Aston honoured in home town

Francis William Aston, who won the 1922 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule”, has been honoured by the unveiling of a “blue plaque” on the site of the house he was born in. Blue plaques are found throughout the UK and mark houses in which famous people once lived.

September 2007 marks the 130th anniversary of Aston’s birth. A recent Historical Account in European Journal of Mass Spectrometry (doi: 10.1255/ejms.878) has shed more light on what sort of man Aston was, his character and his personal life and, particularly, how his life was shaped by his childhood, environment and education.

Francis Aston c. 1920s. Reproduced from K.M. Downard, Eur. J. Mass Spectrom. 13(3), 177 (2007).

Free access to historic archive

The Royal Society Digital Journal Archive, dating back to 1665 and containing in excess of 60,000 articles, is available free online until 30 November 2007.

More details at www.publishing.royalsoc.ac.uk/archive

Pittcon and ACS co-operation

The Pittsburgh Conference is to continue its partnership with the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Analytical Chemistry at Pittcon 2008 (1–7 March, New Orleans, USA). The ACS is expanding its co-programming in the Pittcon technical programme by offering eight Invited Symposia, six Organised Contributed Sessions and one Poster Session.

The ACS symposium, “The Environmental Impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the Surrounding Area”, will be of special interest to many attendees. Also, Dr Leroy Hood will deliver the Plenary Lecture on “Systems Biology and Systems Medicine”, as part of the “Interdisciplinary Analytical Chemistry” symposium. www.pittcon.org

Stopping atoms

The ability to trap atoms for study is important in many fields. A paper published in the New Journal of Physics (doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/9/10/358) demonstrates how a group of physicists at The University of Texas at Austin, USA, have found a way to slow down, stop and explore a much wider range of atoms than before.

Laser cooling has been used in the past, and indeed produced three Nobel Prize winners, but this only applies to atoms with “closed two-level transition”, which excludes important elements such as hydrogen, iron, nickel and cobalt. The new method is magnetic and applicable to nearly all elements and a wide range of molecules. Professor Mark Raizen and his colleagues in Texas developed an “atomic coilgun” that slows and gradually stops atoms with a sequence of pulsed magnetic fields. They ultimately plan to use the gun to trap atomic hydrogen, described by Professor Raizen as the “Rosetta Stone of physics”. He also commented that “Of particular importance are the doors being opened for our understanding of hydrogen. Precision spectroscopy of hydrogen’s isotopes, deuterium and tritium, continues to be of great interest to both atomic and nuclear physics”.

Having successfully designed and used an 18-coil device to slow a supersonic beam of metastable neon atoms, the team is now developing a 64-stage device to slow further and stop atoms.

MS detector for TB

The Wellcome Trust has awarded scientists at The Open University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK, a £1.34million Strategic Translation Award to develop a mass spectrometer capable of detecting tuberculosis (TB) in countries where resources are poor.

TB, which is caused by the M. tuberculosis bacterium, is thought to kill two million people every year, primarily in the developing world. However, diagnosing TB in resource-poor settings relies mainly on the use of smear microscopy of sputum samples, a very labour-intensive process with low sensitivity. This leads to delays in treatment and increased spread of the disease.

The researchers intend to develop a portable mass spectrometer based on a shoe-box-sized GC-mass spectrometer developed for the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. The analysis could be automated, meaning that skilled laboratory technicians would not be needed. It would also not need to be carried out in a special laboratory, making the technology more widely available in the places that need it most.

Water Monitoring Association

Over the last year discussion has taken place within a group of companies involved in water monitoring, and has cumulated in the formation of the Water Monitoring Association. The association represents the interests of companies involved in all aspects of water monitoring. It was formed to influence the development of standards, equipment, personnel and applications that affect qualitative and quantitative water monitoring. Membership is open to any company or individual that has an interest in the monitoring of water and related fields. www.w-m-a.org

Raman award

The 2007 Charles Mann Award, presented at FACSS, is to be made to Dr Neil Everall. The award is presented to an individual who has demonstrated advancement(s) presented at FACSS in the field of applied Raman spectroscopy and/or demonstrated dedication to the advancement of the FACSS Raman spectroscopy programme and/or the Raman sub-committee.

After post-doctoral work at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (near Oxford, UK), Everall joined ICI in 1988. For more than 13 years he led the infrared and Raman spectroscopy activity at ICI’s Measurement Science Group (MSG) at Wilton in the North-East of England. He was appointed an ICI Company Research Associate in 2003, making him the Company’s senior measurement scientist. In 2007, ICI divested its Measurement Science Group to Intertek PLC, and Everall is currently employed in the group which was formed, Intertek-MSG.

His research interests centre on the development and application of vibrational spectroscopy for characterising materials and industrial processes. In recent years this has included infrared and Raman studies of polymer structure (primarily polymerisation mechanisms, microstructure, crystallinity and molecular orientation), modelling the spatial response and depth resolution of the confocal Raman microscope, process analysis with Raman spectroscopy, and materials characterisation using infrared and Raman mapping/imaging. More recently he has been studying Raman photon migration in opaque media, in collaboration with workers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (see page 7), and has also been revisiting the issues that determine the working resolution of the Raman microscope.

Neil Everall

DECHEMA award

The DECHEMA Award 2007 of the Max Buchner Research Foundation has been conferred on Professor Bert M. Weckhuysen of the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. The award is made in recognition of his excellent developments of combined in situ spectroscopic methods and their application to industrial catalytic processes. It will be presented at a colloquium at DECHEMA in Frankfurt, Germany, on 30 November.

Bert Weckhuysen was born and educated in Belgium before going to the USA for post-doctoral studies. He returned to Belgium in 1997, working as a National Science Foundation fellow at K.U. Leuven and, in 1998, received the K.U. Leuven Research Council award for his pioneering work in the field of in situ spectroscopy. In 2000, he was appointed as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. Since 2003, he has been scientific director of the Netherlands Institute for Research in Catalysis (NIOK). The central theme of his research group is the development of structure–activity relationship and expert systems in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and materials science. Special emphasis is placed on the development and use of advanced in situ characterisation techniques, preferably in a combined fashion.

Bert Weckhuysen