Knovel, a Web-based application integrating technical information with analytical and search tools, has announced the immediate availability of the Specialty Chemicals Essentials package. The package offers guidance and best practice information to support efficient, faster and safer processing, production and development of specialty chemicals.

Knovel offers validated reference data sourced from over 70 recognised societies and publishing partners. Specialty Chemicals Essentials enables engineers to jumpstart their use of Knovel with access to content that many top firms frequently use, including seven of the top 10 US specialty chemical companies.

Strategically selected from the 24 total subject areas Knovel offers, the Specialty Chemicals Essentials package includes content and data analysis tools in five subject areas. These are: Chemistry & Chemical Engineering; General Engineering & Engineering Management; Mechanics & Mechanical Engineering; Safety, Health & Hygiene; and Plastics & Rubber.

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STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, Germany, has announced the release of Science of Synthesis 3.10, an online resource providing users with access to chemical information from experts in the field.

With the latest upgrade, Science of Synthesis claims to cover all fields of organic chemistry from organometallics to alkanes. Covered topics will be continuously updated and additional content will be added to the electronic reference through multiple releases per year. The latest release encompasses 14,452 new reactions, with over 68,000 structures. Detailed preparative expertise is provided on: nitro, nitroso, azo, azoxy, and diazonium compounds, azides, triazenes, and tetrazenes (Volume 41); alkenes (Volume 47); and alkanes (Volume 48).

Developed in cooperation with InfoChem, Science of Synthesis seeks to present a critical treatment of synthetic organic chemistry from the early 1800s to the present. As a first point of reference for the synthetic chemist, the resource is projected to possess a user-friendly search function that allows substructure, exact structure, reaction, combined keyword, and full-text searches. Within the application, a structure search is supposedly quick and easy since users have the ability to choose between multiple structure drawing tools (ISIS Draw, Java Applet and ChemDraw). Its compatibility with SFX is seen to assist librarians in navigating literature requests of Science of Synthesis users to resources and services relevant to their search queries.

Science of Synthesis Version 3.10 is fully compatible with both Windows and Macintosh and supports Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers.

From 2010 onwards the existing volumes in the resource will be complemented by a variety of organic synthesis specialist topic reference works. A modular approach will be used to build the Science of Synthesis Reference Library, developed in conjunction with members of the Science of Synthesis Editorial Board.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Council for Chemical Research (CCR) will hold a special half-day symposium to address the critical challenge of keeping the US' chemical enterprise competitive, and the central role research and development (R&D) will play in this process.

Entitled 'Translational Chemical R&D: The Driving Force for Job Creation', the event is scheduled for August 22, during the ACS National Meeting & Exposition. The symposium will take place in Room 210A of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and will include experts from the chemical enterprise. A private reception for further discussion with the speakers and other R&D leaders will follow the event.

The symposium will be divided into two sessions. In the first, presenters will explore big picture trends and new tools to maximise the impact of R&D. In the second session, presenters will focus on tools to translate R&D to commercialisation, such as open collaboration, venture investment in spin-offs, and R&D centers or hubs.

More than 8,000 reports on new advances in medicine, health, energy, environment, and other scientific disciplines that involve chemistry will be presented during the ACS National Meeting.

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The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced that well-known scientists in the chemical sciences field appeared at the RSC's three conferences in three continents for the launch of the new flagship journal, Chemical Science. These conferences were held over three successive weeks in July.

Commencing in San Francisco earlier this month, the inaugural meetings heralded the start of a new global conference series, aligned to the new journal. The International Symposia on Advancing the Chemical Sciences (ISACS) events are an integral part of the RSC's mission to advance the chemical sciences.

In opening the first event, Dr James Milne, editorial director of the RSC, explained how hosting three conferences in three different continents represents the international nature for the conference series, the new journal Chemical Science, and the RSC as a society. This vision was endorsed by the journal's editor-in-chief, David MacMillan, from Princeton University.

