Science at Collins

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…

• Kenyon, IR. 2008. The light fantastic : A modern introduction to classical and quantum optics. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kitchin, Chris. 2007. Galaxies in turmoil : The active and starburst galaxies and the black holes that drive them. London: Springer.
• Nelson, Jenny. 2003. The physics of solar cells. London: Imperial College Press.
• Nolas, G. S., J. Sharp, and H. J. Goldsmid, eds. 2001. Thermoelectrics : Basic principles and new materials developments. New York: Springer.
• Rowe, David Michael, ed. 2006. Thermoelectrics handbook : Macro to nano. Boca Raton: CRC/Taylor & Francis.
• Schlosshauer, Maximilian. 2007. Decoherence and the quantum-to-classical transition. New York: Springer.
• Sessler, A. M., and E. J. N. Wilson, eds. 2007. Engines of discovery : A century of particle accelerators. New Jersey: World Scientific.
• Tolstikhin, I. N., and Jan Kramers, eds. 2008. The evolution of matter : From the big bang to the present day earth. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Not a typo—to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Google Earth now includes a moon exploration tool!

If you’re already using Google Earth 5.0,  you should be set to go. If not, just update to 5.0 and you’ll have the moon at your fingertips. Open up the program, and you’ll see a planet icon in the top menu. Click it and select your planet.

Take a tour of the moon, review historical data and maps, or discover information every robotic spacecraft that’s landed on the moon. Get all the details at the official Google Earth & Google Maps blog.

• Abelson, John, and Philip Hauge Abelson, eds. 2008. Uncle Phil and the atomic bomb. Greenwood Village, Colo.: Roberts and Co.
• Shore, Steven N. 2008. Forces in physics : A historical perspective. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

• Bryan, Jeff C. 2009. Introduction to nuclear science. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
• Dosch, Hans Günter. 2008. Beyond the nanoworld : Quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons. Wellesley, Mass.: AK Peters.
• Ferraro, Rafael. 2007. Einstein’s space-time : An introduction to special and general relativity. New York: Springer.
• Galison, Peter, Gerald James Holton, and S. S. Schweber, eds. 2008. Einstein for the 21st century : His legacy in science, art, and modern culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

ArXiv just announced a new opt-in service for authors, a public author identifier, that will make it easier to find your work.

What does this mean?

A public author identifier is a unique string of characters that makes it it possible to disambiguate authors from each other (letting you be certain that J. A. Smith is a different author than J. Smith) and to search comprehensively for everything written by an author (letting you be certain you’ve found all of J.A. Smith’s papers, including those signed with different forms of the name, like  J. Smith,  or published under an earlier name, like J. Brown).

Right now, ArXiv uses authority records to link authors together in most of these situations, which helps keep authorship in order. However, it is a strictly in-house system. It can’t communicate easily with other services, unlike the public author identifier.

The public author identifier is a URI, or unique string of characters. It will ultimately be linkable to resources not in ArXiv, so that papers in another database could be found, if not accessed, by an author search in ArXiv. This will make it easier for interested readers to find everything you’ve written, upping exposure and citation possibilities.

What else does it do that’s new?

In addition to making publications more obvious, the public author identifier has a few other nifty advantages.  The public author identifier makes it possible to:

• Enter the URI into a browser and automatically have it resolve it into an HTML web page listing all your ArXive deposited publications, as in this example.
• Follow an author or be followed as an author via RSS feed.
• Automatically and dynamically include a complete list of your publications on your own web page using a widget called myarticle. Once the code is inserted in your page, every time an article of yours is deposited in ArXiv, the list on your web page will be updated with no further effort from you.
• Automatically list your articles on your Facebook profile and comment on or discuss ArXiv articles with other authors using the app myarxiv.

How do I use it?

Contact an ArXiv administrator to opt in if this sounds interesting as an author. Then try out any of the new services, or just rest assured that your publications are easier to find.

As a reader, keep an eye out for others using the system, so you can more efficiently keep track of work!

 

Physics, an open-access publication recently debuted by the American Physical Society, aims to provide broadly readable highlights of recent research in the Physical Review journal series.

Three types of articles are published, including:

Viewpoints: Weekly essays of approximately 1000–1500 words that focus on a single Physical Review paper or PRL letter and put the work into broader context.

Trends: Monthly concise review articles (3000–4000 words in length) that survey a particular area and look for interesting developments in the field.

Synopses: (200 words) are staff-written distillations of interesting and important papers each week

What’s so important about this resource?

• It contextualizes recent research and explains its importance, making it easier for students to get into the physical literature.
• It makes it easy for researchers to learn about developments across fields and cross-pollinate ideas.

Click the titles of these new arrivals to be taken to the catalog record to find call numbers and availability.

• Anastopoulos, Charis. 2008. Particle or wave : The evolution of the concept of matter in modern physics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Delft, Dirk van. 2007. Freezing physics : Hieke kamerlingh onnes and the quest for cold. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.
• Mahan, Gerald D. 2009. Quantum mechanics in a nutshell. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• North, John. 2008. Cosmos : An illustrated history of astronomy and cosmology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Ohanian, Hans C. 2008. Einstein’s mistakes : The human failings of genius. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Ramakrishna, S. Anantha, Tomasz M. Grzegorczyk, and Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, eds. 2009. Physics and applications of negative refractive index materials. Bellingham, Wash. Boca Raton: SPIE Press ; CRC Press.
• Uth, Robert, Phylis Geller, Stacy Keach, Elizabeth Noone, Margaret Tesla Cheney, New Voyage Communications, and PBS Home Video, eds. 2007. Tesla  : Master of lightning. Alexandria, Va.: PBS Home Video.

• Petrenko, Victor F., and Robert W. Whitworth, eds. 1999. Physics of ice. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Saito, Yukio. 1996. Statistical physics of crystal growth. Singapore ; River Edge, N.J.: World Scientific.