Fora.tv contains video content on "ground breaking ideas from important thinkers." Fora.tv's Tech & Science section is divided into 8 subject sections: energy, engineering, environment, health & wellness, personal tech, science, technology, and the Internet. There is content overlap among the sections. The site is fully searchable, with basic and advanced search modes. Each video includes a written transcript of the program.
Using data from the Scopus database, Top Cited lists the top 20 cited articles for 26 subject areas. The default provides the top cited articles for all subject areas; users can select a subject as well as three time periods: 2004-2008, 2005-2008, or 2006-2008. RSS feeds are available and a Google map shows authors' locations.
Careers.Computer.Org contains resources for job seekers and employers; it includes a searchable postion listing and a means for employers to post postions and review resumes. Registration is free. The IEEE Computer Society also maintains a Web site called Build Your Career in Computing. It includes news, articles, and links to job boards.
A joint effort of the MIT Engineering and Science Libraries and Harvard's Countway Library of Medicine, the Bioinformatics Tutorials Series (BITS) is a growing collection of bioinformatics tutorials in video format.
The APS has added the following features for Physical Review and Physical Review Letters:
Peptide Guide provides a basic introduction to the field of peptide chemistry along with some applications of peptides. It includes an overview of amino acids, a protein builder that constructs text representations for simple peptides and proteins, a peptide mass calculator, and a glossary as well as information about bonds and synthesis.
60 new books have been added to the UAlbany collection of Safari Tech Books Online. About an equal number of books, that showed no usage for a year, were dropped. All books have been fully cataloged in the Minerva catalog. Alternatively, to browse our collection of Safari books, go to the Safari Website, and click on LIBRARY. To search our collection, go to the Safari Website, and in the Search area, change the default search from "All Content" to "My Bookshelf," and enter keywords.
An article in ComputerWorld describes an erasable high-tech paper. Scientists at Xerox PARC have developed a high-tech paper that can be printed on, the text "deletes itself" in 24 hours, and it can be re-used up to 100 times.
In connection with the 50th anniversary celebration of Physical Review Letters, a series of milestone letters are being selected, briefly described, and posted each week during 2008. "Milestone letters have made long-lived contributions to physics, either by announcing significant discoveries, or by initiating new areas of research. Many of them report on work that was later recognized with a Nobel Prize for one or more of the authors." An RSS feed for the milestone letters is available
SKS Science Products is a Watervliet, NY-based distributor of chemistry and general science labware, laboratory equipment, and laboratory containers. Products they carry include disposable lab supplies, pipetting supplies, digital scales and balances, beakers, glass and plastic sampling containers, and safety items.
Dot What!? is a file extension resource for the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. It can be searched or browsed in alphabetical order. Each file extension record includes the file extension name, a brief description, software that creates or views the file, file type, and operating systems.
An Earth Day 2008 posting: It was revealed on the ABC-TV newsmagazine 20/20 that An Inconvenient Truth, the supposed "documentary" by Nobel Laureate and former vice president Al Gore, uses computer-generated scenes from the 2004 science fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow. The scene shows ice shelves collapsing. Clips of the scene can be seen here. Other convenient lies are documented here.
One of last of the "giants of physics," John Archibald Wheeler, passed away on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at age 96. The New York Times obituary can be found here. "Johnny" Wheeler came from a library family. His father, mother, brother, sister, sisters-in-law, daughter, and niece were all librarians, and he was a great advocate for libraries. Probably the most famous of the Wheeler librarians was his father, Joseph Lewis Wheeler. In the early part of the 20th century, he was the director of the Reuben McMillan Free Library in Youngstown, OH, and later became the director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Joseph Wheeler transformed the Pratt Library into a world class library. He retired in 1945, but continued as a library consultant well into his 80s. Showing great admiration of his father, librarians, and knowledge, "Johnny" Wheeler gave the commencement address at the University of Texas Library School. The address was printed in the journal Libraries & Culture (vol. 28, no. 3, p. 327, 1993), and available here.
Due to scheduled maintenance, please be advised that ScienceDirect will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes from 10:00 to 11:00 pm EDT on Friday, April 11, 2008.
The New York State Library (NYSL) has a growing collection of online journals in science. I've discovered several journals that NYSL provides access to, that UAlbany does not. For example, they provide access to the following journals from the American Scientific Publishers:
Journal of Nanoelectronics and Optoelectronics
Journal of Biobased Materials and Bioenergy
Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology
Journal of Bionanoscience
Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
Also, Wind Energy from John Wiley & Sons.
You can find out what they have at this page http://ty7zv9nn5c.search.serialssolutions.com/, where you can search by title or browse alphabetically.
THE CATCH: In order to remotely access the online journals from the New York State Library (NYSL), you must be a registered borrower of the New York State Library, which provides you with a borrower's card, a borrower's number, and a PIN. UAlbany's NetID will NOT work. For more information on obtaining a NYSL borrower's card, please see http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/apply.htm. Anyone can access NYSL's online journals, if they are in the New York State Library.
There are two new exhibits in the Science Library. One contains information about Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and several other books. Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. For more information about Prof. Pollan, check out his Website. The display includes his books and articles. The other exhibit is in honor of National Public Health Week, April 7-13, 2008. The items on display were donated by the UAlbany School of Public Health, and include promotional materials, books, a DVD, posters, and an emergency survival kit. For more information about National Public Health Week, please see its Website. These exhibits are in the display cases outside of the Current Periodical Reading Room on the second level.
In honor of National Public Health Week, the Science Library and the UAlbany's School of Public Health will host a book discussion. The book is The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. The discussion will take place in the Science Library's Standish Room on Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 12:00 - 1:30 PM. If you have any questions, please contact Irina Holden.
