Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Monday, October 5th, 2009
DOE Unveils New Online Database of Oil and Natural Gas Research Results
By providing easy access to the results of nearly four decades of research supported by the Office of Fossil Energy’s Oil and Natural Gas Program, the knowledge management database could ultimately help boost recovery of the nation’s oil and gas resources.
The database largely evolved from a recommendation made by the Federal advisory committees that counsel the Energy Secretary on the Department’s Ultra-Deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources Research Program.
The database portal provides access to content from dozens of CDs and DVDs related to oil and natural gas research that FE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory has published over the years. It also provides links to reports, data sets, and project summaries from ongoing research. The database includes more than 9,000 files and will be expanded in the future to include geographical information system capabilities that will allow visualization of data.
+ Direct to database
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information, Science, Source File | No Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
From the Article:
Ecologists are taking a page, and its ranking, from Google.
A new algorithm inspired by the search engine works well for predicting which species losses will trigger the fastest collapse of a food web, says theoretical ecologist Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago.
Food webs describe the pattern of what eats what in the neighborhood. If one kind of grass or bug, for example, disappears, creatures that fed on it would need to find something else for lunch. If they couldn’t, or if the alternative entrées went extinct too, then the loss could trigger a cascade of extinctions. Losing certain species can starve so many others that the whole food web unravels.
[Snip]
[Theoretical ecologist Stefano] Allesina got the idea for treating food webs like the World Wide Web while he was at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., and chanced upon a description of Google’s page ranking system. “I said, ‘That looks familiar,’’’ he remembers. In essence, the system calculates a page’s importance, or value to searchers, depending on the importance of the pages that link to it. Through the magic of mathematics, it works. In a food web, species draw importance from the importance of the species that eat them.
Much More in the Complete Article
Source: Science News
Posted in Science, Web Search | No Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
From the Article:
Google Earth — the digital globe on which computer users can fly around the planet and zoom in on key features — is attracting attention in scientific communities and aiding public communication about carbon dioxide. Recently Google held a contest to present scientific results using KML, a data format used by Google Earth.
“I tried to think of a complex data set that would have public relevance,” said Tyler Erickson, a geospatial researcher at the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor.
[Snap]
The application is designed to educate the public and even scientists about how carbon dioxide emissions can be traced. A network of 1,000-foot towers across the United States is equipped with instruments by NOAA to measure the carbon dioxide content of parcels of air at single locations.
At the bottom of the article (in the related resources section) you’ll find more information including the actual Google KML file and a few videos.
Source: NASA News
Posted in Geographic, Science, Software and Web-Based Applications, Source File | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Access the Research Guide
The guide contains both print and Internet resources. You’ll find:
+ General Works
+ Early Works and Compilations
+ Journal Articles
+ Works About Individual Inventors
+ Selected Internet Resources
Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology, and Business Division, Library of Congress
Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, History, Resources, Resources for Educators, Science | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
NOTE: The site described below is very impressive. It not only contains useful text and links but also images, sounds and video. However, the video is ONLY available in the United Kingdom. The audio of animal sounds and locations is available to everyone. For those of you outside the UK, don’t let the lack of video stop you from visiting and using this site.
From a Guardian Article:
Caught at night with infrared cameras, deep underwater with huge floodlights, and under microscopes which distinguish different sorts of microbe, the BBC’s Wildlife Finder is the product of years of planning – and dreaming. Technology and funding have finally made possible the corporation’s ambition to give its spectacular natural history photography and film a permanent global audience.
Starting with 370 animals, including four octopuses and a solitary starfish, the databank of clips and still pictures will be reinforced on a daily basis. BBC staff are combing through hundreds of wildlife programmes, from spectaculars such as Planet Earth to regional TV news items, to create an unprecedented collection. Early stars in terms of hits online include Darwin’s frog, a tiny resident of forests in Chile, which gives birth through the mouth of the male. The process is repeated in slow motion – another feature of the archive’s ability to spy on Earth’s wild creatures to an unprecedented extent.
[Snip]
Pages also contain content from Animal Diversity Web and Wikipedia, scientific classification, and related web sites. Here’s an example.
