For a week in March, the permanent home of Disneyland, world-famous theme parks, Los Angeles Angels baseball, and other attractions becomes the world capital of science as more than 13,000 scientists and others gather here for the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society, and the sessions in balmy Anaheim — held during the International Year of Chemistry — will feature nearly 9,500 presentations that span science’s bounds, from astronomy to zoology.

Press registration for onsite coverage of the meeting is open. A press badge will admit reporters to all of the technical sessions, the exhibitions, and the ACS Office of Public Affairs’ press center in the Anaheim Convention and Exhibition Center. It will include a press conference studio and a news media workroom fully staffed to assist in arranging interviews. The press center will have wireless Internet access, telephones, computers, photocopy and fax services, and refreshments.

With travel budgets limited and many journalists covering scientific meetings from their home bases, public affairs will provide all the essentials for off-site coverage. Embargoed copies of press releases, for instance, will be available in advance of the meeting, along with a press conference schedule and instructions for joining the briefings over the Internet in ACS’ popular “Live Chat” format. Staff also will be available to help arrange interviews with scientists making presentations.

The meeting will offer print, broadcast and online journalists a rich assortment of spot news and feature possibilities. The topics include food and nutrition, medicine, health, energy, the environment and other fields where chemistry plays a central role. Hundreds of those presentations will connect with the meeting’s theme, “The Chemistry of Natural Resources.” Print and online coverage from ACS National Meetings typically reaches a potential global audience of more than 2 billion people — a testament to the newsworthy content of these scientific extravaganzas.