Chemical evolution available tools

Because of the complexity of the inputs for studying Galactic chemical evolution, we are developing a number of tools that make these ingredients and the underlying concepts more accessible to educators, students, and the general public. These tools are available over the World Wide Web at the URL... 

In this section, we briefly review some of the available tools, their features, and possible pedagogical uses. Other tools not necessarily related to Galactic chemical evolution are also available, and the interested reader is invited to explore them at webnucleo.org. 

While research employing SFC is still in the physico-chemical and operational stages, the evolution of the technique is rapidly progressing (303-305). Commercial instruments are now available, but the application of SFC to research problems is still uncommon. One area that is particularly promising is the application of SFC for assaying compounds that are extracted industrially by supercritical fluids. For example, SFC can be used as an analytical tool to quantitate caffeine (114), the oligomer content of polymerizations (111), and fats and oils in foods or petrochemical products (316). 

QSAR methods based on neural nets have also shown promise in modeling gross or in vivo toxicity of compounds to a number of species. Such models may be faster, and cheaper, and constitute useful surrogates for whole organism toxicity tests involving animal sacrifice. Bradbury reviewed the role of QSARs as tools for predicting the toxicity of chemicals when little or no empirical data are available (59). Bradbury observed that there has been an evolution of QSAR development and application, from that of a chemical-class perspective, to one that is more consistent with assumptions regarding modes of toxic action. 

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