Basic Sciences

Human Genome @ 10

Nature.com has a special news section celebrating the Human Genome Project’s 10th anniversary. The contents are mostly included in the April 1st issue. They are asking scientists to participate in a survey to calculate the impact of the sequence.

Link to the pdf of the article is available to LSUHSC faculty staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.

Pathophysiology Resources

It seems like only yesterday we were writing about pathophys resources for nursing, but another semester brings another round of students scurrying to gather and regurgitate the pathology, physiology and pharmacology of a motley crew of diseases.

Whether its Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm to Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome, these resources should have you covered:

CURRENT Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2010
A single-source reference for practitioners in both hospital and ambulatory settings. Annually updated, this book emphasizes the practical features of clinical diagnosis and patient management in all fields of internal medicine and in specialties of interest to primary care practitioners.

EbschoHOST ÔÇô CINAHLplus with Full text
Database of journal articles in nursing. try a key word search of your topic (i.e.: Necrotizing fasciitis and pathophysiology) Limit to full text under ÔÇ£search optionsÔÇØ on the right side of the screen.

StatRef
Online textbooks in nursing. Search many textbooks at once for your topic.

Nursing Consult
Search 30 nursing books and journal articles from MEDLINE/PubMed.

MEDLINEplus
Simple overviews on health topics from authoritative sources on the web.

Genetics Home Reference
Free access to consumer-friendly information on medical genetics and disorders, with references to scientific journal articles

Off campus access instructions

Neuroscience Info Framework

Neuroscience Information Framework
There’s a new, free portal to neuroscience information from the NIH called NIF: Neuroscience Information Framework.

NIF is a free, web-based, portal to a wide variety of neuroscience-relevant resources, funded by the National Institutes of Health. We have an extensive registry of over 2500 resources along with a custom web index and literature archive. Through the NIF Data Federation, we provide a direct query of over 40 databases, with new ones being added regularly.

Type a key word on the homepage to see find information about NIH grants, projects, neuroscience tools, and biomedical literature. A search for LSU gives search results from a variety of sources, from grants to clinical trials, even gene info. Other tabs link to web resources and literature from Pubmed.
NIF search for LSU
The NIF registry is a useful way to locate neuroscience research resources from a network curated by the NIH. The Registry could be a starting point to find jobs, mentoring and educational opportunities in the neurosciences.
NIF Registry

You can also recommend neuroscience resources such as materials, training, software, funding, services, data, jobs or people.

The Librarian’s Review:The search results screen can seem a little overwhelming, but clicking on the arrow by ‘log in preferences’ will make the search box disappear. If you’re used to using Excel, the NIF search result interface is similar. Categories can be sorted or removed to customize the view, and results can be exported, which is useful if you want to put them into Refworks or Endnote. Abstracts appear if you hover your mouse too long over the field, which can get annoying when trying to scan results.

Overall, NIF is a useful portal, acting as a clearinghouse for a number of different to resources, tools, grants and programs in neuroscience. The interface is fairly simple to use, though first time users might get overwhelmed by the amount of information available. It’s a good attempt to make a useful, curated portal for a specialty. Would like to see more of this.

NIF: Neuroscience Information Framework
http://www.neuinfo.org/
also available under our online resources

Winter Olympics & Exp Physiol

New Orleans was so busy with the Saints in the Superbowl and then Carnival that many missed that the Winter Olympics have started again. Experimental Physiology has issued a special themed issue (v95 n3 March 2010) in commemoration of the athletic event. The issue explores “the biological and environmental challenges elite winter athletes must overcome to win gold.”

Off campus access will require a Library barcode & PIN.

PubMed?« Revisions in February

Changes coming to PubMed in early February include:

  • Advanced search page streamlined
  • link to Clipboard will be added to the homepage, if applicable
  • new Limits page with additional limits for dates and search field tags
  • Current Protocols in Bioinformatics

    We are pleased to announce an addition to our Current Protocols series: Current Protocols in Bioinformatics.

    From the preface:

    Bioinformatics occupies a unique niche amongst the sciences, lying at the intersection of biology, genetics, biochemistry, computer science, mathematics, statistics, and numerous other allied fields. The inherent strength of the field of bioinformatics comes from the relationships between investigators in these allied fields; collaborations between these individuals has led to (and will continue to lead to) the development of novel methods and approaches, furthering advances in each of these areas…Current Protocols in Bioinformatics is designed to provide the experimentalist with insight into the types of data and protocols required to perform basic tasks in the area of bioinformatics. More importantly, it provides insight into understanding and properly interpreting the data produced by these methods.

