MOOT XXIII NMR Symposium - Second Announcement

The 23rd Annual MOOT NMR Symposium will take place at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia on October 16 and 17th, 2010.

The MOOT NMR Symposium provides an informal environment for students, post-docs and faculty to present lectures and posters, discuss existing collaborations, and to establish new ones. It has traditionally been a regional gathering of NMR spectroscopists from Ontario and Quebec but has been expanding to include NMR Spectroscopists from the Maritimes. As a result, MOOT XXIII will be hosted for the first time outside of its traditional region; on the East coast in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia! We welcome you to check out and bookmark our website for the most up-to-date information:

http://structbio.biochem.dal.ca/jrainey/NMRMOOT/index.html

Notices:

(1) Registration and submission of titles for oral/poster presentations are open as of June 30, 2010. The deadline for both is September 15, 2010. Visit the registration menu item on our website where registration information can be provided via Word document or fillable PDF.

(2) Be sure and register for the banquet, to be held Saturday evening at the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site on Citadel Hill - overlooking the downtown core of Halifax and the harbour.
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/ns/halifax/index.aspx

(3) A big thank you to all of our confirmed sponsors, including Bruker BioSpin Canada, Agilent Technologies (formally Varian), Sigma-Aldrich Canada, New Era Enterprises, National Ultra-High Field NMR Facility for Solids (Canada), and Suraj Manrao. If you wish to sponsor this meeting, please contact Joe Zwanziger at jzwanzig "at" dal.ca.

Reminders:

(1) Accommodations - a block of rooms has been reserved at Atlantica (http://www.atlanticahotelhalifax.com) at a rate of $129 per night, including parking, and is based on 1-4 person occupancy. See the website for additional details and reservation deadlines.

(2) Travel - a 10% discount has been arranged with WestJet for your flight to MOOT XXIII. Again, additional details are on the website.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback about this year's MOOT and/or website, please let us know by email at mootnmr "at" gmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you in October!

Your MOOT XXIII Organizing Committee:
Mike Lumsden
Joe Zwanziger
Jan Rainey
Ulli Werner-Zwanziger

Don Hughes' Memorial Photos

Hello everyone.

Thanks to all of you who could attend the memorial service for Don last week. I know I enjoyed seeing all of you and sharing stories.

A few days ago we posted a slide show of photos that were taken during the service. In case you haven't had a chance to look through these, please take a couple of minutes to have a look (external link).

Take care,

Bob Berno

C&CB, McMaster

Opportunities for studying polymorphs and cement-based materials via Ca-43 solid-state NMR

June 11, 2010, University of Ottawa

Calcium is an important component in diverse materials and biochemicals. However, NMR spectroscopy of the only spin-active calcium isotope, Ca-43, is notoriously challenging due to its low natural abundance (0.14 %), low resonance frequency, and quadrupolar nature. Recently, researchers from the University of Ottawa, the NRC Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences (SIMS-NRC), and Dalhousie University have independently reported advances in studies of inorganic polymorphs and cement-based materials using Ca-43 solid-state NMR spectroscopy.

"In spite of the great complexity of the calcium silicate chemistry involved in the hydration of Portland cement, we have shown that Ca-43 solid-state NMR provides useful new insights into cement chemistry", says Igor Moudrakovski (SIMS-NRC) of his collaboration with the Institute for Research in Construction (SIMS-IRC). Josef Zwanziger (Dalhousie) and his academic and industrial partners have similarly applied Ca-43 NMR in their project on the development, optimization and commercialization of high performance cement based composite materials.

Zwanziger explains, "we are trying to understand the nature of the composite-cement interface, and the mechanisms of toughening and strengthening in concrete composites. Calcium NMR is one of the many tools which is shedding light on the nature of the interface." At the University of Ottawa, David Bryce and his research group have demonstrated the utility of calcium NMR in understanding polymorphism in solids. This work has implications for understanding biomaterials as well as inorganic materials.

Because Ca-43 NMR in solid state requires a very strong magnetic field for sensitivity reasons, all these experiments were carried out at the National Ultrahigh-Field NMR Facility for Solids (www.nmr900.ca), a national user facility managed by the University of Ottawa and housed on NRC's Ottawa campus, which houses Canada's only 21.1 T (900 MHz) NMR spectrometer.

The latest calcium NMR research has been published in PCCP and J. Am. Chem. Soc., and a perspective on the state of the field is now available in Dalton Transactions (Bryce, 2010).

