PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

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BIOMINING Using microbes to

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BEE DECLINES EPA struggles to assess

the role of pesticides P. 28

WATER TREATMENT Growing with the shale gas boom P. 13

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COVER: Two workers from Nalco, an Ecolab business, take water samples at a gas well site. Nalco

“It’s nice to be able to look at something and see reflected in it the chemistry you’ve worked on.”ANTHONY J. ARDUENGO III, CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR,

UNIVERSITY OF

ALABAMA PAGE 36

24 PATENT FIGHTS OVER SOLAR-CELL TECHGlobal photovoltaics market has grown enough to merit legal wrangling by major firms.

21 CELANESE BANKS ON TECHNOLOGYStrong scientific capabilities will help chemical firm fulfill its big ambitions, CEO says.

18 CONCENTRATES

10 STOPPING SOLAR-CELL DUMPINGCommerce Department recommends trade duty sanctions for Chinese solar-cell firms.

11 NATIONAL CHEMISTRY WEEK GOES NANONanotechnology is the theme for this year’s annual celebration, sponsored by ACS.

10 GETTING RNA ALL EXCITEDMethods to elicit, observe excited states of RNA could benefit endeavors such as drug discovery.

11 FINDING RNA G-QUADRUPLEXESClick chemistry helps distinguish structures, provides insights for possible therapeutics.

9 DEADLY ACID LEAK IN SOUTH KOREAHydrofluoric acid leak at Hube Global in Gumi kills five people and sickens thousands more.

9 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICSA U.S. and a French researcher share prize for observing quantum behavior of particles.

8 ACS SETTLES WITH LEADSCOPESociety agrees to pay start-up software firm $22.6 million after a decadelong court battle.

8 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINEU.S. researchers’ work on switching any mammalian cell to a pluripotent stem cell is honored.

7 CYCLOADDITION REACTION REVIVALResearchers tweak the Diels-Alder reaction for a more efficient route to complex benzenoids.

7 OPTIMISM FOR FINE CHEMICALSCPhI Worldwide attendees see blue skies even in Europe’s troubled economies.

6 NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRYRobert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka are honored for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors.

TREATING FRACKING

WASTEWATERInstead of disposing of

wastewater from fracking, companies are finding

ways to clean and reuse the water. PAGE 13

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

COVER STORY

NEWS OF THE WEEK

BUSINESS

38 PEOPLE

40 MEETINGS

48 NEWSCRIPTS42 CLASSIFIEDS4 LETTERS

3 EDITOR’S PAGETHE DEPARTMENTS

30 FEDERAL R&D FUNDS AT RISKAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science report looks at long-term impact of budget sequestration on R&D.

28 EXPLAINING BEE LOSSESEPA seeks to understand effects of pesticides on pollinator species.

26 CONCENTRATESGOVERNMENT & POLICY

34 MICROBES FOR MININGResearchers begin to dig deep to bring biomining to the industrial forefront.

37 CHEMICAL LANDMARKACS honors DayGlo Color for its invention of fluorescent pigments.

36 ANTHONY ARDUENGOC&EN talks with the discoverer of the first stable N-heterocyclic carbene, 20 years later.

32 CONCENTRATESSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

ACS NEWS

XX

6 28

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FROM THE EDITOR

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ADVISORY BOARDGary D. Allred, Paul T. Anastas, Sherwood L. Boehlert,Paul J. Bracher, Jean-Claude Bradley, Yves J. Chabal,Seth M. Cohen, Kendrew H. Colton, Brian D. Coppola,

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Brian Crawford, President, Publications Division

EDITORIAL BOARD: Ned D. Heindel (Chair);ACS Board of Directors Chair: William F. Carroll Jr.;

ACS President: Bassam Z. Shakhashiri; Stephanie L. Brock, John N. Russell Jr., Leah Solla, Peter J. Stang

Copyright 2012, American Chemical SocietyCanadian GST Reg. No. R127571347

Volume 90, Number 42

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.

Stop The Madness IF NO DEFICIT-REDUCTION deal emerges at year’s end, across-the-board budget cuts will take effect on Jan. 2, 2013. The story on page 30 says the cuts will drive R&D budgets at federal agencies to their lowest levels in decades. The U.S. government should reduce the deficit systematically and stop flirting with the prospect of chok-ing innovation.

The figure above is one reason why. It is the centerpiece of a National Research Council report about information technol-ogy (IT) published in July, which came to my attention via Steve Lohr’s Oct. 8 col-umn in the International Herald Tribune .

The figure conveys how decades-long inter play (gray arrows) between IT re-search in academia (red track) and in industry (blue track) and concurrent ad-vances in multiple fields gave rise to a rich knowledge base from which emerged the high-profile companies in various IT mar-ket segments. IT subfields, the develop-ment of which spurred the growth of a mar-ket segment, are listed at the bottom. Black

dots indicate the launch of commercial products; green lines represent markets of at least $1 billion (thin) or at least $10 bil-lion (thick).

Even though the data are for the IT in-dustry, the conclusions can apply to others. Clearly, the gestation period from basic research to product is unpredictable. Indus-try investment in critical areas came years

after consistent academic research funded primarily by federal agencies. Commercial-ization occurred decades later. Now, the total estimated annual revenues of the com-panies listed in the figure are about $500 bil-lion, the report says. Those revenues would not exist if the U.S. government did not invest in basic IT research back in 1965.

What billion-dollar companies might never start because of indiscriminate cuts in 2013? This madness should stop.

SOURCE: Adapted from “Continuing Innovation in Information Technology,” National Academies Press

LONG-TERM GAIN Sustained investing in basic research gave birth to billion-dollar companies.

2010

2005

2000

1995

1990

1985

1980

1975

1970

1965

University R&D Industry R&D Products $1 Billion market $10 Billion market

Areas of fundamental research in IT

Computer architecture

Software technologies

Networking

Parallel & distributed

systemsDatabases

Computer graphics

AI & robotics

Digital communications

Internet& Web

Cloudcomputing

Entertainment& design

Enterprisesystems

Robotics &assistive

technologies

Personalcomputing

Microprocessors

Broadband& mobile

IT sectors

Companies MotorolaQualcomm

Apple(iPhone)

AMDIntel

TexasInstruments

nVidia

DellHP

AppleSymantec

JuniperCisco

AkamaiTwitter

Facebook eBay

AmazonGoogleYahoo!

Google(non-

advertising)VMwareAmazon(non-e-

commerce)

OracleIBM

Microsoft

ElectronicArtsPixar

Adobe

iRobotNuanceIntuitiveSurgical

4WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

THIS WEEKONLINE

LETTERS

REFLECTIONS ON RUDY BAUM’S TENURE

I WOULD BE LYING if I wrote that I am disappointed at the change in the position of C&EN editor-in-chief ( C&EN, Sept. 17, page 3 ). I owe Rudy Baum thanks for the high percentage of my letters he decided to publish even though they all (except those dealing only with chemistry) opposed his political views. Not that I think that poli-tics does not belong in C&EN, rather that its treatment should not be so one-sided.

Fundamental to Baum’s approach is the implicit assumption that government knows better than private citizens how their money should be spent. This is di-rectly contrary to what experience teaches us and requires government to forcibly appropriate its citizens’ goods, devalue their currency, or both. It is also contrary to democratic principles in that the people vote, not only at the ballot box, but also with their purchases in deciding what gets produced and what does not.

So it is that we are now forced to buy alcohol to burn in our cars and overpriced electricity from windmills and solar panels and to subsidize uneconomical electric automobiles. If independence from Middle East petroleum is indeed in the national in-terest—and evidence for this is weak—the market would substitute natural gas, and the market would then merely reflect the people’s democratic choice. It is arrogant for self-proclaimed experts to overrule that choice.

It is also arrogant to espouse uncriti-cally the disputed position that the planet is warming as a result of carbon dioxide emissions and that this change represents a clear and present danger for the survival of humankind. The arrogance lies with the implied assumption that we understand all the significant factors affecting Earth’s cli-mate and the results of any change. To any scientist who has spent his or her life trying to understand the universe, this assump-tion is ludicrous. The universe and all parts of it, physical and biological, are of vastly greater complexity than we can imagine; we have only barely scratched the surface of it. Each time we peel away a skin of the universe/onion we face another skin. A. E. Lippman St. Louis

Written In BacteriaResearchers have figured out how to “write” with bacteria. They did so by adapting dip-pen nanolithography, which is already used to write with small proteins, polymers, and other nanosized molecules. The established method uses the tip of an atomic force microscope to place molecules at researcher-chosen points on a surface. To adapt the technique for use with bacteria, the team designed a new AFM tip and a microbial ink.http://cenm.ag/nano9

Slicing Polystyrene Produces Problematic ParticlesTo insulate homes, construction work-

ers sometimes line walls with polystyrene foam boards. They slice the boards using a hot wire, releasing nanosized particles into the air that they then might inhale. A new study estimates that compared with

nonconstruction employees, workers breathing in these particles could be exposed to far higher quantities of a brominated flame retardant.http://cenm.ag/hd

Method Detects Damage In Fossil BonesWhen archaeologists find a pile of an-cient bones, they sometimes try to ex-tract DNA from the bones to learn more about human predecessors or animals that are now extinct. But most of these artifacts contain degraded DNA, and only intact DNA can provide useful in-formation. A mass-spectrometry-based technique could help archaeologists triage old or fossilized bone quickly and cheaply for DNA analysis.http://cenm.ag/anl75

Nobel Prize Through Families’ EyesScientists typically feel they have two families—the one at home and their ex-tended lab family. The Newscripts blog gives a peek into the excitement of both families of newly minted Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Robert J. Lefkowitz (see page 6): Blogger David Kroll shares photos of the celebration at the lab, and Senior Editor Carmen Drahl interviews Lefkowitz’ daughter, a novelist, about life with a Nobel Laureate.http://cenm.ag/lefko

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I DO THINK THAT most reasonable scien-tists believe that Earth is warming, that this has been happening since the last ice age, and that it is still going on. Why? What is our part in it? And why does this cycle seem to repeat? These are the only questions I hear. If you believe the data from sediment and core samples, the evidence that Earth is again warming is clear.

One related problem that I do not hear about is the needed production of water for agriculture. We have seen and experienced this problem this summer (and many times in the past). The drought in the Midwest and other areas has reduced the harvest of essential crops.

Potable water can be easily made in WITH SADNESS I read Baum’s last edito-rial on climate change ( C&EN, Sept. 10,

page 3 ). For more than a decade, Baum has not let us forget this issue. His tenacity and common sense will be sorely missed.

The hostility of ACS members to Baum’s editorials has always puzzled me. Of all scientists, chemists should have the best grasp of the forces causing climate change, as well as a honed ability to evaluate com-plex experimental observations. Climate change is our civilization’s big chemistry experiment.

What are the underlying origins of this hostility? Do we simply cling to our familiar past, just as Elie Wiesel’s family repeatedly chose to endure the Nazi invaders rather than escape to safety in the mountains (“ All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs ,” New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, 53–70)? After all, truly mitigating climate change would upset our sedentary lifestyle, gov-ernment entitlements, rampant consumer-ism, and addiction to fossil fuels. Rather than confront this reality, we fantasize that scientists will achieve miraculous break-throughs that might let us have our cake and eat it too.

Any healthy civilization would simply demand sacrifice in the face of impending disaster. Yet, as in Wiesel’s community, we rationalize away the danger and shun mes-sengers like Baum. We want 100% certainty of danger before taking any action that involves sacrifice.

Baum’s retirement is symbolic. Our watchdogs, reared in the mind-set of sur-viving the Depression and World War II, are now leaving us. Soon we will be on our own and ill-prepared to confront the hard times ahead. History and religion know well our fate. William K. Wilson Houston

5WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

LETTERS

IT IS WITH GREAT REGRET that I bid farewell to Baum’s stewardship of C&EN. For the past nine years I have greatly en-joyed the weekly, which, without parallel in the past, kept me abreast with happen-ings in our industry, science, and business. Excellent and diverse selections of well-written articles were topped with Baum’s editorials, which reminded us all that there is life apart from chemistry and that we should both know of it and care about it.

Thank you for it all. Maria A. Wolfram San Francisco

CONGRATULATIONS to Baum on his re-tirement. I have read many of his editorials over the years, and I thank him for the great job he has done. I have especially enjoyed reading the more provocative articles he has written and have often thought that I should write in support of his views. I think that there are many of us who are not el-egant writers and therefore have not come to his defense, but we are thankful for what he has brought to ACS. Tom Lemke Pearland , Texas

I WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS my thanks to Baum for again having the courage to speak out on climate change. We cannot continue to stall by asking for more studies. This is a tactic that is being used by one group of individuals to further their own interests at great risk to the rest of the world.

How bad does it have to get before ac-tion is taken? Some say we have already passed the tipping point. Ted W. Reid Lubbock , Texas

I HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED and been en-lightened by Baum’s editorials. Of particu-lar interest has been his steadfast support of measures to ameliorate global warm-ing. In 1973 I received a contract at Mitre Corp. (a not-for-profit systems engineer-ing firm) to write a rationale for a major program of research and development in solar energy under the then-new Research Aimed at National Needs Directorate at the National Science Foundation. My re-port, “Energy Use and Climate” (NSF-RA-N-75-052), was the first published federal report on the dangers to the climate from

small quantities for human consumption, but the amounts needed for agriculture are immensely greater. Desalination of seawa-ter could provide a substantial amount of demineralized water for this purpose. This water would not poison land that needs constant irrigation. Marginal land could then be used for the food needed by an ex-panding world population.

What is needed is a massive scale-up of desalinization plants and a massive pipe-line infrastructure as we now have for fuel in the U.S. Who will have the foresight to propose this importunate initiative? Gary J. Banuk Hanson , Mass.

the continuing combustion of fossil fuels. The National Academy of Sciences had

made available “Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action” in 1975, and quite a few specialists in the field published papers earlier, notably C. Keeling who had measured CO 2 concentrations starting in 1958 atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Ha-waii. My work with W. Roberts, W. Kellogg, S. Schneider, and W. Washington at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and others led me to the conclusion that unless strict measures were taken soon to limit the concentration of CO 2 to less than 400 to 420 ppm, the global average temperature of Earth could rise 2 to 3 °C and 10 °C or more at the poles. Note that CO 2 concentration in 2012 has reached 390 ppm, and the temperature of Earth is increasing according to the timeline I pub-lished 37 years ago.

Why have we as a nation and a world failed to curtail the use of fossil fuels as I and so many others have called for? I have to blame the fossil-fuel lobbyists, the glob-al-warming deniers, and the antiscience politicians who do not want to confront the incredibly solid evidence all around us. Richard S. Greeley St. Davids , Pa.

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◾ Letters should generally be 400 words or fewer and should include the writer’s full name, address, and home telephone; letters may be edited for purposes of clarity and space. Because of the heavy volume of mail received at C&EN, writers are limited to one letter in a six-month period.

6WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

news of the week

ROBERT J. LEFKOWITZ, 69, and Brian K. Kobilka , 57, will take home this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for unraveling

the molecular workings of G-protein-cou-pled receptors (GPCRs). The receptors

are a family of proteins that transmit critical biological messages for

functions such as vision, smell, taste, and neuro-

transmission, and they are targets for myriad drugs.

GPCRs “are crucially positioned to regulate al-

most every known physiological pro-cess in humans,” Lefkowitz , a Howard

Hughes Medical Institute investigator based at Duke University Medical Center, said by phone at an Oct. 10 press conference. For decades, re-

searchers knew that hormones outside cells led to changes inside cells. But the exact

nature of this chemical signaling was a mystery. Lefkowitz first

traced the receptors respon-sible for this signaling with

radioactive blocking or acti-vating agents.

Kobilka, now at Stan-ford University School of

Medicine, was a postdoc in Lefkowitz’ lab in the 1980s

when the lab was hunting for the gene encoding the

β adrenergic receptor. When Ko-bilka finally isolated the gene, he real-

ized the receptor comprised seven helices, just like rhodopsin, which resides in the retina and

responds to light. Kobilka and Lefkowitz surmised that a large family of seven-helix receptors—the GPCRs—must exist.

“There’s no question this work deserves the chemistry prize,” says University of Wisconsin,

Madison, chemist Samuel H. Gellman , who has col-laborated with Kobilka. “These proteins are vitally important molecules,” he explains, and although the work may sound heavily biological, the duo “did the kinds of things any chemist who wanted to under-stand a molecule would do.”

GPCRs are targets for as many as 50% of medica-tions on the market, but many of those drugs, such as beta-blockers, date to long before the prizewinning discoveries. “Chemists made early GPCR drugs by just making molecules related to natural hormones or neurotransmitters,” says Fiona H. Marshall, chief

scientific officer of Heptares Therapeu-tics , a firm that specializes in GPCR drug discovery. Lefkowitz and Kobilka’s work allows medicinal chemists to better un-derstand the proteins they are targeting as they go about designing new drugs, she adds.

Both winners have founded firms to aid the drug discovery effort—Lefkowitz’ Trevena focuses on avoiding drug side effects, and Kobilka’s ConfometRx helps

companies determine GPCR structures. “I hope my discovery leads to better and less-expensive drugs for patients,” Kobilka said in a statement.

Although the Nobel Committee pointed to Kobilka’s more recent research achievements, including the first

X-ray crystal structure of a GPCR bound to its signaling partner, “this Nobel Prize is not just about the GPCR structure,” Marshall says. “That was the icing on the cake at the end.”

Lefkowitz and Kobilka will split the $1.2 million prize, which Lefkowitz said he didn’t anticipate. “I can assure you I did not go to sleep ... waiting for this call.” On the day of the announcement, Lefkowitz had ini-tially planned to get a haircut. — CARMEN DRAHL

AWARDS: Once teacher and apprentice, duo shares honor for shedding

light on signaling proteins

2012 NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY

An X-ray crystal structure depicts the β 2 adrenergic receptor (green) with its G protein (yellow, blue, and aqua). The complex is stabilized by a llama antibody (red) and the enzyme T4 lysozyme (purple).

OCTOBER 15, 2012 EDITED BY WILLIAM G. SCHULZ & NADER HEIDARI

See photos from the Lefkowitz lab celebration at the Newscripts blog, http://cenm.ag/lefko .

MORE ONLINE

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— SAMUEL H. GELLMAN

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7WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

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A GENERALLY GOOD INDUSTRY outlook pre-vailed among attendees at last week’s CPhI Worldwide, the annual pharmaceutical ingredi-

ents conference, held this year in Madrid. The upbeat view came even as the International Monetary Fund lowered its estimates for global economic growth and European finance ministers rolled out a $650 billion bailout program for troubled eurozone economies.

Some people at the conference did express a bit of anxiety about prospects for economic recovery in Eu-rope. However, 85% of exhibitors say they are positive about the future, seeing pharma industry dynamics outweigh concerns about the global economy, accord-ing to a survey by show organizer UBM.

Custom manufacturers are spreading their bets around the globe. “Operate globally, but be present

locally” is Albany Molecular Re-search Inc. ’s philosophy, said Ian Shott, the U.S. firm’s European president. The company expects to see a “solid uptick” in business after integrating its operations across three continents as part of a restructuring.

BASF announced construction of a catalyst produc-tion line in Mangalore, India. Due to open in 2013, the line will be the German company’s first for fine chemi-cals catalysts in Asia. BASF also recently decided to move the headquarters of its pharma ingredients busi-ness from Switzerland to the U.S.

India’s Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories announced that it is expanding output of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) at its Mirfield, England, facility. Also in the U.K., Almac expects to have completed by year’s end an API expansion in Craigavon, Northern Ireland. Separately, the company has joined with DSM to offer customers development of biocatalytic production routes.

Meanwhile, France’s Novasep said it will invest $39 million to build a commercial-scale chromatogra-phy plant in Mourenx, France. The company said the expansion is in response to projected demand for a large-volume, highly purified API. Earlier this year, No-vasep opened a new facility in China. — ANN THAYER

CPhI: Suppliers hope the pharmaceutical chemicals business

will continue to improve

UPTURN SEEN FOR FINE CHEMICALS

CPhI attendees enjoyed the business climate in Madrid last week.

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RESEARCHERS HAVE FOUND that a known cycloaddition reaction has not been living up to its potential. The finding could lead to more ef-

ficient syntheses of drugs, natural products, heteroaro-matics, polyacenes, and other compounds.

The reaction is the Diels-Alder cycloaddition of an alkyne and diyne. Natural products specialist Thomas R. Hoye and coworkers at the University of Minnesota re-discovered serendipitously that mild heating of a start-ing material containing alkyne and diyne groups induces intramolecular Diels-Alder cycloaddition to benzyne, which is then trapped—for example, by an internal t -bu-tyldimethylsiloxy group—to give polycyclic benzenoid products ( Nature , DOI: 10.1038/nature11518 ).

The Hoye group also found that the benzyne inter-mediate can, in the absence of an internal trapping agent, react intermolecularly with reagents like alco-hols, amides, halides, or acids to form complex benze-

noids. They propose that the process that generates the reactive benzyne be renamed the hexadehydro-Diels-Alder (HDDA) reaction.

