Science

Science Research Basics

Be alert to the different factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science when either reading science articles or evaluating research.

Multidisciplinary Research Sources

Chemistry

Research Sources

PubChem [US Gov]US National Institutes of Health. Search for a chemical under Compound or Substance, it will return an incredible wealth of information on the material. Results include pharmacological action/classification, safety/toxicology, literature links, physical data and lots more. Bioassay and structure searches also available.

ChemSpider
Free chemical structure database providing fast access to over 32 million structures, properties, and associated information. It is owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Reference Sources

Search these for background information

Chemistry from FilmsOnDemand.

Ted Talks: Chemistry.

OpenChem: Lecture videos and more for U.C. Irvine.

Hawley’s Condensed Chemical Dictionary (15th ed)
A compilation of technical data and descriptive information covering thousands of chemicals and chemical phenomena, trade name products, processes, reactions, products, and related terminology.

Chemistry Examples from Wolfram|Alpha.

Periodic Table – Royal Society of Chemistry
Allows you to explore a broad range of information about the elements, their reactions, their properties, their structures, and their histories.

Open Textbooks

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News & Blogs

• Compound Interest
  By Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher in the UK, creating graphics looking at the chemistry and chemical reactions we come across on a day-to-day basis.
• Science Daily: Chemistry
  This award-winning site provides research articles, images, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and videos on a variety of science topics.

• Long-term data show a recent acceleration in chemical and physical changes in the ocean
• Artificial cyanobacterial biofilm can sustain green ethylene production for over a month
• Does science have a plastic problem? Microbiologists take steps to reducing plastic waste
• An innovative method to tune lasers toward infrared wavelengths
• Machine learning model helps characterize compounds for drug discovery

Biology

Reference Sources

Films on Demand – Biology

Biology eBook Collection

• “Collins Dictionary of Biology“
• “Dictionary of Microbiology & Molecular Biology“
• “Dictionary of Developmental Biology and Embryology“

Bookshelf from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare. Search, read, and discover.

Biology & Life-Sciences eBooks from the National Academies Press.

• Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century
• Heritable Human Genome Editing
• Next Steps for Functional Genomics: Proceedings of a Workshop
• Safeguarding the Bioeconomy
• Evaluation of Applications to Carry Out Research to Determine the Taxonomy of Wild Canids in the Southeastern United States

Recommended Resources

Indexes

Encyclopedia of Life – The beginnings of an online resource collecting information about each species in the world.

Biodiversity Heritage Library – “The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community.”

Guides

Audubon Guide to North American Birds – a classic!

BugGuide.net – Hosted by Iowa State U., Bug Guide has insect identification tools as well as a discussion forum for enthusiasts.

Wolfram|Alpha includes a wide variety of searchable information relevant to biology. See their Life Sciences examples for possibilities.

Washington State Biology Resources

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington has a vast online collection, including:

Puget Sound Shoreline – From the Washington Dept. of Ecology, this site lists and discusses plant and animal species found in Puget Sound.

BirdWeb – Seattle Audubon’s Guide to the Birds of Washington State

Pacific Northwest Moths – Hosted by WWU, this is a cooperatively-created guide and key for moths in southern BC and Alberta; WA, OR, & ID; and parts of CA, NV, UT, CO, WY, and MT.

Geology

The scope of the Encyclopedia of Earth is the environment of the Earth broadly defined, with particular emphasis on the interaction between society and the natural spheres of the Earth. This resource is an expert-reviewed collection of content contributed by scholar/professionals who collaborate and review each others work.

Reference Resources

Volcano World
From Oregon State University – this informative and comprehensive site is an excellent resource on this topic.

Living with Earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest
Written by Robert S. Yeats, a leading authority on earthquakes in California and the Pacific Northwest, this online book describes the threat posed by the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Astronomy

PubSpace
Peer-reviewed papers resulting from NASA-funded research. NASA advances the Nation’s space exploration, technology development, and scientific research endeavors, providing a scientific infrastructure.

• NASA eBooks (read!)
• NASA Podcasts (listen!)

Read Full-Text

OpenStax Astronomy

Free textbook that begins with relevant scientific fundamentals and progresses through an exploration of the solar system, stars, galaxies, and cosmology.

Ecology

Abstracts & Citations

Complimentary research database draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. Abstracts

The Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management, Blackwell Science (via Credo Reference)

Blackwell’s Concise Encyclopedia of Ecology (via EBSCO eBooks)

Online Research Resources

Forest History Society
Provides access to a variety of databases, including an extensive bibliography of works on environmental history, materials related to the history of the U.S. Forest Service, descriptions and transcripts of oral history interviews with individuals involved in forest management, and guides to environmental history archival collections around the world. It also includes an image collection of more than 30,000 low-resolution images “documenting the history of human interaction with the environment.”

PubAg
A portal to USDA-authored and other highly relevant agricultural research. Delivers full-text journal articles and article citations by USDA staff.

Open Parks Network
More than 20 national parks and other protected sites are represented in these diverse collections, as well as 2 state park systems and 3 university libraries. The Open Parks Network provides public access to high-resolution, downloadable files.

Introduction to Environmental Science (Open Course from Georgia College) Topics covered include population ecology, human demography, air pollution, and climate change.

Physics

Penguin Dictionary of Physics (Credo Reference)

Encyclopedia of Energy (Salem Press)

Video Series

The Electric Academy Sometimes electrical theory can come across as confusing. The videos you find here will be simple and to the point.

The Mechanical Universe A critically-acclaimed series of 52 thirty-minute videos covering the basic topics of an introductory university physics course. From Caltech.