Posts filed under ‘News sources’
Three New Links on the Blogroll
Three organizations have been added to our blogroll and (obviously) all of them are worth checking out.
- Advancing Green Chemistry – A project of Virginia Organizing, their manifesto reads, “Green Chemistry is the way to design molecules and make products. Period.” They have a free newsletter.
- Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry – A project of the UC Berkeley Institute of the Environment, the BCGC cuts across a wide range of disciplines (all the way from the law school to the chemistry department), sponsors meetings, and publishes a free newsletter.
- WorldWatch Institute – They actually watch the world for you. They publish research, up-to-date news on the environmental trends (see Vital Signs and blogs) and you can follow them via social media. Staying up-to-date with WWI will turn you into a literal “know it all” on the environment.
Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy
The American Institute of Physics has launched a new journal devoted to new energy sources. The Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy will be published online every two months during its first year and hopes to become a monthly afterwards. JRSE is free to the public so dig in and see what’s going in this area. Maybe share your treasures with the group? Too busy to read? Listen to a Science Friday interview with a JRSE editor (Nov 7, 2008).
Some article titles from the inaugural issue:
- Fabrication of organic solar array for applications in microelectromechanical systems
- Flexible Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells fabricated using alkali-silicate glass thin layers as an alkali source material
-
Geothermal Energy: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Your Feet
What does green chemistry look like?
When people ask me what my research interests are, I often say, “Green Chemistry.” Then they usually ask me what that means and I’m (temporarily) stuck for an answer because green chemistry is such a broad field. This breadth is neatly reflected in a recent issue of Chemical Review ( Volume 107, Issue 6, June 13, 2007) which contains 21 separate articles on different aspects of green chemistry, including doing chemical reactions in water and liquified CO2, new types of catalysts, new efficient energy sources like microwaves and sunlight, designing materials for enhanced biodegradability, and using biomolecules as reagents and catalysts. If you have time for only one article, I recommend “Innovations and Green Chemistry” by Horvath and Anastas for its nice summary of contemporary green chemistry.
Here is a complete list of article titles and links.
- Introduction: Green Chemistry
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr0783784 - Innovations and Green Chemistry
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr078380v - Green Chemistry Considerations in Entropic Control of Materials and Processes
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr0509455 - Design of Sustainable Chemical Products-The Example of Ionic Liquids
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050942s - Designing Small Molecules for Biodegradability
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050952t - Toward Greener Nanosynthesis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050943k - “Green” Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization: From Process Design to Preparation of Well-Defined Environmentally Friendly Polymeric Materials
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050947p - Greener Approaches to Organic Synthesis Using Microreactor Technology
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050944c - Human Pharmaceuticals in the Aquatic Environment: A Challenge to Green Chemistry
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr020441w - Transformation of Carbon Dioxide
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr068357u - Making Plastics from Carbon Dioxide: Salen Metal Complexes as Catalysts for the Production of Polycarbonates from Epoxides and CO2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr068363q - Chemical Routes for the Transformation of Biomass into Chemicals
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050989d - A Green Chemistry Approach to Asymmetric Catalysis: Solvent-Free and Highly Concentrated Reactions
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr0509556 - Reactions of C-H Bonds in Water
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050980b - Microwave-Assisted Synthesis in Water as Solvent
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr0509410 - Lanthanides and Actinides in Ionic Liquids
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050979c - Catalysis in Ionic Liquids
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050948h - Gas-Expanded Liquids
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr040199o - Green Analytical Methodologies
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr068359e - Heterogeneous Gold-Based Catalysis for Green Chemistry: Low-Temperature CO Oxidation and Propene Oxidation
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050954d - Photocatalysis for the Formation of the C-C Bond
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr068352x - Biocatalysis in Ionic Liquids
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr050946x - Biocatalysis in Supercritical Fluids, in Fluorous Solvents, and under Solvent-Free Conditions
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr0683820
News sources
A staggering amount of environmental news can be found on the web. I have listed a few sources below with RSS feed links where available (if a source offers several feeds, then I haven’t listed them – you’ll have to poke around and find the ones you want). Instructions for using RSS feeds are provided in a separate post.
Sources are classified as:
- Science news – news articles about scientific research
- Social news – news articles about the environment
- Science – tables of contents of environmental/green science journals
If I were to point you towards one area or another, I would say, “science (with or without news) is nice,” but the choice is yours. Above all, don’t overdo it. If every member watches one or two sources, we will have plenty to talk about. If you have a source that you would like to share, post a comment.
