There have been an increasing number of augmented reality since apps recently. If you search for "augmented" on the Mobile Science database you can find a selection.

Molecule Viewers are particularly notable.

MolAR lets you visualize proteins and molecules through augmented reality.

AR VR Molecules Editor allows one to build and manipulate 3D molecules models of organic and inorganic compounds.

If I've missed any please let me know about them.

 

A number of the mobile science apps have been updated with new signing certificates.

ChemTube3D is an Open Educational Resource containing interactive 3D animations and structures, with supporting information for some of the most important topics covered during an undergraduate chemistry degree. It was developed by the ChemTube3D team including students at the University of Liverpool.

Orange NMR App to predict 13C and 1H NMR spectra: draw a structure to see its spectrum. The accuracy of the algorithm is about 1.9 ppm for 13C and 0.21 ppm for 1H (RMSD=3.4 and 0.31 ppm correspondingly).

Elemental Elemental is the Dotmatics chemistry sketch utility provided at no charge within many Dotmatics products. We are happy to provide this as a FREE app on the iTunes store.

Chemistry By Design is an interactive virtual flashcard that allows students to test their skills using known synthetic sequences. The goal is to display the reagents, starting materials and products for every single step used in constructing a natural product or pharmaceutical. Students are provided with different browsing options to test themselves.

There are many more more science apps for iPhone or iPad listed in the Mobile science database.

 

A couple of the Apps on the Mobile Science site have been updated.

Most notably the Human Anatomy Atlas, which is currently the fifth most viewed app on the site.

What’s New Jul 27, 2020 Version 2021.1.64 Introducing Visible Body User Accounts! With your VB User Account, you can:

• Save and share all your newly created custom interactive content!
• Make 3D Views and Tours that include tags, 3D drawings, and notes, and edit them whenever you want.
• Share your 3D views with other Atlas 2021.1 users.

Note: Visible Body accounts have replaced iCloud in Human Anatomy Atlas 2021.1 or later.

 

As expected Apple released a new iPad Pro together with a new keyboard including trackpad.

Apple today announced its most advanced iPad Pro. Now with the A12Z Bionic chip, iPad Pro is faster and more powerful than most Windows PC laptops. The new iPad Pro adds an Ultra Wide camera, studio-quality mics and a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner that delivers cutting-edge depth-sensing capabilities, opening up more pro workflows and supporting pro photo and video apps. The LiDAR Scanner, along with pro cameras, motion sensors, pro performance, pro audio, the stunning Liquid Retina display and powerful apps, extends the lead of iPad Pro as the world’s best device for augmented reality (AR). The new iPad Pro is available to order starting today on apple.com. With iPadOS 13.4, Apple brings trackpad support to iPad, giving customers an all-new way to interact with their iPad. Rather than copying the experience from macOS, trackpad support has been completely reimagined for iPad. As users move their finger across the trackpad, the pointer elegantly transforms to highlight user interface elements. Multi-Touch gestures on the trackpad make it fast and easy to navigate the entire system without users ever lifting their hand.

I do like the new keyboard/stand.

 

Finding scientific applications for your iPhone to iPad has always been a little hit and miss since there is no “science” category on the iTunes store. To help out I created a database that can be searched via a web interface, https://www.macinchem.org/mobsci/index.php. I've tried to tag all apps with appropriate comments so hopefully searching should identify the relevant applications.

I've recently added a few more apps.

Biological Buffer Calculator
QIAGEN App
Molarity Abacus
BioLegend Lab Tools
TLC Chemistry Tools
SHIMADZU IR
SHIMADZU UV

Feel free to send me details of any I've missed

 

I've just finished adding a few more entries to the Mobile Science Site, there are now over 250 entries covering all areas of science.

The most popular seem to be:

• PocketCAS: Mathematics Toolkit
• Merck Periodic Table
• The Periodic Table Project
• IBM Micromedex Drug Info
• Human Anatomy Atlas 2019
• ChemTube3D
• Elemental

 

Everyone's favourite mobile scientific search app has been updated.

Wolfram|Alpha has been updated

Use the power of Wolfram's computational intelligence to answer your questions. Building on 30+ years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

There are many more apps on the Mobile Science Site simply use the "Search" Box

 

With the release of iOS 13 on the horizon I thought I'd have a look at the excellent mixpanel to look at the current adoption. iOS12 has been rapidly taken up and now commands over 90% of share of iOS use.

 

The upgrade of https://www.chemtube3d.com is now complete. This is an absolutely fabulous resource for chemists with 2400 pages of information. Don't miss the Controls button that controls the animations and try turning your mobile phone for different views.

One of the problems for users of ChemTube3D is finding the content they require because it is so extensive. The new intelligent Search feature is more powerful and easy to use. The new Categories feature groups all the content into a wide range of subsections and provides an alternative way of discovering content. You can reach Categories directly from the new menu structure by clicking on a subject before using the submenu. You can view all the Categories if you perform a Search using the Search box top right. Try searching for “orbital” or “symmetry” or “VSEPR” or a subject of your choice. This should help bring Chemistry Animations under Control.

There is also a ChemTube3D iOS app available for free download.

There is now a brief history of ChemTube3D.

There are more apps for mobile devices on the Mobile Science Site

 

There are now 250 entires in the Mobile Science Database covering every scientific discipline.

The most often viewed apps are

• PocketCAS: Mathematics Toolkit
• Elemental
• The Periodic Table Project
• Wolfram|Alpha
• MoleculAR Viewer
• ChemTube3D
• MestReNova

 

The United Nations General Assembly during its 74th Plenary Meeting proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT 2019) on 20 December 2017.

1869 is considered as the year of discovery of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev. 2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO.

The IYPT website gives details of events and you can find out more by looking for the hashtag #IYPT2019. Of particular note is Mendeleev 150: 4th International Conference on the Periodic Table endorsed by IUPAC.

The periodic table has always been a popular source of apps, with a variety of mobile apps available. There are a couple that I would highlight.

The Elements in Action

The periodic table comes to life with 79 video explorations of the weird, wonderful, and sometimes alarming properties of the elements. Filmed by BAFTA award winner Max Whitby in partnership with Theodore Gray, author of the iconic book and app The Elements, and previously available only in a few museum installations, this is the most beautifully filmed collection of videos ever assembled to explore and explain what makes each element unique and fascinating.

There is a companion book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe that is also very popular.

The Periodic Table Project

To celebrate the International Year of Chemistry (IYC), Chem 13 News magazine together with the University of Waterloo's Department of Chemistry and the Faculty of Science encouraged chemistry educators and enthusiasts worldwide to adopt an element and artistically interpret that element. The project created a periodic table as a mosaic of science and art. The apps include the creative process behind each tile along with basic atomic properties of the element. The apps work to truly highlight the artistic expression of the Periodic Table Project.

Periodic Table

Created by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Did you know that neodymium is used in microphones? Or europium in Euro bank notes to help stop counterfeiting? These are just two of the absorbing facts in our free, user-friendly and customisable app, based on our popular and well-respected Royal Society of Chemistry Periodic Table website.

The RSC also created Top Trumps Chemistry a card game to learn more about the elements.

There are also several online interactive periodic tables

Ptable

RSCperiodictable

ElementsTable

PeriodicTable

There are many events around the world registered on the IYPT website, and if you are organising something you can add them to the list.

 

Easy Markdown has been updated to version 1.8.

A text written in Markdown is a plain text which looks correctly to humans as text and automatically translates in a correctly web pages coded in html. In Easy Markdown the window is split in two parts. As you type plain text on the left, you see on the right the resulting web page as it will be seen on the web.

There are many other Markdown editors here detailed here

 

At the end of each year I have a look at the website analytics to see which items were the most popular.

Over the year there were 70,000 unique visitors with 25% visiting the site on multiple occasions. The US provided 30% of the visitors and the UK 7% with Germany, India and France around 5%. As you might expect the majority were Mac users (56%), but there were also Windows (25%), iOS (12%), and Android (2.5%) users.

Of the Mac users, 51% are now using 10.14 (Mojave), 27% 10.13 with all older versions each well below 10%.

Chrome and Safari were the preferred browsers with both around 40%.

The most popular web pages were (other than the main page)

• Fortran on a Mac
• Cheminformatics on a Mac
• Data Analysis Application on a Mac
• iBabel
• ChemDraw 17 review
• LaTeX and MathML support in Pages

The popularity of the Fortran on a Mac page has continued for several years now and it has been updated several times with user provided information.

The most viewed blog pages in 2018 were

• Xcode 9.0 is available for download
• Scientific Applications under Mojave
• Mac OSX installer for Coot
• Scientific keyboards for iOS
• Tools for Mac Fortran Programmers

The update to Mojave seems to have been another daily smooth transition, with most software developers reporting no major issues.

A couple of recent additions have generated significant interest.

• Cheminformatics toolkits - A listing of Cheminformatics toolkits

• Data Science Libraries - A list of useful python libraries for data science

As has an article I wrote on my thoughts on scientific software

 

2019 is the international year of the Periodic Table

1869 is considered as the year of discovery of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev. 2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO.

If you want to brush up on the table there are a couple mobile apps to help you.

Periodic Table
The Elements in Action
The Periodic Table Project

You can follow events for the year on Twitter https://twitter.com/iypt2019

 

The new Mobile Science site has been running for a couple of months now and is getting an increasing number of visitors.

The top 10 most viewed apps are.

Elemental the Dotmatics chemistry sketch utility provided at no cost.
Wolfram|Alpha the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.
ChemSpider which allows you to search the ChemSpider chemical database, provided by the RSC.
PocketCAS: Mathematics Toolkit the most advanced mathematics application for iPhone and iPad.
ElementalDB search within the 1.4M compound ChEMBL 19 dataset locally on your iPad.
MoleculAR Viewer an Augmented Reality app that allows you to visualize and interact with molecules.
MestReNova designed to for NMR data analysis productivity and flexibility anywhere.
CalcKit lets you create your own personalized calculators.
ChemTube3D an Open Educational Resource containing interactive 3D animations and structures,
WebMO Molecule Editor allows users to build and view molecules in 3-D, visualize orbitals and symmetry elements.

The most searched categories are Chemistry, Medical and Biology.

Feel free to let me know of any apps I've missed or that have been updated recently.

 

Wolfram|Alpha has been updated, to include support for the iPhone XS max and bug fixes.

Remember the Star Trek computer? It's finally happening--with Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

 

The mobile science section is now up and running, and is slowly getting more views.

Just to emphasise that you don't need to log in to search, simply type in your query and hit search.

For example searching for "Viewer" results in 55 hits found and you can further refine your search.

Each App has a detailed description and a link to the iTunes App Store for download, shown below Elemental.

As ever always happy to hear about possible additions to the site.

 

I'm occasionally approached by developers asking about the versions of Mac OS or iOS the visitors to the site are using. Whilst you can get general information from sites like NetMarketShare or Mixpanel I guess it is useful to know what versions scientists might be using.

Over the last month the operating systems used by visitors are 60% Mac, 21% Windows, 12% iOS, 4% Linux, 2.8% Android.

Of the Mac users, 43% are now using 10.14 (Mojave), 35% 10.13 with all older versions each well below 10%

For the visitors using iOS, 71% are using 12.x, and 16% using 11.x

These figures would suggest that visitors to the site are probably among the early adopters, and that Chemistry software developers should try and ensure they support the latest versions of operating systems as early as possible.

 

A number of people have contacted me about the Mobile Science pages being down. This was due to a problem with the system I was using to search and display the contents of the database.

I've now transferred to a new system and rebuilt the database. I used the opportunity to remove apps that were no longer available and to update to newer versions. The search interface is here

https://www.macinchem.org/mobsci/index.php. I've tried to tag all apps with appropriate comments so hopefully searching should identify the relevant applications.

Please have browse and let me know if anything should be added.

 

The adoption of iOS 12 is being monitored by mixpanel and it has just become the predominant iOS version. Rather slower uptake than iOS11 but it looks like there is a clean transition from iOS11 to iOS12.

 

The adoption of iOS is being monitored by mixpanel and it currently stands at around 20%. Rather slower uptake than iOS11 but it looks like there is a clean transition from iOS11 to iOS12.

The comparison with Android OS adoption is interesting.

 

The use of augmented and virtual reality in chemistry is slowly starting to gain traction. The initial use of virtual reality in drug discovery is well documented but usually confined to highly specialised hardware which has limited it's exposure to a wider audience. However as described by Jonas Boström at the recent Chemistry on Mobile Devices Meeting Virtual reality smartphone apps making chemistry look and feel cool. This project aims to enhance the learning experience for school chemistry lessons by providing virtual reality viewing of molecules using inexpensive Google Cardboard viewers available online.

Virtual reality smartphone apps are making chemistry look and feel cool. This project aims to enhance the learning experience for school chemistry lessons by providing virtual reality viewing of molecules using inexpensive Google Cardboard viewers.

EduChemVR have a number of apps for download to allow users to interact with macromolecules or learn stereochemistry.

The power of the latest generation of smart phones has enabled scientists to also explore augmented reality. Augmented reality is now being used in a number of situations. To enhance publications as demonstrated by Alistair Crow, if you want to know how to do this instructions are available here. Many people have probably used the superb ChemTube3D website created by Nick Greeves at the University of Liverpool which is an invaluable education resource, this is also accessible via a Smartphone app.

ChemTube3D contains interactive 3D animations and structures, with supporting information for some of the most important topics covered during an undergraduate chemistry degree

More recently some of the pages have been enhanced to provide access to virtual reality models, if you would like to develop similar pages there is an AppleScript droplet to batch convert Jmol files into files suitable for AR.

More recently Mark Costner has released MoleculAR: an augmented reality (AR) app to view molecules in 3D.

The images of molecules for use with the MoleculAR augmented reality app are available on GitHub and there is a more detailed explanation here.

 

A summer promotion is offering 12 applications at discount prices, pick and choose the ones you want.

