Research Infrastructure

Library and Information Center

Rowland Institute at Harvard
Library News & Notes
May 14, 2004

NOTES

Garrett will be out of the library in the afternoon on Wednesday, May 19.

Online chemical hygiene resources from Harvard can be found at
http://208.253.167.20/chem_hygiene.html. You need a Virtual Private Networking (VPN) client to access this site. Download one at
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/downloads. This will establish a connection between your computer and FAS.

Internet Sites of the Week

Alan Turing: Thinking up Computers
Turing is considered by many to be the “father of software.” This, the first of a weekly series of BusinessWeek profiles on innovators of the last century, considers his strange and eventful life, and how Turing “didn't live to see the revolution he unleashed.”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_19/b3882029_mz072.htm
(Source: Slashdot)

Frontiers in Materials and Nanoscience
DEAS' Industrial Outreach Program takes place on May 20-21, with several workshops and presentations from Harvard researchers, on topics including microfluidics, thin films, quantum information, complex fluids, mesoscale imaging and others.
http://www.deas.harvard.edu/industry/

Granny Buttons
A water blog.from the canals of England.
http://www.grannybuttons.com/granny_buttons/
(Source: Feedster Feed of the Day)

How to Navigate Scientific Language
An article on writing for the sciences includes a traffic light diagram of words and phrases to use and avoid.
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/may/prof5_040510.html

Interactive Cinema Group Weblog
A weblog from the MIT Media Lab whose members write about new interactive media and post movie files and other phenomena about material that interests them.
http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/ic/

The Lost History of the Transistor
IEEE Spectrum features a retelling of the competition between Bell Labs and Texas Instruments in the development of silicon transitors in the mid 1950s.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/may04/0504si.html

New England Ruins
A photographer captures artifacts of technology and industry located throughout New England, including farms, hospitals, factories, schools, saying: “whether it be industrial or insitutional each doorway within is another opening to the past, behind each one a unique story is told. each stairwell leads to another chapter.”
http://photos.dobi.nu/
(Source: the Scout Report)

Outside the Box: Does innovative lab architecture lead to more innovative science?
An article in Sunday's Boston Globe Ideas section discusses innovations in science lab architecture, the new Stata Center designed by Frank Gehry cited as a particular example, the idea being that these buildings are eye-catching on the outside and on the inside designed to make people from disparate groups come into contact with each other.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/05/09/outside_the_box/
Interdisciplinarity is the watchword. Does it really work? (This is the way Rowland has conducted business for quite some time. Scientists exchange ideas at lunches, seminars, reviews, or just walking around.) However, the Globe article points out, things are not always so rosy with some of the new projects. For the Stata Center, people complain about noise and traffic and cost overruns. There's more on Frank Gehry's jaunty installation at MIT's Tech Talk; see
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2004/may12/stata-main.html

Television News by RSS Feed
Journalist Bob Stepno posted a list of TV stations serving news via RSS. None in the Boston area, however; 4, 5, and 7, do you see?
http://radio.weblogs.com/0106327/2004/05/13.html
(Source: Bob Stepno)

NEW BOOKS/VIDEOS

Received May 8 - 14, 2004