ChemFinder handles Access file format (.mdb) databases and E-Notebook is a tool for collaborative working. This suite is built around two main 'big name' applications (ChemDraw Ultra and Chem3D Ultra), two subsidiary ones providing administrative functions (ChemFinder Ultra and E-Notebook), and a supporting cast of reference databases.ĬhemDraw is a tool for producing and handling two dimensional framework drawings of chemical structures Chem3D models those structures in various ways. The box of software was the latest release of ChemOffice (badged '2004') in its top of the range 'Ultra' incarnation, obtained from publishers CambridgeSoft somewhat ahead of market release by Adept Science. The facility, long abandoned, has begun to fall apart, so anything on this list might or might not be making its unpleasant way out into the surrounding environment. More worrying was the combination of hazards which it represented: most of the items being explosive (picric acid, for instance) highly toxic (such as phosgene, to take just one example) or both. The list was a 'partial inventory' for deliveries made to a now defunct military-industrial facility built some decades ago in a remote swamp (see Scientific Computing World, Sept/Oct 2002, 'The Return of the Swamp Thing'.) I was taken aback first of all by the sheer variety and range of it: from simple potassium metal to complex compounds, such as the enzyme carboxylesterase. A few weeks later, cold reality arrived in the form of a long list of chemical names and a huge box of software. This would be an interesting extension from the contexts I knew. My work and interests are in environmental science, but my experience is framed by the British organisations with which I have been involved. In an unguarded moment, I rashly agreed to provide some voluntary support for their preparations. Elsewhere, in a financially-strapped third-world country, a group of first year university students were preparing plans for an entirely unfunded environmental cleanup project. Early in the summer, the long academic break lay before me - uncluttered, for once, by other commitments.

Chemdraw ultra ball and stick model