Strong Biotech Focus To Mark Next Week's ACS Meeting

More than 11,000 scientists from 30 countries are expected to attend the 199th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston next week. The six-day-long gathering (April 22 through April 27) at the Hynes Convention Center will feature more than 4,400 papers presented during 604 technical sessions. The presidential plenary, which kicks off the week-long gathering Sunday, April 22, at 4:30 P.M., will focus on a problem that the field of chemistry shares with other disciplines: the supply of scientists for the 21st century. To help those young people who have chosen to go into science, the Younger Chemists Committee will sponsor two symposia on careers in chemistry. The first, to be held Monday, April 23, at 9:00 A.M., will emphasize careers in waste management. The second meeting, scheduled for Monday afternoon at 1:00 P.M., will compare and contrast jobs in industry and academia. On the purely scientific side, several symposia sponsored by various divisions of ACS have a strong emphasis on biotechnology. From Wednesday to Friday, the Division of Agrochemicals will sponsor a symposium on risk assessment in biotechnology. Scientists will debate the risk of releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment, as well as the public's perceptions of biotechnology. A symposium that is expected to draw much interest is one on chromatography and separation science, with an emphasis on the hot field of biological separations. Five technical sessions scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will focus on chromatography, protein chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, large-scale and preparative electrophoresis, and electrochromatography (a separation technique that combines electrophoresis with liquid chromatography). A unique aspect of the separations symposium is that not all of its participants will have the opportunity to walk along Boston's Freedom Trail - because they won't be in Boston at all. The ACS has selected the symposium to be telecon-ferenced to subscribers throughout the United States. According to teleconference coordinator Michele Gandy, it was chosen for telecon-ferencing because of the large number of researchers interested in the field of separations. As of late last month, four organizations had signed up for at least one of the half-day sessions, receiving a set of slides that they can view in their labs while the speaker in Boston delivers his or her talk. With a telephone hook-up, each subscriber, paying $600 per session, can also participate in the question-and-answer discussion period that follows each presentation. Gandy says teleconferencing will save the subscribers money. "If you figure what it would cost to send one of your staff to a national meeting . . . registration, housing, food, transportation . . . $600 per half-day session saves time and money." Gandy adds that with this service, staff scientists don't have to spend time away from their companies, labs, or universities, while "they can still interact with top people in the field." As for society business, ACS council members will decide which, if any, of three proposed membership dues structures to adopt (The Scientist, Sept. 4, 1989, page 1). The first package calls for a 50 percent discount on membership fees the first three years, a 25 percent discount the fourth and fifth years, and no discount thereafter. The second structure, which also proposes discounts, starts with a 50 percent discount the first year that then is reduced by 10 percent each subsequent year. The third proposal seeks a dues structure based on the income level of each member.

Strong Biotech Focus To Mark Next Week's ACS Meeting

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