Science news
- Environmental Health News
- this service gathers news on a wide variety of environmental topics, scientific and social – poke around and find one or two subjects that you would like to follow (many topic-based RSS feeds are available)
- Environmental Science & Technology On-line News | RSS Feed
- this service gathers news on a wide variety of environmental topics, mainly scientific
- this service also gathers links to other sites related to environmental science (ES&T link list)
- Green Chemistry
- journal’s home page gathers news pertaining to green chemistry
- Nature – current issue (general science) | RSS Feed
- Nature Reports: Climate Change | RSS Feed
- Nature publishes scientific research and science-related news. Only some of these pertain to the environment. The Climate Change section is focused as its name suggests
- Science – current issue (general science)
- ScienceNOW (general science breaking news) | RSS Feed
- Science publishes scientific research and science-related news. News headlines and stories are collected in ScienceNOW. Only some of these pertain to the environment
Social News
- BBC News: Science/Nature | RSS feed
- this service broadcasts news articles around the clock on a wide variety of science/nature topics. Only some of these pertain to the environment
- Environmental News Network
- this service gathers news on a wide variety of environmental topics, scientific and social – poke around and find one or two subjects that you would like to follow (many topic-based RSS feeds are available)
- Grist
- this service gathers news and opinions on a wide variety of environmental topics, scientific and social, injects a bit of humor, and publishes daily – poke around (RSS feeds are available)
- New York Times | RSS Feed
- this newspaper publishes news articles on a wide variety of environmental topics, scientific and social, and publishes daily
Research Journals
- Environmental Expert.com
- this service lists 240 journals & magazines from 48 publishers that relate to the environment – not clear how many of these are available through our library
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Green Chemistry| RSS Feed
- Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy
Using RSS feeds
You can get news from the internet in several ways. There’s the horse-and-buggy method — google the source, figure out which item in the list really is the source, navigate to the source’s home page, poke around to find a recent story — but there are also modern hassle-free all-electric vehicle methods — set up a subscription and have the latest news sent to you automatically. This page describes one of the latter, how to get news sent to you automatically by setting up an RSS feed subscription.
What about email subscriptions? Some sources let you set up an email subscription. This method works well, but with one downside, your Inbox fills up with news stories. You can avoid this by 1) setting up a special folder to hold incoming stories, and 2) setting up an email filter to direct all incoming stories into this folder.
RSS feed reader programs
To use an RSS feed, you need to have an RSS feed reader program. You enter your subscription(s) into the program and it downloads news stories automatically for you. The easiest feed reader to use is a web browser. This page tells you how to use the Firefox web browser, but other web browsers are just as easy to use (instructions and symbols vary, but you’ll be able to figure it out). If you’re really adventurous and want to be a “power reader,” download a dedicated feed reader like NetNewsWire Lite (the Lite version is free and runs on Mac OS) or set up an RSS-enabled email program like Thunderbird to manage your subscriptions (this link takes you to Reed’s help page).
Setting up a Live Bookmark subscription
Follow these steps to create a Live Bookmark subscription in Firefox’s Bookmarks Toolbar:
- Open Firefox
- Find your news source’s RSS feed
- If you are working from my list of News Sources, just click on the words RSS Feed in my list (not all sources may have feeds)
- If you are working with another news source, look for the words RSS Feed on the source’s web page, or look for the
icon (it might be located in the address bar to the right of the URL or it might appear on the web page). Either click on the words or the icon wherever it appears
- A new web page will open asking whether you want to “Subscribe to this feed using Live Bookmarks.” Click on Subscribe Now
- You will be asked where you want to create the live bookmark. Choose the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
- If you create several feeds, you might overload your toolbar. This problem can be solved by renaming the feeds with very short names, or by using the Organize Bookmarks option (Bookmarks menu) to create a folder named Feeds in your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder and moving your live bookmarks to the new Feeds folder.
- You should see your new bookmark on Firefox’s toolbar with a small icon next to it. Mission accomplished!
Reading your news stories
Each time you start Firefox, the program will automatically download the latest news stories associated with each Live Bookmark. To read your stories:
- Click on the feed’s Live Bookmark on your toolbar. This will produce a menu of story headlines
- Choose a story to read by clicking on its headline
Next meeting Sept 6, Th, noon
We will meet in the student lounge in Chemistry on Th, Sept 6 from 12-1. Bring lunch.
Also bring news stories that you would like to share. I am currently working on some instructions to guide you to news stories, but they are still under construction. For now, here are some useful ideas (this list will be removed when I get my other page completed).
