@SEL

Reinventing the Research Library: The MIT Libraries in the 21st Century

2012-01-03T13:45:00.002-05:00

I was looking at the videos MIT Libraries have posted, and this one caught my eye. It's on the long side (8+ min) but nicely done. Of particular note to me, starting at about 5:46, they discuss MIT's commitment to open access - as far as is possible, all articles published by MIT faculty are also housed in their archives, and available to anyone with internet access. The Institute Archive is part of the Libraries.

Video: Reinventing the Research Library

Derek Lovley Perspective article in Energy & Environmental Science

2011-12-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

UMass Amherst researcher Derek Lovley recently had a Perspective article, "Live wires: direct extracellular electron exchange for bioenergy and the bioremediation of energy-related contamination," published in Energy and Environmental Science. He studies the genus Geobacter, microorganisms with the ability to directly transfer electrons outside the cell. This article is an overview of their potential roles in both the sustainable production of energy and the remediation of environmental pollution, as well as raising the idea of applications in "the emerging field of bioelectronics." From the article's Broader context sidebar:

Novel biological processes are a potential source of solutions for the need for new, sustainable energy strategies and the necessity of dealing with the legacy of environmental contamination associated with more traditional energy sources. The genomes of the microbial world encode a vast metabolic potential, which for the most part is poorly understood, but may provide some help for energy needs. This perspective gives a quick primer on the basic principles of direct extracellular electron transfer, a relatively recently discovered form of microbial respiration, and summarizes how continuing developments in the study of this one form of microbial respiration has led to a number of new concepts for bioenergy and the restoration of environments contaminated as the result of energy-related activities.

UMass, state plan world class ocean research lab in Gloucester

2011-12-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

Article in the online Boston Globe - and UMass also has a video on YouTube about reopening this research station.

UMass Researcher Herb Hultin used to work at this station; the library sent many articles there before he passed away in 2007.

Congratulations to Professor Molly Lutcavage on her success!

Video of earth from 350 miles up

2011-11-29T14:13:00.001-05:00

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
I particularly love the lightning flashes and the views of the aurorae.

Science on Screen @ Amherst Cinema - Jeff Podos on bird song, and Hitchcock's The Birds

2011-09-23T21:39:00.005-04:00

Amherst Cinema's newest film series, Science on Screen, will feature a speaker on a science subject and a related film. First up is UMass biology professor, Jeff Podos, and The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. See website for full details.

UMass Amherst Cold Spring Orchard - Belchertown

2011-09-07T11:26:00.003-04:00

You can also buy fruit at the UMass Orchard in Belchertown, and buying the fruit there will support the orchard's operation. Right now, they're selling peaches and plums. Some varieties of apples for which they are most noted should be ready as well (site says "app. August 20").

I have never actually bought fruit there, but I'm hoping to go this autumn. They are open 7 days, but only from 10-5.

Peach season! How about Nectarines?

2011-09-07T11:16:00.000-04:00

Local peaches are ready! I was reminded of this through an email from CISA, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, the folks who have the "Local Hero" campaign in the supermarkets.

If you're interested in buying or picking peaches, they list which of their members offer various kinds of produce, and you can enter your zip code to find farms near you. This list is for peaches.

I actually prefer nectarines; sad to say there are many fewer outlets for this wonderful fruit.

You can also find out what kind of farm it is, whether they use pesticides or not, etc. If you're a localvore, you'll find this site very useful.

Scientific Journal Article Retraction Rate Growing

2011-09-04T10:54:00.000-04:00

On the Media, a public radio show, recently covered the increase in the rate that scientific journal articles are being retracted by interviewing Ivan Oransky. From their description of this interview:

There's often a really interesting story behind a retraction. That's what Ivan Oransky told us. He's a doctor and journalist and founder, along with Adam Marcus, of a blog called Retraction Watch. They monitor scientific journals and investigate why articles were retracted. They uncovered serious ethical breaches at a variety of journals. We asked Oransky to tell us about some of the stories he's covered this year.

Oransky discusses some of the reasons for the increase, including some anecdotes about the papers retracted, and the actions of some authors, editors, and publishers. Because, dismayingly, many retracted papers continue to be cited, he suggests changes in how these papers are marked in the scientific record to reflect the fact that they have been retracted.

National Geographic video on 7 billion - world population by end of 2011

2011-08-12T11:06:00.000-04:00

Bacterial nanowires conduct like metals - nanotechweb.org post

2011-08-10T16:33:00.002-04:00

UMass Amherst researcher Derek Lovley's work with Geobacter sulfurreducens published in Nature Nanotechnology doi:10.1038/nnano.2011.119.

Derek Lovley and colleagues of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst made their discovery in networks of “bacterial filaments”. These are also known as “microbial nanowires” because they conduct electrons along their length. These are produced naturally by some bacteria and are about 3-5 nm wide and up to tens of micrometres long. The filaments bind bacteria together into clumps called microbial biofilms.

To read the article in Nature Nanotechnology, copy the doi (digital object identifier) above, and paste it into the library's citation linker tool.

Cephalopod camo - neat video from Science Friday online

2011-08-07T22:20:00.007-04:00

Integrity Guidelines Up for Public Review - post in The Scientist

2011-08-05T14:58:00.021-04:00

From the online newsletter, The Scientist:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released a draft summarizing its principles for scientific integrity and outlining new principles which it plans to implement at the end of the year, and has invited the public to chime in.

The draft is available in the Federal Register online:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-04/html/2011-19701.htm

It asserts the intention of the NSF to support open and transparent processes in awarding of grants, media policy, and making the results of research available to the public.

From the draft:

SUMMARY: On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued a Memorandum for the Heads of 
Executive Departments and Agencies on Scientific Integrity. Shortly thereafter the Office of 
Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) led an interagency task group to develop an 
implementation strategy, and NSF was represented on the task group. On December 
17, 2010, the OSTP Director issued a Memorandum with implementation guidance (for copies 
of both memoranda, see: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/library/scientificintegrity).
      NSF is fully committed to its efforts to ensure that our processes will advance the goals 
articulated in the Memoranda. This report summarizes NSF practices both current and planned 
to maintain and enhance scientific integrity across our S&E community. The report is 
organized according to the major headings and topics of the December 2010 OSTP Memorandum.

DATES: Comments on the report are welcome before September 6, 2011. 
Comments will be useful in shaping the agency's implementation. Please send comments to 
siip_comments@nsf.gov. All comments received before the close of the comment period will be 
available for public inspection, including any personally identifiable or confidential business 
information that is included. Because they will be made public, comments should not include 
any sensitive information.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
  siip_comments@nsf.gov.

Major headings of the draft report:

I. Foundations of Scientific Integrity In Government
II. Public Communications
III. Use of Federal Advisory Committees (FAC)
IV. Professional Development of Government Scientists and Engineers
V. Implementation

Lessons in discovery and democracy from fellow organisms

2011-05-24T16:39:00.002-04:00

If I am reading her right, in "Channeling the Microbiome" a recent article in The Scientist, Sarah Greene suggests that horizontal gene transfer can be seen as an analogy to information sharing among scientists, and other human beings, and that we might learn from our micro-cousins.

An interview with developmental biologist Peter A. Lawrence of Cambridge University, entitled “The Heart of Research is Sick,” was recently published in the UK magazine Lab Times. Lawrence points out that at its core, science must be about the discovery process, which may not be selected for in a highly competitive environment that rewards the most aggressive individuals and tends to diminish the efforts of younger scientists and women.

In NPR (Morning Edition, May 24, 2011) piece on how bees select a site for a new hive ("Nature's Secret: Why Honey Bees are Better Politicians than Humans") Robert Krulwich reveals a method of persuasion that causes individual bees to investigate the suitability of proposed sites that eventually leads to them picking the best site, essentially by consensus.

Each scout's dance tells the other bees how to fly to the site — this is done by "waggle dancing," a figure dance that gives bees directions. And if a bee really likes the site, she will dance her directions over and over and over, literally hundreds of times. That way, more and more of her sister scouts see the dance, know where to go, and can fly off and check for themselves.

If the site is ho-hum, the second wave of bees will do a ho-hum, say, 10-repetition dance. But if the site is spectacular — high off the ground, narrow opening, facing the right direction, lots of honey storage space inside — then they will give it a spectacular, say, 300-round dance, so more scouts will know where to go. If they like the site, pretty soon everybody is doing the same dance: Let's call it "The Elm Tree" dance.

This is how bees "vote;" they dance themselves into a consensus.

Sounds like fun, and an excellent model. One wonders why the purportedly most intelligent species finds it so difficult to make good decisions.

"Proteus" - film about Ernst Haeckel's work on radiolarians

2011-04-14T14:48:00.000-04:00

Faculty of 1000's newsletter online (The Scientist) featured a documentary by David Lebrun on the life and work of Ernst Haeckel. As it happens, I had written a post back in July 2008 about Haeckel's book of drawings of radiolarians (Kunstformen der Natur) available online, which is why I recalled his name. There's a clip of Lebrun's documentary with the article - all animated with Haeckel's images - mind-boggling!

NSF mandate for Data Management Plans - help from the UMass Amherst Libraries

2010-12-29T16:47:00.004-05:00

Beginning January 18, 2011, proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled “Data Management Plan”. This supplementary document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results.
To assist investigators, the National Science Foundation is providing FAQs and guidance documents from specific Directorates that address compliance. The entire policy, FAQ list, and links to Directorate information are available at http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmp.jsp. For full policy implementation, see the Grant Proposal Guide Chapter II.C.2.j.
Several federal and non-governmental funding agencies have their own set of requirements for data sharing. See for example, the University of Minnesota's list of funding agency data guidelines.

UMass Amherst Libraries: Data Working Group and Data Management Services

To help researchers meet the NSF’s requirements, the Data Working Group is coordinating the development of a number of services to help researchers analyze existing data management practices or create new practices that best fit the needs of their research projects.
Relevant services include:

Guidance in the identification of appropriate data repositories for the archiving of large-scale data sets and associated research outputs, and assistance with material deposition.
Consultation on metadata and standards for format and content of data, policies for data sharing and accessibility, and plans for long-term access and preservation of data sets.
Provision of a globally accessible and widely indexed online location for faculty’s research outputs, including persistent URLs and searchable metadata, through ScholarWorks, the University's Institutional Repository.

This list of services will expand as the work of the Data Working Group and the Digital Strategies Group continues.
More information is available on the Library website under Services for Faculty:
http://www.library.umass.edu/services/services-for-faculty/data-management/

Article worth reading from Aug 2010: I Hate Your Paper - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences - by Jef Akst

2010-12-29T12:05:00.001-05:00

Thought-provoking commentary on the problems of the peer-review system due to bias or other (un)professional conduct, and the state of science and science funding. Lively comments from readers after the article are also worth reading - peer-review is fine on the whole; there are not too few, but too many papers published; that the fault lies with the editors, publishers, etc. Peer-review is changing now; I am interested to see how this plays out in this brave new world we have created.

I will likely reference this article when I talk to students about peer-review in library sessions.

I Hate Your Paper - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences -

Many say the peer review system is broken. Here’s how some journals are trying to fix it.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 - report on the State of Science in the U.S.

2010-10-27T15:20:00.002-04:00

This report was prepared for the Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. From the website:

In the face of so many daunting near-term challenges, U.S. government and industry are letting the crucial strategic issues of U.S. competitiveness slip below the surface. Five years ago, the National Academies prepared Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a book that cautioned: "Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position." Since that time we find ourselves in a country where much has changed--and a great deal has not changed.

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation's outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America's competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited provides a snapshot of the work of the government and the private sector in the past five years, analyzing how the original recommendations have or have not been acted upon, what consequences this may have on future competitiveness, and priorities going forward. In addition, readers will find a series of thought- and discussion-provoking factoids--many of them alarming--about the state of science and innovation in America.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited is a wake-up call. To reverse the foreboding outlook will require a sustained commitment by both individual citizens and government officials--at all levels. This book, together with the original Gathering Storm volume, provides the roadmap to meet that goal. While this book is essential for policy makers, anyone concerned with the future of innovation, competitiveness, and the standard of living in the United States will find this book an ideal tool for engaging their government representatives, peers, and community about this momentous issue.

Available free online - linked above from the title of this blog post.

NSF Data Management Plans - language is out!

2010-10-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

The National Science Foundation had said back in May of this year that Data Management Plans will be required in future grant applications, and that they would elaborate on this in October.

Academic librarians have been wondering if developing these plans might cause researchers to consult us about developing quality metadata for their data. Ideally, thought should be given in advance of data collection to how research might be used in the future, by the researchers themselves, and by others, maybe even in other fields; tagging the data at its inception is most efficient. Looks like baby steps at the beginning, though.

Link to the NSF page where the language on Data Management Plans is published:
   http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf11001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2j

Specific language for various units within NSF (Directorate, Office, Division, Program, etc.) is here:
   http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmp.jsp.

