Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

New Archival Sound Recordings Online via British Library: Unpublished Recordings from 80s-90s from Institute of Contemporary Arts

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Featuring [our emphasis] unpublished recordings of talks and debates with top cultural, artistic and political figures of the day, this latest addition to the JISC-funded Archival Sound Recordings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* Unpublished talks and debates with leading cultural figures published online for the first time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…)

What Does it Mean to Be a Science Librarian 2.0 and other Articles from the New Issue of Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship

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

Mobile Web: CDC Launches Text Messaging Pilot, H1N1 and Other Health News via SMS

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.

High-Impact Researchers: Thomson Reuters Predicts Science and Economics Noble Laureates

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)

Sending Science Down the Phone: New Technology Will Map Research Across the World

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

New Web Resource: Selected Internet Resource Guide: Endangered Species

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

Digitization, Flickr, and Photosynth: Rome Was Built In A Day, With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Digital Photos

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

Resources for Educators: NASA Announces Screening of Space Shuttle Artifacts

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

Online Database: UK Makes First Major Independent Data Contribution to WorldWideScience.org Next Week

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

PubMed Central Releases New Search Option for Embargoed Articles

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.

EBSCO Publishing Makes Evidence-Based Flu Resources Freely Available

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

Social Networking for Science: UniPHY: A New Discovery and Networking Service for Physical Scientists from American Institute of Physics

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)

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Records 50 Millionth Substace in CAS Registry

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

Online Database: Learn About and Search the Western Soundscape Archive

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Access and Search the Archive

From the LA Times Article:

They call their project the Western Soundscape Archive, a digital database of sounds managed and organized by the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. By title, they are both librarians, [Kenning] Arlitsch typically working behind a desk, managing technology for the project, and [Jeff] Rice spending time in the field, using his equipment like a photographer uses a camera: to hold on to a fleeting moment.

Much more about the project and archivists in the complete article.

Source: LA Times

Online Database: New NIH Tool Makes Funding Data, Research Results and Products Searchable

Friday, September 4th, 2009

From the Post:

Comprehensive funding information for NIH grants and contracts is now available on the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT) thanks to a new, user-friendly system called the RePORT Expenditures and Results, or RePORTER. RePORTER combines NIH project databases and funding records, PubMed abstracts, full-text articles from PubMed Central, and information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with a robust search engine, allowing users to locate descriptions and funding details on NIH-funded projects along with research results that cite the NIH support.

+ Access RePORT

+ The project search tool, RePORTER, is available through the RePORT site or by going directly to ProjectRePORTER.nih.gov.

Source: National Institutes of Health
Hat Tip: P.W.

Milestones: Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Will Announce 50 Millionth Registered Chemical Substance Next Week; Don’t Forget Free “Common Chemistry” Database

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

People often tell us we need more science content. So, here’s one for you.

Congrats to everyone at CAS in Columbus, OH.

From an E-Mail Announcement:

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) will announce the 50 millionth registered chemical substance next week. The number itself represents an important milestone both for researchers and CAS, but even more significant is the pace of scientific discovery around the world. Consider this: CAS will record the 50 millionth substance just nine months after recording the 40 millionth. By comparison, it took 33 years for CAS to register 10 million compounds, a milestone reached in 1990.

The predominant source of this new chemical substance information is global patent literature. Several years ago, patents accounted for approximately 20 percent of the substance information added to the registry. Today, that number is closer to 70 percent. CAS, which oversees the Registry—the world’s largest registry of publicly disclosed chemical information—can put those numbers in perspective and provide expert insight on what is driving the increase in the number of patents and registered substances.

CAS expects to announce the 50 millionth registered substance Tuesday [We Will Update Update].

From the Web Site:

REGISTRY is the only integrated comprehensive source of chemical information from a full range of patent and journal literature that is curated and quality controlled by scientists working around the world. For more than 100 years, CAS scientists and colleagues in several nations have analyzed and indexed publicly disclosed global scientific information to build up the unique REGISTRY resource that provides not only chemical names, the unique CAS Registry Number, and vital literature references but also ancillary information such as experimental and predicted property data (boiling and melting points, etc.), commercial availability, preparation details, spectra, and regulatory information from international sources.

See Also (We’ve Posted on this Free Service in the Past):

CAS Launches Free Web-Based Resource “Common Chemistry” for General Public

Common Chemistry is a resource providing information on approximately 7800 chemical substances of general and widespread interest. It is helpful to non-chemists who know a chemical name or CAS Registry Number of a common everyday chemical and want to pair both pieces of information.

Access Common Chemistry

Read the Complete Announcement

Source: CAS

Online Magazine: Science Nation

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

From the Web Site

Science Nation is an online magazine that each week looks at discoveries and researchers that will change our lives: an artificial retina that can help the blind to see, new materials for building things stronger and lighter, what we’re learning from organisms in hot volcanic vents, and ice core secrets that could reveal answers to global warming.

Access Science Nation

Source: National Science Foundation (via FREE)

The National Library of Medicine Specialized Information Services Division Now With Twitter Feed

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

You can access the Specialized Information Division’s Twitter feed at: http://twitter.com/NLM_SIS.

A recent post contains a link to NLM’s comprehensive list of wildfire-related health resources while another offers authoritative coal ash information resources.

Source: Specialized Information Resources at NLM

Hunting Deep-Sky Objects with Wolfram|Alpha

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

A primer (with screen caps) on how to use W|A into finding deep sky objects:

From the Blog Post:

The amount of activity that takes place here on planet Earth is at times unfathomable. But it’s the merest drop in the bucket in comparison to the boundless amounts of activity in our universe—Earth is merely one planet within the Milky Way Galaxy. Most deep-sky objects cannot be seen by the naked eye, but observers looking through a telescope are treated to views of colorful clusters of light and fuzzy clouds of gas in the sky. Here we’ll demonstrate ways Wolfram|Alpha can help you find deep-sky objects such as galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters—our universe has about 100 billion member galaxies, and with so many, it’s nice to have a place to start.

Source: Wolfram|Alpha Blog

Cutting-edge web tool compiles latest climate data to let users see impacts at local and global levels

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Cutting-edge web tool compiles latest climate data to let users see impacts at local and global levels

A new tool that for the first time allows people to easily see how climate change will directly impact their states shows America’s heartland will suffer the greatest jump in temperatures over the next century – with some states potentially heating up more than 10 degrees F, according to an analysis by The Nature Conservancy.

The state-by-state, country-by-country temperature projections are part of a new tool called Climate Wizard that allows people to use an interactive map to explore past and projected climate change data on their computers. With Climate Wizard, users can zoom in on any location to quickly see how temperatures and precipitation may change by month, season or year under different emission scenarios.

Source: Nature Conservancy