    Whether you are wondering what questions publicly available databases can answer, how to analyze protein expression patterns, or you want wanting to build your own biological database, this resource can tell you how.

    Access now. (off campus requires login with library barcode & PIN)

    Fast Help for E-Resources

    The LSUHSC Libraries have access to almost 200 databases so how do you decide which one to start searching in? The Reference Librarians have created 6 E-Resources at a Glance sheets for each of the school of LSUHSC.
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Allied Health
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Dentistry
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Graduate Studies
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Medicine
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Nursing
    Electronic Resources at a Glance: Public Health
    Let us know what you think.

    1st Chemotherapy Agent Used 100 years ago

    Paul Ehrlich developed what is now recognized as the first chemotherapy agent 100 years ago. On August 31, 1909 his 606th compound of arsenobenzene was developed. He was searching for a way to treat syphillis.

    Snowball Dye has Neuroscience Use

    Love to dye your tongue fun colors with New Orleans snowballs in the Summer? Look closer at the FD&C blue dye no.1 in your bubble gum flavored treat.

    Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center have discovered that the food additive may protect nerves in the event of spinal cord injury. The report was published in the early edition section of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday.

    The only side effect was that the rats turned blue.

    Link to the pdf of the article is available to LSUHSC faculty staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.

    Springer Protocols

    The LSUHSC Libraries recently purchased a subscription to Springer Protocols. This database of “reproducible laboratory results” includes:

  • Methods in Molecular Biology,
  • Methods in Molecular Medicine,
  • Methods in Biotechnology,
  • Methods in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and
  • Neuromethods,
  • as well as from a vast number of Laboratory Handbooks, such as The Biomethods Handbook, The Proteomics Handbook, and the Springer Laboratory Manuals.

    It is available on & off campus.

    Zombie Neurobiology

    A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology

    In Night of the Living Dead, zombies are brought back from the dead by a “mysterious force” that allows their brains to continue functioning. But how exactly does a zombie brain function? Finally, a Harvard psychiatrist has the answers.

    Through education Dr. Steven C. Schlozman is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a lecturer at the Harvard School of Education. He is also an avid sci-fi and horror fan – and, apparently, the world’s leading authority on the neurobiology of the living dead. He has even drafted a fake medical journal article on the zombie plague, which he calls Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, or ANSD (the article has five authors: one living, three “deceased” and one “humanoid infected”).

    Check out some of the scholarly articles Dr. Schlozman has published.

    The Ische’ Library has a large selection of Neurobiology books if you would like even more info.

    Create a Healthy Environment for Earth Day

    As part of National Environmental Education Week and Earth Day, the National Library of Medicine is promoting its toxicology resources. These resources include: ToxMAP, ToxTown, ToxMystery, MedlinePlus, Household Products Database, and Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). Several of these resources are part of TOXNET which provides access a host of information related to toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and environmental health. For more information on Environmental Health and Toxicology, check out the Special Information Services page at NLM.

    Scratch that Itch!

    Nature Neuroscience has released an advance online publication of a study that has been getting press in the popular media. The study identifies specialized cells in the spinal cord which seem to be involved in the sensations of itching and scratching.

    **Some links require on-campus access or the use of the Libraries’ remote access service.**

    Synchronized Swimming Mitosis

    The American Society for Cell Biology’s Image and Video Library is a great collection of still images and dynamic videos of the highest quality covering the field of cell biology. CellDance is an annual contest hosted by the ASCB that spotlights new video and digital images in microscopy.

    My favorite is this video from University of California, San Francisco, which uses synchronized swimmers to illustrate mitosis. (The first place winner on the Golgi Appartus is pretty cool as well.)

    The ASCB’s Image & video library invites contributions from all cell biologists who wish to publish high quality images and videos on the site, and all content is available to view for free online. As of yet there are no submissions from LSU! Maybe you could be the first to contribute.

    Friday fun: Vollig Weichgekocht

    This link is dedicated to anatomy fans:
    http://www.sarahillenberger.com/news_sz.html

    (The German translation in the title is something like ‘false softness’.)