On that page is a link to an FAQ about Data Management Plans:
   http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmpfaqs.jsp
For an example, here is Frequently Asked Question #3:

3. Am I required to deposit my data in a public database?
What constitutes reasonable data management and access will be determined by the community of interest through the process of peer review and program management. In many cases, these standards already exist, but are likely to evolve as new technologies and resources become available.

We're all in a brave new world. If you are a UMass Amherst person and are interested in speaking with a librarian about how the Library might be able to work with you on a Data Management Plan, please get in touch!

Academy Rankings Tell You a Lot, But Not Who's No. 1 in Any Field

2010-10-01T14:34:00.000-04:00

Jeffrey Mervis
Science 1 October 2010: 18-19.

This week's release of the long-awaited assessment of the quality of U.S. research doctoral programs by the National Academies' National Research Council will disappoint those who simply want to know who's No. 1 in any particular field, because the NRC assessment can look quite different depending on your definition of "best."

This National Academies' NRC study was discussed in a recent meeting I attended of the UMass Amherst Faculty Senate's council which is the liaison to the University's Development Office. Rankings of this kind are always of interest to University administrations, naturally. Everyone speaking about it acknowledged that the 'rankings' are problematic in a number of ways. One member commented that the people doing the ranking wouldn't have first-hand knowledge of the departments they were judging among - it's a matter of reputation, apparently, rather than anything based on real data. That said, people will make use of the numbers in whatever way will benefit their agenda. From the article in Science:

To be sure, NRC does rank programs—but oh so carefully.Instead of assigning a single score to each program in a particularfield, the assessment ranks the program on five different scales.Each score is also presented as a range of rankings reflectingthe 5th and 95th percentiles of the scores it received. Thescales themselves are based on 20 characteristics (see table,p. 19) that the NRC panel deemed appropriate for a quantitativeassessment. Two are supposed to portray the overall qualityof the program—one derived from a reputational survey(the R scale), the other from a quantitative analysis (the Sscale). Three others rely on subsets that address importantdimensions of quality: research activity, student support andoutcomes, and diversity. The report itself highlights the uncertaintiesgenerated by such an exercise by calling the results "illustrativerankings [that] are neither endorsed nor recommended by theNRC as an authoritative conclusion about the relative qualityof doctoral programs."

The report's Excel spreadsheets are available at www.PhDs.org orwww.nap.edu/rdp.

News article from Nature: "Emperor penguin's old clothes are unveiled"

2010-10-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Fossilized feathers reveal colourful past.

Lucas Laursen

A 36-million-year-old fossilized penguin skeleton found on a cliff-face in Peru has given scientists insight into how penguin feathers, originally used for flight, adapted to swimming. The fossil, found by palaeontology student Ali Altamirano of the Museum of Natural History in Lima, contained intact pigments which researchers say mean that, instead of the black and white plumage of modern-day penguins, the ancient bird sported grey and reddish-brown feathers.
Image caption: The fossilised remains of a giant penguin reveals the birds were not always black and white. - Katie Browne, U.T. Austin
... [article continues - click on title to go to the original article]

Changes at the Sciences & Engineering Library (@SEL) - Fall 2010 - elevators, shelves, and names - oh my!

2010-09-08T13:52:00.002-04:00

We've been busy this summer.

Because the campus Facilities Planning is upgrading the electrical system in our building, we lost a little space on every floor, and about half the Library's basement. We installed motorized compact shelving in the remaining basement space to maximize the storage capacity there; that propelled our decision to rearrange our collections to take the best advantage of this change. In short:

All circulating books - 3rd floor
All bound journals - 1st floor & Basement

Here's our current floor directory

Unfortunately, due to bureaucratic issues, we are not allowed to use the basement yet. Thus, the journals shelved there are unavailable to us until the Amherst Fire Department signs off on the room. Articles from those journals can be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

Also, the long-awaited elevator replacement project has begun. The north elevator in the Lederle Low Rise was replaced over the summer. They are now working (intermittently) on the one in SEL. Until they are done, we must use the elevator at the north end outside the Library to move books from floor to floor (for reshelving, e.g.). If you need to get from floor to floor in the Library, and have limited mobility, please let us know and we can assist.

Finally, we have amended the name of the Library, dropping "Integrated" because it doesn't mean anything now, and because it caused confusion for our patrons, who have been known to go by mistake to the new Integrated Sciences Building instead of Lederle to reach us. This required a lot of website editing, and I'm not convinced we found them all, so if you find "Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library" on our website, please let us know! I also changed the name of the blog - since we are now acronym-ized as SEL, we are blogging as @SEL. Hope you like the change.

Ants save trees from elephants

2010-09-03T14:02:00.021-04:00

Ants on a whistling-thorn tree

Image: Todd Palmer

Commentary from The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences:
"Ants known to defend certain species of Acacia trees from elephant predation deter the massive herbivores so effectively that they are impacting entire savanna ecosystems, according to a study published online today (2nd September) in Current Biology. "

Volunteer salmon fry stocking - help Mass Wildlife in Western Mass this month

2010-04-01T16:01:00.005-04:00

This sounds like it could be fun. From the website:

Help Restore Atlantic Salmon in Massachusetts!

Here's an opportunity to assist in an important restoration program in the Connecticut River Valley. We need all the help we can get to put the fish in the water!

What You Need to Do, Bring, etc.

Bring boots/waders & a lunch. You will get wet!!!Some waders will be available for loan. A change of clothes is a good idea. You will be walking on slippery stream and river beds, up and down steep banks in chest or hip waders so you should be in good physical condition.

Fry released in the river systems and their tributaries stay in the rivers for about two years before migrating to the ocean. When the salmon are about four years old, they will try to return to spawn. More info on salmon.

We meet at 8:00 a.m. and roll at 8:30 a.m.
For more info contact: Caleb Slater, MassWildlife

Call Caleb's voicemail the day/evening before to confirm the schedule! - (508) 389-6331

Bruce Byers on Scientific American Frontiers

2010-02-06T23:15:00.004-05:00

We happened to catch this segment on Scientific American Frontiers, a PBS show hosted by Alan Alda. UMass Amherst biologist Bruce Byers and his colleagues show their fieldwork in a power line clearing in Savoy State Park in western Mass. The show was focused on the "Call of the Wild". In the segment, "Songs of Love and Betrayal":

Alan and Byers attempt to sort out the soap opera-like mating habits of the chestnut-sided warbler.
Only the male chestnut-sided warbler sings, and only during mating season, so the singing seems to be associated with successfully defending a territory and attracting a mate. To check his hypothesis, Byers captures and bands the individuals within one territory. The colored leg bands will help him keep track of which bird is doing what.

ArXiv.org - Cornell Proposes Model to Support Repository

2010-01-22T13:58:00.008-05:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 21, 2010), a "Wired Campus" blog post from Jennifer Howard: "Cornell Library Proposes New Model to Keep arXiv Going."

Cornell University Library announced today that it wants the top institutional users of arXiv.org to help pay for the online scientific repository. "Keeping an open-access resource like arXiv sustainable means not only covering its costs, but also continuing to enhance its value, and that kind of financial commitment is beyond a single institution's resources," Oya Rieger, Cornell's associate university librarian for information technologies, said in a statement describing the new strategy.
...
It costs Cornell about $400,000 a year to maintain arXiv, according to Anne R. Kenney, university librarian at Cornell. The library's annual budget runs in the $40- to $50-million range. Some 200 institutions account for about 75 percent of the download traffic on arXiv, and it's that group that Cornell hopes will pony up first. The suggested contribution for the heaviest users is $4,000. Ms. Kenney says that most of the top 25 have said they will participate.

Broader questions are raised by this eminently reasonable proposal:

Is this a sustainable arrangement?
Should there be more governmental support for this kind of repository? And if so, what kind of precedents does this establish for other fields of study? (NSF already provides significant support. See http://arxiv.org/help/support/faq)
How can academic institutions avoid paying for the same material in multiple formats?

UMass Amherst was 159th of the 200 most common user s of arXiv in 2009, and so might be expected to bear some of the cost. Academic librarians and others are actively discussing these and related issues of access to and funding of scholarly and scientific information. Cornell asserts that arXiv will continue to be open access. More to come.

OSTP Launches Public Forum on Public Access to Research

2009-12-18T15:24:00.003-05:00

The Office of Science and Technology Policy wants you! On December 10 the office officially launched a Public Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research intended to solicit public comments on what the federal government's policy ought to be with regard to published, federally-funded research. They ask: "To what extent and under what circumstances should such research articles—funded by taxpayers but with value added by scholarly publishers—be made freely available on the Internet?"

In most cases, research publications are held behind journal subscription barriers. In research universities and other institutions of higher education, libraries are instrumental in providing access to this content. For those who do not have the benefit of an educational or institutional subscription, much of this research is inaccessible.

Advocates for Open Access encourage the public availability of all federally-funded research. Not only does Open Access make scientific literature available to anyone with an interest in it (for example: people with medical conditions, amateur or unaffiliated scientists), it also speeds scientific process and fosters competition.

Tell the OSTP what you think. The forum will run until January 7. Comments on policy implementation will be taken from December 10 to December 20; comments on features and technology will be taken between December 21 and December 31; comments on management and compliance will be taken between January 1 and January 7.

Neil Forbes interviewed on WFCR: The Power of Bacteria (2009-12-11)

2009-12-11T13:21:00.002-05:00

On the radio this morning, we heard UMASS Amherst researcher Neil Forbes (Chemical Engineering) interviewed about his work using bacteria to target cancer cells. Have a listen.

WFCR: The Power of Bacteria (2009-12-11)

Science paper on glycosylation retracted

2009-11-30T13:53:00.004-05:00

News from The Scientist by Jef Akst:

Researchers are retracting a highly-cited 2004 Science paper describing a new way of adding sugars to proteins -- a longstanding challenge in molecular biology -- citing their inability to repeat the results and the absence of the original lab notebooks with the experiment details, they announced in Science last Thursday (November 26).

It's a little curious - that absence of the original notebooks. Here's the retraction:

Science 27 November 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5957, p. 1187
DOI: 10.1126/science.326.5957.1187-a

Letters

Retraction
We wish to retract our Report (1) in which we report that β–N-acetylglucosamine-serinecan be biosynthetically incorporated at a defined site in myoglobinin Escherichia coli. Regrettably, through no fault of the authors,the lab notebooks are no longer available to replicate the originalexperimental conditions, and we are unable to introduce thisamino acid into myoglobin with the information and reagentscurrently in hand. We note that reagents and conditions forthe incorporation of more than 50 amino acids described in otherpublished work from the Schultz lab are available upon request.
Zhiwen Zhang,¹ Jeff Gildersleeve,² Yu-Ying Yang,³ Ran Xu,⁴ Joseph A. Loo,⁵ Sean Uryu,⁶ Chi-Huey Wong,⁷ Peter G. Schultz⁷^,*

"Regrettably, through no fault of the authors..." is a curious way to report this - absolving themselves, but not giving any other explanation. In an email to The Scientist, Schultz says again, "There are clearly complexities associated with suppression and cellular bioavailablity of these and other glycosylated amino acids that we did/do not understand, and, regrettably, we no longer have the notebooks to help resolve these issues (through no fault of any coauthors)." One wonders what happened.

Another animal 'cam' - on the backs of albatrosses - reveals possible explanation

2009-11-02T15:18:00.007-05:00

Researchers had wondered how certain deep water prey had turned up in the diets of Black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys) - surmising that they had found these species in association with commercial fisheries.
[Photo caption: An iceberg photographed from the back of an albatross]

Now scientists report in the journal PLoS ONE that miniaturised cameras attached to the back of the birds have revealed the birds fly in groups and forage with killer whales.
"We went through thousands of images manually, we were so bored because most of images showed just 'featureless' ocean," says Professor Akinori Takahashi from the National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan.
"Then we suddenly saw some albatrosses flying in front of the camera bird and then found the killer whale in the image."
"Finding the interaction of albatrosses with killer whales in the open ocean is unique, because it provides a clue to explain [how] some fish species unavailable within a diving range of albatrosses often appeared in their diet," he explains.

"World interest in Australian fishery impact test" - Press release from CSIRO

2009-10-28T09:48:00.005-04:00

An Australian method for assessing the environmental impact of marine fisheries has caught the eye of fishery management agencies worldwide. [click on title to connect to source]
[CSIRO = Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation]

26 October 2009

Aspects of the 'ecological risk assessment' (ERA) method have been adopted in the US, Canada, Ecuador, and the Western and Central Pacific, and by the international eco-labelling organisation the Marine Stewardship Council.

The method was developed in research led by Dr Tony Smith and Dr Alistair Hobday from CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship in association with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).