The conference proceedings of USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association have been made open access. All conference proceedings beginning with 1993 are freely available, however, there appears to be slight delay for some of the conferences.
From SciFinder Solutions:
In 2007, the content of the SciFinder Scholar database was enriched with the following information:
Although it is a beta version, the Acta Chemica Scandinavica online archive (1947-1999) is now freely available.
Reaction searching in SciFinder Scholar usually begins with drawing a structure query. However, there are other ways to find reactions, including by using the Explore tool. Check out Exploring Reactions: Beginning with Research Topic for more.
Derived from critical evaluation of the published literature, the NIST Photoelectron Spectroscopy Database provides access to the energies of many photoelectron and Auger-electron spectral lines. The database contains line positions, chemical shifts, doublet splitting, and energy separations, and may be searched by element, line type, line energy as well as other variables.
Located near Geneva, Switzerland, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Hands-on CERN contains a collection of resources explaining the standard model, accelerators, detectors, picture analysis, and particle collisions.
SIAM's (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) new journal, the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, is now available online. During 2008, all articles will be freely available.
Techsted combs the Web and aggregates the top technology news it finds. It also categories the news items into: recent, inverted (unique), most read, dealings, and launch.
From the National Academy of Engineering's Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century Website, this page provides a timeline for the most important triumphs in computing.
Developed by members of the Mathematics Department at Temple University, Calculus on the Web contains practice problems with immediate feedback about the answer, and hints when the answer is incorrect. The site is divided into the following sections (books): precalculus, calculus I, calculus II, calculus III, linear algebra, number theory, and abstract algebra. There are indexes to each section.
Cornell University's Engineering Library has updated its online "sticker shock" exhibit: Sticker Shock 2. The exhibit includes updated prices and cost per use information for Cornell University. This and the original Sticker Shock exhibit highlight the rising cost of journal subscriptions. The University at Albany provides access to most of the titles in this exhibit.
The Hiroshima Mathematical Journal is open access and available on Project Euclid. The archive begins with 1961 and runs through the present issue; it includes approximately 1,300 articles and 23,000 pages. 1961 to 1970 were published as the Journal of Science of the Hiroshima University, Series A-I: Mathematics.
As a means to promote open access, the American Physical Society (APS) allows its authors to post their articles on their personal Web site or their institutional repository immediately after the APS publishes the article.
Beginning with v. 8, 2008, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials is open access and available on the Institute of Physics Electronic Journals Website.
Favorite Photos is a gallery featuring the most popular and striking selections from the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, which is a collection that has more than 30,000 images of physicists and astronomers.
The IEEE Computer Society will be presenting a webinar: "Standardizing Your Software Process Improvement Initiatives" on Thursday, March 27, 2008, at 2:00 PM EDT. Susan K. (Kathy) Land will "discuss the CMMI, ISO 9001, Lean Six Sigma, and other process methodologies, and explain how international process and IEEE Systems and Software Engineering Standards might be best applied to support each of these models." The webinar is free, but registration is required. Please register at this Website.
The ACS journal Biochemistry is now publishing Rapid Reports. Rapid Reports are an expedited manuscript type encouraging short, timely papers on topics of unusual importance or interest, and are limited to three printed journal pages. For additional information, please see these guidelines. Editors will make every effort to come to a decision on Rapid Reports within three weeks of receipt of the manuscript.
From the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Distillations is a weekly podcast on the past, present, and future of chemistry. Its purpose is to help gain an historical perspective on current scientific issues through podcast interviews, features, commentaries, and reviews.
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) announced that they will be contributing CAS Registry Numbers to the WikiProject Chemicals/Data section of the Wikipedia Chemistry Portal. CAS Registry Numbers are recognized as the standard for chemical substance identification.
Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online is now completely open access and free to all readers. The author fee is $150; University at Albany researchers are eligible for a discount. For additional information, please see http://journals.iucr.org/services/oa/openaccess_e.html. The other Acta Crystallographica sections, published by the International Union of Crystallography, operate as hybrid open access publications with a $1,000 author fee. For additional information, please see http://journals.iucr.org/services/oa/openaccess_hybrid.html.
Two landing pages have been updated:
They are portals to some of the most important resources and Web pages for these subjects.
In the mid-1980s, Susan Lammers wrote a book entitled Programmers At Work. It contained interviews of 19 important players "who spurred the PC revolution through their creation of key software programs and companies." Lammers is offering the original interviews on a blog, along with updated biographical information.
The chemistry landing page has been updated. Please see http://library.albany.edu/subject/chemistry_main.html. It provides access to some of the most important resources and Web pages for chemistry.
The computer science landing page has been updated. Please see http://library.albany.edu/subject/computer_main.html. It provides access to some of the most important resources and Web pages for computer science.
Editorial in the Swarthmore College student newspaper The Daily Gazette says "It is Time for Open Access."
Hosted by Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library at Stanford University, the Beilstein Dictionary is a German-English, English-German chemistry dictionary. It contains "about 2,100 entries, including most German words occurring in the Beilstein Handbook, as well as common abbreviations."
From the American Chemical Society (ACS), Bytesize Science is a series of podcasts created to be both educational and entertaining. Bytesize Science translates research from ACS peer-reviewed journals, along with content from the ACS newsmagazine, Chemical & Engineering News, into short podcasts about science, health, medicine, energy, food, and other scientific topics.
From Knowledgespeak:
"Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences has reportedly voted for a policy that allows the university to make their scholarly articles available online for free. Under the proposal, Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. The copyrights of the articles will be held under Harvard's license. However, faculty members can request a waiver of the licence for particular articles."