Do you really need to buy that textbook?

If you’re enrolled in a large science class that requires the use of an expensive textbook, chances are you will find a copy of your textbook on reserve in the science library [search by reserve course in OBIS]. Required textbooks only circulate for 3 hours at a time and can’t be borrowed overnight.

That’s handy for a quick read, but doesn’t really substitute for having your own copy for extended reading, re-reading and marking text as you want for in-depth study.

You might be able to borrow a copy of the text from another OhioLINK library [search the OhioLINK Catalog], but don’t count on it. Many textbooks are required by professors at other colleges and universities, so you’ll have competition from students in your class at Oberlin and in courses around the state.

You may have better luck finding an OhioLINK copy to borrow if you’re looking for a book that is needed for a humanities or social sciences course, whose course content is more unique to Oberlin. Consider, after all, that all chemistry students throughout the state must take organic chemistry, just as all physics majors will learn fundamentals of mechanics and relativity, and you’ll understand why basic science texts can be difficult to borrow during certain periods of the semester.

So… buy the text! And some highlighters. Make it your own. It's a good investment in your own education.

Evolution! of planets, landscapes, mammals, birds and brains

Evolution in a broad sense is a very common theme in our most recent shipment of books, as is evident by these titles:

• Lives of the planets : a natural history of the solar system
• After the dinosaurs : the age of mammals
• Galapagos : the islands that changed the world
• Evolutionary bioinformatics
• Making sense of evolution
• Biological emergences : evolution by natural experiment
• Scientists confront intelligent design and creationism
• The geometry of evolution : adaptive landscapes and theoretical morphospaces
• Evolution and the levels of selection
• The tinkerer's accomplice : how design emerges from life itself
• The inner bird : anatomy and evolution

One of the most intriguing of this batch is David Linden's The Accidental Mind: how brain evolution has given us love, memory, dreams, and God. David Linden shows how the "brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history." Linden addresses the question "are there some aspects of brain function that, on the average, make it easy for humans to acquire and transmit religious thought?" He then tries to convince the reader that "our brains have become particularly adapted to creating coherent, gap-free stories and that this propensity for narrative creation is part of what predisposes humans to religious thought."

Now on the new book display. Visit The Accidental Mind Blog.

Nature cover story: Geckos + Mussels = inspiration for new adhesive

The cover of Nature received today is too fetching to overlook. And the research letter:

A reversible wet/dry adhesive inspired by mussels and geckos [launches pdf] by Lee Haeshin, Bruce P. Lee & Phillip B. Messersmith,

is too remarkable not to read. The Editor's summary gives an excellent overview, including this: "A new adhesive, called 'geckel', [combines] gecko-type nanostructures with the chemical approach to underwater adhesion used by mussels." Stop by the library to read the print issue, which also includes a fascinating account of the paleogeography of the English Channel and the evidence provided for "two catastrophic floods arising from the drainage of huge glacial lakes in the area of the southern North Sea." (Philip Gibbard, p. 259)

Or go online to view the entire issue, and all of Nature from 1997 to the current issue. The print issues are typically received in the library one week after publication.

Poison Ivy and Dandelions Thrive With Global Warming

It isn't simply my imagination that the poison ivy around the little reservoir at the end of our street is incredibly lush and spreading like mad. A recently published study in Weed Science, July 2007 documents that poison ivy responds positively to even small, incremental increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Dandelions are likewise blooming and spreading more aggressively, says another study in the same issue of Weed Science. I long ago made peace with dandelions, but do hope they keep to the yard (which I prefer to think of as a healthy multi-species community rather than weed-infested) and don't invade the meager tomato patch.

You can read both articles in the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center

• Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Potential Impacts on the Growth and Toxicity of Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). Ziska, L.H.; Sicher, R.C.; George, K.; Mohan, J.E. Weed Science 55(4): 288-292.
  
• Reproduction of Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) in a Higher Co2 Environment. McPeek, Tamara M.; Wang, Xianzhong Weed Science 55(4): 334-340.
  

  Also Listen to John Nielson's story Dandelions, Poison Ivy Grow With Global Warming on NPR's Morning Edition.

Seeing Sicko Soon? Here's Related Reading

Michale Moore's latest movie, Sicko, opened in theaters across the nation this past weekend. Reaction has been swift and varied [see Los Angeles Times review; press release from EarthTimes.org, more from Google news].