“AFMA needed a tool for assessing the ecological risk associated with a diverse range of fishing practices: from the hand-selection of rock lobsters in the Coral Sea, to the trawling of Patagonian Toothfish deep in the Southern Ocean,” Dr Smith says.

“We met the challenge with a three-step method that considers targeted and incidentally caught species, as well as threatened, endangered and protected species. Ongoing research is further developing the method for habitats and ecological communities.

“Each level of analysis potentially screens out issues of low concern and directs attention to higher risk issues. This helps fishery managers to guard against unacceptable changes to the ecosystem, while being strategic about where to focus dollars and time,” Dr Smith says.

Dr Hobday says the completion of ERA reports for more than 30 AFMA-managed fishing sectors has been a mammoth undertaking involving many years of work by a large research team.

“Our ERA reports document the most comprehensive assessment of the ecological impacts of fishing in Australia’s commercial fisheries and for any large set of fisheries in the world,” he says.

“More than 1200 species have been assessed, highlighting the diversity of Australian fisheries and pointing to risks requiring analysis and management, both for individual fisheries, and on a cumulative scale.”

The ERA process contributes to the strategic assessment of fisheries under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and flags priorities for research, data collection, monitoring and management.

AFMA is responding with environmental risk management strategies for each fishery and other initiatives such as a guide for fishery managers to help manage shark bycatch. (Sharks and rays come out repeatedly as high-risk species across many fisheries.)

The research has also yielded a database of information on more than 1000 species of mammals, seabirds, reptiles, scalefish, and sharks and rays.

The Bureau of Rural Sciences, Fisheries Victoria, Fishwell Consulting, and the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries assisted with the ERA research.

CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions to Australia’s major research challenges and opportunities. The 10 Flagships form multidisciplinary teams with industry and the research community.

Can USDA's NIFA be ag's NIH? - Bob Grant's NewsBlog from The Scientist

2009-10-27T12:21:00.005-04:00

Commentary on prospects for agricultural and food research after the establishment of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (new name and mission for the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service), looking in particular at the consequences of neglecting publicly available research, and issues for public/private collaborations.

...

Unlike university-based biomedical research, however, which in general has enjoyed robust funding in the recent past, academic agricultural research has withered under a USDA that has traditionally meted out small, non-competitive grants to land grant universities, often at the behest of US legislators trying to direct funds to their home districts or states. The result is an intellectual landscape where much of the knowledge surrounding plant science and agriculture resides not in universities but in industry, locked behind the walls of large agribusinesses.

"We're starting at a different point with NIFA than the one at which we find ourselves at NIH," said Keith Yamamoto, a University of California, San Francisco, molecular biologist who serves as an advisor to the NIH and led the agency's recent efforts to revamp its peer-review process. "The current tilt in the fundamental knowledge about plants, their growth, and development is on the industry side and I would say that it's precisely because of the lack of resources on the public side," he told The Scientist. "It's the basic, fundamental information that needs to be in the realm of the public sector."

The disparity between private and public agriculture research becomes apparent when one considers data from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Lists of recent patent holders in technology classes related to biomedicine -- surgery, drugs, prosthesis, etc. -- are replete with universities, which typically hold patents generated by publicly-funded research. Agricultural patents from 2004-2008, however, are overwhelmingly held by large agribusinesses such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta. In the USPTO's "Multicellular Living Organisms and Unmodified Parts Thereof and Related Processes" technology class (which includes genetically modified organisms), six companies -- Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Monsanto Technology, Stine Seed Farm, DuPont, Syngenta, and Mertec -- were awarded a total of 255 patents in 2008, while the Regents of the University of California system, which held the most patents in that technology class out of any university or university system last year, was awarded only six. Other technology classes relating to agriculture, such as "Plant Protecting and Regulating Compositions" and "Planting," have been devoid of university-held patents over the past 4-5 years.
...

"What have we found out about the influenza A (H1N1) 2009 pandemic virus?" - article in Journal of Biology (BMC open access)

2009-10-09T14:02:00.006-04:00

Question and answer format.
Published online September 18, 2009. Questions include:

The 1918 pandemic influenza virus is said to have started by causing relatively mild disease in the summer but to have become more severe in the winter. Do we know why, and might influenza A (H1N1) 2009 do the same?

What about the possibility that influenza A (H1N1) might recombine with other more virulent viruses?

Might immunity built up in the course of the Northern hemisphere summer lessen the impact of the pandemic in the winter?

...etc.

"Scientists Decry Isotope, DNA Testing of ‘Nationality"

2009-10-02T11:38:00.003-04:00

In the special issue of Science out today, a news item describes a dismaying misuse of science and technology. As one of its tests, the Borders Agency in Britain is piloting use of DNA analysis and isotope testing of soft tissues to verify (or not) whether a person applying for asylum in the U.K. comes from the country they claim to have come from.

"My first reaction is this is wildly premature, even ignoringthe moral and ethical aspects," says Alec Jeffreys of the Universityof Leicester, who pioneered human DNA fingerprinting. ...

After reviewing the Border Agency's plans, Jeffreys [wrote] in an e-mail to Science: "The Borders Agency is clearlymaking huge and unwarranted assumptions about population structurein Africa; the extensive research needed to determine populationstructure and the ability or otherwise of DNA to pinpoint ethnicorigin in this region simply has not been done. Even if it didwork (which I doubt), assigning a person to a population doesnot establish nationality - people move! The whole proposalis naive and scientifically flawed."

Because the hue and cry over this is so widespread in the scientific community, I wondered if this might be a case of those in power trying to use science to intimidate rather than actually expecting to get at the truth. Questionable asylum-seekers might be threatened with the use of "scientific tests" in hopes that they will admit to falsifying their country of origin. This might be deemed reasonable if the tests would actually produce relevant information, but, instead, what is questionable is the attempt to assign country of origin by these means.

Ardipithecus ramidus - special issue of Science magazine

2009-10-02T10:57:00.005-04:00

Science 2 October 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5949, pp. 60 - 61
DOI: 10.1126/science.326_60a

from Introduction to the Special Issue, by Brooks Hanson, "Light on the Origin of Man"
...

This issue presents 11 papers authored by a diverse internationalteam (see following pages) describing an early hominid species,Ardipithecus ramidus, and its environment. The hominid fossilsare 4.4 million years old, within this critical early part ofhuman evolution, and represent 36 or more individuals, includingmuch of the skull, pelvis, lower arms, and feet from one female.The papers represent three broad themes. Five focus on differentparts of the anatomy that are revealing for human evolution.These show that Ardipithecus was at home both moving along treeson its palms and walking upright on the ground. Three characterizeArdipithecus's habitat in detail, through analysis of the hostingrocks and thousands of fossils of small and large animals andplants. These show that Ardipithecus lived and ate in woodlands,not grasslands. The first paper presents an overview, and itand the last two papers trace early human evolution and synthesizea new view of our last common ancestor with chimps. One conclusionis that chimps have specialized greatly since then and thusare poor models for that ancestor and for understanding humaninnovations such as our ability to walk.

Data Sharing

2009-09-18T15:59:00.002-04:00

The Nature Publishing Group has put out an interesting series of articles in their September 10 issue on data sharing: why, why not, and why the sciences are strongly disinclined to open up their harddrives.

Crowd-sourcing dinosaur science! The Open Dinosaur Project

2009-09-08T14:23:00.007-04:00

Here's an innovative way to get science done, and get people involved at the same time. Three researchers asking for help from the public to enter data into a giant spreadsheet. There must be hundreds of projects that could progress this way.

From their organizing blog:

Introducing the Open Dinosaur Project
Posted September 8, 2009

Hello, and thanks for dropping by at the Open Dinosaur Project. This blog is part of a wider project, in which we hope — with your help — to make some science. We want to put together a paper on the multiple independent transitions from bipedality to quadrupedality in ornithischians, and we want to involve everyone who’s interested in helping out. We’ll get to the details later, but the basic idea is to amass a huge database of measurements of the limb bones of ornithischian dinosaurs, to which we can apply various statistical techniques. Hopefully we’ll figure out how these transitions happened — for example, whether ceratopsians, thyreophorans and ornithopods all made it in the same way or differently.
...
if you care about dinosaurs, and want to make some science, then you can be involved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned professional palaeontologist, a high-school kid or a retired used-car salesman: so long as you can conduct yourself like a professional, you’re welcome here.

And now, for the gory details. . .

and so on - check it out here: http://opendino.wordpress.com/
Thanks to CoTurnix's A Blog Around the Clock for this.

Got moose? - with video

2009-08-25T13:12:00.005-04:00

UMass Amherst grad student Dave Wattles' moose research described in an article in The Scientist - with video!
Click on title for full article.

Video of Dave tracking moose on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_YN5UTshkU

The Scientist.com

Volume 23 | Issue 8 | Page 21

By Margaret Guthrie

Got moose?

Cadwell in fall

Courtesy of Paul Lussier

I’m sitting in the cab of a large pick-up whose roof bristles with radio antennae, on a narrow back road in the western, more wooded part of Massachusetts. On the seat between Dave Wattles and me is a radio the size of an automobile battery with knobs and dials on top. It’s emitting a low static hum punctuated by loud chirps. The chirps are from the GPS transponder on a radio-collared moose, in this case the Peru bull, one of Wattles’s 20 or so research subjects. The louder and closer together the chirps, the closer we are to the moose. It’s April, and Wattles is doing his monthly moose check-up.

...

Bee calamity clarified - Newsblog article from New Scientist

2009-08-25T12:19:00.002-04:00

For full article click on title above

Posted by Bob Grant

[Entry posted at 24th August 2009 08:45 PM GMT]

An illness that has been decimating US honeybees for more than three years probably isn't caused by a single virus, but by multiple viruses that wear down the bees' ability to produce proteins that can guard them against infection, according to a new study.

Image: courtesy of Joseph Spencer

"We may not have the smoking gun," University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, the study's main author, told The Scientist, but "we found the bullet hole."

Cells taken from bees that had succumbed to colony collapse disorder (CCD) were cluttered with ribosomal RNA fragments, suggesting that the bees had trouble translating genetic material into functional proteins, Berenbaum and her colleagues report today (August 24) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is an elegant piece of work that weaves together data on host gene expression, microflora and observations of others into a coherent and compelling story," W. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University researcher who was not involved with the study, wrote in an email to The Scientist.

"Furloughs for state school profs" - blog post from The Scientist

2009-07-23T23:43:00.004-04:00

This hasn't happened at UMass Amherst yet... [To see the full article, click on the title of this posting]

Posted in The Scientist by Jef Akst

[Entry posted 22nd July 2009]

Universities across the US are forcing their employees to take unpaid leave, effectively reducing the salary budget without reflecting pay cuts on paper. But for most researchers, who cannot easily pause their studies, what furloughs really amount to is a simple reduction in income -- the same amount of work for less money.

Image: Flickr/hoyasmeg

"Especially in the sciences, [professors can't just stop] laboratory experiments or any ongoing monitoring they're doing," said John Curtis, Director of Research and Public Policy at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "In most cases, [the end result is] just that they get a pay cut."

Last week (July 16), the University of California Board of Regents enacted a furlough plan to save $184.1 million by requiring their employees to take between 11 and 26 days of unpaid leave, amounting to a 4-10% reduction in pay. But the UC system isn't the first; several US schools have been quietly implementing similar plans in the past several months. The problem, of course, is that faculty aren't 9-to-5 employees, and walking away from academic work can be like trying to escape your own shadow.

"The teaching load is not being reduced, [nor] the expectations for producing," Curtis said. "It's something we really hadn't heard of except in isolated cases, and then all of a sudden this spring, probably about 12 public colleges or universities announced furloughs of one kind or another."

[...]

DNA may differ between tissues - blog post from The Scientist

2009-07-20T15:26:00.004-04:00

Posted in The Scientist by Bob Grant on 20th July 2009 04:52 PM GMT. Click on the title above to see the full blog posting, which begins:

Recent findings may spell trouble for genome-wide association studies based on DNA obtained through blood samples: Genetic material may vary between blood cells and other tissues in a single individual, a study in the July issues of Human Mutation reports.

Image: Wikimedia

The study "raises a very interesting question," Howard Edenberg, director of the Indiana University School of Medicine's center for medical genomics, told The Scientist. Many genome-wide association studies -- especially studies on systemic diseases such as diabetes and atherosclerosis -- depend solely upon DNA harvested from blood samples to identify genes associated with medical conditions. But this study "suggests that looking only at blood, you may miss some things."

Searching for the genes behind a fatal condition called abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), researchers from McGill University in Montreal found that complementary DNA from diseased abdominal aortic tissue did not match genomic DNA from leukocytes in blood from the same patient. "We did not expect to find a difference in the tissue [genes] compared to the leukocyte [genes]," said endocrinologist Morris Schweitzer, who led the study.

ACS To Go Electronic Only

2009-07-14T11:50:00.003-04:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education and Ars Technica report that the American Chemical Society, publisher of journals such as Chemical Reviews, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Langmuir, and Nano Letters (to name a few), is preparing to publish their content electronically only and step away from print production.

