ACS Mobile

Credit: Linda Wang/C&EN

ACS has released an app that streams new ACS graphical abstracts to your iphone. Unfortunately you have to pay $2.99 for the app. A free alternative I wrote can be found at the mobile site for ChemFeeds.

The nice thing about my version is it works for any mobile device that gets internet and not just iphones. It also covers RSC and Elsevier journals in addition to ACS. You can also email article links to yourself for later reading. Admittedly the ACS version looks sleek, but ipod only apps are worthless for us Android users.

Link to C&EN’s ACS Mobile coverage: ACS Publications Go Mobile

Link to ChemFeeds Mobile: http://m.chemfeeds.com/

Note: If you are not a member of the smart phone community yet, you can still get your graphical abstracts fix at the regular ChemFeeds website: http://www.chemfeeds.com/

Mitch

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Online Textbooks: ChemWiki Part 1

I remember buying my first O-chem books back when I was attending DVC (Diablo Valley College), a not-so-little community college here in the Bay Area. At first I checked the bookstore and lost my lunch when I saw the price of the new books. The text was $215, the lab manual was another $70, and the solutions manual was $100. Unfortunately, a new edition had been released that year, so even though the professor said that we could use older editions, many of the problem sets wouldn’t match up, so we’d have to get the problems from our classmates. In the end, the cheapest and most convenient route was to go online and buy the international editions. Even after extending the method to all my other classes, I still paid almost $500 for books that semester. Now I attended DVC before California went belly-up, so my classes were still a great bargain at $18 a unit. Since I usually took ~19 units, my total tuition cost was around $350 a semester. The cost of the books were actually greater than my cost of tuition. The sad thing is, this wasn’t an unusual case. Luckily this wasn’t too much of a hardship for me; I had a job on campus and money saved up. However, I knew a lot of students for whom the beginning of the semester meant not eating lunch in order to save up gas money.

Now students have probably been complaining about textbooks since time immemorial. Aristotle probably complained that his scribe made spelling mistakes in his copy of The Republic. Most of the time our bellyaching is justified. Not only do textbooks cost a lot, but there is often a gross amount of errors in them. Everyone knows that the first time you find a caption or answer wrong, it makes the rest of the book suspect. Also, these errors give the publishers a reason to release a next edition…that never seems to fix even half of the errors. However, they do switch around problem numbers, add a few pages of new content, and possibly even rearrange chapters. So now the professors lesson and homework plan, that goes by chapter numbers, page numbers, and problem numbers, is moot. And the student is effectively forced to buy the new edition (price “adjusted for inflation”) or suffer some inconveniences. Most choose to simply buy the new edition since tracking down the old one can be difficult and you have to be quick. Also, sometimes bookstores won’t buy back the old edition so if you had it, and an edition switch occurred before you finished your course track, you are up the creek.

Some of these issues can be addressed with online textbooks. The idea of supplementing physical texts with online modules has been around and implemented by publishers for many years. However, I’ve yet to see a good entirely online chemistry textbook. The advantages of online texts are of many: accessible anywhere you get 3G or Wi-Fi and have your mobile device, interactive learning capabilities, easy distribution, instant update/revision, and low cost publishing (server fees). Of course this won’t necessarily result the publisher make more money, but at 4 billion (yea, you read that correctly, billion) dollars a year, the industry doesn’t really need much help.

The student, however, does. We need these online textbooks, not just to save our wallet, but also to help prevent being stuck with an expensive and lousy text for a year that does a poor job of explaining the material. That expensive O-Chem book I bought really was terrible and it forced my professor to do a lot of extra work in teaching us not to follow the book’s direction of simply memorizing 500 reactions, but to see the patterns and the underlying physical explanations. In the end, we learned from his powerpoints and I paid $215 for a glorified reference book.

Well, some people are pioneering an effort to create an “Open Access Textbook”. In a perfect example of “chem 2.0″, UC Davis Professor Delmar Larsen is the project director of the ChemWiki, a truly free online textbook written by everyone, for everyone. In an absolutely Herculean effort, the developers and Larsen (Mary Obrien, Ron Rusay, Brent Krueger, Michelle McCombs) are trying to create a free and complete, as in covering all branches, chemistry textbook using a community of students, faculty, and outside experts from around the world. Of course they aren’t there yet, and there is still a long way to go but hey, their text literally gets better everyday.

Now I know you probably have a lot of questions: what about correctness and plagiarism? Could such a thing ever be considered an Authority? What do the publishers say? Does anyone actually use the thing? Well, it just so happened that a couple of weeks ago, I was at Davis for the Borge fellowship visitation and I had a chance to talk with professor Larsen who agreed to answer some of these questions for me. In a couple of days, I’ll post the interview here. For now, I suggest you go and check out http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/ and browse not just through the core, but the wikitexts and community as well.

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Smart companies do smart things: Materia has a blog

So it’s not like anyone NEEDS encouragement to think about using olefin metathesis in their chemistry, but in case you wanted to talk to real experts, Materia (the company founded by Grubbs et al. to commercialize metathesis) has recently opened a blog called All Things Metathesis.

