The Lubin Files

World Bank apps

Did you know that the World Bank offers lots of smart phone/iPad apps that you can use?

Here are three apps that we believe might be useful to you:

With the World Bank InfoFinder app you can explore documents filtered by language, country, region and topic. You can also bookmark and share document webpages and connect with the Bank's website.  

The World Development Report 2013 app helps users find the major discussions, tables, and figures throughout the report.  Search by key message, region, topic, and keyword. This app also includes a complete PDF of the WDR 2013 for more traditional reading. 

The Doing Business at a Glance 2013 app presents rankings and quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights across 185 economies with business reform summaries for each economy.

See all of the apps provided by the World Bank here.

More about leaf concentrate and malnutrition

Last week, I posted an entry introducing leaf concentrate (LC). 

Appropriate Technology published a followup article to the one I blogged about entitled "The greatest untapped food resource on earth, part 2" 39(4)11-13. This second article discusses the variety of ways in which LC can be used to supplement the diets of undernourished populations.  LC has also provided astonishing results in helping HIV/AIDS patients suffering from malnutrition.  Some of the nutrients contained in LC are:

iron
vitamin A and B9 (folic acid)
vitamin E
vitamins B6 and B12
vitamin K
calcium
lutein
omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids
high quality protein

This article includes a recipe for cookies using LC. You can find a list of recipes that include LC as a main ingredient here.

Appropriate Technology is part of the library's print journal collection, but a scanned version of this article can be made available to FAO staff members upon request. Contact fao-library-reference@fao.org if you would like to have a copy of it.

K49 Aspergillus and Bioplastic “bullets” used to combat aflatoxins in corn farming

Several species of Aspergillus fungi produce highly toxic aflatoxins that upon contaminating corn fields create huge losses in yield of useable grain.  One strain of aspergillus known as K49, does not produce aflatoxins and is quite adept at excluding its toxic cousins via biocompetitive exclusion.

A team of scientists is working to use this strain of fungus encapsulated in small cornstarch bioplastic containers to battle the growth of toxic aspergillus fungi in corn fields.  These small bioplastic “bullets” keep small rodents and birds from eating the fungi before it has an opportunity to release spores and disperse, and are also biodegradable.

To learn more about how K49 might be dispersed and how the use of the bioplastic “bullets” may help deliver other soil-applied fungi, you can read more here.

TAP (Tropical Agricultural Platform)

TAP is a G20-backed initiative facilitated by FAO in collaboration with other partners.  The platform aims to facilitate capacity development in agricutural innovation in the tropics and its activities are coordinated through a secretariat hosted here at FAO.  The TAP partners are currently developing three services to boost agricultural innovation in the Tropics: Policy-dialogue space, Marketplace, and TAPipedia.

To learn more, go to the official TAP website

 

Follow-up on Artificial Meat.

In an earlier blog post, the possibility of growing meat in petri dishes was presented as a way to provide a desired food product while avoiding the environmental damages of large scale animal husbandry.  Now the Economist takes up the subject as well.  At the moment it is expensive and not realistic to provide meat grown from stem cells, but is this a realistic option for the future? See the article here.

New easier access to full-text articles provided by the library.

Check out the library's new URL link resolver, which allows you to click directly on links to available full text of journal articles from databases like Scopus or CAB Abstracts. The icon has been rebranded to say "Check for full text" as seen here: http://bit.ly/A2FVOg . This service enables David Lubin Memorial Library(DLML) to deliver easy access to full text in any number of locations. It is a friendly and intuitive interface with language options and provides custom links to ILL forms, web resources and direct export to citation management tools as well as 1-click to article service that bypasses the results screen. The new link resolver and E-Journal Portal on the library's homepage make it easier and more efficient for FAO staff in HQ and in the Field offices to find full-text articles in the DLML collection.

Popular Science placed FAOSTAT amongst its 10 most amazing databases.

Popular Science tells why it believes that FAOSTAT is one of the most amazing databases. Click here to discover why FAOSTAT deserves this acclaim and to see the nine other databases that share this honor.

On World Food Day, small farmers may be the key to feeding the world.

The following article in the Financial Times is particularly relevant today.  It provides hope that it is possible to feed the world, but steps must be taken now by world governments and leaders with a commitment to achieving the goal of feeding the world's hungry.  The author sees the role of small farmers as critical, but their contributions will depend on the leaders in their countries and on technology.  See the article here. (You will have to register for a free account in order to have access.)

Library databases from home

Did you know that you can access library databases like Proquest and the Economist Intelligence Unit from home?

As long as you have a username/password for FAODOMAIN (most people at headquarters) then you can access the library homepage from the Secure Access Gateway.

Following to the links to the databases from the library homepage will connect you no matter where you are.

"Publish or Perish." A tool for citation analysis

Citation analysis investigates the number of times an article or an author has been referred to by others in the field of scholarly literature.  It can be used to judge the impact an author or a publication has had upon its peers.  FAO staff members often use citation analysis as part of the auto-evaluation process. 

Historically, the only tools available for citation analysis are ones such as the (extremely costly) ISI Web of Science or the Elsevier Scopus database.  We here at FAO do not have access to Web of Science, but we do have a subscription to Scopus.  Having access to either of these databases does not answer every need that we have at FAO, however. Due to the nature of the type of publications that FAO produces, many of them are just not searchable in the usual places.

I just recently witnessed the demonstration of a citation analysis tool called Publish or Perish that looks to be promising for FAO staff who are looking to judge the effectiveness of their work.  This tool is free to download, and it runs on input from Google Scholar.  As I mentioned above, no citation analysis tool is without flaws, however, Google Scholar may provide insight into the kind of publications produced by FAO that often fall between the cracks of the traditional analysis tools.

Publish or Perish calculates statistics based on the following metrics:

Total number of papers
Total number of citations
Average number of citations per paper
Average number of citations per author
Average number of papers per author
Hirsch's h-index and related parameters, shown as h-index and Hirsch a=y.yy, m=z.zz in the output
Egghe's g-index, shown as g-index in the output
The contemporary h-index, shown as hc-index and ac=y.yy in the output
Two variations of the individual h-index, shown as hI-index and hI,norm in the output
The age-weighted citation rate
An analysis of the number of authors per paper

You can read a detailed comparison of Google Scholar with ISI Web of Science here.