Here is the list of participating apps:

iOS apps:

• Mindnode by IdeasOnCanvas GmbH (AUT) → now 10,99€/$9.99 (30% OFF)
• Notebooks by Alfons Schmid (AUT) → now 4,49€/$3.99 (40% OFF)
• Inko by Creaceed SPRL (BEL) → now 14,99€/$13.99 (30% OFF)
• Prizmo Go by Creaceed SPRL (BEL) → now 3,49€/$2.99 (40% OFF)
• Grafio by Ten Touch Ltd. (BGR) → now 8,99€/$7.99 (20% OFF)
• PocketCAS by Daniel Alm (DEU) → now 4,99€/$3.99 (50% OFF)
• Money by Jumsoft (LTU) → now 1,09€/$0.99 (65% OFF on Standard IAP)

Mac apps:

• Mindnode by IdeasOnCanvas GmbH (AUT) → now 29,99€/$26.99 (30% OFF)
• Notebooks by Alfons Schmid (AUT) → now 9,99€/$8.99 (50% OFF)
• Prizmo by Creaceed SPRL (BEL) → now 38,99€/$32.99 (30% OFF)
• Remote Buddy by IOSPIRIT GmbH (DEU) → now 19,99€/$17.99 (20% OFF)
• PocketCAS by Daniel Alm (DEU) → now 9,99€/$8.99 (50% OFF)
• Findings by Findings Software SAS (FRA) → now 32,99€/$29.99 (40% OFF)
• PDF Watermarker by seense (FRA) → now 8,99€/$7.99 (60% OFF)
• Money by Jumsoft (LTU) → now 16,99€/$14.99 (40% OFF on Standard IAP)
• Studies by The Mental Faculty B.V. (NLD) → now 21,99€/$19.99 (30% OFF)
• Workspaces by Apptorium (POL) → now 6,99€/$5.99 (35% OFF)
• FiveNotes by Apptorium (POL) → now 3,49€/$2.99 (40% OFF)

 

Wolfram|Alpha has been updated

Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. The Wolfram|Alpha App plugs directly into the Wolfram|Alpha supercomputing cloud, computing answers to your questions quickly, efficiently, and without draining your battery.

There are more iPhone/iPad science apps on the Mobile Science Website.

 

I've just added MestReNova to the mobile science site.

MestRe Nova is an iPad app for viewing/manipulation NMR spectra

There are an increasing number of spectroscopy apps available.

 

I just checked the most upvoted apps on the Mobile Science site

https://www.macinchem.org/mobilescience/upvoted/.

ChemDoodle still tops the list but Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit and Elemental are picking up votes as is WolframAlpha. The newly updated Findings lab notebook also remains popular.

The virtual reality macromolecule viewer Learning MacroMols VR is also popular.

 

This should be an interesting development for those developing scientific apps for iOS, the ability to access IBM Watson capabilities.

With Watson Services for Core ML, it’s easy to build apps that access powerful Watson capabilities right from iPhone and iPad, so you can provide dynamic, intelligent insights that improve over time. And with the IBM Cloud Developer Console for Apple, you can quickly tap into Watson Services for Core ML and other services on IBM Cloud

To get you started there is a project on GitHub https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/visual-recognition-coreml.

Classify images with Watson Visual Recognition and Core ML. The images are classified offline using a deep neural network that is trained by Visual Recognition.

There is a database of Mobile apps for science.

 

I just noticed this mentioned on Twitter and so I've added it to the Mobile Science site.

NMR Solvent peaks is a conveniently-searchable version of the ungainly table of NMR data most organic chemists keep a copy of nearby. Instead of searching through the table for a peak near your unidentified peak, just enter your solvent and the peak's multiplicity and location and you'll have a short list of candidate impurities

There is also a web-based version and a twitter feed for submitting bugs and finding out about updates.

There are a number of other NMR apps available

 

Wolfram|Alpha has been updated.

Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

There are more apps on the MobileScience website.

 

The idea behind MedChem Structures Genius is that the chemical structure can be used as a visual and semantical mark to gain information on drug molecules (mode of action, side effects, bioavailability,…). This app, aimed at both students and professionnals, allows learning to recognize chemical drug structures and link them to their INN and their pharmacological class. The quiz allows self evaluation. Only small molecules and peptides and biochemical molecules are listed (no biologics, vaccines, …). The drug classification has been adapted from the ATC WHO classification.

There are many more science apps on the Mobile Science site.

 

Looking at the adoption of iOS11 on Mixpanel it is now over 76% with older versions of iOS disappearing.

It will be interesting to see if there are a flurry of Christmas iPhone upgrades.

 

WolframAlpha has been updated to version 1.8 to bring in support for iPhone X and some bug fixes.

Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. The Wolfram|Alpha App plugs directly into the Wolfram|Alpha supercomputing cloud, computing answers to your questions quickly, efficiently, and without draining your battery.

Take note of this customer review

I recommend that people ignore the one star reviews, those people have no idea how to use the app. They think this is some search engine like google but it’s more suited for running calculations. If you’ve heard of Mathematica and know what the wolfram alpha website is then you are basically getting full support with this app for peanuts compared to what the website charges. It’s not as mathematically powerful as Mathematica but for running quick calculations on the fly, this is indispensable.

 

There have been a flurry of updates to iOS apps recently, presumably linked to the iOS11 update. Looking at the adoption of iOS11 on Mixpanel it looks like it is approaching 70% with older versions of iOS disappearing. From a developers point of view this is good news since they only have to concentrate on supporting a single version.

 

Sea Hero Quest was created by GLITCHERS, presented by Deutsche Telekom and supported by scientists from University College London and University of East Anglia and the lovely people at Alzheimer’s Research, SEA HERO QUEST is an epic culmination of science and gameplay that will change the way dementia research is done forever.

One of the first symptoms of dementia is loss of navigational skills. Doctors cannot differentiate between getting lost caused by disease and getting lost caused by natural ageing because a benchmark of “normal” does not exist.

Until now … because as you play, your navigational data is tracked anonymously, stored securely and combined with every other player from around the globe, to create the world’s largest crowd sourced data set benchmarking human spatial navigation. This incredible resource will eventually lead to the development of new diagnosis tools and treatments for dementia.

In fact playing SEA HERO QUEST for just 2 minutes will generate the equivalent of 5 hours of lab-based research data.

Sea Hero Quest uses ResearchKit to ask optional scientific questions for further helping the research.

There are more scientific iOS apps here http://www.macinchem.org/mobilescience/.

 

An interesting patent has just been granted.

OCEANSIDE, CA, USA, October 31, 2017 ̶ US Patent No. 9,754,085 has been granted to Integrated Chemistry Design, Inc. (ICD) headquartered in Oceanside, CA. The patent covers the technology used in Chirys Draw™ and Asteris™ products designed to replace cumbersome and outdated template tables with a natural circle gesture to rapidly draw chemical rings including complex fused structures. Chirys Draw and Asteris are available worldwide for Apple iPad®.

“We mapped how chemists draw with pen and paper to touch-screen gestures that enable the chemist to focus on capturing their ideas instead of operating the software,” said ICD co-founder and president, Dr. M. Catherine Johnson. “ICD’s comprehensive set of patented touch gestures empowers chemists to draw complex chemical structures and reactions quickly and easily. The newly issued patent represents a foundational piece to the ICD patent portfolio.”

Integrated Chemistry Design products include Chirys Draw, Asteris, Chirys View™, and Chromys™

 

Science Journal by Google is an electronic notebook for recording experiments.

Whether you're a science educator or a hobbyist doing science at home, you can keep your notes, photos, and observations all in one convenient place. Use the sensors in your iPhone or iPad to measure and graph phenomena such as light, sound, and motion, or connect to external sensors via bluetooth to conduct experiments on the world around you.

With the Science Journal app, you can:

• Measure light, sound, acceleration, air pressure, and more using your device’s built-in sensors.
• Take notes and photos to document your science experiments.
• Connect to external sensors using select Bluetooth-enabled Arduino devices.
• Create automated triggers for recording data and taking notes.
• Use sonification to hear the movement of your graphs.

Permissions notice:

• Bluetooth: needed to scan for bluetooth sensor devices.
• Camera: needed to take pictures to document experiments and for the brightness sensor.
• Photo Library: needed to store pictures taken to document experiments and for adding existing photos from your library to experiments.
• Microphone: needed for sound intensity sensor.
• Push notifications: needed to inform you of recording status when backgrounding the app.

 

According to the data captured by mixpanel three weeks after launch iOS 11 has overtaken iOS 10. This is important information for developers who can start to focus on the latest version of the mobile operating system.

In contrast for Android there is a much larger spread of operating systems in use.

 

A couple of apps have been updated recently.

Wolfram|Alpha across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. Always one of the top apps on the MobileSciencesite.

ChemistryKeyboard is a specialized Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae. This update brings:

• Improved layout for wider iPads including tab button and less intrusive labels
• Added arrow types
• More elements keys on wide displays
• Keyboard in the Chemistry Keyboard app was not showing localization

Elemental from Dotmatics the FREE Chemistry Sketch Utility now supports iOS 11 (64-bit support).

R Instructor now version 2.1.4 with core code rewritten.

NEB Tools brings New England Biolabs’ most popular web tools to your iPhone. Use Enzyme Finder to select a restriction enzyme by category or recognition sequence, or search by name to find information on any NEB enzyme.

iSpartan includes viewing NMR data from iSpartan 16.

Findings electronic lab notebook.

 

ChemTube3D is a web based Open Educational Resource containing interactive 3D animations and structures, with supporting information for some of the most important topics covered during an undergraduate chemistry degree. It was developed by the ChemTube3D team including students at the University of Liverpool.

This is an absolutely fantastic resource that offers invaluable insight into the 3D structure of molecules and reactions.

e.g. Diels-Alder

I'm delighted to hear that it is now accessible from a mobile device

There are many more science apps listed on the Mobile Science site.

 

Just had a look at the Mobile Science Website the top five upvoted apps are:-

• ChemDoodle Mobile Draw, 3D, Calculate, Spectra for molecules

• Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit Cheng-Prusoff; Dose to man; Gibbs free energy to binding constant; Maximum absorbable dose calculator; Potency shift due to plasma protein binding

• Wolfram Alpha Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.

• Findings- Lab Notebook With Findings, your lab notebook is always with you and always up to date, be it on the field, at the bench, or at a conference.

• Elemental Elemental from Dotmatics the FREE Chemistry Sketch Utility

 

iMolView has been updated.

iMolview lets you browse and view in 3D protein and DNA structures from Protein Data Bank, and drug molecules from DrugBank. Search for drug names like 'ibuprofen' or 'gefitinib' in DrugBank, or proteins like 'insulin' or 'thyroid receptor' in PDB. Information associated with each molecule in these databases is also at your fingertips. Sync and view your own structure files via iTunes. Molecular view can be customized with a rich set of molecular representations (wires, balls-and-sticks, space filling, ribbon diagrams, molecular surfaces) and various coloring schemes.

What's New in Version 1.9.1

• Fixed number of compatibility issues with modern iOS versions and devices
• Added retina support for all devices
• Added support for new PDB online directory
• Added support for new Electron Density Map server
• Fixed crash with some large PDB files.
• Minor UI changes

 

Chirality-2 has been released, this is a game that aims to teach some fundamental concepts in 1st year University level organic chemistry in a fun and innovative way, using drag and drop and touch based interfaces to solve puzzles and answer questions.

ChemSearch has been updated to enhance searching of the Acros catalogue

The Chemistry Keyboard is a specialised Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae. The update improves stability on large screen iPads.

 

Just added Learning Stereochemistry VR to the mobile science website.

Learning StereoChem VR is a mobile app where you can experience stereoisomers in a virtual reality, using Google Cardboards. Stereoisomers have the same molecular formula and the same connectivity of atoms but a different arrangement of atoms in space. Stereoisomers are non-superimposable on their mirror image. Proteins can often distinguish between these mirror images. In this app we explain the importance of stereochemistry.

This app comes from the same group who created Learning MacroMols VR and Learning Carbons VR. Learning MacroMols VR is a mobile app where you can experience macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, carbohydrates and protein structures (from the PDB – Protein Data Bank) in a virtual reality, using Google Cardboards. Learning Carbons VR is an educational virtual reality (VR) app where students can learn about the various forms of carbon.

The use of VR in teaching looks to be a growing trend.

 

Elemental has been updated to version 2.1 adding support for iOS 11 (64-bit support)

Elemental is the free Dotmatics chemistry sketch app.

There are more mobile science apps here

Researchkit has been updated to version 1.5

ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that allows researchers and developers to create powerful apps for medical research. Easily create visual consent flows, real-time dynamic active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that you can build upon and share with the community.

You can download it from GitHub.

 

Pred-skin is a new mobile app for predicting skin toxicity. Pred-skin is a web app that accesses a web service http://www.labmol.com.br/predskin/ for the calculation and thus requires internet access. The web service also allows bulk predictions.

Chemically-induced skin sensitization is a complex immunological disease with a high impact on the quality of life and working ability. Despite some progress in developing alternative methods for assessing skin sensitization potential of chemical substances, there is no single in vitro test that correlates well with human data. Machine Learning (ML) models provide a rapid screening approach and contribute valuable information for the assessment of chemical toxicity. The Pred-Skin App is an alternative method for assessing skin sensitization potential of chemical substances.

Full details are in the publication Pred-Skin: A Fast and Reliable Web Application to Assess Skin Sensitization Effect of Chemicals DOI There are many more mobile apps available for science on the mobile science website.

 

Back in March 2015, Apple Inc announced ResearchKit, a novel open-source framework intended to help medical researchers to easily create apps for medical studies. Since then there have been a number of mobile apps created to make use of this framework and a few have now made it into the literature, “Back on Track”: A Mobile App Observational Study Using Apple’s ResearchKit Framework DOI was designed to help understand decision making in patients with acute anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures. The Asthma Mobile Health Study, a large-scale clinical observational study using ResearchKit DOI enabled prospective collection of longitudinal, multidimensional data (e.g., surveys, devices, geolocation, and air quality) in a subset of users over the 6-month study period. The Mole Mapper Study, mobile phone skin imaging and melanoma risk data collected using ResearchKit DOI Skin cancer research is particularly amenable to this approach, as phone cameras enable self-examination and documentation of mole abnormalities that may signal a progression towards melanoma.

At the end of last year the RSC CICAG ran a one day meeting looking a mobile apps in chemistry. With the Spring meeting of the ACS in San Francisco starting today I'd be interested in hearing about any new Mobile apps for chemistry. You can download the app for the meeting here.

The ACS Mobile Meeting Application is your full-featured guide to manage your experience at the 253rd ACS National Meeting & Exposition in San Francisco, CA (April 2-6, 2017).

You can browse mobile science apps for iOS here.

 

With withdrawal of ChemDraw and Chem3D from iOS I thought it might be of interest to highlight some of the alternatives.

Put together two pages.

Molecule Viewers for iOS

and

Chemical Sketchers for iOS

 

PerkinElmer have announced that their iOS apps have been withdrawn.

