New and Noteworthy

Holiday

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:17:33 GMT

The LPI will be closed in celebration of the 4th of July holiday, Friday July 3rd.

Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:17:15 GMT

Issue 118 of the Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin is now available. Features in issue 118 include:

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: NASA’S Next Step Back to the Moon - Featuring news about the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and information about how it will benefit lunar exploration
Celebrate Apollo: NASA Commemorates the 40th Anniversary - Featuring news about planned activities and events as America nears the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing
News from Space - Let the Planet Hunt Begin. Herschel and Planck on Way to Study Our Cosmic Roots. Solar System's Most Volcanic Body May Go Dormant. Soft Ground Puts Spirit in Danger Despite Gain in Daily Energy. MESSENGER Spacecraft Reveals a Very Dynamic Planet Mercury. NASA Releases Interactive 3-D Views of Space Station. New Mars Rover NASA Team Finds Riches in Meteorite Treasure Hunt. Cassini Provides Virtual Flyover of Saturn's Moon Titan. Spitzer Telescope Warms up to New Career. Spitzer Catches Star. Cooking Up Comet Crystals
Meeting Highlights - Highlights of the 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Spotlight on Education - Events and programs that provide opportunities for planetary scientists to become involved in education and public outreach and to engage science educators and the community
New and Noteworthy - New products of interest to the community
Meeting Calendar - Upcoming scientific conferences and workshops

The Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin also has an RSS feed.

Apollo Anniversary Celebration

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:16:54 GMT

The 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing will be celebrated on the campus of UH-Clear Lake at the Fly Me to the Moon event on Saturday, July 18 at 6 pm.

Travel back to 1969 and relive man’s first step on the moon when University of Houston-Clear Lake hosts the “Fly Me to the Moon: A Community Celebration of the First Lunar Landing” Saturday, July 18, 2009, 6 p.m. The free event will honor NASA Johnson Space Center and all who contributed to the success of those first steps.
A 1969 family-style picnic will set the tone for the event that will allow guests to enjoy live entertainment, interactive games and activities and good picnic-style food. In addition, moon-watchers can see the stars through telescopes with help from astronomers while watching footage of the Apollo 11 landing on a giant inflated screen.

July 18, 2009 6 pm Fly Me to the Moon at UH-Clear Lake

Selenology Today

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:16:34 GMT

Selenology Today now provides an RSS feed.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:39:21 GMT

The Astronomy Picture of the Day recently celebrated their fourteenth anniversary. You can also view the images on display in the Library.

Family Space Day

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:38:01 GMT

Family Space Day is June 20, 10 am - 1 pm. The topic is Staying Healthy in Space. Children between the ages of 5 and 8 are invited to bring their families to explore space science at this free event. Families are encouraged to bring lunch on sunny days and to enjoy a picnic on the Lunar and Planetary Institute's grounds. Children must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Map

Streamosphere

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:37:41 GMT

Streamosphere by Nature Publishing Group will let you track scientific discussion on the web, in real time. "Streamosphere tracks thousands of scientists over half a dozen social media sites and analyzes their links, likes and conversations. This page visualizes what the most popular discussions are in a particular time period."

Web publishing as a discipline has few tenets but I think release early, release often and don't be afraid to fail are pretty sound. That was the philosophy behind Connotea when Timo and Ben Lund launched it in 2004 and it's the spirit in which I've just put up an early version of Streamosphere.
Streamosphere is a pet side project which I'm running according to what I guess you could call the Paul Graham principles (it'd be disingenuous to say "as a start-up" as most startups don't have NPG level resources. OTOH we lack a fussball table and free M&Ms). Think of it as a pre-alpha alpha.

Selenology Today

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:37:10 GMT

Selenology Today is a free online journal.

Selenology Today is devoted to the publication of contributions in the field of lunar studies. Manuscripts reporting the results of new research concerning the astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry and other scientific aspects of Earth’s Moon are welcome. Selenology Today publishes papers devoted exclusively to the Moon. Reviews, historical papers and manuscripts describing observing or spacecraft instrumentation are considered.

The June 2009 issue, no. 14 is a special issue containing the paper Spectral Mapping Using Clementine UV-Visible-NIR Data Sets: Applications to Lunar Geologic Studies by R. Evans, C. Wohler, and R. Lena

Mars Exploration Science Monthly Newsletter

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:24:08 GMT

The latest issue of the Mars Exploration Science Monthly Newsletter is now available. Upcoming meetings are a major part of the issue.

Hurricanes

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:23:48 GMT

We are now at the start of hurricane season. The library has recently purchased several books and videos to help our summer visitors understand just how dangerous these storms can be. Many of these new items are on display as you enter the library.

Easier Searching

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:23:29 GMT

Easily add selected science databases to your browser search list.

Search the best scientific and technical portals directly from your browser. Deep Web Technologies, leading federated search provider, has just made your research faster, and more efficient. Now, you do not have to navigate back to the homepage of your favorite scientific or technical search engine to do your research. Just enter your query directly on your browser search box and get results!

Some of the available databases include: Scitopia.org, Science.gov, WorldWideScience.org, Mednar.com, Scienceresearch.com and Scirus.com. The browser plug-ins are standards based.

OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for sharing search results. Created by A9.com, an Amazon.com company, the OpenSearch format is now in use by hundreds of search engines and search applications around the Internet. Deep Web Technologies utilizes the OpenSearch format for each of their target search portals, bringing Web 2.0 accessibility to the most important science search portals available.

Knowledge 'Interoperability'

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:23:05 GMT

John Wilbanks, VP, Science, Creative Commons gave a talk "Copyright, Open Access, Subscriptions, and Permissions: What Editors Need to Know in the New Digital Publishing Environment," at the recent annual conference of the Council of Science Editors. It is available both in audio and as a transcript.

Now, one of the things you can do is to get a little bit ahead of the curve. Most of the people in this room have already dealt with the NIH mandate. That’s getting ahead of the curve on one aspect. But you can get ahead of the curve by linking into data and tools. This is what Elsevier is doing. This is what Nature is doing. This is what the major businesses in the science journal space are doing. They’re providing value added semantic markup to what they do because in a data world, the machine readable version of the article is much more economically valuable than the one that has no hyperlinks.