Chemistry – Sciences Library News

Jan 18 2022

Welcome back, Hawkeyes!

Posted on January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 by Laurie Neuerburg

Welcome back, Hawkeyes! We hope that you had a nice break, and we’re glad that you are back! Keep our Hawkeye community safe by getting your free COVID-19 vaccinations and booster if you have not done so yet.

Books, Articles, Laptops, and More

You can search InfoHawk+ to find books, articles, and other resources at the UI Libraries, and you can contact a sciences librarian to get expert help to use our resources.

We now have laptops that you can check out! Visit the Sciences Library Service Desk to check out a laptop. Laptops circulate for 3 days or for 3 weeks, depending on how long you need to use them.

Study Spaces

The Sciences Library offers a variety of study spaces that are available to you! If you are looking for a good place to study, we have study spots that include computer stations, study carrels, study booths, and large tables for group work. The Sciences Library is located at 120 Iowa Ave.

Sciences Library Spring 2022 Hours

The Sciences Library is open Monday through Thursday from 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM, Friday from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, and Sunday from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM for the spring semester. The Sciences Library is closed on Saturdays.

Study Help for BIOL 1411: Foundations of Biology

If you are taking BIOL:1411 Foundations of Biology, then you can take advantage of free study help with our Sciences Library Student Mentors!

Drop-in Tutoring for Foundations of Biology

Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesdays, & Thursday 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Ask to meet with the student mentor at the Sciences Library Service Desk.

Group Study Sessions for Foundations of Biology

Sundays, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM. The student mentor will lead a session to review material from the week’s lectures. This is located in room 102 at the Sciences Library.
Sundays, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM. The student mentor will provide help with lab content. This session will be held in room 102 at the Sciences Library.

Dec 06 2021

Finals Week Stress Relief at the Sciences Library: Fall 2021

Posted on December 6, 2021December 6, 2021 by Laurie Neuerburg

As we wrap up the Fall 2021 semester, a good place to study for final exams is the Sciences Library! Whether you need a quiet place to study, group space, or study break ideas, the Sciences Library has you covered! We have a variety of study spots to choose from including bean bag chairs, large tables, study carrels, and study booths. There are rolling dry erase boards, large TV monitors, computer stations, scanning stations, and print stations that you can use. If you need a rest, then we have coloring sheets, building blocks, and games available for you to use to give your brain a break. You can also check out our virtual Sciences Library’s Finals Week Stress Relief Guide. You can put together an online puzzle of a porcupine, print off science coloring sheets, and view an assortment of animal live cams. You will also find links to xkcd and other science comics that will make you laugh on the Stress Relief Guide!

Rover Replies comic — Source: xkcd.com/2517/

May 21 2021

Transformative Agreement with ACS for Open Access Publishing

Posted on May 21, 2021 by Laurie Neuerburg

UI corresponding authors can now publish their journal articles Open Access and free of cost to them in any American Chemical Society (ACS) journal. The University of Iowa Libraries has entered into an agreement with ACS to bundle the cost of journal subscriptions and Open Access (OA) publishing. Under this three-year contract, UI authors can publish a significant number of articles OA with ACS. These articles can then be immediately read by anyone, anywhere, without the paywalls that traditionally accompany academic journals. For more information, contact Conrad Bendixen, or Leo Clougherty from the Sciences Library.

This arrangement is part of a larger effort by UI Libraries to reduce the cost of OA for individual researchers. Unfortunately, publishers often charge authors directly to pay for the cost of publishing OA journal articles. (For instance, ACS normally charges authors $4,500 per article for OA.) For faculty who don’t have grant or departmental funding, this can be prohibitively expensive. These costs have soared in recent years and are a significant barrier to making research open and freely accessible.

Image of Darwin inside the shape of Iowa

Jan 28 2021

Iowa City Darwin Day 2021

Posted on January 28, 2021February 2, 2021 by Laurie Neuerburg

Iowa City Darwin Day celebrates the benefits of science for humanity, and all are invited to celebrate this year by attending virtual talks by prestigious scientists! All Iowa City Darwin Day events are free and open to the public.