The first clear examples of the HDDA reaction were reported in 1997 by organic chemist Richard P. Johnson ’s group at the University of New Hampshire and independently by organic chemist Ikuo Ueda and coworkers at Osaka University, in Japan. Recently, Brian T. Sterenberg ’s group at the University of Regina , in Saskatchewan, reported a metal-templated version. But chemists have rarely used the reaction or exploited it for synthetic purposes.

What is most novel in the current study “is the beau-tiful intramolecular trapping by a proximate protecting group and a wide variety of intermolecular benzyne-trapping agents,” Johnson comments. “This is an important paper that may help a spectacular but long overlooked type of cycloaddition find its way into the synthetic lexicon.”

The work shows that the HDDA reaction, “previously primarily a curiosity, has signifi-cant synthetic applications,” says Sterenberg. “The relatively easy precursor synthesis along with the potential for further elabora-tion means that the reaction will find applica-tions in the synthesis of complex polycyclic organic products. This paper will have a significant impact on the field of organic synthesis.” — STU BORMAN

SYNTHESIS: New Diels-Alder route to complex benzenoids

RENEWED FOCUS ON A NEGLECTED

REACTION

Nucleophilic reagents such as phenol substitute intermolecularly onto a reactive benzyne formed intramolecularly by alkyne-diyne cycloaddition, yielding complex benzenoid products. Dashed lines show benzyne-ring-forming interactions.

8WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

NEWS OF THE WEEK

FOR DISCOVERING that a cell’s fate is not set in stone, John B. Gurdon, 79, and Shinya Yamanaka, 50, will share the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology

or Medicine. Gurdon and Yamanaka’s work showed that cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent—that is, capable of turning into any kind of cell in the body.

The discovery trans-formed understanding of developmental biol-ogy, created new ways to study the onset of disease, and now paves the way for therapies to combat a wide variety of diseases.

Winning the Nobel Prize is “a tremendous honor, especially since I heard I share the prize with John Gurdon,” said Yamanaka, a stem cell researcher at Ja-pan’s Kyoto University

and San Francisco’s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovas-cular Disease , at an Oct. 8 press conference. “I was able to initiate my project because of his experiments 50 years ago.”

In 1962, Gurdon, a developmental biologist at Cam-

bridge University , published the results of an experi-ment in which he removed the nucleus from a frog em-bryo and replaced it with the nucleus from a tadpole’s intestinal cell ( J. Embryol. Exp. Morphol. 1962, 10, 622). The modified embryo turned into a normal tadpole, showing that the genome—even from a differentiated cell—holds all of the information required for an or-ganism to develop. This experiment was also the first time an animal was cloned.

Some 40 years later, Yamanaka was the first to turn a mouse skin cell into a pluripotent stem cell capable of turning into any kind of cell ( Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.07.024). In particular, Yamanaka showed this reprogramming required the activation of only four genes.

The discoveries of Yamanaka and Gurdon “revo-lutionized regenerative medicine,” comments Ian Wilmut, the University of Edinburgh researcher who famously cloned Dolly the sheep. One practical ap-plication of cellular reprogramming is in studies of disease development in the brain or other organs from which “you can’t take significant biopsies,” Wilmut says. By reprogramming skin cells into more primitive cells and then differentiating them into brain cells, re-searchers can observe the onset of disease, discover its molecular mechanisms, and screen for potential drugs.

“The work of Gurdon and Yamanaka is especially im-portant from a chemist’s perspective since it opened an exciting frontier—small-molecule-mediated transdiffer-entiation,” says Stuart L. Schreiber, a chemical biologist at Harvard University and MIT’s Broad Institute. “Now chemists can explore whether they can impose their will on tissues in the body with new medicines” that convert an abundant cell type into another that is deficient as a result of disease, he says, such as dopamine-producing neurons to help cure Parkinson’s disease.

Yamanaka and Gurdon will split the $1.2 million prize. — SARAH EVERTS

AWARDS: Researchers split prize for their work on cellular reprogramming

2012 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY

OR MEDICINE

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The American Chemical Society and Leadscope Inc. and its three founders have reached a settlement in their long-running intellectual property dispute. ACS, which publishes C&EN, has agreed to pay Leadscope and its three found-ers $22.6 million to settle and resolve all claims associated with American Chemi-cal Society v. Leadscope Inc.

The settlement, which was announced on Oct. 5, also makes clear that all par-ties agree that “all right, title, interest, and ownership in the Leadscope soft-ware and products that were the subject of the litigation belong exclusively to Leadscope.”

“Each party is pleased to put an end to this long-standing dispute,” say ACS, Leadscope, and the company’s founders in a joint statement.

The case involved an initial allega-tion by ACS that Leadscope founders had misappropriated ACS intellectual property in order to develop a software product to compete with the society’s Chemical Abstracts Service . Leadscope then countersued, seeking damages for unfair competition, tortious interference with business relations, deceptive trade practices, and defamation.

A jury found in favor of Leadscope in 2008 on three of its claims, and an ap-

pellate court upheld the verdict in 2010 . The Ohio Supreme Court weighed in last month, partially reversing the lower court ruling ( C&EN, Sept. 24, page 5 ). The top state court overturned the defamation finding but left in place the finding of un-fair competition and tortious interference.

ACS will be able to cover the settle-ment with “a portion of its cash and investments,” the society says in a state-ment. “This payment will not impact the society’s member dues; extensive prod-ucts, programs, and services advancing chemistry; staffing levels; or the ability of ACS to achieve its mission,” ACS says. — SUSAN MORRISSEY

TRADE SECRETS ACS to pay $22.6 million to Leadscope to settle intellectual property case

9WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

NEWS OF THE WEEK

THE SOUTH KOREAN government has declared a “special disaster zone” in a region in central South Korea where a chemical plant leaked

hydro fluoric acid. The designation means that affected residents will be financially compensated and that au-thorities will monitor their health.

The accident occurred on Sept. 27 while workers were unloading the material at South Korean hydro-fluoric acid producer Hube Global in Gumi, a city 125 miles southeast of Seoul, according to the government-affiliated Yonhap News Agency.

The accident killed five Hube workers, sickened more than 3,000 people in the vicinity of the plant site, damaged crops, and affected livestock. On the basis of security camera footage, South Korean police believe that Hube workers were negligent in following proper safety guidelines, Yonhap reports.

Critical of the haphazard response of local authorities, the Prime Minister’s Office became involved, declaring

on Oct. 8 that the area is eligible for special government support. The Prime Minister’s Office is coordinating a multiagency response, according to its press office and statements from the Ministry of Environment.

Hydrofluoric acid is a particularly toxic chemical, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Pre-vention. It can injure lung tissue when inhaled and cause pulmonary edema. Even splashes on the skin can be fatal.

The material is made by only a handful of companies worldwide, the main ones being Honeywell, DuPont , and Solvay , says Kenneth M. Stern, a New York City-based senior manag-ing director at FTI Consulting who has worked in the chemical industry for 40 years.

Hydrofluoric acid is used in petroleum refineries as a catalyst for the alkylation process, Stern tells C&EN. In addition, he says, “it is one of the most critical wet-pro-cess electronic chemicals used for semiconductor pro-cessing, where the strong electronegative nature of fluo-rine allows for the removal of a wide range of oxides.”

On its website, Hube Global says its hydrofluoric acid is suitable for manufacturing of liquid-crystal displays. In operation since 2008, the Gumi plant has a production capacity of 9,000 metric tons per year. — JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY

PLANT SAFETY: Hydrofluoric acid accident kills five workers and

sickens thousands of people nearby

SOUTH KOREA BATTLES PLANT LEAK

A banner calls for the government to respond to a hydrofluoric acid leak.

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FOR THEIR PAINSTAKING observations of the quantum behavior of trapped photons and ions, physics professor Serge Haroche of the Collège de

France and École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Da-vid J. Wineland of the National Institute of Standards & Technology in Boulder, Colo., will share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.

The work of Haroche and Wineland , both 68, has allowed scientists to begin forging ahead with the goal of developing quantum computers, members of the Nobel Committee said at a press conference in Stock-holm on Oct. 9. Their work could also provide the basis for clocks 100 times more precise than current atomic clocks based on cesium atoms.

Their studies have been a real-life exploration of the strange quantum behavior illustrated by the famous thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat, in which a feline exists in the superimposed states of being both

alive and dead until human observation decides the animal’s fate. In reality, this superposition of states, and their subsequent collapse into a specific state, also known as decoherence, becomes relevant only at the quantum level of individual photons and molecules.

Haroche and Wineland got a close-up view of this quantum world with their experiments, which allowed the systems to exist long enough to be studied, said Per Delsing at the press conference. Delsing is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Swe-den, and a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences member.

Although the research of Haroche and Wineland shares similarities, they approached the problem dif-ferently. Wineland trapped beryllium ions in an electric field and probed their quantum states with a laser. Ha-roche trapped photons between two mirrors and used their effects on beams of atoms to infer information about the photons’ quantum states.

The superimposed quantum states in these systems could be used as quantum bits, or qubits, for a quantum computer. Unlike the bits in current computers, which store information in a series of ones and zeros, qubits can store both values at the same time.

The two men will share the $1.2 million prize. Ha-roche, who was reached by phone during the press conference, said he got the news while on a walk with his wife. “I was passing near a bench, so I was able to sit down,” he said. — ELIZABETH WILSON

AWARDS: Observations of the quantum behavior of particles set the stage for quantum computing

2012 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

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10WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

NEWS OF THE WEEK

SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG suspected that many RNA molecules have short-lived, low-abun-dance excited states, but those states have been

difficult to characterize. Now, Hashim M. Al-Hashimi and coworkers at the University of Michigan, Ann Ar-

bor, have developed a method to trap and observe these RNA excited states ( Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11498 ).

The excited states typically last for microseconds and account for less than 5% of the population of a particular RNA molecule. Nonetheless, these alternative structures can significantly affect biologi-cal function, Al-Hashimi says.

“We’ve known for a long time that mo-lecular dynamics are incredibly important in biology,” says Samuel E. Butcher , a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has previ-ously observed an RNA excited state. “It just makes sense that RNA should have excited states. Al-Hashimi and coworkers have given us some of the first views of RNA excited-state structures.”

The researchers identify excited-state candidates using an RNA structure

prediction program. For a given RNA sequence, they select the second-best structure as a possible excited state. (They assume the best structure is the ground

state.) They mutate the RNA molecule to capture the predicted excited-state form. They then use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine the trapped form’s “chemical shift fingerprint,” which they compare with an excited-state-related fingerprint de-rived from chemical broadening in the NMR spectrum of the ground state. If the fingerprints match, they as-sume they have found the right structure.

The researchers used their method to identify excit-ed-state structures for three RNA molecules—the api-cal loop of the transactivation response element (TAR) from HIV-1, which activates viral replication; the ribo-somal A-site, which is involved in decoding messenger RNA; and HIV-1 stem-loop 1 (SL1), which is involved in dimerization of the viral genome.

In each case, the excited state involves small changes in base pair alignment. “The excited state typically sequesters bases that were otherwise exposed,” Al-Hashimi says. “In the ground state, these bases are available to interact with things. In the excited state, they’re not.”

The three systems involve different types of RNA secondary structures—a hairpin for TAR and internal loops for the A-site and SL1. “These motifs are very common and widespread in RNA,” Al-Hashimi says. “The fact that we see these excited states in these dif-ferent motifs suggests that they’re probably a very gen-eral feature of RNA.”

The excited states “may serve as important starting targets for drug design and certainly for understand-ing the range of functions these molecules perform,” says Lewis E. Kay , a biochemistry professor at the University of Toronto. “Most of structural biology has focused to date on the ground states of biomolecules. It is clear that an understanding of function will require structural studies of additional conformations as well. This work takes an important step in that direction.” — CELIA ARNAUD

STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY: Method captures short-lived, low-

abundance RNA excited states

RNA GETS EXCITED

In the excited states of SL1 (ground state shown in green), a bulged base moves up (red) or down (blue) the helix like a zipper.

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Chinese polysilicon solar-cell manufactur-ers could be hit with duties under a ruling issued last week by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The determination marks the near end of a yearlong investigation.

The department found that 61 Chinese firms had sold solar cells and panels below cost, a practice known as dumping, and had obtained illegal subsidies from the Chinese government. The investigation did not include thin-film solar manufacturers.

For the two largest companies, Sun-tech Power and Trina Solar, the tariffs will be 35.97% and 23.75%, respectively, ac-cording to Commerce officials. These du-ties are intended to even the playing field

between U.S. and Chinese companies, the officials stressed, and would be paid by U.S. importers. However, before the penalty can be finalized, the U.S. Interna-tional Trade Commission must determine that the Chinese imports have materially harmed U.S. companies. That ruling is expected in late November.

The initial complaint was filed last year by a coalition of seven U.S. companies and led by SolarWorld, a German manu-facturer with facilities in Oregon. The coalition welcomed parts of the determi-nation but warned of a loophole that it says would allow Chinese companies to avoid duties by using cells made in other

countries and assembled into panels in China ( C&EN, June 4, page 26 ).

On the other hand, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy , another U.S. so-lar trade association, warned of a global solar trade war that may stymie the expanding industry. The Chinese Minis-try of Commerce also warned of a trade conflict and added that the decision “runs counter to global efforts to jointly combat the challenges of climate change and energy security.”

China is the world’s largest manufac-turer of solar cells, exporting more than $3.1 billion in solar cells to the U.S. last year. — JEFF JOHNSON

SOLAR ENERGY China found to be subsidizing solar cells, dumping on U.S. market

11WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

NEWS OF THE WEEK

USING AN ESTABLISHED biotagging technique, researchers have identified compounds that distinguish RNA from DNA versions of G-qua-

druplexes, folded nucleic acid structures. The approach could lead to a richer understanding of RNA G-quadru-plexes, the biological role of which is mostly unknown.

The biotagging method, in situ click chemistry, uses known ligands for a class of target compounds to fish for selective ligands for a specific member of that class. The known ligands and a library of candidate ligands are each derivatized with complementary reactive groups. If both types of ligand bind nearby sites on a biomolecule and orient correctly on the target, their complementary groups can react with one another. This combination can be detected via mass spectrom-etry, thus identifying a selective ligand from the library.

Marco Di Antonio, Raphaël Rodriguez , and Shankar Balasubramanian of the University of Cambridge and coworkers used the approach to find that carboxy-

pyridostatin selectively recognizes TERRA, a key RNA-based G-quadruplex ( Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., DOI: 10.1002/anie.201206281 ). TERRA is produced by transcription of telomeric DNA, which itself tends to form G-quadruplexes and is a potential anticancer drug target. “The function of TERRA in cells is largely

unknown, and the significance of its ability to fold into a G-quadruplex is a hot topic,” Balasubramanian says. The new small-molecule probe “may help us get closer to understanding the importance of TERRA in nature.”

The finding “opens up brand new possibilities for G-quadruplex ligands to be used as very selective thera-peutic agents able to play a regulatory role either at the transcriptional (DNA G-quadruplex) or translational (RNA G-quadruplex) level in a fully controllable man-ner,” comments G-quadruplex specialist David Mon-chaud of the University of Burgundy, in France.

The work introduces “a new chapter in the develop-ment of biochemical probes and drugs that target DNA and RNA,” adds in situ click chemistry codeveloper M. G. Finn of Scripps Research Institute. — STU BORMAN

CHEMICAL BIOLOGY: Work could lead to better understanding of

mysterious folded RNA structure

RNA G-QUADRUPLEX TAGGED SELECTIVELY

Researchers screened two alkyne-derivatized nucleic acid binders (ovals) plus a library of azide-derivatized potential selective binders (six non-ovals) to find a ligand (green) that binds G-quadruplex RNA (gray) selectively.

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NANOTECHNOLOGY WILL BE celebrated and explored as part of this year’s National Chemis-try Week, sponsored by the American Chemical

Society and set to take place on Oct. 21–27. At venues large and small, the 187 ACS local sections nationwide, with support from the society’s headquarters, will each put their own spin on this year’s theme.

Volunteers from the ACS local sections will also unite with businesses, schools, and individuals in their areas to communicate the importance of chemistry to everyday life. Educational activities will be held across the country at locations that include elementary schools, museums, and shopping malls.

“Nano is becoming the next big thing,” says Lynn M. Hogue, chair of the ACS Committee on Community Ac-tivities (CCA) , which coordinates NCW with the help of the ACS Office of Volunteer Support. “If we can get kids interested in the subject, some of them might be the

scientists of tomorrow that take nano even further.” This year marks the 25th anniversary of NCW, which

was launched in 1987 as National Chemistry Day. To commemorate the anniversary, CCA held a symposium and reception during the fall ACS national meeting in Philadelphia. In Tennessee, the ACS government af-fairs committee has secured a Federal Congressional Record, which is equivalent to a resolution, honoring the 25th anniversary of NCW.

ACS offices and divisions are also getting involved in the NCW celebration. For example, the ACS Office of Public Affairs has prepared videos and blogs on NCW, and the ACS Publications Division will feature content from several ACS journals centered on the topic of nanotechnology.

The Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net) is partnering with ACS to offer re-sources and activity ideas for NCW. In addition, copies of the NCW pub-lication, Celebrating Chemistry, are available online in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. And as in previous years, students in grades K–12 are invited to participate in an illustrated poetry contest. For more information about NCW, visit www.acs.org/ncw . — LINDA WANG

Children around the U.S. will engage in hands-on activities during National Chemistry Week.

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PUBLIC OUTREACH: ACS event begins Oct. 21 and will celebrate the growing

nanotechnology enterprise

CHEMISTRY WEEK EXCITEMENT BUILDS

http://www.advion.com

13WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

COVER STORY

ACCORDING TO the most recent estimate by the U.S. Energy Information Adminis-tration , the Marcellus Shale formation of the Appalachian Basin contains more than 140 trillion cu ft of natural gas that is recov-erable but as yet almost wholly unexplored. To get to the gas, energy companies will use a drilling process known as hydraulic frac-turing. It’s a process that involves a great deal of water.

Much of the public concern about this process, also known as fracking, has fo-cused on the mixture of water and chemi-cals that is injected into the ground to fracture open rock and unlock the gas. But experts point out that the most critical risk of pollution from fracking lies in how op-erators handle the water that comes back out of the ground.

This wastewater, a combination of the injected fracking fluid and groundwater, is so saline that it is highly toxic to plants and aquatic life. What’s more, its high dissolved

solids content can easily overwhelm mu-nicipal treatment facilities and contami-nate drinking water supplies.

Handling all that water is a problem not just in the Marcellus region. In the coming years, oil and gas recovered throughout North America will primarily come from unconventional sources, including shale formations, enhanced recovery from older wells, and oil sands. All of these sources create a great deal more wastewater per unit of oil or gas than conventional sources.

This is bad news for the oil and gas industry but good news for the water treatment industry. Well operators are in-creasingly likely to treat wastewater with a combination of chemicals, biocides, filters, and membranes along with more expen-

sive equipment such as evaporators and concentrators.

But the quality of wastewater varies widely from site to site, and different service providers promote different technologies depending on their own expertise or the equipment they’ve invested in, experts say. As a result, whether the oil or gas comes from Wyoming or Pennsylvania, the busi-ness of treating the wastewater is like the Wild West. “It’s a great industry for a water treatment chemist and for a consultant—everyone is still figuring things out,” says Tom Pankratz, a desalination expert at Global Water Intelligence , a consulting firm.

The companies that supply the frack-ing industry with chemicals, equipment, and services are looking to grab a piece of a

CLEANER FRACKING Unconventional oil and gas drilling brings a flood of business for WATER TREATMENT firms

MELODY M. BOMGARDNER , C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU

“Many philosophies exist about how much you have to clean up the water to reuse it.”

WATER HAZARD A holding pond for a hydraulically fractured gas well in Waynesburg, Pa.

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COVER STORY

large and growing market. Treating water from North American oil and gas wells was a $2.5 billion industry in 2010, according to GWI. Another $2.5 billion was spent on reinjection, minimization, and off-site dis-posal of water. The $5.0 billion combined market will double by 2025, GWI predicts. And water treatment is expected to be the faster growing of the two segments, with an annual growth rate of between 10 and 20%.

THERE’S A LOT of water to treat. Hydraulic fracturing requires between 3 million and 5 million gal of water per gas well. The water is combined with fracturing chemicals and a sand or ceramic proppant and then pumped into the horizontal branches of the well. The proppant props open fractures in the shale, allowing gas that has been trapped for eons to flow out. After fracking, roughly 35% of the water returns to the surface as flowback in the first weeks. Additional liquid known as produced water—a mix of fracking fluid and groundwater—comes up with the gas for most of the life of the well.

Hydraulic fracturing got its start in western states, where oil and gas drillers pump untreated wastewater into nearby wells driven deep into porous rock. For decades, deep-well injection has been the first choice for disposal because of its low cost. But the Marcellus areas of Pennsylva-nia and West Virginia have a geology that is not suited to deep-well injection.

To dispose of the water off-site would require around 40 truck trips every day for weeks or months. That is costly, and energy companies can literally wear out their wel-come when using local roads.

In contrast, the goals of wastewater treatment are to reuse, recycle, or reduce the water that comes out of the well. Chem-ical firms that specialize in water treatment such as Kemira and Ecolab’s Nalco unit; equipment makers including GE and Sie-mens ; and service providers, both large and small, customize their offerings depend-ing on the water’s contents and where it is destined to go. The main consideration in selecting technologies, all agree, is cost.

