“State of the Birds” Report Assesses the Health of the Nation’s Birds

“State of the Birds” Report Assesses the Health of the Nation’s Birds

One hundred years after the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the nation’s top bird science and conservation groups have come together to publish The State of the Birds 2014—the most comprehensive review of long-term trend data for U.S. birds ever conducted.

  • Video / Image(s) embedded • 

The State of the Birds 2014 report

Smithsonian Institution

Source: Newswise Environment Wire 26-Sep-2014

sphn-bounces@lists.newswise.com; on behalf of; sphn@lists.newswise.com

U.S. Citizens — Free access to online NTIS reports, Oct. 2014

NTIS is launching greater access to federally funded science & technology information and reports. Starting in October 2014, U.S. citizens will have free access to all electronically-available documents in the NTIS collection.

Currently there are more than 850,000 documents digitized for free public access. For the first time, Individuals will have the option to subscribe to the NTRL in order to benefit from the Premium features of the database, such as Digitization-on-Demand (NTRL Premium Individual). Premium Institutional subscribers (including corporations) will continue to have access to the more than 2.8 million records with a variety of enhanced features as listed in the chart below.

More at: http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/NTRNews7-3.pdf

National Technical Information Service (NTIS) connects to the database.

Princeton University Library has a subscription to NTRL reports,

(National Technical Reports Library)  and is a founding member…I think.

DataCite & Data Citation Index (Thomson Reuters)

 Thomson Reuters and DataCite collaborate to expand discovery of research data 29 Aug 2014

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced a collaboration with DataCite, a global non-profit organization dedicated to enabling people to find, share, use, and cite data. The collaboration will promote the discovery of research data sets through the Data Citation Index, a single-point solution providing access to quality research data sets from multi-disciplinary repositories around the world.

This collaboration will connect the Data Citation Index to high quality research data from repositories worldwide that work with DataCite. This will ensure that the valuable content that has been made citable by DataCite is globally discoverable, properly attributed and reusable by other researchers. As part of the Web of Science – the premier scientific search and discovery platform and industry authority in science, social science, and arts & humanities citation indexes – inclusion within the Data Citation Index will also further DataCite’s mission of increasing acceptance of research data as citable contributions to the scholarly record.

Since creating the Data Citation Index, Thomson Reuters has worked closely with global industry leaders to expand the breadth of research discovery by capturing bibliographic records and cited references for digital research, as well as literature describing research which cites or uses the data, stewarding the accurate identification, attribution and measurement of this growing body of scholarship. The Data Citation Index allows users to gain a comprehensive view of the genesis of research projects and influence the future paths they may take, while minimizing the duplication of work and speeding the scientific research process to keep pace with the changing global research landscape. Through linked content and summary information, this data is displayed within the broader context of the scholarly research ecosystem, enabling users to gain perspective that otherwise would be lost if viewed in isolation.”

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

ChemSpider (Royal Society of Chemistry)

ChemSpider

  • http://www.chemspider.com/

    “This astonishingly powerful, award-winning database from The Royal Society of Chemistry provides fast access to over 30 million chemical structures and properties, as well as nearly unlimited links and related information. For a quick introduction, go to the About page and watch the ten-minute introductory video. Then start searching! Simple searches expedite your exploration when you enter the trade name, synonym, or systematic name of the compound you wish to find. Conversely, you can input by Structure, with an innovative Edit Molecule function. Lastly, Advanced searches allow you to combine methods. In addition, the ChemSpider blog boasts frequent entries about the site and the field at large. [CNH]

  • Source: The Scout Report — Volume 20, Number 33, from the Univ. of Wisconsin

I SCIENCE : The science magazine of Imperial College

I SCIENCE has achieved 28 issues.  It is a topical, well-written magazine about issues and trends in the science world.  Sometimes, the issues are themed, e.g.: Issue 27 is subtitled “The Moral Issue”.  From their Homepage, one can link to Blogs, Features, Podcasts & Videos, Reviews, Magazine (issues) and Contacts.  It doesn’t appear to be searchable, but browsing can be fun and interesting.  Issue 28 (July 2014) on extremes or superlatives, includes articles about extremophiles, super evolutionary adaptations, the speed/physics of catamarans, human body extremes, ocean bottoms, the deep web and nanotechnology.

 

AAS Journals published with IOP, online only as of 2015

“As the Library Liaison for the American Astronomical Society (AAS), I attended their board meeting last week.

The AAS and IOP Publishing (IOP) have asked though that I announce immediately that all AAS research journals published with IOP will become electronic only and will no longer print paper editions. This transition will take effect with the 2015 subscription year and affects the Astronomical Journal (AJ) and the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL), and Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (ApJS).

Electronic-only publication will allow for further development of the AAS journals, outside of the constraints of print providing even better service to subscribers, authors and readers.

