Google Earth: Dive! Dive!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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. ...