Chemistry Central Blog
Chemistry Central at the MASC-11 meeting
Chemistry Central Journal will be attending the Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (MASC-11) meeting taking place at the University of Bath from 19th–20th December.
The programme, organised by G Dan Pantoș and Chemistry Central Journal Section Editor Tony James, features a broad range of speakers, and will include three ‘Flash Sessions’ sponsored by Chemistry Central. The 9 researchers involved in these sessions will have just 8 minutes to deliver their talk, encouraging them to find imaginative ways to present their work. These Flash Sessions follow on from the very successful ‘Lightning Sessions’ that Chemistry Central organised at the Catalysis and Sensing for the Environment meeting earlier this year.
If you will be attending the meeting then we look forward to seeing you there, but those of you who can’t make it can still follow it on Facebook, or on Twitter using the hashtag #MASC11.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 14:54 Comments (0)
Poster prize winners at Systems Chemistry III
We are pleased to announce the poster prize winners for the Systems Chemistry III conference, which was held in Crete, Greece last month. The conference was sponsored by Journal of Systems Chemistry and many of the presentations were delivered by Editorial Board Members, including co-Editors-in-Chief Günter von Kiedrowski and Sijbren Otto.
Prizes were awarded for the following four posters:
Mirror Symmetry Breaking at Interfaces: Glycine and Alpha-Amino Acids
Celia Blanco, Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA), Spain
A mathematical model of the experimentally established mechanisms responsible for the symmetry breaking transition observed in chiral crystallization experiments was presented.
How “Mutations” Affect the Self-Replication of Peptide Functionalised Macrocycles
Mathieu Colomb-Delsuc, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands
New dynamic combinatorial libraries were made from dithiol building blocks functionalized with a peptide chain designed to form beta-sheets.
Two Different Template Replicators Coexisting in the Same Protocell: Stochastic Simulation of an Extended Chemoton Model
Anna Fedor, Eötvös Lorand University of Sciences, Hungary
The minimal cell model, chemoton, and an extended version with two competing template cycles were implemented. The stoichiometric coupling of components in the chemoton ensures that these templates coexist, providing an alternative solution to Eigen's paradox.
Self-Propagating Molecular-Based Assemblies
Leila Motiei, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
An investigation into the formation and properties of self-propagating molecular assemblies, including electrochromic behavior, photovoltaic performance, charge transfer properties and selective permeation of small molecules.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 11:00 Comments (0)
7th German Conference on Chemoinformatics
The 7th German Conference on Chemoinformatics is being held in Goslar Germany next week from 6th-8th November, and once again Journal of Cheminformatics will be the conference publishing partner and poster session sponsor.
The conference spans a wide range of contributions related to computer aided processes in chemistry, and to chemical information, and this year’s meeting will open with a lecture from Editorial Board Member Johann Gasteiger (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg) entitled ‘25 Years of CIC – Achievements and Future Goals’. The following two days are made up of sessions covering cheminformatics and drug discovery, computational materials science and nanotechnology, chemical information, patents and databases, and molecular modeling, as well as a poster session and exhibition.
The abstracts for 24 oral presentations and 43 posters from last year’s meeting were published in Journal of Cheminformatics earlier this year.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 16:04 Comments (0)
Call for papers: Systems approaches in chemistry and biology
A session covering ‘Systems chemical biology and other "systems" approaches in chemistry and biology research’ has been announced for the ACS Spring Meeting in San Diego, USA March 25th–29th 2012.
A systems approach to science aims to study complex networks rather than isolated entities. The goal of this symposium is to review recent developments in systems chemical biology, systems biology and systems chemistry, and examine links between them.
In systems biology large networks describing the regulation of entire genomes, metabolic pathways and signal transduction pathways are analyzed in their totality at different levels of biological organisation. The development of cheminformatics tools that can integrate chemical knowledge with this biological data has created an interest in systems chemical biology. Systems chemistry provides another new research area moving beyond single molecular entities to multi-component, multi-functional chemical systems to create new functions from molecular components at different hierarchical levels or via molecular networks with emergent properties. The development of these integrated systems-based approaches could improve our understanding of complex chemical and biological networks in areas as diverse as drug discovery and materials science.