With prices for natural gas at a historic low of less than $3.00 per thousand cu ft, energy firms are compelled to select the cheapest legal alternative. “My biggest competitor is a hole in the ground,” says Mark Wilson, marketing director for un-conventional gas at GE Power & Water. “We are looking for more energy efficiency and lower capital costs.”

Gas drillers that use hydraulic fractur-ing treat wastewater with the intention of reusing it at the next well. Reuse requires keeping a close eye on water chemistry. Because the water will go back down into a well, operators must ensure that it does not produce scale or cause an explosion in bacterial growth when it gets into the shale formation. Either type of gunk can slow the flow of gas. In addition, reused water must not interfere with the ability of the fracking chemicals to do their job of placing a load of proppant into the shale fractures.

To keep water quality high, water services firm Kroff monitors the water flowing out of a well in real time. Produced water is high

Freshwater source

Municipal watertreatment plant

Transport

Add• Fracking chemicals• Proppants (sand)

Fracturing fluid Gas well

Flowback andproduced water

Transport Disposal well

Analysis and treatment• Chemical treatment• Filters

Reuse

More treatment• Desalination• Evaporation• Crystallization

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Zero-liquid discharge

WATER LOOP Well operators have many choices for wastewater reuse or disposal (red).

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in dissolved solids. Kroff uses the analyti-cal data to design a treatment scheme for the water so it can be mixed with additional freshwater and fracturing chemicals and used in the next well. The treatment itself happens on the well site with mobile units.

Dave Grottenthaler, Kroff ’s general manager, says his firm focuses on removing barium, calcium, iron, sulfate, and bacteria from produced water. “The biggest fear is barium,” he says. “When it forms barium sulfate, the scale is almost irreversible.” Kroff relies mostly on off-the-shelf treat-ment chemicals such as soda ash, caustic soda, acids, and flocculants. The insoluble contaminants are removed via floccula-tion, sedimentation, and filtration.

THE RESULTING WATER is quite salty but useful in fracking. “Although much of the flowback and production brines have high chlorides, we can reuse the water effectively up to 100,000 mg/L. Clean salt water out-performs freshwater for the hydrofracturing process,” Grottenthaler claims. Recently, the company designed and built a core flow analyzer that tests shale rock from a drill cutting and measures the effect of treated water on the formation’s permeability.

Companies developing fracking fluid ingredients must also be mindful of the quality of produced water at their custom-ers’ wells. That’s the case for the water treatment chemical maker Kemira, which

formulates polymeric friction reducers that help ease proppants into tiny frac-tures. “We receive the data, and we provide feedback on product of choice for these conditions,” says Daniel Detter, Kemira’s marketing manager for oil and mining.

Kemira has learned that an ingredient that works in a fracking fluid made with freshwater won’t necessarily work in one based on produced water. “Polymer fric-tion reducers are quite good but are not tolerant of high brine concentrations,” Detter says. Kemira is working on new ver-sions of its polymers that are more brine tolerant. Depending on the condition of the produced water, for example, a cus-tomer may require a nonionic or cationic friction reducer, rather than the more typi-cal anionic variety.

At Nalco, meanwhile, water experts are focused on improving the biocides that reduce populations of microbes growing in flowback water. Joel Pastore, the firm’s marketing manager for unconventional re-sources and water management, says Nalco is designing a biocide that does not inter-fere with other fracturing chemicals. It also breaks down into more environmentally friendly by-products. And as a bonus fea-ture, “it oxidizes iron and precipitates iron out of the solution, which would other-wise interfere with the friction reducer,” Pastore says.

Chemical treatment is just one approach

FRACKING RECIPE Example of fracturing fluid composition from a gas well in Beaver, Pa.

INGREDIENT FUNCTION CHEMICAL

MAXIMUM INGREDIENT CONCENTRATION,

% BY MASS

Carrier/base fl uid Freshwater 85.47795% Proppant Crystalline silica 12.66106% Acid Hydrochloric acid in water 1.29737% Gelling agent Petroleum distillate blend 0.14437%

Polysaccharide blend 0.14437% Cross-linker Methanol 0.04811%

Boric acid 0.01069% Breaker Sodium chloride 0.04252% Friction reducer Petroleum distillate, hydrotreated light 0.01499% pH-adjusting agent Potassium hydroxide 0.01268% Scale inhibitor Ethylene glycol 0.00540%

Diethylene glycol 0.00077% Iron control agent Citric acid 0.00360% Antibacterial agent Glutaraldehyde 0.00200%

Dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 0.00067% Corrosion inhibitor Methanol 0.00142%

Propargyl alcohol 0.00010%

NOTE: Additional proprietary ingredients not listed in material safety data sheet: acid, alcohol, biocide, copolymer, disinfectant, enzyme, polymer, silica, solvent, surfactant, and weak acid. SOURCE: FracFocus

16WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

COVER STORY

to treating produced water. The technol-ogy options lie along a continuum, with chemical-dependent processes on one end and more muscular—and expensive—evap-oration and concentration methods on the other. With treatment offerings all along the spectrum, GE Power & Water says it is pre-pared for any problem a customer brings it.

“Many philosophies exist about how much you have to clean up the water to re-use it,” GE’s Wilson says. “Some customers worry about the salt content or just the divalent ions, while others want to take it to a more pristine state. We have technology that can take it to whatever end state the producer wants it to be in, to virtually distilled water.”

REUSING PRODUCED water in fracking is common for now in the Marcellus region, but with additional treatment to remove salts, well opera-tors have other options. In Pennsylvania, for example, water recovered from a mo-bile evaporator is more than clean enough—at less than 100 mg of total dissolved solids per liter of water—to be discharged to a municipal treatment plant and returned to surface water. The concentrated brine that is left—about 40% of the original volume—can then be trucked to a crystallizer to recover salt for use as road deicer.

In western states such as Wyoming or Colorado, most produced water is not as saline as in the Marcellus area, and reverse-osmosis membranes are sufficient for removing ions, Wilson explains. Well operators in the West gener-ally use deep-well injection for dis-posal. But in the future, especially in dry regions, Wilson says, treated

water may have value in agriculture or other applications that would more than compen-sate for the cost of purification.

As another benefit, Wilson notes, specialized membranes can reduce the amount of fracturing chemicals needed,

especially biocides. GE’s mobile water fleet can pretreat freshwater, filtering out bacteria before the water is sent down the well. Biocides are generally the most toxic additive used in fracturing fluids and limit the uses of recovered water.

GE is working to further adapt its treat-ment equipment for the oil and gas market. It is developing specialized fluoropolymer-coated membranes that remove suspended

solids and bacteria and are toler-ant of the contaminants in pro-duced water. It is even testing new engines that can power equipment with gas obtained at the well site.

GWI’s Pankratz says that in-

stead of having to choose between chemi-cal and physical water treatment process-es, the best possible solution is to have all options available nearby. But most opera-tors are dealing with companies trying to promote their own technology niche, he

says. “The problem is when you get a company that tries to fit its round peg in a square hole.” A chemical-only ap-proach may not achieve the optimal output, whereas evaporation and concentra-tion come with high energy costs, Pankratz warns.

As the unconventional oil and gas industry grows, new technologies will enter the game that may help minimize trade-offs or change strate-gies entirely. Industrial gas firm Linde , for example, is testing a fracking process in which a foam of CO 2 and water, with a thickness simi-

lar to shaving cream, carries proppant into the fractures. According to the company, the method requires less water and fewer chemicals.

John T. Lucey Jr., executive vice presi-dent of business development at Heck-mann , a large and fast-growing water services company, says he is technology agnostic and watches new developments closely. One technology that has drawn his interest is electrocoagulation, a treatment that applies electric current across metal plates to remove emulsified oil, heavy metals, and suspended solids.

As for removing dissolved salts cheaply, Lucey allows for a little wishful thinking. “There is an opportunity to end up with innovative technology to help bend the laws of physics or osmotic pressure,” he says.

Pankratz is more of a realist. “I don’t think there is any step-change technology that is waiting to be unveiled,” he says. The biggest opportunity lies in successfully integrating the technologies that already exist while compensating for changes in produced water quality and quantity over time. To do that requires a clearheaded understanding of each technology’s limita-tions, he says. “No one has done that yet.” ◾

“My biggest competitor is a hole in the ground.”

SALTY STUFF The mix of fracking fluid and groundwater known as produced

water contains wide variations in water chemistry

SHALE FORMATION

CONTENT (MG/L) BARNETT (TEXAS)

HAYNESVILLE (ARK., LA., TEXAS)

MARCELLUS (N.Y., PA., W.VA.)

TDS 40,000–185,000 40,000–205,000 45,000–185,000 Cl – 25,000–110,000 20,000–105,000 25,000–105,000 Na + 10,000–47,000 15,000–55,000 10,000–45,000 Ca 2+ 2,200–20,000 3,100–34,000 5,000–25,000 Sr 2+ 350–3,000 100–3,000 500–3,000 Mg 2+ 200–3,000 600–5,200 500–3,000 Ba 2+ 30–500 100–2,200 50–6,000 Fe 2+ /Fe 3+ 22–100 80–350 20–200 SO 4

2– 15–200 100–400 10–400

TDS = total dissolved solids. SOURCE: GE Power & Water

ROAD WARRIOR This GE mobile evaporator unit travels to well sites.

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CYTEC STRIKES COATINGS DEAL Cytec Industries has signed a definitive agreement to sell its coatings resins business to private equity firm Advent International for nearly $1.2 billion including assumed liabilities. Cytec CEO Shane D. Fleming says divestment of the business, which had $1.6 billion in sales last year, will allow the firm to focus on faster-growing composite, mining chemi-cal, and industrial material businesses. Advent says it intends to help the resins business focus on core competencies and expand its geographic footprint. Cytec first said it was seeking a buyer for the business a year ago. In a conference call with investors, Fleming said two-thirds of the sale’s proceeds will be used to buy back shares. The remainder will go to the firm’s pension fund and for the ongoing expansion of carbon fiber and phosphine chemicals capacity. Cytec created the coatings resins business when it bought the former UCB Surface Specialties in 2004 for $1.8 billion and combined it with its own coatings unit. — MSR

TPC GETS A RIVAL BUYOUT PROPOSAL

TPC Group has received a nonbinding takeover proposal worth $44.00 to $46.00 per share from Innospec , which would get financing help from Blackstone Group. The deal would value TPC’s equity at as much as $720 million. TPC says it will begin nego-tiations with Innospec that could lead to a firm offer superior to the $40.00-per-share agreement that it signed with First Reserve and SK Capital in August. At least one major shareholder, Sandell Asset Management, complained that the $40.00 offer underval-ued TPC. Sandell says it is pleased that TPC is negotiating for a better deal. Innospec and TPC have only modest business over-lap. TPC processes mixed C 4 streams into products such as butadiene and polyisobu-tylene. Innospec makes tetraethyl lead, oth-er fuel additives, and specialty chemicals. Innospec CEO Patrick Williams says he believes that “TPC is a good strategic and synergistic fit with Innospec.” — AHT

KRATON CANCELS POLYMER VENTURE

Kraton is abandoning plans to build a 30,000-metric-ton-per-year hydrogenated styrenic block copolymer plant in Taiwan with partner Formosa Petrochemical. Kra-ton says the project, announced in 2011, was delayed while Formosa awaited environ-mental approval. Formosa later concluded that the conditions for the approval put unwarranted restrictions on its Taiwanese operations. Kraton says it will proceed with the project on its own and consider loca-tions, including ones in China, that it had evaluated in 2010 and 2011. — AHT

VERSALIS SLATES SOUTH KOREAN PLANT

Versalis and Honam Petrochemical have agreed to build an elastomer plant at Honam’s site in Yeosu, South Korea. The facility, with a capacity of 200,000 metric tons per year, is scheduled to come on-line in 2015. The companies have not disclosed the plant’s product slate or how much they will invest. Last month, Versalis CEO Dan-iele Ferrari told C&EN that the company intends to leverage its elastomer technol-ogy to boost its presence in Asia (C&EN, Oct. 1, page 38). — JFT

TESSENDERLO TO SELL FINE CHEMICALS UNIT

Belgian specialty chemical firm Tessen-derlo has agreed to sell its pharmaceutical chemicals business to Luxembourg-based International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG) for an undisclosed sum. The busi-ness has 360 employees and facilities in Calais, France, and Treviglio, Italy. Tes-senderlo has also agreed to sell Profialis, its supplier of extruded polyvinyl chloride

TWO SUCCINIC ACID PARTNERSHIPS ADVANCE

BASF is establishing a joint venture with lactic acid maker Purac to produce bio-based succinic acid. Named Succinity and based in Düsseldorf, Germany, the venture is an outgrowth of a research pact that began in 2009. Succinity’s first facility,

FERRO MAY TOSS SOLAR PASTES LINE

Ferro is exploring strategic options for its business in conductive pastes, which are used in the now-ailing solar panel industry.

CLARIANT ADDS OUTPUT OF FLAME RETARDANT

Clariant has doubled capacity for its di-ethyl phosphinic acid aluminum salt-based flame retardant, Exolit OP, at its plant in

Hürth-Knapsack, Germany. The company introduced the product line in 2004 and says it has since seen strong growth from customers looking to replace brominated flame retardants in electrical and electron-ic applications. — AHT

BUSINESS CONCENTRATES

near Barcelona, Spain, will produce 10,000 metric tons per year of succinic acid begin-ning in late 2013. A second, larger facility is also planned. Separately, Reverdia , a suc-cinic acid joint venture between DSM and Roquette, says it is producing dimethyl suc-cinate in collaboration with Belgium’s Pro-viron . The product can be used as a solvent and fine chemicals raw material. — MMB

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For the first six months of this year, Ferro’s electronic materials segment, which in-cludes solar pastes, had a loss of nearly $5 million, versus income of $53 million in the same period a year ago. Ferro also said it would record charges against earnings of up to $335 million in the third quarter because of the poor outlook in the seg-ment. Ferro’s share price closed at $2.75 on Oct. 10, off 24% from its close the day before the announcement. — MSR

Clariant’s flame-retardant plant in Hürth-Knapsack, Germany.

19WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

BUSINESS CONCENTRATES

EUROPEAN COMPOSITES ALLIANCES TAKE SHAPE

Plastics firms DTC Dutch Thermoplastic Components , Kok & Van Engelen , and Ten-Cate Advanced Composites have joined the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Neth-erlands and Dutch engineering firm Viro to form the European Thermoplastic Automo-tive Composites consortium. The compa-nies plan to promote the use of thermoplas-tic composites in the auto industry. Sepa-rately, BASF and SGL Group have agreed to develop composites featuring BASF nylon and SGL carbon fibers. The partners aim to sell the materials to the automotive market, where their advantages over thermoset composites include faster processing time and greater strength, they say. — AS

GSK CEO UNVEILS OPENNESS EFFORTS

Speaking at the Wellcome Trust in London last week, GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty announced three initiatives that he says advance the firm’s commitment to openness. The British drug firm has screened its library of 2 million compounds and is making freely available about 200 molecules with signs of activity against tu-berculosis. The company will spend about $8 million to double funding at its “open lab” in Tres Cantos, Spain, where independent scientists can research diseases of the devel-oping world. And it will create a system that enables researchers to access detailed, anon-ymized patient data from clinical trials of its approved and discontinued drugs. — MM

ASTRAZENECA, ARDELYX TARGET KIDNEY DISEASE

AstraZeneca will pay $35 million up front for access to Ardelyx ’ inhibitors of NHE3, a pro-tein needed for the absorption of sodium in the intestines. The deal includes RDX5791, an NHE3 blocker that has completed a mid-stage study as an irritable bowel syndrome treatment and is poised for Phase II studies to treat kidney disease. Fremont, Calif.-based Ardelyx could reap another $237.5 mil-lion in milestones as compounds reach the market. AstraZeneca is taking on remaining development costs for RDX5791. — LJ

ROCHE PACT PURSUES HEARING LOSS DRUGS

Roche has joined with Inception Sciences and the private equity firm Versant Ven-tures to create a drug discovery incubator, Inception 3, that will seek treatments for sensorineural hearing loss. The collabora-tion will pursue drugs that target inner ear hair cell protection and regeneration in the cochlea. It will draw on technology from Stanford University. — MM

MERCK WILL MOVE HEADQUARTERS SITE

Merck & Co. plans to close its current headquarters in Whitehouse Station, N.J., and move its base to Summit, N.J. About 2,000 employees and contractors now in

window and door profiles, to OpenGate Capital, a private investment firm. Profialis has a staff of 300. Meanwhile, Tessenderlo says it will invest close to $100 million in its water treatment chemicals facility in Loos, France, over the next 10 years. — AS

BUSINESS ROUNDUP

LUBRIZOL will spend about $125 million to build a chlorinated poly-vinyl chloride resin and compounding facility in Deer Park, Texas, by the end of 2014. Lubrizol already makes the resin, used in plumbing, fire sprinkler, and other con-struction applications, at the site.

AKZONOBEL has filed a suit against Dow Chemi-cal in U.S. District Court in Delaware. The Dutch firm claims that Dow’s Bluewave technology, used to make polyolefin dispersions for paints

and coatings, infringes an Akzo patent.

VICTREX plans to in-crease its polyarylether-ketone (PAEK) capacity in Thornton Cleveleys, England, by around 70% to more than 7,000 metric tons per year. The expan-sion, to be complete by early 2015, reflects grow-ing demand for PAEK in transportation, industrial, and electronic uses, the firm says.

METABOLIC Explorer , a French developer of 1,3-propanediol, butyl alcohol, and other inter-mediates via fermenta-tion, says it will reorganize its operations and reduce

its staff of 121 by approxi-mately 46 positions. The firm blames economic and market conditions for the changes.

TARGACEPT, a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based biotech firm, is cutting 38% of its workforce and closing down research by the end of the year after disappointing results from a Phase II trial of TC-5619, an attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug. The layoffs will save the company roughly $10 million in 2013 and leave it with 43 employees.

PFIZER’s patent on the cancer drug Sutent has been revoked by India’s

patent office on the grounds that it lacks an inventive step. Pfizer says it will appeal the decision. The company joins sev-eral other big drug firms in losing patent protection on products in India in recent months.

LIFE TECHNOLOGIES has acquired Compendia Bioscience , a cancer bioinformatics firm. Com-pendia will extend Life Technologies ’ ability to develop its own tests and partner with pharmaceuti-cal companies to develop companion diagnostics, Life Technologies says.

SANOFI and Massachu-setts General Hospital

have inked a two-year translational medicine research pact focused on developing drugs against blood cancers and solid tumors. Sanofi’s oncol-ogy division will work with three MGH scientists on two molecules in early-stage development.

MERCK SERONO has created Asceneuron, a developer of therapies for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Merck Serono is providing Asceneu-ron with seed funding of $8 million, part of the $40 million it put up to help employees affected by the closure of its Ge-neva headquarters.

Roche says sensorineural hearing loss has no approved pharmaceutical therapies.

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Whitehouse Station will move to Summit or nearby New Jersey facilities. Merck says the move is part of a program to lower ex-penses after its 2009 merger with Schering-Plough. That deal included the Summit fa-cility, which currently houses 1,800 people in research, manufacturing, and business operations. — MM

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BUSINESS

MARK C. ROHR is fond of setting targets. As chairman and chief executive officer of the specialty chemical maker Albemarle , he set lofty goals for sales and earnings per share.

Now Rohr, 61, also has big ambitions for Celanese , where in April he took over as CEO from David Weidman. At the firm’s first Technology Day, held for investors last month in Hous-ton, Rohr laid out an earnings-per-share growth target of 12–14% annually through 2016, up from 10% in 2011. And he set a target for return on capital invested at more than 20% in 2016, up from 15% in 2011.

He is counting on Celanese’s technology strengths to help him achieve these targets. The firm claims its acetic acid technology makes it the lowest-cost produc-er of the chemical in the world. Building on that technology, Cel-anese has a new process, dubbed TCX, for making ethanol from hydrocarbon sources. It also boasts a strong development team that has led to advances in polymers, sweeteners, and other businesses.

Rohr, who has a B.S. in chem-istry and chemical engineering from Mississippi State Univer-sity , explained that he purposely left out a 2016 sales target, in contrast to his approach at Albe-marle. “Our real focus is driving cash flow and earnings with our base portfolio,” he told C&EN. The best-performing compa-nies, both in chemicals and other industries, tend to have earnings growth in the low teens and a return on capital north of 20%, he noted. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to find a way to get to those levels,” Rohr said.

His focus on profitability is understand-able in the face of a credit crisis in Europe, a slowdown in China, and a sluggish U.S. economy. This tough global economy has already affected Celanese. Earlier this year, the firm idled its 600,000-metric-ton-per-year acetic acid plant in Singapore. That plant is one of three that Celanese oper-

ates; the others are in Clear Lake, Texas, and Nanjing, China.

Rohr attributes the Singapore shutdown to a lack of demand. The market is oversup-plied, he said. “India’s economy is weak, and China is not doing the best.” The situation is temporary, he maintained, but he is unwill-ing to predict when market conditions will improve and the unit will come back on-line.

