A commonly used blood thinner can be repurposed as an inexpensive antivenom treatment, a study published in Science Translational Medicine has said

The best practices of tribal communities highlighted at the forum included the production of local seeds, water conservation at source, use of animals in agriculture, checking soil erosion through mixed cropping, and the use of uncultivated food for nutritional security

SAD leader Balwinder Bhundur said the eight leaders had actively colluded with the party’s enemies to create divisions in the party and weaken it

A students’ body has asked the panel to justify the ‘missing candidates’ who should have been called for the police service interview according to the prescribed number per post

Police said that an investigation had been launched but claimed that no evidence to support the victim’s claims has been found so far

The train movement on the track remained hindered for nearly three hours

After the incidents on August 9 and 11, a war of words broke out between the party leaders

The BJP Government in Rajasthan is yet to take a decision on Disaster Relief Minister Kirodi Lal Meena’s resignation

The police had last month arrested 11 people in connection with the July 2 Hathras stampede

Senior doctors and faculty members joined the protests at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where a female post-graduate trainee doctor was sexually assaulted and murdered on August 9

The treatment is for heart-related ailments

Colleges have also been asked to set up ‘Bharatiya gyaan parampara’ cells

The Hindu man has been staying in Silchar town since 1988

Complaint filed by contractor in charge of installation and maintenance said around 3,800 bamboo lights and 36 ‘gobo projector’ lights went missing in May

In November, the State will launch the Yuva Shakti Mission for youth, the Nari Sashaktikaran Mission for women, the Kisan Kalyan Mission for farmers, and the Gareeb Kalyan Mission for the poor, the Chief Minister said in his Independence Day speech

Shishupal Patle’s entry ahead of the Assembly election is being seen as a way to strengthen Congress’s influence in the constituency, which falls under the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra

Dara Singh, the main accused in the triple murder, was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003

Police said masked men on a scooter fired five rounds on Tuesday evening. In July 17, miscreants had lobbed a grenade, but it did not explode and was later disposed of by a special squad

Aircraft with two persons onboard belongs to Alchemist Aviation flying school in Jamshedpur

A police spokesperson said that Babar is using Kashmiris as couriers for raising and passing on funds to different groups to carry out terrorist acts in the valley

Several organisations representing indigenous communities have asked migrant Muslims, referred to as Miya, to leave eastern Assam following a gang-rape case

People present at Rafeek Khan’s house overpowered the attacker, thrashed him and handed him over to police. The accused is a former CRPF assistant commandant and a Shaurya Chakra awardee

Special Judge Vishal Gogne fixed the matter for the next week after noting that no further clarification was required from the ED on the matter

The alleged incident took place inside the private school in Kamla Nagar police station area on September 13 and the girl’s mother reported it to the police the next day

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Sanjay Kumar and R. Mahadevan partially set aside the Patna High Court verdict acquitting all the accused and asked convicts Mantu Tiwari and ex-MLA Shukla to surrender within 15 days

At the last DLC meeting Becky Williams, an instructional designer with CITT, gave a presentation on CMS software issues and spoke about open source (such as SAKAI) vs. Vendor (WebCT/Blackboard) products and a new software system for teacher grading, called SWoRD. Here is a synopsis of what she presented, and feel free to take a look at her ppt for more information: (http://plaza.ufl.edu/rjwillia/swordtalk%20-%20learning%20consort-oct07.ppt).

The first four slides are about CMS vendors vs. open source:

A growing disillusionment with vendor products has many Universities moving or considering moving to Sakai (the most popular open source system available). WebCT and Bb have left many unaddressed issues, and they require universities to pay for upgrades or extensions if something does not work. Moving a CMS to open source has its own issues, but that the vendor situation is so aggravating more universities are considering it as an option. I thought these issues sounded familiar to our LMS experiences - I'll be interested in seeing where the CMS discussion goes.

