Biking to work always seemed like a good idea - get some exercise and save fuel, but when cars, buses and taxis whiz past you in rush hour this can be a hazardous experience. Having a safe route for cyclists makes good sense.  Read the following article from ECOS magazine. "Australian communities will benefit from $5.7 million worth of cycling infrastructure projects announced by the federal government in October. The money is part of the $40-million National Bike Path Program fund set up under the government’s Economic Stimulus Plan." more......

Federated Search technology will take you to the deep web

Read the full article at: http://www.osti.gov/fedsearch

If you’ve been searching for science information using popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you may be missing out on the research you need.

That’s because popular search engines generally cannot search in the deep web where most research is found.

To get to the deep web, you need federated search tools, such as Science Accelerator, Science.gov, and WorldWideScience.org.

With these federated search tools you can find the richest content – the results of billions of dollars worth of government-sponsored scientific research.

In one query, you can search multiple databases at one time, sort through the information in ways that are useful to you, and rapidly return relevant results to your desktop.

THE OPEN SURFACE SCIENCE JOURNAL is an open access online journal, which publishes original full length, short research articles (letters) and reviews on all areas of fundamental and applied surface, interface, and thin films science. http://www.bentham.org/open/tosursj/index.htm

Genome Biology and Evolution is a wholly open access journal that publishes evolutionary advances at the forefront of genomics.

Papers considered for publication report novel findings in the field of evolutionary biology that concern natural genome diversity, population genomics, the structure, function, organisation and expression of genomes, comparative genomics, proteomics, and environmental genomic interactions.

Major evolutionary insights from the fields of computational biology, structural biology, developmental biology, and cell biology are also considered, as are theoretical advances in the field of genome evolution.

The journal is owned by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” the manuscripts detailing the theory of natural selection are being placed online.

On Tuesday [November 24th], Darwin Manuscripts Project will upload about 10,000 high-quality images of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts and notes.

These pages include 34 of the 36 known and located draft leaves of “Origin,” gathered together for the first time since Darwin wrote his seminal book, which was published on Nov. 24, 1859. http://darwin.amnh.org/

The online full text of this scholarly journal is available from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/index.htm

Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is a monthly journal of peer-reviewed research and news on the impact of the environment on human health. EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and its content is free online http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite launched this month will monitor climate change. SMOS is the first satellite designed to map sea surface salinity and to survey soil moisture on a global scale. Read more....

It began as a talking shop for rich intellectuals but 350 years later, the Royal Society is the de facto national academy of science By Steve Connor. Sir Christopher Wren is remembered today for the architectural wonder of St Paul's Cathedral, but he was also one an architect of one of the oldest scientific institutions in the world, the Royal Society, which today begins a celebration of its 350th anniversary. Read more....

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A huge dinosaur discovered in South Africa is a previously unknown species that sheds light on the evolution of the largest creatures ever to walk the earth, a scientist said Wednesday.

Adam Yates, a paleontologist at Johannesburg's Wits University, said the seven-meter-long Aardonyx Celestae occupied a "very significant position in the family tree of dinosaurs."

"This new dinosaur is helping us complete and revise our picture of how the truly giant dinosaurs first got going," he told reporters Wednesday.

Yates said the almost complete fossil remains of the vegetarian giant that existed in the Jurassic period 195 million years ago were discovered in the town of Senekal in South Africa's Free State province by a student five years ago. However, they have just classified as a separate species.

"Aardonyx probably walked on its hind legs but could drop to all fours as well. It had flattened feet with large claws that supported its body weight on the inside of the foot and a robust thigh for supporting weight," he said.

(Reporting by Alison Raymond; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

This post is from the site: http://www.semanticsearchengine.org/.

What is a semantic search engine? Generally speaking, it delivers results based on the science of meaning in language. Originally, many search engines tried to use phrase matching to deliver results, but were supplanted by Google's use of links and other factors to deliver accurate search results to the user. Unfortunately, it is still possible to get vague (or ambiguous) results for certain terms. A semantic engine uses rules of disambiguation to either find out the context of your search, or present you with different options. For instance, a search on "rock" might get you results for music, for stones of the non rolling variety, and for an insurance company logo. A semantic search engine might ask you what you are looking for, or show results around the context of other words in your search query, or present the most common items based on past experience in searching.

Some of the top known semantic engines in 2009 are:

Wolfram Alpha - A newly launched search engine.

