Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library
Online Reference Services and Research Help
The Koshland Bioscience, Natural Resources, & Public Health Library’s reference services have moved online at least through the end of March, in alignment with “social distancing” recommendations from campus.
Contact a Librarian
Librarians are available Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm to answer any questions you might have. Email one of us or click on the link to schedule a Zoom meeting or Google Hangout.
- Integrative Biology: Shannon Kealey (skealey@berkeley.edu; schedule an online meeting)
- College of Natural Resources: Becky Miller (rcmiller@berkeley.edu; schedule an online meeting)
- Molecular & Cell Biology: Elliott Smith (esmith@library.berkeley.edu; schedule an online meeting)
- Public Health: Michael Sholinbeck (msholinb@library.berkeley.edu; use email to schedule an online meeting)
24/7 online help
Chat
Chat with a librarian. The chat service is staffed by Berkeley librarians, but at peak service times or off-hours you may be connected with a librarian from another academic institution.
Online guides, tutorials and videos
- Bioscience Library Guides for courses, subjects, and research basics
- Online videos for the Biological Sciences
Connecting from off campus
If you are not on campus, use EZProxy or the VPN (VPN users: choose Library Access – Full Tunnel rather than the default Split Tunnel) to authenticate yourself as a Berkeley student, faculty, or staff to access online books, journals, databases, and other resources.
If a desired resource is not available as a full-text version online, Berkeley students, faculty, and staff can place a request to our Interlibrary Borrowing Service. If the Library is closed due to unforeseen circumstances, we will update you about our ability to provide this to you via email.
2019 IgNobel Prize Winners Announced A While Ago
Hello,
Once again, we have the IgNobel prizes. Here’s a list of the 2019 winners; links to the actual, real research papers are here.
MEDICINE PRIZE [ITALY, THE NETHERLANDS]
Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.
MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [USA]
Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique— called “clicker training” —to train surgeons to perform orthopedic surgery.
BIOLOGY PRIZE [SINGAPORE, CHINA, GERMANY, AUSTRALIA, POLAND, USA, BULGARIA]
Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, and Tomasz Paterek, for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches.
ANATOMY PRIZE [FRANCE]
Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [JAPAN]
Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child
ENGINEERING PRIZE [IRAN]
Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [TURKEY, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY]
Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria.
PEACE PRIZE [UK, SAUDI ARABIA, SINGAPORE, USA]
Ghada A. bin Saif, Alexandru Papoiu, Liliana Banari, Francis McGlone, Shawn G. Kwatra, Yiong-Huak Chan, and Gil Yosipovitch, for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [GERMANY]
Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.
PHYSICS PRIZE [USA, TAIWAN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SWEDEN, UK]
Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.
Newly Acquired Public Health Books
Here is a sample of new Public Health books — many more may be found on our New Public Health Books web guide. Click the links below for library location. And, happy reading!
Community-based participatory research for health: advancing social and health equity
Transgender and gender nonconforming health and aging
Mapping AIDS : visual histories of an enduring epidemic
Mama might be better off dead: the failure of health care in urban America
Climate change and the people’s health
Global Indigenous Health: Reconciling the Past, Engaging the Present, Animating the Future
Mobile communications and public health
Pregnancy and power: a history of reproductive politics in the United States
The gendered landscape of suicide: masculinities, emotions, and cultures
New Public Health Books
Here is a sample of new Public Health books — many more may be found on our New Public Health Books web guide. Click the links for location: most are at the Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library; some are at other UCB libraries, or online.
LGBT Health: Meeting the Needs of Gender and Sexual Minorities
How Qualitative Data Analysis Happens: Moving Beyond “Themes Emerged”
Reproductive Geographies: bodies, places and politics
Evaluation for a Caring Society
Teaching Health Humanities
Emerging Micro-Pollutants in the Environment: occurrence, fate, and distribution
The Global Gag Rule and Women’s Reproductive Health: Rhetoric versus reality
Health Services Evaluation
Understanding Trans Health: Discourse, power and possibility
Reading – for fun! – at the Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library
In addition to the hundreds of academic journals that we subscribe to electronically, the Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library gets some interesting publications in print. In our recently refreshed New Books and Journals reading area you can flip through key journals like Science and Nature and also peruse magazines like Bay Nature, Successful Farming, National Parks, Earth First!, Outdoor California, Nutrition Today, Reptiles, Natural History, Diabetes, and many others. Settle into one of our comfy chairs and browse away!
