Friday 23 August 2013

Increase in CAO points for primary education, ICT and specialist sciences at NUI Maynooth

The Bachelor of Education degree for primary teaching at NUI Maynooth has seen a surge in demand, coinciding with the move from Froebel College of Education in Blackrock to NUI Maynooth. Points for the BEd in primary teaching have increased to 495, the highest nationally.

There has been strong demand for ICT related courses at NUI Maynooth with the BSc in Computational Thinking at 520 points, 20 points up from last year and the BSc in Computer Science & Software Engineering up 5 points from last year. Specialist scientific courses at Maynooth also experienced strong demand with the BSc in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics increasing to 570 points and the BSc in Biotechnology up 10 points to 425.

Thursday 22 August 2013

Strategies for using Bibliometrics

Strategies for using Bibliometrics
 Evaluation of scientific research is notoriously hard, almost by definition: success means something not done before, but if it was not done before, then how can we evaluate it?

The day before death: New archaeological technique gives insight into the day before death

The day before death: New archaeological technique gives insight into the day before death
 For more than a century archaeologists have carefully brushed and shovelled away the soil surrounding human skeletons. It was thought that the soil was without any value – but now ground-breaking research from Danish scientists show that that the soil holds the key to very detailed information about the individual in the grave.

Satellites glimpse ultra-powerful “black hole” whirlpools in Atlantic

Satellites glimpse ultra-powerful “black hole” whirlpools in Atlantic
 Satellites have shown two mysterious 'black hole' whirlpools in the South Atlantic ocean - ultra powerful “vortexes” which suck water down into the depths.
The powerful vortices of current have been described as ‘maelstroms’ and are ‘mathematical analogues’ for black holes – which is to say they do exactly the same with water that black holes do with light.

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Earth Overshoot Day

Earth Overshoot Day

According to the 'Global Footprint Network' August 20 is Earth Overshoot Day 2013, marking the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

ChemDatabaseService - YouTube

ChemDatabaseService - YouTube

The National Chemical Database Service, which is funded by the EPSRC and hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry have produced a series of webinars about their (non-crystallography) databases.

SPRESIweb is a structure and reaction database for organic chemists. It contains 5.52 million molecules and 4.26 million reactions extracted from the literature by VINITI (USSR) from 1974.  

ARChem is another tool for the synthetic organic chemist.  It takes a database of reactions and uses it to generate a set of rules for finding synthetic pathways.  In this case, the database used is the RSC's 'Methods in Organic Synthesis’.  


ACD/i-Lab2 You can search by compound name or structure (draw or import).  It contains experimental property data from the literature and predicted data, including spectra and log P.  


Chemicalize is a free web application where you can type in a URL and it will augment the web page, pulling out any chemical structures. 

Friday 16 August 2013

9 things you should consider before embarking on a PhD | Elsevier Connect

9 things you should consider before embarking on a PhD | Elsevier Connect

Scopus2Orcid - Use the Scopus to Orcid Author details and documents wizard to collect all your Scopus records in one unique author profile.

Scopus2Orcid - Use the Scopus to Orcid Author details and documents wizard to collect all your Scopus records in one unique author profile.
Your publications on Scopus may be spread over a number of different Author profiles, because these are generated automatically. In order to create a single profile containing the correct publications, please follow the steps in this wizard. On completion, any changes will also be sent as corrections to Scopus.

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) seeks to remedy the systemic name ambiguity problems seen in scholarly research by assigning unique identifiers linkable to an individual's research output. If you have not yet created an ORCID profile, you will be able to do so during the process that follows; alternatively, you can register first at http://orcid.org and then import your works from your profile page

Woolly creature named new species

Woolly creature named new species
A creature looking like a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear has been named as a new species after being wrongly identified for 100 years.
The woolly-furred olinguito, which weighs 2lb (0.9kg), is related to raccoons and coatis and lives in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador.
For more than a century it was mistaken for its larger close cousin, the olingo.

