Apr 4, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 10:50 am by chemspy -- Click to comment
I first wrote about MEMS - microelectromechanical systems - some time in the early 1990s. There was a promise at the time of scalable, modular reaction units that would eventually preclude the need for chemical plants to have multi-gallon reaction vessels and enormous distillation towers. Last time I looked, most chemical plants still had those vessels and towers but MEMS technology has nevertheless moved on apace. It has made enormous, or should I say tiny, …
Apr 3, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 10:28 am by chemspy -- Click to comment
An interesting item on doing science from Chad Orzel represents more than a nod and a wink to the late, great Carl Sagan, although I didn’t see his name mentioned for whatever reason. Anyway, Prof Orzel distils the scientific process down to the following and has triggered an interesting debate nevertheless:
Science is a Process, Not a Collection of Facts The essence of science, broadly defined, is that it is a systematic approach to figuring …
Apr 1, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 4:12 pm by chemspy -- Click to comment
Scienceroll’s Bertalan Meskó has come up with a solution for PubMed fatigue. It’s a debilitating condition that leads to feelings of inadequacy, but it’s not the patient who feels inadequate it’s the PubMed bot itself. “For a site that is as vital to scientific progress as PubMed is, their search engine is shamefully bad. It’s embarrassingly, frustratingly, painfully bad,” says Anna Kushnir on her nature networks blog.
So, Meskó has been connecting up some …
Mar 24, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 1:00 pm by chemspy -- Click to comment
An informatics approach to pricing petrochemical products has been devised by scientists at the Market Research Department of the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) in Tehran, Iran. Their model puts a price on “know-how”, which is the most complicated activity of the commercialization stage.
Writing in the International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management, (2008, 8, 279-297), Reza Bandarian, Ahmad Mousaei, Abbasali Ghadirian and Maham Tabatabaei explain their approach. “The RIPI has a …
Mar 20, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 4:36 pm by chemspy -- 2 Comments; add yours
A Chemspy reader sent me an email asking about the best way to fix their water softener.
Hi, I have a water softener. I met a local repair service, not affiliated with the manufacturer in any way, who can rebuild my broken unit with better quality after-market parts. Sounds like a good plan to me.
So far so good…the reader goes on…
The repair guy proposes to add some good quality resin to the tank to “top it …
Mar 19, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 5:05 pm by chemspy -- Click to comment
Intute provides links and tutorials for educators and researchers in a wide range of disciplines. Part of their efforts involves hosting David Bradley’s monthly Spotlight column in the sciences section. The organisation also publishes a range of booklets that provide fast and direct access to a stack of useful resources.
The 12-page chemistry booklet is now available in HTML and PDF formats for access online, with live and updating links. The page comes out of …
Mar 10, 2008
Posted in Chemspy at 4:43 pm by chemspy -- 6 Comments; add yours
There’s discussion all over the chemical blogosphere at the moment about copyright and CAS numbers Chemspider’s Tony Williams first broached the subject in his blog and has followed up here. Cameron neylon has touched on the issue here as too have PeterMR and Kurt Wegner. If I’ve missed any links, please leave a reference to your post in the comments.
Anyway, here’s a thought…
Thumbnails (i.e. reduced size) versions of photos, images, …
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