Monthly Archives: December 2009

Chemistry journals information — CASSI

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“The CAS Source Index (CASSI) search tool is a web-based resource intended to sup­port researchers and librar­i­ans who need accu­rate bib­li­o­graphic infor­ma­tion. This new tool has been cre­ated as a free-of-charge resource that will enable researchers to con­firm jour­nal titles and jour­nal title abbre­vi­a­tions in an eas­ily acces­si­ble elec­tronic format.

 

This free, web-based tool can serve as a com­pan­ion tool to CASSI on CD cus­tomers to pro­vide easy access for basic jour­nal and abbre­vi­a­tion look-ups, while CASSI on CD pro­vides addi­tional func­tion­al­ity and data such as hold­ings infor­ma­tion, DDS avail­abil­ity, cer­tain record details, and archival abil­ity. To start using the new CASSI search tool, visit http://cassi.cas.org.”

Posted to CHMINF-L by Peter Carl­ton at CAS.org 

Google Earth News

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Among the updates to Google Earth are the following:

New and updated imagery from Mars

UNESCO World Her­itage Sites

3D build­ing facades for 5 cities in CA, and now Philadel­phia, Port­land, Austin &  Chicago

From the UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP15) is Cli­mate Change Tours

Source: The Sight­seer Newslet­ter | Decem­ber 2009

Google Earth Sight­seer Newslet­ter [googlearth@google.com]

 

Complete genomes of 10 individuals to be put on Web

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 From Fierce­Biotech IT [editors@fiercebiotechit.com]

 

“Tech glit­terati strut DNA online

By George Miller Com­ment | Forward

Ten DNA-sequenced vol­un­teers are post­ing this most pri­vate infor­ma­tion online, unpro­tected. You’ll rec­og­nize some of them by rep­u­ta­tion, if not their DNA: pio­neer­ing tech­nol­o­gist Esther Dyson, and high-ranking indi­vid­u­als from the tech/biotech indus­tries and academia.

They are bar­ing all, so to speak, mainly to see what hap­pens. George Church, a geneti­cist at Har­vard Med­ical School, is behind the expo­sure. He, Dyson and eight oth­ers will post not just their DNA, but also med­ical records and descrip­tions of their phys­i­cal traits, says Forbes.

It’s an effort called the Per­sonal Genome Project, in which the vol­un­teers will relate the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing such per­sonal infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able. Researchers want to deter­mine the risks of DNA expo­sure, and learn how to develop soft­ware capa­ble of man­ag­ing human-scale DNA data volumes.

The ten vol­un­teers are just the begin­ning. Researchers are in the process of recruit­ing the first 10,000 vol­un­teers, on their way to 100,000 from the gen­eral public.

- read the Forbes arti­cle
- check out the project Inter­net site
- here are one volunteer’s anno­ta­tion results
- see the intro video ”

Medical subject headings for MEDLINE 2010

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Every year the index­ers at the National Library of Med­i­cine update the Med­ical Sub­ject Head­ings (MeSH) based on the lat­est usage of bio­med­ical, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, pub­lic health and disease terminology.

 *NLM Tech­ni­cal Bul­letin, Nov-Dec 2009, Newly Main­tained MEDLINE for 2010 MeSH Now Avail­able in PubMed

Source: NLM New files for the week of Dec 14, 2009

Open Access “propaganda”

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SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING & ACADEMIC RESEARCH COALITION

From the SPARC eNews Decem­ber, 2009:  Oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­port open access:

Copenhagen COP15

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© flickr user Jams_123 licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
U.N. Cli­mate Sum­mit Under Way in Copen­hagen
Lead­ers from across the globe con­vened today (Dec. 7th) in Copen­hagen for a United Nations con­fer­ence to dis­cuss a plan to com­bat cli­mate change. One of the goals of the sum­mit, which runs through Dec. 18, is to work on a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Pro­to­col that expires in 2012.

Source: WhatsNew@NationalAcademies.org

Under the “Full Story”, there are links to reports and a link to the con­fer­ence web­site.

 

U.S. Government invites comments on Open Access Policy

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 US US gov­ern­ment launches inter­ac­tive pub­lic forum on Pub­lic Access Pol­icy — 11 Dec 2009

“The US’ Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy Pol­icy (OSTP) has launched a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on its Pub­lic Access Pol­icy. The Admin­is­tra­tion is seek­ing pub­lic input on access to publicly-funded research results, such as those that appear in aca­d­e­mic and schol­arly jour­nal arti­cles. Cur­rently, the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) require that research funded by its grants be made avail­able to the pub­lic online at no charge within 12 months of pub­li­ca­tion. The Admin­is­tra­tion is seek­ing views as to whether this pol­icy should be extended to other sci­ence agen­cies and, if so, how it should be implemented.

