The institute gets ₹1.84 crore seed money to set up the centre of excellence

Vikram, a cold-hearted secret agent, a widower, is the only one who can save the universe.

... are what Vidya Ravichandran uses to handcraft gift items

Often panned for not realising the minefield of talent that he is, Samson became the first Indian batter to hit back-to-back centuries in T20 Internationals as his 50-ball-107 with as many as 10 monstrous sixes took India to 202 for 8 in 20 overs.

A commonly used blood thinner can be repurposed as an inexpensive antivenom treatment, a study published in Science Translational Medicine has said

Got this in an email from one of my lists:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This presumably will be drawing some attention shortly. It is a very disturbing report by editors from the Journal of Cell Biology and the Journal of Experimental Medicine who have joined with the Executive Director of the Rockefeller University Press in reporting their inability to verify published impact factors using data provided provided by ISI itself. Their fruitless efforts to replicate published impact factors for their own and other journals revealed numerous and serious errors in several data sets provided by ISI and call into question the validity of both ISI's dataset and their published impact factors. If the problems they encountered are widespread, then the host of evaluative decisions that rely at least in part on published impact factors are suspect. Published impact factors affect authors' decisions about manuscript submission, funding awards, and promotion and tenure. While critiques of the use of impact factors are quite common, this is the first serious question raised about the underlying validity of the data used to calculate impact factors and therefore the accurracy of the metrics that are published.


The editorial by Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill was published in the Journal of Cell Biology and is available at
http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/1091

We need to start brainstorming for ideas and features that we want on the new science portal so we'll be prepared for when we locate a web designer.

Here are a list of some other science library websites. Not all are great but I'd like for us to discuss what elements we like and which features we don't like (just as important). Please feel free to post links to other libraries you think are worthy of critique. Also, if there are general guidelines and features that you'd like to include please post about those too.

My first impression looking at these sites is how busy they all are. Lots of links and it seems overwhelming at first glance. Its a decision that we'll have to make about how much information should be quickly accessible on the main page but yet still easily usable. Caltech's library page is the most easily navigated, IMO. I like the quick drop down boxes and the selection of links. I especially like the menu for authors - as the issue of open access and author rights becomes more important on campus, we'll need to take an active role in helping the faculty understand their rights and options for publishing.


Berkeley: Chemistry: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/CHEM/
Engineering: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ENGI/
Physics/Ay: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/PHYS/

Caltech: http://library.caltech.edu/

Chicago : http://www1.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/index.php3

Irvine: http://www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/science.html

Michigan: http://www.lib.umich.edu/science/

MIT Science Library: http://libraries.mit.edu/science/

Oregon Science Library: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/scilib/

Santa Cruz: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/scilib/

The URL for the mock-up Leila showed last Tuesday is:
lnadams.org/msl.htm

Please remember that this is just a design layout, the links do not work, and it is subject to extreme change.

Comments are highly encouraged! Please post to this blog or email Sara or Joe.

Full Schedule
Proceedings

Best quote: Librarians are like Mr. Paperclip from MS Office - we pop up when you least expect it and try to offer to you help...

This conference focused on the science library's role in supporting e-science and integrating into research collaborations and science departments. There was a mixture of speakers: government, library and institute directors, and a few librarians. The presentations were a mixture of big picture descriptions and some concrete examples. I felt like there wasn't as much hard solutions that we could take back to the library and implement, but perhaps just educating the library community on how radically different e-science is changing the research landscape is the necessary first step.

I've included the highlights from my session notes below (let me know if you'd like the see my full notes in gory detail). Check out the proceedings link above for powerpoint and document files for most of the speakers.

As a side note, our poster about GatorScholar was well-received with many people already aware of the project from either Val's USAIN presentations, the SLA poster, or from hearing about Cornell's project. Medha Devare was one of the panel reactors and she mentioned our collaboration in her presentation. Most of the poster visitors seemed very interested in starting their own version and perhaps at some point we'll have a network of databases.

Thursday

E-Science: Trends, Transformations & Responses

Convener and Moderator: Wendy Lougee, University of Minnesota
Speaker: Chris Greer, Director, National Coordination Office

2. A Case Study in E-Science: Building Ecological Informatics Solutions for Multi-Decadal Research

William Michener, Research Professor (Biology) and Associate Director, Long-Term Ecological Research Network Office, University of New Mexico


3. Rick Luce, Vice Provost and Director of University Libraries, Emory University Libraries

"Making a Quantum Leap to eResearch Support: a new world of opportunities and challenges for research libraries"


Wendy Lougee

Pitfalls: not to fall back on traditional roles, currently we don't respond to multi-institutional collaborations, our boundaries stop with the institution

We need to understand scientists' workflows, need to identify strategies for embedding librarians into project teams. We need to think about core expertise of librarians, reimaging roles of librarians

What do we do to build this collaborative action? We need to think outside the box.

