6:00 p.m.     Dinner

7:00 p.m.     Lecture

The WCRSA ExComm will meet after the lecture has concluded.

Reservations: Please phone or e-mail Angie Spencer ( (864) 250-8278 ) to make your dinner reservation for this meeting Angela.Spencer@gvltec.edu with your name and affiliation. Dinner reservations must be made by Friday, February 20th!

Development of diagnostic methods for rapid and sensitive identification of viruses and other biomedical pathogens is essential for the advancement of therapeutic and intervention strategies necessary to protect public health. Current diagnostic methods for viruses in particular, e.g.i solation, PCR, antigen detection and serology, are time-consuming, cumbersome, or lack sensitivity. We have investigated the use of aligned Ag nanorod arrays, prepared by oblique angle vapor deposition (OAD), as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates for the identification and classification of viral pathogens. The OAD method of substrate preparation facilitates the selection of nanorod size, shape, density, alignment, orientation, and composition, while the procedure is reproducible and simple to implement. The current talk will address aspects of the fundamental nanostructural design of metallic nanorod arrays and their influence on SERS enhancement, as well as the development of a spectroscopic assay for virus and bacteria detection based on these unique nanostructured SERS probes. We will also present results of multivariate statistical analyses on the SERS spectra of different pathogenic species that indicate that it is possible to identify, differentiate, classify and quantify pathogenic microorganisms based on their intrinsic SERS spectra, even at the strain level.

Dr. Rich Dhuly is Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NanoSEC) at the University of Georgia. He obtained his B.S. Degree in Biochemistry at the University of Connecticut and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Rutgers University. He received the Alexander von Humboldt - Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2001. He serves on the Editorial Board of Vibrational Spectroscopy, and has organized numerous technical symposia and served on many scientific advisory committees. His diverse research interests include nanoscience and nanotechnology, spectroscopic and microscopic imaging of surfaces and interfaces, applications of nanoscience to biomedical sensing, biophysical chemistry, interfacial vibrational spectroscopy for the study of biophysical and biomolecular systems, and membrane biophysics.

The Western Carolinas section of the American Chemical Society (WCACS) is proud to participate in the ACS sponsored Chemists Celebrate Earth Day (CCED) Haiku contest. Specific details on the contest are available through the attached PDF or by directly linking to the ACS Chemists Celebrate Earth Day (CCED) site (www.acs.org/earthday). John Kaup (Clemson University) is the CCED Coordinator for WCACS and specific questions about this contest can be directed to him (jgkaup@clemson.edu). WCACS will accept up to three (3) entries per grade category per school. The grade categories, as indicated on the contest form, are K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. Entries must be received by April 3rd to be considered for the national contest. Local section volunteers will judge the submissions based on the criteria indicated in the contest guidelines and will forward one winning entry in each of the four grade categories to the national contest.

PDF FIle with contest information

Submission should be sent to the following address:

ACS Haiku contest
Attn: John G. Kaup
Clemson University
Department of Chemistry
Clemson SC 29634-0973

At our November meeting Sean O'Connor resigned as our secretary due to time constraints. Please join me in thanking Sean for his diligent work as our secretary this past year. Alice Claggett has been appointed to fill his unexpired term.

The Western Carolinas Section of the American Chemical Society will hold its annual Outstanding Seniors Award dinner on April 16, 2009 in the Townes Science Center on the Furman University Campus. We request that you identify your institution's Outstanding Senior Chemistry Major. If your department has not already received a copy of the Awardee Information Form or wants additional information please contact Tim Hanks at tim.hanks@furman.edu or at (864)294-3373. Each Outstanding Senior will receive a certificate and a gift from the Section.

On January 12, 2009, registration opened for all attendees to register for the ACS 237th National Meeting to be held in Salt Lake City, UT, March 22-26, 2009. Early registration fees started on January 12, 2009, and will last through February 23, 2009. More information about the meeting is available at www.acs.org

Our Webmaster, Dwayne Grassie, would welcome your "press releases" about activities that you believe would be of interest to our section. As he says so eloquently on our web site, "without active members reporting the activities of the section to me there would be no web site because there would be nothing to report." Dwayne can be reached at: MAG-IT@charter.net

---

Dr. Laura Wright - Chair 2009.
Dr. Sid Parrish - Chair-Elect 2009.
Dr. Julia Brumaghim - Treasurer 2009
Mrs. Lucy Pryde Eubanks - Councilor 2009-11.
Dr. Royce S. Woosley - Councilor 2008-2010
Dr. George Heard - Alternate Councilor 2009-11.
Dr. John Kaup - Alternate Councilor 2008-10.

Dianne Earle is the 2008 winner of the Outstanding Teaching Award for the Southeast Region of the American Chemical Society! This is a great honor both for Dianne and the Western Carolinas Section. The award will be presented at an Awards Luncheon on Thursday, November 13, in Nashville at the 2008 SERMACS meeting. Congratulations to Dianne!

Dianne has been a very enthusiastic high school chemistry teacher for almost thirty years and the recipient of eight teaching awards, including the Western Carolinas Section Teacher of the Year awards in 1985, 1991, and 2007. In 2003 she was honored as Teacher of the Year by the South Carolina Association of Chemistry Teachers. Dianne was nominated for the Presidential Award for Science Teachers for 2007. Dianne teaches Honors Chemistry I and Advanced Placement Chemistry II at Boiling Springs High School.

She is a member of the National Science Teachers Association, Western Carolinas Section of the American Chemical Society, South Carolina Science Council, Palmetto State Teachers Association, Division of Chemical Education of the ACS, Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, South Carolina Association of Chemistry Teachers, South Carolina Academy of Science, and National Mole Day Foundation. She has served as president of Delta Kappa Gamma and is currently the secretary of SCACT. She has been a Master Teacher at the AP Chemistry Summer Institute at Furman University and was on the 2002 Advanced High School ACS Test Committee.

I feel very honored and humbled to be receiving this award. Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time someone from WCACS won this prestigious honor was in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It is wonderful that the WCACS Section had such confidence in my abilities.

Chemistry affords the opportunity to reignite that sense of wonder in the adolescent child. What other discipline integrates the wonders of the universe with reasoning processes and uses mathematics as a tool?
I hope to teach my students more than facts in chemistry. I want them to see relationships. How is the structure of the atom related to bonding? How is bonding related to properties of matter? How are properties of matter related to the world we see?