Erich Jarvis’ talk “Evolution of Brain Pathways for Vocal Learning and Spoken Language” will be on Friday, February 12 at 12 PM CST. Erich Jarvis is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at the Rockefeller University. He uses song-learning birds and other species as models to study the molecular and genetic mechanisms that underlie vocal learning, including how humans learn spoken language. He chairs the international Vertebrate Genomes Project which studies how species are genetically related and how unique characteristics evolve. Jarvis also collaborates on a project to generate a new human pangenome reference that will represent over 90% of genetic diversity.

Dr. Jarvis is the 2002 recipient of the National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award and was awarded the Director’s Pioneer Award by the National Institutes of Health in 2008. He received the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award in 2019

Charmaine Royal’s talk “Race, Genetics, and Health” followed by a panel discussion will be on Friday, February 19 at 4 PM CST.

Charmaine Royal is a 2020 Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor. She is Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Biology, Global Health, and Family Medicine & Community Health at Duke University. She is also core faculty in the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, senior fellow in Kenan Institute for Ethics, and faculty in the Social Science Research Institute where she directs the Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference and the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Dr. Royal’s research, scholarship, and teaching focus on ethical, legal, and social issues in genetics and genomics, particularly the intersection of race and genetics and its policy implications and practical interventions.

Panelists:
UI Professor of History Mariola Espinosa
UI Visiting Professor of Law Phoebe Jean-Pierre
Dr. Brian Donovan , BSCS
Moderator: UI Associate Professor of Law Anya Prince

Jan 25 2021

Welcome Back, Hawkeyes!

Posted on January 25, 2021August 10, 2021 by Laurie Neuerburg

You are invited to the Sciences Library for a comfortable, quiet place to study! There are computer stations, study carrels, and booths with USB and outlets for phones and computers. If you have group work to do, there are tables and large mobile monitors to use for sharing your computer screen. The Sciences Library is located between Phillips Hall and the Biology Building on Iowa Ave. The building is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 5 PM for the Spring 2021 semester. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have hygiene stations available with disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer. A face covering is required, and yellow stickers mark off seats that are to remain unoccupied. The book stacks are open so feel free to peruse the shelves!

If you need help with your research, then you can meet with a librarian in a one-on-one research consultation to help you find books and articles that you need for a paper or project. You can search InfoHawk+ to find out what the UI Libraries has that you can use online or check out & take home, which includes print books, ebooks, newspapers, journals, and magazines (both print and online), DVDs and streaming videos. You can request that the library purchase something that we don’t have, or request to borrow something that we don’t have through Interlibrary Loan. You can access all of our ebooks, electronic journal articles, streaming videos, and online resources from off-campus by logging in with your HawkID.

You can ask librarians for help about research and using the library whenever you need it through chat, email, in-person, or by phone. Have a great semester! We’re glad to have you at the Sciences Library!

Dec 14 2020

Finals Week Stress Relief Guide

Posted on December 14, 2020December 14, 2020 by Laurie Neuerburg

When you take a break from your studying, rest and recharge with online puzzles, science coloring sheets, wildlife live cams, and museum and nature virtual tours with the Sciences Library’s Finals Week Stress Relief Guide. You can put together a puzzle of the Andromeda galaxy, The Blue Marble view of Earth, a porcupine having a snack, or a peacock displaying its feathers. The science coloring sheets include Coloring Molecular Machinery: A Tour of the Protein Data Bank, Discovering Biology Through Crystallography, and images from the Biodiversity Library. Animal live cams from Explore.org, zoos, and aquariums can transport you to the sights and sounds of an African safari, a colorful, bustling coral reef, or a soothing waterfall. Immerse yourself virtually in the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, and other National Parks, or attend an online tour of the Field Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and the British Museum. If you need a laugh, you can find Bird and Moon, xkcd, and other science comics on the Stress Relief Guide!

