Monthly Archives: April 2009

Hot topics and most-cited papers in scientific research, 2007-08

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April 2009  (from the Apr. 30, Thom­son Reuters Newsletter)

Sci­ence Watch takes its annual look back at the hottest of recent research.

Sci­ence Watch from Thom­son Reuters tracks trends and per­for­mance in basic research year-round. In this highly antic­i­pated annual review, it iden­ti­fies researchers who accounted for the high­est num­bers of Hot Papers pub­lished over the pre­ced­ing two years from 2008. It also high­lights which papers pub­lished dur­ing 2008 were the most cited by year’s end.

Kuo-Chen Chou of the Gor­don Life Sci­ences Insti­tute and Shang­hai Jiao Tong Uni­ver­sity tops the Hot Paper rank­ings, with 17 pub­lished since 2007 cov­er­ing a vari­ety of sequenc­ing tools for pre­dict­ing pro­tein loca­tion. Thir­teen of these reports were co-authored with another of the fea­tured sci­en­tists, Hong-Bin Shen.

The list of 2008’s most-cited papers is strik­ing for the promi­nence of physical-sciences reports in the top spots—especially those on iron-based super­con­duc­tors, a topic that accounts for the num­ber one paper and three oth­ers in the top ten. The­o­ret­i­cal physics, and specif­i­cally string the­ory, also reg­is­ters strongly, with sev­eral papers exam­in­ing recent refine­ments to M-theory.

The hottest research of 2007-08: read the full analysis

Springer’s series: Methods in Molecular Biology

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“Springer is pleased to announce the pub­li­ca­tion of the 500th vol­ume in the best-selling series, Meth­ods in Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­ogy. To com­mem­o­rate this mile­stone, we have made some pro­to­cols from this 500th vol­ume — Sys­tems Biol­ogy, edited by Ivan Maly — avail­able for free online at SpringerProtocols.com. As this new vol­ume demon­strates, Springer con­tin­ues to pub­lish pro­to­cols at the cutting-edge of research.”
From an email ad from the pub­lisher, 4/23/09.

PUL has an ongo­ing sub­scrip­tion to this Springer series.  We’ve not yet received vol­ume 500 — but we have received #528. (They often come out of sequence.)  You may want to fol­low their link.  They have ways to store your own pro­to­cols, and videos of some, and links to the newest with RSS feeds…similar to Wiley’s offerings.

 

Current Protocols relaunched with Journal of Vizualized Experiments

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US Wiley-Blackwell relaunches Cur­rent Protocols.com - 22 Apr 2009

Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and schol­arly pub­lish­ing busi­ness of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has announced the relaunch of Cur­rent Protocols.com, a web­site for sci­en­tists engaged in exper­i­men­tal research in the life sci­ences. The site is pro­jected as an essen­tial resource, bring­ing reli­able, peer-reviewed Cur­rent Pro­to­cols con­tent together with cutting-edge tools and user-generated content.

The new site will offer users the capa­bil­ity to upload per­sonal pro­to­cols to share with the research com­mu­nity; access use­ful sci­en­tific tools and cal­cu­la­tors; par­tic­i­pate in trou­bleshoot­ing forums; get expert advice on spe­cific sci­en­tific ques­tions related to pro­to­cols; read and com­ment on post­ings on the Edi­tors blog ‘Beyond the Bench’; access peer-reviewed video pro­to­cols; and search or browse through all Cur­rent Pro­to­col abstracts.

All con­tent on the site is open access with full text arti­cles remain­ing on Wiley-Blackwell’s online pub­lish­ing plat­form Wiley Inter­Science (http://interscience.wiley.com).

Click here

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter 4/22/09

Prince­ton has a sub­scrip­tion to Cur­rent Pro­to­cols in Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­ogy – and JoVE (coming)

Earth-pages Resource Center and News

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Pub­lisher, Wiley-Blackwell, has col­lected many use­ful resources at their web­site Earth-pages.

Get the “News from the Geo­log­i­cal World”

Their Resource Center’s table of contents:

 

 

A Paperless University by 2010?

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Ana­heim Uni­ver­sity set to become the world’s first paper­less uni­ver­sity — 21 Apr 2009

Ana­heim Uni­ver­sity, a US-based insti­tu­tion which pio­neered online edu­ca­tion in the mid-nineties, has now com­mit­ted to being paper­less by 2010. This direc­tive has caused Ana­heim to push pub­lish­ers to pro­duce e-books, as well as adopt tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions such as the Sony book reader that allow the entire university’s cur­ricu­lum of text­books to be stored in a portable palm-sized elec­tronic reader.

The Ana­heim Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent Dr. William Hart­ley signed the Amer­i­can Col­lege & Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dents Cli­mate Com­mit­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2009. The ACUPCC is a highly vis­i­ble effort organ­is­ing U.S. col­lege and uni­ver­sity pres­i­dents and chan­cel­lors to address global warm­ing by min­imis­ing global warm­ing emis­sions and pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion in an effort to achieve cli­mate neutrality.

