Martin Luther King, Jr. on Science, Knowledge and Wisdom

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., here is an extract from A testament of hope : the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. / edited by James Melvin Washington, 1991.

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”  --p. 493

Dr. King goes on to expound on the dangers of "softmindedness" - of reaching a conclusion before examining the facts, of pre-judging, which is the basis of prejudicial thinking.  "Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings," writes King, and he underscores this with an examination of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.  Hitler knew that softmindedness could lead his followers to "believe that heaven is hell--and hell, heaven... the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

May this public inauguration day of President Barack Obama herald strengthening of scientific understanding among the general population, reasoning based on facts within the Congress, and leaders who exhibit both "toughmindedness" and "tenderheartedness," in the words of M.L. King, Jr.

[Texts originally from The Strength to Love, sermons written by King in 1963].

Strange Science - a fun way to begin winter term

Strange Science - "the rocky road to modern paleontology and biology" - was recently reviewed by The Scout Report.  Thanks to their reviewer for highlighting this fun and informative site.  Once you settle in for Winter Term, enjoy some time exploring the site's content.  Many neat old illustrations show how science advances in fits and false starts, and reinforces the importance of creative thinking, careful observation and repetitive experimentation for improving scientific understanding.

This is especially telling:  "Penned in the 7th or 8th century, Liber Monstrorum warned readers at the outset that most of the stories it relayed were probably lies. Yet in the midst of tall tales and fabrications, increased travel led to the discoveries of very real elephants, anteaters, ostriches and apes. Believing too little could be as bad as believing too much." So enlighten and enliven your mind with a bit of fiction that might just inspire serious fact-finding.

Ready for Winter Shutdown

The readers have gone, with freshly printed boarding passes.
Book returns - emptied, all items checked in and organized.  Shelving comes later!
Plants - watered.
Last week's journals - shelved.
Wayward items gathered from tables and nasty neglected food items deposited in a trash receptacle outside the library.  Ick.

Computers - after much crawling under tables, shutdown and unplugged.
Printers & copiers - off, thank goodness.  No complaints today, yeah.

Newly reupholstered chairs, looking so plump, await the return of students in January.  We are ready!  The library reopens January 2.  A restful, restorative winter break to all.

Recent Student and Faculty Publications in Chemistry and Biology

Thomson Reuters Web of Science reports several new publications by Oberlin College students and faculty.  Last names of Oberlin-affiliated authors are in bold font:

• Chivers, P. T., Benanti, E. L., Heil-Chapdelaine, V., Iwig, J. S., & Rowe, J. L. (2012). Identification of ni-(L-his)(2) as a substrate for NikABCDE-dependent nickel uptake in escherichia coli. Metallomics, 4(10), 1043-1050.  Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Peter Chivers and four former Oberlin students as co-authors.

• Moran, S. D., Decatur, S. M., & Zanni, M. T. (2012). Structural and sequence analysis of the human gamma D-crystallin amyloid fibril core using 2D IR spectroscopy, segmental C-13 labeling, and mass spectrometry. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 134(44), 18410-18416.   Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Chemistry Sean Decatur.

• Rosenthal, M. F., Murphy, T. G., Darling, N., & Tarvin, K. A.  (2012). Ornamental bill color rapidly signals changing condition. Journal of Avian Biology, 43(6), 553-564.   Associate Professor of Biology Keith Tarvin, with Nancy Darling, Professor of Psychology and Malcom Rosenthal (OC '09).

• Zuber, S. T., Muller, K., Laushman, R. H., & Roles, A. J. (2012). Hybridization between an invasive and a native species of the crayfish genus orconectes in north-central ohio. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 32(6), 962-971. [To be deposited in the OhioLINK EJC]  Assistant Professor of Biology Angela Roles with Professor of Biology Roger Laushman and alumni Sierra Zuber and Katherine Muller. 

NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP Satellite

Just yesterday, new images were released of our planet by night, captured by the new NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP Satellite which was launched last year. Check out this article, embedded with incredible images and videos, from NASA's webpage to learn more.

Interested in this subject?