Although PerkinElmer Informatics remains committed to making ChemDraw available to chemists everywhere, the iPad iOS apps ChemDraw, Chem3D and CDSL have been withdrawn from the Apple iTunes store effective immediately. The related Flick2Share capability is also withdrawn from service.

Whilst it was reported that there were plans to build an Android version in 2014 nothing has seen the light of day. It seems they are now focusing on ChemDraw Cloud.

If you already have ChemDraw or Chem3D installed they will continue to operate but the "flick2share" option will not function, it is unlikely that existing apps will be updated or supported in the future.

Alternatives for Chemical Drawing

There are a number chemical drawing apps alternatives to ChemDraw under iOS on the MobileScience Website. Perhaps the most popular is ChemDoodle Mobile and is provided to you for free when you purchase ChemDoodle desktop.

There are five main windows: Draw, 3D, Calculate, Spectra and Help. The Draw window shows a typical ChemDoodle sketcher, where you can draw and store your structures. The 3D window allows you to view the drawn molecule in 3D. The Calculate page calculates properties and the Spectra page simulates NMR spectra. All spectra are interactive.

Elemental is a free chemical drawing app from Dotmatics. This is actually the same chemical sketching application provided for all the Dotmatics products and as is used for drawing chemical queries in ChemSpider. It is also used int ElementalDB an iPad app that demonstrates substructure searching the 1.2M structure ChEMBL database locally on your iPad.

Molecule is a simple modern chemical structure editor. Allow to draw and share chemical structure. MF, MW, Monoisotopic Mass and Elemental Composition calculated interactively during drawing.

MolPrime+ is a chemical structure drawing tool based on the sketcher from the Mobile Molecular Datasheet from Molecular Materials Informatics, Inc. It provides a way to view and edit chemical structure diagrams on an iPhone, iPod or iPad. The unique and innovative sketcher is optimized for the touchscreen interface, and allows professional quality molecular structures to be drawn quickly and efficiently. The same drawing tool has been used in the Green Lab Notebook.

iMolecular Draw is an application that can view, edit and build molecules in 2D.

Chirys Draw chemical drawing app for publication-quality molecular structures and reactions. Designed from the ground up for the iPad, Chirys Draw takes advantage of unique multi-touch capabilities to make drawing molecular structures and reactions easy and accurate.

 

Learning MacroMols VR is a mobile app where you can experience macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, carbohydrates and protein structures (from the PDB – Protein Data Bank) in a virtual reality, using Google Cardboards.

It allows the viewer to explore DNA, RNA, Carbohydrates and Proteins.

EduChem VR (http://educhem-vr.com), create immersive virtual reality world of atoms and molecules, while playing. All molecules are 3D objects and one very efficient way to learn more and deeper about atoms and bonds is by VR.

 

Every looked into the night sky and wondered what a bright object might be? If so then this is the app you need, Stellarium is a Mobile Sky Map is a fully-featured planetarium for your phone. It shows a realistic and accurate night sky map, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

• a catalog of over 600,000 stars displayed as a real time zoomable sky map
• a catalog of many nebulae and galaxies, with pictures for some of them
• asterisms and illustrations of the constellations for several sky cultures
• artificial satellites, including the International Space Station
• realistic Milky Way
• realistic landscape and atmosphere with sunrise, sunset and light pollution simulation
• accurate simulation of stars extinction, and atmosphere refraction
• 3D rendering of the major solar system planets and their satellites
• night mode (red)
• GPS positioning, accelerometers control of the direction of view in the sky

 

For all you iOS app developers, here are the iOS Human Interface Guidelines a set of guidelines and resources that should help developers build high quality, intuitive and consistent apps.

 

CompTox Mobile allows the user to find chemical structure instantly by exact mass (m/z), ¹³C NMR chemical shifts, structure name or CAS Registry Number in a database of about 720,000 EPA CompTox structures.

Within the Chemistry Dashboard, users can access chemical structures, experimental and predicted physicochemical and toxicity data, and additional links to relevant websites and applications.

 

An interesting post on ChemCommerce.org a summary of 7 mobile apps that could be useful for medicinal chemists and other drug discovery professionals.

Of course there are many more apps for mobile devices on the MobileScience website.

 

The essential iOS search tool Wolfram Alpha has been updated.

Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation. Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.

 

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit has been updated.

What's New in Version 2.1. Along with bug fixes, the drug -drug interaction app is updated so fraction metabolised by CYP, fmCYP, and fraction extracted by gut, fgut, can be input if these values are known.

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit app is a suite of resources to support the day to day work of a medicinal chemist. Based on the experiences of medicinal chemistry experts, these otherwise difficult-to-access tools were developed in a portable format for use in meetings, on the move and in the lab.

There is a review of the the Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit here.

 

This looks very cool, Mathpix is a great utility for creating mathematical documents from hand written text.

Mathpix is the world's first technology that can read pictures of your handwritten math. Simply take a photo, crop your equation of interest, and you instantly get solutions and plots.

Scanned equations can be exported to PDF, LaTeX, and Overleaf to be used in publications. It also includes a maths solver and interactive 2D, 3D plotting.

The website Mathpix.com has videos of it in action.

 

Virtual reality apps for the iPhone are becoming more common and the latest is Learning Carbons VR. This is an educational virtual reality (VR) app where students can learn about the various forms of carbon.

For many of these types of apps you will need a VR Google Cardboard headset with head straps and a Bluetooth gamepad (MFi certified - made for iPhone).

 

I've just heard about three new science apps for iOS.

PROtein VR allows you to explore 3D structures of molecules including proteins, DNA and ligands in Virtual Reality. To use it you will need a VR Google Cardboard headset with head straps and a Bluetooth gamepad (MFi certified - made for iPhone).

MoleculE VR is a virtual reality tour introducing some of the basic concepts about cell communication and signalling: how cells receive and respond to messages from their environment, interact with other cells and coordinate their biological processes.

The app includes 5 chapters:

• An introduction to cell communication
• The adenosine A2A receptor
• The corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRF1)
• The glucagon receptor
• The metabotropic glutamate 5 (mGlu5) receptor

MoleculE VR is a Virtual Reality app for phones requiring gyroscope and a VR headset like Google Cardboard.

Chemistry Docking is a game app that allows you to match a small molecule ligand with a large protein to maximize the number of possible interactions.

Chemistry Docking is an ad-supported app. The advertisements are served through iAd

 

Chirality is a new iOS app to help with teaching chemistry.

Learning Chemistry can be challenging. Chirality is a short iOS based game that aims to teach some fundamental concepts in 1 st year University level organic chemistry in a fun and innovative way, using drag and drop and touch based interfaces to solve puzzles and answer questions. There are many more iOS apps for science available here.

 

I just go this message

"We're giving away Halloween promo code treats for PhySyCalc for iOS. If you want to share with your readers feel free to post this link."

http://redeemco.com/g/physycalc-scientific-and-engineering-calculator_fpjc/

PhySyCalc reinvents the calculator. More intuitive than conventional calculator apps, PhySyCalc lets you do full calculations with units. For example, you drive 250 miles on a full 12 gallon tank of gas and want to calculate your mileage. In PhySyCalc you can skip all the unit conversions and just enter 250 mi/12 gal. PhySyCalc gives you the answer in mi/gal. Or, if you like, km/L or L/100 km, all in a few touches of your finger.

 

The Mobile Science site is a resource for finding scientific applications for iOS devices. The is an option for people to vote for apps and while this is needs to be taken with a pinch of salt I thought it might be interesting to highlight the current top 10.

1. ChemDoodle Mobile
2. Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit
3. WolframAlpha
4. Elemental
5. Papers 3 for iOS
6. Findings - LabNotebook
7. Stanford iOS course
8. Asteris
9. Approved drugs App
10. Open Drug Discovery Teams

 

The Green Solvents app has been updated.

You can read the full story behind the app in this blog post.

There are now over 400 apps in the MobileScience database.

 

The Chemistry Keyboard is a specialised Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae. The latest update brings compatibility with iOS10 and a tidied up UI.

There is also a Math keyboard and a Science keyboard

 

m/z EPA CompTox is a new app on the Appstore. It allows you to search chemical structure by exact mass (m/z) in EPA CompTox structures. Instant search in a database of more than 700,000 structures. This joins the increasing number of chemistry apps for mobile devices

For more information about chemistry on mobile devices here is the meeting report for the Chemistry on Mobile Devices: Create, Compute, Collaborate conference that was held 7 September 2016 in Cambridge UK. Organized by RSC CICAG.

 

With the release of iOS 10 comes an update to Xcode. Xcode 8.0 is a free download for OS X 10.11 or later. (An Apple ID is required for iOS development, and App Store submissions require registration in the Apple Developer Program.) The latest version brings Swift 3 and SDKs for iOS 10, watchOS 3, tvOS 10, macOS Sierra, Siri extensions, iMessage apps, and sticker packs for Messages, along with many other changes.

Xcode 8 includes everything you need to create amazing apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. This radically faster version of the IDE features new editor extensions that you can use to completely customize your coding experience. New runtime issues alert you to hidden bugs by pointing out memory leaks, and a new Memory Debugger dives deep into your object graph. Swift 3 includes more natural and consistent API naming, which you can experiment with in the new Swift Playgrounds app for iPad.

Swift 3 is the first major release of the innovative programming language built completely in the open with the community of developers at Swift.org. This release unifies core API naming rules under a new public API Naming Guidelines document that makes writing Swift code feel even more natural. Popular system APIs such as Core Graphics and Grand Central Dispatch are more expressive and harmonize well with Swift.

 

Here is the meeting report for the Chemistry on Mobile Devices: Create, Compute, Collaborate conference that was held yesterday. Organized by RSC CICAG.

Mobile devices are now ubiquitous, there are now estimated to be over two billion SMART phones and tablets in use globally. Each with the computing power to handle most of a chemists needs. The aim of the meeting was to look at the many ways that mobile devices could become the chemist’s essential companion. From searching and consuming content, to performing computational calculations and providing interactive visualizations. From electronic notebooks to devices accessing Cloud based resources.

Nice of Apple to chose to release the iPhone 7 after the meeting :-)

 

Jonas Boström from EduChemVR will be speaking at the Chemistry on Mobile Devices Meeting organised by RSC Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group, 7 September 2016 10:00-16:30, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Our vision is to educate and make chemistry the coolest and most fun subject to learn, and introduce a new way to learn chemistry (and biology) using virtual reality on smartphones…We aim to take a lead in digitalizing life science education by gamification. With EduChemVR apps, teachers can take students on virtual tours to explore small and large molecules.

He has also agreed to give demos at the “poster” session which should be fun.

 

This looks interesting, Perfect

Perfect is an application server for Linux or OS X which provides a framework for developing web and other REST services in the Swift programming language. Its primary focus is on facilitating mobile apps which require backend server software, enabling you to use one language for both front and back ends.

Perfect relies on Home Brew for installing dependencies on OS X, once done you are up and running and can follow the Perfect tutorials

 

Orange NMR has been updated.

Orange NMR is an App to predict 13C and 1H NMR spectra: draw a structure to see its spectrum. The accuracy of the algorithm is about 1.9 ppm for 13C and 0.21 ppm for 1H (RMSD=3.4 and 0.31 ppm correspondingly). The number of heavy atoms in structure to predict for free is restricted to 12 atoms. This restriction can be removed by purchasing additional licenses.

• Instantly re-calculate spectrum while changing structure;
• Predicted spectra stored in iCloud and synchronised among all iOS devices and Mac version (itunes.apple.com/app/orange-nmr/id680184249);
• Email PDF report;
• Zoom in spectrum;
• Zoom in structure (important for iPhone users);
• Option to display chemical shift values on structure;
• Simple clean interface.

The prediction algorithm is derived by: K. A. Blinov, E. D. Smurnyy, T. S. Churanova, M. E. Elyashberg, A. J. Williams, Chemom. Intell. Lab. Syst. 2009, 97, 91

What's New in Version 2.4 More accurate 3J H-H couplings prediction.

There are many more science apps for mobile devices here.

Chemistry on Mobile Devices Meeting

 

A couple of updates.

Molecule World.

What's New in Version 3.0

• Download individual structures and entire collections of molecules to support teaching activities
• Lock a chain to prevent changes in appearance
• Performance improvements make rendering faster and improve behavior with larger structures

WebMO: Molecular Editor, Viewer, and Computational Chemistry Interface

What's New in Version 1.6.2

• WebMO 17 compatibility
• Bugfixes to molecular mechanics cleanup
• Improved rendering of atom labels
• Resolved issues when connecting to WebMO via Safari hotlink

Chemistry on Mobile Devices Meeting

 

I see the iOS version of the very popular writing software package Scrivener is now available.

It looks like you need to updated version (2.8) of the desktop version for synching.

Tailor-made for creating long manuscripts, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don’t know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea. Whether you plan or plunge, Scrivener works your way: meticulously outline every last detail first, or hammer out a complete draft and restructure later. Or do a bit of both. All text sections in Scrivener are fully integrated with its outlining tools, so working with an overview of your manuscript is only ever a click away, and turning Chapter Four into Chapter One is as simple as drag and drop.

 

WolframAlpha has been updated to version 1.7.2.

Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation. Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.

 

Just looking at the speakers at the Mobile Chemistry conference organised by RSC Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group 7 September 2016 10:00-16:30, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Andy Davies is talking about the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit app a suite of resources (Chemical Formula, MWt, GCLogP, Ligand Efficiency, Ligand Lipophilic Efficiency and AZFilters calculations) to support the day to day work of a medicinal chemist. Based on the experiences of medicinal chemistry experts, it was developed otherwise difficult-to-access tools in a portable format for use in meetings, on the move and in the lab. The app was developed in collaboration with Molecular Materials Informatics.

The latest version includes computational structural filters developed by AstraZeneca drug design teams. This looks like an excellent opportunity to hear more about this swiss army knife for medicinal chemists and feedback what new features you might want.

 

The news section on the University of Liverpool site highlights two apps that provide a guide to interactions that may occur between different hepatitis or HIV drugs and over 600 co-medications that a patient may be prescribed, as well as recreational drugs and herbals.

Liverpool HIV iChart and Liverpool HEP iChart are available for free download.

 

Version 1.7.0 of Wolfram|Alpha has been released.

No real details on update other than "bug fixes".

Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation. Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.

