Monthly Archives: January 2011

Bonnie Bassler is the recipient of the Richard Lounsbery Award

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Date:  Jan. 20, 2011

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Acad­emy Hon­ors 13 for Major Con­tri­bu­tions to Science

 

WASHINGTON — The National Acad­emy of Sci­ences (NAS) will honor 13 indi­vid­u­als with awards rec­og­niz­ing extra­or­di­nary sci­en­tific achieve­ments in the areas of biol­ogy, chem­istry, physics, eco­nom­ics and psychology.

 

The recip­i­ents for 2011 are:

 

“Bon­nie L. Bassler, Howard Hughes Med­ical Insti­tute Inves­ti­ga­tor, and Squibb Pro­fes­sor in the depart­ment of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, is the recip­i­ent of the Richard Louns­bery Award. Bassler is being hon­ored for her pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies of the uni­ver­sal use of chem­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion among bac­te­ria and the elu­ci­da­tion of struc­tural and reg­u­la­tory mech­a­nisms con­trol­ling bac­te­r­ial assem­blies. This $50,000 prize rec­og­nizes extra­or­di­nary sci­en­tific achieve­ment by French and Amer­i­can sci­en­tists in biol­ogy and medicine.”

To see the whole list:

Source: What’s New @ The National Academies

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Open Access study in Europe shows ~10% of articles published in OA journals

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“ Study of Open Access Pub­lish­ing project presents find­ings of two-year EC funded study on OA pub­lish­ing — 17 Jan 2011

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Pub­lish­ing) project pre­sented the results of its two-year Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (EU) funded exam­i­na­tion of open access pub­lish­ing at an open sym­po­sium on Jan­u­ary 13, 2011, in Berlin, Ger­many. Over the two-year study dura­tion, the SOAP project per­formed a com­pre­hen­sive study of open access jour­nals, pub­lish­ers and busi­ness mod­els, includ­ing analy­sis of pub­lish­ing houses, learned soci­eties and licens­ing along with the over­all sup­ply and demand for open access.

The study sur­veyed over 50,000 researchers for their opin­ions on open-access jour­nals, which make all their papers freely avail­able online and usu­ally charge authors a fee for each pub­lished paper. Accord­ing to the study, while sci­en­tists like open-access papers as read­ers, as authors, they are still skep­ti­cal. The study found over­whelm­ing sup­port for the con­cept, with 89 per­cent of respon­dents stat­ing that open access is ben­e­fi­cial to their field. How­ever, this sup­port did not always trans­late into action, the study noted. While 53 per­cent of respon­dents said they had pub­lished at least one open-access arti­cle, over­all only about 10 per­cent of papers are pub­lished in open access journals.

The study found two main rea­sons as to why researchers do not sub­mit their work to open-access jour­nals. About 40 per­cent said that a lack of fund­ing for author fees was a deter­rent, while 30 per­cent cited a lack of high-quality open-access jour­nals in their field.

Requir­ing authors to make sure the results of their work are freely avail­able has report­edly had only par­tial suc­cess. Robert Kiley, head of dig­i­tal ser­vices at the Well­come Trust’s Well­come Library in Lon­don, said at the sym­po­sium that open-access rates had risen from 12 per­cent to 50 per­cent since the fun­der began requir­ing its grantees to pub­lish in open-access jour­nals or deposit their papers in a freely avail­able repos­i­tory. How­ever, Kiley acknowl­edged that Well­come Trust had not imposed sanc­tions on researchers who failed to comply.

The study also makes it clear that open-access jour­nals are pro­lif­er­at­ing, espe­cially among small pub­lish­ers. It was observed that one-third of open-access papers were pub­lished by the more than 1600 open-access pub­lish­ers that pub­lish only a sin­gle jour­nal. The study also iden­ti­fied 14 ‘large pub­lish­ers’ that pub­lish either more than 50 jour­nals or more than 1000 arti­cles per year. The group accounts for roughly one-third of open-access pub­li­ca­tions, the study noted.”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, 1/17/11

Alternative Energy eTrack — new database at Princeton

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Alter­na­tive Energy eTrack    

“Sta­tis­ti­cal reports on alter­na­tive power sources includ­ing wind, hydro, solar, geot­her­mal, bio, ocean, trans­porta­tion bio­fu­els, fuel cells along with energy stor­age, effi­ciency, and infra­struc­ture; and car­bon. Also includes elec­tric­ity power prices.”
Empha­sis is on busi­ness, mar­kets & prod­ucts, & news.
Source: Database steer­ing com­mit­tee & Bobray Bordelon
Text from the Library’s Arti­cles & Data­bases listings.
 
 

2011 — International Year of Chemistry — see ACS Calendar

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“ACS launches online cal­en­dar to mark Inter­na­tional Year of Chem­istry — 04 Jan 2011

The Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) began a global, year-long obser­vance of the Inter­na­tional Year of Chem­istry 2011 (IYC 2011) by launch­ing an online cal­en­dar that serves as a vir­tual time machine, trans­port­ing the pub­lic back to some of the epic events and great intel­lects that shaped mod­ern soci­ety through the magic of chemistry.

Called 365: Chem­istry for Life, the cal­en­dar links almost 250 days of the year to events — tri­umphal and triv­ial — in chem­istry, health, med­i­cine, energy, the envi­ron­ment and related fields. They range from Jan­u­ary 1 — which in 1907 saw the debut of the data­base that has fos­tered unprece­dented sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery — to Decem­ber 31 and a sci­en­tific law about those New Year’s toasts with cham­pagne. A mouse-click on the days in between revis­its Joseph Priestley’s dis­cov­ery of oxy­gen; the first suc­cess­ful treat­ment of dia­betes with insulin; George Wash­ing­ton Carver’s dis­cov­ery of hun­dreds of new uses for crops like peanuts; Marie Curie’s land­mark research on radioac­tiv­ity and much more.

ACS will hold a con­test dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2011 in which vis­i­tors to the site can sug­gest top­ics for grayed-out dates — or bet­ter top­ics for active dates. The con­tents of filled-in dates are mere sug­ges­tions and not nec­es­sar­ily the final word. Indi­vid­u­als whose top­ics are accepted for inclu­sion in the cal­en­dar will be eli­gi­ble for a draw­ing with prizes that include an iPad, an iPod Touch and an iPod nano.

The 63rd Gen­eral Assem­bly of the United Nations pro­claimed 2011 as the Inter­na­tional Year of Chem­istry, envi­sion­ing a world­wide cel­e­bra­tion of the achieve­ments of chem­istry and its con­tri­bu­tions to the well-being of humankind. Also being cel­e­brated in 2011 is the cen­ten­nial of the award­ing of the Nobel Prize in Chem­istry to Marie Curie for her work on radioac­tiv­ity, and the 100th anniver­sary of the found­ing of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Chem­i­cal Societies.”

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter