Happy Retirement to Carol Venanzi of the NJIT Chemistry Department

 There was a retirement party today for Carol Venanzi seen above with yours truly.  She was a dedicated researcher and teacher in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science for over 30 years.  She was one of the first people I met when I came to NJIT in 1992.  It was my pleasure to provide library services to her for all those years.  Below is a partial list of her publications:

Pandit, D., Fiorentino, A., Bindra, S., Venanzi, C.A.

Singular value decomposition analysis of the torsional angles of dopamine reuptake inhibitor GBR 12909 analogs: Effect of force field and charges

(2011) Journal of Molecular Modeling, 17 (6), pp. 1343-1351.

Pandit, D., Roosma, W., Misra, M., Gilbert, K.M., Skawinski, W.J., Venanzi, C.A.

Conformational analysis of piperazine and piperidine analogs of GBR 12909: Stochastic approach to evaluating the effects of force fields and solvent

(2011) Journal of Molecular Modeling, 17 (1), pp. 181-200. Cited 1 time.

Misra, M., Shi, Q., Ye, X., Gruszecka-Kowalik, E., Bu, W., Liu, Z., Schweri, M.M., Deutsch, H.M., Venanzi, C.A.

Quantitative structure-activity relationship studies of threo-methylphenidate analogs

(2010) Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, 18 (20), pp. 7221-7238. Cited 4 times.

Banerjee, A., Misra, M., Pai, D., Shih, L.-Y., Woodley, R., Lu, X.-J., Srinivasan, A.R., Olson, W.K., Davé, R.N., Venanzi, C.A.

Feature extraction using molecular planes for fuzzy relational clustering of a flexible dopamine reuptake inhibitor

(2007) Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 47 (6), pp. 2216-2227. Cited 4 times.

Gilbert, K.M., Boos, T.L., Dersch, C.M., Greiner, E., Jacobson, A.E., Lewis, D., Matecka, D., Prisinzano, T.E., Zhang, Y., Rothman, R.B., Rice, K.C., Venanzi, C.A.

DAT/SERT selectivity of flexible GBR 12909 analogs modeled using 3D-QSAR methods

(2007) Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, 15 (2), pp. 1146-1159. Cited 8 times.

Fiorentino, A., Pandit, D., Gilbert, K.M., Misra, M., Dios, R., Venanzi, C.A.

Singular value decomposition of torsional angles of analogs of the dopamine reuptake inhibitor GBR 12909

(2006) Journal of Computational Chemistry, 27 (5), pp. 609-620. Cited 6 times.

Gilbert, K.M., Venanzi, C.A.

Hierarchical clustering analysis of flexible GBR 12909 dialkyl piperazine and piperidine analogs

(2006) Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, 20 (4), pp. 209-225. Cited 7 times.

Misra, M., Banerjee, A., Davé, R.N., Venanzi, C.A.

Novel feature extraction technique for fuzzy relational clustering of a flexible dopamine reuptake inhibitor

(2005) Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 45 (3), pp. 610-623. Cited 8 times.

Gilbert, K.M., Skawinski, W.J., Misra, M., Paris, K.A., Naik, N.H., Buono, R.A., Deutsch, H.M., Venanzi, C.A.

Conformational analysis of methylphenidate: Comparison of molecular orbital and molecular mechanics methods

(2004) Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, 18 (11), pp. 719-738. Cited 12 times.

Banerjee, A., Venanzi, C.A., Misra, M., Davé, R.N.

Fuzzy clustering in drug design: Application to cocaine abuse

(2004) Annual Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society - NAFIPS, 1, pp. 308-313. Cited 2 time

Remembering Marino Xanthos

Yesterday there was a tribute at NJIT for Dr. Marino Xanthos who passed away in June of this year.  He was a renowned leader in polymer engineering and science research and was recognized with a number of NJIT and national awards.  There were several introductory remarks made by the President, Provost, administrators and faculty.  They spoke of his accomplishments as a researcher, teacher and Associate Provost of Graduate Studies at Stevens Institute of Technology and at NJIT.  Dr. Costas Gogos, a friend and colleague of Marino for many years gave a detailed account of his professional and family life.

As liaison to the Department of Chemical Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering I was his librarian.  It was always my pleasure to serve him and greet him when I saw him on campus.  I should conclude by listing just a few of his publications.

Xanthos, M. (2005). Functional fillers for plastics. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.

