Split into two parts

This blog is going to be split into two parts.

For information on new general science and engineering resources, they are now announced at http://www.sciencelibrary.org.

If items pertain to the Penrose Library and our patrons, they will be put onto a new blog that will be announced later.

Build a Trebuchet Contest with Legos

In connection with the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, "the Museum wants you to build a mechanical siege weapon out of Lego building blocks—seriously!" On January 16th, they will host a competition to see whose trebuchet throws an object the farthest. All team entries must be received no later than Thursday, January 7, at 5:00 p.m. Take a look at their entry form and contest rules.

This future can still happen!

Thanks to DLK and Aaron for finding...

Roomba Pac-Man

This is what our academic friends to the northwest of Denver are doing...

The Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been developing software that helps robots form ad-hoc networks and distribute cooperative control of their operations. Some of the individuals at RECUV decided to create a cool demo on their own time to show off what their software can do.

IEEE Xplore new interface soon

IEEE Xplore will be coming out with a new interface in February, 2010. If you are interested in learning a little bit more, take a look at the the following -- "Experience the New IEEE Xplore Digital Library."

Engineers Rule | Forbes Magazine Article

"At American auto companies, finance guys and marketers rise to the top. Not at Honda.

Of all the bizarre subsidiaries that big companies can find themselves with, Harmony Agricultural Products, founded and owned by Honda Motor, is one of the strangest. This small company near Marysville, Ohio produces soybeans for tofu. Soybeans? Honda couldn't brook the sight of the shipping containers that brought parts from Japan to its nearby auto factories returning empty. So Harmony now ships 33,000 pounds of soybeans to Japan."Read on for more...

Libraries are still a critical resource

I just read this in the new issue of the November ASEE Prism magazine, p. 10.

Lyle D. Feisel, Dean Emeritus, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, State University of New York at Binghamton, former president of ASEE wrote:

"Library Still a Critical Resource"
http://www.prism-magazine.org/nov08/email.cfm
(ASEE members will need to login with your ID/password combo.)

"As usual, Henry Petroski provides serious food for thought, this time in his article expressing concern about the passage of the print library. As one who has long enjoyed the pleasures of unexpected discoveries while wandering the stacks of a great – or even a minor – library, I share his concern. It is not clear to me, however, that this will significantly change the nature of scholarship or of engineering problem solving."

[A buncho stuff deleted so I don't get trouble with the copyright police...]

"While that means they must give up some space, I’m sure they will continue to be a critical resource for engineers and the rest of the campus community, aided now by the increasingly ubiquitous computer."For the most part, I think it is a good article, but he ignores the librarians who work in that space. Access to electronic resources is not provided in a vacuum. We figure out what books, journals, ejournals, databases, publishers, platforms, vendors and other resources are available with the money that is provided. We teach the students (and faculty) how to find, use and evaluate all of that data and information. In short, it is the people (librarians) who help the students and faculty turn all that stuff into knowledge.

Knovel University Challenge

Try to win a Wii, an iPod Nano, or some music. go to http://pages.knovel.com/KnovelUniversityChallenge.html.

Google Scholar’s Coverage of the Engineering Literature

Interesting article by John J. Meier and Thomas W. Conkling, Google Scholar’s Coverage of the Engineering Literature: An Empirical Study, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, May 2008. Google Scholar’s coverage of the engineering literature is analyzed by comparing its contents with those of Compendex, the premier engineering database. Records retrieved from Compendex were searched in Google Scholar, and a decade by decade comparison was done from the 1950s through 2007. The results show that the percentage of records appearing in Google Scholar increased over time, approaching a 90 percent matching rate for materials published after 1990.Thanks to Mel DeSart at the U of Washington for noting this.

New Journals from SPIE

DU students, staff and faculty can now access the six journals from the SPIE. They are:

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
Journal of Biomedical Optics
Journal of Electronic Imaging
Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS
Journal of Nanophotonics
Optical Engineering

Take a look at the Peak records for more info.

The Amazonification of articles?

There is an interesting article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine...

"People Who Read This Article Also Read," Greg Linden. "The recommendation systems that suggest books at Amazon and movies at Netflix will soon bring you personalized news.... The newspaper, that daily chronicle of human events, is undergoing the most momentous transformation in its centuries- old history. The familiar pulp-paper product still shows up on newsstands and porches every morning, but online versions are proliferating, attracting young readers and generally carving out a sizable swath of the news business."Thanks to Gary Price for noting at his blog.

National Engineers Week

You guessed it -- this week is National Engineers Week. It runs February 17-23rd.

Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century

With input from people around the world, an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Return to the website on February 15, 2007 at 2PM EST to learn their conclusions.

FIRST Robotics Competition coming to DU!

I plan to go to this great robotics competition at the end of March, 2008. This is a regional competition as part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) program.

Changing study habits of engineering students

This is from ASEE Prism magazine, January 2008, page 24.

CHANGING STUDY HABITS
"Laptops, WiFi and online catalogues make the traditional library obsolete."
By Henry Petroski

Our engineering library used to be crowded with students studying and doing homework. Toward the end of the semester, with project deadlines and final exams approaching, every seat at every table would be occupied well into the extended hours. Lately, however, the library has been so empty that there is talk of folding this once-busy branch into the newly expanded main library.

...

Some students used to be driven to the library to get away from loquacious roommates, raucous parties or loud music that was not to their liking. Now, with their own favorite music downloaded into their iPod or similar device, they can blast it into their ears and so mask all other noise. Also, since libraries seem to have become increasingly tolerant of food and drink on the premises - the aroma of coffee, which has replaced that of cigarette smoke in the atmosphere, is seldom absent - all of a student's senses can be occupied and so exclude all distractions.

...

But not every student with an open laptop in class has tuned out the lecture. On more than one occasion I have had a student volunteer information that I did not have at my fingertips, showing my PowerPoint presentation to be as offline as I was. The student was following along - perhaps even anticipating the next slide - and was supplementing what I was saying with what is available on the Web. Sometimes what the student had found in the digital library was so relevant and revealing that it had to be projected for the entire class to see.

There can be no question that the personal computer has changed the way students and every wired citizen works and learns. It should be no wonder that the traditional books-and-and bookshelves library is a threatened species. In just a couple of decades, the once-staid institution has found its catalogues completely digitized and its books and jounrals increasingly so. The library is trying hard to keep up with the way today's students study and do research, not to mention how professors and other users now work. I know that my way of doing research has changed: I do not visit th engineering branch library nearly as often as I used to. With my laptop connected to the Internet, I do not have to.

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. His most recent book is The Toothpick: Technology and Culture.

Design News Magazine Article

"Second Life: A Virtual Universe for Real Engineering," By applying SL building tools, engineers are facilitating a paradigm shift in computer-aided design, Matthew J. Traum, Contributing Editor -- Design News, October 22, 2007

"First there was the drafting table and the pencil. Then there was 2-D CAD; next came 3-D drafting utilities like SolidWorks and ProEngineer. Now, San Francisco-based Linden Lab has evolved computer-aided design to its next plateau, offering free access to a computer-generated alternative universe called Second Life (SL) where users can build anything."

IEEE Xplore Toolbar

If you would like a quicker way to search the IEEE literature, give this toolbar a try.

New Science and Engineering books

Here are the new science and engineering books that we received in August.

Science books in the Q's
Engineering books are in the T's.

We keep a list of the most recent new books received over the last three to four months.