What impact will this have? Both reports have some interesting comments.

Article from The Scientist on "Citation Amnesia"

2009-06-29T11:14:00.003-04:00

Interesting comment on citation practice in journal articles. Below is quoted only the first few paragraphs. Full article and comments from readers are well worth reading. Click on the title of this blog post for a link to the article.

The Scientist: NewsBlog:

Citation amnesia: The results

Posted by Bob Grant

[Entry posted at 25th June 2009 03:57 PM GMT]

Citing past scientific work in present-day research papers can be a slippery business. Contributions from competing labs can be lossed over, pertinent studies accidentally left out, or similar research not mentioned in an attempt to give the study at hand a sheen of novelty.

We at The Scientist often hear complaints from our readers concerning what they regard as either honest or purposeful omissions in the reference lists of high-profile scientific papers. So we conducted a study of our own to try and quantify the prevalence of these types of slights and ask our readers how the problem might be fixed.

Image: Wikimedia

Indeed, the vast majority of the survey's roughly 550 respondents -- 85% -- said that citation amnesia in the life sciences literature is an already-serious or potentially serious problem. A full 72% of respondents said their own work had been regularly or frequently ignored in the citations list of subsequent publications. Respondents' explanations of the causes range from maliciousness to laziness.
...

Journal of Biology editorial - Biologists Who Count

2009-06-13T16:14:00.004-04:00

Editorial in a recent Journal of Biology discusses the debate about the importance of numeracy in the study of biology. First paragraph below. The title of this post is a link to the full text.

Biologists Who Count

Miranda Robertson

Journal of Biology 2009, 8:34doi:10.1186/jbiol146

Published:

27 May 2009

Editorial

The importance of mathematics in biology is a matter of perennial debate. The squabbles of early 20th century geneticists on the value of mathematics to the study of evolution have recently been revisited in Journal of Biology [1], and the 21st century has seen an explosion of information from various -omics and imaging techniques that has provided fresh impetus to the arguments urging the need for mathematical competence in the life sciences [2]. While there can be no question about the contribution of mathematics to many fields in biology, there is a curious tendency on the part of numerate biologists (often immigrants from the physical sciences) to insist that it is an essential part of the equipment of a biologist and none should be without it. This seems, on the evidence, extreme.

Peregrine falcon chicks atop Du Bois Library - photos of banding

2009-05-28T14:17:00.006-04:00

Click on the blogpost title to see photos of the 'Class of 2009' falcon chicks from library staffer Lorraine LaPointe. There are 4 chicks in this year's brood, 3 females and one male. Lorraine says in her email:

The males are much smaller than the females. The male is in Richard Nathorst’s right hand in the group photo. If you don’t know who Richard is he is the one that looks like the “proud Papa”. Hopefully he will send some better photos.

Common Chemistry

2009-05-26T14:29:00.006-04:00

“Common Chemistry” new CAS website

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS; http://www.cas.org/) , a division of the American Chemical Society (ACS; http://www.acs.org/) has launched a new, free, web-based resource called Common Chemistry (http://www.commonchemistry.org/). This resource is designed to help connect a chemical name to its CAS Registry Number. The CAS Registry Number is considered to be the most commonly used and unique identifier of a chemical substance.

Helpful to non-chemists this site contains approximately 7,800 chemicals of widespread and general interest as well as information about 118 elements from the periodic table. The results page provides the compound’s Registry Number, molecular formula, and chemical name (chemical name synonyms) and a Wikipedia link if available.

While not intended to be a comprehensive CAS Registry number look-up service, it does provide a good starting point for common chemicals. In testing the site my only concern is that it does not provide look-up service by entering a common drug name such as “Prozac.” If this site was truly designed for the non-chemist I would think that it would provide look-up service to those “common” household chemical names.

Reaxys Database Trial through 6/30/09

2009-05-14T15:39:00.004-04:00

The UMass Library is pleased to announce a database trial to Reaxys.

Reaxys is a web-based search and retrieval system for chemical compounds, bibliographic data and chemical reactions. Reaxys is based on data from Elsevier’s chemistry databases – CrossFire Beilstein, CrossFire Gmelin and Patent Chemistry Databases.

Offering a wealth of experimentally validated information, Reaxys brings a fresh look to synthetic chemistry with powerful functionality, combined content and relevant information.

Powerful Functionality
Reaxys search, analysis and workflow tools are designed around the needs and common tasks of users, including:
· Synthesis planner to design the optimum synthesis route
· Multi-step reactions to identify precursor reactions underlying synthesis of target compounds
· Additional search capabilities such as the ability to generate structure query from names or phrases
· Search result filters by key properties, synthesis yield, or other ranking criteria
· Results visualization
· Similarity search
· Transformation analysis

Combined Content
The merger of three prestigious databases puts all the relevant data at the user’s fingertips. A search across the Reaxys database delivers a single results set and each record provides details excerpted from multiple patent or journal sources.

Relevant Information
Reaxys contains an extensive repository of experimentally validated data that chemists need including structures, reactions (including multi-step reactions) and physical properties. Now chemists can get relevant data not found elsewhere, drawn from source publications carefully selected for their importance and relevance to synthetic chemists.

To access the database go to the Reaxys link on the database trials page:
http://www.library.umass.edu/ndl/view/type/databasetrials

Send comments to pborrego@library.umass.edu.

NASA astronaut sends Twitter messages from Hubble

2009-05-13T13:07:00.005-04:00

Article from the Telegraph.co.uk:

Twitter has broken through the final frontier: it has gone into outer space, thanks to one of the NASA astronauts servicing the Hubble Telescope.

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 4:57PM BST 13 May 2009

(L to R) Mike Massimino, Drew Good, Andrew Feustel, and Jon Grunsfeld

Mike Massimino, a member of the crew sent to Hubble, has become the first person to use Twitter from space.

His first tweet proclaimed: "From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

His second, sent via the computers on board the space shuttle Atlantis, said: "From orbit: Getting more accustomed to living in space today and getting ready for our big rendezvous with hubble."

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, has been used by thousands of people in unusual and controversial locations – including the Mumbai terrorist attacks, a child's funeral, and even inside the womb, thanks a pregnant woman wearing a belt with a sensor, which automatically tweeted when it felt the baby kick.

NASA, however, confirmed that this Mr Massimino – who goes by the Twitter nickname Astro_Mike – was the first man to have sent a Twitter message from out of space.

"Tweeting happens every day down here on earth, so why not take it to beyond Earth?" a spokesman at the Kennedy Space Centre.

Mr Massimino started using the blogging service in April and until recently had just a few hundred followers.

He now has in excess of quarter of a million people following his updates on Twitter, thanks to his regular messages in the lead up to launch day on Monday, which gave small details about his preparations and fitness regime.

Twitter, which allows people to post small messages, of no more than 140 characters, has taken off this year, with celebrities, politicians as well as about 15 million of ordinary people using the service.

Two New International Telescopes Launching May 14 - watch the launch live!

2009-05-13T12:22:00.008-04:00

Steve Lord, a graduate of UMass Amherst in Astronomy and Electrical and Computer Engineering, who now works at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Jet Propulsion Lab at Cal Tech in Pasadena, CA, sent me this email:

Dear Friends,

Today [Tomorrow] - On the same day when the Space Shuttle astronauts reach NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to repair it and give it 5 more years of life, a new telescope will be launched from Kourou, French Guiana, South America:

The Herschel Space Observatory:

Herschel was built by 25 European countries with some help from the US - 1000 people x 10 years and 1 billion dollars. The US (NASA) gave 20% in instrumentation. I have worked on Herschel exclusively for 10 years.

Herschel (and another telescope, Planck) will be launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and for a month steered to its Sun orbital position located five times further than the Moon.

The Herschel telescope is the largest telescope to be put into space by far, having more than twice the collecting surface area of the Hubble.

Herschel's instruments are cooled with liquid helium to near zero -273 C and the large mirror cools to -200C.

Herschel will observe the "cool" Universe for 3.5-5 years studing the origin of the Universe and the prebiotic chemistry taking place in space.

Herschel Launch time:
Thursday 14 May*/ /*by the French Aerospace Company
- Trois, deux, un

6:12 AM PST
9:12 AM EST
10:12 AM Rio Janeiro
2:12 PM GMT
3:12 PM CET
6:12 PM India
9:12 PM China

Watch the launch live here (it takes 25 min of burn) http://www.videocorner.tv/

Here are some Herschel info links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7864087.stm
http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/1091848

Links from the European Space Agency (ESA) on

the Herschel and Planck Observatories:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/SEMBM00YUFF_0.html
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=17

And the launch campaign:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=44286

Wikipedia misquotes the dead

2009-05-12T16:07:00.003-04:00

Shane Fitzgerald wondered how accountable modern news media are. Do they check facts in a 24/7 news cycle? He got his chance to test the media's accuracy and research methods when French composer Maurice Jarre died on March 28. Within hours of his death, Fitzgerald added to the Wikipedia article on Jarre a quote he thought would be irresistible to obituary writers. Here it is:

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

He supplied no source or attribution, and the administrators at Wikipedia quickly removed it. Before they did, though, the quote was lifted and appeared in newspapers around the world. So far only one of them, The Guardian, has publicly admitted that its writer copied the quote. Other newspapers have removed the quote but made no apology for the mistake.

This brings up two points: the frequently repeated, too-often-unheard warning about using Wikipedia as a source, and what happens to stories that incorporate inaccurate information. In this case, only one of the newspapers that made the mistake printed a retraction; the others quietly corrected it. What if someone used one of those stories as a source before the correction? The mistake would be carried on, even after it had been fixed. The shadow of Wikipedia is long and dark. And you can quote me.

Elephants on the brink

2009-05-05T14:00:00.004-04:00

YouTube video - photographs of elephants by Karl Ammann with narration by Dale Peterson about a book they collaborated on Elephant Reflections, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2009.

Note from the book by Karl Ammann:

I believe that both the conservation community and most of the conservation media are far too content to go with the ivory story. It's a sexier tale, after all, and it allows us to focus our blame on a distant and rather vague "ivory mafia" in Asia rather than on particular poachers, lax law enforcement officers, and meat traders in Africa. The ivory story is also a simpler one to tell, and perhaps easier to bear. But the consumption of all kinds of wild animal meat in Central Africa has become profoundly commercialized during the past several years. This commercialization has, in turn, caused the consumption of game meat -- including elephant meat -- to explode in scope and impact. The uncontrolled nature of the commercial meat trade is now the most important threat to forest elephants, and it needs to be publicized, understood, and addressed by individuals, organizations and governments.

Post extracted from The Scientist, "A new book explores the many textures of African elephants", published 1st May 2009 04:59 PM GMT.

UMass Amherst Researcher Edward Calabrese Receives Marie Curie Prize for Work on Hormesis, Low-Dose Radiation and Health

2009-05-05T10:37:00.001-04:00

May 1, 2009

Contact:

Ed Blaguszewski
413/545-0444

AMHERST, Mass. – Edward Calabrese, a professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been awarded the Marie Curie Prize for “outstanding achievements in research on the effects of low and very low doses of ionizing radiation on human health and biotopes.”

At an international conference this week at UMass Amherst, Andre Maisseu, president of the Paris-based World Council of Nuclear Workers, announced that Calabrese is the council’s 2009 Curie Prize winner. Maisseu saluted Calabrese during the annual meeting of the International Dose-Response Society, of which Calabrese, an environmental toxicologist, is a founder and current director. Maisseu said the prize recognizes an entire body of research that has improved scientific knowledge of low-dose ionizing radiation effects on human beings and biological communities. A formal award ceremony will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September.

While Calabrese is the foremost expert in the world on a chemical dose-response phenomenon known as hormesis, he has done little dose-response work with ionizing radiation, he observes. However, he feels deeply honored by the council’s recognition. “I accept that I’m being given credit for bridging the gap between chemical hormesis and ionizing radiation,” he says, “and I do believe there is evidence to bridge it. What I have urged all along is for mainstream science to see hormesis as a basic biological principle.”

Hormesis describes the fact that low doses of some chemicals are stimulative or promote growth but higher doses are toxic or inhibit growth, for example. The Marie Curie Prize winner, who joined the UMass Amherst faculty in 1976, says, “We need to conduct the research―which has been long neglected―to understand hormesis more fully, with all its implications.”

The theory’s proponents suggest that low doses of minerals in multivitamin pills such as chromium and selenium, for example, boost health not because they provide required nutrients but because low doses of many toxins stimulate biological systems with beneficial mild stress, while higher doses are toxic. By contrast, the prevailing linear threshold model of toxin behavior says the absence of harmful effects below the threshold assumes there are no effects relevant to health.

