Featured Journal: Nature

Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature also provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science, scientists and the wider public.

The library subscribes to Nature. Check out the current issue's table of contents!

College Student Mindset

"A rite of autumn is under way with the arrival of first-year students at thousands of colleges and universities for registration. Most 18-year-old students entering the class of 2010 this fall were born in 1988. They grew up with a mouse in one hand and a computer screen as part of their worldview. They learned to surf the internet as they learned to read. While they were still in their cribs, the 20th century started to close as the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet bloc disintegrated, and frequent traditional wars in Latin America gave way to the uncontrolled terrors of the Middle East.

Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. A creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students. " Read the rest of the article-
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports

Patterns of Global Terrorism Reports
As a public service, Berkshire Publishing is posting here large sections from its Patterns of Global Terrorism 1985-2005: U.S. Department of State Reports with Supplementary Documents and Statistics for free pdf download. Also provided in html format will be a document of particular current relevance from each section of the volumes.
Of special note is the Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents from 1964-2005.134 pages; PDF.

Children and Environmental Health

Several New Papers on Children and Environmental Health Issues (PDFs)
+ Trials and Tribulations of Protecting Children from Environmental Hazards
+ An Exploration of Ethical Issues in Research in Children’s Health and the Environment
+ The Politics of Risk: A Human Rights Paradigm for Children’s Environmental Health Research
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part I: Genetic and Prenatal Testing
+ Privacy and Ethics in Pediatric Environmental Health Research Part II: Protecting Families and Communities
Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

Archive for Homeland Security

New Online From the Federal Research Division/Library of Congress
U.S. Army Field Manuals, War Department/Department of the Army Pamphlets

The full text of selected U.S. Army Field Manuals (FMs), War Department Pamphlets (WD PAMs), and Department of the Army Pamphlets (DA PAMs), which particularly address some of the current research needs and interests of The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center & School Library will be added regularly to this site.
Source: Docuticker

The Almanac of Higher Education

The Chronicle's 2006-7 "Almanac of Higher Education" is now online. It includes national and state-by-state data on colleges and universities and their students, faculty and staff members, and finances.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/

STATE-BY-STATE ROUNDUPS
Profiles and data for higher education in the 50 states and
the District of Columbia.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/states/states.htm

ACROSS THE NATION
National data on college enrollment trends, faculty salaries,
test scores, degrees awarded, tuition and fees, spending on
research and development, student aid, and more.
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2006/nation/nation_index.htm

50 Popular Science Blogs

Weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare, but some of them are proving popular. Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by the Technorati blog search engine, five scientists' sites make it into the top 3,500. This list gives you a chance to get acquainted with these five sites (Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, RealClimate, Cosmic Variance, Scientific Activist) and many more.
50 Popular Science Blogs
Source: Nature Journal

U.S. Government Manual 2006-2007

As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The new edition of the Manual is available annually in late summer. You may search or browse.
Source: U.S. Printing Office

Lower Cost for College Textbooks

“In response to growing student concern about the high price of college textbooks, the major publishers have developed lower-cost versions of a few of their textbooks. In addition, alternative and online publishers have emerged on the market, offering free or lower-cost versions of some textbooks to students and professors. In order to provide a snapshot of the lowercost textbook market, we examined the lowercost options offered by the major publishers in their online catalogues and identified several alternative publishers offering textbooks for a lower price or for free.”
Textbooks For the 21st Century: A Guide To Free And Low Cost Textbooks
Source: Student Public Interest Research Groups

U.S. Census FactFinder Database

Changes and New Data Made to U.S. Census FactFinder Database

+ 2004 ZIP Code Business Patterns
+ 2005 American Community Survey - Wave 1 - Social and Demographic Estimates released on AFF
+ Changes to the Fact Sheet, People and Housing pages
+ 2004 Nonemployer Statistics released
+ 2002 Economic Surveys made more visible in American FactFinder
+ Download Center - more data available from the Economic Census and Annual Surveys

What's Inside a JPEG File?

As common as these files are in everyone’s life, very few of us actually know what goes on inside a JPEG file and still fewer understand the many pitfalls associated with using this choice when storing their digital photographs. This essay describes the inner working of this file format that we so commonly use, highlighting its many merits and it many flaws. Like any tool that is available to us, there are correct ways to use the JPEG file format and there are times when it is a poor choice.
What is inside a JPEG file?
Source: The Society for Imaging Science and Technology

Booker Prize For Fiction 2006

The long list for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006, one of the most prestigious book awards, was announced this week. Now in its thirty-eighth year, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 and both the winner and the short listed authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales.

The short list will be published by September 14. The winner will be announced on October 15. The choices for the long list, short list, and the winner create great excitement in the book world. The bookmakers in England have Mitchell’s Black Swan Green as the 5-1 favorite so far. I hear that Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is excellent. Many of the authors have been on the list before or have won.

Here is the long list:
Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life
Grenville, Kate The Secret River
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights
Lasdun, James Seven Lies
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch

If you are interested in reading any of these, contact the library.
Source: Booker Prize Online

College Campuses & Security

Some college campuses – especially small ones – might believe they are immune from terrorist activity. But that sense of security is false, says Paul M. Cell, chief of the Montclair State Police Department. “Each institution has its own unique appeal to the various terrorist causes,” says Cell, who is certified in terrorism response and prevention training for law enforcement. In addition to the more publicized dangers campuses face – the bombing of a large research university’s nuclear facilities, for example – incidents that are smaller in scope but still threatening to the campus community can also occur – such as targeting an individual staff or faculty member because of controversial research, or running a Web site that supports a terrorist organization.