Image of Geologic Time xkcd comic — Image credit: xkcd.com

Sep 25 2020

Red, Orange, Yellow: The Science of Fall Foliage

Posted on September 25, 2020September 25, 2020 by Laurie Neuerburg

The autumnal equinox occurred on Tuesday, September 22 this year. This marks the turning point when the sun passes over the Earth’s equator, and the hours of daylight and night are close to equal. From this point on, the hours of daylight will soon begin decreasing each day until the shortest day of the year occurs on the winter solstice. One of the most beautiful effects of the shorter days occurs when deciduous trees prepare for winter by taking on the brilliant colors of red, orange, yellow, and purple. According to the Iowa DNR’s Fall Color Report, the best viewing time for fall colors in central Iowa begins the first week of October.

When deciduous trees stop producing chlorophyll to get ready for winter, their leaves cease being green and turn to red, yellow, orange, or purple. InChemistry’s “Why Do Leaves Change Color in the Fall?” explains the chemical compounds that are responsible for this color change. Red and purple colors are due to anthocyanins present in the leaves, while yellow and orange colors are due to carotenoids and flavonoids.

In Smithsonian Magazine, you can watch a two-minute time-lapse video showing different leaves changing color, a process that would normally happen slowly over several days. It is interesting to watch the video since the process of a leaf turning orange or yellow is different than when a leaf turns red or purple.

If you’re interested in seeking out fall colors, you can use the UI Trees web application to find maples, oaks, dogwoods, and other deciduous trees on campus. You can also view beautiful fall color displays that have been captured in the Iowa Digital Library’s Geoscience Slides collection!

Cover image of The 50 most extreme places in our solar system

Sep 18 2020

Books for 2020: unusual books for an unusual year

Posted on September 18, 2020September 18, 2020 by Laurie Neuerburg

2020 has been an unusual year, to say the least. A pandemic, murder hornets, an Iowa derecho, hurricanes, racial injustice, wildfires, and most recently a discovery on Venus that points to potential alien life. It is a lot to take in and it can be a relief to bury oneself in reading. What else could 2020 bring? Check out these unusual books chosen to match an unusual year.

Aliens

Alien universe: extraterrestrial life in our mind and in the cosmos

Confessions of an alien hunter: a scientist’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Exoplanets: diamond worlds, super Earths, pulsar planets, and the new search for life beyond our solar system

Out there: a scientific guide to alien life

We are not alone: why we have already found extraterrestrial life

Apocalypse

Apocalypse when?: calculating how long the human race will survive

Earth-shattering: violent supernovas, galactic explosions, biological mayhem, nuclear meltdowns, and other hazards to life in our universe

Surviving the apocalypse in the suburbs: the thrivalist’s guide to life without oil

Climate Change

The conundrum: how scientific innovation, increased efficiency, and good intentions can make our energy and climate problems worse

Hack the planet: science’s best hope– or worst nightmare– for averting climate catastrophe

Our dying planet: an ecologist’s view of the crisis we face

Tropic of chaos: climate change and the new geography of violence

When the planet rages: natural disasters, global warming, and the future of the earth

Extreme weather

The 50 most extreme places in our solar system

Catastrophes!: earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and other earth-shattering disasters

Extreme weather: understanding the science of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heat waves, snow storms, global warming and other atmospheric disturbances

Firestorm: how wildfire will shape our future

The weather of the future: heat waves, extreme storms, and other scenes from a climate-changed planet

Insects

American pests: the losing war on insects from colonial times to DDT

The American plague: the untold story of yellow fever, the epidemic that shaped our history

Big fleas have little fleas: how discoveries of invertebrate diseases are advancing modern science

The secret life of flies

Wicked bugs: the louse that conquered Napoleon’s army & other diabolical insects

Plague and disease

Ebola : the natural and human history of a deadly virus

The ghost map: the story of London’s most terrifying epidemic–and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world

Minnesota, 1918: when flu, fire, and war ravaged the state

Pandemonium : bird flu, mad cow disease, and other biological plagues of the 21st century

Flu: the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it

Spillover: animal infections and the next human pandemic

Pale rider: the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the world

A planet of viruses

Racism

Bad blood: the Tuskegee syphilis experiment

Is science racist?

