Plagiarism, Education, and Information Security

Plagiarism is becoming widespread especially in academic environment. The acccess to Internet documents makes it easy to accomplish. Julie Ryan, from George Washington University in article available in IEEE Security & Privicy, proposes a model of curbing the Plagiarism. Click on the TITLE to read the article.

New from UN: Climate Change 2007, The Synthesis Report

Follow up the 21/11/2007 post on this topic.

The Synthesis Report was launched in Valencia, Spain, on 17 November 2007 during a press conference. Click on the TITLE to view the latest information.

Summary for Policymakers of the Synthesis Report (23 pages draft, 16 November 2007): http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

Links to the different IPCC Reports:

* The IPCC Working Group I assesses the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change. Its latest report "Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis" was launched on 2 February 2007 in Paris.

* The IPCC Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it. Its latest report "Climate Change 2007 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" was launched on 6 April 2007 in Paris.

* The IPCC Working Group III assesses options for mitigating climate change through limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing activities that remove them from the atmosphere. Its latest report, "Climate Change 2007 - Mitigation of Climate Change" was launched on 4 May 2007 in Bangkok.

The UJ Library purchase this year the "Climate Change 2001" reports.

A Student Guide to Footnoting for Informational Clarity and Scholarly Discourse

Abstract:

This short article is a guide for authors, student editors, and research assistants to the major types of footnotes and how to prepare them. First, I introduce the three basic types of text requiring footnote citations – those containing (a) references, (b) facts, and (c) ideas. Footnotes for references are designed to allow your readers to retrace your research and to decide for themselves whether your line of analysis is correct. Footnotes for facts are designed to provide your reader with additional background information about anything you have mentioned that may not be familiar to your readers, including potentially obscure people, places, objects, events. Footnotes for ideas are designed to place your arguments, ideas, and analyses in the broader intellectual context of those scholars who have already considered your subject, and often offers glimpses down the side avenues of discourse that cannot be pursued in the article itself. The article concludes with some guidelines for undertaking research in ways that make it easier to prepare scholarly footnotes efficiently and correctly.
International Journal of Legal Information, Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 87, 2006 (available through A-to-Z list full-text OR click on the TITLE, scroll on your left side to find the article)

Reliability of Journal Impact Factor Rankings

BMC Medical Research Methodology 2007, 7:48 (for provisional full-text - click on the titile)

Journal impact factors and their ranks are used widely by journals, researchers, and research assessment exercises.Decisions placed on journal impact factors are potentially misleading where the uncertainty associated with the measure is ignored. This article proposes that caution should be exercised in the interpretation of journal impact factors and their ranks, and specifically that a measure of uncertainty should be routinely presented alongside the point estimate.

Published: 15 November 2007

This Week in Science Online Magazine

23 November 2007,Vol 318, Issue 5854, Pages 1213-1318

News of the Week:

* DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY: Field Leaps Forward With New Stem Cell Advances

* ASTRONOMY: If You Build It, Will They Come?

News Focus:

* GLOBAL WARMING: How Urgent Is Climate Change?

* AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES: The B Cell Slayer

* BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH: From Rolfer to Researcher

* SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY MEETING: Jaw Shows Platypus Goes Way Back

Policy Forum:

* Ecology: Managing Evolving Fish Stocks

Perspectives:

* CELL BIOLOGY: IP7 Debut in Insulin Release

* CHEMISTRY: Chemicals from Biomass

* PHYSICS: Better Computing with Photons

* BIOCHEMISTRY: Signaling Across the Cell Membrane

* APPLIED PHYSICS: Filling the Terahertz Gap

Research Articles:

* High-Resolution Crystal Structure of an Engineered Human β2-Adrenergic G Protein–Coupled Receptor:

* GPCR Engineering Yields High-Resolution Structural Insights into β2-Adrenergic Receptor Function

Reports:

* Shape and Temperature Memory of Nanocomposites with Broadened Glass Transition

* Efficient Transplantation via Antibody-Based Clearance of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Niches

Click on the TITTE for full-text

Science challenges simply irresistable for acclaimed UJ researcher

Professor Jens Gutzmer, lecturer and researcher in the Department of Geology at the University of Johannesburg (UJ has been honoured with the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS) Prize for Young Scientists in South Africa, a prestigious award issued by the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. This national award is made annually to young scientists (under 40 years of age) who have made outstanding contributions in scientific research within specific developing countries.