Hakia - An engine you can ask quesitons, which lets you limit queries to "credible sites" as well as news and images.

Microsoft "Kumo" - A yet to be released replacement for Live Search

Powerset - Which processes Wikipedia results and can answer questions based on the "facts" therein.

Google Wonder Wheel - Which (at this date) doesn't even give its own result when you search on it!  

So far, a general Google, Yahoo, or even MSN search still brings up pretty good results compared to these engines. Wolfram Alpha isn't really a search engine because it does not bring up any other web pages, and it is a bit clunky. These engines may be missing the point for the average surfer who is likely looking for things outside the field of "knowledge." If you ever want to see what PG rated things people are searching for, check out Google Hot Trends and after you weep for the future of humanity, you might note that there aren't too many semantic-friendly queries in the list. Semantic engines are usually popular among academics, and we aren't talking about those people that got a BA degree in distributed studies. If you want to solve a linear equation, or get the mass of the planet so you can calculate orbital velocities, or see your age in minutes, then semantic engines are the way to go. Those of us who got English degrees and had to read Hard Times by Charles Dickens and totally hated it can still remember 20 years later that there was an educator in the book called Mr. Gradgrind, and he only cared about teaching facts. So far, Google is not going anywhere, because it can deliver choices (many of which include the requisite Wikipedia listing) and people still want that.

One last dirty secret for fans of semantic search engines: Searchers aren't that smart. As someone with a background in search, I can tell you that the average query on a search engine is for a website name. Why? Because people know the name of the website, but don't know how to type it into the URL bar. This is probably why Yahoo prefers not to publish an unfiltered list of search queries, because people will go to Yahoo to search for Google. Therefore, when people use a semantic engine and don't get the listing for the site they already typed in, they will not use the engine again. QED.

 

 

DeepDyve is a specialised search engine for technical, scientific and medical information. It now offers a service for renting articles for as little as $0.99 each.  The company's database covers thousands of journals and some 30 million articles, many of which are available for free. Click here to read an interesting and informative article on what DeepDyve has to offer.

There is a vast amount of information on the world wide web that cannot be found using general purpose search engines like Google. General purpose search engines provide only the tip of the iceberg of what is available on the web. There are alternatives to general purpose search engines:

• Subject Specific Search Engines - see links to Scirus and Science below.
• Subject Directories - see links to INFOMINE, Librarians Internet Index and DMOZ below.
• Search Engines that will search the invisible web - see links to CompletePlanet and INCYWINCY below.

Subject Specific Search Engine: SCIRUS - Scirus concentrates on Scientific Information only. It is the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 350 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

Subject Specific Search Engine: SCIENCE - Science.gov searches over 40 databases and 1,950 selected websites, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information, including research and development results. It allows you to Explore Selected Science Websites by Topic.

Subject Directory: INFOMINE - Provides scholarly internet resource collections. It allows you to browse or search by subject category.

Subject Directory: Librarians' Internet Index - One of the best known general directories on the web. "Librarians' Internet Index (LII) is a publicly-funded website and weekly newsletter serving California, the nation, and the world." Click here for more information.

Subject Directory: DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. "The web continues to grow at staggering rates. Automated search engines are increasingly unable to turn up useful results to search queries. The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites can't keep up with submissions, and the quality and comprehensiveness of their directories has suffered. Link rot is setting in and they can't keep pace with the growth of the Internet." For more information click here.

Search Engines that will search the Invisible Web: CompletePlanet.
Discover over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines. "There are hundreds of thousands of databases that contain Deep Web content. CompletePlanet is the front door to these Deep Web databases on the Web and to the thousands of regular search engines — it is the first step in trying to find highly topical information. By tracing through CompletePlanet's subject structure or searching Deep Web sites, you can go to various topic areas, such as energy or agriculture or food or medicine, and find rich content sites not accessible using conventional search engines." For more information click here.

Search Engines that will search the Invisible Web: INCYWINCY -

* 200 million pages spidered and indexed
* hundreds of thousands of search engines indexed and searchable
* runs on a cluster of NRS servers running the Linux Operating System
* user listings, premium keyword purchase, and custom website spidering
* personalized search with relevancy boosting for particular content categories
* search types: web, directory, forms, search engines, images, metasearch
* search and page alerts, bookmarks, and mail accounts
For more information click here. 

 

 

"JSTOR® is a not–for–profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly content. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship."

Title List - Biological Sciences Collection

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