Science at Collins

The National Library of Medicine announced a new web exhibit:
Rewriting the Book of Nature:  Charles Darwin and the Rise of Evolutionary Theory

The display does  a particularly good job of contextualizing Darwin’s scientific work. Natural selection is related to other evolutionary theories, both previous and succeeding. It also does a fine job of exploring Darwin’s less popularly know scientific work, such as his extensive work on plants and the expression of emotions.

Illustrations are another great feature of this site. View the gallery for all sorts of intriguing 19th century images of evolutionary thinkers and original illustrations from Darwin’s works and those of his popularizers.

PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine’s online digital archive of the biomedical literature, now offers the ability to fully search all articles in the database. Until now, embargoed articles (those articles not immediately freely available) could not be searched. Now, however, it’s possible to search for embargoed articles and find both their PMCID (important evidence of compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy) and their date of availability (useful to the anxious researcher).

To include embargoed articles in your PubMed Central search, click the advanced search option:

then in the resulting screen, select the limits tab:

In the limits tab, select the button to show both free and embargoed articles:

Enter your search terms, and you’ll retrieve articles available now and later. Use the tabs on the results screens to look at both freely available and embargoed articles, or look at only one category:

Find out the availability date and the PMCID at the bottom of the embargoed article’s record:

Flower bundles by Brian Beggerly

Every so often, I’d like to highlight some good reads here at Collins, and the combination of the end of the summer and the flowers at the farmer’s market last night reminded me of a pair of books I’d recently finished, both published almost simultaneously. They might keep the rapidly disappearing summer feeling hanging around a bit longer.

Favored Flowers: Culture & Economy in a Global System, by Catherine Ziegler, gives a scholarly reading of the economic and cultural meanings of the global flower market. Amy Stewart’s Flower Confidential, on the other hand, takes a more historical and natural historical approach, running readers through the development of currently popular flower breeds, modern growing technology, and changes in our appetites for flowers. Both discuss in some detail the environmental impacts of large-scale flower growing, in the U.S. and developing nations. For an interesting look at a commodity we take for granted, and a wallop of color as the season grays over, either book is a great choice.