the_Khemist - Slashdot User

Comment Chemistry is much more about practical skills (Score 1) 154

by the_Khemist on Sunday January 31, 2010 @11:33AM (#30970578) Attached to: Chemistry Tasks For the Computer Lab?

I have to say that unless you are studying chemistry at university computers play a very limited role - even then I'd say you only really use software significantly when studying for a graduate degree. Having said that, there are some resources that may be useful 1. Labskills e-learning software http://www.labskills.co.uk/ This software was designed to allow students to gain some understanding of practical chemistry, the principle being that it allows them to explore using lab equipment and basic reactions and play around in a way that it is not easy to enable them to do in a lab. It's not supposed to replace labwork, more give them some preparation and complement practical chemistry. 2. There are some interesting videoclips on youtube, but you need to hunt and sift through lots of rubbish. You might find the channel called periodic table of videos (run by staff at the University of Nottingham) http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos 3. You might find ChemSpider useful. (www.chemspider.com). It's a site which aims to bring together knowledge relating to chemicals. Depending on the compound you might be able to find spectra (UV, NMR IR etc) and other interesting information the record for cholesterol (http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.5775.html) is a good example of the sort of information you might find. 4. If you really need to use a chemical drawing package there are several programs that are free (as in beer) software, symax (http://www.symyx.com/micro/getdraw/) or Acdlabs ChemSketch (http://www.freechemsketch.com/) - this would be my recommendation. 5. You might find http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/All+Reactions an interesting read 6. It's probably above the level of your students but this can be fun/educational too. http://spectralgame.com/ I hope this is useful

Green Cement Absorbs Carbon 213

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @10:13PM from the do-not-like-green-cement-and-ham dept.

Peace Corps Online writes "Concrete accounts for more than 5 percent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions annually, mostly because cement, the active ingredient in concrete, is made by baking limestone and clay powders under intense heat that is generally produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Now Scientific American reports that British start-up company Novacem has developed a 'carbon-negative' cement that absorbs more carbon dioxide than it emits over its life cycle. The trick is to make cement from magnesium silicates rather than calcium carbonate, or limestone, since this material does not emit CO2 in manufacture and absorbs the greenhouse gas as it ages. 'The building and construction industry knows it has got to do radical things to reduce its carbon footprint and cement companies understand there is not a lot they can do without a technology breakthrough,' says Novacem Chairman Stuart Evans. Novacem estimates that for every ton of Portland cement replaced by its product, around three-quarters of a ton of CO2 is saved, turning the cement industry from a big emitter to a big absorber of carbon. Major cement makers have been working hard to reduce CO2 emissions by investing in modern kilns and using as little carbon-heavy fuel as possible, but reductions to date have been limited. Novacem has raised $1.7M to start a pilot plant that should be up and running in northern England in 2011."

A Short History of Btrfs 241

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday August 01, 2009 @05:13AM from the new-and-shiny dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "Valerie Aurora, a Linux file system developer and ex-ZFS designer, has posted an article with great insight on how Btrfs, the file system that will replace Ext4, was created and how it works. Quoting: 'When it comes to file systems, it's hard to tell truth from rumor from vile slander: the code is so complex, the personalities are so exaggerated, and the users are so angry when they lose their data. You can't even settle things with a battle of the benchmarks: file system workloads vary so wildly that you can make a plausible argument for why any benchmark is either totally irrelevant or crucially important. ... we'll take a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of Btrfs on many levels — technical, political, personal — and trace it from its origins at a workshop to its current position as Linus's root file system.'"

Submission + - The Web of Data, beyond what Google and Yahoo show

Submitted by jccq on Sunday July 26, 2009 @05:56PM

jccq writes: Both Google and Yahoo have been supporting Semantic Web markup (RDFa, RDF and Microformats) for weeks and months respectively. What they do, at the moment, is use the markup only for visual feedback by returning better looking, more functional "page snippets". But how would it look if you could get all these bits and compose them automatically to form a single structured information page about what you're searching for? The folks at the DERI institute have just released Sig.ma , is visual browser and mashup generator that will go all over the web of data and find dozens of sources to combine together when answering a user query. Also comes in API mode to reuse the information Sig.ma finds inside applications. The screencast and a (blog post, with semantic web geeks details).

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