January 2009 Archives

IBISWorld, a Princeton subscription database for Industry Market Research, has developed a recession update supplement to its industry reports. These updates are available for all 700 industries in the database and “provide a briefing on today’s rapidly changing economy and the short-term implications for an industry.”

To view the recession update for an industry, first go to IBISWorld. Select the “Industry Market Research” database from the drop down menu or click the button. Then either search or navigate to a particular industry. Once you have selected an industry, click the orange Recession Update link from the Table of Contents menu on the left.

The Recession Update provides information on the immediate impact on the industry, headwind, tailwind, structural changes, future of the industry, and forcasts.

The following link, for example, provides a Recession Update for the Bar, Nightclub and Drinking Establishment industry. http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/RecessionUpdate.aspx?indid=1685

Princeton has a trial subscription to the Material ConneXion database through January 30th. The database contains information on over 1400 materials and processes. You can search by product name, material category, keyword, year, or country.

Material ConneXion is a “knowledge base for information about new and innovative materials.”

For more information or to try out this resource, please visit http://gamma.materialconnexion.com/academic/Default.asp and let us know what you think.

Please see the announcement below.

Dear all,

I recently finished my Ph.D at Oxford on the philosophy of perception. With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, I’ve just launched a website, Academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a ‘tree’ format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.
- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area - the latest people, papers and talks.

We are hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world — Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers. Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

Academics are joining the tree rapidly. More than 24,000 academics have added themselves in the last four months. Some professors on the site include:

- Richard Dawkins - http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins
- Stephen Hawking - http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking
- Paul Krugman - http://princeton.academia.edu/PaulKrugman
- Noam Chomsky - http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky
- Steven Pinker - http://harvard.academia.edu/StevenPinker

We’re trying to spread the word about Academia.edu as much as possible. It would be terrific if you could visit the site, and add yourself to your department on the tree at http://www.academia.edu/. If your university is not there, you can add it.

Independent researchers - if you are a researcher that is not associated with a university, I encourage you to add yourself to the “Independent Researchers” portion of the tree at http://independent.academia.edu.

And do spread the word to your friends and colleagues if you can.

Many thanks,
Richard

Dr. Richard Price
http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

The Department of Energy’s ScienceAccelerator.gov search engine has been enhanced. Please see the announcement below. To try it out, you can visit the website or use the search widget provided below.

Customize Your Search Experience at ScienceAccelerator.gov

It is exciting to announce that an array of new search and retrieval features and capabilities have been added to ScienceAccelerator.gov, providing new options for customizing your search experience.

The search engine that helps you find science information from U.S. Department of Energy key resources now

· automatically spell checks your search term(s)

· allows you to e-mail your search results

· offers the capability to export search results into your citation management software

· provides links to EurekAlert! Science News

· clusters results by related topics and/or by date in order to more easily target subsequent searches.

Other search and retrieval features include

· advanced searching

· searching within a search

· sorting search results and

· narrowing your search results by individually selecting items of interest.

The Help page has been updated to reflect the new options and to provide additional information.

Science Accelerator helps you to find research and development reports; e-prints; science conference proceedings; DOE patents, accomplishments, project descriptions, and software; DOE-associated Nobel Prize Winners; and more.

You are welcome to visit and explore all aspects of the newly-revised Science Accelerator at http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov/ .

Starting today and continuing every Wednesday until February 18, 2009, the Lewis Library will be showing a 27 minute film from the Thirsty Planet series on World Wide Water topics. Several of the films should be interesting to a variety of engineering disciplines from civil and environmental engineering to resource management.

The following films will be shown in the Lewis Library electronic classroom (Room 225) from 12:15 p.m. to 12:45 p.m.

1. Water for the fields ( 1/14) Looks at the use of water for agriculture from locations around the world, surveying both disasters of agricultural irrigation, such as cotton farming in Uzbekistan, and innovative successes in water-efficient techniques and crops, such as in California and India. Also looks at the destructive effects of deforestation and overgrazing, the difficulty of fighting erosion and reclaiming arable soil, and the urgency of the motto: more crop per drop.

