Molecule Man: U-T Feature on Nicolaou

UCSD/Scripps Research Institute chemistry professor KC Nicolaou was featured in the April 24th San Diego Union-Tribune. In the article, Dr. Nicolaou discusses his just-published book, Molecules That Changed the World, about the history, synthesis and impact of aspirin, penicillin, taxol and other important chemical compounds.

Molecules That Changed the World (publisher website) The Nicolaou Group at Scripps Research Institute

Link to Google Books in Melvyl

You will now see links to Google Books in Melvyl search results. Depending on the book’s copyright status you’ll see:

• More About this Book, which includes a brief description of the book, reviews, references to the book on other websites, and links to Amazon and other sites to buy or borrow the book.
• Preview This Book Online! With these books, you can search the text of the book and view a limited number of pages.
• Read This Book Online! This is the “full view” of the book, and you can view every page. You may also be able to download a PDF copy of the book. To see an example, go to Melvyl and search for Einstein’s theories of relativity and gravitation.

More information about UC’s mass digitization projects, including the one with Google.

On Exhibit in S&E

Stop by the S&E Library and take a look at these new and continuing exhibits–

Balsa Wood Tower
A team of six undergraduates in Structural Engineering won first place in the Fifth Annual Seismic Design Competition, held in New Orleans in February. The winning structure, a balsa wood tower, was constructed to withstand simulations of three significant 20th-century earthquakes. More information. The tower is on permanent display at the entrance to the S&E Library, along with the team’s poster. Congratulations to team captain Ruben Soto and his fellow team members: Palak Shah, Carolina Margarito, Jennifer Heredia, Michelle Yokota and Jorge Ortiz.

MAE 156A Robot
The winning robot in Dr. Nate Delson’s Fall 2007 MAE 156A class is also featured in S&E. Built by team members Anson Brune, Chau Nguyen, Geoff Rosenberg, and Bryan Urquhart, the robot senses the heights of a row of blocks and plots them on a grid. Sounds simple, but take a look! Through Spring Quarter.

Calculate Your Carbon Footprint
Your carbon footprint is a measurement of the relative impact of your individual actions on global climate change. The average American’s carbon footprint is the equivalent of 27 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Compare that to the worldwide average of 5.5 per person. Come to the Science & Engineering Library as we celebrate Earth Week and see which lifestyle factors influence your carbon footprint. Our Earth Week display also includes information about Green Engineering, (a web-based carbon footprint calculator), and a listing of Earth Week events at UCSD. A selection of S&E books on climate change is also on display. Through May 2.

Mathematics Awareness Month
April is Math Awareness Month and this year’s theme is “Mathematics and Voting.” Learn about the role math plays in voting methods, and how the outcome of elections can vary drastically depending upon which method is used. How will your vote be counted this November? More info.. Also on display is a series of 13 “Mathematical Moments” – how math affects our everyday lives and the technology around us, e.g. solving Sudoku, eliminating spam, searching the web, predicting storm surge, and more. Math majors will also be interested in an accompanying display on careers in mathematics. Through May 2.

Engineering Expo Posters
Graduate student posters from the Jacobs School of Engineering Expo are on display, including the two winners of the “Best Use of the Literature” awards. Through Spring Quarter.

New Books, March to mid-April

The New Books listings have just been updated for March through mid-April.

• Engineering
• Math, General and Computer Science
• Physical Sciences
• E-Books, including new titles from Knovel, Safari, Synthesis, the CRC NetBase collections, SPIE and various Springer series

Browsing Books - Recent Additions

Here are the new additions to the S&E Browsing Collection. Follow the link to see if the book’s available, or use the Request feature in Roger and we’ll hold the book for you when it’s returned.

• Chemistry in the garden
• Endless universe : beyond the Big Bang
• The open laboratory: the best science writing on blogs 2007
• Astrophysics is easy! : a introduction for the amateur astronomers
• Why there’s antifreeze in your toothpaste : the chemistry of household ingredients
• Winning our energy independence : an energy insider shows how
• The big switch : rewiring the world, from Edison to Google
• Censoring science : inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the truth of global warming
• Cosmological enigmas : pulsars, quasars, & other deep-space questions
• Blip, ping & buzz : making sense of radar and sonar
• The joy of physics
• The physics of NASCAR : how to make steel + gas + rubber = speed
• Robots in space : technology, evolution, and interplanetary travel
• The mystery of the missing antimatter

New UCSD Bioengineering Articles

Recently published articles from the Department of Bioengineering Faculty:

Barbee, K. D., and X. H. Huang. 2008. Magnetic assembly of high-density DNA arrays for genomic analyses. Analytical Chemistry 80 (6):2149-2154.

