NEWS
Division Officers Elected
Arsenic and PET
Janet G. Osteryoung, professor and head of the chemistry department at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, was recently elected chairman-elect of the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. Osteryoung received her B.A. degree from Swarthmore College in 1961. After receiving her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1967, she joined the faculty at Montana State University as an assistant professor. In 1968 she went to Colorado State University as a postdoctoral fellow and held different positions for the next several years. She was program director for chemical analysis at the National Science Foundation from 1977 to 1978. In 1979 she joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Buffalo as an associate professor and became professor in 1982. She joined North Carolina State University in January 1992. Osteryoung was a founding director and president of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is past president of the Rocky Mountain section of the Electrochemical Society and past chairman of the ACS western New York section. From 1981 to 1983 she served on ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY'S editorial advisory board. Currently she serves on the advisory panel on Reproductive Hazards in the Workplace and Environment for the March of Dimes and on the Chemical Measurements Panel of the Ocean Studies Board for the National Research Council. She is also an associate editor for Electrochimica Acta. Her awards include the Fulbright Award (honorary), the 1987 Garvan Medal, the 1990 ANACHEM Award, the 1988 Distinguished Service Award of the Western New York ACS Analytical Group, and the Iota Sigma Pi Triennial National Honorary Member Award. Osteryoung has published more than 160 papers. Her research interests include the chemistry of natural waters, methods development for toxic substances, pulse voltammetry, and microelectrodes. Other officers elected were David Curran of the University of Massachusetts, re-elected as treasurer; Isiah Warner of Louisiana State University, councilor; and James W. Serum of Hewlett Packard, alternate councilor. Joseph L. Glajch of Du Pont Merck Pharmaceutical Company assumed the 1992 chairmanship in September. Sarah C. Rutan of Virginia Commonwealth University will continue to serve as secretary. Continuing to serve as councilors are Jeanne Pemberton of the University of Arizona; Galen Ewing, formerly of Seton Hall University; and William R. Heineman of the University of Cincinnati. Margaret V. Merritt of Wellesley College, Robert A. Osteryoung of North Carolina State University, and Roland Hirsch of the Department of Energy will continue to serve as alternate councilors.
The word arsenic thrillingly strikes terror in the hearts of mystery buffs as it conjures up images of murder and poisoning. Work done by the Los Alamos Medical Radioisotopes and Reactor Applications Group may change our perception of the element that so often appears in our favorite "who-dun-its." Positron emission tomography (PET) uses positronemitting isotopes with short half-lives for medical diagnostic imaging. Unfortunately, prohibitively expensive accelerators (which medical facilities are reluctant to build) are required to generate a reliable supply of isotopes. Dennis Phillips and his colleagues have developed an on-site generator that uses selenium-72 to produce arsenic-72, a short-lived positron-emitting product isotope. Arsenic is toxic in large amounts, but the human body can tolerate a few billionths of a gram for imaging purposes without doing any harm. The usefulness of PET is limited by the small number of isotopes that can be used for imaging, but the arsenic-72 generator provides another option in the diagnostician's PET toolbox. Arsenic-72 should be especially useful for imaging bones and tumors, and eventually it may be used for whole-body imaging. Selenium-72 has a half-life of 8.4 days, which allows sufficient time for shipping and storage. The day-long half-life of arsenic-72 makes it safe for patients and is long enough to synthesize complicated molecules for special uses. Other biomedical generators use an ion-exchange process to separate the radioisotope from its parent. However, Phillips' system allows one to take advantage of the differences in the oxidation—reduction chemistry of selenium-72 and arsenic-72 to separate the parent and the product. The generator can be operated continually or intermittently. Generators that produce rubidium-82 from strontium-82 (for cardiac imaging) and gallium-68 from germanium-68 (for calibrating PET instruments) already are being used.
For Your Information The NIST Chemical Kinetics Database Version 4.0 contains information on 6900 chemical reactions with more than 20,000 individual data entries. The database is useful for modeling combustion systems or chemical processes occurring in the atmosphere. Researchers can examine data for many reactions, compare measured rates to their own data, generate files for inclusion in a modeling program, and produce literature citations. The software allows users to graphically display plots of rate constants and to search for reactions resulting in a particular chemical compound. The database requires MS DOS 2.1 or later, 640K memory, and a graphics monitor. The database costs $390; the update for owners of previous versions costs $125. To order, contact the Reference Data Program, A320 Physics Bldg., NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 (301-975-2208; fax 301-926-0416).
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 64, NO. 2 1 , NOVEMBER 1, 1992 · 1011 A