The college library and the OhioLINK catalog offer hundreds of books on the nation's health care system and health insurance specifically. Search the subject headings
Health care reform and Insurance, health -- United States

One recent book in the main library:

The truth about health care : why reform is not working in America / David Mechanic. Rutgers University Press, c2006.  RA395.A3 M4184 2006

As Michael Moore advises at the end of the movie, at the very end of the credits:

Eat your fruits and vegetables. Go for a walk. Do something!

www.michaelmoore.com

Angel's Trumpet to Zombie Poison: in The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants

The very substantial (nearly 1000 pages), exhaustively indexed and thoroughly referenced Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants is now on the new book shelf. Beautifully illustrated with photographs, drawings, and historically significant botanical sketches, each entry (typically at the species level) provides Latin and common names and synonyms, a brief history, cultivation, and appearance of the plant, plus its chemical composition of the psychoactive material and constituents, medicinal and ritual usage, cultural significance, addictive properties and commercial forms and regulations. A separate section of the work lists plant constituents, from Atropine to Yohimbine, giving molecular structure, formula, plant sources for the substance, and list of references. It is a marvelous source for a quick introduction to more than 400 plants and fungi and their properties. It will be on the Science Library Reference Desk shelf after a brief display period in the new book area.

The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications / Christian Ratsch, forward by Albert Hofmann, translated by John R. Baker. Park Street Press, 2005.

Left: the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) from p. 327 of the Encyclopedia. Used ritualistically for centuries; considered a "magical plant of the gods" and found in "archaeological contexts approximately six thousands years old."

NOAA Scientists to Search Tropical Skies for Answers on Climate Change, Ozone Loss

From this week's news at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA.gov

"Scientists from NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab will be among 400 researchers in Costa Rica this summer to probe one of the most complex and least observed regions of Earth’s atmosphere during the rainy season. Based in San Jose, Costa Rica, the NASA-led field study will shed light on key processes related to climate change, the stratospheric ozone layer, and global chemistry. The study runs from July 2 through August 15.

"ESRL’s David Fahey and colleagues from NOAA and the University of Colorado will fly instruments aboard NASA’s high-altitude WB-57 aircraft to gather data on black carbon particles [produced by fossil fuel burning], ozone, water vapor and particle composition, as well as air pressure and temperature.

"By absorbing sunlight and heating the air, black carbon can change atmospheric circulation and precipitation, but the processes involved are unclear. For example, how black carbon influences clouds and how clouds remove it from the atmosphere remain an unsolved puzzle. Scientists know so little about black carbon that any direct observations are important, Fahey said." [Read more]

While at the NOAA Web site, slip on over to NOAA's Central Library. There you will find a treasure trove of digital images, including scanned pages from historical and rare monographs, charts and maps, and access to the NOAA Photo Library.

On the new book shelf: The Suicidal Planet

The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent Global Climate Catastrophe, is one of three climate-related books received today. Authored by Mayer Hillman with Tina Fawcett and Sudhir Chella Rajan, it has been reviewed in many sources [summary at BookBrowse].

Wisconsin Public Radio hosted an interview with one of the co-authors on Monday, April 23, 2007, on the radio program At Issue with Ben Merens. In the interview, Sudhir Chella Rajan "gives an overview of global warming, and an optimistic but practical plan for avoiding the worst of the damage". Rajan is a senior fellow at the Tellus Institute in Boston where he heads the Global Politics and Institutions program.

Other climate studies on the new book shelf are:
QC981.8.C5 P58 2005.
Climate change : turning up the heat / A. Barrie Pittock.
London ; Sterling, VA : Earthscan, c2005.

QC981.8.G56 A73 2007.
Global warming : understanding the forecast / David Archer.
Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., c2007.

DNA Study Forces New Thinking on What It Means to Be a Gene

From Science News of the Week

Elizabeth Pennisi

"According to a painstaking new analysis of 1% of the human genome, genes can be sprawling, with far-flung protein-coding and regulatory regions that overlap with other genes.

"As part of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, 35 research teams have analyzed 44 regions of the human genome covering 30 million bases and figured out how each base contributes to overall genome function. The results, compiled in a paper in the 14 June issue of Nature and 28 papers in the June issue of Genome Research, provide a litany of new insights and drive home how complex our genetic code really is. For example, protein-coding DNA makes up barely 2% of the overall genome, yet 80% of the bases studied showed signs of being expressed, says Ewan Birney of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton, U.K., who led the ENCODE analysis."

Read the EBI Press Release (pdf)

AAPG Proposed Global Climate Change Statement

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) members are currently discussing the association's proposed Global Climate Change Statement, which offers a perspective "embodied ...in our commitment to a continued level of energy security that will ensure we have the economic capability required to address the broad range of issues facing society." The proposed statement is accessible to the public, but the discussion is open to AAPG members only.

Geotimes, from the American Geological Institute, will be "Plunging into the Debate on Climate Change" in its Geologic Column (coming later this month). Check in there to read Fred Schwab's call for geologists "to lead the charge in educating the public and taking action to help our warming world."

