News from the IVACS Section
IVACS members are gearing up for the 2009 SIVB meeting in Charleston, S.C.
The program is set and we have another exciting meeting planned for this year. Many of our IVACS colleagues and friends have been working hard to polish their presentations, posters, committee meeting agenda, and sessions which they are convening. If you have missed the last meeting or two, don’t be left out this year. The article below was submitted by our colleague Linda Jacobson which highlights just one example of what you might have missed. In addition to the scientific sessions, posters, and workshops, Charleston is a great destination for sight seeing, shopping and dining. Our banquet is scheduled for the Magnolia Plantation which will offer a wonderful historical glimpse of southern plantation and give us all a chance to relax and chat with our old friends and make new ones. I am looking forward to seeing everyone in June.
CSI:Miami and SIVB June 2007: What do they have in common?
Attendees at the Emerging Technologies Session of the June 2007 meeting in Indianapolis were privileged to hear Dr. T. Graham Cooks from Purdue University speak about his new mass spectrometer. His invention caught the eye of the writers of CSI:Miami and it was one of the technologies used in the November 24, 2008 episode to capture criminals. The device not only creates an image of the fingerprint for identity searches, but it can also detect what a person has recently handled. It is powerful enough to discover a fingerprint beneath other finger prints. A CNN report on this technology is currently on the homepage of Aston Labs, the research group of Professor R. Graham Cooks at Purdue University (http://aston.chem.purdue.edu/).
Not only will this technology be useful it tracking down criminals, but it can also protect our food supply. Melamine has been in the news in the past years as contaminant in pet food and infant formula. The FDA issued guidelines limiting the permissible level in dairy products to less that 1 part–per-million. Cooks and coworkers rapidly found a new application for their technology and can now detect melamine in the low parts-per-billion levels in milk and milk products in about 2.5 seconds.
Attendees at the Emerging Technologies session were excited about this technology and how it might apply to their scientific work. The excitement of this new technology has spread into many applications. The SIVB was very fortunate to have Dr. Cooks present a talk on this exciting technology at our Indianapolis meeting.
Dennis Laska, IVACS Chair
dalspu@lilly.com
Greetings to Members of the SIVB In Vitro Animal Cell Sciences Section (IVACS)
You might want to consider signing up with Linked In. The Plant Section has started a SIVB group via the Linked In web site. So far, most of the members are from the plant section and they would really like to see all of our animal section members join this group as well. It’s a great way to communicate to everyone in the group at once. Better yet, its free!
Go to www.linkedin.com and sign yourself up (create your profile) and then you can join the SIVB group by searching under groups and typing in SIVB in the text box to run the search. Todd J. Jones, President of the Society for In Vitro Biology (SIVB) is the gatekeeper for this group and is accepting new members.
All animal section members are encouraged to join this networking tool and keep in touch with fellow members.
Hope to see as many of you as possible in Charleston, SC from June 6-10 for The 2009 In Vitro Biology Meeting.
Guido F. Caputo, IVACS Secretary
gcaputo@nran.gc.ca
Guy Smagghe – Published Again!!
Dear colleagues, friends, collaborators,
I am happy to announce that Springer printed our book entitled “Ecdysone: Structures and Functions”. It was already released in the last month in a prepress format at several international meetings and with great success. This is happy news for the contributing authors and myself. The books is available from March 5 onwards; so this week.
If you may have interest, there is more info at:
http://www.springer.com/life+sci/entomology/book/978-1-4020-9111-7
… Ecdysone is the steroidal prohormone of the major insect moulting hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone. It groups with its homologues the steroidal molting hormones in arthropods, but they also occur in other phyla where they can play different roles. Besides ecdysteroids appear in many plants mostly as protection agents (toxins or antifeedants) against herbivorous insects.
… The important developments and achievements in modern ecdysone science since the first edition in 1989 by J. Koolman have led to this new revised, expanded and retitled reference work. New chapters in this edition include RNA interference, the ecdysone receptor crystal structures and structure activity relationships, etc. Each article may also be read independently, as a review of that particular subject.
… Ecdysone, Structures and Functions will be of immense use and contains essential information for scientists, students, and professionals alike in entomology, endocrinology, physiology, chemistry, and agricultural, plant, biomedicine and environmental sciences.
… Written for: All scientists in academia and industry, government, undergraduates and graduated students in biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, endocrinology, ecotoxicology-endocrine disruption
Please advertise the book with your colleagues, friends and collaborators to spread our science in the world. I hope we can make a move with this book.
Prosit!!! with a good Belgian beer!!!
Guy Smagghe
