Another article about the h-Index

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology has published another analysis of Dr. Jorge Hirsch’s (Physics) h-index, this one focusing on the forest ecology/management literature.

On the robustness of the h-index — Jerome K. Vanclay
The h-index (Hirsch, 2005) is robust, remaining relatively unaffected by errors in the long tails of the citations-rank distribution, such as typographic errors that short-change frequently cited articles and create bogus additional records. This robustness, and the ease with which h-indices can be verified, support the use of a Hirsch-type index over alternatives such as the journal impact factor. These merits of the h-index apply both to individuals and to journals.

New E-Books from National Academies

Some new titles from the National Academies Press. Some are uncorrected copies.

• Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age
• Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering
• Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond
• Analysis of Global Change Assessments: Lessons Learned
• International Benchmarking of U.S. Chemical Engineering Research Competitiveness
• Plasma Science: Advancing Knowledge in the National Interest
• The Future of U.S. Chemistry Research: Benchmarks and Challenges
• A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Astrophysics Program
• An Astrobiology Strategy for the Exploration of Mars

New UCSD Articles: ECE/CSE

Recently published articles authored/co-authored by faculty from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering or Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering:

Nash, A., P. A. Bernstein, and S. Melnik. 2007. Composition of mappings given by embedded dependencies. ACM Transactions on Database Systems 32 (1):51.

Ray, S., and B. S. Song. 2007. A 13-b linear, 40-MS/s pipelined ADC with self-configured capacitor matching. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 42 (3):463-474.

Soriaga, J. B., H. D. Pfister, and P. H. Siegel. 2007. Determining and approaching achievable rates of binary intersymbol interference channels using multistage decoding. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 53 (4):1416-1429.

Zheng, J., E. R. Duni, and B. D. Rao. 2007. Analysis of multiple-antenna systems with finite-rate feedback using high-resolution quantization theory. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 55 (4):1461-1476.

Roh, J. C., and B. D. Rao. 2007. Efficient feedback methods for MIMO channels based on parameterization. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 6 (1):282-292.

Franceschetti, M. 2007. When a random walk of fixed length can lead uniformly anywhere inside a hypersphere. Journal of Statistical Physics 127 (4):813-823.

McKinstrie, C. J., R. O. Moore, S. Radic, and R. Jiang. 2007. Phase-sensitive amplification of chirped optical pulses in fibers. Optics Express 15 (7):3737-3758.

Memorial Day Weekend Hours

Hours for the S&E Library over the holiday weekend, including circulation. The reference desk will be closed Monday.

Saturday - 10am - 5:45pm
Sunday - 10am - 5:45pm
Monday - 10am - 11:45pm (the Geisel Library building will open at 8am)
Normal hours resume Tuesday

Journal of Fluid Mechanics Archive

UCSD now has access to 40 years of articles in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics archive, volumes 1-329 (1956-1996).

Additional UCSD Libraries- and CDL-funded purchases of scientific and engineering journal and database backfiles are in the works and will be announced as they come online. If you have suggestions or questions, please use the S&E purchase suggestion form, or contact Teri Vogel or Deborah Kegel.

Stanley Miller (1930-2007)

The UCSD Press Release on the death of Dr. Stanley L. Miller, emeritus professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. Dr. Miller was a graduate student under (Chemistry Department founder) Harold Urey and later became the first assistant professor recruited by the department.

Dr. Miller is most renown for his pioneering work on the origin of life.

No one then knew how the organic compounds found in life could have originated on the barren, primitive Earth, which Urey surmised had coalesced from a cloud of dust and was initially surrounded by an atmosphere of hydrogen, water, ammonia and methane—some of the major components of the universe.

So Miller put water and ammonia into a globe-shaped flask with hydrogen and methane gas, boiled the solution and zapped the contents with an electrical discharge to simulate lightning and coronal discharges in the atmosphere. Within a week, he had produced a “molecular soup” containing amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and of life itself.

He reported on this experiment, A Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions, which was published in the May 15, 1953 issue of Science.

Dr. Miller co-authored The Origins of Life on Earth, and his work with Dr. Urey is included in Philip Ball’s Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry.

Junkyard Derby Pics

A few photos from today’s Junkyard Derby:

The Science of Beer and Wine Display

In the ’spirit’ of the SunGod Festival, we’ve created a display in the Science & Engineering Library that highlights the science of beer and wine. Come to S&E to read about the processes for making beer and wine, and see photos of beer crystallization under a microscope. We’ve also pulled out related books from our collection for additional reading.

In addition to the SunGod Festival, we’re also celebrating two other UCSD events, both of which reflect the Science and Engineering focus of the campus: The Junkyard Derby and the Watermelon Drop. Please stop by and enjoy them all during May and June.

Hellman Faculty Fellows

Congratulations to Alexander Hoffmann and Terunaga Nakagawa (both from the Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry), and Deli Wang (Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering). They were among the 11 UCSD assistant professors named Hellman Faculty Fellows for 2007-2008. These awards are given to support the creative and research activities of “promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their work.”

New S&E Popular Science Books

Here are some recent additions to the S&E Browsing Collection. If the book is checked out, used the Request button to be next in line to get it.

• Almost human : making robots think - Lee Gutkind (go to The Daily Show to watch Jon Stewart’s 5/7 interview with Gutkind)
• Wikinomics : how mass collaboration changes everything - Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• Death by black hole : and other cosmic quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Times of triumph, times of doubt : science and the battle for public trust - Elof Axel Carlson
• Many worlds in one : the search for other universes - Alex Vilenkin
• The cosmic verses : a rhyming history of the universe - James Muirden ; illustrated by David Eccles
• Don’t throw this away! : the civil engineering life - Brian Brenner
• Einstein’s enigma or black holes in my bubble bath - C.V. Vishveshwara

There are now almost 340 books in the S&E Library Browsing Collection of popular physical science and engineering books, all available for checkout. If you want to recommend other titles for the collection, please contact Teri Vogel.