 

The top 10 upvoted apps on the Mobile Science website are:-

ChemDoodle Mobile

Draw chemical structures. View 3D. Generate IUPAC names. Calculate properties. Simulate NMR. ChemDoodle Mobile! NOTE: ChemDoodle® Mobile is accessed with your ChemDoodle account that is provided to you for free when you purchase ChemDoodle desktop. You can use the Guest account to access this app without purchasing ChemDoodle, but you will not be able to save your chemistry drawings and some features may be restricted.

Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit app is a suite of resources to support the day to day work of a medicinal chemist. Based on the experiences of medicinal chemistry experts, we developed otherwise difficult-to-access tools in a portable format for use in meetings, on the move and in the lab. The app is optimised for iPad and contains calculator functions designed to ease the process of calculating values of: Cheng-Prusoff; Dose to man; Gibbs free energy to binding constant; Maximum absorbable dose calculator; Potency shift due to plasma protein binding.

Elemental

Elemental from Dotmatics the FREE Chemistry Sketch Utility Elemental is now a Universal App that support iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Elemental is the Dotmatics chemistry sketch utility provided at no charge within many Dotmatics products. We are happy to provide this as a FREE app on the iTunes store.

WolframAlpha

Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

Papers 3 for iOS

Papers is your personal library of research. Find, read, organize, sync your research papers -- anytime, anywhere!

ElementalDB

Use ElementalDB to sketch and search within the 1.2M compound ChEMBL dataset. Searching, property calculation and depiction is done from the stored 2D co-ordinates from ChEMBL within the app on your device not via a web service

Developing iOS 7 Apps for iPhone and iPad

Download Free Content from Stanford on iTunes Updated for iOS 7. Tools and APIs required to build applications for the iPhone and iPad platform using the iOS SDK. User interface designs for mobile devices and unique user interactions using multi-touch technologies.

Findings - Lab Notebook

Findings is your lab notebook, reinvented. When running experiments, it is crucial to keep track of what one is doing, to be able to later reproduce the results, assemble and publish them. This is what lab notebooks are for. With Findings, your lab notebook is always with you and always up to date, be it on the field, at the bench, or at a conference. Findings for iOS is even more powerful when used in combination with Findings for Mac.

Open Drug Discovery Teams

Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) provides a magazine-style interface to collated information on a range of topics, primarily regarding research into cures for rare and neglected diseases.

Approved Drugs App

The Approved Drugs app contains over a thousand chemical structures and names of small molecule drugs approved by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Structures and names can be browsed in a list, searched by name, filtered by structural features, and ranked by similarity to a user-drawn structure.

 

ResearchKit is an open-source framework that allows researchers and developers to create powerful apps for medical research.

The Parkinson app is one of the first five apps built using ResearchKit.

mPower is a unique iPhone application that uses a mix of surveys and tasks that activate phone sensors to collect and track health and symptoms of Parkinson Disease (PD) progression - like dexterity, balance or gait. The goal of this app is to learn more about the variations of PD, and to improve the way we describe these variations and to learn how mobile devices and sensors can help us to measure PD and its progression to ultimately improve the quality of life for people with PD.

The initial results have now been published Scientific Data 3, Article number: 160011 (2016) ​DOI, with around 15,000 people contributed data to the study.

 

I've just finished updating the Mobile Science site there are now over 400 entries covering all areas of science. The latest entry is Notelus an electronic lab notebook (ELN). ELNs seem to be increasingly popular, and having access to your notebook on a mobile device that you can carry into the lab/library etc. is very attractive.

There are a selection of ELNs for iOS, some also have desktop versions, whilst there are other systems that are web-based and can be accessed from most devices.

 

iSpartan has been updated.

What's New in Version 1.4.6 Improved stability for iOS9 for Spartan'14 Parallel Suite (Serve)r users Enhanced charge labels in Sketch mode Increased electrostatic potential surfaces integrity

iSpartan is a versatile app for molecular modeling on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. The app allows any chemist fast and easy access to computational methods that have proven reliable for a large range of molecules.

 

When Apple introduced iOS8 one of the features that perhaps didn't grab the headlines was that it allowed you to install third-party keyboard apps from other developers. Whilst the early examples seemed to do little more than change keyboard colour more recent ones have introduced novel features and discipline specific keys. There are three keyboards in the mobile science database.

Chemistry Keyboard The Chemistry Keyboard is a specialized Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae. Allows you to add those nice superscript or subscript 2s. Or a proper arrow glyph, or a triple bond?

The Math Keyboard The Math Keyboard is the ideal keyboard for typing Math and Scientific characters.

SciKey - Scientific Keyboard SciKey is a Scientific Keyboard that brings you the essential scientific characters for your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Now fully customizable, with more than 3,000 characters to choose from, to build your perfect keyboard (requires in-app purchase). It includes Greek and Latin letters, mathematical symbols, emoji and much more missing from the standard iOS keyboard. It also works for text snippets

 

New in version 1.3 of Findings

• Support for iPad.
• Support for landscape orientation on all iOS devices, & improved layout for all screen sizes.
• Support for iOS 9 multitasking enhancements for iPad (Split Screen and Slide Over).
• Export Findings archive via the Share button.
• Import of Findings archive from other applications (Mail, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, etc.). Like on Mac, you can select which document to add or merge.
• Significant improvements to the protocol browser (p<0.001): relevant science fields and separation of your protocols, protocols from others and Findings example.
• Create a new experiment directly from a protocol
• Support for 3D Touch on application icon, with shortcut items to show your experiments, the protocol browser, or a new experiment.

We also improved a lot of things in version 1.3:

• Clearer requests to enable notifications (for timers).
• Nicer-looking superscript & subscript.
• Easier selection of subfield in protocol metadata editor.
• Message to the user when an attachment does not support Quicklook & cannot be previewed on iOS.
• More options for troubleshooting sync under the 'Advanced' section in the settings, including manual sync trigger, Dropbox cache reset, Dropbox file removal, and sync diagnostic logs.
• Completed experiments are automatically marked as ongoing when adding new content for current or future days.
• Example protocols that come with the app are now read-only.
• Tweaks to the app icons, in particular adding missing assets for 3x resolution on iPhone 6S+.
• Allows navigation back to last day of an experiment after moving to today, by having the 'Today' button become 'Last Edit'.
• Creating a new experiment uses a clearer 'Create' button instead of the potentially confusing 'Save'.
• Experiment and protocol deletion now possible in the metadata editor ('i' button).
• Protocol creation possible from any screen of the protocol browser (previously, it was only possible from within a subfield).
• Sharing via AirDrop.
• Full-fledge protocol browser to select a protocol to add to an experiment.
• Watch: start countdown timer immediately when adding via the Watch app.
• Watch: dismissing iPhone alert when timer is stopped on Watch app.
• Watch: clearer accessibility labels on Watch app.

We also fixed a lot of small annoyances and bugs:

• Hiding the irrelevant calendar icon when editing protocols.
• Table display bugs and truncation in document view.
• List numbering wrongly interrupted by table.
• Update completed state of paragraphs after reordering.
• Actually query start date when duplicating an experiment.
• Correctly displaying experiments pending completion under the 'Ongoing' tab when selecting an experiment to duplicate.
• Missing information in diagnostic section of pre-filled feedback emails.
• Using the correct tint color in the various protocol-related views.
• Insertion of picture below selected paragraph when using the paragraph toolbar.
• Keyboard hiding modal menu for changing note type.
• Extraneous space in support button.
• Removing unused options wrongly displayed for Findings in the Settings app.
• Icon missing or incorrect icon when using swipe-to-right to toggle the completion state of a paragraph in the experiment editor.
• Displaying multi-line text in the metadata editor screen.
• For a paragraph added on Mac, a timer could only be added after "deleting" a (non-existing) timer.
• Attachments not duplicated when duplicating an experiment.
• Correctly displaying styled text (bold, italics, etc.) in bullet-list paragraphs.
• Watch: unreliable notification when starting timer from Watch app.
• Watch: glance update after updating experiment progress or timer in the Watch app.

 

PolyPharma has been updated, it uses structure activity relationships to view predicted activities against biological targets, physical properties, and off-targets to avoid. Calculations are done using Bayesian models and other kinds of calculations that are performed on the device. There is more detailed information here. The latest update includes toxicity models from EPA Tox21 dataset measurements.

There are many more iOS apps for science on the mobile science site.

 

I've just been sent a link to an advanced charting kit for mobile devices Shinobicontrols if you are developing an iOS app that requires plots or charts this may be a useful addition.

If you are looking for a graphing toolkit for both iOS and MacOS then it might be worth looking at the tools from VVI

 

The iOS app PolyPharma has been updated. PolyPharma uses structure activity relationships to view predicted activities against biological targets, physical properties, and off-targets to avoid. Calculations are done using Bayesian models and other kinds of calculations that are performed on the device.

More details are available in this presentation.

 

Orange NMR the iOS app to predict 13C and 1H NMR spectra has been updated, just draw a structure to see its spectrum.

What's New in Version 2.2

iOS 9 multitasking supported.

Optional calculation of MF, MW, Monoisotopic Mass and Elemental Composition added.

Ability to show terminal and all carbons on structure added.

Some minor bugs fixed.

 

I just heard about an update to the OSX Molecular DataSheet (XMDS)

After much procrastination, chemical reactions have started to make their way into the OSX Molecular DataSheet (XMDS) beta

This could be a very interesting development.

 

Wolfram Alpha has been updated.

Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

 

MEL Chemistry is an iOS app that allows users visualize molecules in 3D. You can rotate, zoom in and zoom out to see molecule structure in details. There is also an accompanying bench chemistry kit that looks like a perfect christmas present for young (and not so young) home scientists. WolframAlpha has been updated

Remember the Star Trek computer? It's finally happening--with Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation. Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.

 

It looks like iOS adoption is running smoothly, now over two thirds of iOS users.

 

I've just got details of a couple of updates to mobile science apps.

ImageVis3D Mobile is a mobile visualization application one to visualize and share volume and surface data while you are on the go. With ImageVis3D (available for free at www.imagevis3d.com) and ImageVis3D mobile you can transfer your own data directly from the desktop to your mobile device.

What's New in Version 5.1 - new iOS 9 compatible UI (support for Slide Over and Split View) - numerous improvements in the rendering engine - slice viewer visualizes geometry in addition to volume data

Orange NMR is an App to predict 13C and 1H NMR spectra: draw a structure to see its spectrum. The accuracy of the algorithm is about 1.9 ppm for 13C and 0.21 ppm for 1H (RMSD=3.4 and 0.31 ppm correspondingly). The number of heavy atoms in structure to predict for free is restricted to 12 atoms. This restriction can be removed by purchasing additional licenses.

What's New in Version 2.1. Table of peaks added. Structure drawing enhanced: Touch and drag from bond to draw ring. Double click inside ring to make it aromatic. P and I elements added. Help added.

There are now an increasing number of mobile spectroscopy apps available.

 

Chemistry Keyboard has been updated. This update includes the addition of a triple bar character and compatibility with iOS9.

Chemistry Keyboard is a specialised Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae.

 

As of today, Papers for iPhone and iPad is available for free! Full functionality, no in-app purchases or small print.

Awesome news.

 

Developers often ask me about the versions of operating systems that are used to access the site so I keep an occasional eye on the analytics.

Looking at iOS I notice that version 9 is now appearing at just over 6% of the visitors. Version 8 accounts for around 92% with an occasional visitor still using versions 5-7. Just in case the site visitors are not representative I thought I'd check on the Mixpanel site, they also show >90% using iOS 8 as shown below.

The lack of fragmentation in iOS adoption makes it easy for developers to decide on which version of the operating system they need to support.

 

Scientific application for iOS are getting more and more sophisticated, PolyPharma is a new application for looking at Structure-activity generated by a wide selection of predictive Bayesian models.

The results are then displayed using a variety of visualisation methods, a "radar plot", molecules coloured , using the "doppler" signature (blue = low, white = intermediate, red = high) indicating which parts of the molecule contribute most to the predicted activity/property. The activity in all models can be displayed

and the structure activity in a selected model explored using the "honeycomb" display. For each of the targets within the profile, the app stores a selection of representative molecules from the training set that was used to build the Bayesian model. These are shown as a series of thumbnail summaries using the honeycomb-style clustering layout, with the current molecule at the centre, the is support for gestures allowing the user to "pinch" or "sweep" to zoom in or browse.

 

I notice that the Royal Society of Chemistry have just added another mobile app, the Periodic Table is based on the Periodic table on the RSC website and contains lots of interesting facts about the elements.

There are actually a few other Periodic Table apps, including Molar, EleMints, Periodic Table of the Elements, Merck PTE HD, The Chemical Touch, The Elements and my favourite The Elements in Action.

The Elements in Action has videos describing the elements, so if you have ever wanted to know what happens when rubidium is dropped into water this is the app for you, bear in mind however it is a 557MB app.

 

SPRESImobile has been updated.

SPRESImobile provides you with a powerful and convenient way to access ChemReact, containing around 410,000 chemical reactions and related references. InfoChem created ChemReact for chemists who need information about effective reaction transformations. We achieved this by selecting representative examples of each reaction type from the larger SPRESI data collection of 1974-2001

New in Version 2.3 Updated for iOS8. 64-bit version

New in Version 2.2

NAME REACTION SEARCH: After registration users see a new button for name reaction searches in the reaction search form. Furthermore, all users (including those not registered) will see a new hyperlink with the Name Reaction in the reaction hit list, when named reactions are hits for a reaction search. This hyperlink allows users to retrieve all reactions assigned to the specific mechanism.

New in Version 2.0

REACTION SEARCH: Users are now able to perform a range of reaction searches, such as exact, substructure, similar and all-in-one within the new reaction search page

REACTION EDITOR: The MMDS structure editor by Molecular Materials Informatics has been modified to enable intuitive and easy reaction query submission.

INFO FOR SPRESIweb CREDENTIALS OWNERS: SPRESImobile users who own credentials for the SPRESIweb application containing now over 11.8 million molecules (5.4 million abstracted from the literature and 6.4 million from catalogs) and 4.2 million reactions, are now informed about the database they are searching via a short notice visible at the bottom of the SPRESImobile homepage.

There are now nearly 400 science apps on the Mobile Science website.

 

I recently became aware of a new company specialising in software for scientists Shazino have developed a number of interesting applications for both Mac OS X and iOS.

The best known app is PaperShip an iPad, iPhone, and Mac application designed to help you keep your articles organized with your Mendeley or Zotero library. However they also provide a couple of smaller apps that make life easier in the lab.

