Yet one more reason to thank industrious microbes

This delectable collection comes from
Malley's of Cleveland, Ohio.  And,
closer to home: Suzin L. Chocolatier

Improving some of the world's best chocolate by optimizing a microbial starter culture is sweet research, as reported in December 1,  2010 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.  The article is nicely summarized on the ASM news site (Researchers Select Microbes to Improve Chocolate). Fine chocolate is most definitely the product of careful science and creative culinary art!

Read the full article:
T. Lefeber, M. Janssens, N. Camu, and L. De Vuyst. Kinetic analysis of strains of lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria in cocoa pulp simulation media toward development of a starter culture for cocoa bean fermentation. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 76: 7708-7716.

Food microbiology is well-represented in each issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.  For a general introduction, try Food microbiology / Martin R. Adams and Maurice O. Moss.  Royal Society of Chemistry, 2008.  Human diets were be very boring, indeed, without the myriad types of food we enjoy only through microbial action (not discounting the essential role of microbes in the gut!).

Good Luck on Exams! Check out a new book when it's all over...

Exam Day 1 is looming, and every table is occupied here in the science library - though some chairs are still free, if you're willing to share space at the big reading tables.  Good luck to everyone; may your short-term memory perform brilliantly and solidify into long-term knowledge.

More than a dozen new books were delivered today, which could entice you to explore a new subject once this semester's exams are behind you.  The potential disaster of a world without bees is explored in-depth by Allison Benjamin and Brian McCallum.  Nothing like the prospect of world famine due to the loss of these amazing pollinators to redirect your attention from whatever you are studying so madly at the moment.  There are, coincidentally, two more books focused on bees on the new book display right now: Why do bees buzz, and Honeybee democracy.  Check out all three and you could find yourself taking the first step toward apiculture!

There are plenty of other options, including a compilation of this year's best science and nature writing, so take a break and browse our display.

Alumna Felisa Wolfe ('00), now Wolfe-Simon, and her work on arsenophiles

Felisa Wolfe, when she was an Oberlin College
Science Library student assistant

MSNBC's Cosmic Log has been attentive to the research of Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues, and the response from other researchers to their provocative findings, published in Science, that a bacterium can utilize arsenic rather than phosphorus ['Weird life' researchers answer critics].  Before heading off to graduate school and her present position with the U.S. Geological Survey, she was Felisa Wolfe of the science library student staff!  A little known fact of her life at Oberlin, no doubt.  As a 2000 grad, Felisa was one of many science majors who lived through the upheaval of Science Center construction, without reaping any of the benefits  - we moved to the new science library in August 2001 and the rest of the center was completed the following year.  Felisa was also among the last group of students given the Metcalf Student Assistant award when that award was based strictly on merit, rather than longevity of employment.  She was one of the best, providing excellent service at our combination reference/circulation service desk.  It is always great to see scientific publications of former students, and especially exciting when novel research findings challenge long-held assumptions.

Faculty and Student Publications

The following articles, published last month, were just indexed in ISI Web of Knowledge.  Three former students (Mauck, van den Heuvel, and Hull) are named as co-authors of the first paper,  with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Catherine Oertel.

Synthesis and Structures of Pb3O2(CH3COO)2·0.5H2O and Pb2O(HCOO)2: Two Corrosion Products Revisited.
Catherine M. Mauck, Titus W. P. van den Heuvel, Michaela M. Hull, Matthias Zeller, and Catherine M. Oertel
Inorganic Chemistry 49 (22): 10736–10743 Nov 15, 2010. [access at ACS Publications]

Low luteinizing hormone enhances spatial memory and has protective effects on memory loss in rats.
Shira G. Ziegler, Janice E. Thornton.
Hormones and Behavior 58 (5): 705-713 NOV 2010.  [access at OhioLINK EJC]

Extended Hours for Exam Period!

The Science Library has never offered so many hours on a weekend before.  To accommodate the exam schedule, we will stay open until midnight on Friday, and be open 8:30 am - midnight on Saturday and Sunday.  Come on in!  But leave your food outside, please.  More hours.

