Stargazing Conference - research publications

Research publications now come in many different formats - from computer software and databases, to dance performances and music. And traditional journals are no longer the only way of publishing - e-journals, software repositories and blogs are all valuable resources.

* How do you find research that is relevant to you? and how do you know if it is any good?
* How do you make your own "publications" available? and how do you make them count?

This year's "stargazing conference" will provide an opportunity to hear University staff and guest speakers talk about some of the current issues and future trends. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion and this promises to be an essential day for everyone involved in research.

Contact Details: mdima@staffmail.ed.ac.uk Further Details: http://www.itfutures.ed.ac.uk/Conference2008.shtml

myExperiment Virtual Research Environment

JISC funded project from UoManchester and Southampton. Labelled beta:

"myExperiment is a collaborative environment where scientists can safely publish their workflows, share them with groups and find the workflows of others. Workflows, other digital objects and collections - called Packs - can now be swapped, sorted and searched like photos and videos on the Web. And unlike Facebook or MySpace, myExperiment fully understands the needs of the researcher.

myExperiment makes it really easy for the next generation of scientists to contribute to a pool of scientific workflows, build communities and form relationships. It enables scientists to share, reuse and repurpose workflows and reduce time-to-experiment, share expertise and avoid reinvention."

Chemistry is a recently added user community.

Special Issue - Physica Status Solidi B

Volume 245 Issue 10 (October 2008)
Special Issue: Electronic Properties of Novel Materials: Molecular nanostructures

Including Marx & Barth's "Carbon nanotubes - A scientometric study" (p 2347-2351).

Full-text access to the whole issue via library subscription from here (EASE login may be required).

From the abstract: "The most productive authors and leading research organizations are determined. The distribution of the nanotubes articles on the countries of the authors and on the leading journals is given". Based on WoS data.

The science behind the Nobel

Link to You Tube video from RSC Readers Post by Martyn Poliakoff at:

http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/?p=1202

University of Nottingham's Periodicvideo's full selection at:

http://www.periodicvideos.com/

Assessment and Plagiarism Workshop, 19th November 2008, University of Birmingham

This interactive one day workshop is to be facilitated by Chris Rust, Deputy Director of ASKe Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange) based at Oxford Brookes University.

The workshop will introduce plagiarism and academic misconduct and how to deter students from doing this. The use of assessment and feedback will also be discussed and how to use this to encourage active learning.

There is no registration fee for this meeting for those working in UK HE and lunch and refreshments will be provided.

For more information and to register, please see the website:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/events/detail/plagiarism_assessment_nov_2008

Physical Sciences Centre
Higher Education Academy Network
Chemistry Department
University of Hull

Beilstein update

The latest update of the Beilstein database, 2008/03, was made available on Thursday 2nd October.

This database contains 10,853,341 compounds, 22,416,526 reactions and 2,198,835 citations.

As a consequence of this update, Commander 7.0 and 7.1 will download files either to the group folder in the main Commander installation folder if it is writeable, or if not to your My Documents folder (again assuming that you have write permission, which would normally be the case). We do not believe that users with stand-alone installations of Commander 6 will experience any difficulties, although Commander will only attempt to download the files to the main installation folder.

Please email rowena.stewart@ed.ac.uk or crossfire@mimas.ac.uk if you experience any difficulties.

October e-bulletin from the Physical Sciences Centre

Information about forthcoming Centre events, news and developments from the Centre and any other related news, every month. Available on the website:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/publications/ebulletin

Contents for Issue 25, 1st October 2008

1. Call for papers
i) SLTC

2. Forthcoming events
i) Mathematics for physics graduates, 7th October 2008, University of Manchester
ii) Forensic Science SIG meeting - 'Sexual assault from Crime Scene Court - Looking to the future', 15th October 2008, Staffordshire University, Stoke campus
iii) Workshop for New and Aspiring Lecturers, 14-15th November 2008, Best Western Monk Bar Hotel, York
iv) Science Education Research in Higher Education: Past, Present, Future; A symposium to mark the retirement of Prof. Norman Reid, 19th November 2008, University of Glasgow
v) Assessment and Plagiarism Workshop, 19th November 2008, University of Birmingham

3. Other events
i) The Forensic Science Society, One-Day Student Conference: Crime Scene to Court, 13th December 2008, University of Abertay

CALL FOR PAPERS - Third Science Learning and Teaching Conference (SLTC), 16-17th June 2009, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Call for papers for the Third Science Learning and Teaching Conference (SLTC), 16-17th June 2009, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

The aim of this national conference is to bring together practitioners in the teaching of science disciplines in HE to share their experiences, identify common challenges and an opportunity to share effective practice. The conference programme will include keynote lectures; short oral presentations; hands on workshops; posters and exhibitions.

Contributions
Offers of contributions are invited for oral presentations (15 minutes), interactive presentations (30 minutes), workshops (1.5 hours) and poster presentations. Contributions on any of the following themes are particularly welcome:• assessment / feedback / plagiarism• induction / transitions / retention / recruitment• developments in learning and teaching – forward thinking

Abstracts must be submitted using the online submission form at: www.sltc.info. If you are unable to submit using the online form an electronic version of the form can be downloaded from the submissions page, completed and emailed to sltc@leeds.ac.uk. The submission deadline is 12:00 on Friday 28th November 2008.

Registration
The registration fee for the conference will be £195 for those participants with an accepted abstract; otherwise the fee will be £225. Registration will open in December 2008.

Please visit www.sltc.info for more information.
Colleagues in the early stages of their career are particularly welcome.