Readers of Journal of Systems Chemistry and BMC Systems Biology should have a particular interest in this session, which is being organised by Tudor Oprea, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of New Mexico, and Jan Kuras, Journal Publisher at Chemistry Central. Abstracts can be submitted for consideration until October 17th.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 12:08 Comments (0)
5th Meeting on U.S. Government Chemical Databases and Open Chemistry
The 5th Meeting on U.S. Government Chemical Databases and Open Chemistry takes place in Maryland, USA on 25th and 26th August, and the scientific program should be of particular interest to readers of Journal of Cheminformatics.
The meeting will bring together people dealing with small-molecule databases and associated data sets at various U.S. Government agencies, as well as other experts and contributors to public resources in the fields of cheminformatics and chemical databases. Several of the speakers feature on the Editorial Board of Journal of Cheminformatics, including Martin Walker, who will discuss the validation of chemical data on Wikipedia, and Jean-Claude Bradley, who along with Andrew Lang will present their work on collection, curation and modelling of open melting point measurements.
Other notable presentations include “Improving the quality of chemical databases with community-developed tools (and vice versa)” from Noel O’Boyle, and “PubChem: A significant resource for scientists” from Evan Bolton – author of the PubChem3D thematic series.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 10:35 Comments (0)
Chemistry Central at the ACS Fall Meeting
Chemistry Central will be at the ACS Fall Meeting in Denver, Colorado from 28th–31st August. Come visit us at booth 807 where we would be happy to discuss the latest developments at Chemistry Central, and answer any questions you have about open access publishing. You will also be able to enter our prize draw to win an HD camcorder.
On Sunday 28th, Yang Gan – Section Editor for the Physical Chemistry section of Chemistry Central Journal – will deliver a presentation as part of the ‘Reactive Properties of Environmental Interfaces’ session, covering surface charging properties of minerals by a site-specific AFM colloidal probe technique.
Several Editorial Board Members for Journal of Cheminformatics will also be presenting during the conference. On the Tuesday Antony Williams will discuss the role of crowdsourcing in chemistry, specifically with regards to the ChemSpider project, and on the Wednesday, Jonathan Goodman will look at how InChIs can be used to develop a description of chemical reactions.
Evan Bolton, author of the PubChem 3D thematic series will also be speaking on the Wednesday, covering large-scale data analysis of bioactivity information in PubChem using 2D and 3D chemical similarity. And the 'Honoring Marie Curie, Local Women Chemists Celebrate the International Year of Chemistry' session taking place on the Monday will also be relevant to anyone interested in Chemistry Central Journal's Women in Chemistry thematic series.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 14:15 Comments (0)
Chemistry Central at the IUPAC 2011 Congress
The IUPAC 2011 World Chemistry Congress takes place in Puerto Rico next week, and we are pleased to announce that Chemistry Central will be there for the duration of the conference. If you’re interested in hearing more about our journals, and about open access publishing in chemistry, then come visit our stand in the exhibition. You will find us at booth number 88 where you can enter our prize draw to win an Amazon Kindle.
The technical program features a number of plenary sessions from Nobel Laureates, and these are likely to be some of the highlights of the conference. It is worth noting that in 2009, 41 Nobel Laureates signed an open letter to the US Congress expressing their strong support for open access, and two of those signatories – Robert Grubbs and Roald Hoffmann, winners of the 2005 and 1981 prizes, respectively – will be involved in the plenary sessions.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 16:40 Comments (0)
Chemistry Central Journal conferences in July
The broad, multidisciplinary nature of Chemistry Central Journal means that we are always interested in research that links together work from different subject areas. That is why next week, we will be attending conferences on The Science of Ageing – Global Progress, and Catalysis and Sensing for the Environment (CASE).