Media Oddly Silent on Climate Talks

This is a disturbing development, perhaps indicative that the American public has difficulty focusing on long-term, complex problems in competition with WikiLeaks, tax cuts, the economy in general, and a lame duck legislative body focused on other issues.  Climate change waits for no lawmaker or policy wonk, however.  As one of the "most serious challenges facing us today" (Union of Concerned Scientists), media coverage needs to be accurate, thorough and accessible to all.

"At last year’s climate meeting in Copenhagen, the room was buzzing with thousands of reporters. However, today climate change seems to be a forgotten story. Democracy Now! reviewed the transcripts of last week’s evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC in the United States. The Cancún talks were not mentioned a single time." (Democracy Now!, Dec. 6, 2010).

National Public Radio, however, provided good coverage of the talks on All Things Considered.  Thank you, NPR. 

Roger Pielke, Jr. writes with clarity and insight about climate change policy in his new book, The Climate Fix. There are nearly 200 books on similar topics in the same section of shelving; it is an excellent place to learn the facts regarding climate and global warming.

Just ordered: When a billion Chinese jump

Spurred by today's interview between NPR's Steve Inskeep and author Jonathan Watts, journalist for The Guardian, I've just requested purchase of his book "When a billion Chinese jump: how China will save the world - or destroy it."  The interview provided a glimmer of hope for solving China's enormous environmental problems, as well as the challenge of balancing economic progress and environmental responsibility. "I think China is moving very, very quickly on renewable energy and clean tech," Watts says, "precisely because its environment is so bad that they have to take extreme actions."  Until Oberlin's copy is here and ready to be borrowed, request a copy from another OhioLINK library.  Read an excerpt from the book at NPR's Morning Edition.

Mountain Top Removal Road Show & Deepening Our Connections

I am posting these event announcements on behalf of Oberlin Earth First! and Students for Carbon Neutrality.

Tonight 7:30pm Oberlin College Wilder Hall [room location TBA]

The Mountaintop Removal Road Show includes a stunning 20-minute slide show about the impacts of mountaintop removal on coalfield residents, communities and the environment, and features traditional Appalachian mountain music and shocking aerial photos of decapitated Appalachian mountains.

Tuesday 4pm OC Wilder Hall Room 112

Deepening Our Connections is a workshop linking the fields of deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, environmental justice, and mysticism and showing how they can work together to fight oppression and move towards the collective liberation of all living beings. Integral theory is used in the workshop to show the importance of bringing different perspectives together. The workshop is very participatory, no prior knowledge of any of the subjects is required.Sponsored by Oberlin Earth First! and Students for Carbon Neutrality.

Call Your Legislator - ask for LSTA Funding!

A message from the American Library Association

Fund LSTA at $300 Million!

Please call your Congressional representatives and tell them to fund the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) at $300 million for FY 2011. LSTA funding is distributed to states by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through population-based grants. LSTA the only source of federal funding for public libraries, and with more and more public libraries facing state and local budget cuts, it is critically important that libraries receive this money.
Take Action! 

Travel with a good book

Heading off for Thanksgiving break?  Take along some good reading!

Info @ Google books

Fragile web : what next for nature? / edited by Jonathan Silvertown, will give you a renewed interest in the biodiversity of whatever region you are visiting in the next few days.

From the publisher's summary:   [Fragile Web] "discusses the importance of the world's ecosystems and how directly or indirectly humans are responsible for the fate of nature. Crucially, it also examines what can be done to protect the natural world and why it matters. Although we cannot undo all that we have done, ignoring the current crisis facing biodiversity could fundamentally change the lives of future generations."

We have at least 50,000 other great books close at hand, so stop in before you leave campus.  Have a good break!

And, for those staying in Oberlin, the library will be open Friday afternoon as well as normal hours on Saturday and Sunday.  See our HOURS.

Paleobotany text a hefty addition to new book shelf

Paleobotany: the biology and evolution of fossil plants, 2nd ed., by Thomas N. Taylor, Edith L. Taylor and Michael Krings (Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, 2009) is by far the heaviest book on the new book shelf, and may have on average the most images per page, so it caught my attention in our most recent shipment of new books.  What a treasure of authoritative text, illustrations, photographs and other visually presented data!  Far more than a simple compendium of fossil data, the authors provide historical context of the interpretation of systematics and classification, and photographs too numerous to count of cited authors.  The photographs and other illustrations of researchers easily span 180 years, and give a human face to the history and ongoing story of paleobotany.  This is a delightful feature in such a comprehensive tome, and will be appreciated by anyone interested in the history of science.