Congratulations!

Climate Change Irreversible? United Nations Chief Urges Breakthrough After Dire IPCC Report Released

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2007) — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has challenged the world's policymakers to start devising a comprehensive deal for tackling climate change at next month's summit in Bali, Indonesia, after a United Nations report released Nov. 17 found that global warming is unequivocal and could cause irreversible damage to the planet.

Click on the title for full-text article

Oceans Could Slurp Up Carbon Dioxide To Fight Global Warming

ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2007) — Researchers in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are proposing a new method for reducing global warming that involves building a series of water treatment plants that enhance the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. About 100 such plants -- which essentially use the ocean as "a giant carbon dioxide collector" -- could cause a 15 percent reduction in emissions over many years, they say. About 700 plants could offset all CO2 emissions.

Click on the title for full-text article

MIT lecture Search Engine Aids Students

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2007) — Imagine you are taking an introductory biology course. You're studying for an exam and realize it would be helpful to revisit the professor's explanation of RNA interference. Fortunately for you, a digital recording of the lecture is online, but the 10-minute explanation you want is buried in a 90-minute lecture you don't have time to watch.

Click on the title for full-text article

This Week in Science Online Magazine

16 November 2007,Vol 318, Issue 5853, Pages 1033-1164

* Special issue: Robotics

* This Week in Science: Editor summary of this week papers: http://0-www.sciencemag.org.ujlink.uj.ac.za/content/vol318/issue5853/twis.dtl

* News of the Week

- AIDS RESEARCH: Did Merck's Failed HIV Vaccine Cause Harm?

- EPIDEMIOLOGY: Privacy Policies Take a Toll on Research, Survey Finds

- ENVIRONMENT: Panel Calls for Pilot Program for National Indicators

- SCIENTIFIC WORK FORCE: New Analysis Questions Push for More Degrees

- CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientists Say Continued Warming Warrants Closer Look at Drastic Fixes

* News Focus

- SCIENTIFIC FACILITIES: Oceanography's Third Wave

- PUBLIC HEALTH: In the HIV Era, an Old TB Vaccine Causes New Problems

* Letters

- The Carbon Benefits of Fuels and Forests

* Policy Forum

- PUBLIC HEALTH: Biobanks in Developing Countries: Needs and Feasibility

* Perspectives

- PHYSICS: When Oxides Meet Face to Face

- GENETICS: Widespread Monoallelic Expression

- PLANETARY SCIENCE: Hidden Mars

* Brevia

- Hurricane Katrina's Carbon Footprint on U.S. Gulf Coast Forests

* Research Articles

- Orbital Reconstruction and Covalent Bonding at an Oxide Interface

* Reports

- Generation and Photonic Guidance of Multi-Octave Optical-Frequency Combs

- Three-Dimensional Splay Fault Geometry and Implications for Tsunami Generation

- Rise and Fall of Species Occupancy in Cenozoic Fossil Mollusks

- Melatonin Suppresses Nighttime Memory Formation in Zebrafish

Click on the TITLE to access the full-text articles

New European Loess Map

Leipzig. A new map showing the distribution of loess sediments in Europe has been published for the first time in 75 years, in digital format. With this map, Dagmar Haase, a geographer at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), has completed the work of various researchers who had begun as far back as the 1970s and 80s to revise the last comprehensive inventory produced by Rudolf Grahmann, which appeared in Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Leipzig in 1932. Haase and her colleagues have produced the new map with a scale of 1:2,500,000 with the help of modern digital information systems.

