Cartoon illustration from xkcd.com
The scientific community has always been quick to pick up new technology; novel ways of accessing, sharing, and organizing information have a history of changing how science is done. An important effect of the gizmo-humping tendency toward technolust is a redefinition of the way society interacts with science. One mobile platform in particular is feeding our burgeoning appetite for insight and exploration: Apple's iPhone.
The elegant slab of optical-grade glass and beveled plastic is making "science on the go" an edifying, cool, useful, and contextually pleasing experience. With the recent release of more than 500 (and counting) third-party applications for the iPhone in conjunction with the company's second-generation 3G handset and 2.0 firmware, we list 10 essential applications for working scientists, casual science enthusiasts, and all of us in between, in no particular order. We also indulge our fantasies a bit by suggesting features that we think should exist.
TOP 10
The best of the current iPhone app offerings
(1) Molecules
By: Sunset Lake Software
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: "Artificial DNA," sort of. Enter the four-digit Protein Data Base code for any molecule, and Molecules renders its three-dimensional structure as a rotating, zoomable model. Slick! Manipulating the molecule structure with multitouch feels especially intuitive, and the graphic panning is smooth. A flip menu provides a list of your stored proteins with additional information, such as the molecule's discoverers, sequence, source, and where the protein was originally published.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Line- and ribbon-structure rendering; the ability to upload personal structure files; better detail and highlighting of individual chains or residues.
(2) Starmap
By: Frédéric Descamps
Cost: $11.99
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: An ostensible planetarium. Starmap provides a fully portable way of locating things—stars, planets, constellations, meteor showers, deep-field objects—in the night sky. You can calibrate your location (either with city, longitude/laditude coordinates, or by using iPhone's triangulation) and toggle through north-, east-, south-, and west-view sky charts. It allows for customized ambient and star- brightness levels to correct for time of night and light pollution. A flip-dock on the bottom of the screen houses all the catalog lists of the sky objects, and a navigation arrow guides you to your point of interest.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Inclusion of more visible objects, such as artificial satellites; more data for each entry (i.e., for stars: spectrum/temperature/mass, star type, distance from Earth, any known exoplanets, etc.). From Seed's pie-in-the-sky wish-list department, incorporation of J. Richard Gott, Mario Juric, et al.'s "Map of the Universe"--a conformal map with recent deep-space discoveries, such as Kuiper belt objects and galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, based on a logarithmic model of the complex plane--would be an inspired addition.
(3) Genetic Decoder
By: University of Nottingham
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: A quick RNA-to-amino-acid decoder, cute and easy. This web-based app spits out amino-acid information (name, type, structure, codons, and other data) for any RNA codon entered into its nifty tap-touch toggle field. Great for students.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Native application operability!
(4) Jott
By: Jott Networks
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: A personal note transcriber. Jott is a clever little application that converts any speech (spoken into your handset) into text. It stores these transcribed notes in folders and allows the user to edit and reorganize them; there's even a feature to email them to oneself. Although not a science application per se, the tool holds massive potential for scientists, as well as wonderers of the world in general. Very often, flashes of inspiration or formulations of critical questions occur when we least expect them: while taking the long way home; in the wee hours when our minds occupy that magical space between dreams and waking life; in the bathroom. It's not always convenient to put pen to paper when the rush of creativity flows in rapid, unpredictable bursts. Pick up your phone; talk it out. The notes will be there for you to crystallize for the Nobel committee later.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Faster transcription: During our testing, processing of recorded notes lagged when being relayed to the server. The ability to upload personal dictionaries of oft-used technical terminology and proper nouns, with two-way program-recognition memory for new terms that are corrected later in notes.
(5) MIM
By: MIMvista
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: Body Worlds on your phone. As the manufacturer says, MIM for your iPhone provides "multiplanar reconstruction of datasets from modalities including CT, PET, MRI, and SPECT, as well as multimodality image fusion." In brief: Explore 3-D models of the human body. The fusion volume merges several layers of imaging to spectacular effect; the interface here is impressive. Spinning, flipping, and tweaking through the sample datasets is an engaging experience. From a practical perspective, this application offers physicians and patients a portable way to access and navigate real-case medical scans. This is just the type of envelope-pushing approach we love.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: A nonproprietary method of uploading datasets (currently only practitioners with MIM workstations can add patient scans). Ideally, future releases should refine the accuracy to diagnostic quality. "Tricoders" for the medical community of the future. Yeah.
Atom in a Box, Starmap, and MIM: Science for your pocket.
(6) A Brief History of Genetics
By: University of Nottingham
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: Um, a brief history of genetics. Simple and clearly organized, this web-based app provides a timeline of major discoveries in the field, from the 1850s to recent breakthroughs. A pull-down menu at the top breaks up the chart by decade, making for easy reference and navigation. Clicking on an item in the timeline pulls up more detailed information about the respective benchmark. A helpful tool for impressing at cocktail parties. Certain cocktail parties anyway.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: A function that allows searches for key terms of both the timeline and description data.
(7) Atom in a Box
By: Dauger Research
Cost: $9.99
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: Seriously nerd-hot visualization of hydrogenic atomic orbitals. Atom in a Box uses a complex set of equations to display atomic orbitals in real time. Interaction makes use of the iPhone's multitouch interface and accelerometer. The beautiful and fascinating result shows the orbital as a cloud that, according to the designer, "is determined by the orbital's probability density for the electron." Here, the electron is represented mathematically, modeled by something called "eigenstates," in a behavior that is far stranger than the way the Moon orbits the Earth. Understanding the way orbitals behave in a hydrogen atom is an integral component of quantum mechanics and particle behavior in general.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: The ability to save loops locally to access later or use as screensaver, for instance.
(8) MathU RPN Calculator
By: Creative Creek
Cost: $9.95/year subscription
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: A classic Reverse Polish Notation calculator with old-school cachet. For IEEE double-precision accuracy, replace the native iPhone calculator with this JavaScript-driven calc application from MathU, which was inspired by midcentury Hewlett-Packard design. Once downloaded, the interface runs free of a data connection. "Supports over 80 functions and has 20 storage registers that are remembered between runs."
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Better iPhone-friendly native integration would really add up.
(9) WeatherBug
By: AWS Convergence Technologies
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: A portable personal weather station for the closet meteorologist. With the ability to pinpoint reference location to very specific places (the school across the street, in our case) for a slew of real-time data (temperature, graphical live wind direction and velocity, rolling high and low temperature benchmarks, heat index, and humidity), as well as area forecasts with slide-outs to more detailed information, WeatherBug is a step above other technical weather services available. Radar imagery incorporates Google Maps, and the local weather cams are a nice bonus. The program's native integration is smooth and intuitive.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Barometric pressure and trending from the main screen. Feeds from the National Weather Service's CWA scientific forecast discussions along with regular batch runs from the major computer models (NAM, GFS, UKMET, etc.) would really raise the bar from a technical perspective. More imagery, such as Hydrometeorological Prediction Center surface-analysis maps, would make for tasty icing.
(10) NASA Image of the Day
By: Toughturtle
Cost: Free
IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND: An awe-inspiring snapshot from outer -space, every day. A web app, NASA Image of the Day beams distant pictures to your phone, with links to the administration's RSS feeds and podcasts. A great way to inspire on-the-go daydreaming of far-off places filled with darkmatter, hidden galaxies, black holes, and dead stars.
ADDS WE'D LIKE: Again, native integration would be a boon here, as would a well-designed gallery of archive images.