Saturday, March 26, 2011

NMR upgrades at the University of Toronto

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto has ordered $5.5M of new NMR spectrometers from Agilent Technologies to equip its new 4,000-square-foot NMR laboratory. Dr. Timothy Burrow, Manager of the NMR Facility, informed that the new spectrometers will be a 500 MHz spectrometer, with 7600AS sample changer and XSens 13C sensitive cryogenically cooled probe, a 600 MHz dual liquids and solids spectrometer and a 700 MHz spectrometer with a H/F,CN Cold Probe, 7600AS sample changer and solids, biosolids and semi-solids probes.

"These new NMR systems will provide a vital boost to our new Centre for Spectroscopic Investigation of Complex Organic Molecules and Polymers (CSICOMP), increasing the range and scope of research in key areas," said Professor Robert H. Morris, Chair of the Chemistry Department.

The new facility is scheduled to open later this year, the International Year of Chemistry. More than 45 scientists as well as 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will be able to use the facility for inorganic, organic, materials and bio-organic research, including broader investigations into the fate of fluorinated compounds in the environment. The new facility is supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. (See related story in "Canadain NMR Research" News Bulletin, #3.3, Summer 2009, page 3, download)

"We are excited that the University of Toronto's new facility has chosen Agilent as its primary NMR equipment provider," said Kevin Meldrum, director, research products marketing for Agilent. "Agilent is dedicated to helping scientists meet all of their spectroscopy research needs and this agreement further illustrates that commitment."

Read the press release by Agilent Technologies
http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2011/22mar-ca11021.html

Friday, March 25, 2011

61st Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE2011)

Call for Papers CSChE2011 Now Open!

The 61st Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE2011) will be held in London, Ontario, October 23-26, 2011. The call for papers is now OPEN and will close May 31, 2011.

Submit your abstract through Hermes Conference Centre via the CSChE2011 website. Details are available at www.csche2011.ca/Program/submit_abstract.html

You can view the wide range of themes and symposia representing the conference on the CSChE2011 website at www.csche2011.ca

The conference highlights three main symposia themes: Innovation, Industry and Internationalization which are important issues facing chemical engineers living in Canada and globally.

We encourage you to forward this notice to your colleagues nationally and internationally, to submit your abstracts, and to join us in London in October.

Jesse Zhu, Conference Chair
Amarjeet Bassi, Technical Program Chair

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

International Conference on MR Microscopy (ICMRM) Beijing 2011

The ICMRM conference will be held in Beijing August 14-18 at the China University of Petroleum (CUP). The venue is the CUP conference centre and adjacent conference hotel. The conference hotel is large enough that all attendees may be housed on site at very reasonable cost. The main lecture hall, exhibitor venue, coffee break area, poster display, and extra rooms are mere meters away in the attached Conference Centre which is a modern two story building, with an on-site restaurant. Prof. Lizhi Xiao, the conference chair, has been able to block book the entire conference centre and hotel for the duration of our meeting.

Prof Xiao and his local organizing committee have arranged the wednesday conference excursion to visit city centre Beijing including the Forbidden City with the conference dinner to be held in the Great Hall of the People in Tienanmen Square. More details are provided concerning the program, venue and excursion on the conference web site which is found at http://icmrm11.cup.edu.cn/

The second circular for the conference is available for download at http://nmr900.ca/nmr_news.html#ICMRM11

Deadline for Abstract Submission April 30, 2011

The objectives of the ICMRM are to communicate recent developments in high-resolution, spatially resolved magnetic resonance methods and applications. Meeting strength stems from the eclectic background of participants and a diverse venue that has traditionally focused on non-clinical applications in science and engineering areas. The 1st ICMRM was held in 1991 in Heidelberg and was originally known as the "Heidelberg Conference". It is the biannual conference of the Division of Spatially Resolved Magnetic Resonance of the Ampere Society.

Bruce J. Balcom, Professor
Director MRI Research Centre
Canada Research Chair in MRI of Materials
Director, Institute for Materials Visualization and Analysis
Department of Physics
The University of New Brunswick
P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, E3B 5A3
New Brunswick, Canada

Sunday, March 20, 2011

52nd ENC program

Program details of the 52nd ENC including the program overview and abstracts is now available online (52nd ENC program).

52nd ENC Events

Agilent Users' Meeting before the 52nd ENC
April 8-9, 2011, Santa Clara, California
http://www.chem.agilent.com/en-US/Events/en-US/Pages/enc11usermeeting.aspx


Bruker Pre-ENC NMR Workshops and Breakfast Symposium
April 9-10, 2011, Monterey, California
http://www.bruker-biospin.com/enc11.html

52nd ENC
April 10-15, 2011, Asilomar, California
http://www.enc-conference.org/

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Cover article in Chemistry - A European Journal

B.J. Greer, V.K. Michaelis, M.J. Katz, D.B. Leznoff, G. Schreckenbach, S. Kroeker, "Characterising Lone-Pair Activity of Lead(II) by 207Pb Solid-State NMR: Coordination Polymers of [N(CN)2]- and [Au(CN)2]- with Terpyridine Ancillary Ligands," Chemistry - A European Journal 17 (2011) 3609-3618. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.201002913

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Nature News: Breaking the protein rules

One of the textbook concepts in molecular biology is that proteins fold up spontaneously to form the most energetically stable three-dimensional structures. These folded proteins are presumed structurally rigid, which is important for their unique functionality, e.g. as enzymes. There are indications, however, mostly coming from NMR studies, that many important proteins exist in disordered form. A news feature in the latest issue of Nature discusses implications of this potentially far-reaching finding. Among cited examples of intrinsically disordered proteins is the NMR study on Sic1 protein by Julie Forman-Kay and her group at the University of Toronto/SickKids.

T. Chouard "Structural biology: Breaking the protein rules," Nature 471 (2011) 151-153. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110309/full/471151a.html

Saturday, March 5, 2011

NANUC 2011 NMR BootCamp

NANUC 2011 NMR BootCamp (Biomolecular NMR Training Course)
August 15-20, 2011, University Of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
http://www.nanuc.ca/nmrbootcamp/2011_NMR_BootCamp/Welcome.html

Friday, March 4, 2011

ACCN: 17O NMR Discovery

ACCN the Canadian Chemical News, March, 2011
Latest News: New NMR Technique Solves Oxygen Puzzle (online)
(print, ACCN, Volume 63, Number 3, p. 9)

Thursday, March 3, 2011

SMARTER 2 Workshop

Dear Colleagues,

We cordially invite you to the Second SMARTER Crystallography Workshop (Structure elucidation by coMbining mAgnetic Resonance, compuTation modEling and diffRactions), which will be held on 23-27 May 2011 at the University of Aveiro, Portugal.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together specialists from the different areas of materials science, such as materials chemists and processing engineers, diffraction and spectroscopy scientists, and computational structuralists, that may contribute to the development of a common language for a SMARTER approach to structure solving, using Geometrical, Diffraction Modeling and NMR Crystallographies.

Confirmed Invited Speakers: Lynne McCusker (ETH Zurich), Jürgen Senker (Bayreuth University), Lyndon Emsley (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon), Mike O'Keeffe (Arizona State University), Steven Brown (Warwick University), Christian Baerlocher (ETH Zurich), Richard Catlow (Royal Institution, London), Darren Brouwer (Redeemer University College).

The deadline for abstract submission is March 15, 2011.

Registration fees (All lunches and dinners from the programme are included): Full Registration, 450 EUR, Student Registration, 350 EUR

Read more about SMARTER 2 Workshop at http://smarter.web.ua.pt/

SMARTER Organizing Committee