(Press-News.org) Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11)
202-872-6042
Michael Woods
m_woods@acs.org
317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11)
202-872-6293
American Chemical Society
Chemical & Engineering News celebrates its 90th anniversary
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013 — A weekly news magazine that has been around since before Time began celebrates its 90th anniversary this week with a special issue commemorating chemistry's contributions over the past nine decades to medicine, industry and other scientific advances that have improved people's lives. The magazine is Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), a publication of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. C&EN is also sponsoring a slew of celebratory events here at the ACS' 246th National Meeting & Exposition, which continues through Thursday in the Indiana Convention Center and downtown hotels. Among them: A webinar on food fraud and an appearance by Alton Brown, host of the popular Food Network series Iron Chef America.
First published 11 weeks before Time debuted, the magazine that would become C&EN began its historic run on Jan. 10, 1923, as the Industrial & Engineering Chemistry News Edition. By 1942, when it was renamed C&EN, the "Newsmagazine of the Chemistry World" had become — and continues to be — the largest-circulation publication serving the chemical profession and industry.
C&EN's goals 90 years ago remain at the core of its objectives today. "C&EN's vision is to be the first choice for reliable news and information on the chemical enterprise," said Maureen Rouhi, Ph.D., its editor-in-chief. "Our mission is to provide readers with significant news and analysis of the global chemistry enterprise in a timely, accurate and balanced fashion. And we strive to keep readers informed of the activities and official policies of the American Chemical Society."
The magazine, however, has evolved with readers' changing preferences for obtaining news and information about chemistry and many related fields of science. Today, for instance, in addition to the print edition published every Monday, C&EN posts stories online on a daily basis and offers a suite of digital products that include the CENtral Science blogs, a YouTube channel and apps for iPhone and Android smartphones.
"C&EN's value to scientists, and stature in the scientific community, is reflected in its circulation to the ACS membership," said Brian D. Crawford, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications. "At a time when other newsmagazines have experienced sharp declines in circulation, C&EN continues to attract an audience of more than 130,000 subscribing scientists and other readers who follow it in print, online and on their mobile devices each week. It doesn't just lead the industry, it dominates it."
"On behalf of ACS' members, I am delighted to thank and to congratulate the writers, editors, designers and other C&EN staffers over the years who have made our society's news publication a must-read for scientists, businesspeople, policymakers and others," said Marinda Li Wu, Ph.D., ACS president.
This week's commemorative issue features articles focusing on chemistry's contributions to nine vital areas of scientific achievement since the 1920s. These include the development of antibiotics, the emergence of plastics, the rise of environmental awareness and the growth of nanotechnology. Each story includes a "Learning from the Past" sidebar that summarizes significant developments chronicled in C&EN Archives. In addition, the issue includes a sampling of readers' favorite stories, a poster outlining how chemistry has changed the modern world and a C&EN first: a chemistry-oriented crossword puzzle.
The webinar, "Food Fraud: How Scientists Detect It and What You Should Know," begins at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Open to the public, it features presentations by three food authentication experts who will discuss what types of food are most often faked, what chemical methods and instrumentation are used to detect fakes and what analytical gaps exist in this area of research. The panelists are Jeffrey Moore, Ph.D., a senior scientific liasion at U.S. Pharmacopeia; Selina Wang, Ph.D., research director of the Olive Center, University of California-Davis; and Kimberley Warner, Ph.D., a senior scientist at Oceana, an international advocacy group working to protect the world's oceans. They will answer questions following their discussion. Registration is required.
Also on Tuesday, celebrity chef Alton Brown will speak to ACS National Meeting attendees in the Indiana Convention Center. Brown, a culinary commentator on the Food Network and author of three New York Times best-selling books, will discuss how to effectively communicate science to the public.
Rouhi said C&EN is hosting Alton Brown because of his talent in communicating the science that millions of people unknowingly use every day in their own kitchens and backyard grills. "Cooking involves some of the oldest and most widely used principles of chemistry, and we are delighted to feature Alton's demonstrations," Rouhi said. "They underscore how scientific concepts can be explained to nonscientists in understandable terms without sacrificing accuracy."
In addition to these events, C&EN has launched The Watch Glass, a random walk through 90 years of the magazine. This Tumblr page explores the magazine's history through pictures and quotes. Each item links to a story in the C&EN Archives, such as a 1955 cover story in honor of Linus Pauling's Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a 1986 feature on the efforts to discover drugs and vaccines to combat AIDS.
