World AIDS Day

In honor of World AIDS Day, which UCSD observed today, but is traditionally recognized as December 1, the UCSD Libraries collaborated to create a display to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS on the lower level of the Geisel building, outside Current Periodicals and Newspapers and Microforms. The Biomedical Library has also put a few of its books about AIDS on top of the recreational reading collection across from the main desk. There is also a list of current materials on HIV and AIDS that explores the intersection of medicine, social conditions, international perspectives, art and other topics.

We get suggestions

Well, in this case, some positive feedback:

“The new lady who cleans the second floor (her name is Marisela) is very neat. She even tries to clean the dirt on walls. Just wanted to let you know! Much better than the previous man!”

Thanks for the feedback! We will let Marisela know about your comment. We work very hard with the custodians assigned to the Biomedical Library to stress the importance of maintaining a clean facility. With that said, it seems the most important factor is the pride in their work the individual feels. We do our best to let all of our staff, including the custodians, know how much we value their hard work - your comment will help us let Marisela know that our users value her hard work as well.

Reforming NIH Grants

Responding to comments about how grants are awarded, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni will answer questions about this issue on December 4th @ 10 a.m. Pacific (or 1 p.m. Eastern) time. The Chronical of Higher Education will host a live discussion about “Shaking up the NIH.” Start the discussion early by posting to The Chronicle’s web site or simply tune in Tuesday.

Need a Grant, Scholarship, or Fellowship?

The Biomedical Library has put together a great list of resources available. From our Reference Tools page, click Grants & Funding.

A couple of great resources from the list are:

• Community of Science - Search for research funding opportunities from sources that include private and government sources such as the NSF, NIH, USDA. Search by keyword, deadline, funding amounts, geographic area, and more. E-mail funding alert available.
• Grant Select - Current funding opportunities provided by thousands of sponsoring agencies including government, foundations and other nonprofit organizations, corporations, institutes, state agencies, and universities. Our subscription now includes alerts.

A couple of others that are not included in the list are:

• Grants.gov – Find and apply for government grants
• IRIS (click the link “Restricted to UCSD IP addresses”) - contains over 9,000 active federal and private funding opportunities in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition to funding opportunities for faculty, the IRIS Database also contains fellowships and scholarships for graduate students. E-mail alerts are available.
• You can also find out what is available at UCSD by doing an easy Google search using the “university search” http://www.google.com/univ/ucsd. Just type keywords in the search box (e.g. biology fellowship) and to get UCSD-specific pages.

Keep in mind that you will need to use a UCSD networked computer or have the proxy server set up from an off-campus computer to use the resources above (except for Google, of course). For instructions about how to set up the proxy server, see: http://www-no.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/.

Thanksgiving Holiday Hours

The Biomedical and Medical Center libraries are closed on Thursday and Friday, November 22-23 for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Looking for a place to study?  The Geisel Library building will be open on Friday the 23rd, but with shorter hours than usual. Hours for all the libraries are available here. The Biomedical Library will have an Annex delivery on Saturday, November 24.  Save travels and happy holidays to all.

Hot New EndNote Tip

Do you have a long list of citation to put in to your EndNote library? Wish there was a shortcut to getting them there? Well, there is. HubMed - an alternative interface to PubMed offers a citation finder that can take a list of citations copied from a Word document or a PDF. At first, it may not find all of the citations, but with a couple of tweaks, it may find more.

For example, go to HubMed’s Citation Finder and paste in the list of citations below. It will not find all of the citations from this list but try changing the authors on the one it missed to just the first author, et al (i.e., Haynes RB, et al).

Once you have the list, scroll down to the bottom to select all and export using the RIS format. It will save the file as hubmed_ris.ris and you can then import it into EndNote using the Reference Manger RIS format.

