A series of high profile laboratory accidents over the last 7 years has increased the academic community’s awareness of the importance of risk assessment in laboratories, both teaching and research. Because of the many different chemicals used in laboratory work, these risk assessments require ready access to safety information for a large number of chemicals. In order to provide researchers, educators and students with electronic access to chemical health and safety information, PubChem provides a “Laboratory Chemical Safety Summary” (LCSS) data view for more than three thousand chemicals commonly encountered in laboratories (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/lcss/).

        The LCSS contains pertinent chemical health and safety data for a given PubChem Compound record, based on the format described by the National Research Council in “Prudent Practices in the Laboratory: Handling and Management of Chemical Hazards”.  Information contained in the LCSS is a subset of the PubChem Compound Summary page content, and includes information on flammability, toxicity, exposure limits, exposure symptoms, first aid, handling, clean up and more.  These data are provided by various data contributors, including authoritative agencies such as the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Of special interest in this collection is specific “Stability and Reactivity” information, which lists known chemical reactions between the chemical of interest and other chemicals and chemical classes. This information often extends beyond that found on Safety Data Sheets for the chemical of interest.

       LCSSs are available for PubChem Compound records which have GHS (Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals) hazard classification information from PubChem’s data contributors.  PubChem is actively recruiting this GHS information from additional contributors in order to expand its LCSS coverage. If a PubChem Compound record has an LCSS, the link to view it is provided at the top of the Compound Summary page of that compound under the heading “Safety Summary”.  In addition, one can get the complete list of chemicals with an LCSS by visiting the PubChem LCSS project webpage (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/lcss/) or by using the PubChem Classification Browser (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/). If desired, LCSS data can be downloaded from the LCSS page for each compound, or in bulk from the PubChem LCSS project webpage.

In this article, we look at a new application called Marvin Live, developed by ChemAxon for online collaboration. Marvin Live offers a novel approach to designing molecules and leading chemical discussions among remote participants.

We will describe the pharmaceutical industry and academic needs that led to these developments and the workflows made possible, all the way from simple chemical reaction drawing tasks, to connecting globally distributed research teams for project design meetings. We look at use cases that enable their use for tutoring and mentoring, and their capabilities to automate the otherwise time-consuming aspects of meeting preparations and note-taking.

Discussion about textbook price is anchored to cost.  Here I argue that cost is a relatively minor issue in the choice of books by instructors but rather ancillary services offered by the publishers dominates.  Thus, any attempt to replace published textbooks with open on line educational resources must pay careful attention to providing these.  This drives the current transformation of the ChemWIKI into a Stem Hyperlibrary

MolView is a web application which helps students and teachers to visualize molecular structures and view their properties. There are numerous databases publicly available to provide the required data such as PubChem, ChemSpider, ChEMBL, DrugBank, the Crystallography Open Database[1], and many more.[2][3] Currently, MolView uses PubChem, RCSB, the Crystallography Open Database, the Chemical Identifier Resolver[4], and the NIST WebBook[5] to retrieve data. MolView offers a simple search interface to find small molecules, proteins and crystal structures in these databases. MolView uses JavaScript libraries, that use modern web technologies such as WebGL, to visualize these structures. In the past year I have designed a new version of this application from the ground up to facilitate the implementation of new databases and tools. Along with a new architecture and user interface, this version will include internationalization, interactive instructions, advanced search tools, more import/export tools, and more presentation tools. I also intend to include more computational chemistry tools to make the analysis and processing of complex data easier and more fun.