Thursday 15 August 2013

Top 10 most-accessed articles April–June 2013 « RSC Advances Blog

Top 10 most-accessed articles April–June 2013 « RSC Advances Blog

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Sloan Digital Sky Survey
 The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one of the most ambitious and influential surveys in the history of astronomy. Over eight years of operations (SDSS-I, 2000-2005; SDSS-II, 2005-2008), it obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.
SDSS data have been released to the scientific community and the general public in annual increments, with the final public data release from SDSS-II occurring in October 2008. That release, Data Release 7, is available through this website.

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Extinctions of large animals sever the Earth's 'nutrient arteries'

Extinctions of large animals sever the Earth's 'nutrient arteries'
  A new study has demonstrated that large animals have acted as carriers of key nutrients to plants and animals over thousands of years and on continental scales.
 The paper in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Geoscience explains that vital nutrients are contained in the dung and bodies of big animals. As they eat and move more than small animals, they have a particularly important role in transporting nutrients into areas where the soil is otherwise infertile.

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Limitations of Bibliometrics - MyRI

Limitations of Bibliometrics - MyRI
 In this short video, Prof John Walsh from the School of Geological Sciences at University College Dublin discusses some the limitations that they have encountered in using Bibliometrics in their field.

Monday 12 August 2013

EarthSky's meteor shower guide for 2013 | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky

EarthSky's meteor shower guide for 2013 | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky

 Is the Perseid meteor shower over for 2013? Keep watching! The hours between midnight and dawn on August 13 may feature good displays of meteors.

SFI - President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA)

SFI - President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA)
 The President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA) is Science Foundation Ireland's most prestigious award to recruit and retain early career researchers to carry out their research in Ireland. This programme emphasises the importance that Science Foundation Ireland places on the early development of academic careers. The award recognises outstanding engineers and scientists who, early in their careers, have already demonstrated or shown exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge. Awardees will be selected on the basis of exceptional accomplishments in science and engineering in all areas covered by SFI’s legal remit and on the basis of creative research plans that are built on work that has attracted international attention. For the PIYRA programme, scientific excellence is both necessary and paramount but is not sufficient; applications must also demonstrate potential impact.

Fossils throw mammalian family tree into disarray

Fossils throw mammalian family tree into disarray

 Two fossils have got palaeontologists scratching their heads about where to place an enigmatic group of animals in the mammalian family tree. A team analysing one fossil suggests that the group belongs in mammals, but researchers looking at the other propose that its evolutionary clan actually predates true mammals. The situation begs for more analysis, more fossils, or both, experts say.

Friday 9 August 2013

SciVerse ScienceDirect TOP25 Hottest Articles

SciVerse ScienceDirect TOP25 Hottest Articles across all subject areas

An opportunity for postdoctoral scholars | Elsevier

An opportunity for postdoctoral scholars | Elsevier
  For scholars who recently received their PhD’s and currently do not have a research position, Elsevier (leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services) are  offering  unlimited complimentary access to all their  journals and books on ScienceDirect, for up to 6 months.

This program allows those who qualify to have access to scientific journals and books in their field. To find out if you qualify click the link.

Thursday 8 August 2013

Very Large Telescope: The First Fifteen Years of Discovery | ScienceWatch | Thomson Reuters

Very Large Telescope: The First Fifteen Years of Discovery | ScienceWatch | Thomson Reuters

Europe’s flagship visible-light observatory, the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is located on Cerro Paranal (elevation 2, 635m) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of the telescope achieving “first light.”

Wednesday 7 August 2013

The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip - NASA Science

The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip - NASA Science

 August 5, 2013:  Something big is about to happen on the sun.  According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.
"It looks like we're no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal," says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."
Field Flip (splash)

First-ever public tasting of lab-grown Cultured Beef burger - Maastricht University

First-ever public tasting of lab-grown Cultured Beef burger - Maastricht University

On Monday 5 August, Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University presented a burger made from Cultured Beef in front of an invited audience in London. This first-ever public tasting highlighted the urgent need to find a sustainable solution to food production.

World University Rankings 2023

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making them the lar...