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The ACS Council Meeting was held on April 10, 2002.
The following is a summary of this meeting.
The four candidates for President-Elect (Charles Casey, Earnest Davidson,
William Jackson and Alvin Kwiram) gave presentations to the Council.
By ballot, the Council selected Casey (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) and
Kwiram (Univ. of Washington, Seattle) to be the nominees.
The ACS finished 2001 with a million dollar deficit.
The shortfall was a result of a decline in advertising revenue.
The ACS is not going broke. It
has assets valued in excess of $1 billion.
The ACS Strategic Plan for 2001-2003 is available on the web site at
www.Chemistry.org if your interested. While
on this web site, you can also create a personalized home page at
Mychemistry.org. The career and
employment service was also launched on JobSpectrum.org.
Support for job searching and career management is available on this
site. The ACS Salary Comparator is also available at the ACS home
page just in case you want to evaluate your salaries in comparison to your
colleagues in similar employment situations.
Finally, the ACS is considering payment of dues on-line.
No start date was available.
You may not realize that the ACS now applies a dues Escalator in determining
yearly fees. As a result, the 2003
dues will increase by $4.00 to $116.00. After
much debate, this figure was approved by the ACS Council.
The WNY councilors were opposed to any rate increase.
Finally, the membership continues to grow.
We currently have 163,502 members and a retention rate of 94%.
This is an increase of ~500 members over the last census.
Submitted by,
Dave Nalewajek,
Councilor.
| Chair
Joanna Christopher |
Chair-Elect
Patricia DePra |
| Vice-Chair
Larry Springsteen
|
Secretary
Mary
O'Sullivan |
| Treasurer
Andrew
Poss |
Double Bond Staff: Editor and Publisher Business Manager Joanna Christopher
|
| Assistant Editor
Patty
Shelley
|
Hello and Happy Solstice to all readers!
June
is graduation time for many of our children, nieces, nephews, neighbors, and
friends. It tends to remind us of
our own graduations in days gone by. This
month I would like to share with you an excerpt from a little book lent to me by
a coworker, who got it from a friend, who found it at a garage sale for a
quarter. This is a work from days
gone by. On the shoulders of
giants...
Radioactivity
and Radioactive Substances by J. Chadwick, M.Sc., Ph.D. with foreword by Sir
Ernest Rutherford D. Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. ; Pitman's Technical Primes, London, Sir
Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd. Parker
Street, Kingsway, W.C.2. 1923
"FOREWORD
I have read with pleasure this little book of my friend Dr. J. Chadwick.
It is a clear and accurate account of radioactive phenomena written by
one who has a first-hand knowledge of the facts.
For the beginner, the treatment of the subject gains in clearness by
using, as the author has done, the modern conceptions of atomic structure and by
disregard of the historical order of discovery.
To all those who are interested in the development of our knowledge of
this fascinating subject I can strongly recommend this book as a simple,
concise, and accurate statement of the main facts and theories.
E. Rutherford. Cavendish
Laboratory, June, 1921.
Chapter I
The Nature of Radioactivity
1.
Introduction.
The
discovery by Becquerel, in 1896, of that property of matter now termed
radioactivity opened up a new and important field of enquiry. Becquerel found
that uranium salts emitted spontaneously a radiation which was capable of
passing in varying degrees through all matter, whether transparent or opaque to
light, and which could be detected by its effect on a photographic plate.
The radiation from uranium also possessed the property of imparting
electrical conductivity to air and other gases, and this supplied a powerful
method of detecting and measuring such radiations.
The further investigation of the radioactivity of uranium resulted in the
discovery of many new substances, some of which exhibited this property to such
an extraordinary degree that their presence was disclosed by their
radioactivity, the quantity of these substances being too small to be detected
by any other means.
At
the present time nearly forty radioactive elements are known, each with a
definite and characteristic kind of radioactivity. Two of these, uranium and
thorium, were known in 1896, and were at the end of the Periodic Table, having
atomic weights of 238 and 232 respectively.
Between these elements and the next heaviest, bismuth (208) there was a
large gap. This is now filled by
the radioactive elements.
The study of these elements and of their radiations proved to be of great
interest and importance, and it is safe to say that the greater part of our
knowledge of the atom has resulted from it.
Not only has this study supplied experimental evidence of the individual
existence of the atom as a definite unit in the structure of matter, but it has
shown that the atom itself is a complex structure, consisting of negatively and
positively charged particles, and it has indicated the main lines of this
structure."
Have a great June everyone
Editor
Joanna Christopher
STN Express with Discover! is a fully integrated
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technical databases online through STN® as well as other online hosts.