Calabrese and colleagues’ work on chemical hormesis sparked vigorous scientific debate and a special section in the journal, Science, in 1989. Challenged to subject hormesis experiments to more rigorous statistical standards, Calabrese and his longtime UMass Amherst collaborator, Linda Baldwin, created a database of 21,000 papers. In 2003, they reported in a ground-breaking paper that the low-dose stimulatory effect of chemicals is typically about 40 percent enhanced growth, for example.

“It was a coming-out party for hormesis,” Calabrese recalls. “We made a credible case and we did it by following the scientific rules of the game,” he says of their work over the past 30 years. By contrast, he says, the two leading risk assessment models used by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have been imposed on society and the scientific community without being vetted or validated.

Everyday implications of hormesis for risk assessment are significant. If chemical hormesis is a basic biological principle, Calabrese says, society is needlessly over-regulating the environment to protect against low exposures that are not dangerous, and we’re missing possible benefits. “The traditional threshold model is not very good at explaining or accounting for data that’s below the toxic threshold, and that’s where we live. But hormesis is quite good at that.”

Major Implications for Public Health Policy

Mark Mattson, chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, one of Calabrese’s past co-authors, agrees that the findings for which Calabrese is being recognized with the Marie Curie Prize “have major implications for public health policy regarding environmental ‘toxins,’ for the design of biomedical studies, and for the discovery of new therapeutic interventions for a range of diseases.”

Mattson adds that the UMass Amherst research clearly reveals that “hormesis as a widespread feature of biological systems (cells, tissues, organisms and populations) that was previously either unrecognized or ignored by scientists in the fields of biology, biomedical research and toxicology. Calabrese and colleagues have shown that biological systems very often respond adaptively to low amounts of toxins and other stresses (radiation, heat, etc.) so as to increase their resistance to more severe stress and disease.”

Maisseu says it’s unfortunate that most research on ionizing radiation conducted since nuclear weapons were developed has focused on its harmfulness. This has prevented valuable work on possible beneficial low-dose effects, including adaption and repair mechanisms, he feels. Further, anti-hormesis prejudice has deprived the scientific community of fundamental knowledge which might be uncovered, and which is needed to pursue the fight against the different forms of cancer, Maisseu adds.

He therefore salutes Calabrese’s “courageous opposition to this indefensible position with regard to scientific research.” Recalling the famous statement by the 15th century toxicologist, Paracelsus, that all substances are poison and only dose makes a poison, Maisseu adds, “Calabrese dared to undertake work making it possible to correctly appreciate the relationship between dose and effect in many areas of toxicology and biology, and to highlight numerous examples of the hormesis phenomenon.”

Edward Calabrese can be reached directly at 413/545-3164 or edwardc@schoolph.umass.edu.

"Merck published fake journal" - from The Scientist news article

2009-05-01T15:14:00.006-04:00

Posted by Bob Grant
[Entry posted at 30th April 2009 04:27 PM GMT]

From the news article:
Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles--most of which presented data favorable to Merck products--that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.
...
The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, which was published by Exerpta Medica, a division of scientific publishing juggernaut Elsevier, is not indexed in the MEDLINE database, and has no website (not even a defunct one). The Scientist obtained two issues of the journal: Volume 2, Issues 1 and 2, both dated 2003. The issues contained little in the way of advertisements apart from ads for Fosamax, a Merck drug for osteoporosis, and Vioxx. (Click here and here to view PDFs of the two issues.)

Oldish news, to be sure, but still, a cautionary tale.

One of the "Honorary Editorial Board" of this "journal" was an Australian rheumatologist, who is quoted in this article.

"You get involved in a whole bunch of things at this level," Brooks said, adding that he had put his name on "a few advertorials" for pharmaceutical companies about 10 years ago.

As for the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, he said, "If it would have been put to me that [the journal] was just sort of a throwaway, then I would have said 'no'" to serving on its editorial board. He said he was never paid for his role, adding that he "didn't ever get [manuscripts] to review or anything like that," while on the board, because the journal did not accept original manuscripts for review.

A century's worth of bird data online

2009-03-30T11:59:00.006-04:00

Geologists aren't just about rocks and dinosaurs. At the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, there is a project underway to make available online the notes of 3,000 birdwatchers who participated in the Bird Phenology Program. The notes, on forms called Migration Observer Cards, span almost a century, and document migration arrival dates in the spring and fall across the US and Canada. There are 6 million of the cards, and volunteers have undertaken the huge task of transcribing and entering the data.
The BPP has local roots-- it was started in the 1881 by Wells W. Cooke, who wanted to broaden knowledge and understanding of migration. Cooke was born in Haydenville, a village in Williamsburg, just west of Amherst on Route 9. In 1881 he was teaching in Minnesota and organizing volunteers to collect migration data when his efforts came to the attention of C. Hart Merriam, of the newly formed American Ornithologist’s Union. Merriam extended the network to the rest of the US and Canada, as well as parts of the West Indies. In the 1880's the program was taken over by the federal government, but as participation declined in the mid-20th century, the program closed in 1970. The records were curated, but largely ignored, and finally passed on to Jessica Zelt. Zelt is overseeing the the project and reviewing the program’s possible uses and potential for collecting new data. She hopes that the data will provide insights into the effects of climate change on migration patterns and habits.
You can be a part of this important project. No particular expertise is required. Sign up to enter records into the database, and be a member of the next generation of "citizen scientists."

First U.S. Public Access Policy Made Permanent

2009-03-20T15:45:00.000-04:00

On March 11th 2009 President Obama signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision making the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy permanent. This Act requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full text articles will be made publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no more than 12 months after publication in a journal.

"Public access to publicly funded research contributes directly to the mission of higher education,” said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). “Improved access will enable universities to maximize their own investment in research, and widen the potential for discovery as the results are more readily available for others to build upon.”

For more information, visit the Alliance for Taxpayer Access Web site at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

Google Earth: Dive! Dive!

2009-02-03T10:55:00.004-05:00

Google Earth is finally paying attention to parts of the planet below sea level. According to a story in the New York Times Science Times this week, starting Monday (Feb. 9), Google Earth will enable users to cruise beneath the waves, add pictures and video to locales, or "... you can create narrated, illustrated tours, on land or above and below the sea surface, describing and showing things like a hike or scuba excursion, or even a research cruise on a deep-diving submarine." Sometimes when I can't get to sleep, I imagine myself as Sylvia Earle, piloting Alvin through the abyssal depths, so this will seem like a waking dream to me. (Sometimes I try to picture cruising beneath the Cretaceous seas, but that's for another post.) I'm excited about possibilities for teaching and learning using this technology.
Besides oceanography and marine ecology, another feature, Historical Imagery, compiles archives of satellite images to allow you to watch ways the land surface changes. (I don't know if there will be historical subsurface data.)
The new features require downloading the new version, free at earth.google.com.

Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy

2009-01-29T09:14:00.007-05:00

Dennis Overbye had an essay in this week's Science Times, the Tuesday section of the New York Times, commenting on the value of science, indeed, on the values of science. It struck a chord with me.
...

To be honest, the restoration of science was the least of it, but when Barak Obama proclaimed during his Inaugural Address that he would “restore science to its rightful place,” you could feel a dark cloud lifing like a sigh from the shoulders of the scientific community in this country.

When the new president went on vowing to harness the sun, the wind and the soil, and to “wield technology’s wonders,” I felt the glow of a spring sunrise washing my cheeks, and I could almost imagine I heard the music of swords being hammered into plowshares.

Wow. My first reaction was to worry that scientists were now in the awkward position of being expected to save the world. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

My second reaction was to wonder what the “rightful place” of science in our society really is.

...Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world. ...

Click on the title above to read the rest.

Springer eBooks Trial

2008-12-18T12:31:00.000-05:00

The library is pleased to announce a trial subscription to Springer eBooks.

Springer, the world's largest international publisher of scientific books introduces the world's most comprehensive digitized scientific, technical and medical (STM) book collection. The Springer eBook Collection offers the first online book collection especially made for the requirements of researchers and scientists.

The eBook trial includes access to 2005-2008 online eBooks, book series, and reference works. Sample subjects include:

· Behavioral Science
· Biomedical and Life Sciences
· Chemistry and Materials Science
· Computer Science
· Earth and Environmental Science
· Engineering
· Mathematics and Statistics
· Medicine
· Physics and Astronomy

The trial is good through 3 January 2009.

The collection can be accessed through the database trials page at: http://www.library.umass.edu/ndl/view/type/databasetrials

Please send all comments to pborrego@library.umass.edu

"Selected Works" pages - put your CV and publications online

2008-12-09T15:37:00.006-05:00

The UMass Amherst Libraries have developed a means for collecting the intellectual output of the University. Each faculty member (or other researcher at UMass Amherst) may create their own "Selected Works" page that would be accessed through the Libraries' ScholarWorks website, the University's permanent digital archive for these scholarly materials. ScholarWorks is already collecting Masters theses and Doctoral Dissertations, as well as faculty writing, when possible. The Selected Works page could bring together all of a person's work.

Why do this? It is a convenient way for people to find you and your papers, and it can promote visibility for that writing - Google, for instance, includes the pages of ScholarWorks in its searches.

And the Library is committed to keeping the digital output of our community in perpetuity, so your work won't be victim to the ephemeral nature of many websites.

Posting online the full text of your writing raises the question of copyright - many academics have signed over the author's rights to their own work to the publishers of books and journals in order for that work to be published. Most articles and book chapters already published have legal restrictions on what you, the author, may do with your own work.

The Library has been working with other organizations such as SPARC to promote the principle of open access, which would, among other things, allow the author to post their own work on their own website, or a site like ScholarWorks. Using such resources as SHERPA/RoMEO, we can also find out the restrictions any individual publisher has placed on materials they have published, for which they have copyright.

The Library staff can help you to set up a Selected Works page in Scholar Works, or to answer questions you may have about this effort, or about the copyright status of your writings. Please get in touch with us if you are interested.

Nature to retract plant study

2008-12-09T15:27:00.001-05:00

from The Scientist
Posted by Edyta Zielinska[Entry posted at 9th December 2008 04:43 PM GMT]

A highly cited Nature paper that identified a long-sought receptor critical for mediating plant response to stress is being retracted after researchers were unable to reproduce the results.

Corresponding author on the paper, Robert Hill from the University of Manitoba, first discovered a problem with the results over the summer when one of his students failed to reproduce the findings. "The binding assay procedures, at least in our hands, did not give the correct results," said Hill.
...

What information technology are undergraduates using? ECAR study

2008-10-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

Findings of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008, from the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research investigates use and ownership of laptops, internet-ready mobile phones, etc., and what they do with them. "It analyzes the responses of 27,317 freshmen, seniors, and community college students at 98 colleges and universities in the United States to a web-based survey, as well as findings from a focus-group."

As a librarian, one of the most interesting tables was Table 1 in the "Key Findings" (p.4) of this report which shows "Student Computer and Internet Activities." At the very top of the list is Use the college/university library website with 93.4% of the students engaged, and a weekly median frequency of use. The Associated Demographic Factor was 4-year institutions/social sciences, so I can't celebrate too hard, but it still warmed the cockles of my heart.

I've only skimmed this, but it's pretty interesting to see what students are up to with the technology.

Book for neophyte scientists - The Chicago Guide to Your Career in Science

2008-10-20T19:40:00.001-04:00

I was looking for books about science writing and such to add to my subject guides and stumbled on this book - The Chicago Guide to Your Career in Science - a Toolkit for Students and Postdocs, by Victor A. Bloomfield and Esam E. El-Fakahany (U of Chicago Press, 2008). For some inexplicable reason, the UMass Amherst Libraries' copy is housed at the Du Bois library; its call number is Q 147 .B56 2008.

I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but I have dipped into it extensively at random. Every page I have read is full of sensible advice and good ideas, things that scientists know from hard experience or 20/20 hindsight, but might wish that someone had told them in advance. The subjects covered range from "Thinking about a Research Career" to "The Meaning and Responsible Conduct of Research" to "Going to Scientific Meetings" - see the Table of Contents for a fuller idea.

For example, the section "Senior or junior postdoc mentor?" (p. 85) presents a pithy and pertinent discussion on the pros and cons of working with someone with an established reputation and large lab vs. someone earlier in his or her career.

I don't know how well aspiring scientists are exposed to this kind of advice - perhaps it is done well in many labs, but in my humble opinion, this book should be required reading for anyone thinking of going into the sciences.

arXiv Online Scientific Repository Hits Milestone

2008-10-20T09:03:00.000-04:00

On October 3rd 2008 arXiv announced that it passed the half-million article milestone. The online scientific repository was started in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg as a repository for preprints in physics and later expanded to include astronomy, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear science, quantitative biology and, most recently, statistics.

“arXiv began its operations before the World Wide Web, search engines, online commerce and all the rest, but nonetheless anticipated many components of current ‘Web 2.0’ methodology,” said Cornell professor Paul Ginsparg, arXiv’s creator. “It continues to play a leading role at the forefront of new models for scientific communication.”