Another common misconception is that a general emergency plan will be adequate in responding to such incidents, Cell says. “The most commonly overlooked security concern at many colleges and universities is the belief that just having an emergency plan is enough,” he says. “All too often, emergency plans are not exercised, updated, or properly disseminated to the community.” On August 23, Cell will detail how to conduct thorough campus risk, threat, and vulnerability assessments for all types of institutions during a live, 90-minute audio conference on “Level Red: A Community Approach to Mitigating Campus Terrorism.” The focus will be on a multidisciplinary, multijurisdictional approach to campus preparedness.
For more information, click here.

Book Donations

The library is now working with HANDS ACROSS THE WATER, INC. (HATW) to collect books for needy libraries and schools in book starved areas in our country and globally. HATW is a nonprofit charitable organization that has strengthened community and school libraries everywhere from Mississippi to the Fiji Islands. We are collecting every kind of book for all age levels, fiction/nonfiction, general reading books on all subjects, textbooks, encyclopedia sets, hard cover and paperbacks. We also accept books on tape plus DVD’s, but not magazines or journals. HATW has provided a container on campus to store books for pickup.

The library is donating books that we no longer need. Please join us in this charitable reuse project by bringing your surplus books to the library. Thank you.

Education Statistics for 2005

The National Center for Education Statistics posted on Thursday its complete 2005 Digest of Education Statistics. In May the center, the statistical arm of the U.S. Education Department, published many of the report’s tables and charts, which provide raw numbers on, among other things, the number of colleges, enrollments, and graduates, as well as educational attainment, finances, federal funds for education, attitudes on education, and education characteristics of the labor force.

On Thursday the center published the full Digest, a seven-chapter opus that eventually will be available in print. The new material largely repeats what was available in May, but it is broken up into a series of large data files and each chapter bears a lengthy headnote on the broad findings illustrated in the charts and tables that follow.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Beautiful Email

Certain email programs can badly "mess up" what you thought of as a beautifully crafted piece of HTML. For example, many programs - such as Outlook 2003-- won't display images in the email unless the user specifically permits this. Someone told me about a product that might help: Email Advisor from the Lyris company. http://www.lyris.com/products/emailadvisor/

Lyris' website says "EmailAdvisor offers you the first-ever view of exactly how your messages will appear in every single email client on the market today. What's more, after you send a message, you'll see how each of the 40 major ISPs is processing it–in real time–including which ones are inappropriately blocking or filtering it to a bulk folder."

School Matters

Despite a 50 percent increase in per pupil spending over the past two decades, nearly one third of public high school students fail to graduate, and two thirds of all students leave high school unprepared for a four-year college, according to the Manhattan Institute. Given the diminishing economic prospects for Americans without a quality education, the need for reform is clear

Here is a place for parents, educators and leaders to research information about public schools. Type in the school or district name to get performance, finance, and relevant demographic data. School Matters is a service of Standard and Poor's.
http://www.schoolmatters.com/

FedStats

FedStats is the new window on the full range of official statistical information available to the public from the Federal Government. Use the Internet's powerful linking and searching capabilities to track economic and population trends, education, health care costs, aviation safety, foreign trade, energy use, farm production, and more. Access official statistics collected and published by more than 100 Federal agencies without having to know in advance which agency produces them.
www.fedstats.gov

JOIN THE GOODWIN WIKI BOOK CLUB

Join the Goodwin wiki book club!

The wiki format makes it easier for the busy Goodwin community to have a commmunal discussion without the burden of meeting at a specified time in a specified place.This is a protected space that can be viewed by anyone but can only be edited by members of the space. As we grow in membership, the wiki book club can have sections devoted to different types of books.I will choose the first book and invite readers to read along. We will request copies through interlibrary loan for interested readers. I will post information and comments every week (or I may ask another reader to do so), and a discussion will follow in the comments section. This will become a regular feature, with a posting every Friday.Please let me know what you think of the book club idea in general. Suggestions are welcome!
http://goodwinlibrary.wikispaces.com

The first book will be announced Thursday, August 10.

Kafka on the Shore: Notable Book of the Week

Japanese fiction writer Haruki Murakami has had nine of his books published in the United States in translation. His latest novel has recently appeared, under the title Kafka on the Shore, in a translation by Philip Gabriel. This novel was chosen as one of 2006 notable books of fiction.

It's an engrossing two-pronged quest narrative, about a fifteen-year-old boy named Kafka Tamura and an old illiterate man named Nakata who, after a war-time accident as a child, acquires the ability to speak to animals and call down very unusual rainstorms from the clear blue sky.

Reading Murakami, clearly a world-class entertainer with a mysterious metaphysical bent, is a striking experience in consciousness expansion, of which the act of reading itself is a part. As one of the main characters, Kafka Tamura, says--holding up a book and sinking down onto a sofa at the library where he hides out for a while, on the run from his destiny and at the same time moving toward it--"Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world." When you’re reading a Murakami novel, you may feel this way, too.

(Goodwin Library is featuring a selection of Notable Books. The Notable Books Council, a division of the American Library Association, selected these titles for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge or for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers. So far our readers have agreed with the selections.)