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The modules are accessible on the CAS web site at:
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For more information, visit the CAS home page at
http://www.cas.org or call Customer Service at
1-800-753-4227
(in North America) or 614-447-3731.
Chemical & Engineering News Online (http://pubs.acs.org/cen) offers free links to journal articles in a growing number of publications. Links to journal references in C&EN articles include not only ACS journals, but also journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (such as Chemical Communications) and Angewandte published by Wiley-VCH. Readers do not need to be subscribers to these journals to read the linked journal articles. Please contact me if you have any questions: Melody Voith, Online Editor, Chemical & Engineering News, 1155 16th St., NW, Washington, DC 20036 http://pubs.acs.org/cen phone: 202-872-4406; fax 202-872-8727
Beginning this year, National Chemistry Week, formerly held
the first full week of November, will be celebrated the fourth week of October.
As part of the Western New York program, volunteers will be asked to engage in
activities that will help the public understand what chemistry is and how it
relates to keeping everything that is around us clean.
This topic should provide us with a forum to explain the chemical
properties of cleaners ranging from soaps and detergents to toothpaste and
mouthwash. Over the summer months,
I'll try to identify web sites that provide some useful experiments that we, as
a Section, can use for our
demonstrations. As these are found,
I'll have them posted on the local Section web page,www.canisius.edu/~dblbond.
We are always open to suggestions for activities for National Chemistry
Week. You can send your ideas or
any useful links that you have found to me atdavid.nalewajek@honeywell.com. Feel free to contact me at 827-6303.
National Chemistry Week (NCW) is a community-based program
of the American Chemical Society. The
mission of NCW is to reach the public, especially elementary and secondary
school children with positive messages about chemistry; to promote a positive
change in the public's impression of chemistry; to promote a mechanism for
effectively mobilizing ACS local sections; and to motivate the ACS membership
through local section activities. National
Chemistry Week will be celebrated annually in late October.
If you are wondering if you should get involved, remember
that NCW provides a great opportunity to network with colleagues in the chemical
enterprises as well as other fields. It
generates recognition for ACS local sections.
Many other groups celebrate NCW including elementary, middle and high
school teachers, scout troops, librarians, and senior citizens.
The efforts of ACS local sections are recognized for their outstanding
NCW activities through the ACS Phoenix Award program, usually held in
conjunction with the Fall, ACS National meeting.
Dave Nalewajek
NCW Chair.
The Winter 2001/2002 online edition of Chemunity News, the ACS newsletter that connects chemistry educators to the activities of the ACS Education and International Activities Division, is now available. As with the former paper version of this newsletter, staff hopes to provide chemists interested in education programs with timely news about the programs and services at ACS and occasionally include some thought-provoking insights and commentaries on national issues in chemistry education. The goal is to publish a new issue every two months. If you would like to receive an email reminder when new issues are available, please email education@acs.org with your contact information.
One of the best ways to keep your finger on the pulse of
ACS is by visiting chemistry.org, the Website of the American Chemical Society.
But busy professionals don't always have the time to keep up with all the new
content that’s being published on chemistry.org each day. That’s why we
developed a weekly newsletter to bring the latest and greatest content direct to
your e-mail address.
Each week, subscribers receive:
·
Quick summaries of our feature stories complete with color pictures and live
links to full articles;
·
A short description of what’s new on chemistry.org;
·
Links to free articles from Chemical & Engineering News, Modern
Drug Discovery, and Today’s Chemist at Work;
·
Links to the latest offerings from CAS
The chemistry.org newsletter gives you an efficient summary
of the information you want from ACS and lets you decide what to pursue.
Subscribing (and unsubscribing) is free and easy. Just
visit chemistry.org and register. Check the “Mailing List” option on the
registration form and you’ll begin receiving the newsletter the following
Monday. If you’ve already registered on chemistry.org, you can subscribe to
the newsletter by editing your profile and checking the “Mailing List”
option.
SENIOR CHEMISTS
If
you would be interested
in serving as a co-chairman of the
Senior Chemists please contact
Dr. Joseph F. Bieron @ 716 888-2357
Contact
Mary Jean Syrek @ 716-894-2128
Up-coming meetings
Saturday
October 26, 2002
November 30, 2002
January 25, 2003
February 22, 2003
March 29, 2003
Contact Patty @ Canisius College
716-888-2340 or via email at
shelleyp@canisius.edu
For laboratory or moving advice -
a chemist knows what other chemists want
Larry Beanan
For all your Real Estate Needs
Hunt Real Estate
2465 Sheridan Drive
Tonawanda, New York 14150
Office: 834-5400 Mobile:
435-1715
Canisius College Press
Phone: 716-888-3254
FAX: 716-888-3112
E-Mail bieron@canisius.edu
Website: www.canisius.edu/historyproject
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