Chemical Education Today
News & Announcements News from Journal House Find the Right Resource: Textbook Table of Contents If you are a new teacher, you know how difficult it is to find quality resources for a specific topic because of the sheer volume of materials available. Google is a great search engine, but can you really be certain that you are locating quality resources? And who wants to hunt through the more than 5,000,000 results for catalysis to find the best resources for your classroom? What if you could just tap your finger on a topic in your textbook and find a manageable number of high quality resources that are ready for you to use right away? Now you can with the Textbook Table of Contents (TToC) available from the ChemEd DL. The current version of the TToC, located in the ChemEd DL wiki (http://wiki.chemeddl.org/), is a generic table of contents that contains all of the topics you would cover in your introductory chemistry class. All you have to do is click on a topic of interest and you get a list of articles from this Journal that relate directly to that topic. You’ll also find the size of the list to be a little more manageable than the list you get from Google; for example, catalysis brings up about 20 results from the TToC, much less than the 5,000,000 you found on Google. It’s also easy to get any articles you want to from the search results. Just click on the abstract link to the right of the article you want and it takes you to a very familiar page at the JCE. You will find the abstract for the article you chose and another link to get the full text of the article. At this point you need only verify your subscription to the Journal to proceed. Currently the TToC includes all of the articles found in the JCE, but it will be expanding from there. In the future it will also include all of the other resources from the ChemEd DL, such as videos, images, and interactive molecules. Also, tables of contents from real textbooks will be included. You will be able to find the table of contents for the textbook that you’re using and locate resources that way.
Awards Announced EPA Announces Green Chemistry Awards
• Designing Greener Chemicals Award Procter & Gamble Company, Cincinnati, OH jointly with Cook Composites and Polymers Company, North Kansas City, MO
Visit http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry/pubs/pgcc/past.html (accessed Jul 2009) for details about the winning technologies.
Courses, Seminars, Meetings, Opportunities The Human Side of Chemistry in Video Who are Ron Breslow, Madeleine Joullie, K. C. Nicolaou, and Peter Stang? Of course, many of us know these as eminent organic chemists. But who are they and their peers as human beings? What do they have to say about such topics as: What’s the best advice they’ve ever received? What does “balance” and “excellence” mean to them? How do they choose their projects? What is the source of their energy? What brings them the greatest joy? Have they ever been afraid and of what? Who are their heroes? These insights and others are now revealed as part of a remarkable series of short video clips made available by the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry (ORGN). ORGN celebrated its 100th birthday in 2008. As part of this historic occasion, it hosted a Centennial Symposium at the 237th ACS National Meeting and Exposition in Philadelphia on Monday, August 18, 2008. With the support of ORGN and its then-Chair, Bob Volkmann, and current Chair Lisa McElweeWhite, Jeffrey I. Seeman conducted a series of video interviews with ten prominent organic chemists. One goal of these interviews was to reveal the human side of these scientists. Another goal was to contribute to the archives of organic chemistry. And, according to Seeman, another goal is “simply, to have fun. To enjoy and explore the range of values, breadth of experiences, and wonderful complexity of us as human beings”. The videos can be seen at: http://www.layingthegroundwork. com/chemists/ (accessed Jun 2009). In addition to support from ORGN, support and funding came from the ACS Innovative Grants Program and from the Richmond-based interactive storytelling and data-driven richmedia applications company, GroundWorkDesign at http:// www.layingthegroundwork.com/ (accessed Jun 2009).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the 2009 winners of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. They are:
• Academic Award Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• Small Business Award Virent Energy Systems, Inc., Madison, WI
• Greener Synthetic Pathways Award Eastman Chemical Company, Kingsport, TN
• Greener Reaction Conditions Award CEM Corporation, Matthews, NC
A screen from the interview with K. C. Nicolaou.
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 9 September 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
1025
