Friday, 9 October 2009

Film and Sound Online

Film & Sound Online is a set of collections of film, video and sound material. Several hundred hours of high-quality material are available for download, either in full or as segments, and can be used freely in learning, teaching and research. The collection includes film from organisations such as The Biochemical Society, St George's Hospital Medical School and the Wellcome.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/elib/databases/arts/fso

Friday, 4 September 2009

Plagiarism tutorial

This tutorial, developed by the University of Leicester, gives some good examples of what does and does not constitute plagiarism and some very good advice for anyone producing a piece of academic writing, from undergraduate essays to dissertations and theses.
http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/sd/ld/resources/study/plagiarism-tutorial
There are subject specific tutorials for Biological Sciences, Geology and more

Friday, 14 August 2009

ChemSpider

ChemSpider http://www.chemspider.com/ is a free chemical structure search engine covering millions of chemical structures with physical and chemical properties, spectra, links to Internet resources and more. You can search by name, structure or substructure, properties, etc

Friday, 3 July 2009

ARKive

ARKive http://www.arkive.org/ is a unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's species. Watch David Attenborough's short introduction to ARKive to get a feel for what this web site provides http://www.arkive.org/about/promo.html. The site has been recently updated with lots of Darwin related material.

Monday, 22 June 2009

Internet Resources for Genetics and Evolution

Intute's latest booklet is "Internet Resources for Genetics and Evolution" which brings together web sites, databases and learing materials in this area. Details are at http://www.intute.ac.uk/healthandlifesciences/booklets/evolution.html where there are links to all the web sites and a pdf booklet to download

Friday, 22 May 2009

International Day for Biological Diversity

http://www.cbd.int/idb/ The United Nations has proclaimed May 22 as the International Day for Biological Diversity to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. This year, the theme is invasive alien species - one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, and to the economic and ecological well-being of society and the planet. UK events to mark the day are listed here http://www.cbd.int/idb/2009/about/celebration/uk/

New Internet Resources

New Internet resources catalogued by Intute for Earth Sciences and Chemistry

Earthquakes and Seismology
Coulomb 3 : deformation and stress-change software
http://www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20090403-10435081

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Organic Chemistry
Organic chemistry insights
http://www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20080924-17025278

Monday, 11 May 2009

New Internet Resources - Virtual textbooks

Two New Internet resources posted by the Scout Report and Intute - this time focusing on virtual textbooks in Microbiology and Chemistry:

Virtual Microbiology
http://inst.bact.wisc.edu/inst/index.php?module=Book&func=toc&book_id=3
Created at the University of Wisconsin, the Virtual Microbiology site contains a wide range of high-quality scientific educational materials that are meant to supplement and enhance more traditional materials. This particular item is an online textbook, divided into eighteen chapters. Of course, there are the traditional text passages and charts to enhance all of the material, but there are also number of nifty videos that provide additional exploration of topics like pond microbes and hands-on demonstrations. Visitors can also sign up to receive updates about new materials that make their way to the site and they can also provide user feedback.

Internet version of Mark Bishop's An Introduction to Chemistry Text and Tools
http://www.preparatorychemistry.com/Bishop_tour.htm
This website provides an Internet-based version of Mark Bishop's chemistry textbook "An introduction to Chemistry", first published by Benjamin Cummings in 2002. There are two versions of the text. "The new atoms-first version provides a more complete description of atomic theory, chemical bonding, and chemical calculations early. The chemistry-first version has a early emphasis on descriptions of the structure of matter and the nature of chemical changes, postponing the description of unit conversions and chemical calculations." The text is available as PDF and audio files. The site also includes Shockwave animations and tutorials, PowerPoint presentations for each chapter, chapter maps, Shockwave glossary quizzes, and molecular structures.

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Periodic Table of Videos

http://www.periodicvideos.com/ A new site from University of Nottingham that's getting rave reviews. The Periodic Table of Videos gives a new slant to the periodic table by providing a short (around 3 mins) video about each element. There are also extra videos on the chemistry of tea, snow, etc. and for April Fool's Day, Fool's Gold. Read the Daily Telegraph article about it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3347317/YouTube-periodic-table-Explosive-video-guides.html

Monday, 9 March 2009

Online access to Nature

Something I know a lot of you have been waiting for - online access to the journal Nature. Our new subscription allows access to the current year plus four previous years. For access from outside College click on Login and then on Athens Login and enter your ITS username and password. I expect to see high usage stats for this one!

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

SciTopics

SciTopics is a useful new website from Elsevier consisting of articles written by experts on hot topics in the sciences. Each article gives a round-up of current research, recommendations for further reading, links to selected web pages and details of 10 recent and highly cited journal article on the topic. A good place to start for research on an unfamiliar topic. Try SciTopics now at http://www.scitopics.com/

Top 5 most popular SciTopics pages at time of posting:
Measuring Research Output with Science & Technology Indicators By Loet Leydesdorff, 02 Jun 2008
Vaginal drug delivery By José das Neves, 09 May 2008
Sustainable development, renewable, and non-renewable resources By Jeremy Richards, 24 Nov 2008
Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria: Origins and Emergence By Don Clewell, 16 Jun 2008
Solid-state fermentation By Ashok Pandey, 13 Jun 2008

Friday, 6 February 2009

Top Science Blogs of 2008

Can't get enough of blogs? Here's some more to whet your appetite:

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

National eBooks Survey

Have you used eBooks? Researchers at UCL would like to hear from you. Click here to take part in the survey and, if you leave your Birkbeck email address, you will be entered into a prize draw for £200 Amazon vouchers.

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Saturday eLibrary workshops - Spring term

There will be a series of Saturday workshops in the Library this term. Of interest to Science students will be the sessions on Using the Citation Indexes on Saturday 14th Feb. The 12 noon session is introductory and the 2pm session is more advanced. Other sessions you may be interested in are eBooks (17th Jan) and Finding newspaper articles (7th Feb) For more details on the program and to book see the Library web site