NSF.gov, the National Science Foundation Web site, has gotten a redesign. “The updated home page features a number of changes that include new graphics, more ‘white space,’ fewer overall links and a larger area for highlighting stories important to the work NSF supports.”

NSF.gov

Created by the Concord Consortium, the Molecular Workbench is "a modeling tool for designing and conducting computational experiments across science." First-time visitors can check out one of the Featured Simulations to get started.

The homepage contains a number of curriculum modules which deal with chemical bonding, semiconductors, and diffusion. Visitors can learn how to create their own simulations via the online manual, which is available here as well.

The Articles area is quite helpful, as it contains full-text pieces on nanoscience education, quantum chemistry, and a primer on how transistors work. A good way to look over all of the offerings here is to click on the Showcase area. Here visitors can view the Featured simulations, or look through one of five topical sections, which include Biotech and Nanotechnology. Visitors will need to install the free Molecular Workbench software, which is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac

Copyright 2012 Internet Scout Project - http://scout.wisc.edu

Click here to explore the Molecular Workbench

The Environmental Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst encourages and supports “collaboration across colleges and disciplines in environmental research and education." Visitors can learn about the different resources, which include "Environmental Analysis Laboratory,” "TEI Environmental Lecture Series,” "Conferences,” and the "Water Resources Research Center.”
One particularly useful set of resources here is provided within the "WRRC Databases" area. They are two interactive databases: "Acid Rain Monitoring Project" and "Stormwater Technologies Clearinghouse.”
Copyright 2012 Internet Scout Project - http://scout.wisc.edu

Environmental Institute

A modern version of the Periodic table with a video on all the elements was created by video journalist Brady Haran. It features real working chemists from the University of Nottingham. They are currently updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.

The group is also making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab. They have also started a new series - The Molecular Videos - featuring their favorite molecules and compounds.

Wow!

Periodic Table of Videos"

MathSciNet is an electronic publication offering access to a searchable database of 2 million+ reviews, abstracts and bibliographic records relevant to mathematics. The database contains bibliographic data from articles dating back to the early 1800's.

You can access it by going to the Sciences Databases page on the Libraries' web site.

The Wired Chemist, developed by Professor Claude H. Yoder (Franklin & Marshall College), was updated in late 2010, but it has retained its focus on helping students learn chemistry as well as providing professionals with instructional information.

The website is arranged in a clear and orderly manner, with tabs to Chemistry, Mineralogy, Environmental, and NMR. Data, and Links. The Instructional section under Chemistry links to general chemistry lecture notes, tutorials, problem sets, lab exercises, and animated demonstrations.

The Wired Chemist is well organized, easy to navigate, and completely annotated....friendly, usable, well-constructed blend of instructional material in an electronic presentation.

Highly recommended. Secondary school and undergraduate students and their instructors; all readership levels. -- L. A. Hall, California State University, Sacramento
Reviewed in 2012feb CHOICE

Wired Chemist

Scitable, by Nature Publishing Group.


A stunning new Web site created by Nature Education for Biology and Genetics. This site virtually provides all of the functions of a college science course for free. Scitable is truly a well-designed, quite comprehensive resource that offers students and teachers alike a wealth of information, learning tools, and interactive activities on genetics, cell biology, and ecology, with a side order of scientific communication and career counseling.
Want a quick tutorial? Scitable offers short review articles, rich with links to deeper content elsewhere on the site.
Want to know what other students are thinking? The exciting and absorbing Blogs and Forums section (somewhat hidden on the site in the Topics section) contains a blog, Student Voices, run by and for undergraduate students. Time to Decide, discussing issues in science education, is another useful forum.
Want a full course? Try the Learning Paths section, offering a stepwise, progressive series of lessons on topics such as cancer, genetics, and biotechnology.
Want to bring this material into the classroom? There are tools for designing classes and putting together custom texts for students.
This last function, as well as several others including joining and creating discussion groups and collaborating with other Scitable members, requires free registration, but it is well worth doing so.
Reviewed by Choice Reviews Online

Scitable

Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship Fall 2008
written by Charles F. Huber, Chemical Sciences Librarian
at Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara

Nanotechnology is a hot topic in most science and technology libraries. The literature of nanotechnology is widely scattered across traditional disciplines. This paper provides an introduction for the non-expert to key terminology, reference works and indexes to the literature of nanotechnology.

Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

From 8/15/08 Scout Report.

Any aspect of forensic science can be quite tricky, and educators will be delighted to learn about this helpful educational resource designed just for them. Created by Professor Robert Thompson of Oberlin College this online forensic chemistry lab manual is designed to help chemistry faculty in developing forensic chemistry project laboratories for both undergraduate and graduate courses. In this manual, visitors will find sample preparations, procedural details, instructions for students, and typical results in a variety of formats. Along the left-hand side of the homepage, visitors can look through the forensic chemistry analyses, which include explosives, fabric, glass, and arson. The site is rounded out by a selection of "Stories", which are meant to provide the background for chemical analyses of crime scene samples. [KMG]

Forensic Chemistry Lab Manual

The Baylor College of Medicine's BioEd website has added a new video presentation and slide set which will please all science educators everywhere. "The Pathway to Genomic Medicine", created by Dr. Richard Gibbs, Director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center. Specific information about recent progress made in this area will help educators better understand some of these developments. As each slide contains keywords, one may search the slides in this way.