Laboratory Timer, Fast Counter and SciKey a scientific keyboard.

The latest addition is an electronic labNotebook called Hivebench, this is available for both MacOSX and iOS. Looking at the website it seems to be aimed at molecular biologists/biochemists, and there is a free version that allows unto 10 scientists to collaborate.

 

I was tidying up a couple of things on the Mobile Science site and I thought I'd just give a mention to the top 5 most upvoted applications.

1, ChemDoodle Mobile
2. Elemental
3. WolframAlpha
4. Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit
5. Papers 3 for iOS

All worth having a look at.

 

I've been involved in collaborations to write a couple of papers recently and when I mentioned the trials and tribulations of editing and version control when you have multiple authors someone suggested I look at Overleaf. If you are a LaTex user this looks like a very useful option, there are certainly templates for a number of chemistry journals and based on the description on the website it looks like a pretty impressive way for collaborative writing. It looks like they also support iOS.

There is a free option which would certainly be sufficient to try it out.

A reader has highlighted Authorea a web-based collaborative scientific writing tool. Authorea lets you write in LaTeX, Markdown, HTML, Javascript, and more. Different coauthors, different formats, same document. It uses Git, a robust versioning control system to keep track of document changes. A recent article written using Authorea had 200 authors form around the globe.

 

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit is one of the best examples yet to show how mobile devices are making an impact in science. It is becoming the "swiss army knife" for medicinal chemists with an increasing calculators that are critical for drug design. To be honest I think a lot of biologists will find it useful as well.

You can read the full review here.

 

There is a very interesting publication in the latest issue of Science, Point-of-care quantification of blood-borne filarial parasites with a mobile phone microscope DOI describing the use of a smart phone to captures and analyzes videos of microfilarial motion in whole blood.

Parasitic worms are a major health hazard in many parts of the developing world and the drugs used to treat the disease can have serious side-effects so it is important to restrict the medicines to the appropriate patients. Researchers had previously tried developing ways to test blood for antibodies or to stain the parasites for easier identification under a microscope, but the techniques were never fast, cheap, or effective enough.

Instead they use a mobile phone microscope that uses motion—the “wriggling” motion of individual microfilariae—instead of molecular markers or stained morphology to count microfilariae in whole blood. This means that the results are available in minutes as opposed to many hours or days.

The technology uses an unmodified iPhone and readily available components, at the moment the devices are built by hand. Analysis is carried by a custom iPhone app that controls operation of the mobile phone microscope and enable one-touch counting of L. loa microfilariae in whole blood. All source code is available on GitHub.

Collaborations with the CellScope developers at UC Berkeley mean this technology is now being applied to many other applications

How CellScope Loa Works

 

A really clever way to create icons using ascii art. It is open-source and released under the MIT license on GitHub.

I think one of the real advantages of this is you can actually see the image you want to create in the code.

is rendered as..

You can read more here

 

The electronic lab notebook Findings for Mac has been updated, this free update includes a new table layout feature, and timers and timestamps. It also includes a couple of bug fixes. The iOS version has also been updated and there is now also a Findings app for the Apple watch. So if you were looking for an excuse to buy a new Apple watch this seems like the ideal reason!

There is a review of an earlier version of Findings here.

 

Orange NMR has been updated 1H NMR prediction (12 atoms restriction) added.
Allow to draw structures with S, F, Cl and Br.
13C NMR prediction accuracy improved.

ElementalDB has been updated to version 2.1 to fix a bug to improve display under iOS8. ElementalDB is a really impressive demonstration of the computational abilities of an iPad, allowing chemical structure based searching of the 1.4 million structures within ChEMBL. There is a review of ElementalDB here.

iSpartan a interesting tool for molecular modelling under iOS has been updated.
Now 64-bit enabled.
Improved performance of graphics surface code
iOS 7 improvements for Save, Search by Name, and Sketch palette
Improved notification for job errors when using the Spartan Server feature

 

Whilst this is not a Mac application I thought I'd mention it since it seems a very nice implementation.

The Protein-Ligand Interaction Profiler (PLIP) is a web service and command line tool for fully automated characterization of non-covalent interactions between proteins and ligands in 3D structures.

You can either upload a PDB format file or use the search facility to use a PDB by protein, ligand or enzyme-commission number. You can combine multiple search terms to be more specific (AND search).

I used the PDB code 3EQB, the software correctly identified two ligands, ATP and the more interesting ligand CHEMBL485945.

You can view the results using the embedded 3D molecule viewer JSmol shown in the image below.

PLIP is based on a python command-line application. In case you plan local mass/batch processing, you may want to use this one directly. The source code can be found on PLIP on Git Hub.

I first tried this out on my desktop machine and it worked beautifully, I then tried it out on my iPad and iPhone and the website functioned exactly as expected.

 

There continue to be announcements about Apple's medical research software platform, an interview with Steve Friend gives some insights into how ResearchKit and HealthKit were born.

More recently

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its Health Cloud and Watson cognitive computing capabilities will support health data entered by customers in iOS apps using Apple's ResearchKit and HealthKit frameworks. The move, which complements IBM's new Watson Health business unit, will arm medical researchers with a secure, open data storage solution, as well as access to IBM's most sophisticated data analytics capabilities.

ResearchKit is an Open Source framework developed by Apple intended to be used for building apps for medical research.

There is more information here

and the GitHub repository is here

To get the latest stable release

git clone -b stable https://github.com/ResearchKit/ResearchKit.git

Ars Technica will be reviewing in detail over the next few days.

I've added ResearchKit to the MobileScience site.

 

Mobile Science updated in particular I've added a collection of apps for programming as well as adding notes on a number of applications that have been updated. There are now 370 entries in the database and if you know of any that have been missed please add a comment below.

 

A few applications have been updated over the week or so.

Wizard Pro for Mac has been updated to version 1.7.0 highlights from the update include:-

1-click Data Refresh: Suppose you've imported and cleaned your data, perhaps built a few models -- and then your data changes. Now, thanks to the new "Refresh" button in the toolbar, you can instantly update all of your analyses using fresh data from the original source. Customize how columns are matched up with a convenient popover, and feel free to move or rename the source data file on your computer -- Wizard will automatically keep an eye on it. Command-R to refresh the data, Command-E to configure the link.

Revamped menu system: Wizard has a new modular architecture that means you'll only see menus relevant to what you're doing -- that is, Raw Data, Pivot, Summary, Model, and Predict each have their own menu now. Most of the menus are more concise, so you can find what you're looking for faster.

JSON support: by popular request, Wizard 1.7 can import JavaScript (JSON) data files. Make sure your data is encoded as an array of objects and Wizard will do the rest. Export any table or result as JSON, too.

There is a review of Wizard Pro here.

Plot2 a scientific 2D plotting program designed for everyday plotting, it is easy to use, it creates high quality plots, and it allows easy and powerful manipulations and calculations of data. The latest update fives and export bug.

MyScript Calculator for iOS, fixes problems with tutorial being played repeatedly and a drag and drop bug.

 

Cymbol is an iPad app providing fast, easy access to symbols, special characters, and scripts used in scientific writing. The application includes full sets of subscript and superscript numbers used in math, chemistry, and physics documentation. Cymbol also provides extra functionality for the iPad. A snippet editing and management tool, the app has been designed by writers for writers, providing fast, easy access to special characters not currently available on the iPad’s onscreen keyboard. You can also, put and save a variety of enhanced character sequences to the scratch pad and then paste into scientific publications.

 

Data from Mixpanel

 

According to this report by McGraw Hill 81% of students are now using mobile devices to study.

The rise of studying via mobile isn't simply due to the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets on campus, it's a case of mobile suiting the way students study now.

 

MyScript Calculator has been updated, MyScript Calculator performs mathematical calculations based on handwriting input.

Just write the mathematical expression on the screen then let MyScript technology perform its magic converting symbols and numbers to digital text and delivering the result in real time.

You might also be interested in Myscript MathPad which allows you to render complex handwritten mathematical expressions. The result can be shared as an image or as a LaTeX* or MathML* string for integration in your documents.

 

The chemistry keyboard has been updated to improve appearance on the iPad and to correct missing greek letter. The Chemistry Keyboard is a specialized Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae on iPad or iPhone.

 

Whilst I'm sure that the Apple Watch will be the major focus of todays Apple Event one thing that caught my eye was ResearchKit.

ResearchKit is a new open source framework intended to help researchers develop tools for medical research. This new framework takes advantage of the sensors and capabilities of iPhone to track movement, take measurements, and record data. There three modules to address the most common elements across different types of clinical studies: surveys, informed consent, and active tasks. These modules can be used as they are, or can be further built upon.

Health is important to all of us, so we’ve made ResearchKit open source. Now anyone can contribute to the next big medical breakthrough, regardless of their platform. An open source framework is the best way to encourage researchers to collaborate and share their apps and methods. And most important, it’s the right thing to do

ResearchKit contains five Active Task modules developed in partnership with Stanford Medicine, University of Oxford, Sage Bionetworks, and University of Rochester. The four categories include motor activities (gait, tapping), fitness (timed walk), cognition (memory tasks using touch screen), and voice .

In addition of course for passive background data collection the APIs like HealthKit and CoreMotion can be included.

There are already an Asthma app, a breast cancer recovery monitor, Diabetes and Parkinson's tracker.

 

The Mobile Molecular Datasheet has been updated to version 1.6.0.

Property calculation now includes Bayesian models. For individual models, the results are shown as a probability estimate, and a molecular overlay showing the atoms that contributed (ECFP6) fingerprints to the better/worse features. For whole datasheets, probabilities are calculated and stored in a column for each row. In this version, models included are: Solubility, Lipinski Probelike, hERG, KCNQ1, Bubonic Plague, Chagas Disease, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

The ability to import and create new Bayesian models will be added in a followup release.

The app has also been extended to integrate with the iCloud document picker extensions: files can be imported or exported to iCloud folders, as well as other compatible file sharing services, like Dropbox

 

With the increased interest in mobile devices for health and medical indications it is perhaps not surprising that the FDA have updated their guidance for developers who might be creating applications for mobile devices.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes the extensive variety of actual and potential functions of mobile apps, the rapid pace of innovation in mobile apps, and the potential benefits and risks to public health represented by these apps. The FDA is issuing this guidance document to inform manufacturers, distributors, and other entities about how the FDA intends to apply its regulatory authorities to select software applications intended for use on mobile platforms (mobile applications or “mobile apps”). Given the rapid expansion and broad applicability of mobile apps, the FDA is issuing this guidance document to clarify the subset of mobile apps to which the FDA intends to apply its authority.

The focus is on mobile apps that are viewed as medical devices.

 

MathMagic is an equation editor application for editing any mathematical expressions and symbols with easy-to-use graphical interface and various powerful features. MathMagic Personal Edition works well with any word processors, presentation software like Keynote or PowerPoint, DTP layout software like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.

There is a video showing it in action here

There is also a MathMagic for iOS

 

Strict sandboxing in the early version of iOS has caused issues with sharing molecular information between applications, chemists are very used to the idea of being able to copy and paste SMILES, or open sdf, mol files with multiple desktop applications. As iOS has evolved the strategies for sharing information have been implemented and this post on Molecular Materials Informatics has a brilliant summary of the current state of play.

Methods for sharing chemical data are described: iOS apps have many different ways to pass data in and out. Making use of the numerous different ways to exchange data is essential to making cheminformatics functionality useful on mobile devices.

 

There is an interesting article in the latest issue of Bio IT World describing work to design and build applications for mobile devices.

The rapid incorporation of touch devices, such as smart phones and tablets, into our personal and business lives increases pressure on software providers to deliver technology via mobile apps.

 

ChemDoodle Mobile has been updated.

What's New in Version 1.5.0

• Added full 3D graphics support for 3D molecules!
• Full support for iOS8 and the new iPhone sizes
• Buttons are now larger on larger screens
• Various improvements to the sketcher
• Fixed clear button where it sometimes would not work
• Corrected bug where stereochemistry was inverted in 3D coordinate generation
• Resolved rare issue where the app would fail to load properly
• Significantly increased responsiveness
• Minor changes and fixes

ChemDoodle Mobile is the most highly rated App on the Mobile Science website and is accessed with your ChemDoodle account that is provided to you for free when you purchase ChemDoodle desktop.

 

The Chemistry Keyboard has been updated.

What's New in Version 1.0.2

• Period had been inaccessible in portrait mode.
• Split the elements flyout into 2 and filled in missing elements.
• Worked around rendering

The Chemistry Keyboard is a specialised Keyboard Extension for anyone who needs to enter chemical formulae on their iPad or iPhone.

 

Just looked at the iOS 8 adoption on Mixpanel and it just topped 75%

 

The Mobile Molecular DataSheet has been updated, this is an important update and adds a number of exciting new features. There is now the ability to calculate a variety of chemical properties and add these to the data sheet. Importantly these are calculated locally on the mobile device rather than via an internet service.

The properties that are now available include:

• Molecular formula/weight, # heavy atoms, H-acceptors/donors, # rotatable bonds.
• Log P & molar refractivity: both calculated by an atom contribution method (S. A. Wildman and G. M. Crippen JCICS 39 868-873 1999), which requires implementation of substructure searching.
• Bad valences: reviews the valence counts for each of the main group atoms and reports egregious mistakes (e.g. pentavalent carbon).
• Stereochemistry: sites for R/S and E/Z stereochemistry are identified and their labels calculated, with unspecified or known ambiguous cases classified appropriately.
• Tautomers: common H-shifts are identified and the complete list of tautomeric forms are enumerated, with duplicate equivalent molecules removed, and racemised stereocentres labelled accordingly.
• PAINS filters: the original set of queries for identifying frequent hitters and other high throughput screening problem compounds is applied, and any matches are identified.
• Mass distribution: the isotope distribution is calculated for integral masses, as well as the exact mass for the base peak.

The results are also displayed on the individual molecules with bad valencies highlighted, stereochemistry labeled, and PAINS substructures highlighted.

This update really demonstrates the computing power of the mobile devices (Requires iOS8).

 

Wolfram|Alpha has been updated, the release notes simply state "Design Updates".

Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.

There is a comprehensive collection of science applications for iOS on the MobileScience site.

 

Before Christmas a couple of developers contacted me about which versions of Mac OS X were used by scientists, based on website statistics and a poll I posted it looks like >80% of users have migrated to Mac OS X 10.9 or higher. There were a couple of scientists still using 10.6 because of the need for gfortran but several people pointed out that this is now compatible with the newer Mac OS X versions.