Second-quarter operating earnings in the acetyls business, where Celanese de-rives about half of its sales, slid nearly 45% to $99 million compared with the same quarter a year ago. When the company released those results at the end of July, it warned of “troughlike conditions in the acetyl chain through the rest of 2012.” Overall earnings of $402 million in the quarter were off only 9%, thanks to the strength of Celanese’s other businesses.

With its technology empha-sis, what Celanese is doing now, Rohr said, “is putting itself in a position to grow with or without the help of the global economy.”

ANALYSTS WHO follow Cela-nese say the company is on the right track. David Begleiter, an analyst at investment banking firm Deutsche Bank , recently cautioned investors that Cela-nese’s growth prospects in the near term are limited by macro-economic conditions. But he expects the firm’s low-cost ace-tic acid position to help it boost earnings significantly in 2013.

Laurence Alexander, who follows Celanese for brokerage firm Jefferies & Co. , told inves-tors that uncertainty over the pace of recovery in the firm’s acetyl intermediates segment increases the importance of the TCX technology. But investors want to know more about the company’s plans to exploit the ethanol technology, he said.

In July, Celanese opened a 40,000-metric-ton-per-year natural-gas-based ethanol technology development unit in Clear Lake. And the firm has committed to building a 275,000-metric-ton coal-based ethanol plant at its Nanjing ace-tyls complex by mid-2013.

In addition, the firm is nego-tiating with what it identifies

CELANESE BETS ON TECHNOLOGY

Chemical maker’s confidence in scientific capabilities underlies ambitious PROFIT GOALS

MARC S. REISCH , C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU

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NIGHT TRAIN In July, Celanese completed its first TCX ethanol facility, a developmental unit in Clear Lake, Texas.

22WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

BUSINESS

only as a large state-owned enterprise in China to jointly build a 400,000-metric-ton coal-based ethanol facility after 2014. Comments at the firm’s Technology Day by John Fotheringham, general manager of ad-vanced fuels, suggest Celanese’s negotiat-ing partner is either Sinopec or PetroChina , China’s two largest oil firms.

Celanese also revealed in July that it is in talks with Pertamina , Indonesia’s state-owned energy company, about a col-laboration to develop ethanol projects in the country. If a deal is reached, the two say Indonesia could avoid importing as much as 30 million barrels of gasoline annually.

But those projects don’t come near to satisfying the enormous fuel ethanol mar-ket Celanese expects by 2020. At the Tech-nology Day in Houston, Steven M. Sterin, chief financial officer and president of Cel-anese’s advanced fuel technology business, said the firm envisions a global fuel ethanol market by then of about 130 million metric tons annually.

Half of that market will be served by ethanol sourced from corn and other bio-feedstocks. The remainder will be served by ethanol made from fossil feedstocks

such as coal or natural gas, Sterin said. For Celanese, that fossil-based ethanol repre-sents a potential $100 billion market for its one-of-a-kind technology.

“We have an opportunity to go after a market larger than our company, but we don’t have unlimited resources,” Sterin told C&EN. Celanese plans $400 million in annual capital expenditures for all its businesses over the next few years. Just one world-scale ethanol plant costs about $300 million to build, he said.

CELANESE IS “open to a variety of mod-els,” such as joint ventures and licensing agreements, that would allow it to deploy TCX technology without exceeding its capi-tal budget. “We need to protect the technol-ogy and get paid appropriately,” he said.

When pressed for a specific strategy, Sterin would only indicate that the global rollout of TCX technology will likely vary by country and customer. Celanese’s ar-rangements with Pertamina and its un-named Chinese partner are still being worked out. Where strong intellectual property laws exist, Celanese could license TCX technology, Sterin said. Where such protection doesn’t exist, the firm might build and own.

The largest opportunity for the tech-nology is in countries where the economy is growing fast, land for biobased fuels is scarce, and coal is plentiful, Sterin said. For instance, China has just one-sixth of the ar-able land per capita that the U.S. does, but it enjoys considerable coal reserves. And in 2020 the country will likely be importing 70% of the crude oil it needs.

Blending 10% ethanol in gasoline would help China reduce oil imports and meet its goal of cutting airborne particulates from combustion sources by 30%. In addition, ethanol helps reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide emissions, Sterin pointed out. He figures China could use as many as 15 world-scale TCX ethanol plants by 2020.

Indonesia will likely import 60% of its gasoline in 2020. Meanwhile, the country exported 80% of coal produced in its mines last year. With arable land per capita only one-fifth that of the U.S., the country has little land to devote to bioethanol. Thus Sterin estimates the country could benefit from three or four TCX plants by 2020.

But acetyl chemistry and ethanol make up only part of Celanese’s technology effort. The firm has built up large decentralized R&D organizations attached to its other businesses. Those units focus on designing

products to suit the needs of customers, ac-cording to Ashish Kulkarni, vice president of R&D. In total, the firm has about 500 R&D employees working at 14 locations, includ-ing major installations in Shanghai, Frank-furt, Clear Lake, and Florence, Ky., he said.

Today, R&D investment as a percent of sales is lower at Celanese than at most of its peers. In 2011, the firm spent about $96 mil-lion on R&D. Most large chemical firms spend more than 3% of sales on R&D—twice the percentage Celanese is spending.

But spending last year was up more than 35% compared with 2010. In addition, the company spends another $10 million or so on applications development with custom-ers. The figures are set to rise again when Celanese reports its 2012 numbers and will likely be higher still in 2013, Kulkarni said.

CEO Rohr endorses the increase in R&D spending. He also backs the decentraliza-tion of R&D and vowed that Celanese will invest more money in the future to support R&D outside of the U.S. The benefits of hav-ing competent research staff close to cus-tomers can’t be underestimated, Rohr said.

When Rohr visited a maker of ultrathin notebook computers in China recently, he learned just how important it is to have Celanese engineering polymer experts close by. “They told us that development from drawing to shipment is a total of four months,” Rohr recalled. “So the time we have to specify the engineering resin shell of that computer is just 10 days. You have to be

Celanese At A Glance Headquarters: Dallas Sales: $6.8 billion Net income: $607 million R&D spending: $96 million Capital spending: $349 million Employees: 7,600

BUSINESSES (% of total sales):

Acetyl intermediates (46%): acetic acid, vinyl acetate, acetic anhydride, other acetic acid derivatives

Advanced engineered materials (19%): acetal resins, ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, polybutylene terephthalate, liquid-crystal polymers, polyphenylene sulfide

Industrial specialties (18%): ethylene vinyl acetate resins and emulsions, low-density polyethylene resins

Consumer specialties (17%): acetate cigarette filter tow, acetate flake, acesulfame potassium sweetener, sorbates

NOTE: Figures are for 2011.

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23WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

right there with the knowledge and ability to take advantage of those opportunities.”

The firm is aggressive in drumming up new business as well. “We’ll visit a manu-facturer we haven’t worked with before and hand them a component from one of their products,” Rohr said. “We antici-pate their needs, and so the receptivity is phenomenal.”

Phil McDivitt, vice president of the firm’s advanced engineering materials business, said Celanese is finding new op-portunities for its polymers as auto manu-facturers focus on decreasing the weight of vehicles in the drive for better gas mileage.

“Applications for our products are not typically in big parts served by commod-ity plastics,” McDivitt said, but rather in severe service components such as acetal resins for fuel lines and tanks. Engineering resin use in cars has grown from an average of 31 lb per vehicle in 2000 to 48 lb in 2011, he said. Celanese figures that the global market for automotive engineering resins is worth more than $500 million per year.

Celanese is also becoming more in-volved in combining its polymers with carbon fibers to make composites for high-performance auto and oil-field applica-tions. Although Celanese has not tradition-ally been involved in composites, they open “a large transformational opportunity for us,” McDivitt said.

IN SWEETENERS, Celanese sees a chance to enlarge its share of the $80 billion-per-year global sweetener market. High-intensity artificial sweeteners, such as Celanese’s Sunett-brand acesulfame potas-sium, have captured less than $2 billion of that market.

Acesulfame potassium has an opportuni-ty for greater use as a calorie reduction agent in food. Citing World Health Organization statistics, Diana Peninger, vice president of Celanese’s Nutrinova food additives busi-ness, pointed out that 1.4 billion adults are overweight worldwide and more than 500 million are obese. About 40 million children under five are also overweight, she noted.

She acknowledged that most artificial sweeteners have taste shortcomings. In response, Nutrinova has developed formu-las that blend acesulfame potassium and other artificial sweeteners with texturizing agents and bitterness blockers. Launched this year under the Sunsation brand, the new line opens opportunities in beverages, chewing gum, and other markets worth as much as $50 billion per year, Peninger said.

Nutrinova is also looking into devel-oping its own “all natural” sweetener. About 20,000 plant ingredients have been screened so far, she said.

Celanese businesses such as Nutrinova each have their own growth targets in sup-port of the company’s long-term financial goals. “Our intention now is to really ex-ecute against our core,” Rohr said. “And

our core is those things we do well to make money.”

Rohr said he is largely satisfied with the portfolio of businesses he inherited from former CEO Weidman. “We are not really trying to sculpt a new portfolio,” he said, “as much as we are setting very high expecta-tions for our ability to achieve higher levels of growth by doing what we do very well.” ◾

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24WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

BUSINESS

IN JUNE, DUPONT initiated a patent law-suit against Germany’s Heraeus , its main competitor in the market for metallization pastes used to make photovoltaic solar cells. The lawsuit also accused SolarWorld Industries America of infringing DuPont’s intellectual property (IP) by using Heraeus materials in the production of solar cells.

After launching the lawsuit, DuPont is-sued a warning to others. At a conference in Shanghai, Walt Cheng, DuPont’s managing director for electronics and communica-tions in China and Taiwan, declared that the company will “pursue vigorously other points in the photovoltaics supply chain where IP infringement of our photovoltaic metallization pastes exists.” The firm even issued a press release about the speech.

DuPont’s moves demonstrate that the solar industry has become a large enough

market for chemical makers to justify the considerable expense involved with legal actions. When the solar market was younger and smaller, patent infringement could not inflict much damage on an industry giant such as DuPont. But now, the outcome of a patent lawsuit could result in billions of dol-lars of additional or lost sales.

“Going to court is very costly, so the busi-ness has to be big enough to warrant it,” Cheng tells C&EN in his office in Shanghai. “We don’t like taking people to court, but we will have no choice but to sue those who infringe on our intellectual property.”

Technological advances from firms such as DuPont are largely to thank for the increasing size of the solar energy market, Cheng adds. Solar-cell prices are constantly dropping even as the units become more efficient at generating electricity. “Solar en-

ergy is now only a small portion of the total energy mix, but it has huge potential,” he says. “The sun is everywhere, and solar cells are portable.”

The lawsuit DuPont initiated against Her-aeus this summer is its second against the German firm. A case that was launched in 2011 is ongoing. In both instances, DuPont says Heraeus copied key elements of its Solamet line of metallization pastes, which conduct electricity in solar cells. “We have made a step change in the chemistry of met-allization pastes,” Cheng says. “It’s DuPont technology that enables efficient manufac-turing of solar cells by screen printing.”

DuPont has been investing in solar R&D since the early days of the industry, Cheng adds. “Our competitors are welcome to use our technology if they agree to a licensing fee,” he says.

SOLAR CELLS POWER LEGAL FIGHTS

As the photovoltaic industry matures, competitors initiate expensive LEGAL CHALLENGES

JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY , C&EN HONG KONG

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“Going to court is very costly, so the business has to be big enough to warrant it.”

25WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

SOLAR ADVANCES DuPont’s solar R&D includes work at the firm’s photovoltaic center in Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Both Heraeus and SolarWorld , also a German firm, deny any wrongdoing. In a statement issued in July, Heraeus said it reviewed the two DuPont patents in question and con-

cluded that it does not infringe any valid claim of either one. “DuPont’s patent law-suits seek to achieve through legal means what they cannot achieve through product performance and customer service,” the statement said. Heraeus added that it in-vests heavily in R&D and has thousands of patents of its own.

As for SolarWorld, it tells C&EN that the DuPont case makes no sense. The claim “was surprising for us and hardly compre-hensible,” the firm says. DuPont filed the suit in Oregon, where SolarWorld has its U.S. headquarters and operates the largest U.S. solar panel plant.

Whether Heraeus is guilty of patent in-fringement has little to do with SolarWorld, the cell maker says, because it merely pur-chased metallization pastes from Heraeus. But DuPont claims that it was financially harmed by SolarWorld’s sale of solar cells made with patent-infringing pastes. The U.S. firm demands compensation for lost profits and the payment of a license fee.

INTERESTINGLY, SolarWorld and DuPont find themselves on opposite sides of anoth-er dispute involving solar cells. SolarWorld has lobbied the European Union and the U.S. International Trade Commission to slap antidumping duties on Chinese-made solar cells.

DuPont, meanwhile, does not support the trade restrictions. It has major custom-ers for its materials in China with which it codevelops products. Among DuPont’s key customers are Yingli Green Energy and Sun-tech , two of the world’s largest producers of solar cells. SolarWorld tells C&EN that it “cannot presume” that the company’s position on punitive tariffs was a factor in DuPont’s decision to launch the patent in-fringement lawsuit.

DuPont materials play an important role in the Chinese solar industry by providing legitimacy to Chinese-made solar cells in foreign markets, says Fatima Toor, an ana-lyst who heads solar component coverage at the consulting firm Lux Research . For instance, companies that build solar farms in the U.S. typically agree to buy solar cells made in China only if they are made with DuPont materials, she says, because such cells are perceived to last longer than those made with materials from Chinese compa-nies. Polyvinyl fluoride film is another key DuPont product for the solar industry.

Concerning the patent cases involv-ing DuPont, Heraeus, and SolarWorld, the courts are likely to find the arguments and evidence presented murky, Toor adds. “It’s difficult to decide who is right,” she says, noting that she has read the relevant DuPont patents. “There are a lot of com-ponents in the metallization paste such as silver powder and organic elements, and it’s tricky to gain the expertise to make it. But at the same time, patents are usually written vaguely in an effort to cover all angles.”

Although it is suing non-Chinese com-

petitors, it makes sense that DuPont chose a conference in Shanghai to proclaim its commitment to IP protection in the solar in-dustry, Toor says. Suppliers of materials and equipment to the solar industry are becom-ing increasingly concerned about patent infringement by Chinese manufacturers.

The concern is more acute among suppli-ers of machinery used to make photovoltaic cells than among materials firms, she says. “It’s difficult to protect IP on equipment because you cannot walk into somebody’s photovoltaic production facility or an equip-ment manufacturer facility and decide that the equipment is identical,” Toor says. As a result, she adds, some equipment manufac-turers prefer not to patent their machines because patents are published.

The DuPont case is likely to be the first of many IP infringement cases that involve companies around the world, Toor says. “The solar industry is becoming just as con-cerned about intellectual property as the electronics industry is,” she says. The good news for everybody else is that the lawsuits are a product of the increased viability of solar power. ◾

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ELECTRONIC MANIFESTS ADOPTED FOR WASTE

An electronic tracking system will replace multicopy paperwork that must accompany shipments of hazardous waste, under a law that President Barack Obama signed on Oct. 5. The law is expected to save state agen-cies, hazardous waste generators, and waste transporters millions of dollars per year. “By simply modernizing how we collect and maintain this data, we will eliminate millions of paper copies and reduce expenses and labor,” says Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House of Repre-sentatives Energy & Commerce Committee. The Resource Conservation & Recovery Act requires manifests for hazardous waste to help ensure that shipments of this material end up at licensed treatment, storage, or disposal facilities. Currently, six copies of a paper manifest accompany hazardous waste during its transportation. The paperwork is eventually mailed to state agencies and waste generators, which include chemical companies and universities. Recipients must keep the forms on file. Under the new law, EPA will establish the electronic manifest system and collect user fees to offset costs. — CH

CONGRESSMAN WARNS OF SEQUESTER IMPACTS

Congress must act before year’s end to find a more sensible way to reduce the U.S. budget deficit or risk reversing the cur-rent economic recovery, warns Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. In a 15-page letter he sent to colleagues last week, Dicks outlines the impact of the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts, called sequestration, on var-ious federal agencies and points out that this “backup plan” was only intended to induce a compromise to reduce the deficit (see page 30). The repercussions for feder-al R&D for 2013 include about 2,400 fewer NIH research projects grants than in 2012 and some 1,600 fewer NSF research and education grants than in 2012. Cuts to basic research funding at the Department of En-ergy, he notes, would hurt U.S. prosperity and global science and technology leader-ship. “Congress must find a way to replace sequestration with a balanced approach to long-term deficit reduction that focuses on economic growth and job creation and does no harm to our economic recovery in the short-run,” he says. — SRM

REPORT ESTIMATES COST TO KEEP BIODIVERSITY

The worldwide cost of protecting threat-ened species could be as high as $78.1 billion per year, an order of magnitude higher than current conservation funding, according to a new analysis in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1229803 ). The study is the first to look at the costs of maintaining biodiversity worldwide, and it includes financial costs for moving species away from extinction and conserving key sites required by the international Convention on Biological Diversity. The research was done by scien-tists at BirdLife International, a coalition of groups interested in protecting bird species, as well as several international universities and nonprofits. The study finds that reduc-ing the extinction risk for for all threatened species would cost between $3.4 billion and $4.8 billion per year. The cost to protect important habitats for all species would be $76.1 billion per year, it finds. — AW

EPA SEEKS REHEARING OF AIR POLLUTION CASE

EPA is asking the full U.S. Court of Ap-peals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review a decision by three of its judges, who threw out a rule designed to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants that crosses state lines. In a 2-1 decision in August, the appeals court panel deter-mined that the agency had overstepped its legal authority under the Clean Air Act and imposed standards without giving states an opportunity to issue their own implemen-tation plans. The rule, issued in July 2011, caps power plant emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide in 28 states in

UNKNOWNS PLAGUE SHALE PRODUCTION

U.S. shale oil and natural gas production holds many unknowns, including poten-tial environmental and public health risks

as well as regulatory confusion, and even the size of the resource itself is unclear, the Government Account-ability Office says in two reports released last week. Resource estimates, for instance,

are volatile, with three assessments—by the Energy Information Administration, U.S. Geological Survey,

and Colorado School of Mines—showing dramatic increases over the past five years. GAO singles out EIA’s gas estimate, saying

GOVERNMENT & POLICY CONCENTRATES

The health risks of shale gas production are largely unknown.

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it shot up 280% over that period. The office notes that shale-based oil and gas produc-tion has grown more than fourfold between 2007 and 2011, yet environmental and pub-lic health risks are largely unknown and may not reflect potential cumulative long-term effects on water, air, or land. GAO finds that, on top of various state regulations, eight different federal environmental and public health laws apply to unconventional shale oil and gas development. But federal and state agencies have many regulatory chal-lenges, GAO says, because of enforcement and inspection limitations. Oversight agen-cies report difficulties retaining employees, GAO adds, because qualified staff are often hired away by the private sector. — JJ

the East, Midwest, and South. In seeking a rehearing by all eight judges on the appeals court, EPA contends that it is not appropri-ate to consider the implementation plan issue in this case. The three-judge appellate panel developed “regulatory policy out of whole cloth” and stepped into “the realm of matters reserved by Congress and the courts to the technical expertise of admin-istrative agencies,” EPA argues. — GH

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GOVERNMENT & POLICY

BEEKEEPER James Doan, owner and op-erator of Doan Family Farms in Hamlin, N.Y., wants to know what is killing his honeybees. In May, Doan witnessed his api-ary’s largest bee kill since 1987. Back then, the organophosphorus pesticide methyl parathion was to blame, he says. This time, Doan suspects the cause is dust contami-nated with clothianidin, a neonicotinoid pesticide used to treat corn seeds.

Doan is not alone in facing staggering honeybee losses. Declines in honeybees and other pollinator species have been reported by numerous authorities around the world. Data from the Department of Agriculture , the lead federal agency in-vestigating pollinator declines in the U.S., indicate that the number of commercial honeybee colonies in the U.S. dropped from about 5.9 million in the late 1940s to about 2.5 million in 2011.

The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that honeybees are in de-cline, but the agency isn’t convinced that clothianidin or any other pesticide is the only factor responsible. In July, EPA reject-ed a petition from a coalition of advocacy groups and beekeepers to immediately sus-

pend the use of clothianidin, citing a lack of evidence linking the pesticide to a decline in honeybee populations.

“Available science suggests that pol-linator declines are the result of multiple factors, which may be acting in various combinations,” says Thomas Moriarty, a team leader in EPA’s Pesticide Re-Evalua-tion Division. USDA suggests that losses of honeybee colonies are caused by parasitic mites, poor bee management, inadequate nutrition, and pesticides, all of which make honeybees more susceptible to disease.

To get a better handle on the role of pesticides in pollinator declines, EPA, along with the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency and the California De-partment of Pesticide Regulation, has been developing a quantitative framework for assessing the risks of pesticides to bees.

The framework involves a tiered ap-proach, starting with a simple screening assessment designed to quickly rule out pesticides that pose little or no risk to bees. The screening assessment relies on high-end estimates of exposure and considers effects measured on individual honeybees in laboratory toxicity studies. The second

and third tiers involve increasing information requirements, such as field studies, and they consider effects at the colony level.

