An unusually large number of papers from Cornell researchers, numbering nearly two dozen, will be featured at the 219th American Chemical Society national meeting, which starts this Sunday and ends March 31 in San Francisco.
The Cornell papers will discuss cutting-edge research on topics ranging from understanding the chemical composition of green tea to dispensing time-released medicine through nanoengineering. More than 18,000 people are expected to attend the meeting.
While most participants are university faculty members, graduate students or post-doctoral researchers, those giving papers will include sophomore Stephen H. Cypes. Cypes, who is in the Cornell Presidential Research Scholars Program majoring in chemical engineering, will present a poster-paper on his research at the molecular level for developing new materials -- poly-vinylalcohol nanocomposites -- that could one day be used to deliver drugs to the body in precisely controlled doses. On Monday, March 27, he will present "Poly(vinyl alcohol)-based layered silicate nanocomposite in hydrogels," in collaboration with Sumanda Bandyopadhyay, a Cornell post-doctoral researcher, and Emmanuel P. Giannelis, professor of materials science and engineering. On the same day, another of Giannelis' undergraduate students, junior Ruth Chen, also in the Cornell Presidential Research Scholars Program, will present a poster-paper outlining her work with nanocomposites using hydrogels called N-isopropylacrylamides.
The subject comes full circle when Mark Saltzman, professor of chemical engineering, moderates a panel Monday on the subject of drug delivery. He also will present an overview of the subject, condensed from his forthcoming book, Drug Delivery, which is being published later this year by Oxford University Press. Saltzman is collaborating with the Giannelis research group on ways to impregnate the new composite materials with medications.
Sunday's presenters include Jane E. Friedrich, a food science graduate student, and Terry Acree, professor of food science, discussing standardizing smells so that smell testing can be consistent from one laboratory to the next. Acree also will examine the topic "Diversity, similarity and evolution in flavor perception."
Graduate student Mark L. Smith will present research in collaboration with Michael L. Shuler, the S.B. Eckert Professor of Chemistry, and researchers Liz Richter and Hugh Mason from the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research located at Cornell, characterizing the hepatitis B surface antigen production in plant cell tissue culture.
Monday, March 27, John Losey, assistant professor of entomology, will discuss the impact of Bt corn pollen on the monarch butterfly. He will focus on the pollen toxicity and the butterfly's behavior.
Tuesday, March 28, Zhimou Wen, postdoctoral researcher in entomology, and Jeffrey Scott, professor of entomology, will discuss how they have taken a first step in developing a safe and effective birth control for America's No. 1 household pest, the cockroach. The entomologists will explain how they have identified and cloned key genes in the reproductive system of the male cockroach.
Scott also will discuss, with Josef Seifert, an environmental biochemist from the University of Hawaii, insecticide resistance of the housefly and ways to combat that resistance by genetic means.
Ted Murray and Michael Lonon of Cornell Environmental Health and Safety will lead a discussion on having a formal university emergency response team.
Also, Geoffrey Coates, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, will report on his research with biodegradable polyesters and polycarbonates. Coates has been receiving significant academic and industrial attention for his research with catalysts that produce polycarbonates via the copolymerization of epoxides and carbon dioxide.
Wednesday, March 29, graduate students in agricultural and biological engineering Caroline V. Corner, Tina Jeoh and Hyungil Jung and Professor Larry P. Walker will focus on the topic of creating energy and chemicals from biomass waste in their talk titled "Integrating cellulase molecular mechanisms into a heterogeneous reaction system." And Li-Fei Wang and Dong-Man Kim, graduate students in food science, and Chang Y. (Cy) Lee, professor of food science, will give a presentation on the effect of heat processing on bottled and canned green tea.
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