Category Archives: Web resources

NOVA has a Physics Blog

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NOVA’s Physics Blog

·http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/

“NOVA’s Physics Blog is billed as “the physics of noth­ing, every­thing, and all the things in between.” This “Nature of Real­ity” blog promises “a space that wel­comes big ideas about space, time, and the uni­verse.” The posts here include graph­ics, ani­ma­tions, and other visu­ally com­pelling mate­ri­als. Vis­i­tors can scroll down on the right side of the page to look over Recent Posts, Recent Com­ments, and the con­trib­u­tors to the blog. It’s a diverse group, includ­ing math­e­mati­cian James Stein and physi­cist Frank Wilczek. Recent posts include “Why is the Higgs So Light?” and “Sci­en­tific Approaches to the Fine-Tuning Prob­lem.” Each entry con­cludes with the Go Deeper area, which fea­tures the editor’s picks for fur­ther read­ing. [KMG]”

Source:  Today’s Scout Report from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin

WorldCat database reaches 2 billion holdings

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“World­Cat is a data­base of bib­li­o­graphic infor­ma­tion cre­ated and con­tin­u­ously updated by some 25,000 OCLC mem­ber libraries around the world. World­Cat records describe spe­cific works and con­tain a list­ing of insti­tu­tions that own an item, referred to as “hold­ings.” Insti­tu­tions use hold­ings infor­ma­tion to cre­ate local cat­a­logs, arrange inter­li­brary loans and con­duct ref­er­ence work.”

“World­Cat was cre­ated in 1971 so that libraries could share cat­a­loging infor­ma­tion from a cen­tral data­base, increas­ing work­flow effi­ciency and the abil­ity to locate and loan mate­ri­als. It took the OCLC coop­er­a­tive almost 34 years, from August 26, 1971 to August 11, 2005, to add 1 bil­lion hold­ings in World­Cat. It has taken just seven years and eight months to add the next billion.” 

“World­Cat spans six mil­len­nia of recorded knowl­edge, from about 4800 B.C. to the present. It encom­passes records for books, seri­als, sound record­ings, musi­cal scores, maps, visual mate­ri­als, mixed mate­ri­als and com­puter files.”

From OCLC Mem­ber Update [oclc@oclc.org]

“Find more about World­Cat on the OCLC web­site, and watch World­Cat grow as libraries around the world con­tribute to the database.”

(Hold­ings con­sti­tute a higher num­ber than titles.  A(nother) hold­ing is counted for each library that owns a title.

HHMI Cool Science

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www.hhmi.org/coolscience
  • 4 stars (excellent)
  • Beau­ti­fully designed site, con­tent for many age groups
  • Lim­ited resources for children

“Are you ready for some COOL SCIENCE? (Yeah, I thought so.) The Howard Hughes Med­ical Institute’s Cool Sci­ence web­site is an enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive site that cer­tainly lives up to its name and its mis­sion of “shar­ing the facts and fun about sci­ence with all ages.” There really is some­thing for every­one on this site. For instance, the “For Edu­ca­tors” page includes a num­ber of teach­ing resources for all grade lev­els, from kinder­garten to grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion. These resources include books, ani­ma­tions, games and videos, among oth­ers. At the other end of the age spec­trum, the “Curi­ous Kids” page fea­tures a small num­ber of activ­i­ties that address such ques­tions as “Why are snakes like lizards?” The “Becom­ing a Sci­en­tist” page includes inter­views with a num­ber of sci­en­tists who give their opin­ions regard­ing what it takes to suc­ceed as a sci­en­tist, and the “Ask a Sci­en­tist” page gives site vis­i­tors the oppor­tu­nity to have their own sci­en­tific ques­tions answered.”

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“In each print issue of Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News, our Best of the Web colum­nist reviews websites of interest. Taralyn Tan is a web-savvy graduate student in Harvard University’s program in neuroscience."

*The opin­ions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and should not be con­strued as reflect­ing the view­points of the pub­lisher, Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., the pub­lish­ing house, or employ­ees and affil­i­ates thereof.

The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!

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The National Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library Is Launched!

Robert Darn­ton

The DPLA, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the hold­ings of America’s research libraries, archives, and muse­ums avail­able to all—online and free of charge.

From today’s New York Review of Books

 

Molecular Movies Illustrate Science

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Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News [update@genengnewsmail.com]

Feb 15, 2013 (Vol. 33, No. 4)

MolecularMovies.org

“If you get a kick out of beau­ti­fully ani­mated sci­en­tific movies, then you’ll be beside your­self with excite­ment when you visit MolecularMovies.org, a site that has com­piled a large num­ber of sci­ence ani­ma­tions from all over the web. Links to the ani­ma­tions can be found on the “show­case” page, where users can sort ani­ma­tions by sci­en­tific area, ani­ma­tor, or date added, can search all ani­ma­tions by key­word, or can jump to ani­ma­tions falling within a given sci­en­tific topic. There are 22 top­ics rep­re­sented, and they range from adhesion/extracellular matrix, to DNA/chromatin, to neu­ronal sig­nal­ing, and beyond. The ani­ma­tions are not embed­ded within this site itself, and there do exist a few prob­lems with some of the links; how­ever, most of the links worked as expected. Beyond the ani­ma­tions, the Mol­e­c­u­lar Movies site also includes some soft­ware ani­ma­tion tuto­ri­als and a news­feed cov­er­ing the lat­est in mol­e­c­u­lar animation.”

*The opin­ions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and should not be con­strued as reflect­ing the view­points of the pub­lisher, Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., the pub­lish­ing house, or employ­ees and affil­i­ates thereof.