Understanding climates of the past is essential for understanding current climate change, and paleobotany is an vital tool for the study of ancient climates.  The Encyclopedia of paleoclimatology and ancient environments is an excellent resource for more on this subject [view at OhioLINK EBC or Springerlink.com].

Entropy and Rust [Letter], D. F. Styer

New publication from Daniel F. Styer, J&M Schiffer Professor of Phyics, as indexed in ISI Web of Knowledge.

Styer, D. F. 2010. Entropy and Rust [Letter].  American Journal of Physics 78: 1077-1077.

It's Open Access Week! Celebrate with PLoS, DOAJ, SPARC, and more.

See Reading Girl Speaks for more information about Open Access at Oberlin.  For a great overview on Open Access and its impact on scholarly communication, see this video from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC):

Open Access Week 2010 from SPARC on Vimeo.

Don't have time for the whole presentation? Take a peek at this animated short from McGill University.

How else can you celebrate your freedom to read scholarly works, made accessible without payment from you, the reader?  Search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and enjoy immediate access to everything found there.  Browse the extensive collection of articles at Public Library of Science (PLoS): you are certain to find something remarkable among its seven journals.  Even traditional scientific publishers offer a public access option for certain articles, based on contractual agreements with authors and payment of a public access fee by the author(s) or funding agency (e.g., the Author Choice program at American Chemical Society Publications and Springer's Open Choice).  PubMed, the public access database incorporating Medline, offers "free full text" as a limiting option in the Advanced Search, and also as a refine option from the search results screen. 

There is no doubt that increasing public access to scholarly research benefits members of the public as well as students and scholars - so maximize your use of open access materials!

New Publications by Elrod, Birdsall, Andreoni, and Stinebring

As indexed in ISI Web of Science, recent publications by Matthew Elrod, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Daniel Stinebring, Francis D Federighi Chair in Physics and Astronomy:

Birdsall, AW; Andreoni, JF; Elrod, MJ.  2010.
Investigation of the Role of Bicyclic Peroxy Radicals in the Oxidation Mechanism of Toluene
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY A 114 (39): 10655-10663 OCT 7 2010 [access at American Chemical Society Publications]
Co-authors Adam Birdsall and John Andreoni are seniors at Oberlin College, anticipating graduation in May 2011.

Hobbs, G; et al. [including Stinebring, D.] 2010.
The International Pulsar Timing Array project: using pulsars as a gravitational wave detector.
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM GRAVITY 27 (8): Art. No. 084013 APR 21 2010 [access at OhioLINK EJC]

Open Access Database of Breast Cancer Publications

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, ebrary recently announced availability of an open access database of breast cancer publication, created in collaboration with librarians from other organizations.

ebrary's Breast Cancer Searchable Information Center is just one of a growing number of open access collections created by ebrary staff and customers. See the list of additional databases.

In related news, NPR's Talk of the Nation aired "Sorting Through Mammogram Confusion" yesterday [October 14, 2010], following a Morning Edition story on October 11 (In Mammogram Debate, Differences Aren't So Big). 

Learn more at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes for Health.

One-Two Punch: Virus/Fungus Found to Cause Bee Colony Collapse

This fascinating story comes from the New York Times front page (A1) on October 7: Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery.  The fate of honeybees is of critical importance for ecosystems generally and human food supply, specifically, as has been documented in countless other publications and news stories (search: CCD colony collapse honey bees in google and the result is overwhelming).  This book provides good background information: A world without bees / Alison Benjamin, Brian McCallum.

The U.S. House of Representatives held a Hearing to review the status of pollinator health including colony collapse disorder (hearing before the Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture of the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, second session, June 26, 2008), providing abundant evidence of the cost and effect of CCD on farmers nationwide and USDA's research efforts to date.

