Official logo of the International year of Chemistry

The United Nations Organisation has declared 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry. Promoted by IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the governing body of chemistry world-wide, 2011 seeks to celebrate the achievements of Chemistry.   The specific goals of this celebration,  as outlined by Australia’s Prof David StC. Black, the Secretary General of IUPAC, are to:

• Increase the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs
• Increase interest of young people in chemistry
• Generate enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry
• Celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Mme. Curie Nobel Prize and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Association of Chemical Societies.

IUPAC has created a dedicated website at which you can discover the events and activities that will roll out before and during 2011 ( to go to the site click <http://www.chemistry2011.org>or type into your browser) .

In his column in the May-June 2009 edition of Chemistry International, the news magazine of IUPAC, David highlights how Australia might kick of the International Year of Chemistry in spectacular style with the Sydney New Year Fireworks display, which is “nothing if not chemistry in action”. Not only are the fireworks Chemistry, he writes, but people watching the display world-wide on television, are dependent upon chemical technology. Thousands of people will photograph the fireworks making use of the chemistry intrinsic to color photography, be it traditional or digital.  Even those who just look at the fireworks to enjoy the wonderful colours will do so because of the chemistry involved in vision itself (photo-isomerisation of retinaldimine in the eye by light energy is responsible for the visual stimulous).

Chemistry at UNE will be participating in the International Year of Chemistry in 2011.

Approximately 250 year 7 to 10 students from right across northern New South Wales, from Coffs Harbour to Boggabilla, passed through the 1st year chemistry laboratories as part of ‘Science in the Bush’ on August 20th, beginning what we hope will be a life-long involvement with liquid nitrogen, the nylon rope trick, dendritic silver crystals and poly(vinyl alcohol) slime. Each group spent about 45 minutes on the hands-on activities, which added up  to a very full day for technical staff Fran McDonald and Andrew Wallace and the four enthusiastic Honours students who acted as demonstrators on the day.  Science in the Bush is held at UNE annually as part of National Science Week and is targetted at secondary students in the crucial years where it has been reported that most young people lose interest in science. Every year has had a large contribution from Chemistry, but this was the first year we used the larger laboratory to host our activity, giving many more students a chance to work with real chemicals in a real laboratory environment.

Chemistry at UNE is currently advertising for two new lecturers. One of these will be appointed in the area of Medicinal/Biological Chemistry. A second appointment will be open to applicants in any area of relevance to Chemistry’s and the School of Science and Technology’s research interests but who should ideally have a keen interest in undergraduate teaching and Chemical Education.

Chemistry’s homepage provides details of existing staff, teaching and research activities and the School of Science and Technology homepage can be found here.

Applicants should consult the full advertisements and directions for applicants at the University’s recruitment webpage.

informal enquiries can be directed to Professor Graham Leedham, Head of School of Science and Technology, ph: (02) 6773 5009 or email hos-st@une.edu.au or Professor Stephen Glover, ph: (02) 6773 2361 or email Stephen.Glover@une.edu.au.

Rhiannon Schumacher, a postgraduate student in the Bio-organic chemistry group recently presented her work at the AIMECS meeting in Cairns. Seen here in discussions at her poster session, Rhiannon reported her latest findings on a poster entitled “Pushing the limits of Lipinski’s log P with polycyclic aromatics” . The paper, which also reported earlier work by Tony Banks (Ph.D.,2003) and Sam Clay (B.Sc. Hon., 2003) dealt with her latest mutagenicity studies of N-acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides, which show that DNA can be targeted by molecules bearing simple polycyclic aromatics like naphthalene and pyrene

Prof Steve Glover also presented a paper on work carried out in collaboration with Prof Mike Novak and Yue-Ting Wang at Miami University and entitled “Phenyloxenium Ions from Hydrolysis of 4-Acetoxy-4-(benzothiazol-2-yl)-2,5-cyclohexadien-1-one, a Model Anti-Tumor Quinol Ester”. In this paper, theoretical evidence was presented which points to a role of reactive oxenium ions in the anticancer activity of these quinol esters.