“Researchers upload their own articles to arXiv, and they are usually made available to the public the next day. A team of 113 volunteer moderators from around the world screen submissions and recommend whether they should be included in the repository.”

“More than 200,000 articles are downloaded from arXiv each week by about 400,000 users, and its 118,000 registered submitters live in nearly 200 countries, including Suriname, Sudan and Iraq. Fifteen countries host mirrors of the main site, which is located on Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, N.Y.”

For more about this milestone read the press release at:
http://communications.library.cornell.edu/com/news/PressReleases/arXiv-milestone.cfm

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grants

2008-10-17T14:48:00.000-04:00

This might be old news, but I stumbled upon this page today, and thought there might be a use for it on this campus. Below is an excerpt from the page.

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE)

SARE works to increase knowledge about - and help farmers and ranchers adopt - practices that are profitable, environmentally sound, and good to communities. Several types of competitive grants are awarded by four regional administrative councils. Research and education grants, generally ranging from $60,000 to $150,000, fund projects that usually involve scientists, producers and others in an interdisciplinary approach. Professional development grants, generally ranging from $20,000 to $90,000, offer educational opportunities for extension, NRCS, and other agricultural professionals. Producer grants, typically between $1,000 and $15,000, go to farmers and ranchers who test innovative ideas and share the results with their neighbors. Projects address crop and livestock production and marketing, stewardship of soil and other natural resources, economics and quality of life. Application details, deadlines, and percent success vary by region and program (see "Apply" below).

Special Notation
More information on SARE
Who Is Eligible to Apply
1862 Land-Grant Institutions
1890 Land-Grant Institutions
1994 Land-Grant Institutions
Hispanic-Serving Institutions
Individuals
Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS status, other than Institutions of Higher Ed
Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS status, other than Institutions of Higher Ed
Other or Additional Information (See below)
Private Institutions of Higher Ed
State Agricultural Experiment Stations
State Controlled Institutions of Higher Ed
State Governments
More Information on Eligibility
See Request for Applications for more detailed eligibility information.
Request for Application (RFA) Apply: Electronic Abstracts of Funded Projects

Special issue of Nature on Big Data (Sept 3, 2008)

2008-09-23T13:46:00.004-04:00

September 3 (electronically) Nature devoted a segment of an issue to "big data". The hard copy journal was published Sept. 4, v. 455, issue no. 7209.

It includes a commentary, "How do Your Data Grow?" by Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information. Two news features: operations at a "petacentre" - facility which handles petabytes of data - by blogger Cory Doctorow, and one about using wikis to make sense of the mountains of data generated by genomics and other fields.

Another article explores visualization, not just for presenting data, but using it to design the original experiments ("Distilling Meaning from Data" by Felice Frankel and Rosalind Reid). In "The Next Google" a number of visionaries predict what the next big thing might be, from robots to RFI tags, to the Semantic Web and video visors. The longer piece is about data curation for biological information.

Some food for thought here.

Note: Some content is available only on the electronic journal. The link goes to a page called "NatureNews". I noticed that there are more articles on the internet and in the hard copy journal that aren't linked to this "NatureNews" page.

The Scientist as Politician

2008-09-11T12:58:00.001-04:00

To read this article you need to be registered with The Scientist website.
Here's the first bit:

The Scientist
Volume 22 Issue 9 Page 73
By Edyta Zielinska

The Scientist as Politician
So you want to change the world? It's easier than you think.

When Kathy Barker was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School during the 1980s, she knew she wanted to do more than just bench work on polymorphonuclear leukocytes, a first line of defense against infection. At that time, the United States was in the midst of its involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and Barker decided to invite speakers to talk about US foreign policy, encouraging her colleagues and friends to attend. "There were people who looked down on me," she says. "You were supposed to be doing science and not other things." Barker's thick skin saved her from too much bruising. It was only the first of many civic actions she would take.

Political issues can crop up even closer to home. When Barker recently learned about a creationist biology teacher in her daughter's school district who refused to teach his students evolution, "I came in with my guns shooting," she says. In retrospect, Barker admits, it may have been the wrong approach. "It didn't earn me any friends," who could have helped her sway the school board. While she made little immediate progress in her first attempt, she learned the school board was resistant because it might mean ousting their only science teacher. She now plans to petition officers of the school district.

E-Stuff - New feature on ISEL Update - Science Progress

2008-08-28T11:17:00.003-04:00

As an experiment, we are going to blog on a database or an electronic journal of interest, one per month during the semester. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to use the comment or email us.

This idea occurred to me when I stumbled upon a journal I hadn't known about before, Science Progress, which is our inaugural subject for this series.

What I like best about Science Progress is that it provides review articles on hot topics aimed at college students or scientists who are not experts in the field in question. Librarians often get students looking for articles which are written in language they can understand.

Most issues don't have a theme, and cover the waterfront, so to speak. But some issues have theme topics. For instance, in the current issue (Vol. 92, no. 2 - July 2008), all but one of the articles are about the effects of climate change on polar regions; it includes individual articles on climate change and whales and seals, polar bears, arctic fox, microbiology of the Antarctic Peninsular region, and (the non-polar one) butterflies as indicators of climate change. The articles are not short - the shortest in this issue is 9 pages (the one on butterflies), the longest 34 (whales & seals), and all contain extensive bibliographies, as one would expect in a review article.

The UMass Amherst campus has access to current issues electronically only, through a vendor, IngentaConnect. Publication of Science Progress seems to be a little erratic - but generally they put out 3-4 issues per year. It is published in Britain, so there is a tendency for the articles to be focused on Britain - e.g., the article above is about butterflies in Britain.

If you'd like to see recent issues of this journal (back to 2001), use the Library's link to the title through the catalog or e-journal list, or click here on this IngentaConnect link to Science Progress. We have earlier issues (v.11 (1916)-v.87 (2004)) in paper as well.

Solar dish scales down - project of MIT students

2008-08-28T11:02:00.002-04:00

Sustainable Futures - from environmentalresearchweb - Aug 14, 2008

Solar dish scales down

A group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, has developed a small, easy to make, cost-efficient solar dish that might be mass produced by the company they have set up, RawSolar.

The dish consists of a 12-foot wide, mirrored parabola that concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1000. Attached to the dish's centre is a coil of copper tubing 12 foot long that has water running through it. When the dish is pointing directly towards the sun, the water in the coil instantaneously heats up to form steam. This is because the sun's rays converge onto the copper coil, providing intense energy. The steam comes out of the far end of the tube under the dish.

Led by Spencer Ahrens, the students hope that RawSolar will one day mass produce the dishes. They could be set up in large arrays to provide steam for heating, industrial processes, generating electricity, or even air conditioning.

The beauty of the new dish lies in its size – it is smaller than conventional dishes and so requires less support structure, which means it costs less, too. It is also robust (it has already survived a thunderstorm), uses easily-available, off-the-shelf parts and was made by hand, explains team member Matt Ritter.

The structure was based on a design by Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state. Wood patented key parts of his design – the rights to which he has now signed over to the MIT students – and says that Ahrens' team has made significant improvements to the original patterns. "They really have simplified this and made it user-friendly so that anyone can build it," he explained.

The students made their solar dish by riveting aluminium tubing to a steel crossbracing. Strips of mirror were then fixed to this frame and the coil collector at the top of the tube painted black.
The MIT team says the system could produce heat from steam for lower costs than that from oil or natural gas.

"I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen," said MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class this project first took shape last autumn. "And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world." Pelly adds that the technology could scale without subsidies – a first in the solar dish world.

Epigenetics on Nova scienceNOW

2008-08-26T16:29:00.002-04:00

I've been trying to catch Nova scienceNOW (yes, that's how it's written) on PBS with that engaging host, astronomer and American Museum of Natural History researcher, Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's one more way to keep up with new developments in a range of sciences, and to see what merits the attention of the mainstream. Last week, there was a piece on epigenetics, (a repeat show, I think) which I had never heard of (so shoot me), or at least it had never registered with me. Fascinating stuff illustrated with why identical twins can develop such disparate lives - one getting a life-threatening disease when the other doesn't - we're finally unravelling how gene expression works.

There are some resources about epigenetics on the site linked above, including a video of the segment from the show.

SciFinder now available on the Web.

2008-08-06T13:52:00.005-04:00

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) now offers SciFinder on the web after many years of providing access via the locally installed client platform. To connect to SciFinder on the web the user must fill out a one-time registration form setting up an individual account with a username and password. Note that the user will need to be on a computer with a UMass IP address; off campus users will need to go through the library’s SciFinder page so that they can be authenticated.

The UMass Amherst Library has purchased access to SciFinder for 6 simultaneous users; only a limited number of simultaneous users can use either the web or client version, so please remember to logout when done.

For more information visit the library page about SciFinder.

For a comparison chart between SciFinder Scholar and the web version of SciFinder visit the Swain Libraray News blog at Stanford University.

New Piece of Climate Change Puzzle Found In Ancient Sedimentary Rocks by UMass Amherst Researchers

2008-08-06T12:18:00.009-04:00

Press release from the UMass Amherst Office of News & Information.

July 23, 2008
Contact: Steven Petsch 413/545-4413

AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have added a new source of carbon dioxide to the complex climate change puzzle by showing that ancient rocks can release substantial amounts of organic matter into Earth’s rivers and oceans, and that this organic matter is easily converted by bacteria to carbon dioxide, which enters the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

“Sedimentary rocks contain the largest mass of organic carbon on Earth, but these reservoirs are not well-integrated into modern carbon budgets” says Steven Petsch, a professor of geosciences. “Since we need to know the budget of the natural carbon cycle in order to determine human climate impacts, this information will lead to more accurate climate modeling.” The research was conducted by Petsch and UMass Amherst graduate student Sarah Schillawski.

In a study published in the July issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Petsch and Schillawski focused on black shales from Kentucky. Black shales are rich in a type of organic matter called kerogen that contains carbon. Kerogen can turn into oil and natural gas when the rocks are heated. The first step was to determine how much organic carbon could be released from the rocks by simulating the weathering process in the laboratory.

Samples of the shale were placed in glass columns, and the effects of weathering were duplicated by running water through the samples for one year. Kerogen is thought to be difficult to dissolve, but the results of the column studies showed a slow, sustained release of organic matter from the rock. Over the course of one year, the rock samples had lost approximately 0.3 percent of their total organic carbon.

The next step was to determine whether this hard-to-digest organic matter could be broken down by bacteria into carbon dioxide. Using common bacteria found in natural waters, including the Quabbin Reservoir, Petsch found that essentially all of the dissolved organic matter in water from the column studies was rapidly degraded by bacteria over a period of nine days.

“This was the most surprising finding in the study, since these bacteria are adapted to digest organic matter from things like leaves and acorns, which is similar to carbohydrates consumed by humans,” says Petsch. “The presence of microorganisms capable of using kerogen may have significant implications for the global-scale cycling of carbon and oxygen.”

Petsch has also studied the release of carbon from sedimentary rocks by soil bacteria, which is another way that ancient carbon can be converted into carbon dioxide. “We have found outcrops of the New Albany Shale, which is usually black, that have turned a light brown color as bacteria consume carbon where the overlying soil meets the weathered rock,” says Petsch.

According to Petsch, the bottom line is that the release of organic material from sedimentary rocks contributes approximately 2 percent of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year. While this may seem like a small amount, it is another piece of the puzzle that can be used when determining how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

Replacing Roofing, Siding, is a Golden Opportunity to Lower Energy Bills says UMass Amherst Researcher

2008-07-28T11:10:00.002-04:00

Press release from UMass Amherst News Office on advice from Professor Paul Fisette, Department of Natural Resources Conservation.

July 25, 2008
Contact: Paul Fisette 413/545-1771

AMHERST, Mass. – Are you planning to add a new roof or new siding to your home before winter? Paul Fisette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst says that these home improvement jobs can be the perfect opportunity to boost your home’s energy efficiency and lower your heating bills, especially if you own an older home.

“Often a catastrophic event like water dripping from the ceiling can launch home improvement projects into high gear, but there is a lot you can do beyond fixing leaks and replacing worn exterior siding,” says Fisette, head of the department of natural resources conservation and an expert on green building. “A well-designed exterior retrofit will lower energy bills and improve the comfort of your home by eliminating drafts.”

According to Fisette, roof shingles need to be replaced every 20 years, and if your home needs a new roof, it is safe to assume that it also needs new, or at least better, insulation. “Homes built 20 years ago are under-insulated by today’s standards, since fuel was cheap then,” says Fisette. “Builders of that time didn’t devote much attention to insulation and air-tightness. High energy bills, drafty indoor climates and ice dams on the roof are all costly symptoms of these subpar designs.”