It’s got some literature reviews and stuff, but most helpful for chemists is the best practices category, where they explore how to plan your metathesis reactions and how best to purify them. So very 2003 to say this, but blogging is a great medium for businesses to communicate with their customers. This is a really nice example. They have comments, so you can even talk to metathesis experts!

So how long before there’s an Ask Dr. Metathesis column, where frustrated grad students write in with their late-night isomerization angst?

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Web 2.0: In the Classroom?

I went to a workshop a while ago under the title of Teaching During Budgetary Crises.  Among the topics covered were alternative teaching methods and free or inexpensive methods of interacting with your students other than traditional the 50 minute lecture.

We were given a list of a variety of web 2.0 platforms and suggested ways to use them in a classroom setting.  The workshop participants spanned a variety of departments across the university, so as I glance through the list, I can see how some platforms would lend themselves to use in certain departments, while others might make more sense for the physical sciences.

Here’s the list we were given, with links to information about the site.  Have any of you seen any of these technologies used in a classroom or seminar setting?  If so, how were they implemented?  Were they successful?  Would you have done it differently?

I think I could see myself using Jing as a resource to walk through out-of-class examples of more complex or complicated synthesis problems and mechanisms.  Jing is a screen-capture technology that allows you to upload video of your onscreen actions.  I could propose a synthesis problem, jump to my slides covering the needed concepts, and jump to ChemDraw to illustrate my thought process and the correct answer.

Times and technology are certainly changing before our eyes.  Are educators going to stick with the traditional lecture model, or are we going to move with the trends to bring content to students in new and exciting ways?  Or, if we do move with the trends, are we going to end up sacrificing quality to increase curb appeal?

Tools for Interactive Questioning

• Audience Response Clickers (more)
• Surveys/Discussion boards w/i the universities course management system (like Blackboard)
• Google Forms
• Harvard’s Berkman Center’s Live Question Tool

Strategic Recording

• Broadcasting classroom lectures for students taking the course online
• iMovie or Windows Movie Maker
• Jing
• CamStudio (open source screen capture)
• VoiceThread
• iTunes U
• Vimeo
• Ning (create your own social network) (more)
• Facebook

Collaborative Learning

• XMind Concept Mapping
• Google Docs/Google Sites
• PBWorks (formerly PB Wiki)
• Zoho Writer
• Wordpress/Blogger.com course blog
• Skype
• Elluminate/Adobe Connect/DimDim and other e-conferencing platforms

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Major ChemFeeds Upgrade

I added a crowdsourcing component to ChemFeeds that allows users to vote-up chemistry papers they enjoy. For those uninitiated to ChemFeeds, the website displays the latest graphical abstracts from ACS, RSC, and Wiley. As all things involving crowdsourcing and chemists are unpopular, I doubt it’ll be used much. But enjoy anyways.

The upgrade of the website can be viewed here: Hot 100 Abstracts

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Update 1: Some parts of the website may not work with ie. :/

Mitch

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WolframAlpha is for Chemists

This is by far the most difficult story to cover today, since the website that is the feature of this post, WolframAlpha, has been in an constant state of crashing or stalling all day. This problem will only be exasperated after the official launch on Monday. I’ll hope for the best but the links below might not work for a day or two. Lets get to the details of what WolframAlpha is and how it can help you, more than Google ever could.

WolframAlpha is not a search engine, it is a computational engine. It doesn’t get information from the internet it gets it from primary documents and databases then figures out the answer. For example, if you wanted to know how to prepare 1M sodium acetate solution just ask it. It will spit out the correct proportions to make the solution. WolframAlpha can tell you things even though no one inputed that specific information into it. It synthesizes information into a correct and unique response.

It can also be used to spit out simple knowledge like the pKa of acetone.

Since it uses its database to try to answer your questions, you can start thinking outside the box. Here is a favorite, Specific Heat Capacity of Chicken.

If you come up with any interesting WolframAlpha search queries share them in the comments. Reddit Chemistry has already been having fun with it all day.

Link to using WolframAlpha for chemistry queries. Chemistry FAQ.

Mitch

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Adopt a Chemist

In the spirit of Web 2.0 I’ve been inspired by the SPS (Sigma Pi Sigma) Adopt a Physicist. I was wanting to do something like this except for chemists, so I’m looking for chemists who wouldnt mind being ‘adopted’ by local high school chemistry classrooms so that they can ask questions about careers, chemistry, etc. I think the Chemistry Forum might be a good way to do this, but who knows, I’m just throwing this idea out there.

Here’s what the Adopt a Physicist is…we should do the same thing…or at least try to?

================================================================================
Adopt-a-Physicist connects high school physics students to people with bachelors degrees or higher in physics via online discussion forums. Through their interactions, students can find out about the careers, educational backgrounds, and lives of current physicists.
Adopt-a-Physicist Goals

* Expose high school physics students to the range of careers open to people with degrees in physics.
* Advance the dialogue between the physics and the high school education communities.
* Introduce physicists and teachers to the ComPADRE network and its resources.