300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus

From the New York Times:

Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist, was born 300 years ago today and is remembered as the man who gave the world modern taxonomy, the science of classifying organisms. The event was observed at the New York Botanical Garden and reported in today's edition of the NYT. Robbin C. Moran, a Linnaeus expert and the garden’s curator of ferns, noted that Linnaeus had a penchant for naming "smelly, ugly plants" after his critics (of whom there were many). [read more]

The University of California Museum of Paleontology offers a succinct biography of Linnaeus, also known as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus.
[image from www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html]

Sounds of the Earth: Seismic Revelations of the Earth's Interior

John Bullitt has created Deep Earth Dome, a publicly accessible, web-based sound installation with sound clips of vibrations of the earth's crust and "reverberations of thousands of small earthquakes bouncing around the interior of the earth." Grab your headphones (you can check some out from our circulation desk) and listen to the amazing movements beneath our feet, and consider the thousands of miles of earth and water (not to forget telecommunications hardware and air) through which those sound waves traveled to reach your ears. Earthwatch Radio describes John Bullitt's work in a recent broadcast [click on "Listen" at the Earthwatch Radio web site, then visit Deep Earth Dome for more]. Visit often and hear the Sound of the Week. About John Bullitt.
[image from jtbullitt.com/index]

Evolution is a Many Splendored Thing

"A Novel Electrosensory Organ" is depicted on the cover of BioScience (May 2007, now on display with this week's journals) in the form of the rostrum of the paddlefish Polyodon spathula. Take a few moments away from studying for finals and marvel at the evolutionary pathway that led to the development of this exquisitely receptive organ, uniquely adapted to detect planktonic prey (primarily the water flea, Daphnia) in turbid, vision-limiting environments.

Investigators Lon Wilkens and Michael Hofmann, Center for Neurodynamics and the Department of Biology, Univ. of Missouri St. Louis, have studied P. spathula for more than a dozen years. See also an earlier review by Wilkens in The senses of fish : adaptations for the reception of natural stimuli edited by Gerhard von der Emde, Joachim Mogdans, and B.G. Kapoor [Science Library QL639.1 .S44 2004].

A Bumper Crop of New Books

Spring often brings a rush of new books to the library, and this year is no exception. Books received today include a wide range of titles, with something to appeal to everyone. Here are just a few to lure you in. Take a break from preparing for finals, sit a spell by the new book display and read something to refresh your thinking!

Learning to Smell
"Drawing on research in neuroscience, physiology, and ethology, Donald A. Wilson and Richard J. Stevenson address the fundamental question of how we navigate through a world of chemical encounters and provide a compelling alternative to the "reception-centric" view of olfaction." [Johns Hopkins University Press]

The End of the Wild is a "wake-up call. Marshaling evidence from the last ten years of research on the environment, Stephen Meyer argues that nothing--not national or international laws, global bioreserves, local sustainability schemes, or "wildlands"--will change the course that has been set. Like it or not, we can no longer talk about conserving nature, only managing what is left. The race to save biodiversity is over." [MIT Press]

From Alchemy to Chemistry in Picture and Story

University of New Hampshire professor Arthur Greenberg chronicles the mystery, truths, lies, art, and even humor of chemistry. Greenberg gives an engaging account of chemistry's history, introducing some notable characters along the path from alchemy and birth of metallurgy to nanotechnology and femtochemistry.
[Read more from the review at MachineDesign.com]

Small Changes + More Small Changes = A More Sustainable Environment

Ideal Bite Offers Daily Tips

Looking for manageable ways you can make a positive impact for a more sustainable environment? Ideal Bite is a great resource!

From their Welcome page:
"We know that you would just love to "do the right thing" for yourself and the planet if it were convenient, fun, inexpensive, and made you feel good. But until now you have lacked a good source of advice for real people leading busy lives."

Ideal Bite "Eco-tips" give practical advice, with links for more information and persuasive arguments of how one small action on your part can have such a positive benefit for the environment. Check out the Tip Library.

NPR Launches Climate Connections

Climate Connections is a multi-faceted series just launched by National Public Radio in collaboration with National Geographic.

Listen to the story of China's "Coal-Fueled Boom has Costs" from Morning Edition today, and hear Coal miner Wu Gui, who has been working the mines for 34 years, describe his role in China's economy as "a glorious job."

"I am making a contribution to the country," he says. "If we couldn't find coal, China couldn't get richer and more powerful, and we wouldn't be able to improve people's living standards."

NPR correspondent Louisa Lin points out that "China will build 500 coal-fired power plants in the next decade, at the rate of almost one a week. This massive appetite for coal means equally huge greenhouse gas emissions."

Other stories in the series include a report on England's fast-growing vineyards, yielding award-winning wines, thanks to a warming climate and longer growing season, and the advent of olive farming in Devon.
Visit Climate Connections: A Global Voyage for NPR stories on climate change around the world.