Accord­ing to a Uni­ver­sity rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Anaheim’s stu­dents have sub­mit­ted assign­ments elec­tron­i­cally and accessed online library resources since 1998. This year the uni­ver­sity switched from paper to e-catalogues, and dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing has replaced the sub­mis­sion of mul­ti­ple copies of bound the­ses. The uni­ver­sity is expect­ing to con­vert all admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures into dig­i­tal for­mat by 2010.

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter (4/21/09)

U.S. Geological Survey adopting Vivisimo to improve NBII search platform

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The U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey has cho­sen Vivisimo, a provider of enter­prise search soft­ware and exper­tise, to pro­vide its web­site users data and infor­ma­tion from a num­ber of bio­log­i­cal data sources. Vivisimo Veloc­ity Search Plat­form will replace the USGS’ National Bio­log­i­cal Infor­ma­tion Infrastructure’s (NBII) search solu­tion and pro­vide a sin­gle search inter­face. NBII is a col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­gram to pro­vide increased access to data and infor­ma­tion on bio­log­i­cal resources. The pro­gram works with var­i­ous fed­eral, state, non-profit, and edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions. The Veloc­ity imple­men­ta­tion will ini­tially search 30 data sources across mul­ti­ple agen­cies and uni­ver­si­ties. Veloc­ity will also enable geospa­tial dis­play of search results – allow­ing users to search for cer­tain plants or ani­mals in a spe­cific region or loca­tion. USGS will also incor­po­rate Velocity’s new con­cep­tual search to take advan­tage of its exten­sive and author­i­ta­tive Bio­com­plex­ity The­saurus.

Source: E-Content Mag­a­zine (ECX­tra) April 17, 2009.

Open-source, collaborative drug development!?

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Bio­chemist calls for ‘open-source’ R&D revolution

 Source: Today’s Fierce­BioRe­searcher newslet­ter

Uni­ver­sity of Toronto bio­chemist Aled Edwards has been one of the lead­ing cham­pi­ons of the open-source research move­ment in drug devel­op­ment. And he has some inter­est­ing num­bers to back up his calls for a rev­o­lu­tion in research.

There are, he says, 600,000 sci­en­tists around the world who are engaged in devel­op­ing new drugs. And they spawn about 20 new ther­a­pies each year. That means that it now takes 30,000 lab-years to pro­duce a sin­gle new drug at a cost of bil­lions of dol­lars. The entire process is marked by secrecy and it is increas­ingly inef­fi­cient and wasteful.

To read more go to Fierce­BioRe­searcher, the sci­ence of drug discovery

FierceBioResearcher 
Click here to get the Fierce­BioRe­searcher email newslet­ter for FREE!

Blogspeak discussion: the future of science publishing

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 Lat­est edi­tion of Blogs­peak now online — 06 Apr 2009

The third edi­tion of blogs­peak is now online. Fea­tured are Steven Sieck (Sci­ence Pub­lish­ers Step­ping Up Online Com­mu­nity Ini­tia­tives); Char­lie Rap­ple (If we invented the schol­arly jour­nal today, what would it look like?”); Mor­gan Langille (Is PLOS One the future of sci­en­tific pub­lish­ing?); Khes­kett (End­Note & HubMed); and John Tim­mer (Social search doesn’t pan out for Jimmy Wales, Wikia Search). A ser­vice of Knowledgespeak.com, Blogs­peak includes blog posts rel­e­vant to the pub­lish­ing indus­try, par­tic­u­larly STM pub­lish­ing. Sub­scribers are invited to par­tic­i­pate in the lat­est edi­tion of blogs­peak at http://www.knowledgespeak.com/Blog/Blog_Index_More.asp?MID=1#41.

MIT Labs have developed a “Sixth Sense”

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From the TED (Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment , Design) site:

This demo — from Pat­tie Maes’ lab at MIT, spear­headed by Pranav Mis­try — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wear­able device with a pro­jec­tor that paves the way for pro­found inter­ac­tion with our environment.

Pranav Mis­try is the genius behind Sixth Sense, a wear­able device that enables new inter­ac­tions between the real world and the world of data.

Take a look at TED, too.  Efforts began in 1984 to share earth-shaking ideas at a con­fer­ence in Long Beach, CA.  The best talks and per­for­mances are  freely avail­able to view.  One can sub­scribe to the TED series.

 

Safari Books can be downloaded to mobile devices

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“Safari Books Online fea­tures the abil­ity for users to down­load a book and take it with them on a mobile device. Once sub­scribers have access to Safari Books Online, they can sim­ply access the books they want to read remotely through a spe­cial mobile inter­face or iPhone book­bag appli­ca­tion – and take Safari Books online with them wher­ever they go.”

Safari Books Online is a US-based e-reference joint ven­ture between pub­lish­ers O’Reilly Media, Inc. and Pear­son Tech­nol­ogy Group.  Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library sub­scribes.

From Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, April 1, 2009, under the headline:

“Safari Books Online ven­tures into German-speaking mar­kets”