Tomorrow is the national viewing of our products

Everyone: I have the distinct pleasure to announce that tomorrow we officially unveil the BioSUCCEED product and invite all interested parties to participate. I will try to record the lecture (it will be 20 minutes) on facebook, invite folks to participate in our survey, showcase our course materials, tell them about the potential seminar next year in Chem. Ed. on this topic (Renewable Materials), indicate the possibility of a text book on BioSUCCEED, invite participation on the blog, e-mail questions, give me testimonials on the value of the materials, give them my cards, give them the presentation materials, and encourage them to have friends visit our materials. I hope that we can make a difference in peoples' lives!

Here in San Francisco

Yayyyyyy, I have been here in San Francisco for two days and was only able to get on the internet now! Apparently, there is NO wireless here at the Hilton SF and the ethernet cable did NOT work. So I have missed blogging since I arrived. Anyway, I was able to involve BioSUCCEED in the CELL Division Board as a partner for their main activities, i.e., in promoting their themes of sustainability (this year's ACS Conference theme) and renewability (next years). I think that I will organize a session on BioSUCCEED for next year's CHEM ED Division to promote the concepts as well as we can with as much participation as possible. I have written a professor who is the organizer for our Symposium (Green Chemistry, Sustainability, and Education: Collaborative Projects and Interdisciplinary Outcomes) to find out how I can set one up. I think it will be great fun! I set up a blog on ACS' blog site, but I am not sure if it will get much traffic. We will see! However, I think ACS will be a great avenue to help me spread more widely our net of BioSUCCEED and catch more people.

I was enthralled that we may be able to write a book on the topical matter. Sarah at Wiley & Sons will likely help us do it. It will consist of 7 chapters on the 7 modules that we have in our course. I think that it will definitely be a classic for this area of biomass & bionergy. Let's see how it turns out!

Our BioSUCCEED presentation

To our Friends,

I have completed our BioSUCCEED presentation and will be posting it soon on our Facebook site. I am very happy, too, that we will be able to demonstrate a new technology in learning that uses "Clickers," or hand-held devices that allow anonymous audience participation in a series of questions. I am looking forward to showing them off! However, wow, there are a lot to port with me to San Francisco! I will Dr. Rojas' projector, the clickers, my laptop, and my clothes. Phew...I will need to put it on the plane probably!!!

Okay, I will sign off until I arrive in San Francisco!

Group Meeting Laboratory of Soft Materials & Green Chemistry

Today we discussed the importance of safe practices when learning in the laboratory. Always wear your safety goggles whenever you are in the lab. Promote a culture of safety and responsibility so that whenever a problem happens, you are ready! Also, we discussed the value of an SEC-MALLS setup and the intricacies of the MALLS. It was a very good session; we focused on a number of important items that we had not touched upon before with respect to analyzing molecular masses, radii of gyration, and second virial coefficients.

Multi-Angle Laser Light Scattering (MALLS)

Today we found out that the scintillation vial method for the MALLS is becoming a reality. We are getting closer and closer to the final software control of the instrument. The hardware is working great, we just need to calibrate the MALLS and the Wyatt Optilab DSP Interferometric RI instrument. I am hopeful that CARLOS & LAURA will be able to set these up. Given all of the demands on my time, I can't spend much more time on it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that these instruments are set up. This will be an ideal way to obtain polymer molecular weight data for our educational work. We will be able to instruct not only graduate students, but undergraduates, and high school students (Environmentees). These days it will be important to characterize the materials that we are working with and it will be simple enough to do that once CARLOS & LAURA set it up...

The ACS MEETING IS FAST APPROACHING!

We have about 2 weeks before the Conference begins and I am getting ready with presentations and CELL DIVISION activities. I am hopeful that we can take a lot of photos and post them on our facebook site. I am very excited to be going to San Francisco for the 239th ACS Meeting. It is truly historic to think that this meeting is devoted to SUSTAINABILITY! A topic right up our alley!

www.biosucceed.com

We have a domain name that has been inactive for the last couple of years while we trying to fill our site with content. We are nearly there! So it is time now to point that wonderful, sweet domain name to it. We are writing articles and providing presentations that we hope will take advantage of that name. My colleagues at UT will help in making the .com site active by pointing it to our content at www.ncsu.edu/biosucceed. I am thrilled to know that will be happening and that we will have a really wonderful site on which to build for the future. This site will help us in promoting this burgeoning field of renewables for at least our lifetimes. It will serve us in our extension, outreach, distance ed., new course development, and broader impacts. It will help us attract funding, collaborate with people, and broadcast our mission to the world. I am very excited!

BioSUCCEED is now on Facebook!

FACEBOOK NETWORKING

Given the overwhelming success of Facebook in our lives, I decided to start a Group on Facebook that will serve as a forum for all interested in the emerging areas of bioenergy & biomass. It will primarily be used as a discussion board, event calendar, and random news/thoughts network. We can direct people to the surveys, coursework, papers, and other associated media produced from BioSUCCEED. I hope that we can have a number of "Friends" join us! You can find the Group at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=396008630920

Please come join the Group if you have any interest in thesse burgeoning science & engineering arenas.

Thanks!