Our team flew to Boston bright and early this morning to attend the American Chemical Society’s Fall Meeting.
We’re meeting a lot of great people and exploring some incredible opportunities – but we wanted to share a few photos with everyone, more details to come – and don’t forget, you can get live updated by following the conversation on Twitter.
Oh, and you really do need to click here to see the Word Cloud based on what’s happening at ACS right now.
The ACS Conference in Boston takes place from August 
22-26, 2010.
If you are there, you’ll want to keep up with the conversations – if you can’t join us in person, you can still keep up with everything going on.
First, you can check out the #ACS_Boston feed by clicking here.
Second, here’s the beginning of a list of individuals, companies, and organizations you can follow on twitter to know what’s happening throughout the conference in real time:
iChromatography (that’s us!)
Feel free to add your information in the comments section if you or your organization will be offering updates at ACS. And please join us at the ACS TweetUps!
Our good friend, PID Girl, has taken the initiative to set up 
two events for social media users during the ACS Conference in Boston.
Here’s the details from PID Girl:
We’ve got two confirmed Social Media Events scheduled on Monday August 23, 2010 one in the EXPO and the second in the evening at an off-site location.
If you are in attendance at the National Meeting at the Boston Convention & Exposition Center (BCEC) located at 415 Summer Street, Boston at 4pm on Monday August 23, 2010, come by ACS expo booth #236 for “A Gathering of the social media peeps at the ACS National Meeting”. All registered attendees/exhibitors are welcome to join us at this informal social media gathering to discuss their experience and use of social media in academia, research, government and industry. Additional discussion will be on how to utilize social media marketing to promote the upcoming International Year of Chemistry (IYC2011).
Evening Tweet-Up: Open event to Social Media Users in town for the ACS National Meeting and Local Tweeters in the Boston area. Anthony’s Pier 4 welcomes our Twitter Group to meet in their lounge at 8pm on Monday August 23, 2010 at 140 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA 617-482-6262 (located on Boston Harbor-above is a daytime picture of the view from Anthony’s Pier 4). This location is within walking distance from the BCEC. Spread the word.
Many thanks to PID Girl for setting these up – we hope to see you at ACS!
The fishing ban put in place after an oil tanker collision off 
the coast of India has been lifted after Thin Layer Chromatography tests on 138 samples revealed no trace of oil.
Here’s excerpts from the Hindustan Times:
On August 10, three days after the collision, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had taken 138 samples of local varieties of fish such as mandeli, red prawns and Bombay duck from 30 civic markets and tested them.
The Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) test on these samples, conducted at the National Institute of Oceanography and a private institute, showed no traces of oil. “No trace of oil has been found on any of the samples. But fish-eaters should be cautious,” said Deepak Kamat, assistant municipal commissioner, markets department.
With more than 161,000 members, th
e American Chemical Society (ACS) is the world’s largest scientific society and one of the world’s leading sources of authoritative scientific information. A nonprofit organization, chartered by Congress, ACS is at the forefront of the evolving worldwide chemical enterprise and the premier professional home for chemists, chemical engineers and related professions around the globe.
From August 22-26, ACS will hold its Fall National Meeting and Exposition in Boston, MA – and we’re looking forward to attending!
Be on the lookout for Steven Miles, Ned Dugan, Micky Jones, and Ken Grant on the ACS Floor and at the networking events (yes, we will be at both of Monday’s Tweet Ups – 4:00 on August 23 at Booth #236 and 8:00 pm at Anthony’s Pier 4).
Whether you’re attending or not, you can join us here on the blog and on twitter for updates, photos, and video – hope to see you there!
UPDATE: New Video just released on this program:
Our company is fortunate to be involved with the Delaware
BioScience Association BioScience Association and the Technology Forum of Delaware – both organizations have held events at Christiana Care where we have been able to tour a newly opened virtual training hospital.
This training area is designed to mimic everything from an Emergency Room to an Operating Room to a Delivery Room where entire medical teams are put in situations and practice techniques and procedures on the very life-like “patients” (some of them have pulses, talk, and even change skin color if they are not getting enough oxygen).
Here’s a look at the hospital from the WHYY TV Program “First”
Watch the full episode. See more First.
Our friends at TheScientist.com recently published an 
interesting story about the efforts of Alan Alda to teach scientists how to communicate their research and discoveries to the world.
Here’s some excerpts:
“We need to talk to the public,” Alda says. “This is holding back the country, and it’s holding back the world from making progress on what we now know.” He encountered this failure to relate ideas repeatedly when he interviewed hundreds of the world’s top scientists about their discoveries for Scientific American Frontiers, a show that ran on public television from 1993-2005.
—–
For Alda the problem starts at the most basic level of communication. “The affect, facial expression body language — these are things that you wouldn’t think are part of a scientific presentation,” he says. “Emotion is so important. In scientific communication emotion is probably trained out of us, but there’s no reason why it can’t be included. Science is a great detective story, especially when you’re talking to the public. You want them to get involved in this interesting, emotional tangle.”
You can read the complete article here.
Here’s a look at the program Mr. Alda is running at The Center for Communicating Science:
NewsWise has an interesting article about the U.S. Secret Service using Thin Layer Chromatography to analyze inks – here’s some
excerpts:
Inks in one form or another have been around for at least 5,000 years. Scientists can analyze an ink’s components and determine when it was first manufactured, its brand, its composition, and other information by comparing the analysis results to the more than 10,000 inks and matching analyses stored in the International Ink Library managed by the U.S. Secret Service.
…
To analyze an ink sample, forensic scientists separate its components using planar thin layer chromatography. This process uses solvents to separate the ink into bands of color on a page. Each ink creates its own color bands, thus forming a “fingerprint.” Scientists compare the unknown sample’s bands to known samples to find a match.
You can read the complete article by clicking here.
And here’s that great clip from CSI showing ink analysis with Thin Layer Chromatography:
While participating at the National Association of Scientific Materials Managers Conference in Norfolk, we had some great questions come up – we wanted to take a moment to address the general questions here (some of the more specific questions we’ll be addressing in e-mails).
Q: We’re trying to offer our students multiple chances to run thin
layer chromatography experiments, but we want to control costs, what can you recommend?
A: We would recommend trying our scored glass-backed plates. As you can see in the photo here, a 20 x 20 cm plate can be easily snapped into smaller (2.5 x 10 cm) sizes.
Q: Why did you decide to color your HPLC Columns?
A: Excellent question! In addition to the fact that we use an advanced packing material that provides close to 100% coverage inside the columns, we realized that traditional columns can be easily mixed up if their labels come off. By color-coding the columns, you always know what material you have inside the column.
Q: We LOVE the video you did and we want to share it with friends, family, and colleagues – where is it available online?
A: We’re proud of our video, “The Adventures of Ana L’Tech” – it’s been featured on numerous web sites and blogs, and has even been inducted into the Viral Marketing Hall of Fame.
Click Here for the official video web site, Click Here for the YouTube version, or just watch it right here:
NAOSMM 2011 will be held in Minneapolis – Heather McCollor of Macalester College will be one of the hosts for us and here she shows us what to expect there.