ESOC venue in Prague - the Municipal Concert Hall

Professor Glover recently attended two conferences in the Czech republic. From 5-10 July, he attended ISRIUM 2009, the International Symposium on Reactive Intermediates and Unusual Molecules held in Liblice near Prague. He presented a paper entitled

“Identification of an Aryloxenium Ion by Time Resolved Resonance Raman (TR3) Spectroscopy and Density Functional Theory: First Vibrational Spectrum of an Oxenium Ion” by Stephen Glover, Michael Novak and Yue-Ting Wang (Miami University), David Phillips and Jiadan Xue (Hong Kong)

He also presented UNE research at ESOC 2009, the 16th European Symposium on Organic Chemistry, which was held between 12-16 July in the beautiful capital Prague.

“Mutagenicity of N-Acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides —New Substituent Effects” by
Stephen Glover, Samuel Clay, Kate Cavanagh, and Rhiannon Schumacher

1. Feature article in the Journal of Organic Chemistry:

Hydrolysis and Photolysis of 4-Acetoxy-4-(benzothiazol-2-yl)-2,5-cyclohexadien-1-one, a Model Anti-Tumor Quinol Ester.
Y.-T. Wang, K. J. Jin, L. R. Myers, S. A. Glover and M. Novak, J. Org. Chem., 2009, 74, 4463-4471.

2. Invited paper in the Organic08, the Australian Journal of Chemistry’s Special Edition on the 23 rd conference of the Organic Division in Hobart, December 2008:

SN2 Substitution Reactions at the Amide Nitrogen in the Anomeric Mutagens, N-Acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides.
K. L. Cavanagh, S. A. Glover, H. L. Price and R. R. Schumacher, Aust. J. Chem., 2009, 62, 700-710.

The Nyholm Youth Lecture is an annual event, supported by the NSW Branch of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, and has the aim of ‘bring chemistry to life’ for year 10 high school students. This years lecture is titled ‘Chemical are good for you’ and will be presented by Dr Peter Rutledge of the University of Sydney. Much of the lecture will directly address aspects of the science curriculum and includes practical demonstrations. The lecture will be given at 2pm on Wednesday July 1 in the Lewis Lecture Theatre. A small fee of $2 per student is required to cover the costs of chemicals. For further inquires please contact Dr Peter Lye (02) 6773 3018 or Peter.Lye@une.edu.au

UNE hosted over 250 HSC students from Armidale and regional high schools over two days, June 15 and 16, to participate in HSC review activities in the key areas of chemistry, physics, biology and Mathematics. UNE Chemistry presented 5 sessions over the two days with the focus on sulfate analysis of lawn fertilizers and heavy metal, lead, analysis of paint using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. UNE Chemistry with the help of O’Connor Catholic College Chemistry Teacher Regina Menz also ran the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Titration Competition. This years competition saw a record number of teams participating. The overall winning team was from The Armidale School, congratulations to TAS all those that particpated!

A recent collaboration between University of New England’s Professor Steve Glover and Prof Mike Novak at Miami University in the US recently implicated highly unusual reactive intermediates, called aryloxenium ions, in the anticancer activity of a new type of antitumour drug. The drug (a 4-(benzothiazol-2-yl)-substituted quinol ester II) has demonstrated strong activity against a range human colon and breast cancer cell lines. Experimental detection and trapping of the ions at Miami University has been supported by quantum mechanical computations carried out at University of New England and which accurately predicted the structure and reactivity of the 4-(benzothiazol-2-yl)phenyl oxenium ion I .

Their research has shown that the ions may well be formed from the drug under physiological conditions and could be the responsible for their anticancer activity. Similar aryloxenium ions were first generated chemically by Professor Novak and modelled computationally by Steve Glover, while Mike Novak was on sabbatical at UNE in 2003. Since then the collaboration has produced six publications in J.A.C.S. and J. Org. Chem., high impact journals of the American Chemical Society, as well as a theoretical paper in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry. The latest work will be published in the ACS Journal of Organic Chemistry as a special Feature Article in recognition of quality and importance of the work.

Slides for the introduction to the lecture can be downloaded here.