EPA released the proposed framework in August and had its

pesticide scientific advisory panel critique it at a four-day public meeting last month. Panel members pointed out several limita-tions with the process, including the lack of data on pesticides in pollen and nectar, inadequate data on the extent and distribu-tion of pollinator declines, failure to incor-porate some important routes of exposure, and the lack of validated larval assays.

Throughout the meeting, panelists brought up the lack of data on pesticides in pollen and nectar as a major weakness. EPA used a model derived from pesticide residues on tall grass to estimate bee ex-posure to pesticides via nectar and pollen consumption. The model appears to be conservative, meaning it leans toward high risk, but “we have a paucity of data—actual residue measurements on nectar and pollen—with which to compare to this estimate,” stressed Thomas L. Potter, a research chemist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service .

IT IS UNCLEAR, however, who would be responsible for getting such data and who would pay for the analyses. Currently, beekeepers have to foot the bill to find out what chemicals are in their bee and pollen samples, Doan told the advisory panel.

Doan explained how difficult it was for him to get his samples analyzed. When he witnessed large numbers of bees dying in May, he first called the local office of New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

The office told Doan there was no money in the department’s budget to investigate bee kills. So he turned to the New York State Api-ary Inspection Program, which has been in-vestigating a parasitic infection in bees called nosema. An inspector came out, took samples of Doan’s bees, and analyzed them for mites and nosema. Neither one was present at a high enough level to be of concern, Doan said.

Not satisfied with the results, Doan then called Maryann Frazier, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University . Frazier sent Doan’s samples to a USDA bee lab in Gasto-nia, N.C. Doan had to pay for that analysis himself.

PROTECTING THE BEES Environmental Protection Agency aims to improve process

for assessing RISKS OF PESTICIDES on pollinator species BRITT E. ERICKSON , C&EN WASHINGTON

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UNDER STRESS Honeybee colonies such as this one have been on the decline, with multiple factors being blamed.

29WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

“Improving ... risk assessments will ensure that crop protection tools can be used in a manner compatible with pollinator health.”

The results showed high levels of clo-thianidin in both the pollen and the bees, Doan noted. The analysis also detected a few other chemicals, but nothing stood out like clothianidin, particularly in the bees, he said.

Doan believes he is not alone in his strug-gles to get samples of dead bees and pollen analyzed. “I’ve talked to people from all across the country that had difficult times trying to get somebody from their state to come out and pull samples. I have talked to Canadian beekeepers, and they are telling me similar stories,” he told the panel.

Another problem is that EPA lacks data on the extent and distribution of pollinator declines, several panel members pointed out. USDA has been collecting data on the number of commercial honeybee colonies in the U.S. since the 1940s, but those data fol-low trends in honey prices, pointed out Jef-fery S. Pettis, a research leader with USDA’s Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. In addition, the data exclude honey producers with fewer than five hives, who represent an important sector of the industry.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service considered conducting a large study to determine the rate of decline of honeybee colonies in the U.S., but no fund-ing for such a study ever surfaced, Pettis noted. Instead, USDA has been sending out questionnaires to beekeepers for the past six years to survey honeybee losses. “It is not the best data set, but it is the best data set we have,” Pettis said.

THE LACK OF RELIABLE DATA on hon-eybee losses concerned some panel mem-bers. “It doesn’t sound like we have the numbers in hand to really assess the real risk to pollinators,” stressed James McMa-naman, a professor of reproductive scienc-es at the University of Colorado, Denver .

“We need to do some sort of pattern analysis,” suggested William G. Kelly Jr., an attorney with the Center for Regula-tory Effectiveness, an advocacy group that questions the cost-effectiveness of regula-tions. Such an analysis could show “where this problem is occurring, the extent of it, and whether it is really associated with pesticide use in those areas,” he said.

In developing the risk-assessment framework, EPA relied on bee-kill incident

data from its Ecological Incident Informa-tion System (EIIS). But that database does not include many incidents that have been reported elsewhere, pointed out Peter Jenkins, an attorney and policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, the lead advocacy group that petitioned EPA to ban clothianidin earlier this year.

“It is well accepted across numerous stakeholders, especially beekeepers, that EIIS does a very poor job of collecting national bee-kill data,” Jenkins said. In contrast, the system used by Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency captures more incidents and is well regarded, he noted.

Jenkins pointed out that EPA’s database does not include at least 14 bee-kill inci-dents that occurred in the U.S. in 2012 and 120 incidents reported in Canada. Those incidents were all associated with dust from neonicotinoid seed treatments, he claimed.

EPA acknowledges that exposure of bees to dust from pesticide-treated seeds is the focus of numerous ecological incident re-ports. However, the agency did not include contaminated dust as a route of exposure in its framework because methods for predicting pesticide exposure from seed coat dust are not yet available for regula-tory applications, noted Keith Sappington, a senior scientist with the Environmental Fate & Effects Division of EPA’s pesticide

office. In addition, “the agency is currently working to mitigate this exposure pathway based on modifications of seed treatment methods, seed planting equipment, and as-sociated practices,” he said.

But Jenkins and other stakeholders urged EPA to revise the exposure model to include dust from pesticide-treated seeds. “This contaminated dust exposure route and its impact on honeybees has led to Ger-many, Italy, Slovenia, and to some extent France prohibiting various neonicotinoid seed treatments in the last four years,” Jen-kins noted.

SEVERAL STAKEHOLDERS also encour-aged EPA to consider guttation fluid—droplets of sap that form on the edges or tips of leaves of some plants—as an impor-tant route of exposure. EPA acknowledged that such fluid may contain high levels of pesticides, “but the degree to which honeybees rely on this source of water and nutrients has proven difficult to quantify,” Sappington noted.

Representatives from the pesticide industry, on the other hand, said EPA’s exposure estimates are too conservative. A lot of chemicals that pose little or no risk to bees will fail the screening assessment and be subject to unnecessary higher-tier test-ing, said David Fischer, an ecotoxicologist with Bayer CropScience, which markets clothianidin.

Other people at the meeting, including several panel members, were concerned about the lack of validated assays for deter-mining the toxicity of pesticides on honey-bee larvae, the failure of EPA to consider sublethal effects of pesticides on bees, and the use of honeybees as a surrogate for other pollinator species.

Despite the limitations of the proposed framework, EPA’s effort to improve its process for assessing the risks of pesticides to bees has garnered support. Honeybees and other pollinator species are vital for successful agriculture, but so are pesti-cides, noted Ray McAllister, senior director of regulatory policy at CropLife America, a trade group representing the pesticide industry. “Improving the quality and rigor of risk assessments will ensure that crop protection tools can be used in a manner compatible with pollinator health.” ◾

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Colonies, millions

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NOTE: Honey producers with fewer than five hives are not included. Data are not available for 1982–85. SOURCE: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service

IN DECLINE Commercial honeybee colonies have decreased fairly steadily since the late 1940s.

30WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

GOVERNMENT & POLICY

FEDERALLY FUNDED R&D faces $57.5 bil-lion in budget cuts over the next five years if the first half of decadelong, mandatory across-the-board reductions, called se-questration, takes place as scheduled.

The cuts could send R&D funding at many federal agencies to its lowest levels in a decade, according to a new analysis from the American Association for the Advance-ment of Science (AAAS). For instance, the budget of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration would hit levels not seen since the 1980s.

“The impact of this sequester would be truly devastating to the American scientific enterprise,” says Alan I. Leshner, chief ex-ecutive officer of AAAS.

Much has been made of the first year of sequestration, which will begin on Jan. 2, 2013, unless Congress makes a deal to re-place the plan. But few studies have looked at the ramifications on R&D if the cuts con-tinue each year for 10 years, as currently laid out in the Budget Control Act of 2011.

AAAS has tackled this long-term impact question. In an analysis that focuses on the ramifications of the first five years of cuts, it makes clear that the cost of sequestra-tion would be high. AAAS limited its ex-amination to five years to be able to adjust for inflation using data through 2017 from the White House Office of Management & Budget.

“Sequestration is really a long-term challenge,” says Matt Hourihan, director of AAAS’s R&D Budget & Policy Program. “We wanted to get a better sense of how these cuts could affect science funding be-yond just next year.”

For example, the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health & Human Services, faces a total of $11.3 billion in cuts over the first five years of sequestration. Elsewhere, the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency could lose $213 million and the Department of Energy could be out $4.6 billion.

These cuts and others across the gov-

ernment are the result of a last-minute agreement in August 2011 that allowed the U.S. to raise its debt limit. In exchange, members of Congress agreed to come up with a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the fed-eral deficit over the next decade.

The Budget Control Act set up a biparti-san congressional commission, referred to as the supercommittee, to come up with an

agreement on what combination of budget cuts and tax hikes would achieve the set cuts. Sequestration was the “stick” to force the bipartisan commission to come up with a deficit reduction plan; it was never meant to be implemented. But when the super-committee members could not reach an agreement, it went into effect.

Now, almost every defense and non-defense discretionary program—including all agency R&D activities—across the fed-eral government is facing cuts that range from 7.6 to 9.1% annually for a decade. Mandatory programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, are exempt or face smaller cuts.

Under sequestration, agency budget cuts do not compound. Instead, the bud-

gets get cut each year from a base number set in the Budget Control Act that remains nearly flat at 2013 levels. The result is that agencies are effectively pitching in a por-tion of their budgets each year for 10 years to bring down the deficit.

For example, the National Science Foun-dation’s average annual budget over the first five years is $5.6 billion, assuming con-gressional appropriators hold all discre-tionary accounts flat to mirror the overall cap set by the law. Each year of this period, it would lose an average of $421 million to deficit reduction, for a total five-year loss of $2.1 billion, according to AAAS.

IN THE FIRST YEAR of sequestration, al-most every program at every federal agency would face a cut as mandated by the law. But for future years, the law is not as spe-cific, so agencies would likely have more

control over what programs to reduce or eliminate, Hourihan points out.

Sequestration comes at a time when many observers already fear that U.S. R&D is falling behind. Overall federal funding has been flat or slightly declining for the past decade, aside from a one-time boost from the 2009 economic stimulus package.

Sequestration would make that situa-tion worse, says Steven Fluharty, senior vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania. The university received $900 million in R&D awards in 2012, 80% of which came from the federal govern-ment. He estimates that sequestration could cost the university $50 million to $60 million per year in research funding and more than 1,100 jobs.

BILLIONS AT RISK IN BUDGET CUTS

Report looks at long-term IMPACT ON R&D FUNDING of federal sequestration set to begin in January

ANDREA WIDENER , C&EN WASHINGTON

DEADLOCK-INFLICTED PAIN Sequestration could have a devastating effect on R&D

starting in 2013 if it goes into effect as scheduled

$ MILLIONS 2013 BUDGET a FIRST-YEARSEQUESTER

2013 ADJUSTEDBUDGET

Department of Defense $73,704 $6,928 $66,776 Department of Health & Human Services 30,825 2,528 28,297 Department of Energy 11,191 972 10,219 National Science Foundation 5,557 456 5,101 National Aeronautics & Space Administration 9,303 763 8,540 Department of Agriculture 2,307 189 2,118 Department of Commerce 1,250 103 1,147 Department of the Interior 788 65 723 Environmental Protection Agency 562 46 516 Department of Homeland Security 611 50 561

TOTAL $136,098 $12,100 $123,998

NOTE: The Department of Veterans Affairs is exempt from sequestration. a Budgets based on levels set in the Budget Control Act of 2011. SOURCE: “Federal R&D and Sequestration in the First Five Years” by AAAS

31WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

“Significant advances with enormous potential could erode very quickly,” Flu-harty says. “We recognize that these are challenging times, but we need to approach this in an evidence-based fashion and not with a blunt instrument.”

Sequestration could also do irreparable harm to the cause of attracting students into science and keeping talented young scientists in the workforce, Leshner says. “We know that at the NIH, the average age of a first grant is 42,” he says. “Imagine where it will go if we make it even more dif-ficult” to get those first grants.

IN ADDITION TO its analysis of sequestra-tion as currently enacted, AAAS examined a second—admittedly less likely—plan that would exempt defense programs from the automatic cuts. The House of Repre-sentatives has passed such a plan, but the Senate and the White House have shown little support for it.

Under this scenario, research and regu-latory agencies would face massive cuts of 17.5% each year, according to the AAAS report. That would mean total five-year

losses of $26.1 billion at NIH, $5.9 billion at DOE, and $4.9 billion at NSF, for example.

The AAAS report also includes a break-down of the five-year impact on all federal R&D spending for each state. This analysis assumes defense programs are not exempt. California takes the largest hit by far, los-ing $11.3 billion over five years, followed by Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.

The University of California system would undoubtedly bear much of Califor-nia’s burden, with its 10 university cam-puses, including research powerhouses UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego, as well the national labs it operates for DOE.

In a letter last month to the California congressional delegation, UC President Mark G. Yudof laid out sequestration’s effect on the university system. In just

the first year, UC would lose more than $335 million in federal support for research; financial aid for thousands of UC students, including 80,000 who received Pell Grants in 2012; and $21.5 million in Medicare rev-enues to the UC health system.

J. Gary Falle, UC’s associate vice presi-dent for federal governmental relations, thinks that the Administration and Con-gress recognize the potential destruction that sequestration could cause. In fact, some in Congress are issuing such warn-ings (see page 26).

“I believe that when the Budget Control Act was passed, adopted, and signed, the threat of sequestration was out there, but nobody was thinking it was really going to happen,” Falle says. “But we are within 90 days of it happening, so it is getting pretty close to going into effect.” ◾

Sequestration was the “stick” to force the bipartisan commission to come

up with a deficit reduction plan.

32WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

T-SHIRT TO ATHLETE: YOU’RE DEHYDRATED

Some sports clothing already contains embedded nanoparticles that hinder growth of stinky bacteria that feed on sweat. Now, there’s a new smart textile that can analyze sweat and potentially help its wearer figure out whether dehydration is imminent ( J. Mater. Chem., DOI: 10.1039/c2jm34898e ). Researchers led by Nicola Coppedè of the Institute of Materials for Electronics & Magnetism , in Parma, Italy, functional-ized cotton fibers with a conductive polymer composed of poly(3,4-ethyle ne dioxythiophene) and poly(styrene sulfonate) and then integrated a silver wire into the textile to complete the circuit. When someone wearing the fabric perspires, redox reactions between salt ions in sweat and the silver wire result in ion flow through the material. These ion currents could be used to indicate changes in the salt concentrations in sweat that occur during dehydration. As the salt concentration in sweat rises, so does the likelihood that the athlete is becoming dehydrated, Coppedè says. This is the first elec-tronic fabric capable of detecting salt concentrations in aqueous, sweaty conditions, he notes. The team suggests the functionalized textile could also be used for diagnosing or monitoring people with cystic fibrosis, because their sweat contains abnormal concentrations of salt ions. — SE

FLUORESCENCE PROBE FOR CITRULLINATION

A new technique for detecting citrulline groups, a type of posttranslational protein modification associated with a variety of human diseases, has speed and sensitivity advantages over previous techniques ( J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja308871v ). The method could lead to a deeper un-derstanding of citrullination and aid drug development for associated illnesses. Citrullines are amino acids generated from arginine residues by protein arginine deiminases (PADs), which have abnor-mally high activity in rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and other condi-tions. The role of citrullination isn’t well understood, in part because colorimetric detection of citrulline has low sensitivity and antibody-based detection techniques are expensive and slow. Paul R. Thompson of Scripps Florida and coworkers devised a phenylglyoxal-based citrulline test with fluorescence detection. The method is fast and highly sensitive, and it can be used by most researchers because the reagents and instruments needed for detection are avail-able in virtually all biochemically focused laboratories, the researchers note. They used the technology to identify disease bio-markers in mice with ulcerative colitis and believe it could aid the search for therapeu-tic PAD inhibitors. — SB

SYNTHESIS VIA ELECTROSPRAY

Electrospray—a mainstay of mass spec-trometrists in which an electric field is used to disperse a solution into a fine mist of charged droplets—might also find a

BORENIUM SALT CATALYSTS READILY

REDUCE IMINES

Canadian chemists have learned how to generate powerful metal-free catalysts for important imine reduction reactions by starting from boron-based Lewis acid-base complexes ( J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja307374j ). Patrick Eisen-berger, Adrian M. Bailey, and Cath-leen M. Crudden of Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, coupled B(C 6 F 5 ) 3 or [(C 6 H 5 ) 3 C][B(C 6 F 5 ) 4 ] with 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane and pinacolborane. The resulting catalytic salts consist of a highly electrophilic borenium cation paired with a fluorophenylborate anion (one shown). Crudden’s team found that the catalytic borenium complexes

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CONCENTRATES

activate the C=N bond of a broad range of imines and use the hydrogen from pina-colborane to reduce the C=N bond to form secondary amines under mild reaction con-ditions. In another paper just published, Jeffrey M. Farrell, Jillian A. Hatnean, and Douglas W. Stephan of the University of Toronto report a related borenium cata-lyst that activates and uses H 2 for imine reductions ( J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja307995f ). These two reports are the first examples of borenium catalysts being used for metal-free reductions, Crudden says. Both groups provide new strategies for avoiding the use of stoichiometric boro-hydride salts, but Crudden’s version offers a unique mechanism that also avoids the need to use H 2 gas. — SR

A smart fabric for detecting athlete dehydration is built from functionalized cotton (black thread) and silver wire (top).

J. M

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place in synthetic chemists’ tool kits, ac-cording to a report ( Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., DOI: 10.1002/anie.201206632 ). Com-partmentalized liquids such as micelles and emulsions are often used to enhance chemical reactions. Thomas Müller of the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, along with Abraham Badu-Tawiah and R. Graham Cooks of Purdue University wondered whether the charged micro-droplets generated with electrospray might serve the same purpose. The chem-ists studied the base-catalyzed Claisen-Schmidt condensation of 1-indanone and 4-chlorobenz aldehyde. They conducted the reaction in a flask at room tempera-ture, as well as in an electrospray appara-tus equipped with four multiplexed elec-trosonic spray ionization tips. Whereas the benchtop reaction took several hours to complete, the electrospray method gen-erated products in better than 90% yield within the time of flight of the evaporat-ing charged droplets. The technique, the researchers note, could be used to make milli gram quantities of material in a mat-ter of minutes. — BH

Borenium catalyst

B(C6F5)4–

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33WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CONCENTRATES

MECHANICAL MANEUVERS ENABLE

FRUIT FLY SIGHT

The missing link in understanding the conversion of light to an electrical signal in Drosophila photoreceptor cells might be a mechanical contraction of cell membranes ( Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1222376 ). The complex path of

sight starts with photo-isomerization of rhodopsin (a G-protein-coupled receptor; see page 6 ), goes through cleav-age of the inositol head from the mem-brane phospholipid phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphos phate (PIP 2 ), and ends with opening of an ion channel to import Ca 2+

COMBINATORIAL METHOD DELIVERS SELECTIVE

POLYENE EPOXIDATIONS

The terpenoid alcohol farnesol possesses three double bonds, each of which differs only slightly in its chemical environment. Phillip A. Lichtor and Scott J. Miller of Yale University report a method for selectively epoxidizing just one of those double bonds by us-ing peptide-based catalysts ( Nat. Chem., DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1469 ). The epoxidation strategy features small peptides that contain aspartic acid as the key catalytic component. During the catalytic cycle, aspartic acid’s carboxylic acid side chain is activated with a carbodiimide. This species generates a tran-sient peracid when it reacts with hydrogen peroxide. The peracid, in turn, epoxidizes double bonds. Lichtor and Miller used a combinatorial synthesis approach to vary the amino acids around the critical aspartic acid residue. In doing so, they discovered catalysts that selectively epoxidize the dou-ble bond closest to farnesol’s alcohol func-tional group. The catalysts turned out to be enantioselective as well, producing just one epoxide isomer with greater than 80% enantiomeric excess. The Yale group was also able to use its combinatorial strategy to find a catalyst that selectively epoxidizes the double bond in the middle of farnesol, a reaction that hasn’t been reported until now. — BH

PUTTING A STOP TO MICROBIAL FREELOADING

A population of bacteria has a metabolic tactic for keeping its rogue members in check, researchers report ( Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1227289 ). The discovery could someday be useful for controlling infections or for making industrial fer-mentations more efficient. Pseudomonas aeruginosa activates certain genes upon reaching a threshold popu-lation by using a communica-tion system called quorum sensing. One of those genes prompts secretion of an enzyme that digests an extra-cellular protein source. Some individual microbes, however, don’t heed the quorum-sensing call and live off the protein digested by nearby bac-teria. Ajai A. Dandekar, Sudha Chugani, and E. Peter Greenberg of the University of Washington School of Medicine have now found a way to restrain freeloaders so they don’t sabotage the population. The cheaters, as Greenberg calls them, don’t turn on a gene to produce an intracellu-lar enzyme that metabolizes adenosine.