Project Summary

Download the Program Packet

Physicists and students interact through discussion forums for a three-week period. Before the three week period begins, the physicists and classes (via the teachers) each create a brief introduction page. After registration closes, teachers choose some physicists for their classes to interact with, preferably from different career categories.

The physicists each host a discussion forum where students dialogue with them about careers, educational level, current projects, and other topics of interest.

This structure lets students interact with physicists and learn first-hand what people with degrees in physics are doing. In addition to dialoguing with their assigned physicists, students can also read conversations between other physicists and students.

Registered teachers will receive an Adopt-a-Physicist Teacher’s Guide that provides practical suggestions for implementing Adopt-a-Physicist in the classroom and suggested student assessments.

Adopt-a-Physicist is a service provided by Sigma Pi Sigma (ΣΠΣ), the physics honor society, in collaboration with the American Physical Society (APS), the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and ComPADRE. It is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the American Physical Society Campaign for Physics. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of ΣΠΣ, APS, AAPT, or the supporting institutions.
The Adoption Process

* Registration: Physicists and teachers register and create a profile. This requires a ComPADRE login. ComPADRE accounts are free, require only a name and email address, and give the registrant access to all ComPADRE resources. Further information such as school/employer and contact information is required for Adopt-a-Physicist, but will not be used for any other purpose.
* Physicists Adopted: Once registration has closed, teachers can search the profiles of registered physicists (by career, research area, degree level, etc.) and sign up their classes for discussion forums. Registered teachers will be notified when it’s time to choose their physicists.
* Discussion Forums Open: Students and physicists dialogue over the three week period that the forums are open. Teachers are encouraged to monitor the discussions.
* Discussions Archived: The discussion forums close after a 3-week period; however transcripts of the conversations are archived and will remain accessible.
==============================================================================

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Reddit Chemistry: Year One

I’ll briefly explain Reddit for those that don’t know about it. Reddit started as a social bookmarking website, but has grown into a method of determining what is popular on the internet on any given day. Reddit allows you to “vote-up” stories / webpages / news / blogs that have interesting content and based on a simple algorithm will display the most popular stories of the day. Roughly a year ago Reddit allowed its users to make their own specialized sub-reddits and I made the: Chemistry Reddit

Here are the stats after a year in operation of the Chemistry Reddit:
Members: 863
Links Submitted: 250
Banned Users: 2 (although I think they are the same person)

Top 5 links:

• 20 votes: A death in the science family. Be carefull with tert-butyl lithium! submitted by vastib
• 19 votes: Today I am (beta) launching my attempt to give chemists a place to discuss reactions while building a free open chemical reactions database submitted by kbrower
• 16 votes: Nitrogen Triiodide submitted by mitchandre (me!)
• 15 votes: You know you’re a Chemist when… submitted by mitchandre
• 14 votes: Chemist (Elisa Najera) Comes in 5th in Miss Universe Contest submitted by mitchandre

Most unpopular link:
-1 vote: vote up if you think carbon should rhyme with boron/neon/argon/krypton/xenon/radon submitted by spacefaced

If you’ve never looked into social bookmarking I highly recommend Reddit. It has a good community, and a large active chemistry group.

Click this to view the Chemistry Reddit: Chemistry Reddit

Mitch

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The Nano Song – Chemical Edutainment Done Right

So ACS has the Nanotation contest right now trying to find the most entertaining way to explain the concept of Nano. These people from Berkeley have done an amazing job*, so Mitch, I want you to hook up a brotha (me) with these people. I showed it to my niece and she memorized the song today and said:

boyie’s cute five year old niece: “i’m going to teach my teacher about nanotechnology!”

I present to y’all, the Nano Song.

* chemistry-blog does not officially endorse the video for the nano contest (unless Mitch deems it so), but boyie sure does love the nanosong.

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ACS PUBS Redesign Brings Chaos To the RSS Masses

The new ACS PUBS redesign is a great step forward for ACS. Unfortunately, it is causing havoc across the RSS landscape from looking at the recent blog postings at The Sceptical Chymist and Everyday Scientist. The root of the image problem seems to be the RSS feeds are calling .tif files even though they exist as .gif files in their respective folders (someone probably mistyped a ‘t’ for a ‘g’). Alas don’t fret, ChemFeeds is working just fine.  So if you want your graphical abstracts fix, head on over:

http://www.chemfeeds.com/

Edit 1: Actually the new ACS feeds seems to be causing greater than normal lag at ChemFeeds. Also, for some journals they are actually calling journal images from folders that have no images in them. So, although I’ve fixed them up as much as I can, I can’t create images in folders, but its better than nothing.

Edit 2: I’ve been going crazy looking over and pruning through their feeds that I generated this cool error shown below.

Edit 3: I just realized it says I’m from the University of Washington, I have no clue what is going wrong with their website now. As I’m connecting through Berkeley’s access.

Edit 4: Rachel has an update: About Those Feeds

Mitch

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