The NYT story addresses the mysterious nature of colony collapse, and the fortuitous result of academic/military collaboration to research the cause: 

"Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.
"One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic."

Now that the cause of CCD is more clearly understood, how can it be treated?  That remains elusive:

"Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.
"They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected."

Published in NYT online September 6, 2010.
By KIRK JOHNSON

Nobel 2010 in Chemistry: Palladium-Catalyzed Cross Coupling

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is shared by Richard F. Heck, Univ. Deleware; Ei-ichi Negishi, Purdue Univ.; and Akira Suzuki, Hokkaido University, for their developments of palladium-catalyzed cross coupling, including refining the method and reagents used for synthesizing complex molecules. As noted on the Nobel Prize site, "the Heck reaction, Negishi reaction and Suzuki reaction are of considerable importance to chemists." Among the many applications of their work, their methods have led to the efficient synthesis of compounds used to treat cancer and other disease, to protect agricultural crops from fungi, to create new materials that benefit computer technology, and to advance research through the synthesis of naturally occurring molecules in test tubes.

A search of the phrase "Palladium-Catalyzed Cross Coupling" resulted in 1,406 references in ISI Web of Knowledge, in an amazing array of subject disciplines  - characterized as agriculture, allergy, immunology, genetics, ophthalmology, endocrinology, electrochemistry, materials sciences, and so much more (the refine by subject areas is such a useful option in ISI WoK!).  For a good overview of the chemistry, see Palladium in Organic Synthesis, available to OhioLINK users at SpringerLink.com as part of the Topics in Organometallic Chemistry series.

Graphene the Focus of 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics

Graphene was first described in this 2004 publication in Science, accessible to Oberlin users both in JSTOR. org and on the AAAS sciencemag.org site:

Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K.; Morozov, S. V.; Jiang, D.; Zhang, Y.; Dubonos, S. V.; Grigorieva, I. V.; Firsov, A. A. 2004. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science, 306, 666-669.

Since that publication, co-authors and 2010 Nobel Prize winners Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have published together at least 63 times (as found through an author search in INSPEC).  The "Information for the Public" offered at the Nobel Prize website is wonderfully prepared to help non-physicists understand the significance of graphene's development and utilization:

"Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new – not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it.

"The list of possible applications for graphene is long. The relentless activity that began following its discovery will eventually most likely bear fruit. No-one can predict what the future might bring, not even this year’s Nobel Laureates."

 Take a look and enjoy the graphics.  The images give a much better idea of graphene's structure!  See also this book at SpringerLink:  Progress in industrial mathematics at ECMI 2006  / Luis L. Bonilla ... [et al.], editors] for a few chapters on graphene.

Big Read Kickoff! Saturday @ The First Church

After months (and months) of planning, we are at last embarking on our community read of Fahrenheit 451.  The kickoff event, long scheduled at the fire circle in Tappan Square, will instead be indoors at The First Church, in the Meeting House (Sat., Oct. 2, 4pm).  The forecast of rain and cold wind made the outdoor location less and less desirable (so unlike the brilliant blue sky, bright sun and fluffy white clouds visible from the science library windows at this moment).

Come hear readings of the book by Marvin Krislov, Eric Norenberg and Geoffrey Andrews, and remarks from Molly Raphael OC'67, President Elect of the American Library Association.  We'll still offer popcorn, cider and the opportunity to make a small facsimile of your favorite book, which will then be destroyed in some manner, in a dramatization of our abhorrence of book burning.  This is ultimately a celebration of the Freedom to Read and a fitting end to Banned Books Week.  Join Us!

The Big Read will continue through March, with more events and book discussion groups.  Stay informed at oberlinbigread.org

Publication co-authored by recent grad Johanna Weaver

Johanna Weaver graduated in May 2009. Co-authors of this paper are from University of Oklahoma, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute of Panama, and Pomona College of Claremont, California.

Kaspari, Michael; Chang, Charlotte; Weaver, Johanna. 2010. Salted roads and sodium limitation in a northern forest ant community. Ecological Entomology 35:543-548.

Indexed in ISI Web of Science. Full-text access at the OhioLINK EJC or Wiley Online [subscribers only].