Engineering & Mathematics Notebook

Publishers in the Science/Technology/Medical (STM) disciplines aren’t content to focus on optimizing text-based content and search engines in online databases. A growing number of these companies now offer visualization tools to enhance discovery.

Among the pioneers in this area are the various web sites which enable users to draw and search on chemical structures or to view existing structures in manipulable 3D models. These features are available in tools such as ChemSpider (acquired by the Royal Society of Chemistry this past spring); the Structure and Property Search feature available in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics; SciFinder from CSA; PubChem; and Molecule of the Month; to name a few  (Many of these sites used common visual engines, such as the Java-based JMOL, for 3D display of molecular images).

Another entrant is Illustrata, from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA).  Introduced in 2007, Illustrata offers "deep indexing" databases of images - including tables, charts, figures, graphs - contained within the articles and other materials that CSA indexes.  You can search on the types of images you’re interested in, then view thumbnails of the results displayed in the context of the article’s abstract and other citation details.  According to CSA, beta-testers for Illustrata found the ability to search for and view  images resulted in more precise search results, clearer understanding of the resources they were viewing, and opportunities for comparative analysis as well as inspiration for the design and presentation of their own graphics.

Earlier this year, Nature started offering 3D interactive images in the Acrobat PDF versions of some of its articles.  These images can be rotated and zoomed in or out upon, and displayed with various layers of information and graphics toggled on or off.

And everywhere we look, Google or Yahoo maps and other geospatial engines are being used offer insights into the geography of research.  Springer’s Authormapper shows the geographic location of its authors (at least of the time of publication) in an interactive Google map (this seems like a handy tool for planning a research trip or sabbatical!). Researcher ID (previously described here) from ISI Web of Science has a similar interface for its authors within its “testing labs.”.

Visualization tools are cropping up in all academic disciplines, from geology to medicine. In Tufts' own backyard, VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) is a interdisciplinary tool for creating concept maps. The Boston Subsurface Project, developed by the Tufts Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, uses a GIS interface to highlight the relationship between the City of Boston's soils and its history. Such projects are exemplify the statement that pictures tell a thousand stories and, as such, offer new opportunities for discovery and analysis.

CAS, the American Chemical Society's division that produces the CAS registry, just announced that on September 7 it expects to register the 50 millionth unique chemical substance. Only last November, CAS registered its 40 millionth substance (a derivative of azulenobenzofuran). Per CAS, it registered its 10 millionth compound in 1990, after 33 years, and now registers approximately 12,000 new substances daily. That means that, at the current exponential rate of registry additions, we could be celebrating the 60 millionth substance by the start of 2010.

With such an explosion - figuratively speaking - of new substance registrations, having effective systems for identifying, tracking and them becomes critical in order to facilitate research. The CAS Registry Number System is among the most prominent such systems for chemicals substances. PubChem, from the National Institutes of Health, has its own Chemical ID number system as does International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which helped to develop the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) system. Unlike the CAS system, the PubChem and IUPAC systems are non-proprietary. Just last month, IUPAC announced that it has established the InChi Trust to further the development of its open source algorithm so chemical engineers and other chemistry researchers and professionals may expect to see increased InChis alongside the CAS numbers and the prospect of interesting ways to link substances using these unique identifiers.

Knovel, the collection of Engineering technical books that Tufts provides, has just updated its interface. Enhancements include:

• Term suggestions ("Did you mean?") if you misspelled a search term while performing a search.
• Autocompletion of terms that you start typing into the Knovel search box.
• The option to add the Knovel Search Engine to your web browser toolbar.
• Search lists displayed in collapsible lists, with the relevant sections of the top most relevant titles highlighted. The pertinent PDFs or interactive tables and charts are now one click away.
• G.E.T. (Graphs Equations Tables) Search, an enhanced version of Knovel's previous search tool for retrieving data from interactive graphs, equations and tables. A pull-down menu shows all the search fields, organized by major categories, from acid-base properties to volatility. Multiple search statements can be combined and the resulting data can be sorted, filtered, and extracted to other formats, such as Excel, ASCII, and HTML.

The July 27, 2009 issue of Business Week (BW) features a list of 25 young companies that are shaping the alternative energy landscape. From Cambridge, MA's Greenpoint Energy to Vancouver's Clean Current Power Systems, these startups are selling products and services in the Green Cars, BioFuels, Hydro, Solar, Smart Grids, Batteries, and other industries which either are just emerging or being vastly reshaped.

Despite the current Great Recession and constrained investing climate, the entrepreneurs behind these companies are able to obtain venture backing (which goes beyond VC firms to include the U.S. Energy Department and major corporations like Chevron and Google) and clients willing to take risks (a supplementary article in the same BW issue offers tips on how getting investors - or being one - in such ventures). As such, they may provide insights to students in Tufts' engineering and entrepreneurship programs who are pursuing opportunities in alternative energies.

Last year, Tufts acquired the Knovel (pronounced “novel”) electronic book collection. Our subscription includes over 1,800 handbooks and encyclopedias in all aspects of engineering, from adhesives and coatings to sustainable energy and development. In addition to providing online facsimiles of these handbooks, Knovel offers interactive searchable, sortable, and downloadable tables and graphing calculators as well as the ability to search on properties such as creep, shear strength, velocity, chemical characteristics, and many other search parameters.

While you can search Knovel’s content through its standard online interface, Knovel also offers widgets to initiate searches in other ways. You can embed its search widget (pictured here) in your own web pages, such as your personal blog, and account pages in iGoogle or other services.

Other widgets include a desktop search utility, available for Windows, Apple, and Yahoo! Widgets, and search toolbars and pull-down search engine plug-ins for Explorer and Firefox browsers. Access to all these widgets is available from Knovel's website.