Each meeting, held over four days, contained 18 plenary lectures given of the world's leading researchers in their respective fields. The RSC also welcomed close to 200 new members who joined the society as a result of the conferences. The first issue of Chemical Science was published just a few weeks before the first meeting, and received significant praise from delegates and speakers. Many confirmed plans to submit their latest research results to the journal, which aims to surpass the standards set by other leading general chemistry titles.

Plans are already underway for next year's three ISACS meetings, which will be spread throughout the summer of 2011. Many delegates have already registered an interest in attending future ISACS meetings, suggesting this will quickly become an established and exceptional series for the chemical science research community.

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Carnegie Mellon University has announced that its ChemCollective website has received the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). The award, sponsored by Science magazine, recognises outstanding freely available online materials that enrich science education.

The ChemCollective website (www.chemcollective.org), developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, seeks to provide chemistry instructors with access to virtual lab and scenario-based learning activities. It gives introductory level chemistry students the opportunity to participate in activities that go beyond traditional textbook problems, allowing them to engage with chemistry in a way that more closely resembles the activities of practicing chemists.

Associate Professor of Chemistry David Yaron and his team, made up of software engineers, undergraduate programmers and educational consultants, began developing the resources used in the ChemCollective in 2000, and the site was launched in its current format in 2004. Last year, more than 100,000 experiments were performed on the website and the software was downloaded more than 25,000 times for use on local computers. Many instructors have submitted their own materials to the site to be shared among users. Of the 117 labs currently available on the site, 56 have been contributed by 11 different groups from the user community.

Science magazine announces one recipient of the SPORE award each month throughout the year, publishing an essay on each programme. The essay on the ChemCollective appears in the April 30 issue. Co-authors of the essay include Carnegie Mellon's David Yaron, Michael Karabinos and alumnus Donovan Lange, along with James G. Greeno and Gaea Leinhardt from the University of Pittsburgh.

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Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has announced a partnership with Reaction Explorer to bring new capabilities to the online organic chemistry market.

Students can access Reaction Explorer through WileyPLUS, an online teaching and learning solution for organic chemistry. Reaction Explorer is projected to help students achieve a higher level of understanding of the intricacies of organic chemistry reactions, syntheses and mechanisms.

Reaction Explorer was initially developed at the University of California, Irvine, in the laboratory of Professor Pierre Baldi, and has been used there for over 3 years to teach undergraduate organic chemistry. It uses expert system technology to predict the results of arbitrary organic chemistry reactions. This unique ability allows students to explore the results of novel reactions, regardless of whether they were anticipated by the developers.

The Reaction Explorer system has two primary modules, focusing on the most challenging and important problem-solving skills students learn in organic chemistry. Synthesis Explorer allows students to interactively learn and work through multi-step retrosynthesis problems, while Mechanism Explorer challenges a student’s ability to propose and sketch reasonable organic reaction mechanisms.

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STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, Germany, has announced the launch of Science of Synthesis Version 3.9, an online resource that provides highly evaluated chemical information from leading experts in the field. This critical treatment of synthetic chemistry claims to be one of the most authoritative, in-depth information resources available on synthetic methodology. It contains comprehensive coverage of the entire field of organic chemistry from all published and readily available sources from the early 1800s until the present.

With this upgraded version, 45 out of the 48 printed volumes are now available online. Over 14,000 new reactions and an additional 1,545 experimental procedures have been added to this release. There are currently a total of 252,000 reactions and more than 32,000 experimental procedures available.

Developed in cooperation with InfoChem, Science of Synthesis possesses a user-friendly search function that allows substructure, exact structure, reaction, combined keyword, and full-text searches. Within the application, a structure search is quick and easy since users have the ability to choose between multiple structure drawing tools (ISIS Draw, Java Applet, and ChemDraw). Its compatibility with SFX assists librarians in navigating literature requests of Science of Synthesis users to resources and services relevant to their search queries.

Science of Synthesis Version 3.9 is fully compatible with both Windows and Macintosh and supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers.

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