Data Curation: Issues and Challenges

Convener and Moderator: James Mullins, Dean of Libraries, Purdue University

• Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN

Transition or Transform? Repositiioning the Library for the Petabyte Era

How can libraries work with science (in a very general sense)?

1. Transition or Transform? Need to become embedded and integrated into team science. Many different models of engagement

Geosciences pilot where the library worked with the Geological department to curate their datasets (Edinborough):
Found: Time needed is longer than anticipated, inventory doesn't have to be comprehensive, little documentation exists
Outcomes: positive, requirement for researcher and auditor training, need to develop a data policy

2. Lots of opportunities of action: leadership by senior managers, faculty coordination, advocacy & tranining, data documentation best practices

People and Skills: there are not enough specialised data librarians. In UK 5 data librarians. Need to bring diverse communities together - facilitate cooperation between organizations and individuals.

Open science: new range of areas where results are being put onto the web (GalaxyZoo eg.) Librarians need to be aware of implications.

3. Need multidisciplinary teams and people in library, huge skill shortage, need to find core data skills and integrate it into the LIS curriculum. Recruit different people to the LIS team, rebrand the LIS career. Go from librarianship to Informatics.

• Fran Berman, Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego, and Co-chair Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access

"Research and Data"

Researchers are detectives, shows different major questions (SAF, Brown Dwarfs, bridge stress, Income dynamics over 40 years, Disease spread-Protein Data Bank) - key collections all over.

CI Support: all these issues are crucial. researchers want a easy to use set of tools to make the most of their data.

She finds different preservation profiles: timescale, datascale, well-tended to poor, level of policy restrictions, planned vs. ad hoc approach

Researchers focused on new projects, customization of solutions to problems, collaboration

Researchers need help: developing management, preservation and use environments, proper curation and annotation, navigating policy, regulation, IP, sustainability

Questions about preservation: what should we save and who should pay for it? Just saving everything isn't an option. 2007 was the crossover year - digital data exceeded the amount of available storage. What do we want to save? Who is we?
Society: official and historically valuable data, Fed agency or inst normally takes part.
Research community: PDB, NVO.
Me: medical record, financial data, digital photos - real commercial market for preservation solutions.

What do we have to save?
private sector: HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley,
OMB regulations for fed funded research data (3 years, not always easy to do).

Economics: many costs associated with preservation. Maintenance upkeep, software, utilities, space, networking, security, etc.

UCSD forged partnership with library. Trying to create a preservation grid with formal policies, nationwide grid with other institutions.

Panel Responders:

• Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean of University Libraries and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center, Johns Hopkins University

Data Curation Issues and Challenges:

It makes sense to help scientists deal with public and higher levels of data, not the raw data.

Considerations: need to work within their systems, consider gateways for systems as part of infrastructure development (think about railroad gauge), focus on both human and tech components of infrastructure, human interoperability is more difficult than tech interoperability, trust is key!

Questions: What about the cloud or the crowd? Can Flickr help us with data curation? What are the fundamental differences between data and collections? Human readable vs. machine readable? How do we transfer principles into new practices? What are we trying to sustain? Data? Scholarship? Our organizations?


Supporting Virtual Orgs

• Thomas A. Finholt, Director, Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) and Research Professor & Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, School of Information, University of Michigan

Changing nature of geographically-distributed collaboration:

history: transition in terms of distributed work. Much of what came before (collaboratory, video conf) had a precedent but new emerging has no precedent (crowdsourcing, VO's), no traditional context leaves us a bit adrift.

Lesson 1: anticipate cultural differences.
Domain scientists: characteristics: power distance (bias toward seniority, hierarchical), individualist(solo PI, individual genius), masculine(adversial and competitive), uncertainty avoidance
CI developers: power distance (bias toward talent, egalitarian), collectivist(project model), masculine, embrace risk

Lesson 2: plan for first contact.

