Windows program "Torganal2 - spectroscopic puzzles".

Vista and XP program is designed for university and college chemistry students who are beginning their study of organic spectroscopy.

Torganal2 displays high resolution spectra of organic unknowns (acquired at the University of Manchester) and users can practice and improve their spectral interpretation skills while identifying the compounds.

Free and paid versions are available. The free (demoware) version has 5 unknowns. The paid version currently has 40 unknowns and is for institutional use.

For more details and free download see www.chem.utas.edu.au/torganal/

Seminars - Research into Teaching and Learning

A new seminar series will run on the last Wednesday of each month between October and May, at 12.30 till 2 in the seminar room in Simon Laurie House, School of Education. Members of the University are welcome. For further information, contact Lindsay Paterson in the School of Education.

The seminars for session 2009-2010 are as follows; staff giving the seminars are in the School of Education except where stated otherwise:

28 October: Lyn Tett and Jenny Hounsell, "Support and progression issues for non-traditional students: some findings from the study of the experiences of students who entered the College of Humanities and Social Science directly from Further Education".

25 November: Ava Blass, Educational Coordinator, MSc in Translational Medicine. Title to be announced.

27 January: Rowena Arshad, "Teacher Education Students' Understanding of Social Justice Issues".

24 February: Siân Bayne and Jen Ross, "Researching teaching using virtual ethnography".

31 March: Charles Anderson, Kate Day and Hamish Macleod, "Evaluating a large-scale learning and teaching initiative : issues, challenges and strategies".

28 April: Zoe Williamson, final title to be announced, on the theme of "Becoming a researcher: the impact of self-study on practice".

26 May: George Meldrum and Catherine Morgan, a topic to be confirmed on cross curricular teaching and learning in science and geography.

Call for papers - Green Chemistry: Multidisciplinary Use of Chemical Information Resources

239th ACS National Meeting
San Francisco, March 21-25, 2010
CINF Division

The symposium will focus on databases, features, and functions that support the reduction or elimination of any negative environmental or health effects. Accepted contributions will describe innovative uses of chemical information resources in support of sustainable chemistry.

All accepted presentations will be judged and a cash prize will be awarded.

Presentations will be 25 minutes, including time for questions. The ACS site for submissions is open until October 19th at http://abstracts.acs.org/chem/239nm [N.B. needs an ACS ID or to register for one].

Call for Registration - 5th German Conference on Chemoinformatics

Hotel 'Der Achtermann',
Goslar, Germany
8 - 10 November 2009

The international conference covers plenary talk, regular talks, and posters in the following sessions:

* Chemoinformatics and Drug Discovcery
* Chemical Information, Patents, and Databases
* Molecular Modelling
* Computational Material Science and Nanotechnology

Online registration via the conference website at www.gdch.de/gcc2009.

The deadline for registration is October 8, 2009.

Chemical Drawing software for Mac OS from contributors to CHMINFL

Unedited and untried but from a reputable source, the following comes from contributors to the CHMINF-L mailing list.

The first options were in response to a question about freely available alternatives to ChemBioDraw for Macs.

BKChem - http://bkchem.zirael.org/
written in Python and should also work on a Mac. Exports to ISO26300 format (OpenDocument Format, ODF) which can then be used or edited in OpenOffice.org. It is free.

ChemDoodle - http://www.chemdoodle.com/

JChemPaint - http://jchempaint.sourceforge.net/
free and open source

Bioclipse - http://www.bioclipse.net/
free and open source

MarvinSketch - http://www.chemaxon.com/product/msketch.html
written in Java. Free for academics with registration.

The following are not Mac-specific:

A review of a number of Chemistry graphics packages can be found here at (beware of pop-ups) - http://dragon.klte.hu/~gundat/rajzprogramok/dprog.html

ACD ChemSketch - http://www.acdlabs.com/download/chemsk.html

Symyx Draw - no fee

KnowItAll Academic Edition - http://www.knowitall.com/academic/
free to students, faculty, and staff at degree-granting schools, colleges, and universities.

Xdrawchem - http://xdrawchem.sourceforge.net/

Review of the Student Learning Experience in Chemistry

The Higher Education Academy commissioned a series of National Subject Profiles to cover the areas of Materials, Biochemistry Microbiology and Media and Communications.

The Physical Sciences Centre consider chemistry and physics to be such vital subjects that two subject reviews, one for chemistry and one for physics and astronomy, have been independently funded.

Find the reviews at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/home/projects/subjectreviews

NeSC newsletter

September 2009's issue at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/news/newsletter/index.html

Includes information about the e-Science Institute call for new Theme proposals and a summary of Jul09 StoMP (stochastic dynamical modelling for prokaryotes) workshop, when "microbiologists and physical and computational scientists joined forces to expose the inner workings of bacteria."