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World Demographic Trends

World population is expected to reach 6.6 billion in 2007 according to a report of the Secretary-General entitled, World Demographic Trends (E/CN.9/2007/6).

The report presents an overview of demographic trends for the world, its major areas, the development groups and selected countries. The topics covered include population size and growth [Africa has the biggest growth rate at 1.21, Europe has negative growth], fertility and contraception, mortality [life expectancy in North America 82.7 yrs, in Africa 65.4], international migration, population aging and urbanization.

The report also includes information on population policies and summarizes the concerns and views expressed by Governments with respect to major population trends. Learn more about the UN's activities related to Population from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Google patent search

Google Patent Search only has US stuff at present but can be a hugely usefull tool to track the intended products of your local industry.

From the Googleblurb:

Q. Where does this patent data come from?  
A. All patents available through Google Patent Search   come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.  

Q. What types of patents are available?  
A. Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of   patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s through those   issued in the middle of 2006. We don’t currently include patent applications,   international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months, but we   look forward to expanding our coverage in the future. 

Q. How many U.S. patents are there?  
A. To date, the USPTO has issued approximately   7 million patents.  

Q. How does it work?  
A. Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search,   Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy   to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search   homepage, or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by   criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.  

excellent list of Open Access Journals

Jan Szczepanski, a librarian at Göteborg University, has collected links and information on Open Access journals for years. His lists contain over 4500 current OA-journals and 757 historic. You will find more information on the OA Librarian blog

Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts

Podcasting science has taken off in recent times and is an under-used resource for journalists.
There are number of medical organizations and institutes that have created sites [here hear] featuring podcasts.
Try for example Johns Hopkins Medicine Podcasts.
Started in October 2005, each podcast lasts from five to seven minutes and features a “lively discussion of the week’s medical news and how it may affect you.” Past topics have dealt with the risks of not immunizing children, the use of fish oil in people who’ve had a heart attack, and drug coated stents.

See to it that your health reporters have it as an RSS feed.

Compleat works of Charles Darwin

This site contains every Darwin publication as well as many of his handwritten manuscripts. All told there are more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published  and the largest manuscript  catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from   reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries,  descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important  works for  understanding Darwin's context. Free audio mp3 versions of his works are also available.

War on science

Stem cell veto's, comparing embryonic stem cell research to murder, anti global warming "science", creationism... it seems that the only war Bush is winning is the war on science:

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released survey results that demonstrate pervasive and dangerous political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one-fifth (18.4 percent) said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document."

The New York Times reports:
From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”
In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics

The Scientist reports on continueing conflict of interest problems:

Nearly one in five scientists appointed to expert panels of the  National Academy of Sciences (NAS) had direct financial ties to companies that stood to benefit from the deliberations, according to a sampling released by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). NAS was created by President Lincoln in 1863, to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of  science or art" when requested by any department of the government.
"I believe there are scientists out there without conflicts of interest who can serve on these committees and do a comparable job" to experts with ties to the affected companies, said Merrill Goozner, CSPI's director of Integrity in Science program. CSPI cites the example of a NAS panel evaluating the risk of mercury in fish that included a scientist whose research was funded by pro-industry lobbying groups such as the United States Tuna Foundation. Another panel studying pollution emissions included 10 out of 11 scientists with ties to carbon-emitting industries.

Tracker service for science journalists

KSJ Tracker is a new service for science journalists, created and funded by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We believe that if science reporters and editors have convenient and timely access to the work of peers across the country, they can better evaluate and improve their own performance.

 

Our goal is to provide a broad sampling of the past day’s science news and, where possible, of news releases or other news tips related to publication of science news in the general circulation news media, mainly of the U.S. Our goal is to have a new batch of posts up each day by 1 pm Eastern time.

We also give science journalists the opportunity to suggest stories and to comment constructively on one-another’s work. The volume of science-related news makes a genuinely comprehensive site almost impossible, but we get what we can. The principal tracker is Charles Petit, a longtime science reporter known to many in the field.

 

KSJ Tracker ordinarily includes brief descriptions of news stories with occasional commentary, headlines and links to their publishers’ Web sites—some of which require registration to gain access. Priority goes to stories that report or analyze new scientific research, and to reports on science policy and issues. Less attention is given to brief reports and updates that add little to what has already been in the news.

 

Our main sources, owing to our limited fluency in languages other than English, will be U.S. newspapers and wire services plus any English-language stories from abroad that come to our attention. Also, we may include selected links to press releases and other raw material connected to stories, and occasionally to particularly important new entries on blogs or other sites that come to our attention.

Good source of new medical research information

  MedPage Today is a clearinghouse of new medical news information. Along with updates, the site also includes “Teaching Brief” articles which help clinicians and consumers to understand the implications of new discoveries and developments in the medical world.

The site has a number of RSS feeds and an email allert function.

The site is housed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

ScienceBlogs

ScienceBlogs
http://scienceblogs.com/
ScienceBlogs is the web's largest conversation about science. It features blogs from a wide array of scientific disciplines, with new voices coming on board regularly. It is a global, digital science salon.

MedlinePlus

En del sajter förtjänna återkommande uppmärksammhet.
En av dessa är MedlinePlus.
Dels innehåller den samm typ av information som FASS, med läkemedelssök mm, dels en medicinsk uppslagsbok, dels en bra medicinsk nyhetstjänst, och mer därtill.
Väl värt att titta på om medicin ligger inom ditt researchområde.