The Australian Institute of Criminology launched an online publication of the Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2008 database. This first ever interactive publication uses Space-Time Research’s SuperVIEW…

Facts and Figures Online presents statistics from 1994 – 2008 on a range of crime statistics to help enhance understanding of the trends and patterns influencing crime and criminal justice in Australia. This is the first time data across different years (time series) has been presented for analysis in this way.

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SuperVIEW uses interactive visualization to make it easy to convey complex statistics to wider communities, such as who is committing crimes and where they are committing them. By using SuperVIEW this way the AIC is encouraging more users to access this valuable data resource more often. The data can be better tailored to meet the needs of its users.

Source: Australian Institute of Criminology

To help students planning their professional careers understand the opportunities in the fields of genetics and genomics, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) today launched the Genomic Careers Resource on the institute’s Web site, www.genome.gov. The careers resource showcases nearly 50 career opportunities through video interviews, career profiles, tools to rate potential career choices, and an interactive game.

“It would have been valuable to have such easily accessible career advice when I was a student,” said Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D., director of NHGRI, part of the National Institutes of Health. “The Genomic Careers Resource will get current and future students excited about careers in genetics and genomics, showing them how they can contribute to improving human health and a better understanding of our biological world.”

The Genomic Careers Resource Web site, available at www.genome.gov/GenomicCareers, is aimed primarily at high school and college students. Institute staff unveiled the new resource today at the annual National Science Teachers Association meeting in Philadelphia. Science teachers were encouraged to share the resource with other educators and school guidance counselors who play critical roles in guiding today’s students toward careers.

Source: National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

The National Institutes of Health announced today that it is creating a public database that researchers, consumers, health care providers, and others can search for information submitted voluntarily by genetic test providers. The Genetic Testing Registry (GTR) aims to enhance access to information about the availability, validity, and usefulness of genetic tests.

Currently, more than 1,600 genetic tests are available to patients and consumers, but there is no single public resource that provides detailed information about them. GTR is intended to fill that gap.

The overarching goal of the GTR is to advance the public health and research into the genetic basis of health and disease. As such, the registry will have several key functions:

• Encourage providers of genetic tests to enhance transparency by publicly sharing information about the availability and utility of their tests
• Provide an information resource for the public, including researchers, health care providers and patients, to locate laboratories that offer particular tests
• Facilitate genomic data-sharing for research and new scientific discoveries

+ Genetic Testing Registry

Source: National Institutes of Health

The app costs $2.99 and a video demo is available here.

ACS Mobile provides readers with an up-to-the-minute live stream of peer-reviewed research content published across the Society’s preeminent portfolio of scholarly research journals, and is augmented by “Latest News” from Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) –– the Society’s industry-leading magazine and preferred source of online news for its more than 161,000 member professionals.

Gerry McKiernan from Iowa State University has more including a bullet list of features here and a direct link to the iTunes store.

Source: ACS, Spectrum

34 Pages; PDF.

Author: Li Zhang (Mississippi State University Libraries

Abstract:

This article examines Web resources in research articles from 30 scholarly journals in disciplines across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The purpose of the study is to report the degree to which scholars make use of Web-based resources in the journal literature and to identify Web citation characteristics within different subject areas. The study also explores whether any changes emerged between 2001 and 2007. The examination confirms the finding of previous studies that, even though Web resources are not heavily utilized in journal articles, the number of such resources is increasing. Publicly accessible database repositories and open source software prevail over other Web resources in research communication. The implications for academic libraries are discussed. The study suggests that new strategies need to be developed to manage Web-based information resources.

Accepted: March 18, 2010
Anticipated Publication Date: January 2011

Source: C&RL

Exploring Earth Visualizations:

Features over 100 animations and images that illuminate key concepts in earth science. Examples are: coal formation, nuclear fission, growth of a continent, tectonic plate movement, volcanoes and earthquakes, fault motion, geyser eruption, wave motion, tornadoes, hurricanes, and more. Students can observe a single place on earth from multiple views, 3-D models of water and common molecules, different climate zones, and seasonal changes in the amount of sunlight reaching locations on earth.

Source: National Science Foundation (NSF) (via FREE)

The physicsworld.com newsflash app, which has had over 3,600 downloads to date, enables users to download the latest news articles from physicsworld.com directly to their iPhone or iPod Touch. Users can quickly access news stories, completely free of charge, which are displayed in an easy-to-read format. They can share these news articles with friends and colleagues via an e-mail link.

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IOPscience express is designed to keep users up to date with the latest articles to appear in 30 IOP-owned journals. It allows users to view and download articles that have been published over the last two years, and customer feedback suggests that researchers value this ability to access journal content when they’re on the move.

Users can download up to 20 articles per month to their iPhone or iPod Touch for free. They can also search for relevant articles, and e-mail information about selected articles to themselves or a colleague to enable access to the article from a desktop computer. More journal content will be added shortly, with another five journals earmarked for inclusion in IOPscience express.Both apps have been developed to provide all researchers with mobile access to valuable physics content and are free to use.