List of Citations to Try:

Peters, A., Rubsamen, M., Jacob, U., Look, D., & Scriba, P. (1991). Clinical
evaluation of decision support system for insulin-dose adjustment in
IDDM. Diabetes Care, 14, 875–880.
Piercy, G., Deber, R., Trachtenberg, J., Ramsey, E., Norman, R., Goldenberg,
S., Nickel, J., Elhilali, M., Perrault, J., Kraetschmer, N., & Sharpe,
N. (1999). Impact of a shared decision-making program on patients with
benign prostatic hyperplasia. Urology, 53, 913–920.
Ream, E., & Richardson, A. (1999). From theory to practice: Designing
interventions to reduce fatigue in patients with cancer. Oncology Nursing
Forum, 26, 1295–1303.
2. Lowe HJ, Barnett GO. Understanding and Using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Vocabulary to Perform Literature Searches. JAMA 1994;271(14):1103-1108.
3. Coletti MH, Bleich HL. Medical Subject Headings Used to Search the Biomedical Literature. JAMIA 2001;8(4):317-323.
4. Sood A, Erwin PJ, Ebbert JO. Using Advanced Search Tools on PubMed for Citation Retrieval. Mayo Clin Proc 2004;79(10):1295-1300.
5. PubMed Tutorial. [National Library of Medicine web site]. Available at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/viewlet/mesh/searching/mesh1.swf. Accessed August, 15, 2005.
6. Jenuwine ES, Floyd JA. Comparison of Medical Subject Heading and text-word searches in MEDLINE to retrieve studies on sleep in healthy individuals. J Med Libr Assoc 2004;92(3):349-353.
7. Haynes RB, Wilcynski N, McKibbon KA, Walker JC, Sinclair JC. Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound studies in MEDLINE. JAMIA 1994;1(6):447-58.

A Shortage of Oxygen: Lessons from the Summit of Mt. Everest

On November 28 from noon to 1 PM, Dr. John B. West, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Physiology, will give his “Everest talk” at the UCSD Biomedical Library.  Only library old-timers remember when Dr. West last gave this talk at the library several years ago. 

In Dr. West’s own words:  “Climbers at extreme altitudes such as on Mt. Everest are of great medical interest because they are very near the limit of human tolerance to oxygen deprivation.  During the 1981 American Medical Research Expedition to Everest we obtained the first measurements of human physiology on the summit of Mt. Everest and the results were very surprising.  The expedition will be described with some beautiful mountain slides and a smattering of science.”

This is the third talk in the Biomedical Library lunchtime lecture series.  Space is limited so please RSVP to Vicky Anderson at vkanderson@ucsd.edu by November 26.  Feel free to bring a discreet lunch; cookies and water will be provided.

Biomed 2007 Best Use Of Literature Award

To encourage scholarly research among medical and pharmacy students the librarians at the Biomedical Library established the “best use of literature in a scientific poster” award in 2006. The Library partners with the summer research programs at the School of Medicine (SOM), Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SSPPS), and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging (SIRA) to award the prize.

On November 15, 2007 over 50 students participated in the Summer Scholars annual poster presentation. The librarians judged the poster references by quality, variety, and use.

This year Laura Marrone’s poster on “Depression, Functioning, and Visual Acuity Associated with Age-Related Macular Degeneration in the UCSD Shiley and ASSIST Registry” and Helen Shi’s poster on “Racial/Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Renal Cell Carcinoma Incidence and Survival” each received $125.00 for the “best use” award. The winning posters will be on display in the Biomedical Library through the end of the year.

The NIH Short-Term Research Training Grant program provides an introductory biomedical research experience for students during the summer between their first and second year of medical or pharmacy school. The National Institute on Aging co-sponsors the SIRA Medical Student Aging Research Training (SMART) program provides students with experience in aging-related research. In January the process for applying for the 2008 summer programs will begin. For information about these programs is available at School of Medicine Office of Student and Educational Affairs.

Cancer Research & the World Community Grid

In 2004, IBM started a project to harness the unused computing power of home & corporate PCs around the globe, giving it the name the World Community Grid. Since then, several long-term research projects have been completed in months instead of years, for example, FightAIDS@Home where an estimated 5 years of research took only 6 months on the Grid.

The newest project planned for the Grid “Help Conquer Cancer,” is a cancer protein detection project. The limits of traditional computing have hampered the analysis of 90 million images of crystalized proteins. The estimate to finish the analysis of these proteins is 162 years with existing computing power. With the Grid, they estimate it will take approximately 1 - 2 years and it will be able to analyze them all together instead of in small batches.

The benefits of the research will help doctors find proteins that will detect cancer at a very early point in its development. Once finished, the results of the analysis will be freely available to cancer researches around the world.

Read the full story at ComputerWorld.com.

Veterans Day holiday hours

The Biomedical Library will have shorter hours on Monday November 12, the Veterans Day holiday. We will be open 10am - 6pm. The Medical Center Library (MCL) will be closed. Please check the main library hours page for details on other libraries.