Cabrales, P., A. G. Tsai, and M. Intaglietta. 2008. Modulation of perfusion and oxygenation by red blood cell oxygen affinity during acute anemia. American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology 38 (3):354-361.

Chang, S. F., C. A. Chang, D. Y. Lee, P. L. Leet, Y. M. Yeh, C. R. Yeh, C. K. Cheng, S. Chien, and J. J. Chiu. 2008. Tumor cell cycle arrest induced by shear stress: Roles of integrins and Smad. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (10):3927-3932.

Chien, S. 2008. Effects of disturbed flow on endothelial cells. Annals of Biomedical Engineering 36 (4):554-562.

Feala, J. D., L. Coquin, G. Paternostro, and A. D. McCulloch. 2008. Integrating metabolomics and phenomics with systems models of cardiac hypoxia. Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology 96 (1-3):209-225.

Continue reading New UCSD Bioengineering Articles…

John A. Wheeler, 1911-2008

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler, who studied under Niels Bohr and later taught Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett, who worked on the Manhattan Project and adopted the term “black hole” (over ‘com­pletely collapsed gravitational objects’), passed away on Sunday at the age of 96.

Obituaries and tributes from:

• New York Times
• Princeton University
• Physics Today
• Scientific American
• On the Cosmic Variance blog, a personal tribute from one of his students

Selected Works:

• The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission (w/ N Bohr). Phys. Rev. 56, 426 - 450 (1939)
• Nuclear Constitution and the Interpretation of Fission Phenomena (w/ DL Hill). Phys. Rev. 89, 1102 - 1145 (1953)
• Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics (1998)
• Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity (1992)

American Chemical Society - NIH Guidelines

ACS has updated their Author & Reviewer Resource Center to include information about the new NIH guidelines. When the article is accepted, the corresponding author will receive and be asked to complete the NIH Policy Addendum.

For ACS authors whose manuscripts acknowledge research funding support from NIH, the ACS hereby grants to the author the right to provide an electronic copy of the final peer-reviewed manuscript and supporting information to the NIH upon editorial acceptance by the ACS journal as titled above. This grant shall permit public accessibility of the deposited content on the NIH’s PubMed Central database, 12 months after the official date of publication of the final article by ACS.

Cambridge Structural Database 2008

Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) 2008 is available.

Due to the size of these programs, you cannot directly download the files to your computer and install. Instead, you will copy the ISO files to your computer, then burn those files onto CDs, and then use the CDs to install in the programs. Instructions for doing this are on our CSD Guide.

The ISO files and the new site and confirmation codes are at the UCLA CSD site. Proxy or VPN access is required to get those codes, which you will need the first time you run CSD on your computer and when you download the January 2008 content update from the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Please contact the Chemistry Librarian if you have any questions.

The Great Campus Race is coming

Move Fast, Think Faster!

1^st place wins $200!

2^nd place wins $100!

… with more prizes to come.

All UCSD students are invited to compete for prizes using teamwork, brains and speed. In the Great Campus Race, teams of two or three will get a list of clues which they must solve. Each clue answer will correspond to a location on campus. Racers are free to use any means to solve the clues, and are encouraged to call friends and/or use the Internet. The first team to be photographed at each of the locations and return to the finish line will win. Racers may only travel on foot or using a campus shuttle.

The race will be held on Saturday, April 12^th at 1:00 PM. Check-in will be from 12:00 to 12:30, with a pre-race briefing at 12:45. The Start/Finish will be on the Forum level of the Geisel Library (concrete area under the tower.)

For all the details, and to sign up, visit http://scilib.ucsd.edu/greatcampusrace.

Think you can solve a clue? Try this one:

The 18th century British prophetic poet who wrote ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion’ and the star of ‘Gossip Girl.’ Find the campus building which shares a name with this unlikely pair.