 Properties of aspirin modified enteric polymer prepared by hot-melt mixing
 By Chomcharn, Nonjaros; Xanthos, Marino
From International Journal of Pharmaceutics (Amsterdam, Netherlands) (2013), 450(1-2), 259-267. Language: English, Database: CAPLUS, DOI:10.1016/j.ijpharm.2013.04.036
 

 Recycling of the #5 Polymer
By Xanthos, Marino
From Science (Washington, DC, United States) (2012), 337(6095), 700-702. Language: English, Database: CAPLUS, DOI:10.1126/science.1221806
 
 Drug release characteristics from nanoclay hybrids and their dispersions in organic polymers
By Ha, Jin Uk; Xanthos, Marino
From International Journal of Pharmaceutics (2011), 414(1-2), 321-331. Language: English, Database: CAPLUS, DOI:10.1016/j.ijpharm.2011.05.028  


 Sequential modification of cationic and anionic nanoclays with ionic liquids
By Ha, Jin Uk; Xanthos, Marino
From Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews (2011), 4(2), 103-107. Language: English, Database: CAPLUS, DOI:10.1080/17518253.2010.509111

Information Literacy on the Fly in 20 Minutes Twice

I always like it when a professor contacts me in advance and arranges for a class on a specific topic.  I have a standard plan that I use for all of my classes, but then at the end I cover the specific assignment.  Yesterday I received a frantic e-mail from a professor teaching two sections of a biophysics course.  He assigned students to find a paper discussing mutations, cancer or evolution that showed graphs and tables.  He reported that students were having problems finding this.  He asked me to visit these classes on very short notice.

It was the Ebsco Discover Service to the rescue.  I showed them how to do the search (mutations) and (statistical study).  I showed them how to limit to full text articles that are available in our library.  At that point they had to look at the articles in PDF to find if the article had what they needed.  I did this in 20 minutes.  The professor seemed to be satisfied.  As usually I advised the students to come to the reference desk if they need further assistance.

Google Wins Again in a Science/Engineering Library

It is somewhat exasperating when you give a lecture to science/engineering students about the use of the primary journal literature and how to search bibliographic databases to find papers on a topic and then find out that they just report web sites.  They seem to love searching Google and just don't want to apply their information seeking skills to searching library databases.  For many years I have taught to a sophomore level class in environmental engineering who are assigned a descriptive paper. Below are the topics that were assigned this semester.  I do feel that most of them were too broad and that in the future a more specific topic be given which would compel students to find journal articles.

Group #          Topic for Paper

1                      Hydroelectric Energy - what the technology is, how it is used, the costs, the problems/benefits with the technology and present a real-world case study.

2                      Electromagnetic Radiation from Mobile Phones - source, nature of the problem, environmental/health implications and ways to address the situation.

3                      Highway Traffic Noise Barriers - what they are, how they are constructed, costs, and the environmental benefit.

4                      Collapse of the World Trade Center Buildings - nature of the environmental problem, health implications and ways that the Government is addressing the problem.

5                      Greenhouse Gas Emissions - source, nature of the problem, environmental/health implications and ways to address the situation.

6                      Bioremediation – what the technology is, how it is used, the costs, the problems/benefits with the technology and present a real-world case study.

7                      Wind Energy - what the technology is, how it is used, the costs, the problems/benefits with the technology and present a real-world case study.

8                      Solar Energy - what the technology is, how it is used, the costs, the problems/benefits with the technology and present a real-world case study.

9                      Geothermal Energy - what the technology is, how it is used, the costs, the problems/benefits with the technology and present a real-world case study.

10                    Illegal Selling/Use of Pesticides - nature of the problem, explanation of pesticides and pesticide  regulations, environmental/health implications and ways to address the situation.

Pratt Institute Revisited 2013

From 1979-1982 I worked as a library information scientist at Schering Corporation in Bloomfield, NJ while I pursued a masters degree in library and information science at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  Today I visited Pratt as I needed to consult with Selenay Aytac, my collaborator on a research project.  She is a librarian at LIU Post, but also teaches as an adjunct at Pratt.

Certainly so much has changed in 31 years.  Schering Corporation no longer exists as it was taken over by Merck a few years ago.  The Brooklyn campus still exists, but the library school moved to a building on 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.  Certainly the profession has changed so much in that time frame.  Back in 1982 nobody even percieved of the internet.  I think almost everything that I learned back then is now obsolete.  All of the faculty who was there at that time have retired.  We searched Dialog using 300 baud modems.  It was nice to see their facility today.

The Federal Government Shutdown and Library Services

Tomorrow I will be teaching a class on how to find physical and thermodynamic properties of chemical substances.  One of the resources that I demonstrate is the NIST Webbook.  To my dismay I found out that this site is not working due to the federal government shutdown.  Today a student approached me with an environmental question.  To my surprise the EPA's main website was functioning.

Go figure.

The Next METRO Science Librarians SIG meeting will be Monday November 4

The next meeting of the METRO Science Librarians SIG will take place on Monday November 4 at 1:30 PM at METRO Headquarters at 57 East 11^th Street – 4^th floor in Manhattan.  The Program will be:

How to Find Chemical Information from Scifinder and other Sources.  The speaker will be Daniel Reasoner from Chemical Abstracts Service.  This session is suited for science and medical librarians without an educational background in chemistry.

Visit http://metro.org/events/426/ for more information and registration.

For this meeting there will be a nominal $5.00 registration fee that may be paid in advance or at the door.

For further information please contact:

Bruce Slutsky

Bruce.Slutsky@njit.edu