Earth-like Planet Discovered in Libra

From NPR.org
by Nell Boyce

Morning Edition, April 25, 2007 · Scientists have discovered a new planet in the constellation Libra. The small, rocky planet is special because it appears to have mild temperatures, like Earth. Researchers believe it looks like the first planet outside of our solar system that could be home to liquid water, and maybe even life.
Listen to the story on NPR

[image: an artist's illustration of the planet, which scientists think is either rocky, or covered with oceans. From NPR.org]

Audubon Exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

John James Audubon: American Artist and Naturalist
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Open through April 29, 2007

The name John James Audubon is synonymous with the study and preservation of American wildlife. His masterpiece, "The Birds of America" folio (the "baby" folio edition is in the science library) and his lifetime of written journals stand as an unsurpassed contribution to the world of fine art, natural science and American history and literature.

John James Audubon's art and aesthetic legacy continue to amaze and inspire. His visionary and prophetic concerns for the environment continue to speak to new generations throughout America and the world today. Met this man of contradictions — John James Audubon: American Artist and Naturalist, on display in the Museum’s Corning and Fawick galleries from February 10 through April 29. The exhibition, which traces Audubon’s life and development as an artist, features 60 Double Elephant Folio-sized, hand-colored engravings from his masterwork, The Birds of America, printed between 1826 and 1838.

When completed, the final Birds of America folio comprised four volumes (each weighing 50 pounds) containing 435 life-sized, hand-colored plates portraying 1,065 individual birds. Each set sold for $1,000, and fewer than 200 bound copies were printed. (Most of the original copper plates were sold years later by Audubon’s destitute widow for their value as scrap metal; only about 80 were saved.)

Also on exhibit are 10 other Audubon prints, three from the smaller and less expensive Royal Octavo edition of The Birds of America and seven from the Imperial Folio of the Quadrapeds, created with son John Woodhouse Audubon. Visitors can see works by Audobon’s contemporaries, original letters, documents, personal items, rare books and photographs. There are also other originals by Audubon, including oil paintings, a drawing and watercolors with his field notes.

In addition to the traveling exhibition from the John James Audubon Museum and State Park in Henderson, Kentucky, the The Cleveland Museum of Natural History will display some of its own Audubon holdings, which include a first-edition Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America, two unbound reprint sets of the Folio and a complete set of the 1876 edition of American Ornithology by Alexander Wilson, a contemporary (and competitor) of Audubon.

Directions to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Giant Bats Snatch Birds from Night Sky

From NPR.org Morning Edition April 18
by John Nielsen

Every spring, billions of songbirds in Europe migrate north to their breeding grounds. They often fly at night, when few predators are around. But now researchers have found evidence that giant noctule bats in Europe are catching and eating songbirds mid-flight. The songbirds often migrate at night in an attempt to avoid predators.

“[The bats] wrap the prey between their wings and the tail membrane, so they make kind of a cage for the bird... It was something that shocked all bat scientists.” Ana Popa-Lisseanu, Bat Ecologist
[Listen to John Nielsen's full story on NPR]

These surprising research findings were published Feb. 14, 2007, in Public Library of Science ONE (PLoS ONE), an open-access journal:
Bats' Conquest of a Formidable Foraging Niche: The Myriads of Nocturnally Migrating Songbirds

Authors: Ana G. Popa-Lisseanu, Antonio Delgado-Huertas Manuela G. Forero, Alicia Rodríguez, Raphaël Arlettaz, Carlos Ibáñez.

[image from Figure 1 in the PLoS One article: "Nyctalus lasiopterus showing its impressive teeth to the researchers."]

Interested in more about bat ecology? Check out the book with the same title:

Bat Ecology / edited by Thomas H. Kunz and M. Brock Fenton
University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Against All Odds, Scientists Isolate Protein

Summary from the Chronicle of Higher Education [access by subscribers only after April 17]

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

"Using sophisticated medical equipment designed for studying human diseases, a team of scientists has isolated fragments of proteins inside the bones of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, a find that shatters expectations about how quickly biological materials decay in fossils.

"The discovery also points to a new method for unraveling the evolution of extinct animals, and it could potentially settle major debates, such as whether birds evolved from dinosaurs or a different group of reptiles.

"If the work can be verified by other laboratories, it suggests fossilized bone might harbor far more information than scientists have ever suspected." The research was reported in Science April 13, in articles on pp. 277-280 and 280-285, by a team that included Mary Higby Schweitzer, an assistant professor of paleontology at North Carolina State University, as well as members from Harvard and Montana State Universities and the University of Chicago. [access to Science articles for subscribers only].

Image from "Sue at the Field Museum" The Field Museum, Chicago.