You know something’s gone mainstream when chemistry’s flagship magazine, Chemical & Engineering News , recommends it. The current issue contains an article offering five tips for a better job search. And right there at number three is “Connect through blogging.” What specifically should job-seekers be doing with their blogs?

The graphical language of 2D structures has served chemistry well for the last 100 years. Ironically, this language which is so useful for human communication is extraordinarily difficult for machines to understand. Heroic efforts at digital raster image recognition such as OSRA and those recently summarized by Egon Willighagen, in addition to a handful of others, have tried to tackle this problem with varying degrees of success.

James Gosling, widely credited as the creator of Java, will be at a special session of the San Diego Java Users’ Group on August 8th. Love it or loathe it, Java has changed the direction of software development, and Gosling has been a major force behind it. Based on the record turnout for last month’s presentation by Google on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), seating will be scarce. You’ll also need to RSVP beforehand.

Word processing replaced the typewriter for the simple reason that documents could be prepared and edited so much more quickly. If Web authoring replaces conventional word processors, it will be for the simple reason that Web documents can be found, distributed, reprocessed, and combined with other content so much more effectively. The peculiar nature of chemical structure information complicates chemistry’s transition to Web authoring.

Several articles in the past few years have alluded to the ongoing cost squeeze faced by librarians maintaining scientific journal collections. Consistently we’re told by those doing the buying that subscription costs have gotten way out of control. Sadly, there’s only one correct response: kill subscriptions to those journals that price themselves out of the marketplace.

If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, IMS Health’s recent Intelligence.360 on the global pharmaceutical industry is worth reading. One noteworthy set of data contained in the report is a list of the top ten best-selling drugs worldwide for 2006. A list of chemical names and numbers by itself is not that useful. However, adding chemical structures has a way of prompting better questions and generating many more ideas.

Sometimes, searching through the attic of scientific ideas turns up unexpected treasures. Like old clothing styles that suddenly become fashionable again, the passage of time has a way of making old ideas relevant by supplying new context. Those ideas that once enjoyed widespread popularity followed by complete obscurity are especially interesting. This article talks about one of them and why it may matter again.

Previous articles have discussed Firefly, the codename for a new 2D structure editor for the Web. Although it can be deployed as a self-contained applet on Web pages, Firefly is composed of modules that are readily re-used. By taking advantage of this design and Java’s native UI toolkit Swing, new UI elements can be built with relatively little effort.

Making a name for yourself in science is no easy job. Aside from the technical challenge of doing noteworthy science while working under constraints, there’s the compounding challenge of making your work known to influential colleagues. Excellent work done in a vacuum is lost to science, only to be “rediscovered” by those more willing or capable of self-promotion.

Chemists can be very discerning when it comes to chemical structure aesthetics. This is not surprising, given the central role played by 2D chemical structures in the day-to-day work of many chemists. For example, consider the Wikipedia Chemistry/Structure drawing workgroup’s ongoing discussion about achieving a consistent look for chemical structures on the online encyclopedia.

Chemical structures are a language. Like any language, grammar and spelling convey meaning and become “standardized” over time. But as native speakers of any language will tell you, languages also take on important cultural nuances that are difficult to convey to non-native speakers. Chemical structures are no different, as Stuart Cantrill’s comments show.