Rowland Institute Library Blog

People in Washington are not “out to get” scientists, the House Science
committee chair assures a group at Brookhaven, telling them strategies
for lobbying for more federal monies for the physical sciences. 

Several library association, along with  the National Security
Archive and public interest groups, filed an amicus brief in the
Supreme Court case waged by Vice President Cheney to keep his Energy
Task Force documents confidential.  The amici state they “share
the copnviction that broad access to government records protects values
essential to representative democracy.” (Source: beSpacific, which has a full page devoted to reporting on the case.)

there’s an article on the front page today’s Harvard University Gazette
that delighted me as much as anything I ‘ve read recently…. “Academic
turns city into social experiment” profiles Antanas Mockus (is that his
real name or was he sent to “Mock us”?), mayor of Bogota, who recently
spent two weeks as a visiting fellow at Harvard.  In a city racked
by murder and despair, Mockus used theater to get people back into the
idea of civic investment.  The picture on the front page shows a
“traffic mime” waving an “incorrecto” sign at a jaywalker.  Other
innovations included a ladies-only night in the city, during which men
went home and policewomen were in charge of security.  Mockus got
to people to use cards (”thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down”) to express
approval or disapproval of their fellow citizens’ public behavior and
launched an anti-terrorism march, “‘a vaccine against violence’, asking
people to draw the faces of the people who had hurt them on balloons,
which they then popped.”  the latter  drew 50,000
participants.  As a result, among other improvements, people are
saving water, paying taxes and engaging in civic life.  
Extraordinary….

“News organized by topic and location” says Topix.net … You can plug
in your zip code and get news stories proximate to your area, or browse
by specific location, person in the news, or from a variety of
categories. Even has XML feeds. (Source: ResourceShelf)

Then get a translator … This site searches across Amazon US and half
a dozen other international Amazon sites.  If Amazon US doesn’t
have the book you want, maybe someone else will… (Source; Blogdex)

BioMed Central, Receiving content from BioMed Central and The Scientist as an RSS headline feed. 
BMC recently announced the availability of RSS feeds for their online
journals.  This page explains how to get a feed for any BMC
journal (e.g. http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmccellbiol/rss) “by adding
/rss/ onto the journal URL.”  They’ve also included a feed listing
the latest articles added to the BMC server, as well as lists of most
viewed articles for each title and the BMC platform as a whole. 
This is another way for users to select content of interest and receive
it seamlessly through a desktop news aggregator or web-based news
aggregator.  Talk about increasing exposure to open-access
publications! (Source: The (sci-tech) Library Question)

(Source; Scripting News)

The Cold Spring Harbor Oral History Project features interviews with
James Watson, Sydney Bremer, Eric Lander and some nearly fifty
scientists who have been associated with the laboratory, documenting
much history of molecular biology from its origins to the
present.  Astounding.  (Source: Science Netwatch, 5 March
2004)

(Requires individual subscription.)  J. Craig Venter et al report
in Science the application of whople-genome shotgun sequencing to a
microbial aquatic environment, noting considerable diversity in genes
and species. 

.. but they are a little late entering into this, while it is
welcome.  AIP did it two years ago…  The Virtual Journals
provide an easier approach… And why not throw their weight into RSS,
especially since Phys Rev Lett and others add new articles daily? 

Well, it will help for now….