For more on remote sensing and observations of earth from space, check out the following titles in the Science Library:
Earth Observations from Space: the first 50 years of scientific achievement
Our Changing Planet: the view from space

Additionally, the following are available online as electronic resources:
Exploring space, exploring earth
Advances in earth observation of global change

Copulation in the Animal Kingdom (and beyond!)

This week the Oberlin SIC (Sexual Information Center) brings us their annual Safer Sex Week to promote sexual awareness, education, and positivity. As often as issues of sex and sexuality are discussed in the context of humanities here at Oberlin, there are countless relevant topics to explore within the natural sciences. So, I present to you, from the Oberlin College Science Library, this blog post to introduce you to just a few of the interesting texts we have on our shelves!

To get you started, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach, is a both scientifically engaging and utterly entertaining read if you'd like to pick something up for fun and learn about historical and current research that's been conducted on the topic of human sex.

For all you neuro majors out there, if you're interested in the neuroscience and endocrinology behind sexuality, Biological Substrates of Human Sexuality would provide a great look into the most recent findings in this field.

Moving beyond human sex and sexuality, if you have an interest in insects, marine fishes, plants (regarding mate choice, or an introduction to their reproductive biology, perhaps), crustaceans, animal homosexuality, monogamy, or hermaphroditism, we have plenty to fuel your curiosity!

Finally, if you're in the mood to watch a movie this weekend (because, let's face it, reading period and finals are almost here and you're running out of down-time...) check out our DVD shelf for The Botany of Desire, based on the book by Michael Pollan. This may be somewhat of a stretch for this blog entry but definitely worth mentioning, as it explores the concepts of sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control in the context of four plants that are tied closely to our lives.

Robert Owen, Professor of Physics published in Physical Review

A new publication by Robert Owen, professor of physics, as reported in Web of Science:

Zhang F., A. Zimmerman, D. A. Nichols, Y. Chen, G. Lovelace, K. D. Matthews, R. Owen, and K. S. Thorne. 2012. Visualizing spacetime curvature via frame-drag vortexes and tidal tendexes. II. Stationary black holes. Physical Review D 86:084049. [access for subscribers, provided by the library]

Here is just one sentence from the abstract, to draw you into this particular spin: "We also explore how the tendex and vortex lines change as the spin of a black hole is increased, and we find, for example, that as a black hole is spun up through a dimensionless spin a/M=√3/2, the horizon tendicity at its poles changes sign, and an observer hovering or falling inward there switches from being stretched radially to being squeezed."

I would only observe that neither radial stretching nor squeezing sounds particularly desirable, in the context of falling inward to a black hole.  Learn more: Black holes in higher dimensions / edited by Gary T. Horowitz.  Cambridge Univ Press, 2012.

Marine life off the coast of Texas

What began as an in-house project to identify organisms caught in routine sampling by Texas Parks & Wildlife Coastal Fisheries field staff has become an extensive database of photographs, descriptions, definitions and taxonomic information for a widely diverse collection of organisms found off the Texas coast.  Freely available on the internet, the Identification Guide to Marine Organisms of Texas is useful for anyone interested in animals and vegetation of the Gulf Coast.  Visual glossary photos depict the anatomy of common species, and the "fish feature query" is a fun way to discover fish species based on selected characteristics.  The site is an excellent way to help the public appreciate species diversity in the region, while serving the educational and research mission of a state-supported agency.  Thanks to the TPWD and webmaster Brenda Bowling for making it publicly available.

Texas Coral Reefs, by Jesse Cancelmo (Texas A&M University Press, c2008), an ebook accessible through OBIS, is a good place to start for a broader look at the ecology of the Texas coast.  This image is a small portion of a photograph of Geyer Bank, appearing on page 109 of the book.