Access BBC Wildlife Finder
Much More in the Official Press Release
Source: The Guardian and BBC News Release
Hat Tip: Library Stuff
See Also: Recently Released: BBC Earth Explorers
From the News Release:
Natural history fans can enjoy the excitement of wildlife filming on location from their armchairs by following production teams working on future series…
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources, Resources for Educators, Science | No Comments »
Friday, September 25th, 2009
From the Scope Section of the Document:
Science matters. Almost no one disagrees. Agreement on how science is taught, the curriculum designed, the method used, and the measure of literacy achieved is quite another matter. Almost everyone has an opinion or suggestion. This compilation provides references and resources that highlight methods, curricula, standards, and strategies that promote learning in the nation’s elementary, middle, and secondary schools. Many of the books and resources list activities and projects designed to engage and capture the imagination of the K-12 student. Some provide incentives and novel ideas for science teachers, methods of integrating standards into the classroom, or new ways of making connections between mathematics and science, looking at physics, or exploring the environment. Other materials seek to inspire and enthuse both teacher and student, to encourage further study and/or careers in the sciences, or to advance science literacy through the school into the community.
This present guide complements LC Science Tracer Bullet 90-5, The Crisis in Science Education, and TB 75-5, Science Education in America. The latter provides an historical overview. Not meant to be a comprehensive bibliography, this is designed–as the name of the series implies–to put the reader “on target.”
Materials in the Tracer Bullet Include:
+ Introductions to the Topic
+ Subject Headings
+ Basic Texts
+ Additional Titles
+ Specialized Titles
+ Related Titles
+ Handbooks
+ Government Publications
+ Technical Reports
+ Selected Technical Reports
+ Dissertations
+ Selected Dissertations
+ Abstracting and Indexing Services
+ Journals
+ Representative Journal Articles
+ Selected Materials
+ Additional Sources of Information
+ Selected Internet Resources
See Also: Access the Entire Online Collection of Science Tracer Bullets
Source: Science Reference Services, Science, Technology & Business Division, Library of Congress
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Education, Reference Tools, Resources, Resources for Educators, Science | No Comments »
Friday, September 25th, 2009
From the Announcement
The British Library launches the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Talks from the 1980s online from this page via the British Library Sound Archive.
Featuring [our emphasis] unpublished recordings of talks and debates with top cultural, artistic and political figures of the day, this latest addition to the JISC-funded Archival Sound Recordings website offers a chance to explore in detail cultural directions in the UK of the late 20th century.
* Unpublished talks and debates with leading cultural figures published online for the first time
* Over 880 recordings – that’s 1000 hours
* Recordings date from 1981 to 1994
* Subjects discussed include art, literature, performance, fashion, film, music, philosophy, psychology, biology, feminism, AIDS and politics
More Facts:
+ Browse Talks by Date, Subject, or Contributor
+ Learn More About the Institute for Contemporary Arts
More After The Jump
(more…)
Posted in Archives and Special Collections, Arts and Humanities, Resources, Science | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Access the Latest Issue (Summer 2009) of Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship
Articles Include:
+ Chemical Information in Scirus and BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)
+ What Does It Mean to Be a Science Librarian 2.0?
+ Managing Biological Journal Citations: The Use of a BIBTeX Journal Titles and Abbreviations Database in Conjunction with LaTeX Type-Setting System
+ RefWorks in Three Steps: Undergraduate Team Bibliographies
+ Building Better Biology Undergraduates through Information Literacy Integration
+ Journals Not Included in BIOSIS Previews Have a Notable Impact in Biology
+ Teaching Interview Skills to Undergraduate Engineers: An Emerging Area of Library Instruction
+ Book Review: Research and Discovery: Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science
+ Electronic Resources Reviews: Reaxys
Access the Latest Issue (Summer 2009) of Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship
Source: Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship
Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Science, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
The CDC mobile site at http://m.cdc.gov has been around since early this year.
Now the CDC has launched a text messaging (SMS) pilot program.
By texting the word HEALTH to 87000 you’ll begin receiving updates on a variety of health topics including the H1N1 virus.
The service from the CDC is free but remember standard text messaging rates apply. You can expect up to three messages a week until the pilot program ends the first week of December.
To opt-out of the service all you need to do is reply HEALTH QUIT.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Hat Tip: P.W.