In total, loess soils cover around one fifth of Europe: especially in the Eastern European lowlands, in a belt north of the low mountain range, in the foothills of the Alps and the Danube basin and in various other river basins. The publication of the map in Quaternary Science Reviews marks the completion of a project on which geographers and soil scientists have been working for decades.

Public release date: 15-Nov-2007

ISI Journal Citation Reports: South African Journals Impact Factors

According to the 2006 ISI Journal Citation Reports, only 17 South African Journals are accredited internationally. Look at the Sciences Journals Impact Factors:

* African Journal of Marine Science (1.086)

* South African Journal of Geology (1.000)

* South African Journal of Botany (0.648)

* African entomology (0.613)

* South African Journal of Science (0.602)

* Water SA (0.494)

* South African Journal of Wildlife Research (0.488)

* South African Journal of Chemistry (0.459)

* African Zoology (0.408)

* Bothalia (0.407)

* Ostrich (0.256)

* South African Journal of Animal Science (0.215)
* J S AFR I MIN METAL (0.124)

Click on the Table to enlarge image. You will also find out what are the: Total Cites, Immediacy Index, Articles and Cited half-life indicators.

P.S. ISI Journal Citation Report is available through the Library Databases list. Direct link is also available on this website.

Climate scepticism: The top 10

What are some of the reasons why "climate sceptics" dispute the evidence that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth's climate? As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finalises its landmark report for 2007, we look at 10 of the arguments most often made against the IPCC consensus, and some of the counter-arguments made by scientists who agree with the IPCC.

The World University Rankings 2007

Martin Ince reveals the winners and losers in The Times Higher-QS World University Rankings 2007. The world's top ten universities are in the UK or the US, according to the annual Times Higher-QS World University Rankings published with this issue.
Harvard has emerged as the world's top university for the fourth time in succession, with Cambridge, Oxford and Yale universities all tied for second place. The UK has four institutions in the top ten this year, compared with three last year. Imperial College London makes fifth place, up from ninth last year. University College London rose 16 places, making it to ninth place. Princeton, California Institute of Technology, Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology make up the rest of the top ten....

The rankings confirm the modest world status of universities in continental Europe, with the top university being France's Ecole Normale Superieure in 26th place. This places continental Europe behind institutions in Canada, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, the US and UK.
The top 200 includes four from the developing world: two in Brazil, one from Mexico and, for the first time, an African university, Cape Town, in 200th place.
A total of 28 nations have at least one institution in the 200. Virtually every university in Australia is in the rankings, with 12 representatives, while the Netherlands, with 11, emerges as continental Europe's principal power in higher education.

Single-largest Biodiversity Survey Says Primary Rainforest Is Irreplaceable

ScienceDaily (Nov. 14, 2007) — As world leaders prepare to discuss conservation-friendly carbon credits in Bali and a regional initiative threatens a new wave of deforestation in the South American tropics, new research from the University of East Anglia and Brazil's Goeldi Museum highlights once again the irreplaceable importance of primary rain forest.
Click on the TITLE to view the full article

First-ever 'State Of The Carbon Cycle Report' Finds Troubling Imbalance

ScienceDaily (Nov. 14, 2007) — The first "State of the Carbon Cycle Report" for North America, released online this week by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, finds the continent's carbon budget increasingly overwhelmed by human-caused emissions. North American sources release nearly 2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, mostly as carbon dioxide. Carbon "sinks" such as growing forests may remove up to half this amount, but these current sinks may turn into new sources as climate changes.Click on the TITLE to view the full article.

The full report, Draft 4, May 2007 is available under "Environmental Science" topic on the left side of this web page.

