Archive for the 'Conferences' Category

The Pacific Polymer Conference is the pre-eminent meeting of the Pacific Polymer Federation, the alliance of the polymer societies and polymer divisions of chemical societies from the nations around the Pacific rim.  On December 6th-10th 2009  the event was hosted in Australia at the Cairns Convention Centre, a fine venue for a splendidly organised meeting with a fantastic array of speaker.

The Applied Polymer Chemistry group presented three papers at the 11th Pacific Polymer Conference.

Dr Fellows presented a lecture entitled “Effect of Poly(acrylic acid) Molecular Mass and End-Group Functionality on Calcium Oxalate Crystallisation“ Authors  CP East, AD Wallace, A Al-Hamzah, WOS Doherty and  CM Fellows.

Mr Al-Hamzah presented a lecture entitled “Apparent Inhibition of Thermal Decomposition of Bicarbonate and Hydrolysis of Carbonate by Poly(Acrylic Acid). The Effect of Molecular Weight and End-Group Functionality.”
Authors A Al-Hamzah and CM Fellows.

Mr Prangley presented a poster entitled “The truth about surface grafting. A quantitative investigation into ATRP “surface grafting” on commercial Poly(Dimethylsiloxane) substrates.”
Authors RP Prangley, AD Wallace and CM Fellows.

An excellent and productive time was had by all!

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

The Applied Polymer Chemistry group presented three papers at the 30th Australasian Polymer Symposium, the annual scientific meeting of the Polymer Division of the RACI and the NZIC polymer group, held in Melbourne on the 30th November – 4th December.

Dr Fellows presented a lecture entitled “Chain Transfer to Butyl Methacrylate”
Authors CM Fellows and DF Sangster.

Mr Wallace presented a poster entitled “An active membrane/liquid interface: A novel approach to the synthesis of pervaporation membranes”
Authors AD Wallace and CM Fellows.

Mr Alhamzah presented a poster entitled “Synthesis, Characterisation, and Application of Poly(Acrylic Acid) for use as Base Scale Inhibitor in Desalination Plants”
Authors A Alhamzah and CM Fellows.

The PhD candidates did a splendid job and excited much discussion with their posters. No dead cats were thrown at their supervisor.

The bio-organic chemistry group presented four papers at the National Conference of the Organic Division of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (Organioc08) which was held in Hobart last week.

Prof Glover presented an Invited Lecture entitled:
“Anomeric Amides - a Class of Unusual Non-planar Amides”
The paper collated all the known knowledge pertaining to “Anomeric amides” a highly unusual class of amides discovered at UNE over the last decade or so.

Rhiannon Schumacher presented a poster entitled:
“Mutagenicity of N-Acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides -New Substituent Effects”
Authors: Samuel Clay, Stephen Glover, Kate Cavanagh and Rhiannon Schumacher
The poster described our latest QSAR for the mutagenicity of N-acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides.

Two other posters were presented by Prof Glover:
“Identification of an Aryloxenium Ion by Time Resolved Resonance Raman (TR3) Spectroscopy and Density Functional Theory: First Vibrational Spectrum of an Oxenium Ion”
Authors: Stephen Glover, Michael Novak, Yue-Ting Wang, David Phillips, Jiadan Xue.
The poster described the collaborative work leading to the identification of the first IR data of the unusual reactive intermediates, phenyloxenium ions.

“HERON Reaction of N-Acyloxy-N-alkoxyamides-Theoretical and Experimental Study”
Author: Stephen Glover
The poster described a new HERON reaction and the theorectical evidence supporting it.