WELCOME
TO THE AEROSOL SOCIETY’S NEWSLETTER
Welcome
Welcome
to the December 2010 edition of the Aerosol Society’s occasional
newsletter. We hope that you enjoy reading the articles, catching up on
members’ news and finding out about the latest aerosol science conferences
and events.
Events
DDL21 – Drug Delivery to the
Lungs Conference
8th
– 10th December 2010
19th
April 2011
NanoFormulation2011
Conference
26th
June – 1st July 2011
4th
– 9th September 2011
Awards
The
aerosol society sponsors a number of educational training and student
awards. The CN Davies award is currently open for applicants from new
graduates until 31st March 2011. For further information on this and other
awards please refer to the website.
Society
News
We
have lots of news in this issue so here is a quick summary of the items
you can find below: Drug
Delivery to the Lungs is Europe’s premier conference and exhibition
dedicated to pulmonary and nasal drug delivery and is again being held at
the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. For 2010, there are 70
Exhibitors and 430 delegates attending as well as speakers from UK,
Europe, America, Canada and Australia. For
further details please go to www.ddl-conference.org.uk EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING Members
of The Aerosol Society are invited to remain for a short meeting after the
morning DDL session to elect new members to The Aerosol Society Committee
The
Meeting will take no longer than 10 – 15 minutes Alan
Cussens, one of the originators, a long serving committee member and
Honorary Life Member of the Aerosol Society, died after a short illness on
the 14th of October 2010. Alan
graduated in physics following National Service in the RAF. His first job
was with the Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell where he worked in teams
running the large and complex experimental rigs built to provide the data
for early reactor design. However, after a fairly short time there he
decided that his talents could probably be more profitably employed in the
commercial sector and he took a job selling fluid dynamic measuring
equipment, in the UK, for a Danish company. Over the next few years he
built up an extensive knowledge of the field and a wide circle of contacts
in universities and research institutes and then in 1973 he took the bold
step of moving out of employment to set up his own distribution business.
Bristol Industrial Research Associates Ltd (BIRAL) began by selling fluid
dynamic instruments, where Alan had a very good knowledge of the market,
but its major business soon became instruments for airborne particle
characterisation and so began his association with the aerosol research
community. In
1986 a group of those who were involved in aerosol research in the UK and
Ireland held a meeting to discuss forming a society to promote the science
in both countries. Alan attended this inaugural meeting and was elected as
a member of the first executive committee. He remained a committee member
with a number of executive roles, including General Secretary, for the
maximum term of ten years. Such was the value of his expertise that after
a very short break he returned and was either a member or seconded to the
committee until 2009. Perhaps Alan’s greatest contribution to the Society
was in initiating the running of major conferences. He took a leading role
in organising the first European Conference that the Society hosted in
Oxford in 1992 and the International Aerosol Conference in Edinburgh in
1998. He also had a major supporting role in the European Conference held
in Dublin in 2000. Without Alan’s business and financial expertise, the
running of large conferences when the resources of the Society were very
small would have been a much riskier undertaking. His major contribution
to the Society was recognised by the awarding of Honorary Life Membership
at the International Conference in 1998. Alan
had a very wide range of interests outside of work, which he pursued
energetically, particularly after he retired from the day to day running
of the Company. He had a considerable knowledge of literature and music
and was a keen traveller with a lively interest in the people and culture
of the countries he visited. He was also someone with a strong social
conscience who contributed significant time and effort to a number of
charitable causes and who enjoyed the wide range of personal contacts this
brought him. He will be greatly missed, of course by his family and
friends, but also by all those who knew him through his many and varied
activities. With
more than 1300 delegates this IAC was easily the largest to date. This is
hugely encouraging in terms of the continually growing interest in aerosol
science but makes the organisation of such conferences increasingly
difficult. The diversity of the field is clearly illustrated by the fact
that, including special sessions, there were up to eight parallel sessions
at any one time. These were further enhanced by the very large number of
posters that, combined with the platform sessions, gave a comprehensive
picture of the range of research being carried out world-wide. However,
the numbers meant that it was only possible for an individual to cover a
small proportion of the subject areas in the course of the conference. Preparations
are well underway for the European Aerosol Conference to be held in
Manchester, 4th – 9th September 2011. The website is up and running and has
details of important dates for your diary, including the abstract
submission deadline – 15th February 2011. You can download a template for
abstracts here. Please
let us know of any news items related to members of the Aerosol Society
that you would like to share with the rest of the
society.
