Science!
Wednesday February 28, 2007
How to Find Chemical Information, Part II
Another highlight from Maizell's How to Find Chemical Information...
Bad synthesis indexing (Ch. 7.7.K). I knew it! Searching SciFinder Scholar for synthesis methods can be frustrating because of the number of false hits. Lots of articles may pop up when you do these searches, but often many never really discuss the synthesis. I've wondered why this was. Was I conducting bad searches? Do I simply not understand the articles? (I always have to admit the possibility that there's a conceptual gap between my chemistry understanding and the inferences of a chemistry research article. Always.) I'm feeling better about my librarian skills now, knowing that there's a reason for this: beginning in 1983 a 'P' designation for preparation methods was included on relevant article records, determined by a computer algorithm analyzing content. Sounds good--if only it had worked. A lot of articles would get the P for having something on preparation, and something on your chemical, but not necessarily both at the same time. And sometimes it was even less accurate.
The result is that, essentially, when you search for the synthesis of a compound, SciFinder returns a list of articles discussing the compound, some of which will be what you want. You can avoid wasting time reading the wrong articles by first reviewing the abstract and indexing for returned articles, looking specifically for the chemical and its role in the study, but that has always seemed sort of ridiculous and not teachable. Why not improve the algorithm? In 1994, they did. Literature added since then is indexed with preparatory terms only by the document analyst (i.e., a human scanning the article).
Maizell reports that CAS staff believe the preparation indexing was 99% accurate. How they arrive at this term is not mentioned, but based on my own experience I find it hard to believe. Nor is there any indication they fixed all the false indexing created during the Reign of the Synthesis Algorithm.
Good to know.
Posted by jkwilson ( Feb 28 2007, 02:26:36 PM EST ) PermalinkHow to Find Chemical Information, Part I
I've been reading through Robert Maizell's How to Find Chemical Information to further my chemistry librarianness. The book is nine years old at this point and therefore dated in many respects, but most of the concepts and history are valuable. I'm still learning a lot about chemistry research myself, my own background being more astronomy, physics, computer science, and mathematics. I figured I'd share some of the interesting tidbits I pick up as I proceed, for my edification and yours.
Translations (Ch. 5.7). People in all sciences sometimes need foreign language articles. Sometimes they optimistically think that we can always get an English copy of what's needed. Having to break their spirit by explaining this isn't the case makes me wish this was true. When you can't find a translation, there are still solutions to the problem, though, even if you're not friends with a bilingual colleague:
- Read the abstract only. Often this is in English, especially if indexed by CAS or another service. Maybe this is enough to go on. Or at least enough to know how much time you should devote to finding this article.
- Find equivalent journal articles, reviews, or books. Try patents, too, especially if you're looking for a foreign patent. Often an English version will appear later.
- Scan tables, graphs, equations, and figures to pick out some of the relevant portions. If nothing else, maybe that will help determine where to work with a foreign language dictionary on translation.
- Purchase a custom translation. There are services which do this for you for a fee, and it probably ensures more accuracy than doing it yourself with a dictionary. [Maizell doesn't mention a similar suggestion I usually give people: hit up the foreign language department at your university. Maybe you can get a student to translate it for you cheaply, or get it for free by having their instructor make them do it!]
Friday February 09, 2007
Whoa
This is fascinating. Over on Cognitive Daily, they posted the results of a quick experiment in which readers were asked to select a number, any random number they wanted, between one and twenty. Here were the results:
For whatever reason, an extremely high percentage of the 347 respondents picked 17 (dark blue bars). By comparison, 347 numbers randomly generated by a computer (light blue bars) were much more evenly distributed. Significant analysis follows, and several objections to the conditions of the experiment are posted in the comments.
Mostly I think it shows that humans and computers have different ideas about what "random" really means. Many readers probably felt like 17 was the least common number in daily life (although if you're a cribbage player, you'd argue that it's 19) so therefore it seemed the most random. Whereas you can see that 5, 10, 15, and 20 all got a low response. A machine wouldn't differentiate the same way.
So speaking of random number generation, every year I participate in a college bowl game-picking pool organized by a friend of mine. Essentially, it's just a contest between about twenty people to try to pick the most bowl games correctly. I only vaguely follow college football so I'm out of my depth to begin with, although the pool is comprised of a range of people, from those obsessed with college football, down to people who are completely ignorant. I'd guess I'm in the 20th percentile or so of participants. Meaning I have more base subject knowledge (on college football) than about 1 in 5 others. But I think anyone who's participated in a NCAA tournament pool knows that knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and the person who has followed the game closest throughout the season not only doesn't have an advantage, they probably, in fact, have a disadvantage.