Slide 5 through 42 are about a new, free software called SWoRD. In large classes, professors assign fewer papers as writing assignments due to the difficulty of grading a large number of papers. Despite writing less, student grades are higher and students feel they are good writers; and, yet, teaching faculty don't agree. SWoRD is a system by which papers are automatically assigned to other student writers, for peer-review. Each student peer-reviews 5 papers. Ms. Williams had evidence supporting the value of multiple peer reviewing of a paper; it is much more useful for a student to have 3 peers review their paper than it is for one student or one professor to review the paper. Read the slides if you are interesting in learning more. Currently the software is free, although Ms. Williams thought that would most likely change.

This meeting was held in the Digital Worlds Building at Norman and included a digital tour of the Gator Nation Island in Second Life. Someone at the meeting mentioned that the Libraries were holding reference hours within SL, which Laura Jordan was able to speak to.

2008 USAIN (United States Agricultural Information Network) Conference

Tradition in Transition: Information Fueling the Future of Agbiosciences

April 27 – 30, 2008 Wooster, OH

University of Florida is an institutional member of USAIN, an organization whose primary purposes are to promote discussion of agricultural issues and trends, to develop and influence national agricultural information policy, to make recommendations to the National Agricultural Library (NAL) and to increase collaborations between member partners (http://www.usain.org/). USAIN does an excellent job communicating legislative changes to its members, and then working with members to get involved with state and national government.

The conference was hosted by Ohio State University and held at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, closely situated next to a beautiful arboretum and rose garden.

Here are a few of the most important highlights from the conference:

1. The AgNIC Born Digital Steering Committee, of which UF is a participant, met for the first time to begin phase I of the born digital initiative. Here at UF it used to be we would receive a copy of IFAS Extension resources, which we would catalog and make available in our print collection. Many Extension resources (documents, websites, etc) are now published only in digital format and while this format increases access to the current resources, many of these older resources are at risk of being permanently lost due to a lack of consistent preservation processes. This is a problem not just at UF, but at almost every land-grant throughout the nation. The goal of this steering committee is to identify digitization standards (selection, metadata, format, etc.) and to develop an infrastructure to assist the land-grants in developing their own processes at the local level. The other institutions participating are Univ. of Arizona, Ohio State, Colorado State, Texas A&M, Cornell, Univ. of Minnesota, Purdue, and potentially Michigan State and Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

2. Mary Ochs (Cornell) Peter Ballantyne and Barbara Hutchinson (IAALD) spoke about Agbioscience information for the worldwide community. There is a strong need to "make research information easy to access for current and future generations" through common international standards, open applications, user friendly information & data, andlocal and global action . A large amount of agricultural information is created within the U.S., and we should do more to share that information with the international community. The result of this discussion was the creation of an International Agricultural Information Interest Group which will focus on the first steps of bringing in librarians from other countries to future USAIN conferences, as well as providing more Ag information on the USAIN website. Here is Peter Young - the Director of the National Ag Library - speaking about global collaborations: http://iaald.blip.tv/file/864317/

3. Peter gave the NAL update, mentioning the new Blueprint for Success: The National Agricultural Library 2008-2012. Many of you may have seen in the Washington Post the article, A Precious Resource at Risk, about the drastic budget cuts facing NAL in the upcoming year. I believe it was at the last USAIN that I learned that the NAL has had a flat budget for the last twenty years. Somehow I didn't write down the percentage they will have to cut, but I believe it was either 40% or 60% - both staggering cuts. This will prevent the NAL from preserving their special collections, from buying print materials, from participating in Interlibrary Loan, and more. For more information, see the USAIN website for Lobbying Congress for Support.

Many of the invited speakers spoke on biofuels, bioenergy/bioproducts, and sustainable farming, including David Kline, an Amish farmer and author/editor of Farming Magazine. Without going into too much detail, here are a few of the interesting things I learned from all the speakers:

1. In the 1850’s ethanols were used for lighting, but in the 1860s-1906 an ethanol tax was enacted (making kerosene more competitive). The first ethanol fueled auto was the Ford Quadricycle (1896). The first flex-fuel car: Model-T (1908)!
2. In 2008 there were 11 billion gallons of ethanol produced from corn. Unfortunately there are a number of issues related to: water quality, soil erosion, water supply, biodiversity, loss of grasslands, increase in feed costs. Also, corn is displacing other crops -- leading to food riots.
3. The cellulosic biofuels (corn, switchgrass, MSW, forest residues, etc.) industry will grow rapidly in coming years. And will bring some very specific questions, such as how will supply chains develop (big issue), what are the implications for the food/feed/fiber markets, how will environmental issues be addressed, can we coproduce fuels and foods, and how can farmers and local communities benefit?
4. Lastly, has been shown to increase smog and cancerous benzene emissions. Also, all current biofuels increase carbon dioxide emission relative to gasoline.