The Science of Ageing takes place in Brighton, UK from 11th–14th July and is being co-organised by Lizzy Ostler, Section Editor for Chemistry Central Journal. Studies into ageing have traditionally been dominated by biological research groups, but in recent years, the potential impact of chemical analysis and small molecule interventions has become widely recognised. Research into ageing spans the full range of chemistry and there are an increasing number of chemists working in this area.
To highlight this, Chemistry Central Journal has organised a lunch reception on the penultimate day of the meeting specifically for the chemists who are attending. Here, we will formally announce a new thematic series on Chemistry of Ageing to recognise the growing contributions that chemists are making to the field.
The CASE meeting is a one-day conference at the University of Birmingham, UK organised by Chemistry Central Journal Editorial Board Member John Fossey. In addition to the more traditional lectures, the conference will feature three lightning sessions, in which the speaker must deliver 20 slides with just 20 seconds allowed per slide. The lightning sessions, powered by Chemistry Central Journal, are an example of the changing way in which chemistry is communicated.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 16:10 Comments (0)
Supplement for German Conference on Chemoinformatics
Journal of Cheminformatics has just published a new supplement containing meeting abstracts from the 6th German Conference on Chemoinformatics, which took place in Goslar, Germany last November.
This represents the fourth year that Chemistry Central has been involved with the Goslar Meeting, which aims to address a broad range of modern research topics in the realm of computers and chemistry. Contributions from all research areas of computational chemistry were welcome, but this year’s conference focused on recent developments and trends in the fields of:
- Chemoinformatics and Drug Discovery
- Chemical Information, Patents and Databases
- Molecular Modeling
- Computational Material Science and Nanotechnology
The supplement contains the abstracts from 24 oral presentations as well as 43 posters, and it should be a valuable resource for anyone who works in the field of chemical information.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 10:34 Comments (0)
We have returned from the ACS Spring Meeting in Anaheim, where we got a great response from the delegates who came to visit our booth in the exhibition hall. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for open access publishing amongst chemists. Students, researchers, librarians and educators all saw the benefits that unrestricted access to research can bring them.
There were some engaging presentations covering chemistry and the internet at Steven Bachrach’s (Trinity University) session. Steve’s presentation covered the history of the chemical internet from 1994 to the present day, touching on some of the topics he mentions in his paper Chemistry publication – making the revolution. Jean-Claude Bradley from Drexel University (who delivered his presentation remotely over the internet) spoke about open notebook science and its implications for the future. In contrast Steve Heller, project director of the InChI Trust looked at some of the implications of the chemical internet in his presentation "What is the Internet doing to chemistry and our brains". Jan Kuras at Chemistry Central also presented an assessment of open access in chemistry with a focus on the results from a recent comprehensive study of open access publishing (SOAP Project).
We will be at the fall ACS Fall Meeting in Denver later in the year and hope to see you there.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 17:38 Comments (0)
Chemistry Central at the 241st ACS Meeting
Chemistry Central will be at the 241st ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Anaheim, California from 27th–30th March. If you will be attending then please stop by booth 1202, where we would be happy to discuss the latest developments at Chemistry Central with you.
On Wednesday 30th March, Jan Kuras, Journal Publisher at Chemistry Central will be presenting at the ‘Internet and Chemistry’ session. His talk ‘Open access in chemistry: Information wants to be free?’ will review the current state of open access in chemistry and take a look at where it could head in the future.
There are several other presentations taking place at the ‘Internet and Chemistry’ session that may be of interest.
On Tuesday 29th March, Anthony Williams will present ‘How the web has weaved a web of interlinked chemistry data’. Then on the Wednesday, there will be presentations from Jean-Claude Bradley on ‘Rapid dissemination of chemical information for people and machines using Open Notebook Science’, and from Henry Rzepa on ‘Evolution of the science journal and the chemical publication’.