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Science, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Thomson Reuters today announced the 2009 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates — researchers likely to be in contention for Nobel honors — in anticipation of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and in economics to be announced from October 5-12.
Thomson Reuters is the only organization to use quantitative data to make annual predictions of Nobel Prize winners.
Each year, data from ISI Web of Knowledge is used to quantitatively determine the most influential researchers in the Nobel categories of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. These high-impact researchers are named Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates and predicted to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the near future, based on the citation impact of their published research.
Since 2002, 15 Citation Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.
[Snip]
The Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates typically rank among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of researchers in their fields, based on citations of their published papers over the last two or three decades.
See Also: 2009 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates Website
See Also: Essay: The Methodology Behind the Predictions
Source: Thomson Reuters (via PR Newswire)
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing, Science | No Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
From the ACM News Summary:
Research from Imperial College London scientists indicates that new smartphone software will help epidemiologists and ecologists in the field analyze data remotely and map findings across the globe. The study authors also say the software will allow the public to function as “citizen scientists” and gather data for community projects. The smartphone software lets users collect and record data, photos, and videos, and then transmit this material to a central Web-based database. The Web site uses the handset’s global positioning system to record the user’s location, and it can then display all the data collected on this subject across the world through Google Maps. The smartphones can additionally be used to request and see all the available maps and analyses. “This is the first time that we have been able to link all the functionality of smartphone technology to a Web-based database for scientists to use,” says lead study author David Aanensen. “Our software is ideal for projects where multiple people collect data in the field and submit these to a central Web site for mapping and analysis.” The researchers are currently using the software to assist in their analyses of the epidemiology of bacterial and fungal infectious diseases. Smartphones for the software employ the open source Android operating system, allowing software developers to create their own applications.
Access the Full Article (via Imperial College)
See Also: Research Paper: EpiCollect: Linking Smartphones to Web Applications for Epidemiology, Ecology and Community Data Collection (via PLoS One
Posted in Science, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Friday, September 18th, 2009
This new guide includes web-based resources from:
+ The Audubon Society
+ Center for Biological Diversity
+ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
+ Fish & Wildlife Service
+ International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
+ National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service
+ World Conservation Monitoring Centre
+ World Wildlife Fund
Access Endangered Species Internet Resource Guide
Source: Science Reference Section, Science, Technology and Business Division, LC
Posted in Bibliographies, Webliographies, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
From the Article:
The ancient city of Rome was not built in a day. It took nearly a decade to build the Colosseum, and almost a century to construct St. Peter’s Basilica. But now the city, including these landmarks, can be digitized in just a matter of hours.
A new computer algorithm developed at the University of Washington uses hundreds of thousands of tourist photos to automatically reconstruct an entire city in about a day.
The tool is the most recent in a series developed at the UW to harness the increasingly large digital photo collections available on photo-sharing Web sites. The digital Rome was built from 150,000 tourist photos tagged with the word “Rome” or “Roma” that were downloaded from the popular photo-sharing Web site, Flickr.
Earlier versions of the UW photo-stitching technology are known as Photo Tourism. That technology was licensed in 2006 to Microsoft, which now offers it as a free tool called Photosynth.
“With Photosynth and Photo Tourism, we basically reconstruct individual landmarks. Here we’re trying to reconstruct entire cities,” said co-author Noah Snavely, who developed Photo Tourism as his UW doctoral work and is now an assistant professor at Cornell University.
Source: Science Daily
+ Access and Use Photosynth (via Microsoft)
+ Various Photosynth’s of Rome
Posted in Arts and Humanities, History, Museums & Online Exhibits, Resources, Science, Software and Web-Based Applications | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
NASA Announces Screening of Space Shuttle Artifacts
NASA is inviting eligible educational institutions, museums and other organizations to begin registering to screen potential space shuttle artifacts.
The artifacts represent significant human spaceflight technologies, processes and accomplishments of the shuttle program. More information about the types of artifacts that may be available is included in a brochure, “Space Shuttle Program Artifacts,” located at:
http://www.nasa.gov/transition
To ensure broad access to potential shuttle artifacts, NASA partnered with the General Services Administration to provide a first of its kind, Web-based electronic artifacts prescreening capability. The Web-based artifacts prescreening module may be accessed at:
http://gsaxcess.gov/NASAWel.htm
Only a few hundred items will be initially screened, but thousands of other items will be added periodically until all artifacts have been screened. Each artifact will be screened for 90 days. Once the screening period closes, requestors will be notified about the status of their request.
Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Posted in Resources for Educators, Science, Search News, Source File | No Comments »
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Launching on the 14 September, the UK will make its first major independent contribution of research data to the project with the upload of the Environment Research Funders’ Forum (ERFF) Research Database. The database holds information on some 20,000 publicly funded environmental research projects and programmes that have been funded by ERFF’s member organisations since 2005.
Www.worldwidescience.org offers researchers the ability to search over 50 national databases simultaneously, providing anyone interested in science with free access to quality, authoritative information on cutting edge scientific research.
Although data is being continually added to the ERFF’s collections, through the federated search function, anyone using WorldWideScience.org will be able to access the most up to date information from the UK’s largest public sector funders of environmental science.
Developed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in the US, and chaired by Richard Boulderstone, Director of E-Strategy and Information Systems at the British Library, the project currently makes available over 357 million pages of scientific information covering energy, medicine, agriculture and the environment, but continues to seek new partners to expand the resource and help stimulate revolutionary advances in science.
Access WorldWideScience.org
Source: British Library
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Science, Source File | No Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Finding embargoed article citations in PubMed Central (PMC) is now as easy as 1-2-3! [Note: "Embargoed" articles comprise those which are not immediately free on publication, but only after a specified time period.] With the implementation of a new PMC search option, you can easily retrieve both the citations for embargoed articles and their corresponding PMC reference numbers, known as PMCIDs. Because articles under embargo do not show up during a regular PMC search, this new feature is particularly valuable for authors and publishers who must submit PMCIDs as proof of compliance with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy.
Source: NLM Technical Bulletin
Hat Tip: P.W.
Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Science | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Concerns about Pandemic H1N1 and the upcoming flu season have people on alert and the medical and nursing editors from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) are responding by making the latest evidence-based flu-related information available for free.
Access Database
Source: EBSCO
Posted in Information Industry, Science | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Researchers in the physical sciences now have a new tool for communicating with colleagues, identifying potential collaborators, and keeping up with competitors.
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) today unveiled the launch edition of its pioneering new website, AIP UniPHY a first-of-its-kind scientific networking platform for physical scientists. Through AIP’s partnership in this venture with Collexis Holdings, Inc., a leading developer of semantic technology and knowledge discovery software, the site will continue to evolve and develop.
AIP UniPHY is the world’s first literature-based, professional scientific networking platform that allows physical scientists to identify and connect directly with individuals whose expertise they may need in future collaborations. Utilizing Collexis’s proprietary Fingerprint technology, AIP UniPHY enables fast and accurate knowledge retrieval and allows individuals to search for and locate documents, researchers, trends, and new discoveries more quickly, precisely, and thoroughly than ever before.
A unique feature of AIP UniPHY is the profiling of individual scientists based on their publication history. “By providing pre-populated profiles” said John Haynes, AIP’s Vice President, Publishing, “we hope to facilitate the process by which researchers connect and share data. We expect that this will both increase the number of significant breakthroughs made across a range of disciplines, and decrease the time it takes to bring these innovations about.”
AIP UniPHY enables researchers to see the networks that connect more than 180,000 physical scientists from more than 100 countries. They will discover the research each of these individuals has conducted and follow a web of connections showing each co-author with whom the investigator has worked. AIP UniPHY reveals with whom each of these co-authors has collaborated, as well.
Access UniPHY
Source: American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Posted in Scholarly Publishing, Science, Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, announced that on September 7 it recorded the 50 millionth substance in CAS REGISTRY, the world’s most comprehensive and high-quality compendium of publicly disclosed chemical information. The recently registered substance is a novel arylmethylidene heterocycle with analgesic properties. {Our emphasis] Reaching the 50 million mark so quickly is an indicator of the accelerating pace of scientific knowledge. CAS registered the 40 millionth substance just nine months ago-in contrast, it took 33 years for CAS to register the 10 millionth compound in 1990.
Much more about this milestone in this ResourceShelf post from last week including info about the free CAS “Common Chemistry” database.
Source: Chemical Abstracts Service
Posted in Information Industry, Science | No Comments »
