E-Notebook helps an environmental chemist
by Warren Hicks
Warren Hicks, BSc (Hons), is an Environmental Chemist with the CSIRO in Australia. The CSIRO is Australia's largest scientific research organisation with over 6,000 staff conducting scientific and industrial research in diverse fields such as radio astronomy, the environment, industrial processes and medical research.
"My work as an environmental chemist is far away from the work of synthetic and pharmaceutical chemists, their laboratories or pilot plants. My 'lab bench' has trees, blue sky, rivers and the ocean. On the down side, crocodiles chew up my buoys, cattle trample my installations, mosquitoes and other biting insects chew on me, but then nothing's ever perfect! I usually work with a multidisciplinary team of soil scientists, microbiologists and hydrologists. Our group's interest is applied research to understand the biophysical processes that lead to land and water degradation. The environmental degradation we study is the result of past inappropriate land management practices, rather than contamination by industry. We use our knowledge to produce tools for better decision making and to develop cost effective remediation techniques. My part is to investigate the geochemistry, so I do lots of field sampling and measurement. Once the data is in, I try to make sense of the temporal and spatial changes in geochemistry. My lab notebook is full of mineral dissolution equations, stability constants and manipulations to interpret and present the data for publication. I make extensive use of geochemical modelling programs, trying to match predictions to the behaviour of field data and the mineralogy of precipitates."
"I think chemists have always been at the leading edge in taking up computers to assist them in their work. I read about ChemOffice with interest. And while the full suite of applications in ChemOffice is not applicable to the sort of chemistry I do, the functionality of E-Notebook caught my attention. It looked like a possible alternative to my paper lab notebook and useful to round up the scatter of data files on my computer hard drive. I also liked the idea of getting my field notebook into an electronic format, and doing so as quickly as possible after the work is complete."
"Our work is organised into small project teams that are issue-based rather than discipline-based. I'm the only chemist in a group of about six scientists and for the moment I'm the only user. With E-Notebook, it was easy to create notebooks and pages to hold and organise my notes, field data and analytical lab results. E-Notebook looks like a good replacement for my lab book and a great place to put the notes from my field work. Everything is in one place, so that if I'm out of the office and want to do some writing up, I don't have to worry about bringing along all my field books." CambridgeSoft laboratory software solutions are supplied and supported in the UK by Adept Scientific plc, Amor Way, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 1ZA; telephone (01462) 480055, fax (01462) 480213, email chem@adeptscience.co.uk or see Adept's World Wide Web site http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/. Adept Scientific is one of the world's leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers.
With offices in the UK, USA, Germany and throughout the Nordic region, Adept Scientific is one of the world's leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers. |
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