There was quite a bit more information available from all the speakers. If you are interested in reading the speaker presentations, they are available for download: http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/usain/downloads.html

Computing services notes - from Middle Managers 8/7/08

* All circ problems: aleph, print demons, notices, etc -- anybody/everybody just send a Grover http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/grover ticket. As Systems learns the quantity, frequency, and variety of problems reported, they'll learn how to how to base assignments.

__________________

* New linking service - Serials Solutions 360 Linker - is being tested The "Find it@UF" icon will change slightly (substituting the SFX trademark swirly with an @) and we’ll need to know when to make the switch on all our handouts, web pages, etc.

_________________

* phishing -- everyone remember to never give out any of your passwords to anybody. Not to Systems, not to CIRCA, not to UF. Requests for passwords (especially from email messages) are masquerades for phishing schemes. OK to give your logon, but never your password.

____________________

* Active Directory -- public computers will begin conversion this week. Patrons will use Gatorlink to logon. We may create guest accounts (following procedures) valid for 14 days. Guest accounts cannot be renewed; patrons will have to select a new name (smith1, smith2, etc) every 2 weeks. The Peoplesoft folks have not yet committed to making longer-term, renewable guest accounts. These guest accounts are for computer use only; they do not govern borrowing privileges or remote access. (Patrons can log into to the Library Proxy with their Gatorlink, but it only connects if their Gatorlink account indicates an eligible status.)

*** We currently have 300 courtesy borrowers, and some of them may be eligible for real Gatorlinks (which they can create themselves). They should check with Jim Stevens. In the meantime, it may be easiest to create them a temp guest account on the spot and then (we or patron) contact Jim to see what else can be done. Stay tuned.

*** There are 1800 guest computer use accounts active today. 1800 accounts x every 2 weeks means a lot of work for staff and a lot of grief for patrons. We'll hope to succeed with requesting speedy establishment of longer-term, renewable guest Gatorlink accounts.

*** Small branches with only student assistants on the weekends might send guests to MSL for account creation.

______________

* Active Directory for staff computers -- might happen in mid-Fall. Huge implications for how we all manage our email; some aspects will be time-consuming and deadline-based.

*** Campus email only saves Inbox and Sent email for 30 days. Then it goes into Deleted folder. After 30 days, stuff in Deleted is irretrievable. We all must learn to put any items we want to save into our Retain Permanently folder.

*** Our new email address will be our Gatorlink. If you might be professionally embarrassed by your Gatorlink name, change it soon.

*** We'll all have to notify our discussion lists of our new (gatorlink) address. We should still receive mail directed to uflib, but we won't be able to post to lists that expect us to send from uflib. Feel free to start converting your discussion lists to gatorlink soon.

*** Will said he'll check the group email addresses (sciref, illoan, etc) to see how they can be addressed, managed, and accessed in the campus AD. Stay tuned.

*** We should receive recommendations and procedures on storing and backing up email on library vs. campus servers before we switch. Some gory details available at http://www.mail.ufl.edu/questionsandanswers.shtml and http://www.mail.ufl.edu/managemail.shtml.

* Office 2007 - if you really want Office 2007 on your staff computer now, please send a request via Grover. If you can wait til about mid-Sept, Systems will be able to push the software over the network rather then sending a staff member to enslave your computer for awhile.

Here are the tentative plans for big changes to all our staff computers as of the Middle Managers meeting on 11/6/08.

Breathe deeply…

Office 2007
* Send a Grover if you would like to have Office2007 pushed to your computer. It will not be sent unless you ask.
* Systems will soon push an Office2007 compatibility tool to all staff. This will enable folks to share documents successfully between Office2003 and Office2007 users.