From Darwin to Hitler: evolutionary ethics, eugenics, and racism in Germany

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks

Medical apartheid: the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present

Troublesome science: the misuse of genetics and genomics in understanding race

Bizarre

The 7 laws of magical thinking: how irrational beliefs keep us happy, healthy, and sane

13 things that don’t make sense: the most baffling scientific mysteries of our time

AsapSCIENCE: answers to the world’s weirdest questions, most persistent rumors, and unexplained phenomena

It looked good on paper: bizarre inventions, design disasters, and engineering follies

Too big to know: rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room

Willful ignorance: the mismeasure of uncertainty

Sep 10 2020

Find a comfortable place to study at the Sciences Library!

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Laurie Neuerburg

Head to the Sciences Library for a comfortable, quiet place to study! We offer a variety of study spots. There are many computer stations, study carrels and booths with USB and outlets for phones and computers, tables, and large mobile monitors to use for sharing your computer screen. This year we have new paint, new carpeting, and new rolling white boards!

The Sciences Library is located between Phillips Hall and the Biology Building on Iowa Ave. The building is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 6 PM. During the pandemic we have hygiene stations available with disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer. A face covering is required, and yellow stickers mark off seats that are to remain unoccupied. The book stacks are closed so that we can offer more electronic book access. If you would like to pick up a book, go to the service desk on the first floor.

Our live chat service is available during the day and also from 6-9 PM on Monday through Thursday, and 1-5 PM on Sunday.

Hope to see you soon!

Jun 12 2020

Antiracism Resources for the Sciences

Posted on June 12, 2020June 15, 2020 by Laurie Neuerburg

After #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM, and #Strike4BlackLives on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, there is a need to continue education and action about anti-racism. The CEO of American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the journal Science, said that “When we hold up a mirror to the scientific enterprise, we see that it’s not only politicians and law enforcement that need to be reminded that Black lives matter.” A forthcoming special issue of Nature will be dedicated to exploring systemic racism in research, research policy and publishing in support of the Black lives matter movement. The sciences have not been impervious to racism, and there are resources for anti-racism education specifically for the sciences that will help all of us to create a better and more just world.

This past year Iowa City Darwin Day recorded two workshops about teaching biology without racial prejudice that have been recorded and are freely available for streaming online. The workshops are “Playing With Fire? How We Perpetuate Biological Beliefs About Race in the Classroom and How We Can Avoid It” and “Genomics Literacy Matters: Teaching Genomics to Prevent Racial Prejudice.” Additionally, there is an article in the New York Times about the curriculum taught by the workshop leaders called “Can Biology Class Reduce Racism?” which explains the necessity for classroom education that racial differences in achievement and other disparities are not due to genetics.

In the ebook Making Black Scientists: A Call to Action, Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy Nguyen offer ideas to help support and advance future black scientists based on their observations of successful outcomes at historically black colleges and universities. In Sisters in Science: Conversations with Black Women Scientists about Race, Gender, and Their Passion for Science and Notable Black American Scientists, learn the about stories of black scientists to amplify their voices and to inspire those who will follow in their footsteps. To find more in InfoHawk+, search on keywords such as Black scientists, African American scientists, minorities in science, or ask a librarian for assistance (lib-sciences@uiowa.edu).

The UI Libraries Antiracism guide provides information about understanding racism, resources for antiracist allies, support resources for people of color, and resources for parents and educators. This guide and the resources within it are meant to inspire reflection, education, and action for the University of Iowa community and beyond.