Full details can be found in this press release.”

http://ioppublishing.org/newsDetails/american-astronomical-society-journals-going-electronic-only

Barbara Kern,  Chair, PAM/SLA

bioRxiv (beta) Biology Preprint Server

bioRxiv beta The Preprint Server for Biology graphic

A not-for-profit bioscience information service,
from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Watch the video here

  • Submit a paper and within 24 hours anyone can read and cite it, without waiting months until it’s reviewed
  • Free for authors, free for readers
  • Share your paper with other scientists without having to wait months before it’s reviewed
  • Get feedback on your paper before submitting it to a journal
    (more and more journals accept submissions that have appeared onbioRxiv)

bioRxiv contains hundreds of papers that present new, confirmatory, or contradictory findings

Biochemistry
Bioengineering
Bioinformatics
Biophysics
Cancer Biology
Cell Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics
Genomics
Immunology
Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Molecular Medicine
Neuroscience
Paleontology
Pathology
Pharmacology
Physiology
Plant Biology
Scientific
Communication
Synthetic Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology

More details, including submission instructions, at
bioRxiv.org

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory graphic

Frontiers in Earth Science & Frontiers in Environmental Science

Switzerland Frontiers launches new open-access journals – Frontiers in Earth Science and Frontiers in Environmental Science – 06 Nov 2013

“Open-access publisher Frontiers, part of the Nature Publishing Group family, has announced the launch of two new open-access journals – Frontiers in Earth Science and Frontiers in Environmental Science.

Manuscripts submitted to specialty sections in “Frontiers in” journals are peer reviewed by specialty associate and review editors. Specialty Chief Editors oversee subject areas across the ‘Frontiers in’ journals.

The initial specialty sections open for submissions to Frontiers in Earth Science are: Atmospheric Science, Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism, Hydrosphere, Interdisciplinary Climate Studies, Paleontology, Structural Geology and Tectonics, Quaternary Science, Geomorphology and Paleoenvironment and Structural Geology and Tectonics. Further specialty sections will be added soon.

Initially, Frontiers in Environmental Science will offer specialty sections in: Agroecology and Land Use Systems, Air Pollution, Atmospheric Science, Environmental Informatics, Environmental Toxicology, Green and Environmental Chemistry, Groundwater Resources and Management, Interdisciplinary Climate Studies, Microbiotechnology, Ecotoxicology and Bioremediation, Soil Processes, and Wastewater Management.

Frontiers publishes all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY), which allows users to share, copy and distribute a work, while at the same time crediting the authors of the article.”

Click hereSource:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

Science Advances — new OA journal from AAAS

US AAAS launches new title – Science Advances – 14 Feb 2014

“The non-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the Science family of journals, plans an expansion of its scientific communication efforts with the launch of a new title, Science Advances, as an extended forum for high-quality, peer-reviewed research.

Spanning science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the social sciences, the new digital publication will leverage Science’s uniquely broad scope to help speed scientific progress by promoting the rapid communication of current research. Science Advances will be published online – on an open-access basis, with articles freely available to the public – through the payment, by authors, of an article processing fee.”

Click here

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter, 2/14/14

Finding NCDC Climate Data and Resources

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented an online webinar on Feb. 26, 2014.  From their description:

  • Duration: 40 minutes
  • Speakers:
    • Greg Hammer , Meteorologist, NCDC
    • Scott Stephens, Meteorologist, NCDC
    • Stuart Hinson, Meteorologist, NCDC
    • Mara Sprain, MALS Librarian, NCDC
    • Susan Osborne, Technical Writer and Communications Specialist, NCDC

“Summary: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) maintains the world’s largest climate data archive and provides climatological services and data to every sector of the United States economy and to users worldwide. Records in the archive range from paleoclimatic data, to centuries-old journals, to data less than an hour old. The Center’s mission is to preserve these data and make them available to the public, business, industry, government, and researchers.

Data come to NCDC from not only land-based stations but also from ships, buoys, weather balloons, radars, satellites, and even sophisticated weather and climate models. With these data, NCDC develops national and global datasets. The datasets are used to maximize the use of our climatic and natural resources while also minimizing the risks caused by climate variability and weather extremes. NCDC has a statutory mission to describe the climate of the United States, and it acts as the “Nation’s Scorekeeper” regarding the trends and anomalies of weather and climate. NCDC’s climate data have been used in a variety of applications including agriculture, air quality, construction, education, energy, engineering, forestry, health, insurance, landscape design, livestock management, manufacturing, national security, recreation and tourism, retailing, transportation, and water resources management.”

“Participation is free, however registration is required. Upon registering, an e-mail confirmation of registration will include instructions for joining the Webinar. …Parts 2 and 3 of the webinar series will be presented in the spring of 2014. More information will come out on those individual webinars later.”

The NCDC webinar is directly at: http://login.icohere.com/connect/d_connect_itemframer.cfm?vsDTTitle=NCDC%20%2D%20The%20World%3Fs%20Largest%20Climate%20Data%20Archive&dseq=18332&dtseq=84935&emdisc=2&mkey=public1172&vbDTA=0&viNA=0&vsDTA=&PAN=2&bDTC=0&blog=0&vsSH=A

Government webinars are listed here: http://login.icohere.com/public/topics.cfm?cseq=1172.