Thursday 31 October 2013

Irish research team shines light on male infertility

IRISH RESEARCH TEAM SHINES LIGHT ON MALE INFERTILITY | Research Office | NUI Maynooth
 A research team led by Professor Kay Ohlendieck from NUI Maynooth’s Department of Biology has determined the molecular mechanisms of a particular form of sperm abnormalities called globozoospermia and found that the abnormal morphology of sperm cells plays a crucial role in infertility.

Friday 25 October 2013

In Pursuit of the Irish Headhunter

In Pursuit of the Irish Headhunter
 Charles R. Browne (1867-1931) surveyed communities in the remotest parts of Ireland between 1891 and 1900. A major exhibition of his  photographic collection was presented in the John Paul II Library at NUI Maynooth. Check out the Photo's of the exibition.

SFI SPEAKER SERIES: GROW YOUR OWN... Curators Talk | Science Gallery

SFI SPEAKER SERIES: GROW YOUR OWN... Curators Talk | Science Gallery

 So what is synthetic biology? Ask the experts in an evening with the curators, Paul Freemont, Anthony Dunne, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and Cathal Garvey - as part of the SFI Speaker Series. Find out how design, genetics, engineering and biology all contribute to one of the most important emerging fields in contemporary science.

Tellus Border Home

Tellus Border Home

Tellus Border is an EU INTERREG IVA-funded regional mapping project collecting geo-environmental data on soils, water and rocks across six border counties - Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth - and continuing the analysis of existing data in Northern Ireland.  The project is a cross-border initiative between the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland, the Geological Survey of Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast and Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Airborne geophysical data has been released and is available to view on the Tellus Border viewer. Please visit the Data Downloads page to download the data. Geochemical data will be available to download later in 2013. Topsoil geochemistry is available to preview on the Tellus Border viewer

Thursday 24 October 2013

NUIM ePrints and eTheses Archive

Welcome to NUIM ePrints and eTheses Archive - NUIM ePrints and eTheses Archive

 NUI Maynooth ePrints Archive is an institutional repository of ePrints which showcases the research output of NUI Maynooth and St. Patrick's College staff and postgraduate students. This open access ensures the widest possible dissemination and impact for our work in Maynooth and cont ributes to the growing body of research literature that is now freely available online.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Dryad Digital Repository - Dryad

Dryad Digital Repository - Dryad

The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of datatypes.

Apps 4 Gaps: All-Ireland Open App Competition

Apps 4 Gaps
Apps4Gaps is an All-Ireland competition aimed at encouraging young people (including 3rd Level) to develop ideas and create applications that will provide innovative and fresh ways of exploiting the Open Data freely available from the Census 2011 that could benefit society in such areas as transport, housing, planning, education, communications and health.

Winning teams will be awarded €1,000 – €1,500! The best entry overall will be awarded a Boole Medal.

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Irish Squirrel & Pine Marten Project funded by the Irish Research Council

Irish Squirrel & Pine Marten Project - Irish Squirrel + Pine Marten Project

 In October 2009, the Mammal Ecology Group of NUI, Galway, launched an exciting research project investigating the relationships between three woodland mammal species in Ireland; the native red squirrel, the pine marten and the introduced grey squirrel. The research project was carried out by Emma Sheehy under the supervision of Dr Colin Lawton and funded by the Irish Research Council.

 In the most recent distribution survey carried out on the two species (Carey et al., 2007) it was noted that in certain midland counties (Laois/Offaly and Cavan/Monaghan) the grey squirrels had not replaced the red in the same manner as in other areas, and even that the red squirrel had extended its range. This coincided with a resurgence of the pine marten (Martes martes) in the two areas suggesting that the pine marten may be disrupting the usual pattern of displacement of red squirrels by greys. Alternatively it may just reflect habitat preferences of the species concerned.

Click into the Media Links to hear Emma chatting about her research.



Irish Qualitative Data Archive

Irish Qualitative Data Archive
  
The Irish Qualitative Data Archive (IQDA) is a central access point for qualitative social science data generated in or about Ireland. The archive contains qualitative datasets that include interviews, pictures and other non-numerical material. It also frames the parameters and standards for archiving such data within the Irish research community. The IQDA is building on existing archiving projects being undertaken by NIRSA(National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis) at NUIM both relating to photographs (NIRSA photo archive and the Ned Cassidy photo archive, the latter in conjunction the Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) and NUIM library).

MANTRA Research Data Management Training

Research Data MANTRA

MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process. Through a series of interactive online units you will learn about terminology, key concepts, and best practice in data management. MANTRA is maintained by Data Library staff in Information Services, University of Edinburgh. It was originally developed in collaboration with the Institute for Academic Development as part of a Jisc-funded Managing Research Data project (2010).

MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process. - See more at: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/#sthash.8AzaAKPg.dpuf

MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process. - See more at: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/#sthash.8AzaAKPg.dpuf

Scopus Database

Scopus | Elsevier TrainingDesk
Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and is available via the Library.

Want to improve the effectivness of your search strategies check out these online tutorials.

Bias in research: the rule rather than the exception?

Bias in research: the rule rather than the exception? - Editors' Update - Your network for knowledge - Editors' Update – Your network for knowledge

Dr Kevin Mullane and Dr Mike Williams, two of the editors of the Elsevier journal, Biochemical Pharmacology, discuss some of the causes and prevalence of bias in the fields of biomedical research - and the implications for the wider research community.