It can be tough to recognize successful innovations: first efforts are often awkward hybrids



Crowdsourcing: idea that we send out challenges and solutions come to us (ex. Innocentive website, Games with a Purpose). We don't know who is going to do the work, effort is contributed voluntarily -> incentives are important to motivate work

Delegation of organizational work: people can count on organizations to do some of the basic policy work. Much attention has focused on technology and processes to support social ties, alternative course is the use of technology to supplant social ties - > think of this as organizing without the work of organizing, questions of who to trust, who pays, permitted to use the resources are managed by middleware.

Group work is an inevitable fact of org life.

• Medha Devare, Life Sciences and Bioinformatics Librarian, Mann Library, Cornell University

Idea of Virtual Organization: boundary crossing, pooling of competencies, participants or activities geographically separated, fluid, flat structure, participant equality

Library contributions: technology choices, tools; tech support/guidance; subject expertise; understanding of research landscape; vision - user needs of the future?

Examples of library support: VIVO, DataStar (supports data-sharing among researchers)

DataStar: Data Staging Repository: supports data sharing, esp during research process, promotes publishing or archiving to discipline specific data centers and/or to Cornell's DR. Nascent stage

Reinventing the library? Librarians as middle-ware to facilitate process of connecting and creating coherence across disciplines - both VIVO and DataStar aid this.

Hope that both tools seamlessly interact with each other.


D. Scott Brandt, Associate Dean for Research, Purdue University Library

Tries to embed librarians in research teams. We have to redefine what we do, collect.

Narang said the sports science team, under the leadership of renowned sports injury expert Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala, is a never-before support for the Indian athletes.

A research paper documents the fact that older people tend to underestimate their cognitive decline and this could affect their finances; experts say senior citizens could be more vulnerable to cyber scamsters and to financial abuse from their own families

Exploring the dream of crossing the borders brought on by inquisitiveness and curiosity

New York, NY : Oxford University Press , 2024.

[New York] : W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2024.

Washington, DC : American Psychiatric Association Publishing, [2024]

Zydus Lifesciences’ ZyVac TCV receives WHO prequalification, eligible for U.N. procurement, combating typhoid fever in high-risk regions

Elon Musk's Starlink and global peers like Amazon's Project Kuiper back an administrative allocation of spectrum for satellite broadband

During the 141 th AGM of Indian Tea Association, the stakeholders of tea industry highlighted the challenges faced by the industry which included the “unsustainable increase in costs” amidst “unremunerative prices” with “adverse weather conditions across Assam and Bengal” further aggravating the situation. 

Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA, USA : Edward Elgar Publishing, [2023]

"We strongly urge you to rescind this appointment immediately and build a diverse White House staff who are committed to the core American values of inclusiveness, diversity and tolerance," the letter delivered to the Trump said.

45 students awarded gold medals for their academic performance

The executive programme aims to equip professionals with the essential skills and knowledge to excel in the fields of data science and AI

Prof Geim addressed the 15th Convocation of Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science (HITS).

Applications are open until November 29, 2024, with additional admission rounds planned for the 2025 entry year.

At the science exhibition at the Mahatma Montessori Higher Secondary School, students showcased their skills in innovation

A masterful exponent of seam and swing bowling, de Villiers shares his thoughts on the craft and its practitioners, and sheds light on why he was so good at the death and what it was like to be a part of an era when South Africa returned to the international game

Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press , 2024.

The first scientist from a developing country to be appointed to the top position of IBRO, Shubha Tole is currently the dean of graduate studies at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

The Hindu’s weekly Science for All newsletter explains all things Science, without the jargon.

This week’s Sci-five quiz is on Ada Lovelace.

The supplement is created with flavonoids, plant-derived secondary metabolites known for their health benefits.

FMCGs should be a priority target sector for ANRF, the new public-private partnership initiative, and the BioE3 policy of the government

Letting AI shape the future of science may undermine hard-won progress in getting science to build public trust

One million cases of human leptospirosis are reported every year resulting in an estimated 60,000 deaths

Over 70,000 undergraduate, postgraduate and M.Phil students given degrees in absentia and 520 Ph.D candidates, including 90 gold medal-winners, receive their degrees in person

This week’s Sci-Five quiz is on drones.

As the maximum phase of the current solar cycle approaches, continuously monitoring the Sun with Aditya’s VELC payload is expected to provide valuable scientific data

This week’s Sci-five quiz is on vampire bats.

The conference has been organised since 2005 by the Swadeshi Vijnana Andolana by joining hands with universities, and research and development institutions in Karnataka