NO SUPERSOLID STATE FOR HELIUM

Solid helium cooled to millikelvin tem-peratures does not form a friction-free supersolid, report Duk Y. Kim and Moses H. W. Chan of Pennsylvania State Univer-sity ( Phys. Rev. Lett., DOI: 10.1103/physrev-lett.109.155301 ). In 2004, Chan and then-graduate student Eunseong Kim reported what seemed to be evidence of a supersolid state when they filled a porous glass with helium and then cooled it to less than 0.2 K ( C&EN, Jan. 19, 2004, page 14 ; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature02220 ). When they oscillated the glass, some of the helium appeared not to move with it, a sign that they had produced a frictionless state. Research by Chan’s group and others since then produced inconsistent results. In the new work, Kim and Chan rede-signed the experimental apparatus to elimi-nate gaps where helium could exist outside the glass pores. Using the improved system, they saw no evidence for super solidity. The effects observed in the earlier experiment were likely the result of an abrupt increase in the shear modulus—a measure of material stiffness—of bulk solid helium at very low temperatures, Chan says. — JK

They can thus be held in check by adding a small amount of adenosine to the medium where they grow. Engineering similar pairs of quorum-sensing-controlled genes could be the key to controlling cheat-ers in microbes used to secrete enzymes or small molecules on industrial scales, Greenberg notes. “We can manipulate the situation so that cheaters never prosper,” he says. — CD

The membrane phospholipid PIP 2

(carbon = green, oxygen = red, phosphorus = purple, and hydrogen = white).

The blue background shows up when a bacterial colony digests its surrounding protein source. A cheater colony (top) doesn’t digest its surrounding protein.

AJ

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and Na + into the cell. But how, exactly, hy-drolysis of the phospholipid triggers open-ing of the ion channel was a mystery. Roger C. Hardie and Kristian Franze of Cam-bridge University noticed that light flashes induced physical contractions in photore-ceptors, which they measured using atomic force microscopy. Cleaving the bulky ino-sitol head from PIP 2 releases a proton and leaves behind a slimmer diacylglycerol in the membrane lipid bilayer, allowing recep-tor membranes to contract. The mechani-cal force of the contraction, combined with the released proton, triggers opening of the ion channels, the researchers propose. “The study of Hardie and Franze highlights the emerging concept that transmembrane proteins are sensitive to the membrane environment,” says University of Southern California neurobiologist Emily R. Liman in commentary about the work. — JK

Farnesol

OH

34WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

THE HARSH, TOXIC conditions in which metals are extracted from the earth may not produce a hospitable environment for humans, but for some microorganisms, that environment is a cozy bath. Reveling in slurries that are often extremely acidic or basic, these microbes swim around, de-riving energy from oxidation and reduction reactions that release economically valu-able metals from minerals.

That’s why researchers have become increasingly keen to get these microbes on the mining payroll. They’re looking for ways to use bacteria and archaea to extract metal from virgin rock as well as from retired mine sites whose toxic waste pools may still con-tain trace amounts of valuable metals.

Harnessing microbes to do mining work is called biomining, or sometimes bioex-traction or bioleaching. The strategy has been most extensively studied for copper and gold: Colorado-based mining consul-tant Corale L. Brierley estimates that 10 to 15% of copper and 5% of gold worldwide are currently being harvested through biomining. Researchers are also evaluating biomining as a way to harvest zinc, nickel, cobalt, and uranium, but many of these newer applications haven’t made it past the lab stage, says D. Barrie Johnson , a microbi-ologist at Bangor University, in Wales.

“Mining can never be sustainable,” John-son says, noting that it consumes between 3 and 5% of all the energy produced globally.

And biomining is not a solution for the immense environmental pollution prob-lems caused by the mining industry, says

Jürg Zobrist , a staff scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science & Technology who’s been involved in mining pollution research.

But biomining can help scavenge more metals from mines and replace some ener-gy-intensive mining steps, thereby increas-ing extraction efficiency, Johnson says.

Biomining was first envisioned in the 1950s and 1960s, when acid-loving mi-crobes called acidophils were discovered, Brierley says. In the decades since, re-searchers have been trying out biomining here and there, but large-scale buy-in from the mining industry has been slow to come, Zobrist says. That’s because biomining re-quires new infrastructure, making it more economical for companies to do things the traditional way: by crushing and mill-ing rock, separating the valuable-metal-containing minerals by flotation, and then smelting the minerals at high pressures and temperatures to get out the metals.

It also takes more time to extract met-als with biomining than with conventional methods, Zobrist says. Metal extractions that take hours or days by conventional means can take weeks, months, or even longer with microbes—which is not good for business. “There’s a lot of promise to biomining, but the strategies have yet to be adopted on a large scale because the mining

industry sees econom-ics as the bottom line,” Zobrist says.

But interest in biomining is increasing, says Bernhard Dold, a geochemist at the Uni-

versity of Chile , in Santiago, who works with a variety of mining companies. “In the past five years, there’s been a mentality change in the mining community,” he says.

For example, big-name mining compa-nies around the world, such as Rio Tinto , Vale , and Newmont Mining , are showing interest, Johnson says. Smaller companies are also keen, he adds. Talvivaara Mining opened a mine in 2010 in Finland that uses microbes to extract metals from ore.

INTEREST IN BIOMINING is growing be-cause of a confluence of factors, Johnson says. One is the world’s increasing demand for metal-containing products just as we’ve used up “virtually all of the high-metal-containing ore that is easily accessible in the lithosphere,” he says. “We’re process-ing material that is much lower grade than before.”

It used to be that ores containing less than 5% copper weren’t worth mining, Johnson notes. But with current demand, “geologists are now looking for ores with 0.3% copper,” Dold says. They’re even looking in mining waste slurries from 10 or 20 years ago, which still have 0.4% or 0.5% copper because mining processes weren’t as efficient back then. “What was once waste is now a mine,” he says.

Another factor that makes biomining increasingly attractive to the industry is rising energy prices, Johnson says. Because the mining industry devours a lot of energy, and energy is increasingly expensive, some companies are now willing to consider a slower extraction if the process consumes less energy, he says. For example, biomin-ing can operate at atmospheric pressure and much lower temperatures than con-ventional techniques: 30 °C instead of 800 °C in the case of nickel, Johnson says.

One of the best-studied biomining ap-plications is for ores that contain copper in association with sulfide minerals such as pyrite, also known as fool’s gold. Instead of separating the metal from the pyrite with

MINING WITH MICROBES With metal demand and energy prices on the rise,

researchers develop BIOMINING to extract valuable metals SARAH EVERTS , C&EN BERLIN

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“Biology is not going to take over mining, but it is going to be more important.”

BIOEXTRACTION The Escondida copper mine in Chile hosts a biomining operation.

35WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

high temperatures or pressures, biomining uses microbes from the Acidithiobacillus and Leptospirillum genera to do the job.

These microbes have protein systems that can oxidize Fe 2+ to Fe 3+ , which they use to generate chemical energy for their meta-bolic processes, Dold says. The reaction also produces sulfuric acid as a by-product and releases copper ions, which can remain in solu-tion because of the acidity of the reaction medium. Metallic copper can then be precipitated onto electrodes via electrochemistry.

“If you get copper in solution, it’s easy to get it out,” Dold says. “You have to make the bacteria happy so they can do their job as fast as possible.” In practice, that means kick-starting protein-catalyzed redox reactions by adding sulfuric acid to bioreactors or waste pools to reduce pH to comfortable levels for acid-loving bacteria.

IN THE PAST DECADE, microbiology has gained many new tools for sequencing and characterizing hard-to-culture bacteria—innova-tions that have also helped bolster biomining. A key part of biomining research is finding new microbes that can eke out an existence in the harsh conditions common in biomining applications.

But even though members of the Acidithiobacillus and Leptospi-rillum genera are often top contenders for biomining operations, there’s no one-size-fits-all microbial culture that can be applied uni-

versally, Dold says. Every situation—be it untouched ore or old mine tail-ings—involves different trace metals and minerals, whose relative con-centrations are based on the area’s geology and any processing that has already taken place. In practice, this means that each situation requires a unique mixture of microbes to do the optimal biomining job.

Johnson said his group has done “dream team experiments” starting with 20 organisms that are known to do well in biomining applications. Depending on the situation, “you end up with three or four players, and those players will depend on what exactly you are processing,” he adds.

As interest in biomining rises, researchers are also trying to extend

biomining to new types of ores, in addition to the well-studied gold and copper ores. For example, just last year, Johnson reported the first case of applying biomining to laterite minerals, which require reducing conditions—instead of copper and gold’s oxidizing con-ditions—to extract metals such as nickel or cobalt.

By going back to his dream team of biomining microbes, Johnson was able to report that putting Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in an-aerobic conditions at low pH did the solubilizing trick ( Miner. Eng., DOI: 10.1016/j.mineng.2010.09.005 ). He’s currently working with the Brazilian mining company Vale to apply biomining to its nickel and copper mines in South America. Dold says he is working on cop-per biomining projects with companies in Chile and Peru, such as Anglo American, Codelco, and Southern Peru Copper Corp.

“Biomining is a bit of a niche market, but with increasing envi-ronmental pressures, constraints, and regulations, more and more mining companies are looking into it,” Johnson says. “Biology is not going to take over mining, but it is going to be more important.” ◾

MINING MEAL Green acid-loving algae feast on copper sulfide in black rock.

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ANTHONY J. ARDUENGO III likes molecules that break the rules. The University of Alabama chemistry professor has spent his career cre-ating compounds with abnormal valency and bonding arrangements leading to unusual molecular electronic properties. Although many chemists might not recog-nize Arduengo by name, they will recognize one of his milestone rule-breaking achievements: the discov-ery 20 years ago of the first isolable N-heterocyclic carbene, or NHC.

Arduengo was a researcher at DuPont when he made the cyclic diamine (an imidazole) bearing adamantyl substituents. In carbenes, the central carbon has a valen-cy of two instead of the usual four, Arduengo explains. A lone pair of electrons fills one of the carbon’s orbitals, leaving one orbital empty.

Chemists once viewed carbenes as highly reactive, transient spe-cies that were important intermediates in some reactions, Arduen-go says. Although predictions were made that the electron imbal-ance in carbenes could be stabilized with structural modifications, no one had been able to crystallize one and put it in a reagent bottle. He credits the research culture at DuPont for making it possible.

“We worked on applied projects, but we also were free to look for new ideas and concepts. This discovery-driven approach liber-ates you from the philosophical confines of what is conventionally known,” he says. “Within that culture, if you keep your ear to the rail and listen for research problems that come along, you can al-ways be thinking about how you might provide a quick solution.”

Arduengo had been working on developing cross-linking cata-lysts used in paints and other polymer-based systems. Meanwhile, DuPont was trying to develop an environmentally friendly water-borne coating with low volatile organic compound emissions, he says. He recognized that the catalytic imidazole thiones he had been working on provided a solution.

It struck Arduengo that the carbene intermediates that captured sulfur to make the thiones had an unusual tolerance to moisture in the air and to a range of different types of substituent groups on the nitrogen atoms. “When you notice something like that in the lab, it tends to gnaw at you as to why,” Arduengo notes. “It finally dawned on me that these particular carbenes were really stable.” Although Arduengo’s DuPont managers thought he was chas-ing shadows trying to isolate a stable carbene, he gave it a shot anyway. He nailed it on his first try.

When news about Arduengo’s discovery spread, chemists quickly grouped NHCs with cyclopentadi-enes and phosphines as go-to ligands for transition-metal catalysts. They also found that NHCs function as metal-free organocatalysts. The carbenes now come in many varieties, and analogs have been made

from elements all across the peri-odic table. They also have branched out from catalysis and into elec-tronics and other applications.

Arduengo’s interest in tinkering with molecules comes honestly, he says. He has always had an interest in working with tools and doing mechanical work. When he was 16, for example, he teamed up with his father to build a car from miscel-laneous parts. His fascination with cars continues. Now 60, he owns a yellow 2008 Lotus Elise. “Aside from really liking the car, I feel a

kinship to it because it has a DuPont automotive waterborne coat-ing,” Arduengo says. “It’s nice to be able to look at something and see reflected in it the chemistry you’ve worked on.”

ALTHOUGH HE ENJOYED working at DuPont, Arduengo sensed in the late 1990s that the firm’s research culture was shifting to-ward project-driven applied research, where success or failure depended more on whether something worked and less on funda-mental discoveries like uncovering stable carbenes. He decided to change gears, and in 1999 he took a faculty position at Alabama. He also has a joint research appointment at the Technical University of Braunschweig, in Germany.

The transition to academia enabled Arduengo to continue dis-covery-driven applied research on carbenes, he says. Some of his latest work includes developing modified NHC ligands and using NHCs for alkyne metathesis reactions. But his penchant for tinker-ing with tools has led him in new directions.

One of his targets is developing NHC-based dyes to capture light in solar cells. He’s reluctant to share details pending patent protec-tion, but his group’s chromophores absorb light from the infrared into the ultraviolet and convert light energy into electrical energy without the semiconductor layer that most solar cells require.

Arduengo says his foray into stable carbenes has been overwhelm-ingly gratifying to him as a scientist and educator. “I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with some of the world’s luminary scientific figures and help many hardworking young scientists in my group,” he says. “As a trumpet player, I can tell you that one’s musical performance improves with the quality of the musicians with whom

you associate and perform. This intellectual concert enhancement holds true among chemists.”

He’s also thrilled that many chemists have picked up on and found success with NHCs. “It’s invigorat-ing to know you’ve made a contribution that will leave a mark,” Arduengo says. “As a scientist, that is something we all hope for I think, to push the sci-ence forward and give others tools to work with so they can go even further.” ◾

STEPHEN K. RITTER , C&EN WASHINGTON

Inventor of stable N-HETEROCYCLIC CARBENES reflects on the impact of his discovery 20 years later

ANTHONY J. ARDUENGO III

“It’s nice to be able to look at something and see reflected in it the chemistry you’ve worked on.”

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36WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

C&EN TALKS WITH

Arduengo

37WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

ACS NEWS

THE BRILLIANTLY colored fluorescent pigments used in everything from psy-chedelic posters to clothing, toys, and accessories were designated a National His-toric Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society during a ceremony at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland on Sept. 8. The pigments were invented by two brothers who founded the company DayGlo Color .

“Fluorescent pigments are a universally recognizable and truly iconic sci-entific development,” said ACS Board Chair William F. Carroll Jr., who presided over the ceremony. “Beyond being ubiquitous in our everyday lives, from construction cones to clothing, fluorescent colors are a symbol of safety and protection that improve our daily lives. Today, construction work-ers, firefighters, crossing guards, and countless others are safer and more visible because they wear brilliant, fluorescing colors.”

During the ceremony, Carroll presented Stephen C. Jackson, president of DayGlo Color, with a commemorative plaque honoring the development of DayGlo fluo-rescent pigments.

“The history of fluorescent pigments is a wonderful tale of discovery and development and a prime example of how the disciplines of chemistry and engineering can be applied to create an entirely new class of material,” Jackson said when accepting the award.

In 1933, two enterprising teenage broth-ers, Robert C. and Joseph L. Switzer, found a way to turn naturally fluorescing organic compounds into paint by combining the materials with a natural polymer, shellac. They used this experimental paint to design costumes for their amateur magic shows. The costumes glowed on stage under a black light, which emits ultraviolet light.

The brothers soon realized the wide-spread potential of their fluorescent paint. They continued to improve their products, developing “daylight fluorescents” in the 1940s. These pigments, which fluoresce in

daylight, became known as DayGlo fluores-cents. The brothers founded Switzer Broth-ers Inc., in Cleveland, in 1946. They renamed the company DayGlo Color in 1969.

World War II led to new applications of fluorescent technology. These included fluorescent fabric panels used by troops in North Africa to identify themselves to Allied aircraft as friendly and fluorescing materials that allowed Allied forces to use aircraft car-riers at night, which gave them an advantage

over the Japanese military. Growth in the use of fluores-cent colors for marketing and packaging took off after the war. The first big break in packaging came in 1959 in an application

that’s still recognized by its DayGlo colors: Tide detergent.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Chemical Landmarks program, which ACS initiated in 1992 to enhance public appreciation for the contributions of the chemical sciences to modern life in the U.S. and to encourage a sense of pride in the practitioners of those sciences.

The program has awarded landmark status to 70 places, discoveries, and achieve-ments in the history of chemical science and technology. Other advances recognized through this program have included the world’s first synthetic plastic, the discovery of penicillin, and the development of Tide laundry detergent. For more information about the program, visit www.acs.org/landmarks . — LINDA WANG

A GLOWING LANDMARK Development of DayGlo FLUORESCENT PIGMENT

is designated a chemical landmark

Announcements of ACS news may be sent to acsnews.cen@acs.org.

ACS LAUNCHES WEBINARS-IN-A-BOX

ACS WEBINARS-IN-A-BOX, a pilot pro-gram launched this month by ACS Webi-nars , held its inaugural event on Oct. 2. The national webinar viewing event was cospon-sored by the Younger Chemists Committee (YCC), ACS Careers , and ACS Webinars.

Participants, primarily younger chemists and student members from more than 25 lo-cal sections, tuned in simultaneously to “Se-crets from the Other Side—What Recruiters Know That You Don’t.” Dennis Guthrie of Dow Chemical presented and then fielded participants’ questions live via webcast.

“This is the first webinar event of its kind for ACS. It allows people to get togeth-er from around the country and be able to communicate and network with each other virtually,” says Samuel Toba, manager of ACS Webinars. “We’re enabling local sec-tions to have a much wider reach.”

The Webinars-in-a-Box program aims to simplify the process of organizing a lo-cal section or student chapter event. Each event organizer can request a free box from ACS that contains promotional materials, discussion guides, resource packets for participants, raffle prizes, and other event-planning tools.

“Frequently, younger chemist leaders are students, and they may not have a lot of confidence to lead an event,” says Christine McInnis, a senior chemist for Dow Micro-bial Control and chair of the YCC local and regional affairs working group. “Having the program in a box really helps local section YCC leaders understand what is being asked of them and feel confident that they’re go-ing to be able to pull off a successful event.”

Toba says that any ACS group, including committees and technical divisions, can help organize a Webinars-in-a-Box event, and ACS will provide the resources to help the group get started. Questions about the new program and suggestions for webinar topics can be sent to acswebinars@acs.org.

The Webinars-in-a-Box series is one of several new initiatives by ACS Webinars, including ACS Webinets. These two-minute video segments are based on popular full-length ACS Webinars. Toba says these short videos can be watched in less time than it takes to finish a morning coffee. For more information, visit acswebinars.org. — LW

LANDMARK Carroll (right) presents the plaque to DayGlo’s Jackson.

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PEOPLE

ACADEMIA

Seventeen scientists in the fields of chem-istry, biochemistry, and chemical engineer-ing are among the 219 people elected to the 2012 class of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. New members were inducted during a ceremony earlier this month at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. Following are the 2012 fellows and foreign honorary members in the chemical sciences:

James M. Berger , a professor of biochem-istry, biophysics, and structural biology at the University of California, Berkeley; Robert G. Griffin , a professor of chemistry and director of the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sharon Hammes-Schiffer , Eberly Professor of Biotechnology and a professor of chemistry at Pennsylvania State University; Mark Johnston , a profes-sor of biochemistry and molecular genet-ics at the University of Colorado, Denver; Gerald F. Joyce , a professor of chemistry and molecular biology at Scripps Research Institute; Daniel Kahne , a professor of chemistry and chemical biology and a pro-fessor of biological chemistry and molecu-lar pharmacology at Harvard University; David W. C. MacMillan , James S. McDon-nell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University; David W. Oxtoby , president and a professor of chemistry at Pomona College; Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos , Susan Dod Brown Professor of Chemical & Biological Engi-neering at Princeton University; Michele Parrinello , a professor of computational science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich; Danny F. Reinberg , Howard Hughes Medical Institute inves-tigator and a professor of biochemistry at New York University School of Medicine; Eli Ruckenstein , State University of New York Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University at Buffalo; Helmut Schwarz , president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a professor at Germany’s Technical University of Berlin; George Stephanopoulos , Arthur D. Little Profes-sor of Chemical Engineering at Massachu-setts Institute of Technology; J. Fraser Stoddart , Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University; Ve-ronica Vaida , a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences fellow at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and

BUSINESS

Robert Cashman has been promoted to vice president of business development at OSO BioPharmaceuticals Manufactur-ing. In this role, Cashman is responsible for developing and executing strategies to expand the company’s injectable pharma-ceutical contract manufacturing business. He will also oversee existing and potential customer relationships, manage pricing structures, and direct strategic corporate alliances. Cashman previously served as director of new business development for the company’s East Coast market. He now steps into the position vacated by Milton Boyer , who was appointed president of OSO Bio in February. Based in Albuquer-que, N.M., OSOBio is a contract manu-facturing organization that specializes in injectable sterile liquid, suspension, and lyophilized biologic and pharmaceutical products.

Peidong Yang , a professor of chemistry, materials science, and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jonathan S. Dordick has been appointed vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the current

director of the Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies and Howard P. Isermann Profes-sor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Rensselaer. As the vice president for re-search, Dordick will be

responsible for advancing research across the full range of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary activities. Dordick will continue as director of the Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies until a successor is selected.

Paul Nealey and Juan de Pablo , who had been professors in the department of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have joined the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering. Da-vid Awschalom , currently a professor in the physics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will join the institute in early 2013. The institute was founded in 2011.