For most homes, an energy retrofit of the ceiling is fairly easy. Just climb into the attic, block all air leaks connecting the living space to the attic with foam insulation from a can, and increase the thickness of the insulation on the attic floor. You will need 12 inches of fiberglass or cellulose insulation to deliver the R-38 values recommended for much of the country. A good plan is one that provides a continuous insulation barrier between the attic and the living space below.

The situation gets more difficult in cape style homes and homes with cathedral ceilings, where sloped ceilings mean that areas between roof rafters are sealed by finished surfaces. Shallow roof pitches can also be problematic, since there may not be enough space between the rafter ends and the attic floor to install enough insulation. In these cases, insulation needs to be added after the lower edge of the roof has been removed, exposing areas that were inaccessible from the inside. Insulation products with a high R-value per inch, such as rigid foam, may also be required due to space constraints.

If your siding has also seen better days, replacing it can not only dress up your home, but can also be a way of addressing places where air leaks, holes and lack of insulation reduce your homes energy efficiency.

“At first, this process may seem simple; just strip off the old siding from the walls, replace any failing trim, and put up new siding,” says Fisette. “But this limited vision can lead to lost opportunities to increase the insulation in the walls.”

Fisette says he is constantly surprised by the number of old houses that don’t have enough, or any, insulation in the wall cavities. Many owners of older homes replace or add to the insulation in the attic, where it is fairly easy to reach, but avoid the more complicated enclosed-wall insulation. Filling these cavities with blown-in cellulose, fiberglass and foam when old siding is removed becomes much easier, since the insulation can be placed in the wall cavities through holes in the exposed outer sheathing.

This is also the time to repair loose sheathing, replace any rotten wood and patch all gaps, holes and seams with foam insulation from a can. Sealing around window and door openings should also be done at this time.

For maximum energy benefits, Fisette recommends wrapping the exterior walls with rigid foam insulation, which is available in sheets. The rigid foam can be attached to the sheathing with glue or nails, and seams should be taped. Since siding should not be nailed directly to the rigid foam, this process can get a bit tricky, requiring the use of vertical wooden strips attached to the foam sheets to serve as anchors for the siding. This creates an air space between the siding and the insulation. While it may seem like a lot of work, this method will provide a tight, dry and warm structure for many years.

Fisette says that payback times are the most common question posed by homeowners, who wonder whether the cost of extra insulation will transfer into savings. “Payback can be very hard to calculate, since it depends on how much money is spent on improvements and a host of other factors, including climate, existing levels of insulation and fuel costs,” says Fisette. “Calculations on savings for adding insulation to the walls of a standard ranch house predict a five to 10 year payback.”

PubMed's Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) changed

2008-07-15T10:37:00.001-04:00

PubMed Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) was originally developed to identify author names, journal titles, and MeSH terms in search queries without search tags. In the old schema, author name and journal title fields were not searched when the search terms also matched a MeSH term. This caused thousands of citation-type searches to fail every day. The new ATM addresses this problem by removing those field restrictions. Under the new schema, query terms can be found in both MeSH terms and every PubMed citation field.

For more information visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/pubmed_atm_change.html

SciFinder Web Coming Soon

2008-07-15T09:28:00.001-04:00

Soon access to SciFinder at the UMass Amherst Libraries will be possible through the web. In addition to the traditional means of accessing SciFinder Scholar via a client, CAS is now offering web access. In total the UMass Amherst Libraries is limited to six simultaneous users. This means that it is important to remember to Logoff when finished to free up a connection for another user.

Users are asked to register, agree to the terms of use, and maintain their own username and password. After one submits the registration form, CAS sends an e-mail with instructions for completing the registration process. Therefore, you must have an e-mail address with your organization’s e-mail domain.

So, look for future information about this upcoming opportunity.

For more information about SciFinder Scholar visit http://www.cas.org/SCIFINDER/SCHOLAR/index.html

"UMass studies alternative ethanol sources" - article in Springfield Republican/MassLive site

2008-07-03T14:26:00.003-04:00

Highlights the work of "Stephen J. Herbert, a professor of agronomy in the UMass Department of Plant, Soil & Insect Sciences who is leading the research along with Om Parkash, an assistant professor in the department, and Randall G. Prostak, a weed specialist with the UMass Extension. "

UMass studies alternative ethanol sources

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

By STAN FREEMAN
sfreeman@repub.com

AMHERST - With corn prices rising and corn shortages growing around the world, ethanol made from corn - viewed just a year ago as the preferred substitute for gasoline - has rapidly fallen from favor.

In hopes that ethanol can still offer a way out of the energy crisis, this spring in the Pioneer Valley, University of Massachusetts researchers are field testing alternatives to corn that can be grown on land that offers poor support for food crops, such as on roadsides and hillsides and in rocky or dry soils. ...

Stacia Marcelynas Battles Wind, Rain to Place UMass Amherst Eighth in National Supermileage Competition

2008-07-02T15:14:00.001-04:00

The UMass Amherst team created a super-mileage vehicle nicknamed "The Homewrecker" (I'm sure there's a story there!) which "racked up an impressive 683 miles per gallon at the Eaton Corporation proving grounds in Marshall, Michigan, finishing in the top 25 percent of a field of 35 teams from around the world at the June 5-6 event. "

Wordle Me This

2008-07-02T10:23:00.000-04:00

A quick diversion not wholly unrelated to things science: Wordle! Here the introductory text of "What is Nanomanufacturing?" can be reproduced thus:

And the article itself is good reading, too!

Amazing what you can find online these days - Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur 1899-1904

2008-07-01T15:09:00.010-04:00

My colleague, Maxine, says that Kunstformen der Natur means Artforms of Nature. It is an online scan of a beautiful book, a collection of page plates of living things, many microscopic, but in any case, beautiful shapes that have been rendered in drawings by Ernst Haeckel. These images are pretty spectacular - some in color and others black & white. If anyone knows more about this book, or Ernst Haeckel, I'd be interested to hear about it.

I think the whole book can be downloaded from this site also, though my German is non-existent, so I'm not certain!

Gmelin Database Trial now through 8/30/08

2008-06-27T09:49:00.001-04:00

The UMass Amherst Sciences & Engineering Library has arranged for a trial subscription to the Gmelin database now through August 30th.

The Gmelin Database is the sister database to Beilstein, covering inorganic and organometallic compounds from 1772 to date. Based on a German publication, the Gmelin Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie, the database currently comprises over 2.5 million compounds, including glasses, alloys, ceramics, minerals and coordination compounds, 1.9 million reactions and 1.3 million citations.

During this time period we will also have access to the Patent Chemistry Database.

For instructions on how to connect to the database contact Paulina Borrego pborrego@library.umass.edu

Darwinmania!

2008-06-26T14:04:00.003-04:00

New York Times blog post (June 17, 2008) from Olivia Judson on the upcoming 200th anniverary of Charles Darwin's birth Feb 12, 2009; also, "July 1 [2008] is the 150th anniversary of the first announcement of his discovery of natural selection, the main driving force of evolution." This was at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London (see yesterday's blog post on the Linnean Society collections) where both Alfred Russel Wallace and Darwin read papers on natural selection. Judson outlines the prior claimants to the concept of evolution and natural selection, and then asks the question, why do we celebrate Darwin over any of these others? it was for On the Origin of Species, published on November 24, 1859.

The reason the “Origin” was so powerful, compelling and persuasive, the reason Darwin succeeded while his predecessors failed, is that in it he does not just describe how evolution by natural selection works. He presents an enormous body of evidence culled from every field of biology then known. He discusses subjects as diverse as pigeon breeding in Ancient Egypt, the rudimentary eyes of cave fish, the nest-building instincts of honeybees, the evolving size of gooseberries (they’ve been getting bigger), wingless beetles on the island of Madeira and algae in New Zealand. One moment, he’s considering fossil animals like brachiopods (which had hinged shells like clams, but with a different axis of symmetry); the next, he’s discussing the accessibility of nectar in clover flowers to different species of bee.

At the same time, he uses every form of evidence at his disposal: he observes, argues, compares, infers and describes the results of experiments he has read about, or in many cases, personally conducted. For example, one of Darwin’s observations is that the inhabitants of islands resemble — but differ subtly from — those of the nearest continents. So: birds and bushes on islands off the coast of South America resemble South American birds and bushes; islands near Africa are populated by recognizably African forms.

He argues that the reason for this is that new islands become colonized by beings from the nearest continents, and that the new inhabitants then begin evolving independently. He then asks: can animals and plants from the continents get to new islands, especially those that are far out at sea? To investigate this, he conducts experiments to see how long seeds from different plants can remain immersed in saltwater and still begin to grow. In short, he tests his reasoning over and over again.

Let's celebrate Darwin's birth this coming February! And then the publication of Origin in November!

Science Blogs

2008-06-26T11:39:00.002-04:00

As you all know, the blogosphere is burgeoning - people have things to say, and the Web makes it possible for folks to find an audience easily. The thing to do is find the right name!

I was reading a blog I found through the environmentalresearchweb newswire written by a woman named Liz Kalaugher doing Arctic research onboard the icebreaker/research vessel Amundsen, and started wondering if someone was collecting all the science blogs.

So I Googled "science blogs" - and found someone has taken that name. Seed Media Group has a site called "Science Blogs" - a group of about 70+ bloggers that this company has selected. So no, I haven't found a collection of all science blogs yet, but there's some pretty interesting stuff on this site - not just people propounding their own point of view, but discussion from readers. In my opinion, that's where the real action is.

For instance, I sampled a blog called Drug Monkey which is written by DrugMonkey, an NIH-funded biomedical researcher, and PhysioProf, an NIH-funded basic science faculty member at a private medical school. PhysioProf was ranting about (1) the way up-and-coming scientists - grad students, post-docs - are not exposed to the possibilities of 'alternative' career paths other than 'academic science' (in the private sector); and (2) don't expect him to change the system - he's only one person. This piece was posted yesterday, and there are 40 responses from thoughtful (mostly) people as of this writing. Forty responses tells me the blog has a lot of people who follow it, not only reading but writing in. It's a little community.

If anyone finds a big list of science blogs from different sources, please let me know - I'd like to start collecting them, if not reading them!

Linnean Collections online

2008-06-25T13:57:00.001-04:00

The Linnean Society of London (U.K.) is creating a digital image collection of the plants and insects in their possession. They have completed the 14,000 plants, and the moths and butterflies segment of the insect collection. The images show both top and bottom views of the butterflies/moths, and the labels. The photographs are beautiful.

From various pages on their website:

The Linnean Society of London holds some 9,000 specimens, including 3,200 Linnaean ones, of which many are important types. After acquiring the collections from the widow of Linnaeus in 1784, Sir James Edward Smith, the founder and first President of the Linnean Society, added his own specimens to the collection, almost trebling its size. Because of difficulties in recognising all the material interpolated by Smith it has been maintained as a single historic collection. Besides insects as we understand them today, the collection also includes such things as spiders, scorpions, millipedes and crabs – all ‘insects’ as Linnaeus understood them.

The prime scientific importance of the Linnaean part of the collection is as type* specimens for the species which he described. Smith's material (which can often be distinguished from Linnaeus' by the type of pins used to secure specimens) is a valuable source of information on insects from around the globe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but so far has been little exploited.
[*A type specimen is one which is permanently associated with a given scientific name, and acts as a permanent reference point to confirm the identity of the species to which the name must apply.]

For more information see "The 'Linnaean' insect collection" by Mike Fitton and Kim Harman in The Linnean Special Issue No. 7, 2007, 'The Linnaean Collections'.
...

The Linnaean Collections comprise the specimens of plants (14,000), fish (158), shells (1,564) and insects (3,198) acquired from the widow of Carl Linnaeus in 1784 by Sir James Edward Smith, founder and first President of the Linnean Society. They also include the library of Linnaeus (of some 1,600 volumes) and his letters (c. 3,000 items of correspondence and manuscripts). All are housed in a temperature and humidity controlled strongroom in the Linnean Society.

It is the Linnean Society's aim to make available its primary research material in digital formats to support taxonomic and conservation efforts worldwide as well as providing public pleasure and enjoyment.
Browse the Collections
Search the Collections by categories: Herbarium or Insects.

The Herbarium archive contains all 14,000 Linnaean plant specimens. This first phase of the Insects archive contains the Linnaean and Smithian butterflies and moths only. All the remaining insects from the collection will be made available early in 2009.

Apparently, the Fish and Shell Collections will also be digitized, eventually.

Database Trial - Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical and Life Sciences Collection

2008-06-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

The library currently has a trial subscription to the Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical and Life Sciences Collection database. View more than 700 online animated seminar style talks by leading scientists on biomedical and life sciences topics.

The trial ends June 30, 2008.

Send comments to cpmullen@library.umass.edu

Yes, We Will Have No Bananas

2008-06-18T10:00:00.003-04:00

New York Times Op-Ed from Dan Koeppel, the author of “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World,” suggests that distance, the practice of monoculture, and a virus will cause bananas to become much more expensive, and be regarded as what they are, "an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach."

