Most people are familiar with PubMed, BLAST, and other NCBI databases, but many may not know that it is possible to customize your searches in them. MyNCBI, a free account within PubMed and the other NCBI databases such as Genome and PubChem, facilitates many useful research tools. Here are a few ways you can use it to your advantage:
Continue reading “MyNCBI: Getting the Most out of PubMed, Genome, and More”
TRAIL, the Technical Report Archive and Image Library, is a project started by librarians 10 years ago to digitize technical reports produced by various agencies in the United States government and to make them available to all users.
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In October, 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced a new generation of the National Geologic Map Database, the index to United States maps. It has resulted from a partnership between the USGS and the AASG, the Association of American Geologists. Its antecedent directed searchers to regional map depositories, but now many maps and publications are freely available for downloading. Some maps must still be purchased or otherwise obtained.
Continue reading “NGMBD, The National Geologic Map Database, a resource for everyone”
MedlinePlus is a free health information resource from the United States’ National Library of Medicine. This post is not a comprehensive review of the entire site, but will give a general overview and highlight some of my favorite areas. MedlinePlus is geared to provide information for patients and the general public. Most of the information has been written at the 5th to 8th grade level. It is intended to be a consumer-based resource and not for medical professionals. The information within MedlinePlus provides selected links to reliable healthcare web sites and information generated at the National Library of Medicine. It contains links to over 975 medical topics, including links to the A.D.A.M. medical encyclopedia and the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary. The statistics page of the website reports that there is Information from over 1,000 organizations containing over 35,000 links to authoritative health information. Continue reading “MedlinePlus: Worth Its Weight in Gold”
Nuclear energy is the energy contained in the nucleus of an atom. When the atoms are broken apart in the fission process, the energy released can be used to generate electricity. The most common element used in nuclear fission is uranium.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a one-stop shop for all data and statistics on nuclear power. Topics covered include nuclear operable units, electricity generation, storage of radioactive waste, and state of operating nuclear power plants. While the focus of this data is on nuclear power in the United States, there is also data provided for yearly international nuclear electricity generation.
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Continue reading “NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)”
Powered, controlled flight is a scientific and engineering achievement rich with examples of scholarly communication. Background sources provide a foundation. Correspondence provides insight into challenges and developments in a field. Experimental findings shared via professional meetings and journal articles encourage wider discussion and further exploration. Scholarly conversations between the Wright brothers and Octave Chanute preserved in digital collections at the Library of Congress provide a rich exemplar for students learning about scholarly communication. Continue reading “Scholarly Communication and the History of Flight”
BLAST, the Basic Local Alignment Sequence Tool (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) is a data mining tool provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). It allows users to input a nucleic acid or protein sequence and search against millions of other sequences in the database to identify those based on similarity and not identity. Ideally, search results will hopefully identify known sequences and provide insight into the possible identity and function of the sequence of interest.
Continue reading “Understanding BLAST and Improving Your Search”
Are you still looking for a reliable federated search tool that goes beyond the run-of-the-mill results? Do you miss searching Scirus by Elsevier? WorldWideScience.org might be a worthwhile alternative to explore. Developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), WorldWideScience.org has partnerships with many national and international science portals and one can search the interface in ten different languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Searching multiple sources, WorldWideScience.org displays results based on their relevance order. Continue reading “WorldWideScience, a Cut above the World Wide Web”
Searching for information on complex organic molecules can be an onerous task. Many organic compounds have both common and systematic names. For example, caffeine can also be known as guaranine, methyltheobromine, 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, theine, or 1,3,7-trimethylpurine-2,6-dione. Researchers performing comprehensive literature searches will be interested in research involving not only a specific compound but also similar compounds or other molecules containing the same substructure. Searching on a specific systematic name may inadvertently omit stereoisomers, tautomers, molecules containing the same substructure of interest, or molecules differing by the substitution of as little as one atom. Conceiving of all appropriate synonyms for a name-based search would be a Herculean task for both an organic chemist and a science librarian.
Continue reading “I Don’t Know Your Name, But You Look Familiar: Using Chemical Structure Searches”
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