Environment Research Letters: ERL

Environment Research Letters is an open-access journal for Environmental Science. At the end of October 2007, ERL celebrated it's 1st birthday. Some of the articles published through 2007 were:

Vol.2, no.4, October-December 2007

* Strategic GHG reduction through the use of ground source heat pump technology: Higher energy prices and concern about climate change is drawing increasing attention to ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems

The focus of this issue is on Environmental Health and Justice Internationally.

* Environmental justice: a critical issue for all environmental scientists everywhere; Environmental justice in Scotland: policy, pedagogy and praxis; Exploring the joint effect of atmospheric pollution and socioeconomic status on selected health outcomes: an overview of the PAISARC project; Environmental justice and the distributional deficit in policy appraisal in the UK; The dilemma of contact: voluntary isolation and the impacts of gas exploitation on health and rights in the Kugapakori Nahua Reserve, Peruvian Amazon

Vol.2, no.3, July-September 2007

* Critical technical areas for future improvement in bio diesel technologies; The risk of surprise in energy technology costs; Limitations of science and adapting to Nature; Relaxed eddy accumulation measurements of ammonia, nitric acid, sulfur dioxide and particulate sulfate dry deposition near Tampa, FL, USA; Global multi-decadal ocean climate and small-pelagic fish population; Will dry events occur more often in Hungary in the future?The water intensity of the transitional hydrogen economy.

Vol.2, no.2, April-June 2007

* Life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas emission impacts of different corn ethanol plant types; Scientific reticence and sea level rise; Reconsidering 'appropriate technology': the effects of operating conditions on the bacterial removal performance of two household drinking-water filter systems; The regrets of procrastination in climate policy.

Vol.2, no.1, January-March 2007

* On the verge of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system? Climate change, bio fuels, and global food security; Allowable CO2 concentrations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a function of the climate sensitivity probability distribution function; Global scale climate–crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming; How hybrid-electric vehicles are different from conventional vehicles: the effect of weight and power on fuel consumption

Click on the TITLE above to visit ERL journal. Short cut to this journal is available under "Open Access Journals" on this web page.

Show Your Librarian Some Love

Show Your Librarian Some Love / by Todd Gilman

Many academic librarians feel unloved and underappreciated on their campuses, and the main reason is that they sense they are viewed as second-class citizens by members of the teaching faculty.Certainly that sentiment will not come as news to librarians. I wonder, though, to what extent teaching faculty members know how their library colleagues feel.....

.....Many professors summarily dismiss librarians' earnest and repeated offers of research instruction or, at the very least, don't take full advantage of those offers. When prodded they may claim they have "too much to cover" in their courses to make time for a library visit.....

.....Your students need the library and the librarians in it. If your students didn't get enough exposure to research education before your course (and trust me, they didn't) you owe it to them to bring them in. Most undergraduates come to college having mastered only the most basic tools for research. They can use a dictionary. They can conduct a search in Google that yields results (5 million, in fact!). They may even be able to run an online search by author or title and then find the book on the shelf.....
....Better yet, why not work with that librarian to develop one or more assignments for a grade that will enable your students to apply what they have learned while the library is still fresh in their minds? That way they are sure to take the library seriously, reap the maximum benefit from their interaction with the librarian, and get practice using the library for something more than study space...

Click on the title to view the full article.

