The Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management (http://icwdm.org) is pleased to announce that it has finished scanning and posting the first 16 volumes of the Vertebrate Pest Conference Proceedings, spanning 32 years, to its Digital Commons site http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/icwdm/

The Vertebrate Pest Conference is the longest running animal damage control conference in North America. These proceedings contain valuable information on the management of a variety of animal species that have had negative impacts on human health and safety. It is a veritable gold mine of information for researchers and practitioners.

From Science Direct:

New to ScienceDirect are features that make the platform even more user friendly and deliver better, clearer results in fewer clicks.

Researchers like to quickly evaluate articles before reading them

Researchers can now use preview tabs that provide quick access to the important article assessment components: the abstract, figures/tables and references. These tabs are on the results page, the table of contents page and the article page.

Researchers have to scroll to the foot of articles to view reference information, which hinders reading

We’ve made it possible for researchers to view reference information within the body of a paper when their cursor moves over a reference marker.

Researchers want to access specific information quickly

A new navigation pane on the search results page provides a view of the research output on a subject by year, by content type or by journal/book titles with the most results. By using these filters researchers can refine their search results without having to return to the search form.

Once a researcher has evaluated and read an article, they often want to email it to their peers

A new article toolbox brings together all of the article-related functionality including ‘Cited By’, ‘Download PDF’, ‘E-mail Article’ and more, into one easy-to-find location. Researchers can now take further action quickly and easily with little extra effort.

Researchers are interested to know how other experts rate articles they read

Due to be launched in phases over the coming months, the integration of article comments and ratings from Elsevier’s social collaboration site, 2collab enables researchers to evaluate papers according to colleague-driven comments and ratings of articles right on the article page.

“Introducing BioInformatics Series Tutorials (BITS) brought to you by MIT Engineering and Science Libraries and Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine.

These video tutorials highlight bioinformatics resources such as NCBI Entrez, BLAST, and the UCSC Genome Browser and focus on specific activities for conducting genomic research. BITS can be viewed at a user’s own pace and own convenience.

The first installment of BITS covers the UCSC Genome Browser, which contains reference sequences and working draft assemblies for a large collection of genomes. Users will learn how to retrieve DNA sequence, display and configure the annotation tracks, identify gene intron-exon boundaries, and use the BLAT tool.

BITS are available here:MIT Engineering and Science Libraries: http://libraries.mit.edu/video
Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine: http://countway.harvard.edu/video_tutorials

Questions?
MIT Engineering and Science Libraries ask-bioinfo@mit.edu
Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine countref@hms.harvard.edu”

From David L. Osterbur and Paul A. Bain, Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine and Courtney D. Crummett, NLM 2^nd Year Associate Fellow, MIT Engineering and Science Libraries

New Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Ed. by Noretta Koertge
Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008
Call# Ref Q141 .N45

From Gale:
“Charles Scribner’s Sons releases the first major expansion of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, entitled The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, featuring more than 775 completely new articles. This new work extends, complements and comments upon the original Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which contains thousands of biographies of mathematicians and natural scientists from all regions and historical periods. The Dictionary of Scientific Biography presents an accurate and reliable narrative of the development of science, not as a mere accumulation of technical information but as the collective accomplishment that has ordered our understanding of nature. More than 500 of the new articles are devoted to scientists deceased since 1980 and not previously treated in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography including Hans Bethe, Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, Fred Hoyle, Mary Leakey, Konrad Lorenz, Barbara McClintock, Linus Pauling, Andrei Sakharov, B. F. Skinner, and Edward Teller. There are also more than 75 articles on figures overlooked in the original Dictionary of Scientific Biography (from Chrysippus to Kinsey) and 250 “postscript” commentaries on important careers that have inspired new research and interpretation (from Archimedes and Aristotle to Darwin, Einstein, and Oppenheimer).

The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography guarantees the permanent relevance of the original work and constitutes a huge expansion of its scope.

Selected biographies include:

• Luis Walter Alvarez
• Aristotle
• Charles Babbage
• Francis Bacon
• Charles Robert Darwin
• Albert Einstein
• Rosalind Elsie Franklin
• Galileo Galilei
• Caroline Lucretia Herschel
• Thomas Henry Huxley
• Carl Gustav Jung
• Isaac Newton
• J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Louis Pasteur
• Jean Piaget
• Claudine Picardet
• Julia Bowman Robinson
• Carl Sagan
• Beatrice Tinsley
• Alan Mathison Turing
• And many more”

Enjoy streaming videos featuring discussion, analysis and interviews with leading scientists as they share their discoveries.

Video streaming is fast, easy to use and in high quality.

