Category Archives: “virtual communities”

Conspiracy and chemistry and an invitation to lunch

Posted on April 10, 2009 by pm286

Antony Williams (Chemspider) and Stuart Cantrill (Nature) have recently blogged about what the blogosphere is seeing as censorship on the Web by the American Chemical Society. This is a bold and serious claim and needs some background. The facts,  from … Continue reading →

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CKAN – an idea whose time has now come

Posted on April 9, 2009 by pm286

CKAN – The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network is the brainchild of Rufus Pollock (a young and incredibly energetic economist) at Cambridge. It’s part of Rufus’ vision of a world of distributed semantic Open knowledge. I think CKAN is an idea … Continue reading →

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Software patents again… Oh dear

Posted on April 6, 2009 by pm286

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and the hydras have many heads. Just when you think PRISM is decapitated up pops Conyers and now the good old European Patents directive is still alive. Please kill it… The great thing … Continue reading →

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CML – semantics for pi-bonds

Posted on April 6, 2009 by pm286

Rich Apodaca has asked how CML represents ferrocene. As there is no communal agreement on how to do this, CML has to support all possible current mainstream representations (the resolution of these is not a semantic, but ontological task). The … Continue reading →

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CML – semantic representation of molecular structure

Posted on April 6, 2009 by pm286

I have been asked by Rich Apodaca to show how the various styles of representing ferrocene are possible within CML. Let me stress that these are different connection tables which the community variously uses to represent a single compound. There … Continue reading →

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Why we need chemistry ontologies

Posted on April 6, 2009 by pm286

Mat Todd is an example of the new generation of organic chemists who is concerned about the broader picture of information. Here’s a recent comment, which I address: Mat Todd says: April 5, 2009 at 11:09 pm (Edit) Peter, I … Continue reading →

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Chem4Word – why semantics are necessary

Posted on April 6, 2009 by pm286

I was asked to explain how Chem4Word and CML could encode ferrocene. I’ll start by using Wikipedia to give a clear and accurate picture. Sorry for the cut-and-paste mess. WP: Ferrocene is the organometallic compound with the formula Fe(C5H5)2. It … Continue reading →

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CML – a semantic approach to chemistry

Posted on April 5, 2009 by pm286

Rich Apodaca has asked me to show how CML can deal with metallocene compounds – and I’m happy to do this – it comes at a very good time. He points to Metallome blog and I’ll copy some of the … Continue reading →

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CAS and InChI – who can assign identifiers?

Posted on April 5, 2009 by pm286

I’ve had two useful comments on CAS and InChI identifiers which have updated my knowledge (a feature of closed organizations and authorities is that updates often trickle out in small amounts, particularly if they represent an unwelcome progress towards openness). … Continue reading →

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Chem4Word – the journey so far

Posted on April 4, 2009 by pm286

We’ve been very silent about Chem4Word (C4W) for several reasons, but a major one is that I don’t like vapourware. I’ve spent too long in the pharma industry getting high-pitch sales including (ca. late 1980s, all true): “We have a … Continue reading →

Posted in "virtual communities", Uncategorized | 4 Comments