- Drug Delivery to the Lungs 21
-
Extraordinary General Meeting
- Death of founding member Alan
Cussens
- Report from the International Aerosol Conference
-
European Aerosol Conference 2011
Drug Delivery to the Lungs 21, 8th – 10th December 2010
Extraordinary General Meeting
of
THE
AEROSOL SOCIETY
on
THURSDAY 9TH
DECEMBER
at
12.30PM
in
THE PENTLAND THEATRE, EICC,
EDINBURGH
Death of founding member Alan Cussens
The International Aerosol Conference 2010
Given
the scope of the conference everyone’s highlights will be different but
some things did seem to stand out. Perhaps the foremost aspect was
illustrated by the opening plenary on “Aerosols from Biomass Burning”. The
urgent requirement for the world to reduce reliance on fossil fuels brings
with it new potential problems from particulate pollutants and it was
encouraging to hear that numerous research groups are devoting effort to
both anticipate and address these problems. The closely related field of
climate change modelling continues to grow with the increasing awareness
that the dynamics of the atmospheric aerosol is a major factor in
predicting the progress of climate change.
It
is quite rare for aerosol science to figure prominently in the news but
the past year was an exception with the ash cloud from the
Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland causing havoc in European airspace. A
special session on the efforts of a number of groups to monitor the cloud
proved to be very popular indeed.
The
ash cloud is clearly an exception but otherwise the major focus of
measurement and instrument development remains in the nanometre size range
with interesting developments in extending the reliable measurement range
of instruments to single nanometre sizes. The use of nanoparticles in the
construction of micro-engineered surfaces and structures was the subject
of an excellent plenary lecture by Professor Mansoo Choi, which
illustrated many exciting developments in this area.
The
increasing importance of bioaerosols was illustrated with two special
sessions on characterisation and field measurement issues. These
highlighted the growing awareness of the importance of aerosols in disease
transmission and requirement for specialised tools for discrimination and
measurement.
The
overall picture brought back from the conference was of a field of science
and technology that is of growing importance in very diverse areas. These
extend from climate modelling to construction of complex micro-engineered
surface and from novel forms of power generation to disease transmission.
We can only speculate as to what will be new in 2014.
Aerosols
in the News
NASA’s
Earth Observatory recently updated its fact
sheet on the global impact of aerosol particles. Their website also
includes a map
of global PM2.5 concentrations, following a paper
earlier in the year from Dalhousie University that combined satellite
imagery and model output. Recent
research on secondary organic aerosols suggests that the assumption that
they are liquid may not be appropriate. The paper
in Nature describes experiments that measured the degree of bounce in an
aerosol impactor. The work has implications for the understanding of SOA
processes.
A
recent discovery
has found that gold nanoparticles can induce luminescence in leaves. When
exposed to short wavelengths the gold nanoparticles emit blue-green light
that in turn causes the chloroplasts to emit red light. The researchers in
Taiwan suggest it could even open up the possibility of using trees as
streetlights. Please
let us know if you have any stories you would like us to feature. We would
also consider including links to academic job opportunities relevant to
aerosol science.
Bioweapons
pioneer, William Patrick, died on 1st October 2010. His intriguing career
oversaw the dismantling of the US Army’s biological warfare laboratories
and their renewed focus on defence against bio-aerosol attack. The Wall
Street Journal gives a fascinating insight
into this unusual aspect of aerosol science.
CONTACT
US
Secretary
Sheila Coates, The Aerosol Society, PO Box 34, Portishead, North Somerset,
BS20 7FE,
Tel: 01275 849019, Fax: 01275 844877, www.aerosol-soc.org.uk, email: admin@aerosol-soc.org.uk