Science Resources

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

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From SciFinder Solutions:

In 2007, the content of the SciFinder Scholar database was enriched with the following information:

• more than 85,000 proton NMR spectra for nearly 84,000 substances
• more than 1,200,000 additional commercially available substances
• new experimental property tags for new proteins and nucleic acids
• approximately 10,000 traditional medicine patents from 1985-2005
• nearly 18,000 records from Chemisches Zentralblatt (issues 1905-1906) enhanced with English machine-translations of the bibliographic and abstract information
• U.S patent records from 1870-1889
• utility model patents issued from the Peoples Republic of China State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) from January 1, 2007
• bibliographic data and abstracts for patent applications from the Indian Patent Office (made available through SFS within 14 days of publication)

Posted by Michael Knee at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although it is a beta version, the Acta Chemica Scandinavica online archive (1947-1999) is now freely available.

Posted by Michael Knee at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Michael Knee at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)