David L. Bryce "Calcium Binding Environments Probed by 43Ca NMR Spectroscopy," Dalton Transactions (2010) online. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c0dt00416b

Igor Moudrakovski, Rouhollah Alizadeh, James J. Beaudoin, "Natural abundance high field 43Ca solid state NMR in cement science," Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 12 (2010) 6961-6969. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c000353k

David L. Bryce, Elijah B. Bultz, and Dominic Aebi, "Calcium-43 Chemical Shift Tensors as Probes of Calcium Binding Environments. Insight into the Structure of the Vaterite CaCO3 Polymorph by 43Ca Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy," Journal of the American Chemical Society 130 (2008) 9282–9292. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja8017253

NMR workshops at the 52nd Rocky Mountain Conference

The Solid-State NMR Symposium of the 52nd Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry will take place August 1-5, 2010 at the Snowmass Conference Center in Snowmass, Colorado.

http://www.rockychem.com/

Consider attending one of two traditional NMR vendor's events associated with this symposium (registration required). Both workshops will be held on August 1st in the Snowmass Conference Center.

Bruker Solid State NMR workshop and seminar
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
http://www.bruker-biospin.com/rmc2010_nmr.html

Varian 21st Solid-State NMR User's Meeting
2:00 pm - 7:00 pm
http://varianinc.com/cgi-bin/nav?/products/nmr/events/solids_2010/index

4th Annual VIVA NMR Symposium

Hi All,

I am pleased to announce that the 4th Annual VIVA NMR symposium will take place Monday, June 21st at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby Mountain Campus) in Burnaby B.C. Yes, that is only 2 weeks away! We apologize for the short notice but certain events have made it necessary to organize it early this year.

The aim of this one day symposium is to bring together NMR users, researchers and managers from western Canada and the north-west of the USA to share information on topics of general NMR interest and to foster the development of an NMR community. Talks or poster presentations by graduate students are especially encouraged. Talks must be registered before June 15th, all other registrations will end on June 20th.

On-line registration is now available at http://www.sfu.ca/~vivanmr

The symposium is designed to be affordable and thanks to generous sponsorship by Bruker Canada and Agilent Technologies (formerly Varian Inc) the registration fees are only $20 for students and $50 for non-students which includes the lunch banquet and afternoon poster social session.

The program will consist of 15-20 minute talks, a lunch banquet at Club Ilia, and a poster session/social gathering.

A meeting of NMR facility managers is scheduled to follow immediately after the conference at the Himalayan Peak Restaurant (at SFU) on Monday from 6 - 9 pm.

For further details see the conference website.

Due to the short time available we have not been able to reserve special accommodation this year but there are links on the website to accommodation at SFU.

Please feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who might be interested.

I hope to see you all here in 2 weeks!

Sincerely,

Andrew

--
Dr. Andrew Lewis
Director, Magnetic Resonance Facility
Department of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive, Burnaby BC V5A 1S6
Email: arl "at" sfu.ca, Tel: 604 306 7959
Fax: 778 782 3765, Office: TASC 2, Room 9908

Multidimensional NMR Methods for the Solution State

edited by Gareth A. Morris and James W. Emsley
Hardcover: 580 pages
Publisher: Wiley; June 2010
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0470770757
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470770759
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0470770759

Wiley: "Multidimensional NMR methods have transformed the way in which solution state NMR is used to elucidate the structures of chemical and biochemical systems. The first book covering new developments in nearly a decade, this much-needed resource explains recent experimental methods for the rapid measurement of multidimensional solution-state NMR spectra. With articles written by key developers of the techniques, the coverage deals with both the theoretical tools and the latest practical applications, giving an unmatched guide to students, researchers, technicians, and anyone else working with NMR techniques today"

Canadian contributions

A.D. Bain "COSY: Quantitative Analysis," Chapter 13, Multidimensional NMR Methods for the Solution State (EMR Books), Eds. G.A. Morris and J.W. Emsley, Wiley (2010) pp. 167-176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470034590.emrstm0095

T.T. Nakashima and R.E.D. McClung "Heteronuclear Shift Correlation Spectroscopy," Chapter 22, Multidimensional NMR Methods for the Solution State (EMR Books), Eds. G.A. Morris and J.W. Emsley, Wiley (2010) pp. 289-304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470034590.emrstm0209

R. Muhandiram and L.E. Kay "3D HMQC-NOESY, NOESY-HMQC, and NOESY-HSQC," Chapter 25, Multidimensional NMR Methods for the Solution State (EMR Books), Eds. G.A. Morris and J.W. Emsley, Wiley (2010) pp. 335-350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470034590.emrstm0563

The complete Table of Contents is available on Stan's NMR blog.