The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method

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The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method [pdf]

http://www.geosociety.org/educate/NatureOfScience.htm

For those who haven’t been in science class for some time, the scientific method may be a bit of a hazy memory. Those people (educators and others included) who need a bit of a refresher, along with a nice guide to talking about the scientific method, will find this resource from The Geological Society of America most efficacious. Authored by scientist Christine V. McLelland, this 9-page document “promotes understanding of the nature of science and how the scientific method is used to advance science, focusing in particular on the Earth sciences.” The document covers topics like “What is Science?” and breaks the scientific method down into its five primary parts. It also offers some brief talking points about the nature of science, and a nice bibliography.”

Source:  Scout Report, Univ. of Wisconsin, Apr. 13, 2012

Interactive Physics Simulations

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“Interactive Physics Simulations [Flash]

http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/physics

At the top of this site’s homepage, visitors will see a banner that proclaims “Over 70 million simulations delivered.” Needless to say, the Interactive Physics Simulations site is quite popular, and the offerings here can be used in the classroom or by persons with a general curiosity about static electricity, alpha decay, and other related topics. The site is sponsored by a range of institutions, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The site includes three dozen different simulations, many of which are available in over a dozen languages, including French, Russian, Chinese, Italian, and Vietnamese. First-time visitors might want to start with the “Build an Atom” which affords visitors the opportunity to build an atom out of protons, neutrons, and electrons and then play a fun game after they’re done. Also, users can look at the simulations by topical headings, which include “Sound & Waves”, “Heat & Thermo”, and “Light & Radition”. ”

Source:  Scout Report, Univ. of Wisconsin, Apr. 13, 2012

Hottest Scientific Researchers & Papers — 2011 (Web of Science)

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US Thomson Reuters names Hottest Scientific Researchers and Papers of the year – 12 Apr 2012

“The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced ‘The Hottest Research of 2011’, a ranking of the most influential scientific researchers and research papers of the year by Science Watch, its open Web resource for science metrics and analysis. Tracking researchers whose recent published papers recorded notably higher levels of citations during 2011, along with the most highly cited individual papers of the year, the annual report spotlights emerging trends in science and the innovators behind them.

This year’s group of 15 Hottest Researchers each contributed to at least 10 Hot Papers, covering key areas such as genetics, cardiology, epidemiology and cancer research. Eric S. Lander of The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard topped the list of most influential researchers for the second year straight, recording 14 Hot Papers in 2011. This was Lander’s eighth year on the list. He was followed by Salim Yusuf of McMaster University and Michael R. Stratton of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, both of whom recorded 13 Hot Papers in 2011. The most highly cited individual paper published in 2011, ‘Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations: Cosmological Interpretations,’ by E. Komatsu, of The University of Texas at Austin, et al. received a total of 564 citations during the year.

The year’s Hottest Researchers were identified using citations that occurred during calendar year 2011 for papers published between 2009 and 2011. The list of Hottest Papers tracks total citations to non-review papers during calendar year 2011. To compile both lists, Science Watch draws on data and commentary from Thomson Reuters bibliometric experts and Essential Science Indicators, a unique compilation of science performance statistics and science trends data based on journal article publication counts and citation data from Web of Knowledge.”

Click here
Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

ScienceAlerts.com adds Biological Sciences category

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Thailand ScienceAlerts.com adds Biological Sciences category – 06 Apr 2012

“ScienceAlerts.com, a Web 2.0 social network to discover and share scholarly content, has announced that the latest addition to this natural sciences website is the Biological Sciences Category. The new Biological Sciences category currently features 520,658 stories largely derived from 984 scientific biology publishing sources.

ScienceAlerts.com’s Biological Sciences Category covers life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, genetics, and distribution. This category also provides a Biological Sciences RSS feed to stay up to date with the latest research in this science discipline. One of the latest articles presents the interrelationship of mycophagous small mammals and ectomycorrhizal fungi in primeval, disturbed and managed Central European mountainous forests.

Besides the Biological Sciences category, ScienceAlerts.com contains an Agricultural Sciences Category which the cultivation and production of crops, raising of livestock, and post-harvest processing of natural products. ScienceAlerts.com’s Environmental Sciences Category covers the external physical conditions affecting growth, development, and survival of organisms, and their management while it’s Forestry Sciences Category presents the cultivation, maintenance, and development of forests. ScienceAlerts.com’s Geographical Sciences Category covers the physical characteristics of the earth including its surface features, and the distribution of life on earth, and that of the Health Sciences aggregates the effects of disease and medical treatment on the overall condition of organisms.