###
A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 8 a.m. in the ACS Press Center, Room 211, in the Indiana Convention Center. Reporters can attend in person or access live audio and video of the event and ask questions at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Follow us:
Twitter | Facebook
Chemical & Engineering News celebrates its 90th anniversary
2013-09-09
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
21st century vision toxicity testing and risk assessment for agrochemicals
2013-09-09
Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11)
202-872-6042
Michael Woods
m_woods@acs.org
317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11)
202-872-6293
American Chemical Society
21st century vision toxicity testing and risk assessment for agrochemicals
INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013 — How will emerging 21st century toxicity testing technologies impact agricultural products? How do they fit in the life cycle of discovery, regulatory registration and product defense or product stewardship? What's the ...
JCI early table of contents for Sept. 9, 2013
2013-09-09
Study identifies fibroblast growth factor 18 as an ovarian cancer biomarker
Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women and is often not detected until the later stages of disease, which contributes to poor prognosis. Biomarkers that can be used for early diagnosis and outcome have been identified; however, many of these have not been evaluated at the biological and clinical levels. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Birrer and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital identify fibroblast growth factor ...
Study identifies fibroblast growth factor 18 as an ovarian cancer biomarker
2013-09-09
Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women and is often not detected until the later stages of disease, which contributes to poor prognosis. Biomarkers that can be used for early diagnosis and outcome have been identified; however, many of these have not been evaluated at the biological and clinical levels. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Birrer and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital identify fibroblast growth factor 18 (FGF18) as a predictive marker for poor overall survival in ovarian cancer patients. ...
Insulin secretion disrupted by increased fatty acids
2013-09-09
Patients with type 2 diabetes have increased levels of circulating glucose and fatty acids, which lead to disease complications. In healthy individuals, β cells within pancreatic islets release insulin in response to glucose and incretins, which are gastrointestinal hormones. Coordination between β cells is predicted to be important for insulin release. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, David Hodson and colleagues at Imperial College London demonstrate that β cell-β cell interactions are important for insulin secretion in human ...
Cancer researchers discover root cause of multiple myeloma relapse
2013-09-09
(TORONTO, Canada – Sept. 9, 2013) – Clinical researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered why multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow, persistently escapes cure by an initially effective treatment that can keep the disease at bay for up to several years.
The reason, explains research published online today in Cancer Cell, is intrinsic resistance found in immature progenitor cells that are the root cause of the disease – and relapse – says principal investigator Dr. Rodger Tiedemann, a hematologist specializing in multiple myeloma and ...
Breath tests could be used to diagnose lung cancer
2013-09-09
Barcelona, Spain: Collecting samples of exhaled breath from people at a high risk of lung cancer could be a cheap and non-invasive method of diagnosing the disease, according to new research.
The findings will be presented today (9 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona.
Current tests for lung cancer include blood and urine tests, followed by CT scans and chest radiographs. This new method could see people at a high risk of lung cancer receiving an initial breath test to quickly assess their symptoms.
Previous research ...
Severe asthma patients less responsive to treatment
2013-09-09
Barcelona, Spain: People with severe asthma, who are often described as 'steroid-dependent', are actually less likely to respond to the treatment they depend on, when compared to people with mild asthma.
The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (9 September 2013), represents the first analysis of a cohort of patients from an unparalleled research project that will collect over 3 million samples from 300 children and 700 adults with severe and non-severe asthma, and without asthma.
Although asthma is common, ...
Severity of sleep apnea predicts aggressiveness of melanoma
2013-09-09
Barcelona, Spain: The severity of sleep apnoea can independently predict the aggressiveness of malignant skin melanoma, according to a new study.
The research, presented today (9 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress, adds new evidence to a number of studies that have found a link between cancer and the sleep disorder.
Previous studies have looked at a link between sleep apnoea and both mortality and incidence rates from cancer. Some experimental studies in mice have also shown that reduced oxygen levels in the blood, which is common ...
New muscular dystrophy treatment shows promise in early study
2013-09-09
HEIDELBERG -- A preclinical study led by researchers in the United States has found that a new oral drug shows early promise for the treatment of muscular dystrophy. The results, which are published today in EMBO Molecular Medicine, show that VBP15 decreases inflammation in mice with symptoms similar to those found in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The authors found that the drug protects and strengthens muscle without the harsh side effects linked to current treatments with glucocorticoids such as prednisone.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy results in severe ...
First animal model of adult-onset SMA sheds light on disease progression & treatment
2013-09-09
Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A research team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has used a recently developed technology they call TSUNAMI to create the first animal model of the adult-onset version of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a devastating motor-neuron illness.
The same team, led by CSHL Professor Adrian R. Krainer, Ph.D., and including scientists from California-based Isis Pharmaceuticals, as well as the University of Southern California and Stony Brook University, succeeded a year ago in using TSUNAMI to make a mouse model of the disease as it is manifest in ...