I've now been asked a similar question about mobile devices, according to Google analytics for this site for the last month, 75% of the visitors using an identified mobile device are using an iPad or iPhone. Looking at the version of operating system on those iOS devices 80% are running 8.x.x, around 15% are using 7.x.x with the remainder running earlier versions. This seems to be supported by the latest data from https://mixpanel.com/trends/ shown below, which shows >70% iOS adoption.

From a developers point of view it really underlines the need to support the latest versions of Mac OS X and iOS.

 

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit app is a suite of resources to support the day to day work of a medicinal chemist. Based on the experiences of medicinal chemistry experts, we developed otherwise difficult-to-access tools in a portable format for use in meetings, on the move and in the lab. The app is optimised for iPad and contains calculator functions designed to ease the process of calculating values of: Cheng-Prusoff; Dose to man; Gibbs free energy to binding constant; Maximum absorbable dose calculator; Potency shift due to plasma protein binding; Log D vs pH curves; Attrition Modeller, Drug-drug interactions.

What's New in Version 1.1 New (December 2014): Three additional functions: LogD vs pH curves, Attrition modeller and Drug-drug interactions.

The Keyboard Extension Chemistry Keyboard has been updated.

What's New in Version 1.0.1
• Landscape keyboard now has a lower case Greek character map.
• Moved Grid of Elements to bottom of keyboard and improved its gesture handling
• Dark Keyboard had been blanking out the element grid.
• Search results were sometimes mislabeling temperatures as °C instead of K.
• Search results would occasionally include garbage strings.

There are many more apps for iOS on the Mobile Science site

 

The Mobile Science website continues to attract additional views. November has turned out to be the most popular yet with over 3,000 page views.

ChemDoodle, Elemental and Wolfram|Alpha continue to be the most popular.

 

The excellent mixpanel continue to monitor iOS8 uptake among other things. iOS adoption is now over 60% with the steady decline in iOS7 continuing.

 

With iOS 8 Apple now support third party custom keyboards

A custom keyboard replaces the system keyboard for users who want capabilities such as a novel text input method or the ability to enter text in a language not otherwise supported in iOS.

The Chemistry Keyboard allows users to enter chemical formulae, equations etc without having to struggle entering subscripts etc. Whilst the chemistry keyboard is an app in itself it also allows you to use the custom keyboard with other applications

You can read more details here.

 

I've just added Papers 3 for teams to the mobile science site. This app has been designed for teams, departments, companies and institutions to offer the same flexibility and easy management of Papers 3 to users with iOS devices as there is with desktop volume licenses.

 

Computable has been updated.

What's New in Version 1.1.1

• Fixed input cell text field scrolling issue on iOS 8
• Fixed issue with info button positioning on iOS 8
• Fix crash when showing info button
• Fix crash when presenting code completions
• Fixed welcome tour layout on iOS 8
• Fixed completions table view layout on iOS 8

Computable is a full-featured IPython system. Create, edit, and run IPython notebooks on your iPad

 

Papers for iOS has been updated. This is a substantial update and includes a number of new features together with significant improvements to performance.

• Library Filtering: You can now filter your library by a particular color label, as well as by all colors at once as in previous versions.
• Library Sorting: You can now sort in ascending or descending order when using any of the filters in the Library view or Federated Search.
• Sync Settings: The library sync settings section has been redesigned to give you more control over your sync settings and manual syncing.
• Notes: It is now possible to add General Notes to a paper on both iPad and iPhone, or edit existing notes.
• Support: Improvements to the "Help" section in the sidebar to include a completely redesigned support website and a direct link if you need to open a support request.
• Reading List: Improved interactions with the Papers Online Reading List.
• Linking to a Papers library on Dropbox now automatically starts an initial sync.
• Improves the "Add Keywords" screen to make it clearer which keywords are currently selected for the paper in question.
• Reduces the delay before the pop-up bottom menu bar appears on iPhone for better user experience.
• Adds a clear button to the Federated Search text bar to quickly clear a previous search query.

Performance & Stability:

• Authors are now added to a paper when using the "Match" functionality.
• User-added keywords are no longer removed when using the "Match" functionality.
• The correct PDF is now displayed when attempting to view a supplementary PDF that had been attached to a paper.
• An imported paper is now also opened automatically (as well as being imported) in the Reader when using the "Open in Papers 3" Safari functionality.
• Remaining issues with the "Open in Papers" Safari bookmarklet have been resolved.
• The "Automatic File Downloads" setting within Sync Settings will now download all available primary and supplementary files on a user's Dropbox for all papers in the library.
• The "Download All Files" functionality will now correctly download PDF files instead of associated webpages in all cases (except when PDFs can't be downloaded because they are behind a pay-wall).
• Using the Federated Search after unlinking from a library on Dropbox and deleting all local library data now returns search results.
• When choosing "Sort by Author", the Library is now sorted by surname first, and prioritizes papers with at least one author.
• Download progress bars now appear correctly for library items on iPhone as well as iPad.
• The token field bar now appears correctly on the Federated Search keyboard when using Papers 3 for iOS on iOS 8 devices.
• The color of a highlight annotation can now be changed once it has been added to a paper.
• Improved stability during initial app launch.
• Reductions to disk space usage by ensuring redundant PDF thumbnail cached data is removed when the app is launched.
• The Reading List contents are now refreshed after moving items from it to the Trash.
• Addresses some UI issues with the library screen when using Papers 3 for iOS on the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
• Prevents viewing the paper metadata inspector in landscape on iPhone to avoid UI issues.

 

The iOS scientific calculator PhySyCalc has been updated. PhySyCalc 2.0 is now universal in supporting both iPhone and iPad, there is now a swipe up for keyboard and swipe down for quantities. Plus Numerous improvements to the calculator engine.

PhySyCalc reinvents the calculator. More intuitive than conventional calculator apps, PhySyCalc lets you do full calculations with units. For example, you drive 250 miles on a full 12 gallon tank of gas and want to calculate your mileage. In PhySyCalc you can skip all the unit conversions and just enter 250 mi/12 gal. PhySyCalc gives you the answer in mi/gal. Or, if you like, km/L or L/100 km, all in a few touches of your finger.

 

The hugely popular Wolfram|Alpha has been updated.

With Wolfram|Alpha on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can explore a vast world of knowledge through an app adapted for your ever-changing, on-the-go lifestyle. Use Wolfram|Alpha to discover new information about the world and to deliver expert knowledge into any facet of your mobile life. The Wolfram|Alpha App plugs directly into the Wolfram|Alpha supercomputing cloud, computing answers to your questions quickly, efficiently, and without draining your battery.

 

Findings LabNotebook for iOS has been released. This comes with Dropbox sync.

There is a review of the MacOSX version here.

 

There have a few new additions to the Mobile Science site taking the total number of apps up to 350.

These include the Chemical Engineering App Suite for iPad and iPhone, and a series of apps from Wavefunction, Inc that cover molecular structure and bonding called the ODYSSEY applications.

 

I was just glancing at the chart on Mixpanel and I see that iOS8 is now the major iOS version. With iOS8 and iOS7 comprising over 96% of the market share it certainly makes it easier for developers to maintain compatibility.

 

Several more apps have been updated recently.

ElementalDB has been updated to use ChEMBL 19.

ChemSearch has more pricing info and now uses ChemDoodle web components 6.0.1

Chemistry by Design has been updated for iOS8.

 

I’ve had a couple of people mention that they have not updated to iOS8 because they don’t have enough space on their iPhone/iPad, well the good people at MacWorld have released a step by step video that shows how to use iTunes on your Mac to do the update.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iosapps/how-update-iphone-ipad-ios-8-without-deleting-3451992/

 

ChemSpider has been updated with additional advanced filtering options (e.g. log P, density, rule of fives violations, etc.). Also a minor UI tweaks and bugfixes.

A new addition to the mobile science site 3D Molecules Edit & Test,

FEATURES:

• Building molecule model of any organic or inorganic compound using most of periodic table elements.
• “Test yourself” mode to build the target chemical compounds.
• Support of single, double and triple bonds.
• Building molecule models of cyclic compounds.
• Hints which provide information about what's going wrong with the builded molecule.
• Visualization of Wireframe style, Stick style, Ball and Stick, Spacefill (CPK) models.
• Visualization of atomic orbitals and electron effects.
• T-shaped and «seesaw» molecular geometries support.
• Availability of information about the bond length and chemical element symbols in the molecule.
• Bond-angle optimization.
• Saving and sending the created model by e-mail.
• Loading, editing and saving molecule in SDF file format.
• Loading, editing and saving molecule in PDB file format.
• Creating, sending and opening molecule verification file.
• Export to VRML format for builded molecule.
• Opening the molecule file attachments directly from Mail.
• Opening and saving created molecules in cloud services and third-party applications.

 

When I created the Mobile Science site I did wonder how popular it would be. I occasionally check the page views and September has proved to be the busiest month to date with over 2400 page views.

As you might expect the three most recent additions generated the most page views with Computable a iPython system for the iPad topped the list, closely followed by the Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit an app designed to help drug designers. In third place was Chemical Valence a teaching aid to learn about chemical bonding.

In fourth place was ChemDoodle Mobile this is the iPhone and iPad companion to the popular chemical publishing desktop application, this app has also proved to be the most popular upvoted on the mobile science site. Two apps tied for fifth place Elemental and ChemDraw for iPad.

I’ve tagged each of the applications in order to make searching a little easier and the most popular tag is Chemical Drawing, closely followed by Molecule Viewer.

There are now 340 entries spanning a diverse area of science, if anyone knows of any that I’ve missed feel free to send me the App Store link.

 

A interesting page monitoring iPhone 6 and iOS 8 adoption/usage rates.

 

The latest incarnation of iOS is a major change and the most comprehensive review I’ve seen to date is the Ars Technica iOS8 Review

One feature that may be of particular interest is iCloud Drive, iCloud Drive keeps the concept of application-specific folders for data, but it allows users (and other applications) to see the filesystem and access data stored in multiple app folders. This means that you can open a molecular data file with the applecation of your choice.

BUT

In iOS 8, you'll be given the opportunity to upgrade from standard iCloud to iCloud Drive once you sign into your account, but you should tread lightly here—converting your account to use iCloud Drive is a one-time deal and it can't be reversed. iOS 8 still supports "Documents & Data" sync, the old-style iCloud syncing method that will continue to work with Mavericks and older iOS versions.

If you still use Macs running OS X 10.9 or older or if you have an iPhone you can’t upgrade to iOS8 and you want to sync data between them, don't turn iCloud Drive on.

 

ChemSpider Mobile has been updated.

Version 2 has a completely redesigned user interface, with powerful new functionality for previewing search results, saving compounds, and exporting to other apps and webservices. The new look incorporates the latest graphical art from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the style conventions of iOS 7.

 

ComputableUpdated

• Added Python code completions and inline documentation

• Added a Welcome Tour for new users

• Dropbox sync fixes

• Fixed a bug with incorrect initial caret position in the Python editor

• No longer hiding the navigation bar in landscape mode to keep the navigation bar buttons available

Computable is a full-featured IPython system that allows users to create, edit, and run IPython notebooks on the iPad

 

There is a recent publication “How Mobile Devices and Apps for Green Chemistry can bring value to scientists” DOI nicely illustrates how much mobile devices have become part of our working lives.

We made the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable Solvent Selection Guide more accessible and have increased its visibility by creating a free mobile app for the Apple iOS platform called Green Solvents. We have also used this content for molecular similarity calculations using additional solvents to predict potential environmental and health categories, which could help in solvent selection.

Green Solvents is a reference card for chemical solvents, with data regarding their "greenness": safety, health and environmental effects.

There is a full listing of mobil iOS apps on the MobileScience Website

 

The Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit app is a suite of resources to support the day to day work of a medicinal chemist. Based on the experiences of medicinal chemistry experts, we developed otherwise difficult-to-access tools in a portable format for use in meetings, on the move and in the lab. The app is optimised for iPad and contains calculator functions designed to ease the process of calculating values of: Cheng-Prusoff; Dose to man; Gibbs free energy to binding constant; Maximum absorbable dose calculator; Potency shift due to plasma protein binding.

The app has been designed in collaboration with the editors of the forthcoming book, The Handbook of Medicinal Chemistry: Principles and Practice, which will be published in November 2014 providing a comprehensive, everyday resource for a practicing medicinal chemist throughout the drug development process and is an ideal companion for the biannual MedChem Summer school run by the RSC.

 

I’ve just added Computable to the mobile science site. Computable brings iPython and SciPy to the iPad allowing to create, edit and run iPython notebooks on your iPad. Computable comes with full-featured SciPy stack, Numpy, SciPy, SymPy, Pandas, Matplotlib. The free download includes a series of 32 example notebooks and lectures that allow you to evaluate the application. To create or edit your own notebooks you will have to make an in app purchase to unlock the full feature set ($9.99).

 

An interesting paper from George Whitesides et al “Universal mobile electrochemical detector designed for use in resource-limited applications” in PNAS DOI. It describes an inexpensive, handheld device that couples the most common forms of electrochemical analysis directly to “the cloud” using a mobile phone.

Several electroanalytical techniques (chronoamperometry, cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, square wave voltammetry, and potentiometry) are described and demonstrated.

Four applications demonstrate the analytical performance of the device: these involve the detection of (i) glucose in the blood for personal health, (ii) trace heavy metals (lead, cadmium, and zinc) in water for in-field environmental monitoring, (iii) sodium in urine for clinical analysis, and (iv) a malarial antigen (Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2) for clinical research.

Full technical details are included in the supporting information.

 

Open Drug Discovery Teams has been updated to add Ebola a disease topic.

The Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) project is a crowd-sourced content aggregator for chemical topics.

Features:

Magazine-like interface for browsing topics, which include rare and neglected diseases, and precompetitive initiatives like green chemistry. Back-end server which harvests links from Twitter, based on topic hashtags. App integration with Twitter, allowing users to influence content by crowd-sourced ranking. Chemically-aware recognition of content: browsing and integration with other apps.

 

Molecular Materials Informatics, Inc. have been updating and expanding their portfolio of iOS apps, the latest addition is Green Lab Notebook, this looks like an interesting application for managing chemical reactions on a handheld device.

There are now nearly 350 mobile science apps on the Mobile Science website.

 

Sean Ekins gave a talk on TB Mobile at the recent ACS in San Francisco.