The point is, I make all of my picks via random number generation. I've tried different methods in the four years I've played, all lacking scientific validity. Here's a summary of my methodology:
Year 1: Random number generation by MS Excel
Year 2: Combination of Excel and polling my roommate (whom I perceived as lucky) for random numbers
Year 3: Asking friends to gather numbers from random.org, which I compiled and gleaned results
Year 4: Random number generation by Google spreadsheet
This last year I finished in 2nd place in the pool. Second place! Picking entirely randomly, going only by meaningless numbers generated by Google spreadsheet software, I out-picked nearly the entire field. Year 1, the other year with no human intervention, was similarly successful--in the top three I think. The worst year was Year 3, which required the most human participation. Even though the numbers were random, I asked people to gather them. I finished last, easily. Year 2 was somewhere in the middle.
What I'm saying is, if you're in an NCAA tournament pool with me this year, beware Google spreadsheet!
Posted by jkwilson ( Feb 09 2007, 09:56:11 AM EST ) Permalink
Wednesday February 07, 2007
DST is the new Y2K
An interesting calendar problem has cropped up thanks to new Daylight Saving Time (DST) rules. It's being extended by 4 weeks starting this year, beginning 3 weeks earlier and ending one week later under provisions of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005. Our campus calendar system, and presumably several other electronic clocks and calendars, need a patch to be made aware of the change.
So for the window of time between March 11 (when it now starts) and April 1 (when it would've started under the old rules), we might have some calendar havoc as schedule meetings don't post at the right time. Luckily we have a good IT department that seems to have fixed it.
Although I'm glad to see a proactive shift to save energy--is there a good reason not to do this?--this is almost certainly bigger news for IT folks than for others, since most people have no idea when DST starts or ends anyway, we just change our clocks when they tell us to. They are also kind enough to do it over a weekend so if you somehow miss it you'll probably figure it out sometimes Sunday. Still, I'm frankly amazed the whole scheme works. There must be some social science jargon for events that work simply because everyone agrees to play along, but I'm afraid I lack the vocabulary.
Speaking of clocks, I got this spiffy National Geographic wall clock for christmas:
Traditionally styled and always accurate, the clock synchronizes each night to the U.S. atomic clock in Colorado and self-adjusts for daylight saving time, leap seconds, and other time changes.
That's right. Leap seconds.
Posted by jkwilson ( Feb 07 2007, 10:38:04 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday January 23, 2007
Why are you here?
Over the weekend I attended the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. It was a great program and I learned a lot about the current state of science blogging. My biggest conclusion is: why are you here? If you dig science bloggery, you need to hit ScienceBlogs, truly the world clearinghouse on science blogging, and home to numerous excellent writers, bloggers, and scientists.
One project I've been working on of late has been the PAMS reference wiki. It's been sort of chugging along as I've been thinking about exactly how I wanted to use it, but my interest in the wiki was greatly renewed during the conference after a talk by Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley of the UsefulChem Project. He's doing some really interesting work, with a commitment to open source science. I really like the interactivity and ease of wikis, and recognize that wikipedia is the default first stop for information needs for a significant portion of internetters these days, no matter what the topic. Which is to say, it's easy and relevant and most everyone likes it, so as a librarian I'm totally on board. For professional research, the library is still (easily) the place to go, but eventually the two concepts are going to merge. I'll be fascinating to see exactly how.
Science! will probably continue to be home to interesting anecdotes I come across, but I don't anticipate posting any more frequently than I do now, unless I am hit with some kind of repurposing brainstorm. Mostly ScienceBlogs, The Annals of Improbable Research, and Modern Mechanix cover what my first thoughts were about this blog, and the PES News blog covers most of the new happenings in the library relevant to what I'm doing.
Posted by jkwilson ( Jan 23 2007, 12:08:12 PM EST ) Permalink
Wednesday January 17, 2007
The Open Laboratory
The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006 is now available at http://www.lulu.com/content/631016
Looks interesting!
More information from the editor here:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/01/the_science_blogging_anthology.php
Posted by jkwilson ( Jan 17 2007, 11:53:11 AM EST ) Permalink
Thursday January 04, 2007
2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference
Consider attending the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, coming up Saturday, January 20. This is a free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web.All information on the conference can be found at http://wiki.blogtogether.org/blogtogether
I'm going!
Posted by jkwilson ( Jan 04 2007, 02:48:27 PM EST ) Permalink
Tuesday December 12, 2006
Santa's Relativity Cloud
It would be wrong not to point out breakthrough research being done on this campus. See The Science of Santa.