Sharon Chung has been named product line manager for Asia at Emerald Kalama Chemical, a business unit of Emerald Per-formance Materials. Chung fills a new posi-tion to oversee sales and operations of the K-Flex product line—which includes phthal-ate-free plasticizers and coalescents for use in adhesives, seal-ants, and coatings—throughout the region. She will be located in the company’s offices in Hong Kong. Prior to joining Emerald, Chung filled a number of roles in finance, logistics, marketing, and business development at Ciba Specialty Chemicals and Huntsman Corp.

Paul Graves has been appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer of FMC Corp. Previously, he was a partner and managing director at Goldman Sachs Group. Graves will succeed Kim Foster , who will retire at the end of 2012. Mark Douglas has been appointed president of the company’s Agricultural Products Group, succeeding Milton Steele , who will retire in early 2013. Ed Flynn has been promoted to president of the Industrial Chemicals Group, succeeding Douglas. Flynn had been manager of the Alkali Chemicals Division. In addition, Marc Hul-lebroeck , agricultural products director for Eurasia, has been named vice president and business director of FMC Agricultural Products for North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Bruce Lerner , Per-oxygens Division manager, has been named vice president and global business director of the division. Eric Norris , Lithium Divi-sion commercial director, has been named vice president and global business director of FMC Lithium. Mike Smith , BioPolymer Division manager, has been named vice president and global business director for the division. Robert Trogele , agricultural products director of North America, has been named vice president and business director of FMC Agricultural Products in Asia. Antonio Zem , agricultural products director for Latin America, has been named vice president and business director for FMC Agricultural Products in Latin Ameri-ca and president of FMC Latin America.

George Marinos has been appointed man-ager of flavor applications for Takasago In-ternational’s Flavor Division. Before join-

39WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

Alan Bishop has been selected to be the principal associate director for science,

technology, and engi-neering at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He had been acting in that role since August 2011. He oversees directorates of chemistry; life and earth sciences; engi-neering and engineer-

ing sciences; experimental physical sci-ences; information technology; and theory, simulation, and computation. He joined LANL in 1979.

Marie D’Iorio has been named executive director of Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology, located at the University of Alberta. She had been acting as the in-stitute’s interim director general since last year. Founded in 2001, the institute is a joint initiative of the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Alberta, the government of Alberta, and the Canadian government. Its mission is to transform nanoscience ideas into novel, sustainable nanotechnology solutions with socioeco-nomic benefits for Canada and Alberta.

Noelle J. Umback has been appointed as a commissioner on the Forensic Science Education Programs Accreditation Com-mission of the American Academy of Foren-sic Sciences. She is currently a supervising criminalist within the DNA laboratory of the New York City Office of the Chief Medi-cal Examiner.

SUSAN J. AINSWORTH compiles this section. Announcements of new hires and retirements may be sent to s_ainsworth@acs.org.

ing Takasago, Marinos had been a program leader at Kraft Foods. Takasago is a flavor and fragrance company.

Jack Noble has joined Koch Membrane Sys-tems as commercial director for water and wastewater for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Koch Membrane Systems develops membrane technologies for a diverse range of industries and applications worldwide.

Eduardo Padilla has been named direc-tor of corporate distribution for North America at BASF. He will be based in Flor-

ham Park, N.J. In his prior role, he was the manager of distribu-tion for the Disper-sions & Pigments Division. He succeeds Frank Bergonzi , who left BASF in July. Jan-Peter Sander has been named senior vice president of BASF’s Personal Care Europe business unit. Prior to this appointment, he was vice president of BASF’s Pigments & Resins Europe busi-ness unit. In his new position, Sander will be responsible for all areas of the business, including manufac-turing, supply chain,

technology, marketing, and sales. Sander will succeed Simon Medley , who is leaving BASF. The Personal Care Europe business unit is part of BASF’s Care Chemicals Divi-sion, which manufactures ingredients for hygiene, personal care, home care, indus-trial and institutional cleaning, and techni-cal applications.

Eric Peeters has been appointed vice president of Dow Corning’s Electronics Solutions business. He succeeds James Helwick , who will now lead the company’s electronic products portfolio as science and technology director of Dow Cor-ning Electronics Solutions. Most recently, Peeters served as vice president of Dow Corning’s Solar Solutions and Wind En-ergy Solutions businesses—a role that will now be filled by Dan Futter. Previously, Futter had been business vice president of Dow Corning’s Business & Technology Incubator.

May Shana’a has been named group vice president of technology and growth strat-egy for Ashland Specialty Ingredients. Most recently, Shana’a served as global vice president for skin care and portfolio man-agement at Johnson & Johnson. Ashland Specialty Ingredients provides products, technologies, and re-sources to the personal care, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, coatings, and energy industries.

Hugh Williamson has become chief oper-ating officer of SmartKem, a developer of printable organic semiconductor materials for flexible electronics in North Wales, in the U.K. He will be based in Manchester, England. Most recently, he was techni-cal director at Vivimed Labs Europe. In addition, Gary Tam has been appointed business development director in Asia for SmartKem. He will be located in Hong Kong. He had been commercial director for Liquavista Asia. Muhammad Raza and Keith Lumbard will join SmartKem as scientists in the company’s chemistry synthesis labs in Manchester; they will be responsible for the development of next-generation organic semiconductor mol-ecules. Most recently, Raza was a develop-ment chemist at Fine Organics. Lumbard was a scientist at Reaxa.

Richard White has been appointed execu-tive vice president of operations for Center Valley, Pa.-based Avantor Performance

Materials. He is re-sponsible for Avantor’s global manufacturing, resource planning, quality-assurance, supply-chain, and environmental health and safety operations. Most recently, he served as chief oper-

ating officer for the solar division at STR Holdings, a solar encapsulate manufactur-ing company. Avantor’s biomedical and life sciences products are used in academic, industrial, and quality-control laboratories for research, pharmaceutical produc-tion, and medical lab testing, whereas its electronic products are used in the manu-facture of semiconductors and flat-panel displays.

Conrad Winters has been appointed direc-tor of drug product development at Hovi-one. Most recently, he had been a senior director at Xenon Pharmaceuticals. Mike Ironside has been named general manager of Hovione’s Technology Transfer Center in East Windsor, N.J. Ironside had been vice president of chemical manufacture and development at Anacor Pharmaceuti-cals. Hovione develops and manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug product intermediates.

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40WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

MEETINGS

THE BATON ROUGE SECTION will host the 68th Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SWRM 2012) at the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center in Baton Rouge, La., from Sunday, Nov. 4, through Wednesday, Nov. 7.

The Hilton lies in the heart of the city and overlooks the Mississippi River. Baton Rouge, which is the capitol of Louisiana, is home to Louisiana State University (LSU), Southern University, and Baton Rouge Community College. The prestigious Pen-nington Biomedical Research Center and the Center for Advanced Microstructures & Devices are also located in the city. In ad-dition, Baton Rouge is the center of a thriv-ing petrochemical industry and is located near the plantation country of southern Louisiana and the swamps of Acadiana.

The general chair of the meeting is Har-old Young of Lion Copolymer, and the pro-gram chair is George Stanley of LSU.

Please visit the SWRM 2012 website, www.swrm2012.org , for evolving program details as well as registration and hotel information.

TECHNICAL PROGRAM. The diverse technical program will encompass more than 500 presentations. Symposia will include “Advances in Polymer Chemistry”; “Bioinorganic Chemistry”; “Catalysis for Clean Energy Technologies”; “Chemi-cal & Structural Biology: New Frontiers in Therapeutic Development”; “Clean Energy, Materials Science & the Materials Genome Initiative”; “Conjugated-Carbon Nanostructures: Molecular Topology, Tun-able Properties & Applications”; “Current Advances in the Chemistry of Boron & Related Systems”; “Dispersants for Deep-Sea Oil Spill Remediation Applications”; “Resources for Entrepreneurs & the Road to Success”; “Environmental Health: In-tersection of Chemistry & Biology”; “Fluo-rescence Spectroscopy in the 21st Century: Single Molecules, Superresolution & Nano-materials”; “Functional Materials Based on Complex Macromolecular Architectures”; “Glycochemistry”; “Increasing Engage-ment & Learning among Millennial Stu-dents in Chemistry”; “Industrial Round-table: Future of Chemical Industry in the

LA/TX Region”; “Measurements & Imaging of Surfaces & Nanomaterials”; “Memorial Symposium in Honor of Professor Dennis Shelly (Texas Tech)”; “Plant Problem Solv-ing—Ramping Up Plant Performance with Good Science & Engineering”; “Spectros-copy & Applications of Nanoparticles”; and “Women Chemists as Leaders & Mentors.”

A gala grand opening reception will launch the special undergraduate poster session and graduate recruiting fair on Sunday evening. The meeting will include general oral sessions in analytical, educa-tion, inorganic, macromolecular, organic, and physical topics, along with general poster sessions on Monday and Tuesday afternoon and evening.

A chemical industry roundtable event will be held on Monday afternoon. Top executives from Albemarle, Dow Chemi-cal, ExxonMobil, and Sasol will present their companies’ views on the future of the chemical industry in the Gulf Coast region for the next five to 10 years. Louisiana Chemical Association President Dan Borné will moderate and will lead discussions and question-and-answer sessions.

WORKSHOPS. On Monday, CEM Corp. will present a workshop on “Microwave Technology: One Tool, Limitless Possibili-ties.” Also on Monday, PerkinElmer will present a series of workshops on liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and gas chromatography/MS called “Advanced Applications with LC/MS and GC/MS.”

Agilent will offer workshops on Tuesday covering topics in analytical chemistry, including atomic spectroscopy, gas chro-matography, GC/MS, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, LC/MS, and ultra-high-pressure LC.

Also on Tuesday, the ACS Office of Career Management & Development will offer three career workshops on “Planning Your Job Search,” “Preparing a Résumé,” and “Effective Interviewing.” And ACS members will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with an ACS Career Consul-tant for an individual résumé review. Sign-up for these 30-minute sessions will take place at the on-site registration table.

SOCIAL EVENTS. A variety of social events have been planned for SWRM 2012. Event tickets can be purchased through registration or on-site as available.

On Sunday, Cajun Pride Tours, a local company, will provide a plantation and swamp tour, including transportation from and to the Hilton. Also on Sunday, a high school teacher and student event will fea-ture the use of chemical demonstrations in the classroom. The event will be held in the Louisiana Art & Science Museum across the street from the Hilton. Afterward, a gala wel-coming mixer and undergraduate student poster session will be held in the Hilton.

Monday will begin with a student breakfast at the Hilton, organized by the LSU Student Affiliates Chapter of ACS. Tickets are just $1.00, thanks to the event sponsors. An ACS governance luncheon will also be held at the Hilton on Monday. Members of the ACS Board of Directors will be available to answer attendees’ ques-tions about ACS programs and to give a brief update on the state of the society.

The industry roundtable will take place on Monday afternoon at the Manship Theatre, located in the Shaw Center, just one block from the Hilton. A reception will follow.

On Monday evening, a Louisiana craft

2012 SOUTHWEST REGIONAL MEETING

SWRM 2012 At A Glance Dates: Nov. 4–7 Location: Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol

Center in Baton Rouge, La. Information Contacts: Harold Young,

general chair, haroldwyoung@cox.net; George Stanley, program chair, gstanley@lsu.edu; and Kimberly Savage, regional meeting planner, ACS, k_savage@acs.org

Website: www.swrm2012.org

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41WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

beer tasting with beers from independent brewers will be held at the Hilton. Tickets are $10.

On Tuesday, a women chemists lun-cheon will be held at the Hilton and will feature ACS President-Elect Marinda Li Wu as the main speaker. Tickets are $25 for members and $15 for students. The lun-cheon will be followed by a symposium on “Women Chemists as Leaders & Mentors.”

The SWRM 2012 awards reception and banquet will be held Tuesday evening at the Hilton. Awards to be presented at the ban-quet include the ACS Division of Chemical Education Southwest Regional Award for Excellence in High School Teaching, the Southwest Regional ACS Science Award, and the Stanley C. Israel Regional Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences, sponsored by the ACS Office of Diversity Programs. Tickets are $40. For a complete list of awards and awardees, please see the meeting website.

EXHIBITION & SPONSORSHIPS. The ven-dor exhibit will be in the Main Ballroom of the Hilton on Monday and Tuesday. The ex-

hibition area, which will also serve as the site for the poster sessions, will be adjacent to the areas for technical sessions and sympo-sia. Coffee breaks will be held twice per day.

Drawings for items donated by vendors will be held each day. Winners will be chosen from entries placed by registered conference attendees in a drawing box in the exhibit area.

To reserve exhibit space or for fur-ther information, please visit the SWRM website.

LODGING & TRAVEL. Baton Rouge is located in southeastern Louisiana, ap-proximately 70 miles from New Orleans. Interstate 10 and Interstate 12 both pass through the city. More information on directions, parking, and accommodations can be found on the SWRM website.

The Baton Rouge Airport is 7 miles from the Hilton. Major carriers, including Ameri-can Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, serve this airport. Rental cars and taxis are available at the airport. The Hilton offers a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel.

Major bus routes pass through Baton Rouge. The bus stop is located downtown, approximately 2 miles from the Hilton.

Driving from New Orleans takes 90 minutes; from Houston, approximately five hours; and from Shreveport, La., six hours.

Amtrak serves New Orleans and Ham-mond, La. Hammond is 40 miles from Baton Rouge.

A block of rooms is being held for SWRM 2012 conference attendees at the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center. Please iden-tify yourself as an ACS member if you con-tact the hotel directly.

REGISTRATION. Registration is available through the SWRM 2012 website at www.swrm2012.org . Advance registration closes on Oct. 15; however, online registration will remain open at the on-site registration rates until Nov. 2. After that date, partici-pants must register on-site.

On-site registration will take place in the Hilton from noon to 6 PM on Sunday, Nov. 4, and from 7:30 AM to 6 PM on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 5 and 6. ◾

ACS is Seeking a Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute®

ACS Green Chemistry Institute®

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® (ACS GCI) is a unit within the American Chemical Society (ACS). Its mission is to “catalyze and enable the implementation of green chemistry and engineering throughout the global chemical enterprise.”

General Role of Director, ACS GCI

The Director provides vision and leadership for green chemistry activities at the ACS. The Director will lead a staff that is responsible for implementing a strategic plan developed in concert with the ACS GCI Governing Board, a volunteer group of green chemistry experts appointed by the ACS Board of Directors.

Specific Position Accountabilities

1. Provides leadership and vision for the ACS GCI.

2. Provides strong representation for ACS interests in green chemistry to the external community. Builds further collaborations with external stakeholders that advance green chemistry.

3. Serves as the principal ACS spokesperson for green chemistry.

4. Manages a professional staff and contractors and is responsible for the professional development of these individuals. Builds a strong internal team within ACS GCI that brings value to the ACS and to the external community.

5. Serves as the primary liaison with the ACS GCI Governing Board and provides staff support to the Governing Board chair.

Education/Experience/ Technological Knowledge

College degree at the Ph.D. level in chemistry, biology, engineering, environmental science or other technical field related to green chemistry or an equivalent combination of professional experience.

12+ years of related experience

ΠEducational or other experience in the area of green chemistry and/or engineering as evidenced by the development of programs, teaching materials, publications, presentations, and/or grant materials in green chemistry.

ΠSuccessful program development skills as demonstrated by the inception and creation of new government, academic, or private sector programs related to green chemistry or similar environmental programs.

ΠDemonstrated management experience and/or strong team development skills with demonstrated skill in bringing together government, academic, and private sector interests.

Salary is commensurate with demonstrated credentials and experience. To apply for the position, please visit www.acs.org/gcidirector.

Questions? Please call ACS at 1.202.872.4600 and ask for Human Resources.

tol building in Baton Rouge

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IMPORTANT NOTICES■ Employment in countries other than your own may be restricted by government visa and other policies. Moreover, you should investigate thoroughly the generally ac-cepted employment practices, the cultural conditions, and the exact provisions of the specific position being considered. Mem-bers may wish to contact the ACS Office of International Activities for information it might have about employment conditions and cultural practices in other countries.■ Various state and national laws against discrimination, including the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibit discrimination inemployment because of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, physical handicap, sexual orientation, or any reason not based on a bona fide occupational qualification.■ These advertisements are for readers’ convenience and are not to be construed as instruments leading to unlawful discrimination.

POSITIONS OPEN

DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF PHYSICS National Science Foundation (NSF) , Arlington , VA The Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sci-ences (MPS) announces a nationwide search to fill the position of Director, Division of Physics (PHY). Appointment to this Senior Executive Service position may be on a career basis, a one- to three-year limited-term basis, or an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment with a salary range of $155,500 to $174,460. Information about the Division’s activities may be found at http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=phy.

The successful candidate will possess an estab-lished record of significant achievement in research administration as well as leadership responsibility in academe, industry, or government. In addition to having a strong record of research and education ac-complishments within his or her technical communi-ties, the Division Director must be experienced and competent in technical, financial, and administrative management. He/she must work well with people, be an effective communicator, and act as a mentor to continuously develop the diversity of talents and skills of his or her colleagues at all levels.

Announcement PHY-2012-0009, with position re-quirements and application procedures, is located on the NSF Home Page at http://www.nsf.gov/about/career_opps/vacancies/executive.jsp. Applicants may also obtain the announcements by contacting the Executive Personnel and Development Branch on 703-292-8267 (Hearing impaired individuals may call TDD 703-292-5090). Applications must be received by November 19, 2012.

NSF is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to employing a highly qualified staf f ref lecting the di-versity of our nation.

FORMULATION CHEMIST. The National Wildlife Re-search Center (NWRC) , a USDA research facility in Fort Collins , Colorado , is seeking a formulation chem-ist. Applicants for this two-year term position should possess demonstrated ability to develop and modify formulated products for delivery of drugs, attractants, repellents, and other chemically based tools for wild-life damage management. Hands-on experience with controlled release, emulsion, suspension, granulation, compression, extrusion, and spheronization desired. The appointment will be at the GS-12 level ($73,848 per year). Applicants must be US citizens. Please provide your resume electronically to nwrc@aphis.usda.gov (“Chemist” in subject line) no later than November 5, 2012. Veterans should include a DD-214. Visit the NWRC website: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwrc/. The USDA is an Equal Oppor-tunity provider and employer.

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bers, 100 undergraduates, 80 graduate students,

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partment and in interdisciplinary research centers on

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tailed résumé, a list of publications, clear and concise

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during autumn 2012 and continue until the position is

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tion should be directed to the search committee by

email to: montague@u.washington.edu.

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Campbell ProfessorAppointment

ASSISTANT OR ASSOCIATE PROFES SOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMAThe Department of Chemistry at The University of Ala-bama seeks an outstanding individual with expertise in inorganic chemistry to fill a tenure-track position at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank. The successful candidate is expected to have a Ph.D. and postdoc-toral training in chemistry or closely related discipline and to develop a vigorous, externally funded research program. The ability to teach both undergraduate and graduate chemistry courses is required. The area of research is open, but areas complementary to existing interdisciplinary programs at the university in materi-als science, energy, catalysis, synthesis, sustainability, and biological chemistry are of particular interest. De-tailed information about the Department can be found at http://bama.ua.edu/~chem/. Applicants should apply online at https://facultyjobs.ua.edu (posi-tion # 0807373) and provide a curriculum vitae with publication list, summary of detailed research plans, and teaching philosophy statement and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent to the Chair, In-organic Chemistry Search Committee, Department of Chemistry, Box 870336, The University of Ala-bama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 or sent electronically to chem@bama.ua.edu. Review of applications will begin November 1 and continue until the position is filled. Ap-plications from women and members of traditionally underrepresented groups in chemistry are especially encouraged. The University of Alabama is an Equal Op-portunity/Equal Access Employer and actively seeks diversity among its employees.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITYYou can’t afford to miss this opportunity to advertise with us. Chem ical & Engineering News reaches the larg est global audience of individuals in the chemical and allied industries. Your recruitment ad will reach our worldwide pass along readership of over 300,000. Call your local advertising representative today.

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ACADEMIC POSITIONSACADEMIC POSITIONS

LECTURER POSITIONS DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida invites applications for two 12-month, full-time, non-tenure-track Lecturer positions to begin in fall 2013. One appointment is anticipated in the area of General Chemistry and one in Organic Chemistry. Applicants are expected to have a PhD in Chemistry or a closely related field and demonstrable expertise in teaching at the University level. Responsibilities related to these positions potentially include course curriculum development, electronic course manage-ment, operation of a teaching laboratory, advisement of undergraduates, publication of scholarly work, and successful acquisition of grant funds. Exceptionally qualified candidates will be considered at the level of Senior Lecturer.