Watch the Moray eel’s mobile set of Jaws grasp its pray, see how researchers slow light to a halt in one box and eject it into another or discover how two new moons for Pluto were found using the Hubble telescope.

This year Nature will continue to provide you with groundbreaking streaming videos on the biggest scientific projects. Access the online video streaming archive today!

We are excited to announce that the new JSTOR platform will be launched on Friday, April 4. The behind-the-scenes process for switching from the existing JSTOR to the new platform will begin around 7:00 a.m. EST. We will be making changes throughout the day, but the vast majority of users should experience no interruption or downtime. If you do have any difficulties, though, please contact support@jstor.org.

A document describing features of the new platform is included in the JSTOR Sandbox (http://sandbox.jstor.org/). The Sandbox also has links to tutorials and training materials focused on the new JSTOR interface. In addition, a list of newly scheduled webinars appears at the end of this announcement, with links to online registration.

We would like to thank all of you for your comments over the past few months and your patience more recently as we performed additional testing. As always, your comments have proven to be invaluable. We look forward to your ongoing feedback as we continue adding enhancements and new content.

Webinars

The following training webinars are led by JSTOR User Services staff. A phone and a computer with online access are required. To register, follow a link in the list below.

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/507861435

Using the JSTOR Interface
Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/780793020

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/469266764

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/401053120

Using the JSTOR Interface
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/680252260

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/958097487

The April 2008 issue of Proceedings of the IEEE (v.96, no.4) covers the main aspects of multimedia information retrieval research and upcoming challenges in the field. Multimedia information retrieval refers to a set of theories, algorithms and systems that aim at extracting pertinent descriptors or metadata related to multimedia content and allowing search, retrieval and other user functions. In recent years, the tremendous interest of users in multimedia information retrieval has driven a significant amount of research in the field. Primarily, research objectives in information retrieval have been to develop technology breakthroughs that enable fast, natural, intuitive and personalized access to a vast number of multimedia data collections.

This special issue of Proceedings of the IEEE, entitled “Advances in Multimedia Information Retrieval,” begins by outlining specific approaches for multimedia retrieval and looking at the progress to date in the field. Papers have been carefully selected to cover the main aspects of the multimedia information retrieval research, highlight successes, critically analyze the achievements made so far and assess the applicability of information retrieval results in real-life scenarios. The issue provides insights into the current possibilities for building automated and semi-automated methods as well as algorithms for segmenting, abstracting, indexing, representing, browsing and retrieving multimedia content in various contexts. Additionally, future challenges that are likely to drive the research in the multimedia information retrieval field for years to come are also discussed. To learn more, please visit the Proceedings of the IEEE website.

An IEEE Xplore environment upgrade is scheduled for Saturday, 15 March, 2008. During this upgrade, the system will be unavailable for up to four (4) hours beginning at approximately 10:00 am EDT (UTC/GMT - 4 hours). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you have any questions, please contact onlinesupport@ieee.org

Organic reactions in water : principles, strategies and applications
By U. Marcus Lindström
Oxford ; Ames, Iowa : Blackwell Pub., 2007.

Call # QD169 .W3 O74 2007

From Wiley.com

“Volatile organic solvents are the normal media used in both research scale and industrial scale synthesis of organic chemicals. Their environmental impact is significant, however, and so the development of alternative reaction media has become of great interest.

Developments in the use of water as a solvent for organic synthesis have reached the point where it could now be considered a viable solvent for many organic reactions. Organic Reactions in Water demonstrates the underlying principles of using water as a reaction solvent and, by reference to a range of reaction types and systems, it’s effective use in synthetic organic chemistry. Written by an internationally respected team of contributors, and with a strong focus on the practical use of water as a reaction medium, this book illustrates the enormous potential of water for the development of new and unique chemistries and synthetic strategies, while at the same time offering a much reduced environmental impact.”

Birds in the ancient world from A to Z
By W. Geoffrey Arnott
London ; New York : Routledge, 2007.

Call # Ref QL690 .G8 A76 2007
From RoutledgeClassicalStudies.com
“Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z gathers together the ancient information available, listing all the names that ancient Greeks gave their birds and all their descriptions and analyzes. Arnott identifies as many of them as possible in the light of modern ornithological studies.

The ancient Greek bird names are transliterated into English script, and all that the ancients said about birds is presented in English. This book is accordingly the first complete discussion of ancient bird names that will be accessible to readers without ancient Greek.

The only large-scale examination of ancient birds for seventy years, the book has an exhaustive bibliography (partly classical scholarship and partly ornithological) to encourage further study, and provides students and ornithologists with the definitive study of ancient birds.”