Source: Institute of Physics Publishing
Hat Tip: Knowledgespeak

The Index to American Botanical Literature has provided a service to the American botanical community for over a century, published initially in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club and subsequently in Brittonia. Beginning in 1886, when Elizabeth Britton of The New York Botanical Garden was editor, the Index has provided bibliographic data both on books and articles in periodicals. In 1999, the Index went to an entirely electronic format.

The Index contains entries dealing with various aspects of extant and fossil American plants and fungi, including systematics and floristics, morphology, and ecology, as well as economic botany and general botany (publications dealing with botanists, herbaria, etc.). “America” is defined in the broadest possible sense, encompassing land and marine plants and fungi from Greenland to Antarctica. American territory outside this area, e.g., Hawaii, is not included.

The searchable database includes all those entries published in the Index since 1996, and thus includes botanical literature appearing since late 1995. We have made minimal progress in retrospective cataloging, and will continue to add older literature as time and manpower are available. If a bibliographic entry is not in the Index, it probably means either (1) the subject matter was considered inappropriate (e.g., physiology, genetics), or (2) the publication has not arrived at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.

Access and Search the Database

Search Using:
+ Category
+ Author
+ Title of Article or Chapter
+ Journal
+ Book Title
+ Keywords

See Also: Fact Sheets About Plants, Flowers, and Gardening Tips

See Also: 1000 Plants to Know (21 Pages; PDF)

Source: New York Botanical Garden (via Infomine)

A real-time, online checklist program [alerts are also available], eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales.

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eBird documents the presence or absence of species, as well as bird abundance through checklist data. A simple and intuitive web-interface engages tens of thousands of participants to submit their observations or view results via interactive queries into the eBird database. eBird encourages users to participate by providing Internet tools that maintain their personal bird records and enable them to visualize data with interactive maps, graphs, and bar charts. All these features are available in English, Spanish, and French.

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ns from birders through portals managed and maintained by local partner conservation organizations. In this way eBird targets specific audiences with the highest level of local expertise, promotion, and project ownership. Portals may have a regional focus (aVerAves, eBird Puerto Rico) or they may have more specific goals and/or specific methodologies (Louisiana Winter Bird Atlas, Bird Conservation Network eBird). Each eBird portal is fully integrated within the eBird database and application infrastructure so that data can be analyzed across political and geographic boundaries.

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eBird data are stored in a secure facility and archived daily, and are accessible to anyone via the eBird web site and other applications developed by the global biodiversity information community. For example, eBird data are part of the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN), which integrates observational data on bird populations across the western hemisphere.

Source: eBird (via Listio)

MaterialsViews.com, the news service covering the latest developments in materials science, chemistry, and physics, has been updated with new features that help materials scientists keep up with the latest research.

MaterialsViews.com’s professional scientific editors scan the materials science, chemistry, and physics literature, looking for the most interesting, exciting, and relevant breakthroughs in all of materials science as soon as they are published. They then distill the best papers into concise summaries that can be quickly scanned so busy scientists can identify the papers they want to spend more time reading.

Finding articles is faster on the new MaterialsViews.com, with improved navigation and layout. New individual channels for hot subject areas–including nanotechnology, polymers, energy, electronics, photonics, surfaces, and more–let scientists focus on the stories most relevant to their research.

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It’s also easier to find upcoming events and conferences, and the new MaterialsViews.com jobs page can help locate the perfect career opportunity anywhere in the world.

MaterialsViews.com is a free resource.

Source: Wiley (via KnowledgeSpeak.com)

You’ll see that the technology and scanning comes with the assistance of Google. In fact, you’ll notice a Google ad at the bottom of each scanned page.

Direct to Popular Science Archive

The Pop Science Archives intro page points out that “advanced features and browsing” are in the works because they are needed. For example, to be able to limit your search to a specific year or range of years would be very helpful.

Nevertheless, it’s more useful (interesting, too!) and free content available to all.

Direct to Popular Science Archive

Source: CrunchGear, Twitter, PopSci

Search Fields Include:

+ Year
+ State
+ Location (Camp, Grocery Store, Hospital, Picnic, etc.
+ Etiology (Cause of Disease)
+ Etiology Status
Users are able to select more than one item (aka “multiple values”) in one or more categories.
Records can be easily downloaded.

Access OutbreakNet

Another source for this type of info (most of their data also comes from the CDC) is the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Outbreak Alert! Database. We posted about this dbase back in 2007 shortly after it launched.

Outbreak Alert contains from 1990-2007. It also permits the user to include “type of food” in a search.

See Also: Much More About Foodborne Outbreaks (via this CDC site)

Sources: CDC, CSPI

1) New Literature From Around the World
In February, Alexander St. Press added over 20,000 pages of new content to four collections.