One other presentation of note will be on Monday 28th March at the 'Open Data' session, where Peter Murray-Rust will be discussing ‘Open Data and the Panton Principles’ – a set of principles and practices to help authors and publishers assert that their published data is truly open.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 12:07 Comments (1)
Visions of a (Semantic) Molecular Future
A symposium that should appeal to the whole cheminformatics community takes place in Cambridge on 17th January. The event, entitled Visions of a (Semantic) Molecular Future, will celebrate the career of Peter Murray-Rust a Journal of Cheminformatics Editorial Board Member and a strong advocate of open data.
Peter has made great contributions to the field of semantic markup, and the symposium will include discussions from a number of scientists on where they think the semantic revolution is taking science. Among the panel of notable speakers, there will be presentations from Robert Glen, also on the Editorial Board of Journal of Cheminformatics, and Cameron Neylon, Editor-in-Chief of the recently announced BioMed Central journal Open Research Computation.
Monday’s symposium will be preceded by a two-day “hackfest” taking place over the weekend, which is based on the recent culture of “unconferences”. There are no set goals – in an unconference these are usually worked out on the day of the event – but participants will work together to build systems to support open semantic knowledge. These could include:
- Unilever Centre Open projects
- scraping and textmining of published knowledge,
- mash ups (Open chemistry and bioscience resources, bibliographies, government data, Linked Open Data).
- enhancement with geo-location and time-lines (“space-time”)
- computational frameworks (Lensfield, Quixote).
- Blue Obelisk mashups in chemistry
- toolkits for crowdsourcing.
This two-part event not only celebrates the career of Peter Murray-Rust, but more importantly it looks to build the future.
You can follow these events on Twitter: #pmrsymp, #pmrhack
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 11:53 Comments (0)
Celebrating the History of Chemical Information
Chemistry Central will be attending a one-day meeting “Celebrating the History of Chemical Information” to be held at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London on November 29th. The event, organised by the RSC Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group, the RSC Historical Group and the CSA trust, covers some important aspects of chemical information such as literature, databases, structures, etc.
The meeting will involve an excellent panel of speakers, including two Editorial Board Members from Journal of Cheminformatics. Peter Willett, professor of information science at the University of Sheffield will be discussing “Cheminformatics: historical development of database methods” and Robert Glen, Director of The Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics at the University of Cambridge will look at the future of chemical information.
This promises to be an interesting day and we will post relevant highlights after the meeting next week.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 15:40 Comments (0)
Chemical information for the non-practitioner
Understanding how to effectively retrieve information from the chemical literature can be an arduous task even for the relatively experienced chemist. To the non-practitioner though, the minefield of indexing and abstracting services, substructure and reaction searches, unique identifiers, and chemical databases probably seems impenetrable.
Judith Currano, head of the chemsitry library at the University of Pennsylvania, gave a presentation in Philadelphia last month that aims to make some of the techniques involved in searching for chemical information more accessible to those without a chemistry background. The presentation is available online as slides and as a webcast, and covers the organisation of the chemical literature, providing some background on the various resources available – SciFinder, Reaxys, PubChem and Scopus, to name a few – outlining their coverage and capabilities. There are also plenty of real examples of how to retrieve certain kinds of information.
And while the coverage is far from exhaustive, it should also serve as a useful refresher for the practising chemist.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 15:03 Comments (0)
6th German Conference on Chemoinformatics
The 6th German Conference on Chemoinformatics takes place in Goslar, Germany next month and we are pleased to announce that Journal of Cheminformatics will be the Poster Session Sponsor and Conference Publishing Partner.
The conference scientific advisory board includes three Editorial Board Members from Journal of Cheminformatics – Robert Glen, Alexander Tropsha and Wendy Warr – as well as co-Editor-in-Chief Christoph Steinbeck. Christoph will also be presenting on computational metabolomics – a field at the boundary of cheminformatics and bioinformatics. Other topics that the scientific programme will cover are cheminformatics and drug discovery, computational materials science and nanotechnology, chemical information, patents and databases, and molecular modeling.
The conference runs from 7th–9th November, and will involve a range of presentations and posters, as well as a free software session.
Posted by Bailey Fallon at 13:39 Comments (0)