And there?s really no need for Santa to enter the house via chimney, although Silverberg says he enjoys doing that every so often. Rather, the same relativity cloud that allows Santa to deliver presents in what seems like a wink of an eye is also used to ?morph? Santa into people?s homes.Posted by jkwilson ( Dec 12 2006, 12:58:22 PM EST ) Permalink
Wednesday November 29, 2006
Mythbusters
Science! heartily endorses Mythbusters, of which the New York Times says:
It may be the best science program on television, in no small part because it does not purport to be a science program at all. What ''Mythbusters'' is best known for, to paraphrase [co-host Jaime] Hyneman, is blowing stuff up. And banging stuff together. And setting stuff on fire. The two men do it for fun and ratings, of course. But in a subtle and goofily educational way, they commit mayhem for science's sake.The core mission of the show is to test urban legends and folklorish tales of incredible feats to determine whether they could actually happen. You know, with science. For example, they devoted a recent episode to testing the mentos and diet coke phenomenon, changing variables, constructing power nozzles, and trying to set height records. In another episode, they tried out a bunch of cat burglary movie cliches: assembling suction cup building-climbing apparatus, cutting through glass doors without setting off alarms, and trying to hack laser burglar alarms, just to name a few.
It's rarely the most thorough investigation, but they have the budget, time, and engineering expertise that most of us lack. So they can try stuff like building personal jet packs. A lot of things naturally get blown up or broken--in the last episode I watched they tested (and confirmed) the effect of a compressed gas tank nozzle getting broken off. In their controlled test they dropped a metal weight onto the valve, snapping it off, and launching the tank-turned-propelled-missile into a cinderblock wall, which it went cleanly through.
Anyway, it's on the Discovery Channel. Best show on TV*. Check it out sometime.
*Other than the Venture Brothers. But that's about SUPERscience, not regular science.
Posted by jkwilson ( Nov 29 2006, 03:53:17 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Saturday November 25, 2006
Somehow makes even The Lord of the Rings seem short
It is hard to overemphasize the shocking suddenness of life's proliferation in the seas and on the lands of Earth. Suppose some galactic civilization had evolved on planets of stars older than the sun, and they had sent out a dozen expeditions to visit Earth, spaced evenly throughout Earth's history. The first ten expeditions would have found only lifeless craters, lavas, sand dunes, and highly eroded river channels on Earth's land surfaces. The eleventh expedition would have arrived 380 My [million years] ago and would have found the land mostly covered by flourishing Devonian forests. The twelfth expedition would find us.
From William K. Hartmann & Ron Miller's The History of Earth. Recommended as a highly readable summary of the geological and biological evolution of the planet. Mostly geology, since that's actually most of Earth's history--6/7ths of it, in fact, without any life whatsoever. Human history is even more absurdly short, about 10,000 years, compared to 4,500,000,000 years of Earth history. Which is to say the Earth has been human-free for 449,999/450,000 or 99.9998% of its existence. (By comparison, dinosaurs were around for something like 150,000,000 years--15,000 times as long as us.)
Anyway, if at this point in your life you're not completely blown away by the staggering scale of geologic time, this is a nice book to fix that.
Posted by jkwilson ( Nov 25 2006, 11:26:40 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday November 08, 2006
Transit of Mercury
Astronomy is exciting when things pass in front of other things. It can teach us a lot, like when galaxies pass in front of other things in deep space, which can cause a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Or, it can just look really swell and give us a window into how everything is moving around out there, as in eclipses.
Today, witness a fairly rare event: a transit of Mercury across the face of the sun. You can get more information and witness a broadcast online at the Exploratorium. The transit begins about 2:15pm Eastern Time. Hopefully the webcast will be worthwhile: it's a reduced size image suitable for internet broadcast, of something already small and sort of fuzzy if you're not looking closely.
This is similar to a solar eclipse in that we'll see one object passing between us and the sun, manifesting in a shadow of that object. The difference is that while the angular size of the moon is just about that of the sun from Earth perspective, resulting in occasional total eclipses, Mercury appears much, much smaller. Like, this small (image from Exploratorium site):
I was fortunate to see the 1999 transit live through a solar telescope. But that time, Mercury just clipped the edge of the solar face. This time it will catch more of the disk from where I'm at, and will take around five hours. On the east coast, the sun will set before the transit is finished.