This Week in Science Online

Volume 318, Number 5852, Issue of 9 November 2007
http://0-www.sciencemag.org.ujlink.uj.ac.za/current.dtl
What is interesting to read:
News of the Week:
* ASTROPHYSICS: Universe's Highest-Energy Particles Traced Back to Other Galaxies
* TUBERCULOSIS: Few Mutations Divide Some Drug-Resistant TB Strains
* SCIENCE IN CHINA: Max Planck's Asian Venture Rethinks Its Agenda
* EVOLUTIONARY GENOMICS: Fruit Fly Blitz Shows the Power of Comparative Genomics
New Focus:
* MICHAEL WALKER: Seeking Nature's Inner Compass
* MICHAEL WALKER: A Home for Maori Science
* PLANETARY SCIENCE: Majority Rules in Finding a Path for the Next Mars Rover
* GENETICS: Who's the Queen? Ask the Genes (Biologists are finding that in some social insects nature...)
Policy Forum:
* ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE: Rethinking Desalinated Water Quality and Agriculture
Perspectivevs:
* CHEMISTRY: Enhancing Colloids Through the Surface
* COMPUTER SCIENCE: Is There Progress on Talking Sensibly to Machines?
Brevia:
* A Cretaceous Hoofed Mammal from India
Research Articles:
* Correlation of the Highest-Energy Cosmic Rays with Nearby Extragalactic Objects
* IRE1 Signaling Affects Cell Fate During the Unfolded Protein Response
.... and much more for you to read.

Climate: SA 'not bothered'

Some of the research findings on how South Africans feel about the Climate Change & Global Warming were published in News24 on 9/11/07.

Cape Town - Only a third of adults living in South Africa's metro areas feel that climate change or global warming will affect them. This is one of the findings of a study conducted in September by South Africa's leading marketing and social insights company, TNS Research Surveys. The company interviewed 2 000 adults in all seven of South Africa's major metropolitan areas in a study that looked at how people feel about climate change, their use of key resources and what their carbon footprint is.
Most people put issues such as crime, HIV/Aids, corruption, poverty and unemployment, and poor service and housing delivery higher in importance than climate change.

Read the full article from News24: http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_2217656,00.html OR click on the TITLE above.

UJLink: Library Catalogue in action

It is a fact! The UJ Library has a new Library Catalogue!

How to get started?

From the main page you can select any of the searching options.
· Basic Search – by default you search for KEYWORDS. You can select from OTHER OPTIONS to search for a Title, Author, Subjects, Journal Title, Afrikaans Subjects, Shelf Number, Dewey Number, ISBN/ISSN and Author/Title
· Advanced Search – You can EXTEND your search to multiple fields, but also you can LIMIT your search to specific Campus Collections (APK, APB, etc), Location (References, Main Collection, Law Collection, etc.), Material type, Language, Years of Publication, and Publisher. You can SORT the results by: relevance, date or title. On the right site of the screen SEARCH TIPS are available
· Multiple Databases – NEW feature to the Library Catalogue. You can search across multiple resources to find full-text articles, abstracts, images, books, and more. You can search simultaneously the UJ Library Catalogue, Other Universities Catalogues, some Internet websites, selected databases, etc. You need to exercise to get the feeling of what you will get as results.
· Databases A-to-Z - Link to the existing databases list.
· Course Reserve – Find out what materials are placed on Reserve. You can either search per COURSE or LECTURER. You have BASIC SEARCH option link.
· My UJLink – NEW! Your’ personal UJLink. You need to login with your Surname and Staff/student number. You can renew your books, place a hold on a book, save preferred searches, look at your reading history and my ratings. You can search through a Basic search screen; limit your search per location or available items only.

This Week in Science Online

Volume 318, Number 5851, Issue of 2 November 2007

View the latest Content of Science Online:

* News of the Week: Climate change; Natural Disasters, Medicine; AIDS Research; History of Science

* New Focus: SCIENCE AND COMMERCE: Who Owns Glycobiology?; NUCLEAR PHYSICS: A Lab to Get the Measure of Matter; IMMUNOLOGY: Testing the Line Between Too Much and Too Little; ECOLOGY: Do Wandering Albatrosses Care About Math?

* Policy Forum: Disaster Management: confronting Disaster loses

* Perspectives: DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY: Acceptable nAGging; CHEMISTRY: No Protection Required; PHYSICS: A New State of Quantum Matter; ASTRONOMY: Mining for the Ephemeral

* Research Articles

- Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells

- Molecular Basis for the Nerve Dependence of Limb Regeneration in an Adult Vertebrate

* Reports

* Technical comments