Bioedonline

From the New York Times: "Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. On another, the Douglas fir. Another, the oyster mushroom. If you owned the Book of All Species, you would need quite a bookshelf to hold it. Just to cover the 1.8 million known species, the book would have to be more than 300 feet long...." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26ency.html

Encyclopedia of Life Website

A Student's Guide to the Medical Literature

Exploring the existing medical literature can be a real challenge. Fortunately, this site offered by the University of Colorado's Health Sciences Center provides a nice guide. Created by a fourth year medical student, Katherine McLucas, the guide begins with a short tutorial that outlines a simple four-step approach to reading medical literature. Additionally, the site also includes a section on search strategies, an interactive glossary with hyperlinked terms, and version of the guide that can be used on a PDA.

Go directly to the web site: Medical Literature

Global Warming Facts & Our Future
An exhibit "to help us make informed decisions and to help answer some important questions" about global warming. Topics explored include the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, causes of climate change (such as ocean circulation, volcanic eruptions, and human activity), historical climate change, and more. Includes activities, related links, and reading suggestions. From the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences.

Click on Global Warming

"This tutorial teaches you how to evaluate the health information that you find on the Web. It is about 16 minutes long." It walks consumers through the process of determining who is behind a website (such as a physician or a drug company), separating noncommercial and commercial content (such as advertising), checking to make sure the site is current, and more. From the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Go to MedlinePlus

This site uses an animated town to provide basic information about radiation in the environment. Wireless networks, stadium light shows, and medical X-rays are some common sources noted in the presentation. Each location is linked to a fact sheet explaining the types of radiation, personal steps for protection, and the roles that various government agencies play in protection and control. The site also includes a glossary and related links. From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Try it!

Radtown USA

U.S. National Library of Medicine: Chemical Information
Hundreds of thousands of chemicals, plus "synonyms, structures, regulatory list information, and links to other databases." The "ChemIDplus Lite" feature allows searching by chemical name or registry number; with "ChemIDplus Advanced," users "search and display ... registry number, chemical name, molecular formula, structure, physical and toxicological properties plus locator and classification data." Also includes links to additional databases and resources. From the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Go to NLM: Chemical Information

LabLit.com: The Culture of Science in Fiction & Fact

This site "is dedicated to real laboratory culture and to the portrayal and perceptions of that culture ... in fiction, the media and across popular culture." Features interviews, articles, a message board, and a list of novels (and other media) that depict "realistic scientists as central characters and portray fairly realistic scientific practice or concepts, typically taking place in a realistic -- as opposed to speculative or future -- world." Edited by a scientist.

Interested? Go to
Lablit

In a world that has the capability to create infinitesimally tiny machines, it may be hard for some to understand how the most basic products are created. This website attempts to answer some of those questions, beginning with information on how accordions are made, and ending with a discussion on the creation of zirconium. For each item, visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the processes involved with their manufacture and assembly. Perhaps users have wondered how the tiny candy corn is manufactured? They need wonder no more after taking a look at this site. The site also takes on more complex items, such as the camera lens and the nicotine patch. Overall, the site contains dozens of such detailed descriptions, and can be enjoyed by persons of all ages and interests.

How products Are made

Thomson Gale announced the addition of more than 700 medical-related videos to its Health & Wellness Resource Center. This new video library is a result of a partnership with Healthology, Inc. a physician-founded health media company. Healthology video content covers over 60 therapeutic areas, such as oncology, rheumatology, neurology, and gastroenterology.

Browse the Multimedia Library in the Health & Wellness Resource Center

Science.gov is an interagency initiative of 17 U.S. government science organizations within 12 Federal agencies - search across agency resources via one query. The new MetaRank search engine analyzes how often the search term appears in the abstract and where it is in the abstract’s text.

Users can set up free “Alert” service which delivers personalized information about the most current science developments to your computer once a week.

http://www.science.gov

"Established in 1995 with funding from the Energy Foundation and the Department of Energy, the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) has spent the past decade educating the general public about renewable energies. This is accomplished by providing competent and rigorous policy analysis about the myriad of issues surrounding the viability and sustainability of such energy sources. Visitors to the site’s homepage will find clickable icons (such as those depicting wind, solar, and hydrogen), and they can discover the variety of resources associated with each type of renewable energy source."

Read more on the Renewable Energy Policy Project Website

New Genome Comparison Finds Chimps, Humans Very Similar at the DNA Level

Check it out...
Chimps and Humans

A paper presenting the results of a research conducted about five search engines- AltaVista, Google, HotBot, Scirus and Bioweb -for retrieving scholarly information using Biotechnology-related search.
Link: Precision and Recall of Five Search Engines for Retrieval of Scholarly Information in the Field of Biotechnology

"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field... Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."

Read more from the PLoS Medicine journal

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