It's looking even worse than we feared

Just received (in print):  New Scientist, issue for Nov 17-23, with the cover story "Climate change: five years ago we feared the worst.  But it's looking even worse than that."  Coming on the heals of yesterday's talk by Peter Harper (What Americans don't get about climate change), seven worrisome signs of potential catastrophe should shake-up anyone feeling complacent or uncertain about the reality of climate change.  Writer Michael Le Page outlines why things are looking very grim indeed:

1. Arctic ice is warming faster than predicted
2. Extreme weather is getting more extreme
3. Food production is taking a hit
4. Sea levels will rise faster than expected
5. Greenhouse gas levels could keep rising even if our emissions stop
6. We're emitting more than ever
7. Heat stress means big trouble

This last point is particularly ominous.  Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, concludes that "if we full 'develop' all of the world's coal, tar sands, shales and other fossil fuels we run a high risk of ending up in a few generations with a largely unlivable planet."  As Peter Harper so aptly put it, I would like my granddaughter's granddaughter to know that we tenants of the early 21st century did all that was humanly possible to keep Earth a hospitable place.

45 years = 114,801,000 more people in USA

On this date in 1967, just a few minutes after 11am, the U.S. Department of Commerce Census Clock passed 200 million.*  Population growth has slowed worldwide since the peak of the 1970s, but is still galloping along.  Now, exactly 45 years after passing the 200 million mark, the U.S. resident population is nearly 314,801,000.  World population long ago exceeded the 6 billion mark and is projected to surpass 9 billion by 2050.

This is a pivotal moment, according to the authors of a book with that title.  "A difference in fertility of a single child per woman’s lifetime between now and 2050 alters the projection by 3 billion, a difference equal to the entire world population in 1960." [p 29]  A Pivotal Moment : Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge is available electronically and in print, in the main library.

*according to the Illustrated Almanac of Science, Technology, and Invention.

Tuesday's Total Solar Eclipse

Unless you've been to northern Australia and back in the last twenty-four hours, you didn't get the chance witness, in person, the total solar eclipse that happened yesterday. You may have, however, been watching online as there were several live-streams available from a number of sources!

Whether or not you took part in this event yesterday, you may be interested in learning more about solar eclipses. The science library has you covered! From their context in mythology to astronomy, solar eclipses are fascinating occurrences, and the following titles can provide you with lots of information (and a few incredible pictures):

Littmann, Totality : eclipses of the sun

Montelle, Chasing shadows : mathematics, astronomy, and the early history of eclipse reckoning

Steel, Eclipse : the celestial phenomenon that changed the course of history

And --although a bit late in this case-- to prepare you for next time (which is a hybrid solar eclipse scheduled for November 2013):

Harrington, Eclipse! : the what, where, when, why, and how guide to watching solar and lunar eclipses

Frog, Pumpkin, Mosquito. What do they have in common?

Answer: They are on the new book shelf. Not an actual frog, pumpkin or mosquito - but intriguing new books about them. The pumpkin book, especially, is quite tempting this time of year. And how can one resist the enthusiasm expressed by the frog on the cover of our newest addition to the Reaktion series on animals?  There are plenty of other things to borrow in the new book area, in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, ecology, neuroscience, plant physiology, geology... the list goes on and on!  Come see. 

Recent Publications: Craig, Page, Simonson and Stalnaker

Articles by Oberlin science faculty published this fall included the following (Oberlin faculty indicated in bold font):

Craig, Norman C., Fuson, H. A., Tian, H., & Blake, T. A. (2012). Analysis of the rotational structure in the high-resolution infrared spectra of trans-hexatriene-1,1-d(2) and -cis-1-d(1). Journal of Molecular Structure,1023, 68-74. 

Cunningham, L. C., Page, F. Zeb, Simonson, Bruce M., Kozdon, R., & Valley, J. W. (2012). Ion microprobe analyses of delta O-18 in early quartz cements from 1.9 ga granular iron formations (GIFs): A pilot study.Precambrian Research, 214, 258-268. 

Demaison, J., Craig, Norman C., Conrad, A. R., Tubergen, M. J., & Rudolph, H. D. (2012). Semiexperimental equilibrium structure of the lower energy conformer of glycidol by the mixed estimation method. Journal of Physical Chemistry a, 116(36), 9116-9122. 

Stalnaker, Jason E., Chen, S. L., Rowan, M. E., Nguyen, K., Pradhananga, T., Palm, C. A., & Kimball, D. F. J. (2012). Velocity-selective direct frequency-comb spectroscopy of atomic vapors. Physical Review a, 86(3), 033832.