Active Directory (AD) for staff
The Systems staff will be experimenting on themselves in early Nov, switching to campus Active Directory. They will measure how smoothly the process works, how long it takes to switch a user, and any problems they may encounter. Assuming their experiments are successful, the following is expected to happen:
* Dec. 1 (week) – Systems staff will switch each of our staff computers from the Smatherslib domain to the Campus AD domain.
* After a computer has had its domain switched, we will have a temporary 2-step process for logging in and accessing our email. First, we will log onto the computer with Gatorlink. Then, to open Outlook email, we will log in with our Smatherslib account.
* Dec. 5 (beginning) – Systems staff will visit our staff computers again to migrate our email to the Campus Exchange server. We will have to be present to log in during this activity. We hope to create a dept schedule: Systems will tell us when (days, hours) they plan to be in MSL, and we will coordinate times when each of is is at our computers and interruptible.

Prior to Dec 1-5:
* If you have messages in your Inbox or Sent box or Drafts box that are more than a year old, you will have to move those items into another folder prior to your planned visit from Systems to convert your email.
* Systems hopes to hold one or more training sessions for the new email, probably in 1A, before Thanksgiving. They may also post some step-by-step instructions on the Systems blog at http://blogs.uflib.ufl.edu/systems/.
Other details about Campus Exchange available at:
http://www.mail.ufl.edu/emailquestions.shtml
http://www.mail.ufl.edu/questionsandanswers.shtml
http://www.mail.ufl.edu/managemail.shtml

Fallout
* All permissions to access folders will be broken during the transition. We’re not sure of the impact on group emails such as Sciref and MSLcarrels, or on permission to upload web pages to the server. We may find ourselves sending a Grover each time we can’t open a folder and Systems will reassign permissions case-by-case, probably fairly quickly.

If Systems discovers they can't switch us successfully by mid-Dec, the whole process will be rescheduled for January or so. Stay tuned.

Need to send a Grover? Login as:
ufadgatorlinkname

Looking for group lists? They're being added to the new Global Address list. Type:
lib-conf ... for meeting rooms
lib-dl ... for some group lists (discussion lists?)
Look all up and down LIB... and maybe you'll find what you need.

Chopra fell just 2cm short of Jakub Vadlejch’s effort, whose 88.38m in the opening round proved enough for the Czech to take first place

Chopra finished second at the Doha Diamond League as his big final effort of 88.36m fell short by just two centimeters of Jakub Vadlejch's winning effort on May 10

Today’s 2cm victory is a little revenge for the previous year: Jakub

Usain Bolt’s superhuman effort of 9.58 seconds (100m) and 19.19 seconds (200m) at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin have not been threatened ever since.

The AFI chief said the athletes needed to declare their coaches’ names in dope control forms and all the coaches would have to be registered with the federation

Deepthi smashed American Breanna Clark's earlier world record of 55.12 seconds set during last year's edition of the championships in Paris

The timing puts India in the 21st place in the Road to Paris list of World Athletics while the aim was to be either in the 15th or 16th spot

The two champion athletes agree on both the crux of the problem — incorrect or insufficient guidance — and the reasons for it — increased competition and desperation to succeed — but differ in how accountability should be apportioned

Chebet clocked 28 minutes 54.14 seconds, taking nearly seven seconds off the previous world record set by Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey three years ago to qualify for the event at the Paris Olympics.

Baranica secures the gold in women’s event; Vithya Ramraj claims the women’s 400m hurdles title; Abha bags the shot put top spot

The national record holder Avinash Sable, who has already attained the Paris Olympic qualifying standard, clocked 8:31.75 to overwrite his own previous meet record of 8:33.19, set five years ago in Lucknow.

The 27-year-old gymnast, regarded as one of the best ever, booked her ticket to Paris with a resounding victory at the US trials. Having successfully made a comeback after a two-year break to safeguard her mental health, she has the opportunity to put the 2020 Olympics firmly in her rearview mirror

The Ukrainian outperformed the world indoor champion, Australia's Nicola Olyslagers, with both competitors clearing the 2.01 metre height on their second attempts

The lineup features 314 women and 278 men, spanning ages from 16 to 59 and with 46 states represented.