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ChemSpider and Open Chemistry is an excellent Webcast on the pitfalls of searching for chemical information on the Internet, and the advantages of open chemistry and using the ChemSpider search engine. ChemSpider can be searched by exact structure, substructure, and similarily structure as well as by chemical names and molecular formula, and limited by properties. It has been enhanced with calculated properties from ACD Labs.
Technology Review describes the 10 Emerging Technologies for 2010. The editors of Technology Review selected the items on the list based on the question, will the technology change the world? Some have a great chance to change the world or at least have an impact.
The Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information launches the DOE Green Energy portal. The portal is designed to be a discovery engine, and to provide access to green energy R&D information from DOE National Laboratories and DOE-funded research projects. DOE Green Energy covers both current and historical research, including bibliographic citations, technical reports and patent information on renewable energy and energy conservation. Subjects covered includes solar, wind, bioenergy, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and wave power, and energy storage as well as traditional energy sources. Full-text reports or patents are usually freely available.
With the recent volcano activity in Iceland, you may wondered about some of the terms used in the news reports. The USGS Photo Glossary of Volcanic Terms is very useful in this regard because it uses photos to reinforce the textural description. Besides a photo and description, each entry includes additional descriptive information.
ResearchGATE is social networking platform for scientists and researchers. It is Facebook for scientists. Although it focuses on science, it is open to many other disciplines. ResearchGATE is a repository and discovery tool containing thousands of articles and millions of abstracts. Scientists can create profiles, discover collaborators, upload articles, discover articles, find jobs, and discuss their work. ReseardhGate is free of charge. For more information, see this New York Times article or this BusinessWeek article or this video.
File this under underutilized.
The IEEE Computer Society Digital Library provides online access to 22 society magazines, transactions, and letters, as well as a growing collection of conference proceedings and workshops. Most of the magazines, transactions, and letters go back to 1988, or to volume 1 for publications that began after 1988. The IEEE Computer Society Digital Library is great place to find items on the practical aspects of computing, and theoretical and experimental peer-reviewed articles.
ticTOCs has evolved into Journal TOCS. I described ticTOCS in December 2008 here. Journal TOCs is a free table-of-contents alerting service. Currently, it covers more than 14,000 journals from over 450 publishers; more that 360,000 articles. Jounranl TOCs can searched or browsed, or journals can be saved with a "tick" to be viewed again or exported into an RSS feed reader. Registration is required to save and view journal tables-of-contents.