Posted by jkwilson ( Nov 08 2006, 10:34:19 AM EST ) Permalink
Monday October 30, 2006
Little chocolate donuts
My next exercise as chemistry reference librarian: look up all the dubious compounds contained in the donuts I just ate. (Ironically and idealistically known as Mrs. Freshley's Chocolate Mini-Donuts, purchased out of a vending machine. The good news is that they had an expiration date.) My short-term goal is to use library resources to understand the purpose of each of the mystery ingredients. My long-term goal is to scare myself into never being tempted to eat these things again:
sodium acid pyrophosphate
sodium aluminum phosphate
monocalcium phosphate
dextrins
guar gum
karaya gum
monoglycerides
sodium stearoyl lactylate
xanthan gum
bees wax
cellulose
enzyme [this is frighteningly vague--I'm not quite sure this counts as full disclosure of ingredients, to be honest]
sodium propionate
potassium sorbate (to preserve freshness)
Posted by jkwilson ( Oct 30 2006, 04:18:13 PM EST ) Permalink
2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference
I'll be going to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, to be held at UNC in January. If you're interested in science blogging and will be in the area, please consider attending. From the site: "This is a free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web." Have a look at the site for more details.
Should be interesting to meet some others in the area who have actual science blogs, instead of my random science news observations (on topics sometimes decades old).
Posted by jkwilson ( Oct 30 2006, 02:26:56 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [3]
Friday October 13, 2006
All nine lives used up
Genetic Savings & Clone is going out of business.
I discussed this a while ago: they were in the truly insane business of cloning cats for a steep fee. This was actually a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. They only cloned five cats successfully, and sold only two to paying customers. According to the AP story, they simply haven't been able to make the process commercially viable.
Posted by jkwilson ( Oct 13 2006, 11:39:22 AM EDT ) Permalink
Monday October 09, 2006
Nemesis!
Highly recommended, as a readable introduction to the process of working through from scientific hypothesis to theory, is Richard Muller's Nemesis. (By remarkable coincidence it is available in this library, or it will be, once I turn it in.)
The Nemesis theory is a fun one. Having a look at the graph below will help explain it (from Rampino MR, The galactic theory of mass extinctions: An update. Celestial Mechanics & Dynamical Astronomy 69 (1-2): 49-58):
What we're seeing here is the number of living species (represented by the rather brutal 'species kill percentage') over time. We see that there are frequent "death spikes", where large numbers of species perish all at once. It turns out these even happen with some regularity, something like every 26-30 million years, depending on how much you trust the age measurements of the fossils. You can see that the death spikes are often accompanied (especially in more recent times, when they're easier to find) by signs of comet, asteroid, or meteor impacts--leaving behind craters and iridium and kicking up dust ("ejecta").
The fact that the impacts are happening fairly regularly isn't really the subject of debate any more (Muller's book takes you through some of the early discoveries of these impacts). But the cause and exact frequency of the impacts is another matter. Why are we getting bombarded with such regularity? It can't be coincidence.
Muller and his colleagues originally came up with the idea of Nemesis, a theoretical companion star to the sun. When it approaches every 26 million years or so, it wrenches a bunch of comets out of their stable, distant lives in the outer solar system, and sends them hurtling towards the sun, some of which will eventually impact Earth. The book takes you through the development of the hypthosis as he rules out several potential alternate theories, debates evidence with other teams of scientists, and fights to prevent the mass media from completely getting it wrong or embarrassing him. It's a great window into the world of scientific discourse. How are theories developed? How are they disproven? How do teams of experts in different fields effectively work together? What happens when another reputable team has a different theory? How do "nutty" theories gain respect, and how does any theory stand up to scrutiny?
The book was published in 1988, so it's somewhat dated, but the theory itself is still around and depending on what you read, appreciating about the same level of moderate acceptance. It's left with Muller preparing to search for the Nemesis star, and nearly twenty years later it has still never been definitively identified--making it easy to write off the theory. Detractors also usually cite a lack of evidence for the periodicity of the extinctions (despite the graph seen above, the dating isn't entirely accepted), or insufficient proof that Nemesis could have a stable orbit with respect to the sun. The most commonly-studied alternate theory these days is that the solar system actually oscillates up and down with respect to the galactic plane while it orbits around the galactic center, and when it crosses this plane (every 26 million years), the extra mass of dust and gas nearby is enough to perturb some comets. Muller actually considers and dismisses this theory within his book. So, the matter is hardly settled.
Anyway, while it's obviously not helpful to the theory that no candidate star has been found, it's not hopeless either--such a star would be very small and currently is at its furthest from our solar system. So the good news is that if we believe the theory, the "putative death star" (as geologist Eugene Shoemaker referred to it) is a good 10-15 million years away from a return trip.
Posted by jkwilson ( Oct 09 2006, 05:18:39 PM EDT ) Permalink