 Rat­ing = 4 stars = excellent

Strong points: large col­lec­tion of animations

Weak points:  some links didn’t work

www.molecularmovies.com

 

Microbiology Online — from the Society for General Microbiology

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Micro­bi­ol­ogy Online

Source:  Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News [update@genengnewsmail.com]

Mar 15, 2013 (Vol. 6, No. 33)

www.microbiologyonline.org.uk
  • 4 stars = excellent
  • Nice site design and organization
  • No weak points

“Now here is one big web­site for things so small! The edu­ca­tional web­site for the Soci­ety for Gen­eral Micro­bi­ol­ogy, Micro­bi­ol­ogy Online is packed full of infor­ma­tion about microor­gan­isms. Com­bin­ing ani­ma­tions and actual images of the microbes, the web­site offers stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to explore pages such as intro­duc­ing microbes, microbes and the human body, microbes and food, and microbes and cli­mate change. For teach­ers, the site pro­vides infor­ma­tion on such top­ics as microbes and basic prin­ci­ples, prepa­ra­tion of media and cul­tures, activ­i­ties, and safety infor­ma­tion. There are a num­ber of free down­load­able resources avail­able to teach­ers, as well. Beyond the teacher and stu­dent pages, Micro­bi­ol­ogy Online also includes links to the lat­est news and podcasts/videos. The site is well orga­nized and con­tains a lot of mate­r­ial to excite both stu­dents and teach­ers of the subject.”

*The opin­ions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and should not be con­strued as reflect­ing the view­points of the pub­lisher, Genetic Engi­neer­ing & Biotech­nol­ogy News, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., the pub­lish­ing house, or employ­ees and affil­i­ates thereof.

National Academy of Sciences is 150 years old

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 ”

 

 

 

 Edi­to­r­ial by NAS Pres­i­dent Ralph Cicerone
An edi­to­r­ial by NAS Pres­i­dent Ralph Cicerone will appear in the March 19 print edi­tion of the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences. On the occa­sion of NAS’s 150th year of ser­vice to the nation, Cicerone dis­cusses the mis­sions and work of the Acad­emy and not only its his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance but also its value in the future.”

 What’s New @ The National Acad­e­mies, Mon­day, March 12, 2013  

In other news from Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, today: the Pro­ceed­ings of the NAS will be stored in Por­tico.  As an elec­tronic archiv­ing ser­vice provider, Por­tico will act as a per­pet­ual access mech­a­nism for this title.

Image database available now in the Princeton University Library collection

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Image Quest  

Over two mil­lion images of objects, events, places, works of art, sports, and sci­en­tific pur­suits, from dozens of col­lec­tions such as Getty Images and the National Geo­graphic Soci­ety. Each image includes full cita­tion and copy­right infor­ma­tion. Rights have been cleared for edu­ca­tion use.  (Britannica’s com­pi­la­tion from over 50 of the world’s best collections.)

From  Bobray Bor­de­lon, March 6, 2013

eLife — Open Access journal for important research in Life Sciences and Biomedicine

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 “Web­site for new open-access jour­nal, eLife, launched — 17 Dec 2012

eLife, a new open-access jour­nal for out­stand­ing advances in life sci­ence and bio­med­i­cine, reveals a fresh approach to pre­sent­ing and using sci­en­tific con­tent on its new website.”

“The eLife jour­nal invites vis­i­tors to explore impor­tant new research and asso­ci­ated data, read com­ments and com­men­tary by experts and col­leagues, and get a sense of the qual­ity of work that eLife is pub­lish­ing. Nine­teen research papers have now been selected for pub­li­ca­tion by eLife’s aca­d­e­mic editors.

The new site also offers a chance to explore how eLife is tak­ing advan­tage of dig­i­tal media. Pre­sen­ta­tion of con­tent is clean and distraction-free, allow­ing authors to present the results of their research in full, and invit­ing read­ers to delve deeply into the work by explor­ing fig­ures and their sup­ple­ments, watch­ing videos, read­ing edi­tor deci­sion let­ters and author responses, down­load­ing data sets, view­ing article-level met­rics, and more. All of this is a start­ing point, as eLife will con­tinue to solicit feed­back from the com­mu­nity in mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion as acces­si­ble and usable as possible.

The eLife jour­nal is now online at http://elife.elifesciences.org.”

Click here

Source: Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter, Dec. 17, 2012

Wikipedia is not the only free online encyclopedia, but

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it is by far the most used with Schol­ar­pe­dia a dis­tant 2nd “with only… 5% of the num­ber of papers ref­er­enc­ing Wikipedia.”

All other free online ency­clo­pe­dias tal­lied less than 50 papers ref­er­enc­ing them in 2011.

  • Cit­i­zendium: “an English-language free ency­clopae­dia project launched by Wikipedia’s co-founder.”
  • Knol: “Knol is a Google project includ­ing user-written arti­cles on a range of topics.”
  • Plan­et­Math: “a col­lab­o­ra­tive ency­clopae­dia focussing on mathematics.”
  • Schol­ar­pe­dia: “peer-reviewed open-access ency­clo­pe­dia, where knowl­edge is curated by com­mu­ni­ties of experts.”
  • Wik­i­books: “a free library of edu­ca­tional text­books that any­one can edit.”
  • Wikipedia: “a free, col­lab­o­ra­tive, mul­ti­lin­gual Inter­net encyclopedia.”
  • Wik­isource: “Wik­isource is an online library of free con­tent pub­li­ca­tions, col­lected and main­tained by the Wik­isource community.”

    • Data from Sco­pus.  Ref­er­ence from: Research Trends (bib­lio­met­rics newslet­ter) Issue 27, March 2012.  “The influ­ence of free ency­clo­pe­dias on sci­ence”, by Sarah Huggett.