Enjoy the first solar eclipse of 2012 this coming Sunday.  Here’s the map of the path of the annular solar eclipse of May 20th.  A partial eclipse may be viewed in San Diego starting at 4:27 pm PDT and ending at 6:41 pm.

Table of times (beginning, max, end)  for your city in the United States.

For eye safety and viewing tips, read this article at NASA.  Pinhole camera techniques work best if you don’t have welders glass 14 or the correct kind of mylar.  Or just look at the sidewalkor ground under a small leafed tree to see many tiny eclipse images.

Five UC San Diego bioengineering Ph.D. students whose research is aimed at improving human health are among the 2012 recipients of the annual Siebel Scholars awards. Selected for their outstanding academic performance and leadership, each student receives a $35,000 fellowship during the final year of their studies.

The five new Siebel Scholars from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering are part of the Department of Bioengineering, which ranks 1st in the nation for biomedical engineering, according to the 2010 National Research Council (NRC) rankings.

UC San Diego Siebel Scholars: Class of 2012

• Jessica DeQuach
• Che-Ming Jack Hu
• Dan Kagan
• Lauren Hruby Jepson
• Nathan Lewis

more

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its 8 millionth patent today. US 8,000,000 is titled “Visual Prosthesis,” and describes an invention for people who have lost their vision due to outer retinal degeneration. Read more about it.

This new video series from ACS Publications is intended to assist authors and reviewers in understanding and improving their experience with the processes of writing, submitting, editing, and reviewing manuscripts with topics like:

• The essential elements of a scientific journal article
• Ethical guidelines for authors and reviewers
• Criteria to consider when selecting a suitable journal for submission
• Writing a good cover letter
• Suggesting peer reviewers
• Responding to reviewer comments and editorial decisions
• Guidance for authors who may need assistance with English language writing skills.

In the first video, How to Write a Paper to Communicate your Research, ACS asks Harvard professor George Whitesides:

• When should you begin to think about writing up your research for publication?
• How do your students handle your approach of writing while you research?
• How do new technologies help scientists communicate their work?
• How many drafts does each paper undergo? Do you have your papers undergo an internal review?
• Do authors need to be thinking of marketing their articles?
• How concerned should I be about the title and abstract of my papers?

• Asian quakes map (from USGS) at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia.php with details on Honshu foreshocks, main quake and aftershocks.
• Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at http://www.weather.gov/ptwc/
• also West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center at http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/
• Asian & world news sources (from IR/PS Library) at http://ucsd.libguides.com/content.php?pid=145998&sid=1241628

If you’re a female grad student in Computer Science, or a female undergrad entering your senior year, you may be eligible to apply for the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship.

“Google Anita Borg Scholarship recipients will each receive a $10,000 award for the 2011-2012 academic year. A group of female undergraduate and graduate students will be chosen from the applicant pool, and scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of each candidate’s academic background and demonstrated leadership. All scholarship recipients and finalists will be invited to attend the Annual Google Scholars’ Retreat in Mountain View, California in 2011.”

More information.

From the White House, the video of the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation Awards Ceremony.  UCSD Chancellor and chemistry professor Marye Anne Fox was among the National Medial of Science recipients.

Also, Obama awards science medal to UCSD’s Fox (San Diego Union Tribune)

From the White House Blog:

Yesterday, three National Medal recipients joined us for Tuesday Talks – including Steven Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera; Marye Anne Fox, a pioneer in organic photochemistry and electrochemistry; and Warren Washington, a leader in climate change research. They answered your questions on a range of topics – from the evolution of digital photography to careers for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) — in a live video chat on WhiteHouse.gov and Facebook.

Congratulations to UCSD Chancellor and chemistry professor Marye Anne Fox, one of this year’s National Medal of Science recipients,

for seminal contributions to chemistry by elucidating the role that non-homogeneous environments can exert on excited-state processes, and enhancing our understanding of charge-transfer reactions and their application to such fields as polymers, solar energy conversion, and nanotechnology. (NSF)

Administered by the National Science Foundation for the White House, the National Medal of Science honors individuals who have made “outstanding contributions to science and engineering. Nominees are selected by a committee of presidential appointees based on their advanced knowledge in, and contributions to, the biological, behavioral/social and physical sciences, as well as chemistry, engineering, computing and mathematics.”

Chancellor Fox and the other winners (including UCSF’s Stanley Prusiner) will be honored at a White House ceremony, when they will receive their medals from President Obama.

White House Press Release
San Diego Union-Tribune

Since 1989, Thomson Reuters (ISI) has been predicting Nobel Prize winners based on analysis of citations in the scientific literature. They claim to have predicted at least one Nobel Laureate each year, except 1993 and 1996.

This year’s predictions

Past successful predictions

Watch for upcoming announcements of the 2010 Nobel Prize winners:

Physiology or Medicine – Monday 4 October
Physics – Tuesday 5 October
Chemistry – Wednesday 6 October
Peace – Friday 8 October
The date for the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature will be set later.
Economic Sciences – Monday 11 October