ScienceAlerts.com’s review process is partly automated and partly manual to rigorously ensure that only relevant content is featured on the site. Since new science content is discovered in real-time, the delay between original publication and appearance at ScienceAlerts.com is usually only minutes. ScienceAlerts.com includes a search feature to retrieve specific titles or keywords from its’ large database. In addition, it suggests up to ten related articles for each article selected.”

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter, April 6, 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.

    Harold Shapiro will receive the National Academies’ highest award

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    Shapiro to Receive Public Welfare Medal, NAS’ Most Prestigious Award

    Harold T. Shapiro, an economist lauded for his ability to distill, debate,

    and resolve the complex aspects of controversial scientific issues,

    has been awarded the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal.

    From:

    What’s New @ the National Academies  Mon, Jan. 23, 2012

    March to the Moon — new digital archive from NASA & ASU

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    “Arizona State University announced last week the launch (no pun intended) of the new Project Gemini Online Digital Archive, an online archive of NASA’s Gemini spacecraft flights. (From the announcement: “Project Gemini (1964-1966) was the second United States human spaceflight program, after Project Mercury (1960-1963). The overarching goal was to test systems and operations critical to the Apollo program (1961-1975), conceived with the purpose of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth’.” The archive is available at http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/. “

    Source:  Tara Calishain’s ResearchBuzz Jan. 19, 2012

    Wikipedia – a 24-hour protest blackout January 18th!

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    “Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.”

    Thanks to Library purchases & subscriptions, including those to many online encyclopedias, we should survive!

    From: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

    NBII To Be Taken Offline Permanently January 15, 2012

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    “In recent years, however, the NBII–like so many other important federal programs–was plagued with budget cuts. The FY 2012 budget mandated its termination. The main Web site, www.nbii.gov, will be taken offline on January 15, 2012, along with all of its associated node sites.

    The NBII provided three main benefits to the biological resource community. First, its design as a federation of partners allowed it to assist data owners in maintaining critical assets that might not otherwise be made broadly available; second, scientists, managers, and others searching for data on a particular subject could do so from a single, Web-based source rather than having to go to the sites of numerous organizations to compile the results they sought; and third, the NBII provided users with direct access to many data resources that are deeply embedded in structured databases on the Web and that are relevant to biology–resources that would not be revealed to them using a standard search engine such as Google.

    USGS staff now are working with partners to identify ways that–to the extent possible–will help to fill the gap in data access that will be created when the NBII goes offline.”

    To read more about the National Biological Information Infrastructure, here’s a link from which the above quote was taken:

    http://www.usgs.gov/core_science_systems/Access/p1111-1.html

    A Postscript:

    “The Library of Congress is a part of a collaborative web archive project to archive U.S. Federal Government Websites, and this site has been crawled by the Internet Archive as a part of that project. It is not publicly accessible yet but it has been preserved.

     

    Since we’re a part of the collaborative project, we’ll eventually get a copy of that capture for the Library of Congress archives.”

     

    /mrc (Margaret Clifton, mcli@loc.gov)

     

    PubMed Health — A comprehensive online resource about “what works”

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    “NLM Announces Expansion of PubMed Health

    New Resources Create a Comprehensive Online Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Reviews

     

    The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health, announces the expansion of the information available from PubMed Health (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/), which provides integrated access to clinical effectiveness reviews.  

    NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), in partnership with England’s national Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, the Cochrane Collaboration, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and other agencies in the US and abroad, now makes available more than 18,000 clinical effectiveness reviews via PubMed Health. PubMed Health organizes these clinical effectiveness research results, including full texts as well as summary information, for consumers and clinicians.

    Effectiveness studies are essential for informed clinical and consumer decision making. Multiple studies are necessary over time, and interpreting their complex and often conflicting results is a challenge.

    Systematic reviews of clinical effectiveness studies address this need with rigorous scientific methodology. However, they are scattered across the biomedical literature and the Web sites of public health agencies around the world that produce many of them. The National Library of Medicine is uniquely positioned to gather these critical clinical resources in one place.

    Users of PubMed Health can: 

    • Access the whole comprehensive collection of resources in a single search, including cancer information for consumers and clinicians from the National Cancer Institute
    • See the results of a simultaneous search for reviews in PubMed
    • Refer to consumer medical encyclopedia search results also delivered simultaneously
    • Follow RSS feeds of featured reviews and “Behind Headlines,” which looks at the research behind news stories
    • Learn to make sense of research results in its “Understand clinical effectiveness” and “Behind Headlines” sections
    • Share resources via e-mail and social media with “Add this”

    NLM invites you to visit PubMed Health, learn more about the Web site (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/about/) or follow the project on Twitter @PubMedHealth (https://twitter.com/PubMedHealth) to help you keep up with the evidence on healthcare effectiveness.”

    Source: NLM New files for the week of Dec 12, 2011 (NLM Announces)