Science Center roof slabs get hauled away

The damaged slabs of roof covering are now being hauled away - great work on the part of the Facilities Operations staff and contractors!

Temporary repairs are underway, and the library remains dry.  With any luck, the science center will reopen tomorrow, if all systems are back online.  Meanwhile, the little outpost of science reserve materials is in operation at Wilder Student Union.  Come talk to us in the lobby.  We might just give you a treat on this All Hallow's Eve!  Our service desk will be open until 11pm.

UPDATE, 4:45pm - the science center will reopen on Thursday.  Hurray!  Thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make this happen.

Science Reserve Items Available to Lend in Wilder

Given the lack of access to the Science Center today, we have moved part of the reserve operation to Wilder Student Union.  Come see us in the lobby!  Required textbooks, laptops, calculators, even a few headphones, are all available to check out. There are plenty of quiet areas in Wilder where you can use the materials.  We'll also help with reference questions - don't hesitate to ask.

Science Center & Library CLOSED

The science center and science library were closed at 1:30pm today, due to hazardous weather conditions and leaky areas of the roof.  High winds have pulled slabs of the elegant aluminium cover off the roof, and the incessant rain is finding its way into the exposed roofing material.  

Notice the big slab of aluminum perched on the roof over the walkway between the east and north areas of the science center (photo left).  So far, the library has not experienced water leakage like that occurring in a few rooms on the upper floors of the science center. Send kind and heartening thoughts to our friends in Safety and Security and Facilities Operations, who have been working hours in this driving rain to minimize risks to us all.

A much bigger slab of the roof pealed away yesterday afternoon and came down on the north side of the building, just outside the windows of West Lecture Hall.

Biodiversity at PLoS Hubs

Listening to the discussion at an ALAO pre-conference session on open access publishing led to a brief look at the Biodiversity Hub at PLoS (Public Library of Science).  PLoS Hubs serve to aggregate journal articles in a given discipline, highlighting connections among researchers world-wide, and articles from different publishers and various publishers.  Learn more.  There are now over 1,319 articles highlighted in the Biodiversity Hub, added to the Hub between September 2010 and March 2012.  Take a look!

Fall Break... even the sleepers are gone

Looking east from the library entrance.

The view out our north windows.

 Mid-week of Fall break is a very, very quiet time in the library.  A brief pause in the semester.  The view toward north quad is delightful - perfect weather for ultimate practice, but the players are elsewhere.  A good time for quiet work.

Energy for Future Presidents

If you watched the second of the presidential debates last night, you may have noticed an increased focus on the subject of energy. In light of this ongoing discussion over energy policy in the United States, I bring you --or, rather, author Richard A. Muller brings you-- Energy for Future Presidents: the science behind the headlines. In this book, Muller tackles the full gamut of current energy challenges, analyzing everything from the fallout at Fukushima to the future of natural gas. If you're interested in these important issues, whether as a concerned citizen or an environmental studies major, come in and check this book out from our "New Books" shelf under the display window!


Additionally, here's an interview with Richard A. Muller from NPR's Morning Edition; and two more articles (from the LA Times and Huffington Post) covering energy in the context of the presidential debates if you'd like to keep reading!

Halucinatory Realism and the Nobel Prize in Literature

How does the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature relate to science?  The phrase "hallucinatory realism" caught my imagination when I read the announcement of the award to Chinese-born Mo Yan "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."  Hallucinations stem from disturbances in the brain, and that's neuroscience, my friend.  Or do these experiences fall in the realm of religion, psychology or philosophy? Literature, for sure, and historical documents abound with references to hallucination and illusion. Do a subject search on "hallucinations and illusions" in OBIS, and books in a wide range of disciplines, from many different decades, are listed - from scientific to the bizarre, and everything in between. Perfect for a liberal arts collection.  A recent book from Oxford University gives the more scientific overview: Perception, hallucination, and illusion / William Fish. The library's print copy is checked out, but OhioLINK users can access this online.