Tuesday 30 October 2007

New editions of Theory and Practice of Histological Techniques & Clinical Procedures in Primary Eye Care

Theory and practice of histological techniques / edited by John D. Bancroft and Marilyn Gamble. 6th edition : Churchill Livingstone, 2008.

Clinical procedures in primary eye care / David B. Elliott.
3rd edition: Butterworth Heinemann, 2007.

Now available in the Short Loan collection at the library desk or see http://www.library.dit.ie/

Friday 26 October 2007

CoRR - Computing Research Repository


CoRR allows researchers to search, browse and download papers through its online repository. Subjects include artficial intelligence, computational complexity, security, networking, programming languages, robotics and software engineering. http://arxiv.org/corr/

Thursday 25 October 2007

Solar radiation and global warming


The climate change being recorded around the Earth is down to human activity, most scientists accept. But there are other potential contributors to global warming, including the sun.

Even a small increase in solar radiation could have an impact on the rate of warming, suggests the professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, Prof Joanna Haigh.

Haigh is an expert in radiative transfer in the Earth's atmosphere. She studies how gases and clouds in the atmosphere absorb and scatter radiation from the sun and also thermal radiation.
"A fundamental understanding of these mechanisms is important because the Earth's climate depends on a balance between incoming solar and outgoing thermal radiation," Haigh writes.
"In order to predict possible changes in the climate we need to assess its response to any imposed radiative imbalance.


Tuesday 23 October 2007

Physical and inorganic chemistry e-tutorials


A resource comprising a full-text set of online tutorials in physical and inorganic chemistry is now available. Prepared by Jim Plambeck of the University of Alberta and hosted by Intute at http://intute.ac.uk/sciences/reference/plambeck/chem1/ua101.html

Monday 22 October 2007

Collaborate with Google Docs


Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online to share and collaborate in real time for free. Store and organise your work. Control who can see your documents and read other users' examples.

https://www.google.com/

Irish TImes Archive



DIT Library subscribes to the new Irish Times Archive Search which is now available via the library website.


The Digital archive contains exact reproductions of all articles published by the Irish Times from 1859 onwards, while the Text archive contains material published on ireland.com from 1996 onwards.


Access this resource via the DIT Library website @

Friday 19 October 2007

2007 Nobel Prize Winners


Read about the new 2007 Nobel Laureates for physics, chemistry and medicine at http://nobelprize.org/

Endnote e-tutorials



EndNote is a bibliographic software package that allows you to record and organise personal files of searchable references to books, journals articles, conference papers, images, websites and any other kind of publication. Use the Cite As You Write function in MS Word to create bibliographies and cite references in your assingment.

For online tutorials go to the following link on the DIT Library website:

Thursday 18 October 2007

Institute of Food Science & Technology (UK)

For the latest food science and technology information go to the IFST website @

Science Direct Top 25 Articles in your subject area


Now you can keep track of the latest trends and developments in your speciality with Science Direct's Top 25 Hottest Articles. TheTop 25 is a free service which provides lists of most read articles- counted by article downloads on ScienceDirect. You can choose to view Top 25 lists by journal (from among more than 2,000 titles), or by subject (from 24 core subject areas). From these Top 25 results go straight to read the full article depending on your access rights.
You can sign-up to receive the free quarterly Top 25 alerts. When you register, choose to receive alerts by subject or journal, and subscribe to 10 alerts at once.

Nutrition Resources

Nutrition and food science information and sources available at http://arborcom.com/

Dietary Supplements


The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) is part of the US National Institutes of Health. The site provides research information about supplements and links to other nutrition info and material.

Wednesday 17 October 2007

Tables of Physical Data


Data tables for mechanics, electricity & magnetism, thermodynamics, acoustics, condensed matter, physical constants and optics are available @

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

PhysORG


PhysOrg.com is a website that provides the latest physics and nanotechnology news from around the world taken from verified news sites. http://www.physorg.com/

Monday 15 October 2007

Fundamental Physical Constants d-base


The Fundamental Physical Constants database gives values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics & chemistry as published by CODATA (Committee on Data for Science & Technology) and the NIST in 2002.

The site also includes conversion factors for energy equivalents recommended by CODATA for international use and an introduction to the constants for non-experts.

Friday 12 October 2007

Organic Chemistry Resources


This website aims to collect and annotate synthetic orgnaic chemistry sites. It has six sections: Resources, Chemicals, Analysis, Synthesis, Comunication and Activities. For ease of use there is a subject index and a search facility @ http://www.organicworldwide.net/

Physics Challenges

This site offers a wide range of physics challenges aimed at undergrads. The challenges involve the application of physics principles to everyday problems.

Created by the Physics Dept of the Duke University, NC @
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/physics-challenges/challenges.html

Thursday 11 October 2007

Eye Emergencies


An animated interactive study & revision program aimed at students, optometrists and ophthalmologists. It includes a variety of common scenarios where patients present with eye conditions and symptoms.

Hosted by the University of Birmingham @

Protein sequence analysis guide


A bioinformatics tutorial in nucleic acid sequence translation and identification guiding the analysis of a DNA fragment.


Produced by University College London at http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser/jj/introfrm.html

Wednesday 10 October 2007

Molecule of the Month @ the Protein Data Bank


The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is an international respository of experimentally determined 3D structures of biological macromolecules. Produced by the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics @ http://www.rscb.org/pdb

Reference Service


Need information fast on a research topic? An email reference service “Virtual Reference Centre” is available for registered staff and researchers of DIT Kevin Street Library. The service provides assistance by email with enquiries related to:

Ø Library subject databases searching
Ø Current awareness tools
Ø Obtaining full text content

Please email enquiries to kst.library@dit.ie - we aim to get back to you within 48 hours.

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Developing an eye drop to save sight

A UCC research team is figuring out ways to strengthen ailing eye cells that could prevent blindness in later life.

Approx 60,000 people in Ireland suffer from eye degeneration, failing vision and eventual blindness and it can have a debilitating impact on their quality of life. That's why scientists in Cork are seeking to beef up ailing eye cells and halt degeneration in a number of eye diseases. There's a whole gamut of different diseases, like retinitis pigmentosa [ RP], age-related macular degeneration [ AMD] and glaucoma, and they lead to blindness," says Tom Cotter, professor of biochemistry at University College Cork (UCC). "There are very few treatments for these conditions, and you are losing one of your five senses." The cells die through a suicidal implosion called apoptosis, a process that Cotter's group has studied for more than 15 years.

For the full article click on :
http://0-www.ireland.com.ditlib.dit.ie/newspaper/health/2007/1009/1191668769101.html

Monday 8 October 2007

Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists

Microbiology news and views to help the busy scientist keep up-to-date on current research, forthcoming conferences, hot research topics, high impact publications, and much more.

Available at http://www.horizonpress.com/blogger/

Thursday 4 October 2007

Wednesday 3 October 2007


Information skills sessions are now available for both new and returning science students.

Workshops for first years are subject specific and aim to introduce students to both the hardcopy resources on the library floor and the growing e-resource collection on the Library website. Introductory sessions cover areas such as finding information for assignments and using the library WebOpac.

More detailed seminars on building skills in areas such as database searching, e-journals, evaluating web resources, citing sources and keeping research current are also offered and can be tailored to suit class groups.

For more details please contact julie.defoubert@dit.ie