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Rowland Institute at Harvard
Library News & Notes
September 17, 2004

Internet Sites of the Week

Big Dig Reunites Neighborhood with Boston
A great day when the elevated artery was torn down… go see it…
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/17/big.dig.ap/index.html

Docuticker
Docuticker is a weblog announcing new government documents, reports from research institutions, nongovernmental organizations and similar phenomena, by the librarians of ResourceShelf.
http://www.docuticker.com/
(Source: ResourceShelf)

Human Genome Hits Halfway Mark
A BBC News article summarizes the progress of human genome sequencing projects towards the “gold standard.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3658386.stm
(Source: nodalpoint.org)

Hurricanes
This week's edition of the Scout Report features several links to hurricane-related sites
( http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/NSDL/PhysSci/2004/ps-040917-topicindepth.php#1),
to which we would add the BBC's report, The Science of Hurricanes,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3653020.stm,
Wired's speculation on global warming's possible effects of wild weather to come:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64952,00.html,
and ABC’s investigation of the relative destructive capacity of hurricanes and tornadoes.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTech/US/hurricane_tornado
_0400917-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

IM, I Said
Simson Garfinkel expounds on the usefulness and advantage of instant messaging for business, its efficiency for communicating brief information quickly, and that it is not just for chatty teenagers.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/09/garfinkel0904.asp?trk=nl

Increasing the Size of a Piece of Popcorn
Abstract: “Popcorn is an extremely popular snack food in the world today. Thermodynamics can be used to analyze how popcorn is produced. By treating the popping mechanism of the corn as a thermodynamic expansion, a method of increasing the volume or size of a kernel of popcorn can be studied. By lowering the pressure surrounding the unpopped kernel, one can use a thermodynamic argument to show that the expanded volume of the kernel when it pops must increase. In this project, a variety of experiments are run to test the validity of this theory. The results show that there is a significant increase in the average kernel size when the pressure of the surroundings is reduced.”
http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0409424

InterViews
The National Academies' InterViews features conversations with NAS member scientists in RealAudio format. You can listen to the entire interview or choose from selections. Now there's an RSS feed to alert you when there are updates to the site.
http://www.nationalacademies.org/interviews/
(Source: ResourceShelf)

Is Your Financial Information Safe?
A Fact Sheet from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse explains what kinds of information financial companies collect, what they must do to safeguard it, how they fall short and what you can do protect your financial privacy.
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs24e-FinInfo.htm
(Source: beSpacific)

Moving and Sensing: From Molecules to Cells
In honor of Howard Berg's 70th birthday, a group of colleagues will fete him with a series of talks at Harvard's Science Center on October 2. See Jason Figueriedo's poster for details.
http://www.rowland.harvard.edu/images/bergfest04final.pdf
Howard's Rowland web page resides at:
http://www/labs/bacteria/people_hberg.html

Nature Gets Political
This week's Nature features a comparison of the two presidential candidates and their views on scientific topics such as climate change, stem cell research, space exploration and others. An interactive feature of the questions can be browsed at
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/uselection/index.html#flash.
A BBC Summary is available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3660276.stm
(Source: BBC News)
(Update: Science has a similar feature, including a breakdown of each candidate's views and their responses to specific questions, e.g. climate, funding, etc.
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/candidates2004/)

New York Times article on legal music downloading sources
Excerpt: “Downloading music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of music available online is not just free but also easily available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.”
(Sources: Open Access News, beSpacific)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/arts/music/10INTE.html?ex=
1252555200&en=1754341400ebc367&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Rowland Junior Fellows
Welcome to Kristin, Peer and Frank, our new Rowland Junior Fellows. See their lab descriptions following the links from this page:
http://www.rowland.harvard.edu/rjf/index.php

Search Engine Watch Blog
If you like to keep up-to-date on search engine innovations, business and news, this blog is a good one to feed to your aggregator.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/
(Sources: The Virtual Chase, Library Stuff)

NEW BOOKS/VIDEOS

Received September 11 - 17, 2004