Science at Collins

The third week in November is Geographic Awareness Week, and contains, smack in the middle, national GIS day, so I wanted to highlight some of the geographic information resources we have here at Collins, since geography is so much a part of many scientific investigations.

Check out some of the resources at Collins, and some of the materials that are available online, at the Geographic Information page.

I think the National Environmental Atlas is particularly exciting—you can build and browse maps in eleven categories, spanning from the biology of invasive species to Congressional Districts.

Recently, some changes were made to the campus networks that caused some difficulty in connecting with databases, especially Lexis-Nexis. Our technology team has worked hard, and we think everything is updated, but if you run into any trouble, please let us know!

This reminded me that we depend on you to tell us when access is out of order, and, of course, we want to make sure things are as easy for you as possible. So if something seems out of whack, don’t assume it’s you–let us know! We’re always happy to help.

You can always mention a problem to anyone at the library; they’ll fix the problem or refer you to the person who can. Or call or email your science liaison, leave a comment here, or email libtech(at)pugetsound.edu for tech help!

Here’s hoping you’re all enjoying the fall break. For this week, visiting reference at Harned is cancelled, but I’ll be back next week:

• Tuesday: 4pm-5pm
• Wednesday: 12pm-1pm

Welcome to day one of Open Access Week!

It seemed fitting to begin this week’s highlighted open access resources with PLoS Biology, the first PLoS journal. The goal of the peer-reviewed PLoS Biology is to feature ‘works of exceptional significance, originality, and relevance in all areas of biological science, from molecules to ecosystems, including works at the interface of other disciplines, such as chemistry, medicine, and mathematics.’

Not only does PLoS Biology make new, scientific work freely available, but all material is published under a Creative Commons attribution license, meaning that it’s easy to use material for teaching or further research.

Like the physics and medicine prizes, the 2009 Nobel prize in chemistry was split between three researchers: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Thomas A. Steitz, at Yale University, and Ada E. Yonath, at Weizmann Institute of Science. The three were honored for their work on the structure of the ribosome. The bacterial ribosome is the target of most antibiotics, and understanding how the bacterial ribosome is structured is launchpad for developing structure-based drugs to combat drug-resistant bacteria.

Read the Nobel scientific background report, or check out some of the primary research reports:

• Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
• Thomas A. Steitz
  (click the right-hand link, ‘Search PubMed for Steitz Lab Publications’)
• Ada E. Yonath

This year’s physics Nobel was split between Charles Kao for breakthroughs in fiber optics for one half, and  Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the CCD sensor for the other. Both halves not only represented new scientific discoveries but have become the foundation of our digital communications.

To find out more, read the Nobel committee’s scientific background report, check out City of Light here at Collins Library,  or read J. R. Janesick’s Duelling Detectors. Or, try our physics resources to hunt down the primary research reports…

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year went to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak, for their work on “how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”.

Learn more with some key publications you can find at Collins Library:

• Szostak JW, Blackburn EH. Cloning yeast telomeres on linear plasmid vectors. Cell 1982; 29:245-255.
  In print at Collins
• Greider CW, Blackburn EH. Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell 1985; 43:405-13.
  In print at Collins
• Greider CW, Blackburn EH. A telomeric sequence in the RNA of Tetrahymena telomerase required for telomere repeat synthesis. Nature 1989; 337:331-7.
  This issue in print at Collins; 1990 to the present online.

Or watch the prize announcement or a quick talk about the discovery honored.

• Melzak, ZA. 2007. Companion to concrete mathematics. Dover ed. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.
• Mrowka, Tomasz, and Peter Steven Ozsváth, eds. 2009. Low dimensional topology. Providence, R.I. Princeton, N.J.: American Mathematical Society ; Institute for Advanced Study.

• Bastasch, Rick. 2006. The Oregon water handbook : A guide to water and water management. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press.
• Rudwick, Martin JS. 2005. Bursting the limits of time : The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Williams, Travis. 2009. The Willamette River field guide. Portland: Timber Press.

• Adelman, Larry, Llewellyn Smith, Vital Pictures, National Minority Consortia, and California Newsreel, eds. 2008. Unnatural causes [videorecording] : Is inequality making us sick?. Widescreen format ed. San Francisco, Calif.: California Newsreel.
• Armstrong, F. A., and Katherine M. Blundell, eds. 2007. Energy– beyond oil. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Clover, Charles. 2006. The end of the line : How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Creighton, Sarah Hammond. 1998. Greening the ivory tower : Improving the environmental track record of universities, colleges and other institutions. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
• Jeans, Christopher,Producer., Julian Sabath Editor., Television Trust for the Environment, United Nations Environment Programme, and Films for the Humanities & Sciences, eds. 2006. H₂O [videorecording] : Hilltops-2-oceans. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
• Opie, John. 1998. Nature’s nation : An environmental history of the United States. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
• Roberts, Peter, Joe Ravetz, and Clive George, eds. 2009. Environment and the city. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
• Santiago, Myrna I. 2006. The ecology of oil : Environment, labor, and the mexican revolution, 1900-1938. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Schnaiberg, Allan, and Kenneth Alan Gould, eds. 2000. Environment and society : The enduring conflict. Caldwell, N.J.: Blackburn Press.