New 'super-paper' is stronger than cast iron

2008-06-16T16:35:00.003-04:00

Article on the New Scientist Tech site - perhaps of interest to our wood technology folks, as well as the nano folks, and anyone interested in new materials.

First three paragraphs:

Punching your way out of a paper bag could become a lot harder, thanks to the development of a new kind of paper that is stronger than cast iron.

The new paper could be used to reinforce conventional paper, produce extra-strong sticky tape or help create tough synthetic replacements for biological tissues, says Lars Berglund from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Despite its great strength, Berglund's "nanopaper" is produced from a biological material found in conventional paper: cellulose. This long sugar molecule is a principal component of plant cell walls and is the most common organic compound on Earth.

Another blog

2008-06-11T15:38:00.000-04:00

I really enjoy Olivia Judson's blog posts for the New York Times. She's an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, and she's witty, imaginative and seems really smart. Today's post discusses the bacteria discovered in rocks deep below the seafloor, and the possibility that they may contribute to weathering of the crust. She has blogged about ichnofossils, rain-seeding bacteria, and what the world would be like if all genetic mutation stopped. She is given to flights of fancy, like this one on dinosaur mating habits:

"Which brings me to my tyrannical fantasy. I want to take a journey 68 million years back in time to see a Tyrannosaurus rex couple mating. What was it like? Did they trumpet and bellow and stamp their feet? Did they thrash their enormous tails? Did he bite her neck in rapture and exude a musky scent? Somehow, I imagine that when two T. rex got it on, the earth shook for miles around."

Or this one on things that live among pineapple leaves:

"The other day, I went to the supermarket to buy a pineapple. I didn’t select the one that smelled the ripest, but the one with the most impressive leaves: tall, bushy and uncrushed by the journey from Costa Rica. When I got it home, I put it in the kitchen sink, turned on the tap, and watched how the water gathered and formed pools in the spaces between the leaves. And I began to imagine that I was not a human in an apartment in London, but a small frog in a tropical forest, climbing up the leaves of a plant like a pineapple, looking for a pool where I could deposit the tadpole I’m carrying on my back."

Her curiosity as an evolutionary biologist leads her to think about a range of environments, from clouds to the "deep subsurface biosphere." As a geologist, I find lots to think about in her articles. Take a look at a couple yourself. They make for provocative reading, but they're somehow relaxing.

Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research

2008-06-02T13:21:00.001-04:00

Article by Jeffrey R. Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2008 on doctored images in scientific journals, their prevalence, detection, and consequences.

"Kristin Roovers was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with a bright career ahead of her—a trusted member of a research laboratory at the medical school studying the role of cell growth in diabetes.

"But when an editor of The Journal of Clinical Investigation did a spot-check of one of her images for an article in 2005, Roovers's research proved a little too perfect."

Putting science into people's lives

2008-06-02T12:01:00.005-04:00

A thoughtful op-ed article from the New York Times, June 1:

Put a Little Science in Your Life

By BRIAN GREENE
Published: June 1, 2008
Science is a language of hope and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our lives and our world.

'... in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science’s underlying technical details.

'In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”'

Brian Greene, a professor of physics at Columbia, is the author of “The Elegant Universe” and “The Fabric of the Cosmos.”

New Art Exhibit at ISEL

2008-05-01T13:39:00.001-04:00

“Images: Neotropical Birds”

An exhibit of photographs by Jeff Podos at the Integrated Sciences & Engineering Library

Associate Professor of Biology Jeff Podos’ exhibit of Neotropical birds is on display from May 5 to August 29, 2008 in the Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library, Graduate Research Center Lowrise at UMass Amherst.

The exhibit includes twelve 16" x 20" color photos or photo montages of birds from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest and the Galápagos Islands. The birds were photographed in their natural environments.

Jeff Podos has been affiliated with UMass Amherst since 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor of Biology. With the help of his students and collaborators, he studies the behavior and evolution of birds, with particular emphasis on the evolution, function, and development of vocal signals.

According to Professor Podos, “the Neotropical region supports a remarkable diversity of bird species, including many species that are found only in specific regions such as the Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest. Brazil by itself contains about 1700 described species, with new species being described each year. All of North America, by contrast, supports about 700 bird species. Much about the lives of Neotropical birds -- their behavior, distribution, mating patterns, and so on -- remains relatively unknown.”

For more information contact Paulina Borrego at pborrego@library.umass.edu or 545-7891.

What Have You Done With Your Cognitive Surplus Lately?

2008-05-01T10:23:00.001-04:00

Clay Shirky explains how 1 trillion hours of worldwide television consumption per year could translate into 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year. If only we could kick Desperate Housewives.

It's National Library Week-- Do you know where your librarian is?

2008-04-16T13:57:00.002-04:00

Since 1958, the nation has designated a week in April as National Library Week. Since we're in the midst of it now, I thought I'd talk about one relatively new aspect of the UMass Libraries-- the Peripatetic Librarian.

As more library resources become available electronically, some people think they don't need librarians to get the information they need. Of course, that's not true. Nevertheless, some people avoid coming to the library for help. Librarians being who they are, then, ride out to the rescue.

At UMass, I'm aware of four outside-the-library places where you might find us waiting for your questions, or maybe just reminding you by our presence that you have a question.

Mike Davis, Library Liaison to the Isenberg School of Management, holds office hours there in Room 212 every Tuesday from 10:30am to 12:30pm.

Barbara Morgan, Liaison to Legal Studies, Political Science, STPEc, and Steve McGinty, Liaison to the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, as well as Sociology, SDPPS, TEC, Economics, Educational Policy, and Research & Administration (whew!) can be found just outside the Thompson Cafe each Wednesday and Thursday from 11:30am to 12:30pm.

Maxine Schmidt (that'd be me), Liaison to Biology, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, and Resource Economics-- in the Blue Wall every Wednesday from 10am to noon.

Madeleine Charney, Liaison to the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and Landscape Architecture, is currently on maternity leave, but normally holds hours in Hills.

So stop by one of these outposts and say hi sometime, and look for more of us in more places outside the library. Of course, you're always welcome in the Good Ole Library too!

New Subject Guides

2008-04-11T16:29:00.001-04:00

The UMass Library subject guides are getting a makeover! We are using an application called LibGuides that gives us a lot more flexibility with content and style. We can include rss feeds from blogs and news sources, embed videos and even a chat widget, so you can "chat" with us live when we're online. You can also comment on the guides and their contents. The guides we have up so far look really good, and we'd love your feedback. Check them out at http://umass.libguides.com
There are four ISEL-related ones at present. You can also find some at the appropriate pages on the new Research Database Locator

New Journal Ranking Source

2008-04-11T11:48:00.004-04:00

BioMed Central's blog has a piece on "SCImago – a new source of journal metrics offering a wealth of free data on open access journals." The importance of a specific journal is of interest to anyone publishing their research - obviously, one would prefer to publish in a journal with the greatest impact. Thomson Scientific, as the first to create this metric using Citation Indexing with their Journal Citation Ranking (JCR), has long had the dominant role, but many have criticized their methodology, and been frustrated by their slowness to include new journals. Also, this service is costly.

A few companies have challenged Thomson Scientific's monopoly (Scopus and Google Scholar, for example) and now SCImago has joined the fray. It uses data from Scopus, and gives weights to the citations based on their sources - a citation from a lesser-read journal will have lower impact on the rating than one from Nature or Science.

Thanks, to Jim Craig for bringing this to our attention.

Two-sided printing available at ISEL

2008-04-01T14:47:00.001-04:00

In response to numerous requests from our patrons, printing on both sides of the sheet is available from public workstations.

Two points:

Send the print job through as a two-sided print request - you cannot choose it after sending it the printer. This means you shouldn't just click on the printing icons that send the print job directly to the printer without bringing up a dialog box. In the printing dialog box, select Properties; this usually brings up Printing Shortcuts, where you can chose Two-Sided Printing.

The cost is the same as whether you use one or two sheets of paper to print two sides. The only benefit to you is that it uses less paper.

Any questions, please ask the library staff.

Wireless access vastly improved at ISEL

2008-04-01T14:43:00.000-04:00

Recently, new nodes for wireless network access were installed and activated by OIT. We now have much better signal strength on all four floors, though perhaps the best signal is on the first, second, and third floors. There are no actual nodes in the basement, but you can get signal there from the 1st floor nodes.

Come and check it out!

RefWorks using science databases

2008-03-30T16:45:00.000-04:00

Learn how to use RefWorks focusing on science databases such as Agricola, PubMed and Web of Science.

Using RefWorks with Science Databases - Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library

Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 11:15 am-12:15 pm
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 4:00-5:00 pm

The workshops will cover the basics: how to access RefWorks, search catalogs, import references from library databases, retrieve and manage citations, and create bibliographies according to various citation styles (e.g. MLA or APA). They will also cover more in-depth applications: how to manipulate your database, use Write-N-Cite to add parenthetical references to your work, use RefShare to share folders with other researchers, and other questions you may have.

To register email refworks@library.umass.edu

DIGITAL QUADRANGLE SERIES COLLOQUIUM

2008-03-14T09:34:00.001-04:00

A press release from the UMass Amherst Libraries:

DIGITAL QUADRANGLE SERIES COLLOQUIUM

“Engaging the Web for Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publication”

Amherst, MA – UMass Amherst will host “Engaging the Web for Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publication” on March 28, 2008, from 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. in Campus Center Room 163C at UMass Amherst. Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, will give the keynote talk “The Googlization of Everything.” The program will also include a faculty panel presentation of Scholarworks implementations, remarks on the Carnegie Classification on Community Engagement, and a facilitated luncheon that will result in action plans for keeping author rights and publishing in an online environment, addressing concerns about Intellectual Property (IP), and adopting ScholarWorks. Dr. Vaidhyanthan’s talk and faculty presentations are open to the public. The roundtable lunch portion of the program is open to UMass Amherst faculty and staff only.

A cultural historian and media scholar, Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001); and The Anarchist in the Library: How Peer-to-Peer Networks are Transforming Politics, Culture, and Information (Basic Books, 2003). He is co-editor of Rewiring the “Nation”: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). After five years as a professional journalist, Vaidhyanathan earned a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has taught at the University of Texas, Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and New York University. He is currently associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia and writing his next book, The Googlization of Everything, a critical examination of Google's disruptive effect on culture, commerce, and community, on a public website produced by the Institute.

Scholarworks@UMassAmherst (http://www.scholarworks.umass.edu) is one way the campus supports the open communication of the scholarship at UMass Amherst. Over the past several years, UMass Amherst has made a significant investment in ScholarWorks to enable the shift to a digital culture. Using this digital technology and the web has its benefits but its use also raises many questions including, "Have I been losing the rights to my own work?" "How can I keep my author rights?" and, "If my work isn't online, is it invisible?"

ScholarWorks provides the infrastructure and support for creating access and dissemination vehicles and providing the long-term preservation of research and scholarly products. Critical for this transformation are faculty awareness of author and IP rights, alternative digital publishing platforms, and knowledge of how to use ScholarWorks. The final portion of this program, a facilitated roundtable discussion for UMass Amherst faculty and staff, will be devoted to this awareness. Participants will leave with actionable plans for their use of ScholarWorks.

This third annual Digital Quadrangle Series Colloquium is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries, Office for Research, Center for Teaching, the Graduate School, and new this year, the Office of Outreach.

For more information, contact Marilyn Billings, 545-6891, mbillings@library.umass.edu, or Marla Michel, 577-0092, marla@research.umass.edu, or visit http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dq/. Faculty RSVP is requested to Marilyn Billings by Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

Indigenous maps safeguard territories - an article from an environmental research newswire.

2008-03-13T15:35:00.000-04:00

Indigenous people know their own territory best, and if they can create a map which includes all the places that are important to them, it is a powerful tool when working with corporations.

This article comes from a useful environmental newswire, Environmental Research Web.

Near Arctic, Seed Vault Is a Fort Knox of Food

2008-02-29T14:53:00.000-05:00

An article from the New York Times this Leap Year day, discussing the establishment of a formal network of seed banks.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

A vault buried under the permafrost in Norway has begun to receive millions of seeds, an effort to save the genetic legacy of vanishing plants.

Ten Worst Jobs in Science 2007 - from Popular Science magazine

2008-02-18T13:43:00.001-05:00

Popular Science's annual bottom-10 list, in which they salute the men and women who do what no salary can adequately reward.

National Science Debate

2008-02-05T09:28:00.000-05:00

A group of scientists, educators, government officials, business leaders and other prominent people in the US have called for Science Debate 2008. The goal is to get the presidential candidates to talk about their views on science and technology policy, environmental issues, and medicine and health issues. You can read about the beginnings of the effort here. There are lists of supporters, both individual and institutional, on the website, and you can add your name to the list as well.