The presentation entitled “New target prediction and vizualization tools incorporating open source molecular fingerprints for TB Mobile version 2” is now on slideshare. Well worth a read. Also a recent publication New target prediction and visualization tools incorporating open source molecular fingerprints for TB Mobile 2.0

There are now nearly 350 mobile science apps on the Mobile Science website.

 

Whilst R is a very comprehensive statistical and data analysis package it does have a very steep learning curve.

R Instructor is an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch application that uses plain, non-technical language and over 30 videos to explain how to make and modify plots, manage data and conduct both parametric and non-parametric statistical tests.

R-Instructor for iOS

Now added to the mobile science site.

 

According to a report at the ACS Yield101 and Reaction101 are now available for free.

 

Asteris has been updated. Asteris is an iOS app that arose from a collaboration between Optibrium and Integrated Chemistry Design that allows medicinal chemists to design new molecules on their iPad and then calculate a range of physiochemical and ADME properties.

What's New in Version 1.0.2 Add sulfoxide support, using either double bond, or separated charges, Add multiple ring creation with one gesture if atoms are selected. Permit scaling with selected atoms and bonds. Add wavy bonds if Single bond tapped a second time. Add Presentation Mode.

There is a review of version one here

 

ChemSearch is an iPad app that gives you access to the Acros Chemicals catalog. It uses the ChemDoodle Web components as a front end to structure-based searching.

You can then look at all the chemical property and safety information by selecting a particular molecule.

 

I was recently sent a link to an interesting publication.

The Multiple Sclerosis Performance Test (MSPT): An iPad-Based Disability Assessment Tool DOI

As someone who has known a number of MS patients I was very much aware of the difficulties in accurately assessing the progress of the disease. The MSPT application uses the iPad as a data collection platform to assess balance, walking speed, manual dexterity, visual function, and cognition. It also provides an objective analysis and comparison with a reference population.

 

I’ve just been sent links to a selection of iOS apps related to space exploration.

The NASA Visualization Explorer, the coolest way to get stories about advanced space-based research delivered right to your iOS device. The NASA app allows you to explore with NASA and discover the latest images, videos, mission information, news, feature stories, tweets, NASA TV and featured content. There is also the NASA TV for live feeds. Portal to the Universe a news aggregator for space news.

The ESO Top 100 Images, which brings users a selection of the best astronomy images taken by a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based telescopes from the Atacama Desert in Chile. Whilst the ESA/Hubble Top 100 Images, which brings users the best Hubble pictures from ESA. Looks like an ideal place to browse for new desktop pictures.

Finally if you want to explore the Science Museum in London from the comfort of your sun lounger, with Journeys of Invention you can study, rotate and even operate some of the most revolutionary scientific inventions of all time.

 

The have been a couple of new additions to the mobile science database of scientific applications for iOS.

StatsMate is a calculator designed to make statistical analysis easier.

Bio Flowchart Lite is a collection of biological clip art.

Chemist Virtual Chemistry Lab is a fun app for undertaking chemistry experiments, Try mixing chemicals by pouring them into beakers or test tubes. You can also heat the chemicals with a bunsen burner, or put a piece of cesium into water.

 

I’ve just added the 300th iOS app to the mobile science website. The honour goes to Predictive Tools for Breast Cancer this is a tool for risk prediction of additional axillary metastases after Tumor-Positive sentinel node biopsy, described in a recent publication.

I also found a number of other iOS applications that might be of interest to those working in the area of Onclogy.

The Roche Oncology Pipeline app is a comprehensive guide to all oncology molecules currently under investigation in Roche/Genentech clinical trials. Similarly the [Lilly Oncology Pipeline app] (http://www.macinchem.org/mobilescience/biology,medical/lilly-oncology-pipeline/) gives access to the Lilly oncology pipeline. Genetech also provide the HER2 testing roadmap an iPad application that details the steps required for accurate HER2 testing for breast cancer. The BRisk Breast Cancer Risk Assessment is intended to provide a means of assessing age-specific risk of breast cancer for women with a family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer. The Breast Cancer @Point of Care™ is a clinical support platform that provides comprehensive information on the diagnosis, treatment, and management of Breast Cancer, made up of a progressive series of chapters and other learning tools. HER2 Reader is a simple clinical decision support app developed primarily for pathologists and oncologists who perform predictive marker testing for breast cancer.

 

The popular iOS molecule viewer iMolView lite has been updated with the ability to draw a structure in 2D and then convert to 3D.

There are also several new additions to the Mobile Science site medicinal-plants-pro a guide to 150 common species of medicinal plants. Molar is an educational tool and reference for students with features such as periodic table, triangle solver, and chemical equation balancer. TB Mobile makes available a set of molecules with activity against Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, and known targets available in CDD. Stephen Hawking’s Snapshots of the Universe explains the principles that control our universe through simple and fun experiments

 

I was recently sent details of another electronic lab notebook (ELN), Labarchives appears to be a web-based system that supports all major platforms any time you are connected to the Internet. This includes any Windows, Mac, or Linux system using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, as well as on the iPad.

The Professional version is priced for academic institutions and non-profits at $99 per user per year (which includes 100 GB of storage per user), representing a 50% discount off of pricing for commercial organisations.

Special departmental and site license pricing is also available as well as quantity discounts.

LabArchives can also be installed on a local server.

 

The secret of a good iOS app is often finding a niche that is both useful but does not require lots of functionality or screen real estate. Chemical Names Spell Checker ticks both boxes nicely.

The Chemical Names Spell Checker provides chemical name spell checking and chemical name synonym look-up. Data are provided by the ChemSpell service that contains more than 1.3 million chemical names related to organic, inorganic, pharmaceutical, toxicological, and environmental health topics.

Once checked the name can be copied to the clipboard for use in another application.

The ChemSpell Web Service API is free of charge. Neither registration or licensing is required. This app nicely underlines the power of chemistry web services.

Well worth all chemists having on their iPhone or iPad.

 

The popular molecule viewer for iOS Chem3D has been updated, the release notes suggest no new functionality just bug fixes.

There is a page of molecule viewers for iOS here

 

RCSB PDB the official molecule viewer for the RCSB PDB has been updated to include the latest molecule of the month.

There are many more science applications for iOS here

 

Many journals now provide a reader so that you can access the journal on your mobile device. I’ve been adding them to the Mobile Science site, currently there are 34 different journal readers available.

You can see them all here.

There are many more science applications for iOS on the Mobile Science site.

 

IDdx: Infectious Disease Queries Users can find lists of matching infectious diseases by picking disease search criteria (103 signs & symptoms, 39 epidemiological factors, and 16 regions of the world). The user can see all the symptoms associated with a disease or see all the diseases associated with a symptom.

Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice From HIV care delivery to Hepatitis C virus testing…travel and tropical medicine…and infection surveillance, prevention, and control, Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice delivers the vital information needed to optimally prevent and treat infectious diseases.

ECG Guide for iPad Full reference text that includes in-depth information on topics such as: Approach to ECG Interpretation, Analysis of rate, rhythm, axis, P wave, QRS complex, ST segment, T wave and QT interval, Ventricular hypertrophy and atrial enlargement and much more.

There are many more science applications for iOS here

 

I’ve just added a list of applications to the mobile science site, these are all anatomy reference applications. For those who remember Gray's Anatomy before it became a TV series these mobile apps offer the opportunity to explore and interact in 3D at a fraction of the weight of the book!

There are many more science applications for iOS here

 

I’ve just been sent details of a couple of mobile apps that may be of interest to the medical profession.

MediMath puts 144 of the most important medical calculators and scoring tools on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

MedScape Medscape is the leading medical resource most used by over 4 million physicians, medical students, nurses and other healthcare professionals for clinical information. - Medical News: - Drug Information and Tools: - Disease & Condition Information: - Medical Calculators

Micromedex-drug-reference Comprehensive drug information.

There are many more science applications for iOS here

 

iMOLView has been updated, this update optimises the app for iOS7.

Several apps have also been recently added MacroMole is a molecule viewer/teaching aid. Biochemistry Refence is a self-contained 350 page series of articles for a wide range of biochemistry topics. The comprehensive medical reference The Merck Manual is available for iOS.

Apple have also brought out iOS Human Interface Guidelines.

 

I’ve just been sent details of two more Science apps for iOS.

X-ray utilities looks like a handy app for crystallographers. Real-time PCR is an iOS Application from Life Technologies, a collection of easy-to-use real-time PCR resources, and a comprehensive reference.

There are many more science applications for iOS here

 

RCSB PDB Mobile has been updated to include the May Molecule of the Month.

Aquaporin, May 2014 Molecule of the Month by David Goodsell 1fqy

There many more science applications for iOS here

 

I’ve just added ChemiCal to the database of mobile science application.

ChemiCalc is a powerful unit converter for chemistry and physics calculations. Students and teachers can enter and simultaneously view converted values for energy, wavelength and frequency. Formulas and fundamental constants relevant for quantum mechanics are included.

There many more science applications for iOS here

 

The official PDB viewer has been updated

ScienceCloud is a secure, SaaS-based, mobile-enabled information management and collaboration environment that improves data and knowledge sharing for globally networked researchers. Bi-directional integration between ScienceCloud and existing on-premises systems lets life sciences organizations migrate to the cloud in a measured fashion, continuing to leverage critical legacy applications as long as needed.

Two mobile apps are now available ScienceCloud Projects and ScienceCloud Tasks.

There are many more mobile science apps here

I’ve just finished a brief review of Asteris is a new iOS app that arose from a collaboration between Optibrium and Integrated Chemistry Design that allows medicinal chemists to design new molecules on their iPad and then calculate a range of physiochemical and ADME properties.

The complete review is here, and there is a full listing of reviews here.

 

I’ve just added a Radioactive Decay Calculator to the listing of mobile science applications.

 

I’ve just added the 250th entry on the Mobile Science database, and the honour goes to KiwiViewer

KiwiViewer is a free, open-source visualization app for exploring scientific and medical datasets. KiwiViewer opens a variety of file formats and provides flexible methods of accessing data, including Dropbox, Midas, iTunes file sharing, or download via url. Supported data types include meshes, images, and point clouds, with options for vertex coloring and texture mapping. File formats include: byu, g, jpg, kiwi, mha, obj, pcd, pdb, ply, png, stl, tiff, vti, vtk, vtm, vtp, vtu, and archive formats zip, gz, bz2.

The full MobileScience database can be found here.

 

Shortly after announcing 100,000 downloads Dotmatics have posted an update to the chemical drawing app Elemental for iOS.

• Interface tweak for iOS 7

Previous improvements - iOS 7 update - Elemental drawing bug fixes - Property prediction bug fixes - iPhone 5 support - Updated predicted properties engine - YouTube video link for introduction to the app - App size reduces from 8MB to 1MB(!) - Dropbox and Twitter Integration - Calculated Properties Panel - Rate Elemental Button! Love Elemental? Please rate us! - Follow us on Twitter button - @ElementalApp - Full Retina Display Support - File association improved - Sketched molecules persist over restarts - Copy image to Camera Roll - Copy Image to Clipboard - File association (tap and hold to load in Elemental) - E-mail attachments have been improved - support for multi-centre bonds added - Multitouch gesture support Undo - double tap Zoom - pinch Scroll - two finger drag - E-mails now export a reaction/RXN file if the sketch contains an arrow - MOL file e-mails contain predicted molecular properties: MW, MolFormula, XLogP - Add text notes into your sketch - Now compatible with iOS 5.0 and up - E-mailing of images has been improved - Larger icons

There are many other Chemical Drawing Apps that support iOS

 

The official mobile app for viewing PDB structures RCSB PDB has been updated to include the April molecule of the month.

The molecule designer app Asteris has been updated to version 1.0.1 with a number of bug fixes and performance improvements.

 

Dotmatics have just announced that the chemical drawing app Elemental for iOS has been downloaded 100,000 times. Whilst not in the same league as Angry Birds it surely marks an important milestone for scientific apps for mobile devices.

There are many other Chemical Drawing Apps that support iOS

 

A couple of mobile science applications have been updated recently.

MyScript Calculator has been given an iOS 7 makeover.

Write the mathematical expression and MyScript technology will convert symbols and numbers to digital text and delivering the result in real time.

SUPPORTED OPERATORS

• Basic operations: +, -, ×, ÷, /
• Powers, Roots, Exponentials: 7², √, ∛, e³
• Misc. Operations: %, |5|, 3!
• Brackets: ( )
• Trigonometry: cos, sin, tan, cot, cosh, sinh, tanh
• Inverse trigonometry: acos, asin, atan
• Logarithms: ln, log
• Constants: π, e, phi.

SPRESImobile has also been updated, there a number of bug fixes and you can now search by reaction name.

SPRESImobile provides you with a powerful and convenient way to access ChemReact, containing around 410,000 chemical reactions and related references. InfoChem created ChemReact for chemists who need information about effective reaction transformations. We achieved this by selecting representative examples of each reaction type from the larger SPRESI data collection of 1974-2009.

We are starting to see companies exploit the client server model in bringing ever more sophisticated scientific applications to the iPad.

Asteris is a joint development from Optibrium the creators of StarDrop and Integrated Chemistry Design who created Chirys Draw. Asteris uses Chirys Draw’s touch interface to design novel molecules and then uses StarDrop’s predictive modeling power, guided by the Glowing Molecule™ visualization, instant feedback dramatically reduces the time it takes you to identify high quality compound designs. Using Asteris you can calculate a range of simple “core properties”, and ADME properties, including solubility, hERG inhibition and CNS penetration, using rigorously validated models from the StarDrop platform.

• CORE PROPERTIES
• Molecular Weight
• Number of rotatable bonds
• Flexibility
• Number of hydrogen bond donors
• Number of hydrogen bond acceptors
• Topological polar surface area.
• logP
• STARDROP ADME PROPERTIES
• logS
• logS7.4
• logD
• 2C9 pKi
• hERGpIC50
• BBB log([brain]:[blood])
• BBB category
• HIA category
• P-gp category
• 2D6 affinity category
• PPB90 category

All of the predictions are calculated using StarDrop ’s ADME QSAR module. You will need to be connected to the internet to perform these calculations using the secure Asteris cloud server.Alternatively, you can run the calculations on your own server with the “Enterprise” edition.

All communications with the server uses industry-standard SSL encryption. No compound structures or data are stored on the server. Calculate "core properties" for an unlimited number of molecules for free. Calculate ADME properties for 20 new compounds each month, free of charge. Additional ADME property calculations can be purchased via an in-app purchase.

There are demo videos on the support site.