Monday 21 October 2013

Access Project MUSE collections from the Library

Project MUSE
 Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE books and journals, from leading university presses and scholarly societies, are fully integrated for search and discovery.

When searching just select for content the Libray has access to to see full text availability.

Thursday 17 October 2013

Impact factors are clouding our judgement

Impact factors are clouding our judgement  (Reciprocal Space Blog by Stephen Curry)
  
Nature has an interesting news feature this week on impact factors. Eugenie Samuel Reich’s article — part of a special supplement covering various aspects of the rather ill-defined notion of impact — explores whether publication in journals such as Nature or Science is a game-changer for scientific careers.

Trapped in a Fig: The Perils and Payoffs of Pollination

Trapped in a Fig: The Perils and Payoffs of Pollination | EveryONE

 Pollinating insects are an industrious bunch, working tirelessly as they flit from blossom to blossom. But for insects like the short-lived, fig-pollinating wasp, the job of bringing fruit to fruition can be a dangerous business. According to a recent PLOS ONE study, some wasps can get trapped and die in the fig during pollination, when they enter to deposit their eggs. The researchers find that wasps of a certain size may take this risk into account when deciding which figs to approach.

Are Alternative Metrics Still Alternative? by Mike Buschman and Andrea Michalek

Bulletin April/May 2013 (ASIS&T)

 Citation counts have long been the tried and true measure of academic research usage and impact. Specifically, published articles in prominent journals citing other published articles in other prominent journals equate to prestige and tenure. This scheme for determining impact was developed in the 1960s, and while so much else about collecting and disseminating information has changed since that time, the citation count mechanism continues to dominate the way research is evaluated. Yet, there are many well-known problems with this system.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Horizon 2020 featured projects for Ireland

Country profile and featured projects for Ireland - Horizon 2020 - the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation - European Commission

Research-related data and summaries of featured projects relating to Ireland. 

"Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness. Running from 2014 to 2020 with a budget of just over €70 billion1, the EU’s new programme for research and innovation is part of the drive to create new growth and jobs in Europe."

Friday 11 October 2013

Why altmetrics are about more than just research impact ~ libfocus - Irish library blog

Why altmetrics are about more than just research impact ~ libfocus - Irish library blog

Royal Irish Academy audio archive

Royal Irish Academy | About | Audio

 Listen to audio recordings of discourses, public lectures and other Academy events under the catagories of Science, Humanities, Social Sciences and Policy. These recordings include

'A Conversation with Professor Peter Higgs and Colleagues' where they explore four generations of research on the Higgs boson.

'Public Lecture: A Hundred Objects, A Hundred Stories' with Fintan O'Toole, Author of A history of Ireland in 100 objects.

Academy Discourse: 'The Battle for Afghanistan' with William Dalrymple discussing the 1st Afghan war.

'Values in University Education - From Academic Freedom to Impact'. The seminar explored shifting principles, aims and values in higher education, such as academic freedom, impact, peer review and open innovation, against the backdrop of current economic challenges.

Thursday 10 October 2013

MANTRA Research Data Management Training

Research Data MANTRA

MANTRA is a free, non-assessed course with guidelines to help you understand and reflect on how to manage the data you collect throughout your research. The course is particularly appropriate for those who work with digital data.
Through a series of interactive online units you will learn about terminology, key concepts, and best practice in data management.


MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process. - See more at: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/#sthash.kZfGU6dL.dpuf
MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process. - See more at: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/#sthash.kZfGU6dL.dpuf

The Mental Health of young people in Ireland : Report

PERL Homepage - Royal College Surgeons in Ireland

A report of the Psychiatric Epidemology Research across the Lifespan (PERL) Group was lauched today titled "The Mental Health of young people in Ireland". This report summarises findings on the rates of mental ill-health among Irish youth from their Adolescent Brain Development Study and their Challenging Times Two Study.

Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics

SAO/NASA ADS: ADS Home Page

Operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS (Astrophysics Data System) maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 10.4 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints. The main body of data in the ADS consists of bibliographic records, which are searchable through highly customizable query forms, and full-text scans of much of the astronomical literature which can be browsed or searched via a full-text search interface. Integrated in its databases, the ADS provides access and pointers to a wealth of external resources, including electronic articles, data catalogs and archives. They currently have links to over 10.1 million records maintained by their collaborators.  Access to full text will depend ofcourse on what your Library has subscriptions to.

Monday 7 October 2013

Tracking Citations and Altmetrics for Research Data: Challenges and Opportunities

Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Bulletin August/September 2013 by  Stacy Konkiel  . Click for the full article.
 The recently announced San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment [1], which calls for the abandonment of the journal impact factor as a means to determine the quality of research, highlights how important and contested the measurement of scholarly impact has become. Measuring impact for research data is also complicated. Data citation itself is not yet a standard practice [2, 3], and there is no authoritative agreement on how and when data should be cited [4]. Altmetrics, which track scholarship’s usage on the social and scholarly web, comprise a nebulous group of metrics that use an ever-shifting list of web services’ APIs as a source of their data [5]. As with data citations, standards do not yet exist to record or report the impact of different types of altmetrics. In light of these challenges, a panel was convened at the ASIS&T Research Data Access & Preservation Summit 2013 (RDAP13) to discuss new developments in exactly how researchers track the impact of data.

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...