanding chemical, geochemical and biogeochemical reactions in porous media
Organizers:
George Redden,
Rick Colwell,
Charles Werth, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana (werth@uiuc.edu)
Numerous physical, chemical and biological processes control the movement and transformation of solutes in subsurface environments and in porous or fractured systems in general. The governing relationships are applied in the geosciences to predicting contaminant transport, remediating subsurface contaminants, in situ extraction of energy and mineral resources, designing subsurface repositories for wastes and carbon dioxide, and modifying geotechnical properties of soils. The same principles also apply to engineered systems such as processes in fixed bed reactors and membranes.
While understanding the individual fundamental processes, such as mineral precipitation or solute partitioning, is as important as ever, there remain many challenges to understanding how the processes are spatially and temporally expressed in porous systems. Chemical and biological processes often depend on non-uniform dispersive and diffusive mixing of solutes. In some cases, the properties of porous systems and subsurface environments can be modified by the chemical or biological processes, which points to the important connections between pore-scale phenomena, non-linear process coupling, and volume averaged (measurable) reaction rates and products.
We invite contributions for this session from researchers in the geosciences, and other disciplines who are involved in experimental and modeling research related to understanding the spatial and temporal distribution of chemical and biological reactions in porous media systems.
Siderophores: From Biogeochemistry to Medical Applications (co-sponsored with the Division of Inorganic (INORG) Chemistry)
Organizers:
Bhoopesh Mishra, Department of Geosciences,
Anne M. L. Kraepiel, Department
of Chemistry,
Siderophores are strong Fe chelators produced by bacteria, fungi and higher plants. We are just beginning to understand their importance for iron acquisition by organisms in natural environments and their role in the biogeochemical cycles of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Their potential medical applications are numerous, including their use as chelating agents to induce Fe deprivation in infectious pathogens or as “Trojan horses” designed to deliver antibiotics directly to bacterial cells. Siderophores can also serve as biosensors for iron and possibly other metals. The goal of this symposium is to bring together scientists studying siderophores from all possible perspectives. The exchanges facilitated by this symposium will greatly benefit the environmental, bioinorganic, biochemical and medical communities, who work on similar problems with different approaches and set of techniques.
Biogeochemical Redox Processes in Soils and Sediments
Kate Campbell, U. S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA (kcampbell@usgs.gov)
Mathew Ginder-Vogel, Department
of Soil Chemistry,
Thomas Borch,
This symposium will bring together experts working on biogeochemical redox processes relevant to the speciation, distribution, and transport of nutrients and environmental contaminants. We invite participants to present process-oriented laboratory, field, and multi-scale studies that aim to illustrate the dominant biogeochemical mechanisms controlling element mobility. Topics of interest include the interdependency of microbial and geochemical processes, new biogeochemical modeling approaches, advanced analytical techniques, redox biogeochemistry of minerals and redox active metal(loid)s.