Applications must submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent on their behalf to Lecturer Search Committee c/o P. Brucat, Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, PO Box 117200, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200, before No-vember 26, 2012, for full consideration. All candidates for employment are subject to a pre-employment screening which includes a review of criminal records, reference checks, and verification of education and credentials. Please visit http://www.hr.ufl.edu/job/datacard.htm to complete a voluntary Applicant Data Card. The University of Florida is an Equal Opportu-nity employer. Minorities, women and those from other underserved groups are encouraged to apply.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY

The Chemistry Department of the U.S. Naval Acad-emy, Annapolis, MD, invites applications for one or more tenure-track positions in experimental physical or biophysical chemistry at the assistant professor level to begin August 2013. The department consists of 41 full-time faculty members including five physi-cal chemistry faculty and occupies over 52K sq. ft. of recently renovated office, classroom and laboratory space equipped with a wide array of modern instru-mentation. The department graduates approximately 35 students per year with ACS-certified chemistry degrees. The successful applicant must be strongly committed to teaching at the undergraduate level and will be expected to help teach general chemistry and physical chemistry courses on a rotating basis. In addition, the candidate of choice will be expected to develop and maintain a vigorous research program which includes supervision of undergraduate re-searchers. Candidates should send curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy, concise descrip-tion of research/scholarly interests and arrange for three letters of recommendation (at least one of which addresses teaching) to be sent electronically by No-vember 9, 2012, to Chemistrysearch@usna.edu. The Naval Academy does not discr iminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political af-filiation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military ser-vice, or other non-merit factors.

THE RICHARD STOCKTON COLLEGE of NJ is seeking to fill a tenure-track position at the Assistant/Associ-ate Professor level in the area of Organic Chemistry for September 2013. Stockton’s diverse faculty and student body combines a spirit of innovation with a sense of tradition for academic excellence.

A Ph.D. is required. Teaching and postdoctoral re-search experiences and academic experiences with culturally diverse populations are desirable. Commit-ment to undergraduate teaching and research involv-ing students in the area of Synthetic Organic Chem-istry leading to external funding, a must. Teaching includes Organic Chemistry at all levels and General Studies (non-major) courses.

Send a letter of application, CV, three recommen-dations, brief statements of teaching philosophy, and research interests to Dean D. Weiss, School of Natu-ral Sciences and Mathematics, Richard Stockton College of NJ, AA#52, 101 Vera King Farris Drive, Galloway, NJ 08205 or to namsdean@stockton.edu. Please go to www.stockton.edu for further informa-tion. The College is an Equal Opportunity Institution encouraging a diverse pool of applicants.

The School of Materials Science and Engi-

neering at the Georgia Institute of Technol-

ogy invites applications and nominations for the Hightower Chair in Biopolymers.

This senior position will serve as a focal point within the School and the Institute for research and teaching in the fi eld of biopolymers, while working to broaden interac-tions in polymer science, bio-materials, and polymeric materials having a biological origin or function. Candi-dates with interests in the theory, design, synthesis, pro-cessing, characterization, and applications of biopolymers are especially encouraged to apply. There are numerous opportunities for campus-wide interactions in the various units of the Colleges of Engineering and Science, includ-ing the School of Applied Physiology and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Further interactions are envi-sioned with the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineer-ing and Bioscience (IBB), the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), and the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnol-ogy (IEN). The successful candidate should have a history of establishing outstanding research programs, a dem-onstrated interest in fostering collaboration, and a com-mitment to high-quality teaching with the opportunity to develop courses and academic programming in biopoly-mers. The metropolitan Atlanta region provides much opportunity for local cooperation in medical research and development, along with potential entrepreneurial oppor-tunities through the Institute’s (IC)3 program.

Candidates should submit an application letter describing their vision for the position, a curriculum vitae, and names (and contact information) for fi ve references to www.mse.gatech.edu/Hightower. The application review process will begin immediately and will continue until the posi-tion is fi lled. Enquiries may be made to chair of the search committee at anselm.gri� n@mse.gatech.edu. All enqui-ries and applications will be treated as confi dential.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes nominations and applications from women and minority candidates.

Endowed ChairPosition

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR – BIOCHEMISTRYChemistry Department

SUNY CortlandBiochemistry tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor available August 2013. The successful candidate will teach 18 contact hours per academic year in Biochemistry and either General Chemistry or Organic Chemistry. A typical semester teaching load at Cortland might include one lecture and two labs or two lectures and one lab. Additional responsibilities include conducting a program of pub-lishable scholarly research involving undergraduate students in the area of biochemistry, chemical biol-ogy, or medicinal chemistry and performing college service including advising students. Required Quali-fications: Ph.D. in Chemistry or a related field by time of appointment and specialization in biochemistry or chemical biology. Preferred Qualifications: Prefer-ence will be given to applicants with a strong interest in teaching, postdoctoral experience, and the potential to advise publishable undergraduate research in bio-chemistry, chemical biology, or medicinal chemistry. Review of application materials will begin November 1, 2012, and application materials will be accepted until the position is filled. For consideration, please apply online at https://jobs.cortland.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=52885 and follow the applica-tion instructions listed under “Special Instructions for Applying.”

SUN Y Cor tland is an A A/EEO/A DA e mploye r. We have a strong commitment to the af firmation of diver-sity and have interdisciplinary degree programs in the areas of Multicultural Studies.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYDepartment of Chemical Engineering

Assistant ProfessorThe MIT Department of Chemical Engineering (http://web.mit.edu/cheme/) invites candidates for faculty positions starting July 2013 or thereafter. Ap-pointment will be at the assistant or untenured associ-ate professor level. In special cases, a senior faculty appointment may be possible. Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in chemical engineering or a related field by the beginning of the appointment period. Candidates with research and teaching interests in all areas relevant to the field of chemical engineering will be considered. The successful candidate is expected to advise stu-dents and develop and teach chemical engineering courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as to develop a sponsored research program and be involved in service to MIT and the profession.

Interested candidates should submit application materials electronically at https://chemefacsrch.mit.edu. Each application must include a curriculum vitae, the names and addresses of three or more ref-erences, a strategic statement of research interests, and a statement of teaching interests. It is the re-sponsibility of the candidate to arrange for reference letters to be uploaded at https://chemefacsrch.mit.edu/letters/.

Please address questions to ChemE- Search-Master @ chemefacsrch.mit.edu. Responses received by December 1, 2012, will be given priority.

With MIT’s strong commitment to diversity in engi-neering education, research, and practice we espe-cially encourage minorities and women to apply.

MIT i s an Equal Oppor tunit y/Af f ir mat ive Act ion employer.

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. Ripon College invites applica-tions for a tenure-track Assistant Professor starting August 2013. A Ph.D. in organic chemistry or in a relat-ed area with a strong organic background is required. A dedication to teaching undergraduates and to es-tablishing a vigorous, collaborative, undergraduate research program with some external support is es-sential. Teaching duties will include organic chemistry, advanced organic, and advanced and interdisciplinary courses consistent with areas of expertise and inter-est. Send application letter, CV, academic transcripts, statement of teaching and research interests, and three letters of recommendation to Dr. Colleen Byron, Department of Chemistry, Ripon College, P.O. Box 248, Ripon, WI 54971-0248. Review of applications will begin November 19, 2012, and will continue until the position is filled. www.ripon.edu. AA/EOE.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

THE MUND-LAGOWSKI DEPARTMENT OF CHEM-ISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position to begin August 19, 2013. A Ph.D. in analytical chemistry or closely related field is re-quired. Teaching responsibilities will include general chemistry and introductory and upper-level analyti-cal chemistry. The position requires a commitment to excellence in teaching and to the establishment of an externally funded research program that is predi-cated upon collaboration with both B.S. and M.S. stu-dents. Startup funding is available. See http://www.bradley.edu/academic/departments/chemistry/ for details about the department, including our cur-rent equipment holdings. Applicants should submit a single PDF file containing: (1) a letter of application, (2) a curriculum vitae, (3) a statement of teaching phi-losophy, (4) a description of research plans (including start-up costs) that includes the roles played by B.S. and M.S. student collaborators, (5) unofficial copies of undergraduate and graduate transcripts, and (6) the names and addresses of three professional references to ChemistrySearch@bradley.edu. Review of applica-tions will begin immediately, and will continue until the position is filled. Information about Peoria, IL, and the opportunities the region provides may be found at http://www.bradley.edu/about/visiting/peoria/. A background check will be required for employment. Bradley University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirma-tive Action Employer. The administration, faculty, and staff are committed to attracting qualified candidates from underrepresented groups.

WANT YOUR DREAM JOB? Find it at www.acs.org/careers. Search the latest postings for jobs in specific fields, at various levels, in different locations. Or post your résumé and have employers find you. Why wait? Go to www.acs.org/careers and get started on finding the right job for you.

When responding to a position, please mention you saw the ad in

44WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

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The Chemistry Department at Eastern Kentucky University seeks applicants

for two tenure-track, Assistant Professor positions (one in Inorganic

Chemistry and another in Physical Chemistry) beginning August 15, 2013.

Teaching responsibilities include freshman and advanced courses with asso-

ciated labs. Candidates for the position must have a Ph.D. in Chemistry or a

closely related field by the time of appointment and must be committed to

excellence in teaching, service, and scholarly activity. Degrees(s) must be

from a regionally accredited or internationally recognized institution.

Preference will be given to candidates with post-doctoral and teaching expe-

rience. Research expectations include the establishment of an independent

research program commensurate with a master-level institution. Candidates

with research plans that can complement existing strengths of the depart-

ment are preferred. Start-up funds are available. Review of applications will

begin on November 1, 2012 and will continue until the positions are filled.

All interested applicants must apply for these positions at jobs.eku.edu

and must apply for them separately if interested in being considered for

both (search requisition #0612185 for the Inorganic Chemistry posting

and requisition #0612187 for the Physical Chemistry posting).

All offers of employment are contingent on completion of a satisfactory background check.

Eastern Kentucky University is an EEO/AA institution that values diversity in its faculty, staff,

and student body. In keeping with this commitment, the University welcomes applications from

diverse candidates and candidates who support diversity.

EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY

Chemistry DepartmentAssistant Professor

Positions

ACADEMIC POSITIONSACADEMIC POSITIONSACADEMIC POSITIONS

GETCONNECTED

Place a recruitment ad in

C&EN and have us post it online for

you.

The ACS Careers site is accessed by over 40,000 chemists and en gineers each month. Send your recruitment message around the world with the proven leader in classified adver-tising for the chemical and allied industries.

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and pricing.

TENURE-TRACK POSITION ORGANIC CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida announces a search for a tenure-track faculty position to begin in fall 2013. The appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level. The department has a special interest in receiving applications from can-didates with research interests in synthetic organic chemistry applied to methodology development, natural product synthesis, chemical biology, medici-nal chemistry, or materials. In addition to contributing to the research, teaching and service missions of the Department of Chemistry, there are numerous oppor-tunities for interactions both within the Department and campus-wide in the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sci-ences, Medicine, Agriculture, and Engineering. Some of the centers of expertise and areas of traditional strength at the University of Florida include the Emerg-ing Pathogens Institute, the UF Shands Cancer Center, the McKnight Brain Institute, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Ph.D. required. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Applications must be submitted through UF Ga-tor Jobs at https://jobs.ufl.edu requisition number 0901676. Each application must include cover letter summarizing qualifications, curriculum vitae, ongo-ing research directions, teaching interests, interest in department, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent on their behalf by e-mail to the Faculty Search Committee at organicsearch@chem.ufl.edu. Complete applications must be re-ceived before November 26, 2012, for full consider-ation. All candidates for employment are subject to a pre-employment screening which includes a review of criminal records, reference checks, and verification of education. Please visit http://www.hr.ufl.edu/job/datacard.htm to complete a voluntary Applicant Data Card. The University of Florida is an Equal Opportu-nity employer. Minorities, women, and those from other underserved groups are encouraged to apply.

TENURE-TRACK POSITION Department of Chemical Engineering and

Materials Science University of California , Davis

Applications are invited for a faculty position at the As-sistant Professor level in chemical engineering.

All areas of expertise will be considered, and candi-dates with an interest in the area of catalysis are es-pecially encouraged to apply. The candidate should have a strong research record with the potential and commitment to be become a leader in the field. Commitment to undergraduate and graduate educa-tion is essential. A Ph.D. in chemical engineering or a related discipline is required. Consult http://chms.engineer ing.ucdavis.edu/ for our online application procedure and requirements. The position is open un-til filled, but to assure full consideration, applications should be submitted no later than October 19, 2012, for a start date of July 1, 2013.

UC Davis is an Af firmative Action/Equal Opportu-nit y employer and is dedicated to recruiting a diverse faculty community. We welcome all qualified applicants to apply, including women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans.

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY St. Lawrence University

23 Romoda Drive Canton , NY 13617

Professor – Inorganic Chemistry, Tenure-TrackA tenure-track position at the assistant or associate professor rank, depending on experience, is available at St. Lawrence University (SLU) for a Ph.D. chemist with a specialization in inorganic chemistry. The suc-cessful candidate will be expected to teach advanced inorganic chemistry, an inorganic lecture/laboratory course, and participate extensively in the teaching of general chemistry in a small-class format. Position begins August 2013.

For a complete job description including mini-mum qualifications required as well as application instructions, please visit http://www.stlawu.edu/resourc es/job.html.

SLU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY The Division of Materials Sci-ence and Engineering at BU is seeking candidates for a junior-level faculty position. All areas will be consid-ered, but we have a particular interest in experimental approaches to the digital design of materials. The ideal candidate would work in an interdisciplinary way with theorists, computational scientists, and other experi-mentalists. The division is seeking to foster growth in the broad, interdisciplinary topics of biomaterials, electronic and photonic materials, materials for en-ergy/environment, and nanomaterials. Candidates with research interests that transcend the traditional boundaries of MSE are strongly encouraged to apply.

Please visit http://www.bu.edu/mse/ for infor-mation about the MSE Division. For more information about this position and to apply, please visit https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/BU/MSE/ASTP. Ap-plication deadline is January 15, 2013. Review of ap-plications will begin immediately; therefore applicants are encouraged to apply early. Boston University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer located in Boston , MA .

WESTMINSTER COLLEGE invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry for fall 2013. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry or closely related field. Strong commitment to total student development in a liberal arts college is required. Normal teaching load is 12 contact hours and duties may include cours-es in specialty as well as lower-level courses. Ability to teach Environmental Chemistry is preferred. Recently constructed and renovated science facilities are avail-able and participation in an undergraduate research program is expected. For details logon to http://www.westminster-mo.edu/EXPLORE/OF FICES/BUSI NESS/HR/JOBS/Pages/FacultyPositions.aspx. Send cover letter, CV, unofficial transcripts, and three letters of recommendation to Dr. Glen Frerichs, Chair, Department of Chemistry, Westminster Col-lege , 501 Westminster Ave., Fulton , MO 65251-1299. Review of applications will begin immediately and con-tinue until the position is filled. Westminster College is an EO/AA employer.

45WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG OCTOBER 15, 2012

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ACADEMIC POSITIONS

THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY at the Univer-sity of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida, invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor to begin August 2013. We are recruiting candidates in the area of materials chemistry and/or biomateri-als. We are seeking an outstanding candidate who complements the existing strengths of the Center for Smart Metal-Organic Materials Advanced Research and Technology Transfer. Applicants will be expected to develop a vigorous, externally funded research pro-gram. Applicants must be eminently qualified to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in chemistry, including courses designed to educate students on materials. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in chemistry, materials science, or a closely related field conferred by the start of the appointment. ABDs will be consid-ered, but applicants are expected to have their Ph.D. by the start of the appointment. Preference will be given to applicants with postdoctoral experience in these areas. Further details are available at http://chemistry.usf.edu.

Applicants must submit an online application by November 18, 2012, at http://employment.usf.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=60224.

According to Florida Law, applications and meetings regarding them are open to the public. For ADA accom-modations, please contact the Manager of Fiscal and Business Administration, Kimberly Read, (813) 974-4487 at least five working days prior to need. USF is an AA/EA/EO institution and strongly encourages ap-plications from women and minorities.

ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY FACULTY POSITIONWAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

The Department of Chemistry at Wayne State Uni-versity seeks applications for a tenured or tenure-track position in analytical chemistry with appoint-ments beginning in August 2013. Candidates should have a Ph.D. degree in chemistry or a related field and a commitment to undergraduate and graduate edu-cation. Junior candidates should have the potential to develop a nationally recognized, externally funded research program, and should send a complete cur-riculum vitae and description of future research plans, as well as three letters of recommendation addressing both research and teaching potential. Mid-career and senior candidates should have a strong record of ac-complishment appropriate to the appointment level, and should send an application letter and complete curriculum vitae. The Department of Chemistry of-fers an excellent research environment that includes ample, newly renovated research laboratories. In addi-tion, the department has a fully equipped and staffed Lumigen Instrument Center with state-of-the-art instrumentation in NMR, mass spectrometry, X-ray spectroscopy, and electron microscopy. More infor-mation about the department can be found at http://www.chem.wayne.edu. All materials should be sent to Professor Charles H. Winter, Associate Chair, 153 Chemistry, Wayne State University, 5101 Cass Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48202-3489. Review of applications will begin in early November 2012. Wayne State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.

THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami seeks applicants for a tenure-track appointment at the Assis-tant/Associate Professor level starting in the 2013–14 academic year. Minimal qualifications include a Ph.D. in Chemistry and significant postdoctoral experience. To be considered at the Associate professor level, the candidate must have at least four years of indepen-dent teaching and research experience. We specifi-cally welcome applications from chemists having re-search interests in the area of Systems Chemistry or Systems Biochemistry and the ability to interact with a group of interdisciplinary scientists in the general area of Complexity Science. In addition to developing and maintaining a nationally and internationally rec-ognized research program, the successful candidate will be expected to teach at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Applicants should forward a cover let-ter, CV, two representative publications, research plan, statement of teaching philosophy, and the names of three referees using the application portal at http://www.as.miami.edu/sciencecluster/. Review of ap-plications will begin November 15, 2012, and continue until the position is filled. Information about the de-partment can be found at http://www.as.miami.edu/chemistry/. The University of Miami is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity University that values di-versity and has progressive work-life policies. Women, persons with disabilities, and members of other under-represented groups are encouraged to apply.

Don’t miss your opportunity to advertise in these anticipated upcoming summer issues. Send your recruitment message around the world with the proven leader in classified advertising for the chemical and allied industries.

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INDEX TO ADVERTISERS IN THIS ISSUE

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newscripts

M ilitary food engineers have a tough job. Just try designing meat that can sit on a shelf for three years

and still taste good. That’s what Tom Yang does at the U.S.

Army’s Combat Feeding Directorate. The food Yang creates will someday become part of an MRE (MEAL, READY-TO-EAT) that soldiers take on combat missions.

Beef jerky is popular among the troops, but it’s excessively salty and gets brittle after just one year, explains Yang, a food scientist at the Natick Soldier Research, Develop-

ment & Engineering Center , in Natick, Mass. To fi nd an alternative to jerky, Yang had

been investigating osmotic dehydration. That process pulls the water out of meats using osmosis, in the same way brine replaces water in a pickle.

Yang had tested several ideas when he saw the answer on an exhibit hall table at a food science meeting: a meat version of a popular kids’ snack, the Fruit Roll-Up. The osmomeat process was designed by the Association pour le Développement de l’Institut de la Viande , a French nonprofi t funded by both the French government and the meat industry. Yang decided osmomeat would be a good fi t for the military.

What makes the nonprofi t’s process unique is how it prepares the meat. The institute molds ground meat into thin sheets. It then runs the meat sheets on a conveyor belt through a molasses-like brine of 80% maltodextrin. The result is a meat roll-up that’s semidry, stable for years—and completely raw.

The key is that the meat is highly acidic, with a pH of around 2. The fi nal product has a pH of 4.6 or 4.8, which is acidic enough

MILITARY MEAT ROLL-UPS, GOLDEN EGGS AWARDED

to keep bacteria from growing even after months of sitting on the shelf.

The resulting meat sheet has a lot of po-tential, Yang says. You can toast it to make a lunch meat or jerky, smoke it like barbeque, or eat it as the French do: raw. And the pro-cess works with almost any ground meat:

beef, pork, chicken, even seafood. “The meat itself is quite bland,

but since it starts with ground meat, you can add spices—chi-potle, teriyaki, barbeque—even vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, all of this good stu� ,” Yang adds.

Yang brought the technology to the Georgia meat-processing company FPL Food, which is now creating some osmomeat recipes for the Army.

So it might not be long before you spot a seafood

roll-up in an MRE near you.

A while back, Newscripts described the newly established GOLDEN GOOSE AWARDS, which were

designed to recognize important research discoveries that at fi rst glance appear ridiculous ( C&EN, July 2, page 80). The fi rst awards were presented last month at a ceremony on Capitol Hill.

When Golden Goose winner Charles Townes came up with the original idea for a laser , many people told him it wouldn’t work. “Fortunately, I was an associate pro-fessor then, and they couldn’t fi re me just because I was dumb,” Townes says in a vid-eo about the awards (see the clip at http://cenm.ag/gg1). At the time, Townes had funding from the National Science Founda-tion and the O� ce of Naval Research to do basic research on atoms and molecules.

Other Golden Goose winners include Eugene White, Rodney White, Della Roy, and Jon Weber, whose basic research on tropical coral led to the development of bone-graft material, and Martin Chalfi e , Roger Tsien , and Osamu Shimomura, whose studies of the chemicals that make certain jellyfi sh glow led to the widespread use of green fl uorescent protein in research.

Given such sti� competition, it seems unlikely that the meat roll-up will make the cut for next year’s prizes.

ANDREA WIDENER wrote this week’s column. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.

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