 

Whilst Papers3 remains an extremely popular desktop reference management application Papers3 for iOS has come in for some criticism, in particular poor synchronisation with the desktop and the use of unintelligible file names. The latest version seems to address some of those concerns.

What's New in Version 3.1.5 New:

• Supplemental file support.
• Sharing PDFs via email now use human readable file names.

Stability fixes:

• Fixes a crash related to syncing.
• Improved performance on syncing.

Other:

• General bug fixes.
• Improved general appearance on iPhone.

The Mobile Science website contains more science apps for iOS.

 

Since it has been just over three months since I built the Mobile Science website I though it might be interesting to see how it is performing. After a slow start there have been around 6000 page views and looking at the weblog it is clear many people are starting to use the search facilities to explore. Currently there are around 250 scientific apps listed and I’ve started to add iOS programming resources.

The top 25 viewed apps are:-

Wolfram|Alpha
Papers for iOS
ChemDoodle Mobile
The Elements in Action
ChemDraw for iPad
Elemental
iMolView
The Elements in action
Play to cure: Genes in Space
Living Molecules
iOS Chart Library
Chemistry by Design
TouchPlot
Learn NMR FID
SciVerse Science Direct
Mobile HyperChem
Mobile Molecular DataSheet Toolkit
Reaction 101
Mathematics with PocketCAS pro
RCSB PDB Mobile
Tydlig - Calculator Reimagined
PyMOL
ElementalDB
Plasmid.io
Named Reactions Pro

Whilst the number of chemistry apps is perhaps unsurprising it is great to see other areas of science starting to make an appearance.

 

The ACS Mobile Meeting Application is your full featured guide to manage your experience at the 247th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Dallas, TX. App features include: - Native app: No wifi connection required to access the conference program, schedule, or maps. - Home: Quick access to technical, social, and governance meeting program browse and search features, exposition information, and app user guide. - Program: Browse the entire event program to build your personal schedule, bookmark sessions or speakers, or access session handouts as available. - Take notes and share them via email. - Connect your meeting experience with social media. - Exhibitors, Maps, related conference info and much more

There many more mobile application on the MobileScience website.

 

RCSB PDB Mobile has been updated to include molecule of the month.

There is a comparison of Molecule Viewers for iOS here.

 

I’ve put together a page briefly describing the molecule viewers I’ve found for iOS.

I’ve included both small molecule and large biomolecule viewers, together with some that use a client server model.

 

Everyones favourite physicist Brian Cox has just brought out a new app. The wonder of Life app allows you to explore nature in 3D with Professor Brian Cox as your personal tour guide. This is a follow up the highly successful Wonders of the universe.

Brian Cox is an excellent presenter and these apps are based on the highly successful BBC TV series, Wonders of Life and Wonders of the Universe.

 

TB Mobile from Collaborative Drug Discovery been updated.

TB Mobile makes available a set of molecules with activity against Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, and known targets available in CDD. It links to pathways (biocyc.org), genes (tbdb.org), literature (PubMed).

The latest update adds support for iOS7, and adds further compounds and molecular targets. So now there are 96 unique targets and 805 compounds. There is also major new functionality including interactive clustering, personal favourites, target prediction and exporting capabilities.

 

I’ve just been sent details of a number of iOS apps that would be useful to those involved in spectroscopy, (NMR, IR, MS) so I’ve added them all to the mobile science site.

 

Learn NMR FID is a great teaching tool to learn the basics of NMR data collection and processing. Use simulated free induction decays (FIDs) and spectra to see apodization, noise and relaxation effects. Move peaks and see how the FID changes. Real and imaginary FIDs prior to and after processing are displayed as is the resultant spectrum after the Fourier transform.

There are more science apps for iOS on the mobilescience site.

I also thought I’d mention this framework that was brought to my attention recently. There is a trend to move massively parallel tasks to the GPU, GPU Image is a framework (BSD license) that simplifies the creation of GPU filters. This framework is built around OpenGL ES 2.0, so it will only work on devices that support this API. This means that this framework will not work on the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and 1st and 2nd generation iPod touches. All other iOS devices are supported.

 

Beating cancer through a space game never seemed possible. Until now….

Every day, scientists across the globe are painstakingly analysing the genetic faults in thousands of cancer samples. They are looking for clues that will help develop new cancer treatments. This game let’s you help.

Play to Cure™: Genes in Space is a pioneering way of helping these scientists in their mission to beat cancer sooner and all via this world first mobile game supported by Cancer Research UK.

A mysterious substance is discovered in the voids of deep space. Dubbed Element Alpha, the substance is refined for use in medicine, engineering and construction and soon the Element Alpha industry explodes galaxy wide.

As an employee of Bifrost Industries, one of the biggest traders of the substance, your job is to collect as much Element Alpha as you can and trade it for upgrades to your spacecraft to help you manoeuvre the asteroid filled space course.

Game features:

• Arcade/action space gameplay
• Rise through the ranks at Bifrost Industries from Recruit to Galactic Legend
• Upgrade and customise your ship with unique items, weapons and colours
• Plan your route to maximise your Element Alpha haul
• Maximise your profits by trading your Element Alpha when the market is high or sell immediately for a guaranteed return

HOW THIS HELPS TO BEAT CANCER SOONER

Element Alpha represents genetic cancer data that scientists across the world analyse on a daily basis. Genes in Space has successfully translated this data into an interactive, asteroid-strewn intergalactic assault course.

By collecting Element Alpha and navigating your spaceship through the cosmos you’re finding the significant genetic changes which help scientists to discover cancer causing genes and develop new life saving treatments.

So gamers take note. The Genes in Space story may not be real, but the impact of what you’re doing is far from science-fiction.

Why not download Play to Cure™: Genes in Space and do your bit.

This application is designed for iPhone 4S and higher, along with iPad 2 and higher. You can play on older devices but your gaming experience may not be the same

 

The Wolfram|Alpha iOS app has been updated. This is an essential app whether or not you are a scientist.

This update fixes a few bugs and supports iOS7 design.

There are more apps on the MobileScience website.

 

I’ve just added SVGgh from GenerallyHelpfulSoftware to the MobileScience website.

SVGgh is a collection of classes for using SVG as artwork in iOS Apps. Includes a UIView and a button class.

No excuse for using bit mapped images!

 

I see that Papers3 for iOS has just been updated to version 3.1.1.

This version now includes article level metrics (Altmetrics) on the article you're reading now available in the landmarks view (PDF reader).

• General bug and stability fixes.

• Improved performance on syncing.

There are more science apps for iOS here http://www.macinchem.org/mobilescience/.

 

I’ve just added FierceBiotech and FiercePharma to the MobileScience website. Those are two very popular industry news monitors.

 

A while back I was asked to help with an Applescript to help automate the transfer of notes from an iPad to Evernote on the desktop. Since then I’ve kept an eye on the increasing interaction between mobile device and desktop. It is clear that more and more applications now have versions that run on the iPad allowing you to access information on the move. I noticed a recent review of Notebook from Circus Ponies that again emphasises the importance of the iPad version that automatically syncs with the Mac version.

I’ve never been on a business trip without my MacBook Pro but I wonder if we are getting close?

 

There is an interesting post on Molecular Modeling Basics on the use of Wolfram Alpha to solve chemistry homework problems. I have to say I continue to be impressed by Wolfram Alpha, the breadth and depth of science that is covered is amazing.

For science apps for iOS have a look at the mobile science page.

 

I was just reading the end of year newsletter from [Molsoft] and I came across this interesting snippet.

MolSoft is excited to announce that Anaglyph 3D is now available to use in ICM and iMolview.

Sure enough the update on Dec 24th has this in the release notes.

Anaglyph stereo mode is added. (Set 'Stereo Type' to 'Anaglyph' in Tools menu) Any red-cyan 3D glasses will work in this mode.

There are a number of suitable glasses on Amazon 3D Red/Cyan Glasses

I think this is the first app to enable this sort of stereo viewing and it just underlines the strides that mobile platforms are making in scientific computing.

For science apps for iOS have a look at the mobile science page.

 

The iOS7 tech talk videos are now online.

Registered Apple Developers can watch full sessions from the iOS 7 Tech Talks to get in-depth guidance on developing for iOS 7. Discover how to create innovative, flexible, and intuitive apps that integrate the latest Apple technologies.

For science apps for iOS have a look at the mobile science page.

It has been just over a month since I set up the Mobile Science database and I thought it would be good to have a look at how things were going. The aim of the database was to enable scientists to be able to search for scientific apps for iOS.

It took a lot of work to compile all the information so I’m delighted to see that it has been accessed nearly 1500 times with visitors from all over the world. A fair number of people have been voting for their favourite application and it perhaps not surprising that the chemical drawing applications, Elemental, ChemDoodle Mobile and ChemDraw are all in the top 5. The other apps picking up votes are popular scientific search and computation tool WolframAlpha and the award winning reference management app Papers3, together with ElementalDB an app that allows you to search a local copy of the 1.2 million record ChEMBL database, an app that really demonstrates the computing power now available in a hand-held device.

I will of course continue to update the database but since finding science apps on the iTunes Store can be a challenge I’d be delighted to hear about any that I have missed.

 

Originally Theodore Gray produced a beautiful coffee table book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, this was later converted into an iPad app The Elements which gave access to more dynamic information than could be achieved with a hard copy book. Now the developers have gone one step further and created The Elements in Action a periodic table with video explorations of the properties of elements. Some of the videos look like they have been rescued from old research labs so this is probably your only opportunity to see them in action.

 

A couple of applications from Molecular Materials Informatics, Inc have been updated.

Open Drug Discovery Teams is a content management system providing crowd sourced information on a range of tropical and neglected diseases. The ODDT app is free. It can be used anonymously to browse topics. Submission of content requires the user's Twitter account to be enabled and made available to the app.

Living Molecules allows specially crafted molecular glyphs to be snapped by the device camera, which direct the app to chemical data: molecules, reactions and collections. This update fixes a bug that could cause the app to crash.

Mobile Molecular DataSheet update includes Sketcher improvements: crayon gestures for adding rings and lines; traversal gesture for growing rings from bonds; and a "band-aid" feature for fixing badly drawn chain bonds.

There is now a searchable database of mobile science apps

 

Both ChemDraw and Chem3D have been updated, the release notes don’t give much information on the updates other than Redesigned for iOS7 and bug fixes.

The use of mobile devices in teaching has offered new opportunities and a recent presentation by Layne Morsch illustrates this quite nicely. Using ChemDraw for iPad and Flick-to-Share to Increase Engagement in Organic Chemistry. The page has a couple of embedded videos that give more details.

The other feature that is now becoming mainstream is the 3D-printing and since Chem3D can export in .stl format it is not surprising people have started to experiment with creating 3D models of molecules, there is a brief video here, unfortunately it is a loop of the printing process so don’t expect to see the final product. CambridgeSoft have also produced their own videos of these apps in action

 

A couple of apps have been updated recently

WolframAlpha the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

Living Molecules allows specially crafted molecular glyphs to be snapped by the device camera, which direct the app to chemical data: molecules, reactions and collections

There is now a database of mobile science apps

 

As the MobileScience site expands I’ve started to add other resources in addition to the applications. There are now a couple of useful additions for iOS programmers if you are looking for a training course, a plotting library or a chemistry toolkit.

I’d be delighted to add any more useful resources.

Finding scientific applications for your iPhone to iPad has always been a little hit and miss since there is no “science” category on the iTunes store. To help out I created a page listing applications that I knew about, unfortunately as the number of applications increased the page became unmanageable. In addition an alphabetical listing is not the most useful way to search through them.

I’ve now transferred all the information to a database that can be searched via a web interface.

The site is available at http://www.macinchem.org/mobilescience/, I’ve started to categorise applications to aid navigation but I’d be interested to hear of any suggestions. Currently there are over 200 entries covering an extensive area of science, if I’ve missed any please let me know and I’ll add them.

In the news section I’ve added links to publications and presentations that might be interesting.

I’d encourage to have a look around and I’d be interested to hear any comments or suggestions.

 

 

Experimental Assistant from Nano3D Biosciences. This application helps organize and analyze data from experiments. It take manual photos and automatic shooting for multiple images and time lapse movies, and stores them in albums for easy access later

 

There are updates to both ChemDrawand Chem3D) for iPad. There is little information available about the update to version 2.0 other than “bug fixes” and the apps have been redesigned for iOS7 and now have a minimum requirement for IOS7.0 or later.

The mobile science page contains a listing of science apes for iOS.

 

I’m hearing more and more concerns about security concerns with regard to mobile devices. I guess this was to be expected as more people have smart phones and tablets start to replace laptops. It seems Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt drew laughter when discussing security on the Android platform, Executive chairman dances around straight answer while talking up Android security.

Schmidt said in the distant future there would be an assumption that nothing is secure and that security will be devised on a per app basis for each user.

I’m not sure whether many people would find that situation very helpful. His view is perhaps a consequence of a recent study issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suggesting Android devices represent a significant security threat. Of the malicious attacks documented in the study, 79 percent took place on an Android device and 19% on Symbian whilst Apple's iOS received just 0.7 percent of the recorded malware threats. One of the key sources of threats appear to be the installation of apps from insecure sites, so whilst the approval process for the Apple iTunes store occasionally causes complaints it also acts as a significant security barrier. Whilst the Google Android should have the same role it is perhaps worrying to find that recently 50 malicious apps had to be removed. There have however now been reports of threats distributed via email spam.

The Android trojan known as Stels began distributing via fake U.S. Internal Revenue Service-themed emails, using an Android crimeware kit to steal sensitive information from the device, and monetizing by making calls to premium numbers.

Apple does seem to be taking the security concerns seriously, the AppStore provides an initial check on apps, the new fingerprint authentication provides an extra level of device protections. In iOS7 we have Activation Lock so that someone who’s got hold of your device can’t disable Find My iPhone without knowing both your Apple ID and that Apple ID’s account password. The person with your lost device can’t erase data on the device, also if you designate your device as being lost it can’t be restored to reactivate it—the phone displays only a phone number and a custom message about contacting you.

Keeping the operating system up to date helps, and the adoption rate for iOS7 is very impressive.

 

I was just looking at the iOS7 adoption rate on the Mixpanel website. When I looked last night, iOS7 stood at 63% of users, iOS6 just over 32% with older versions of iOS below 4%. Given that iOS7 has only been available just over a week this is a remarkable adoption rate. Excellent news for all those mobile science developers since it looks like will be able to focus their efforts on the latest version of the operating system,.