Merck Index Update

Merck and CambridgeSoft have just released the 14th edition of the Merck Index. The Merck Index is an online, searchable encyclopedia with information and key references for nearly 11,200 drugs and biologically significant chemicals.

What’s new with the 14th edition:
• a new interface
• more property data
• updated references, including citations from 2006

The ChemDraw plugin for structure/substructure drawing can be downloaded form the CambridgeSoft SciStore.com site for free (registration required)

Win a Video iPod, $500 & more

Take an Open Book Quiz…Knovel Style. You could win one of 15 prizes- a 30G Video iPod, an iPod Shuffle or the $500 Grand Prize!

Open to UCSD students and postdocs. Use www.knovel.com to answer the five questions correctly. Contest ends November 13th.

What is Knovel? It’s UCSD’s latest licensed online resource for students/researchers in chemistry, engineering, physics, and life sciences. Knovel has over 950 books with interactive tables of physical data, background information, and other useful stuff.

Beilstein Workshop - Thurs, 10/26

Beilstein & Gmelin for Beginners
October 26 (Thurs) 4:00-5:30pm @ CLICS 264 (TLC)

This workshop will get you started on using the Beilstein (organic) and Gmelin (inorganic/organometallic) databases, which index millions of chemical substances by name, structure, reaction and property data. Will cover software setup, navigating the interface, search tips locating the articles cited in the databases.

RefGrab-It: Capture Webpage Info for RefWorks

RefWorks has announced their October 2006 batch of new features:

• RefGrab-It - for PC and Mac
  RefGrab-It works with your browser to capture bibliographic information from web pages. Under Tools in RefWorks, you’ll see a RefGrab-It option that will take you to a page with the IE and Firefox bookmarklets (just drag the appropriate link to your browser’s bookmark toolbar). Once you’ve imported the reference, you can add other fields like Date Accessed and Descriptors.

  Note: This bookmarklet opens up new browser windows for 1) the RefGrab-It page that reviews what’s been captured for the webpage and offers the option to import into RefWorks, and 2) the Import Completed page. If you click Import on that review page a second time, your reference will be imported into your RefWorks account again. Duplicate references can be located and deleted easily.

• RefShare Enhancements
  • Create an RSS Feed for Your Shared Folder or Database

  • Easier Linking to a Single Reference in a Shared Folder or Database
  • Custom Links to Groups of Records or Search Results in a Shared Folder or Database
• Other improvements:
  • EndNote 10 libraries can now be directly imported into RefWorks

  • The Term Assistant feature (used when entering or editing references) can now be disabled from the Tools, Customize area.

Element 118 (in Phys Rev C)

Phys. Rev. C 74, 044602 (2006)
Synthesis of the isotopes of elements 118 and 116 in the ²⁴⁹Cf and ²⁴⁵Cm+⁴⁸Ca fusion reactions
–coauthored by Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and UC’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

From the New York Times, Element 118, Heaviest Ever, Reported for 1,000th of a Second:

The results were met with praise but also caution from other scientists in the field, particularly given the fraught history of element 118. Another California lab, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, announced that it discovered the element in 1999 but retracted the claim two years later after an investigation found that one of its researchers, Dr. Victor Ninov, had fabricated data. Dr. Ninov was later fired.

“This is not because one is doing something wrong,” Dr. Nazarewicz said. “It’s because these are very difficult measurements. They are playing on the edges of statistics.”

Other related articles:

• Elements 116 and 118 Are Discovered, from Physics News Update

• Livermore scientists team with Russia to discover element 118, from LLNL Public Affairs
• Scientists discover new element — No. 118, San Jose MercuryNews

SciFinder Workshop - 10/19

SCIFINDER SCHOLAR: THE BASICS
October 19 (Thurs) 2:00-3:30pm @ CLICS 264 (TLC)
Seating is limited. Please register.

The core index to the chemical literature with 25 million journal article and patent references, SciFinder Scholar is an essential resource for chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering, materials science (and physics, environmental science, etc.) researchers. However, it has a few challenges that sometimes make it less accessible than some of the other databases. This workshop will cover everything from software setup, to topic/name/CAS/structure searching.

Nobels & IgNobels 2006

The 2006 Nobel Prize recipients include
Medicine: Andrew z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information
Physics: John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for their discoveries supporting the Big Bang Theory
and
Chemistry: Roger D. Kornberg for resolving the machinery that gives voice to DNA

2006 IgNobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. 2006 awards include Ornithology: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches and Physics: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Universit� Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.

IM your Librarian !!

Get answers to your reference questions instantly from the S&E Reference Desk or any of the S&E Librarians through our new Instant Messaging Service.

Check for the individual librarians online from M-F 10am -5pm.

IM users:
Login to your IM window
Add S&E reference desk or your Preferred Librarian as your buddy (S&E buddy names)
Click on one of your buddies to send an instant message.

New to IM?
Select one of your IM services
Fill out a small form and download the IM software
Choose a screen name
You are all set in 2-3 minutes.

IM with No Download:
Use meebo, a Web-based IM service from an infostation within your own library
Select your IM to login

Ask now

Knovel Arrives at UCSD!!

The UCSD Libraries are pleased to announce that UC San Diego now has access to the Knovel’s collection of scitech & engineering handbooks and reference works from a wide variety of publishers. The database currently contains 950 titles (including databases and data tables) in these areas:

Contest for Students

Take an Open Book Quiz…Knovel Style! You could win one of 15 prizes- a 30G Video iPod, an iPod Shuffle or the $500 Grand Prize!

Open to UCSD students and postdocs. Use www.knovel.com to answer the questions. Contest ends November 13th.
Continue reading Knovel Arrives at UCSD!!…

Scanner now available at S&E

The S&E Library now has a scanner attached to the public Microsoft Office workstation (at the beginning of the row of Infostations along the windows).

Using the scanner is pretty basic–place your item face-down on the glass and hit the scan button to start the process. There’s no OCR component, so text can only be scanned as an image. You can then move the scanned images to a folder on the desktop and then save them to your flash drive.

Saving the scanned images to a flash drive is free, or you can print to the local black/white printer for 10c/page with an Imprints card.