James and Mary Frances would like to welcome you to the Sci-Tech 101 blog. We are dragging ourselves into the 21st century by setting up this blog so we can continue our discussions from our sessions at the annual SLA conferences. We hope you will find this informative and interesting. Our focus until June 2010 will be Alternative Energy Resources and Agricultural Resources, though other topics are welcome. Feel free to post questions or interesting links about science resources - but keep it basic! After all, this is a 101 presentation!
12/23/2009
Christmas Trees & More, from the University of Illinois Extension
Happy Holidays, everyone!!! For more facts about Christmas Trees than you can shake some tinsel at, go to http://urbanext.illinois.edu/trees/ to find out the scoop from the University of Illinois Extension office. Did you know there are more than 21,000 Christmas Tree farmers in the United States? Or that 31.3 million Christmas Trees were purchased in 2007? Or that Edward Johnson, Thomas Edison's assistant, came up with the idea for electric tree lights in 1882? All this, and much more can be found at the site.
Here's hoping you and yours have a tremendous holiday season and a Happy New Year!-jem
12/22/2009
Annual Energy Outlook 2010 Early Release
The US Energy Information Administration has provided an early release of the Annual Energy Outlook 2010 with Projections to 2035: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html - mfl
12/21/2009
NREL Sustainabilty Analysis
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Sustanability Analysis looks at the environmental, life-cycle, climate, and other impacts of renewable energy technologies. - mfl
12/11/2009
DOE Launches New Website to Bring Energy Technology Information to the Public
Press release from the Department of Energy:
"WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary Chu announced today that the Department of Energy is launching Open Energy Information (www.openEI.org) - a new open-source web platform that will make DOE resources and open energy data widely available to the public."
Read more at: http://www.energy.gov/news2009/8381.htm - mfl
Something new with Information Bridge
DOE's Information Bridge has a new feature. "Word Clouds" now appear when you hover your cursor over the citation in your search results. The top 50 terms from the full text document are shown, with varying font size to represent the frequency of that term within the document.
"The Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information provides free public access to over 210,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature. Documents are primarily from 1991 forward and were produced by DOE, the DOE contractor community, and/or DOE grantees. Legacy documents are added as they become available in electronic format." - mfl
12/09/2009
2010 Hunger Report
The report A Just and Sustainable Recovery: Bread for the World Institute's 2010 Hunger Report is now available at http://www.hungerreport.org/2010/.
This report includes a great deal of data and statistics about the issues of food, world poverty and other topics related to hunger. You can order a hard copy, but the entire report is available freely online. jem
12/04/2009
Looking To a Cleaner Future
Looking To a Cleaner Future From the News Centre of the IAEA: "To better promote and support environmental safety and responsible remediation, the IAEA has launched a new initiative in the area of environmental remediation. Dubbed ENVIRONET, it intends to create networks among Member States, enabling countries to help each other find sustainable solutions to return radiologically contaminated sites to a safe and environmentally sound state." Note the Story Resources box. - mfl
12/02/2009
Alternative Energy News
Alternative Energy News provides links to online resources designed to raise public awareness and encourage debate about renewable energy technologies. - mfl.
11/30/2009
USDA Browse by Audience Feature
If you go to the USDA's site (www.usda.gov), you'll notice a handy feature titled "Browse by Audience" on the left hand side. This feature opens a drop-down menu that lists various communities (Consumers, Educators and Students, etc.). Choosing one will bring up resources tailored to the community. For example, if you choose Consumers, you'll get a link to, among other things, Complete Guide to Home Canning. You can also find a link to discover the Farmers' Markets in your area. For Educators and Students, a very useful link takes you to State Agricultural Facts, which, when you click on it and scroll down, takes you to a link to State Fact Sheets which offers a clickable map of the USA. When you click on a state, you get all kinds of statistical data on the state in question. Pretty nifty!
Each audience provides new and exciting links to explore and provides hours of entertainment! jem
11/20/2009
A New Route to Cellulosic Biofuels
A New Route to Cellulosic Biofuels: ZeaChem's pilot plant will make ethanol using termite microbes. Source: MIT Technology Review. - mfl
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