Science and Forestry Library News

Google vs Scientific Publishing

Steve Sloan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:37:29 +0000

This Slate article pretty much says it all.

Open Source Science

Steve Sloan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:50:19 +0000

An article in the NY Times looks at by-passing peer review.

Canada holds its place in science

Steve Sloan — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:15:05 +0000

A chart on page 52 of the December 17, 2011 issue of New Scientist show that Canada’s contribution to the world’s scientific literature held steady from 1999-2008 at about 4% of the world’s total.

Are the big news articles in Physics available at UNB Libraries?

Steve Sloan — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:36:19 +0000

Physics World has just released its list of the top 10 advances in Physics for 2011. I set out to see how our subscription list held up in making the discoveries available to UNB readers. The results:

Amplifying Single-Photon Nonlinearity Using Weak Measurements
Simple and in situ determination of general quantum states using weak measurement (arXiv preprint)
Demonstration of temporal cloaking (arXiv preprint) and Macroscopic Invisibility Cloaking of Visible Light (arXiv preprint)
A new cosmological distance measure using Active Galactic Nuclei
Observation of the Dynamical Casimir Effect in a Superconducting Circuit (arXiv preprint)
Scale for the Phase Diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics
Will be published in Physical Review Letters, to which we have a subscription
Single-cell biological lasers. UNB Libraries has no access to this article and it appears no preprint was placed in the arXiv system.
Implementing the Quantum von Neumann Architecture with Superconducting Circuits
Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years after the Big Bang (arXiv preprint)

Looking for Science-related media?

Steve Sloan — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:26:32 +0000

A couple of good places:

Feynman biography (graphic novel style)

Steve Sloan — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:37:26 +0000

When I was at the ALA conference last June I picked up a few science books that were written in the “graphic novel” style. (They are in our SCI-POP collection.) One was a biography of Richard Feynman. I also bought an original drawing by the book’s artist. You can see it hanging near the collection. Today I came across a blog that reviewed the book.

criticism in the sciences

Steve Sloan — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:57:34 +0000

I always find it interesting when people claim there is a conspiracy among scientists to conceal certain facts or only present evidence on one side of an issue (UFOs, climate change, alternative medicine, etc., etc.). In the real world, scientists have to face withering criticism from their peers. Take, for example, this
withering but fun book review. It’s hard for a conspiracy to exist in an intellectual battlefield.

Pendulum waves

Steve Sloan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:36:34 +0000

Yes, science can be beautiful. Eric spotted
this video of pendulums that is quite captivating.

Who’s the author?

Steve Sloan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:32:59 +0000

Inappropriate authorship in scientific (specifically, medical) journals has surfaced again as an issue. A recent study showed that 21% of the articles had either ghost authors (those who worked on the paper but were not credited) or honorary authors (those listed as authors but who did not contribute to the work) or both.

arXiv turned over to Cornell Library

Steve Sloan — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:01:50 +0000

arXiv, the popular physics and math preprint repository, has been turned over to Cornell University Libraries by its creator Paul Ginsparg. arXiv has over 700,000 preprints and supports over a million downloads a week.

Source: College and Research Library News, November 2011, p. 562.