2. Waters of discord (1/21) Almost half the world gets its drinking water from rivers that cross national boundaries. Analysts predict that more wars will be fought over water than oil. This program surveys a number of active or potential hot spots: Israel and the river Jordan; the Southeastern Anatolia Project in Turkey and its effects on Syria and Iraq; Egypt’s Toshka Canal and the Nile Basin Initiative; and the Tehri dam in India. The program also looks at the effects of the Hoover dam on the Colorado River delta in Mexico and the success of Lesotho’s Katse dam.

3. Watery visions (1/28) In a dramatic reversal of policy since apartheid, South Africa has become a model of water fulfillment. Despite being one of the driest regions on Earth, India’s Rajasthan is an oasis due to the revival of a system of ancient rain basins. This program looks at these encouraging examples to show how sustainable solutions to long-term water management can be achieved, while a visit to Sertão in Brazil illustrates the appalling alternative — two very different futures.

4. Testing the limits of possibility: massive dams and waterworks (2/4) Looks at the construction of dams examining the positive and negative impact as well as the politics and economics of several ongoing or proposed projects: China’ Three Gorges Dam, Egypt’s Mubarak pumping station, pit-mine reclamation in Germany’s Lausitz Region, and Spain’s controversial national hydrological plan for the Ebro River.

5. Water for profit 2/11 When demand outpaces supply, water becomes a commodity to be traded on the global market. But who owns water and how can a price be set on water? In this program the pros and cons of privatization are assessed in a number of water management situations around the world: Aguas Argentinas in Buenos Aires; the Bechtel Corporation in Cochabamba, Bolivia; Thames Water Company in Jakarta and a public/private test partnership in Albania.

6. Water for the cities 2/18 Takes a hard look at the mounting challenge of providing millions of people in urban areas with potable water and adequate disposal of waste water. To highlight the difficulties, segments focus on the water problems of the magalopolis, cities with populations over 10 million people such as Lagos, Jakarta and Mexico City. The massive logistics that enable Las Vegas, Nevada to prosper in the middle of a desert are also explored.

Here is a great way to keep track of new developments and stay current in the field of Electrical and Electronics Engineering: IEEE’s Top 100 Documents Accessed page. You can also view the most recently added material at the Content Updates page, or sign up for Email Alerts.

What’s different about the Princeton University Library web browsers?

You may have noticed the LibX Toolbar upgrade to the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers on computers in the library. If you haven’t seen it or tried it out, I highly recommend it. Adapted for Princeton University Libraries by Steve Adams, Biological and Life Sciences Librarian, this browser plug-in really will help “streamline the research process.”

This toolbar is more than just another search box in your browser. It allows you to:

• Easily navigate Princeton University Library online resources with a handy toolbar dropdown menu on the left.
• Perform advanced in-browser searching of a variety of databases, including: PUL Main Catalog, EBSCO, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar and many more. A drop-down menu allows you to easily switch between databases without having to navigate to separate websites.
• Highlight text within the browser window to drag and drop it into the search bar, directly onto a selected database, or onto the Google Scholar button.
• Search for highlighted text in select databases with a right click.
• ISBNs, ISSNs, PubMed Ids, and DOIs in the body of a page become links to check the Main PUL Catalog for holdings.
• Easily check PUL holdings of books you find at your favorite online retailer.

For more detailed information about how to use this great new tool, visit Steve Adam’s LibX Toolbar Libguide at: http://libguides.princeton.edu/content.php?pid=6769&sid=42420

Sebastian Thrun, Prof. of Computer Science at Stanford, and Anthony Levandowski, a Google product manager, have written an interesting Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, on January 3, 2009:

Four Ways for Detroit to Save Itself

The four ideas are: 1.) Dedicated short-rnage communication (like WiFi technology) 2.) Solar-electric hybrids 3.) Robotic cars able to drive in tight formation 4.) Online cars