OSTP launched an inter­ac­tive, online dis­cus­sion on Decem­ber 10. The dis­cus­sion is focused on three major areas of inter­est. These include: Imple­men­ta­tion (Dec. 10 to 20): Which Fed­eral agen­cies are good can­di­dates to adopt pub­lic access poli­cies? What vari­ables (field of sci­ence, pro­por­tion of research funded by pub­lic or pri­vate enti­ties, etc.) should affect how pub­lic access is imple­mented at var­i­ous agen­cies, includ­ing the max­i­mum length of time between pub­li­ca­tion a pub­lic release?; Fea­tures and Tech­nol­ogy (Dec. 21 to 31): In what for­mat should the data be sub­mit­ted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve infor­ma­tion, and to make it easy for oth­ers to link to it? Are there exist­ing dig­i­tal stan­dards for archiv­ing and inter­op­er­abil­ity to max­imise pub­lic ben­e­fit? How are these antic­i­pated to change; and Man­age­ment (Jan. 1 to 7): What are the best mech­a­nisms to ensure com­pli­ance? What would be the best met­rics of suc­cess? What are the best exam­ples of usabil­ity in the pri­vate sec­tor (both domes­tic and inter­na­tional)? Should those who access papers be given the oppor­tu­nity to com­ment or pro­vide feedback?

Each of these top­ics will form the basis of a blog post­ing that will appear at www.whitehouse.gov/open and will be open for com­ment on the OSTP blog.

Search for more Pub­lic funded research infor­ma­tion in K-Store”

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter
 

Indiana Univ. to use cloud computing in life science research

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From today’s Fierce­biotech News, Fierce­Biotech IT [editors@fiercebiotechit.com]

By George Miller
“… Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity is spend­ing $1.5 mil­lion from the National Insti­tutes of Health on…high-end com­put­ing dis­cov­ery tools. The Hoosiers’ Per­va­sive Tech­nol­ogy Insti­tute Dig­i­tal Sci­ence Cen­ter is tar­get­ing cloud com­put­ing to sup­port life sci­ence research.
In addi­tion to bust­ing com­put­ing bot­tle­necks, the cen­ter plans to use the cloud for ana­lyz­ing sequenc­ing data, the vol­ume of which is “one to two orders of mag­ni­tude larger than pos­si­ble with cur­rent com­pu­ta­tional capa­bil­i­ties,” accord­ing to an indus­try arti­cle. Ama­zon Web Ser­vices, Microsoft Azure, and other open source soft­ware are expected to be part of the installation.
The center’s research team will part­ner with IU life sci­ence research teams to test the plat­form in such research areas as sequence assem­bly and pop­u­la­tion genomics. Cloud tech­nolo­gies will also be applied to gene fam­ily clus­ter­ing and struc­tural visualization.
The IU work is also sup­ported by the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion via its Future­Grid exper­i­men­tal super­com­put­ing net­work project.”
- see the arti­cle

There are other inter­est­ing sto­ries too:

Pitt hits com­put­ing jack­pot
Hoosiers tap cloud for sequenc­ing
Nano, in vivo 3D gains for imag­ing
Remote imager to pro­vide dis­ease data

 click here to read it on the web.. or here:

http://www.uptilt.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=2164839&mlid=125589&siteid=8121&uid=4a81392a19

Knovel launches Nanotechnology collection

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“Knovel launches Nan­otech­nol­ogy col­lec­tion — 02 Dec 2009

Knovel, an online resource for engi­neers, has announced the avail­abil­ity of the Nan­otech­nol­ogy col­lec­tion. The new col­lec­tion seeks to help engi­neers expand their knowl­edge base and build exper­tise in this rapidly-growing multi-disciplinary area.

The Nan­otech­nol­ogy col­lec­tion fea­tures con­tent from lead­ing pub­lish­ers includ­ing Else­vier, McGraw-Hill, Springer, Smithers Rapra, Royal Soci­ety of Chem­istry, World Sci­en­tific and Wiley. It focusses on nanoscale mate­ri­als, nanostructure-dependent prop­er­ties and phe­nom­ena data as well as fab­ri­ca­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques. Subtopics within the col­lec­tion include Nanos­truc­tures and Micro/Nanodevices; Micro/Nanofabrication and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Tech­niques; Nanobiotech­nol­ogy; Envi­ron­men­tal Nan­otech­nol­ogy and Envi­ron­men­tal Safety; and Nanocomposites.

Knovel is an online resource that helps engi­neers find reli­able tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion. Knovel’s reli­able con­tent, opti­mised search and inter­ac­tive tools, help engi­neers solve prob­lems faster by pro­vid­ing answers at the point of need, in turn help­ing organ­i­sa­tions increase the pro­duc­tiv­ity of their engi­neer­ing staff.”
 

From Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter.

______________________________________________

From PUL’s Arti­cles and Data­bases listing:

Knovel Engi­neer­ing and Sci­en­tific Online Ref­er­ences  
Col­lec­tion of the lat­est lead­ing tech­ni­cal and engi­neer­ing ref­er­ence books.