http://live.watchmactv.com/ represents an interesting "fusion" cooking of
Internet technologies.
At the site, one can subscribe via RSS to videofeeds from the site, encoded in
the new h.264 codec. A 2 minute download using broadband can produce
2-3 minutes of video at a very good image size (640 by 480). All this
it is presumed will be "squirtable" into an iPod more or less automatically.
It seems to have some interesting pedagogic potential. Combined with eg
the CMLRSS way of entraining molecules in a feed, and the potential of including
RDF information (RDF is a way of associating formal information about
the purpose of a link) it seems the scope for re-inventing chemical publishing
continues unabated. I suppose the ultimate incarnation is that one's iPod
could contain in effect a personalised issue of a chemical journal, but enhanced
with eg molecule coordinates and other chemical information, in association with
other articles, audio, video, etc etc.
And just to complete the full range of geekery, http://www.fingergear.com/
would allow all of this to be accessed only if the appropriate biometric
identification is supplied!
--
Henry Rzepa.
+44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax); rzepahs(a)mac.com (iChat)
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
(Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email.
If expected reply not received, please phone/fax).
Friends and Colleagues,
I have the pleasure of announcing a new web site focused on Green Chemistry --
The St. Olaf College/EPA Green Chemistry Assistant http://fusion.stolaf.edu/gca
The Green Chemistry Assistant is more than just a web site -- it is a fully
functional web application. The overall objective of the site is to help you
analyze chemical processes that you are interested in in terms of Green
Chemistry. But you will find, if you explore a little, that the Green Chemistry
Assistant is useful far beyond the typical confines of that field.
With this web site you can:
* do simple green chemistry calculations such as atom economy, theoretical
yield, relative excess, experimental atom economy, process mass efficiency, and
E-factor.
* better organize the "prelaboratory" work associated with carrying out chemical
reactions in the student or research laboratory,
* graphically analyze a chemical process in terms of a variety of "greenness"
measures,
* consider the health and environmental hazards associated with a chemical process,
* generate "Green Process Analysis Reports" that summarize a process in terms of
inputs, outputs, and safety, and
* save your work by sending the data and report to yourself or others via email.
The Green Chemistry Assistant is primarily geared toward students:
* General chemistry students can use this site to learn about basic green
chemistry calculations such as atom economy, limiting reactant, theoretical
yield, and percent yield.
* Organic chemistry students can use this site to prepare "prelab" reports that
summarize the number of moles and mass of reactants and products and take into
account hazards.
* Advanced chemistry students will find this site helpful for obtaining CAS
registry numbers as well as physical and safety information relating to over
68,000 compounds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Green Chemistry
Database.
While designed primarily for students, we hope that this web application will be
an important contribution to both the Green Chemistry and the
synthesis/pharmaceutical communities.
Of course, we'll be interested in hearing from anyone for whom the site does not
behave properly. We believe it is well tested on Windows machines using a
variety of browsers; due to the complexity of browser/operating system
combinations on Macintoshes, we are less confident that it will work entirely
properly on those systems, but we encourage you to try it out and tell us what
needs fixing.
Enjoy!
Bob Hanson
--
Robert M. Hanson, hansonr(a)stolaf.edu, 507-646-3107
Professor of Chemistry, St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Ave., Northfield, MN 55057
mailto:hansonr@stolaf.edu http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr