Monday 17 December 2007

Christmas Library Opening Hours---Reminder

Don't forget dear readers that the Kevin Street Library Christmas opening hours are as follows:

KEVIN STREET LIBRARY HOURS
Christmas & New Year 07/ 08

Mon 17- Thurs 20 December: 9.30am - 5.15pm
Friday 21 December: 9.30am-1.30pm



Saturday Dec 22 - Tuesday Jan 1: Closed (incl.)


Wednesday 2 January: 9.30am - 5.15pm


Normal term hours resume on Thursday January 3rd

Mon - Fri: 9.30am - 9.30pm
Sat: 10am- 5pm

Thursday 13 December 2007

Role of Nanotechnology in Solar Energy Generation

Prof Shay Curran delivers a free public lecture entitled The Role of Nanotechnology in Solar Energy Generation at DIT today at 4pm.

Existing solar panels are based on inorganic chemistry. They are made of rigid silicon and while effective, giving conversion efficiencies of between 12 and 20 per cent they are very expensive.
Prof Curran is going "organic" in a chemistry sense, producing thin film solar cells combining modified fullerenes suspended in a polymer layer. "We are sticking to the organics because they are much simpler, cheaper and flexible substances," he says. When Curran says flexible he means flexible. He envisages uses such as coatings on tent fabrics where the tent itself provides the electricity, or fabric-like sheets that can be thrown over a roof top to generate electricity for the home. Imagine a beach towel that also powers an MP3 player or a radio powered by the sun.
For the full Irish Times article see: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2007/1213/1197411732332.html

Tuesday 11 December 2007


Foresight is a premiere source of news relating to nanotechnology policy, applications and research. Here you can read daily headlines from Nanodot (their blog) and Nanotechnology News.

For nanotechnology news and updates check out Foresight at
http://www.foresight.org/news/news_events.h

Monday 10 December 2007

Thesis writing

Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation? This url links to useful sites for postgrad students focusing on tips and hints on the thesis writing process including:
  • how to start and how to finish

  • reflective writing,

  • different types of research methods

  • vivas and defending your thesis
http://www.learnerassociates.net/dissthes/

Friday 7 December 2007

BMJ full-text online


The British Medical Journal provides free access to original research articles. The full text of all other articles appearing in the print journal is made freely available for one week after publicatio and then again after one year.

See http://www.bmj.com/

Thursday 6 December 2007

DIT Kevin St Library Hours Christmas/New Year

DIT Kevin St Library hours for Christmas /New Year

Mon 17th-Thurs 20th Dec: 9.30-5.15pm
Friday 21st December: 9.30am-1.30pm.
Sat Dec 22-Tues Jan 1: Closed(incl.)
Wednesday 2nd January: 9.30am - 5.15pm

Please note normal term hours resume on Thurs 3rd January 08:
Monday - Friday: 9.30am - 9.30pm
Saturday: 10am- 5pm

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Medical imaging techniques


This resource from the Univeristy of Manchester is aimed at bioscience / physics students and focuses on medical imaging techniques. It contains case studies, an interactive quiz and tutorials covering MRI and CT images.

Friday 30 November 2007

MRI e-book


This is an illustrated textbook includes coverage of the mathematics of MRI, spin physics, NMR spectroscopy, imaging hardware and basic imaging techniques. The text is aimed at students of physics or medical related disciplines.

Produced by the Rochester Institute of Technology and available at the following link: http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri

Thursday 29 November 2007

Faculty of 1000 Medicine & Biology

New! DIT Library is currently offering access on a trial basis to Faculty of 1000 Medicine and the Faculty of 1000 Biology. These are unique online services that highlight and evaluate the most important articles published in medicine and biology based on the recommendations of a faculty of over 2400 leading clinicians and researchers.


Faculty of 1000 Medicine and Faculty of 1000 Biology help you stay on top of the important research in your field quickly and easily. Features include 'MyF1000' a personalised service tailored to your area of expertise and 'Top 10s' which are the best articles evaluated in the last month or the most viewed articles.

The trial runs until 31st December 2007 and access is from:

BioMedCentral e-journal resource


BioMedCentral publishes over 184 peer reviewed biomedical research journals with immediate free access for all titles.


Tuesday 27 November 2007

Chemical Constants data


The Fundamental Physical & Chemical Constants database gives values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics & chemistry as published by CODATA (Committee on Data for Science & Technology) and the NIST in 2002. Updates for 2006 are also available.


The site also includes conversion factors for energy equivalents recommended by CODATA for international use. For more information and to start searching look @ http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants

A day in the life of a histopathologist

Prof Eoin Gaffney is a consultant histopathologist at St James's Hospital in Dublin. He's a director of Biobank Ireland and is a strong advocate of research.

Friday 23 November 2007

New edition of Adams & Moss Food MIcrobiology


Two copies of the 3rd edition of Food Microbiology are now in the Short Loan Collection and three copies are available for lending at the 664.001579 shelfmark.

Food Microbiology
Martin R. Adams, Maurice O. Moss.
Cambridge : Royal Society of Chemistry,
2008 , 3rd edition.

Thursday 22 November 2007

Lessons from a Career in Science - James D Watson

James D Watson will be remembered forever in the annals of science for his part in the discovery of the structure of DNA early in his career.

Subsequent to that discovery he has had a long distinguished scientific career and at the age of 69 he has just published his autobiography, Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Career in Science (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Find the full article by William Reville with more info about James D Watson and his discovery of DNA structure @
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2007/1122/1195251660365.html

(image from britannica.com)

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Chemistry WebBook

New for chemistry and physics students.

The NIST Chemistry WebBook provides access to chemical and physical property data for chemical species.

Varieties of searches can be done such as formulae, chemical names, CAS registry numbers, electron affinity, molecular weight, and ionization energy.

Search at http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Careers for scientists


Have a look at http://www.phds.org/ for information about postgrad
opportunities, postdoctoral life, careers and jobs in science.

Monday 19 November 2007

New e-tutorial for pharmacy students


A brand new Internet Pharmacist web tutorial is now available at http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/pharmacist


Developed by Robert Abbott, an information scientist based at Intute: Health and Life Sciences, University of Nottingham this tutorial builds on the original by Fawz Farhan, Editorial Director, Mediapharm, consultant to HEA Health Sciences and Practice.

New for health science students

New resources for Health and Life Sciences


Friday 16 November 2007

WebElements Scholar - periodic table resource


WebElements by Dr Mark Winter aims to be a high quality source of info relating to the periodic table for uni and college students. The site contains lots of graphics showing elements' structures and periodic properties.



From genes to genomes


A new edition of 'From Genes to Genomes' is now available in the library.
Four copies are shelved at shelf number 572.8.



From genes to genomes : concepts and applications of DNA technology
Jeremy W. Dale and Malcolm von Schantz.
2nd edition
Wiley 2007.

Tuesday 13 November 2007

Links for Chemists


Links for Chemists is an index of chemistry resources on the web. This site is developed and hosted by The University of Liverpool, Department of Chemistry and includes sections on industry, publications, topics, companies and lab info.

Find L4C at http://www.liv.ac.uk/Chemistry/Links/links.html

Monday 12 November 2007

Conferences


PapersInvited is designed to assist researchers at all levels - scientists, professors, post-docs and students who are seeking publishing opportunities for their research papers. It presents a list of Calls for Papers issued by professional bodies, journal editors and other conference organizers in all disciplines.


Try the ' Specialization' area to view calls for papers in specific disciplines/areas of specialization under that classification.
Access this resource via the DIT Library databases list at

Friday 9 November 2007

Blog search engines

If you interested in finding blogs in your subject area, then the following blog search engines will prove useful in helping you to locate some:

http://www.technorati.com/

http://www.icerocket.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/

http://uk.ask.com/?o=312&l=dir


Image taken from http://www.irs-review.org.uk/sillysearchtemplate.htm

......and a blog or two to whet your appetite!

http://wordpress.com/tag/biochemistry/

http://scienceblogs.com/


Happy Hunting:-)

Aids Research

Two interesting articles on the subject of Aids research, published in the latest edition of the Science Today supplement of The Irish Times can be accessed by clicking on the links below:


http://0-www.ireland.com.ditlib.dit.ie/newspaper/sciencetoday/2007/1108/1194222838263.html


http://0-www.ireland.com.ditlib.dit.ie/newspaper/sciencetoday/2007/1108/1194222838259.html

Showcasing Irish Scientists

A new TV series entitled The Investigators, which aims to showcase the work of Irish scientists, started on RTE 1 last night. The seven programmes in the series " will look at areas where Irish scientists are having a real impact on problems important in a global context". Subjects covered include climate change, cancer and studies of the brain.


"Unsung heroes under the microscope by Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, Science Today supplement, 8/11/2007."
http://0-www.ireland.com.ditlib.dit.ie/newspaper/sciencetoday/2007/1108/1194222838261.html

Intute Blog


Click on the link below to access the new Intute blog.

http://www.intute.ac.uk/blog/

Thursday 1 November 2007

CogPrints


CogPrints is an electronic archive containing pre-refereed preprints and published papers in computer science. Areas include artificial intelligence, complexity theory, HCI, machine learning and robotics.


Tuesday 30 October 2007

New editions of Theory and Practice of Histological Techniques & Clinical Procedures in Primary Eye Care

Theory and practice of histological techniques / edited by John D. Bancroft and Marilyn Gamble. 6th edition : Churchill Livingstone, 2008.

Clinical procedures in primary eye care / David B. Elliott.
3rd edition: Butterworth Heinemann, 2007.

Now available in the Short Loan collection at the library desk or see http://www.library.dit.ie/

Friday 26 October 2007

CoRR - Computing Research Repository


CoRR allows researchers to search, browse and download papers through its online repository. Subjects include artficial intelligence, computational complexity, security, networking, programming languages, robotics and software engineering. http://arxiv.org/corr/

Thursday 25 October 2007

Solar radiation and global warming


The climate change being recorded around the Earth is down to human activity, most scientists accept. But there are other potential contributors to global warming, including the sun.

Even a small increase in solar radiation could have an impact on the rate of warming, suggests the professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, Prof Joanna Haigh.

Haigh is an expert in radiative transfer in the Earth's atmosphere. She studies how gases and clouds in the atmosphere absorb and scatter radiation from the sun and also thermal radiation.
"A fundamental understanding of these mechanisms is important because the Earth's climate depends on a balance between incoming solar and outgoing thermal radiation," Haigh writes.
"In order to predict possible changes in the climate we need to assess its response to any imposed radiative imbalance.


Tuesday 23 October 2007

Physical and inorganic chemistry e-tutorials


A resource comprising a full-text set of online tutorials in physical and inorganic chemistry is now available. Prepared by Jim Plambeck of the University of Alberta and hosted by Intute at http://intute.ac.uk/sciences/reference/plambeck/chem1/ua101.html

Monday 22 October 2007

Collaborate with Google Docs


Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online to share and collaborate in real time for free. Store and organise your work. Control who can see your documents and read other users' examples.

https://www.google.com/

Irish TImes Archive



DIT Library subscribes to the new Irish Times Archive Search which is now available via the library website.


The Digital archive contains exact reproductions of all articles published by the Irish Times from 1859 onwards, while the Text archive contains material published on ireland.com from 1996 onwards.


Access this resource via the DIT Library website @

Friday 19 October 2007

2007 Nobel Prize Winners


Read about the new 2007 Nobel Laureates for physics, chemistry and medicine at http://nobelprize.org/

Endnote e-tutorials



EndNote is a bibliographic software package that allows you to record and organise personal files of searchable references to books, journals articles, conference papers, images, websites and any other kind of publication. Use the Cite As You Write function in MS Word to create bibliographies and cite references in your assingment.

For online tutorials go to the following link on the DIT Library website:

Thursday 18 October 2007

Institute of Food Science & Technology (UK)

For the latest food science and technology information go to the IFST website @

Science Direct Top 25 Articles in your subject area


Now you can keep track of the latest trends and developments in your speciality with Science Direct's Top 25 Hottest Articles. TheTop 25 is a free service which provides lists of most read articles- counted by article downloads on ScienceDirect. You can choose to view Top 25 lists by journal (from among more than 2,000 titles), or by subject (from 24 core subject areas). From these Top 25 results go straight to read the full article depending on your access rights.
You can sign-up to receive the free quarterly Top 25 alerts. When you register, choose to receive alerts by subject or journal, and subscribe to 10 alerts at once.

Nutrition Resources

Nutrition and food science information and sources available at http://arborcom.com/

Dietary Supplements


The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) is part of the US National Institutes of Health. The site provides research information about supplements and links to other nutrition info and material.

Wednesday 17 October 2007

Tables of Physical Data


Data tables for mechanics, electricity & magnetism, thermodynamics, acoustics, condensed matter, physical constants and optics are available @

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

PhysORG


PhysOrg.com is a website that provides the latest physics and nanotechnology news from around the world taken from verified news sites. http://www.physorg.com/

Monday 15 October 2007

Fundamental Physical Constants d-base


The Fundamental Physical Constants database gives values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics & chemistry as published by CODATA (Committee on Data for Science & Technology) and the NIST in 2002.

The site also includes conversion factors for energy equivalents recommended by CODATA for international use and an introduction to the constants for non-experts.

Friday 12 October 2007

Organic Chemistry Resources


This website aims to collect and annotate synthetic orgnaic chemistry sites. It has six sections: Resources, Chemicals, Analysis, Synthesis, Comunication and Activities. For ease of use there is a subject index and a search facility @ http://www.organicworldwide.net/

Physics Challenges

This site offers a wide range of physics challenges aimed at undergrads. The challenges involve the application of physics principles to everyday problems.

Created by the Physics Dept of the Duke University, NC @
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/physics-challenges/challenges.html

Thursday 11 October 2007

Eye Emergencies


An animated interactive study & revision program aimed at students, optometrists and ophthalmologists. It includes a variety of common scenarios where patients present with eye conditions and symptoms.

Hosted by the University of Birmingham @

Protein sequence analysis guide


A bioinformatics tutorial in nucleic acid sequence translation and identification guiding the analysis of a DNA fragment.


Produced by University College London at http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser/jj/introfrm.html

Wednesday 10 October 2007

Molecule of the Month @ the Protein Data Bank


The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is an international respository of experimentally determined 3D structures of biological macromolecules. Produced by the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics @ http://www.rscb.org/pdb

Reference Service


Need information fast on a research topic? An email reference service “Virtual Reference Centre” is available for registered staff and researchers of DIT Kevin Street Library. The service provides assistance by email with enquiries related to:

Ø Library subject databases searching
Ø Current awareness tools
Ø Obtaining full text content

Please email enquiries to kst.library@dit.ie - we aim to get back to you within 48 hours.

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Developing an eye drop to save sight

A UCC research team is figuring out ways to strengthen ailing eye cells that could prevent blindness in later life.

Approx 60,000 people in Ireland suffer from eye degeneration, failing vision and eventual blindness and it can have a debilitating impact on their quality of life. That's why scientists in Cork are seeking to beef up ailing eye cells and halt degeneration in a number of eye diseases. There's a whole gamut of different diseases, like retinitis pigmentosa [ RP], age-related macular degeneration [ AMD] and glaucoma, and they lead to blindness," says Tom Cotter, professor of biochemistry at University College Cork (UCC). "There are very few treatments for these conditions, and you are losing one of your five senses." The cells die through a suicidal implosion called apoptosis, a process that Cotter's group has studied for more than 15 years.

For the full article click on :
http://0-www.ireland.com.ditlib.dit.ie/newspaper/health/2007/1009/1191668769101.html

Monday 8 October 2007

Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists

Microbiology news and views to help the busy scientist keep up-to-date on current research, forthcoming conferences, hot research topics, high impact publications, and much more.

Available at http://www.horizonpress.com/blogger/

Thursday 4 October 2007

Wednesday 3 October 2007


Information skills sessions are now available for both new and returning science students.

Workshops for first years are subject specific and aim to introduce students to both the hardcopy resources on the library floor and the growing e-resource collection on the Library website. Introductory sessions cover areas such as finding information for assignments and using the library WebOpac.

More detailed seminars on building skills in areas such as database searching, e-journals, evaluating web resources, citing sources and keeping research current are also offered and can be tailored to suit class groups.

For more details please contact julie.defoubert@dit.ie