Volume 37, Issue 2

The organizing committee is pleased to welcome scientists from around the world to the 45th IUPAC World Chemistry Congress and 48th IUPAC General Assembly (IUPAC-2015), which will be held 9-14 August 2015 in Busan, Korea. IUPAC-2015 will provide the appropriate forum to promote innovation in chemistry and related fields all over the world.

On the cold, rainy night of 5 December 2014, the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) opened its latest exhibit, Books of Secrets: Writing and Reading Alchemy . Nearly 200 visitors braved the weather to see a selection of alchemical manuscripts, chosen primarily from a large collection CHF acquired in 2013, along with rarely seen alchemical paintings from CHF’s extensive fine-art collections.

Names are essential to data manipulation and data interpretation. IUPAC standardizes the names that chemists use in their scholarly works, which it publishes as a suite of terminology, nomenclature and ontology, the IUPAC colour books. Currently, machine-accessible representations of these publications are not available on the Web. In this article, we argue the case for Web-based, machine-accessible representations of IUPAC publications.

For chemists and chemistry students around the world, “IUPAC” is synonymous with “nomenclature” – especially the nomenclature of organic chemistry. Generations of chemists have learned – sometimes grudgingly – to read and write systematic names for organic compounds using guidelines codified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. [1,2,3] The prefixes, suffixes, numbers, and parentheses of IUPAC names put molecules in order: individually, by expressing the network of atoms and bonds that constitutes the structure of an organic compound, and collectively, by situating each compound among the tens of millions of known organic chemical substances. IUPAC names carry this order out of chemical journals and into such sites as patent records, customs lists, and environmental regulatory databases.

At its General Assembly in Busan, Korea, on Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 August 2015, the IUPAC Council will be asked to elect a Vice President, a Secretary General, a Treasurer, and members of the Bureau to fulfill the vacancies created by retiring members. IUPAC National Adhering Organizations are invited to submit nominations no later than 12 June 2015.

On 20 May 2015, World Metrology Day will join the 2015 International Year Light (iyl2015.org), with day-long celebrations on the theme of Measurements and Light.

Heide Hackmann, a social scientist with extensive experience running international research organizations, will be Executive Director of the International Council for Science (ICSU) Secretariat from March 2015. Lucilla Spini, a biological anthropologist with experience in international science coordination, will take on the newly created role of Head of Science Programmes in early January.

Zafra M. Lerman, creator and advocate for the Biennial Malta Conferences, which promote international scientific cooperation and diplomacy by convening scientists from 15 Middle Eastern nations, has been chosen by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to receive the 2014 Award for Science Diplomacy.

On 1 December 2014, the opening day of the Nineteenth Session of the Conference of the States Parties of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the headquaters of the OPCW in The Hague, Dr. Robert Mathews (Australia) and the Finnish Institute for the Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (VERIFIN) were jointly presented with the inaugural OPCW-The Hague Award.

The Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division (Division I) together with the Committee on Chemistry Education are pleased to announce the 2015 Physical Chemistry Cartoon Competition. This year’s theme is “Light and Chemistry”, in recognition of the UN’s International Year of Light, and entries should reflect this theme.

The IUPAC Secretariat office has been located in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) since May 1997, following its relocation from Oxford, England after 29 years. The office was housed in a small building right in the center of RTP, which is one of the most prominent high-technology research and development centers in the USA, centrally located near major universities, including Duke University in Durham, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University at Raleigh.

The October 2014 issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry includes several papers arising from an IUPAC project on immunochemistry that describe interactions between molecules of the immune system and their ligands [1,2] and consider how a knowledge of this chemistry is furthering the development of both the analytical applications of immune-based sensors [3], and of better therapies for a variety of human medical conditions [4]. Each paper is structured to provide some historical context, followed by a critical presentation of our current perspective on the role chemistry is playing in the basic understanding of the immune system and its potential for exploitation.