If you’d rather be behind a book, our book jacket display near the circulation desk features some of our new print books, many of which are popular titles on science, health, and environmental topics.
2018 Winners of the Ig® Nobel Prize Announced!!
…For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK
MEDICINE PRIZE [USA] — Marc Mitchell and David Wartinger, for using roller coaster rides to try to hasten the passage of kidney stones.
REFERENCE: “Validation of a Functional Pyelocalyceal Renal Model for the Evaluation of Renal Calculi Passage While Riding a Roller Coaster,” Marc A. Mitchell, David D. Wartinger, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, vol. 116, October 2016, pp. 647-652.
ANTHROPOLOGY PRIZE [SWEDEN, ROMANIA, DENMARK, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY, UK, INDONESIA, ITALY] — Tomas Persson, Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, and Elainie Madsen, for collecting evidence, in a zoo, that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often, and about as well, as humans imitate chimpanzees.
REFERENCE: “Spontaneous Cross-Species Imitation in Interaction Between Chimpanzees and Zoo Visitors,” Tomas Persson, Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, and Elainie Madsen, Primates, vol. 59, no. 1, January 2018, pp 19–29.
BIOLOGY PRIZE [SWEDEN, COLOMBIA, GERMANY, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND] — Paul Becher, Sebastien Lebreton, Erika Wallin, Erik Hedenstrom, Felipe Borrero-Echeverry, Marie Bengtsson, Volker Jorger, and Peter Witzgall, for demonstrating that wine experts can reliably identify, by smell, the presence of a single fly in a glass of wine.
REFERENCE: “The Scent of the Fly,” Paul G. Becher, Sebastien Lebreton, Erika A. Wallin, Erik Hedenstrom, Felipe Borrero-Echeverry, Marie Bengtsson, Volker Jorger, and Peter Witzgall, bioRxiv, no. 20637, 2017.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [PORTUGAL] — Paula Romão, Adília Alarcão and the late César Viana, for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces.
REFERENCE: “Human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces,” by Paula M. S. Romão, Adília M. Alarcão and César A.N. Viana, Studies in Conservation, vol. 35, 1990, pp. 153-155.
MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Akira Horiuchi, for the medical report “Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned From Self-Colonoscopy.”
REFERENCE: “Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned From Self-Colonoscopy by Using a Small-Caliber, Variable-Stiffness Colonoscope,” Akira Horiuchi and Yoshiko Nakayama, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, vol. 63, No. 1, 2006, pp. 119-20.
LITERATURE PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, EL SALVADOR, UK] — Thea Blackler, Rafael Gomez, Vesna Popovic and M. Helen Thompson, for documenting that most people who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual.
REFERENCE: “Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products,” Alethea L. Blackler, Rafael Gomez, Vesna Popovic and M. Helen Thompson, Interacting With Computers, vol. 28, no. 1, 2014, pp. 27-46.
NUTRITION PRIZE [ZIMBABWE, TANZANIA, UK] — James Cole, for calculating that the caloric intake from a human-cannibalism diet is significantly lower than the caloric intake from most other traditional meat diets.
REFERENCE: “Assessing the Calorific Significance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Paleolithic,” James Cole, Scientific Reports, vol. 7, no. 44707, April 7, 2017.
PEACE PRIZE [SPAIN, COLOMBIA] — Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge, Maria-Luisa Ballestar, Jaime Sanmartín, Constanza Calatayud, and Beatriz Alamar, for measuring the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automobile.
REFERENCE: “Shouting and Cursing While Driving: Frequency, Reasons, Perceived Risk and Punishment,” Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge and Maria-Luisa Ballestar, Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 12017, pp. 1-7.
REFERENCE: “La Justicia en el Tráfico: Conocimiento y Valoración de la Población Española” [“Justice in Traffic: Knowledge and Valuation of the Spanish Population”)], F. Alonso, J. Sanmartín, C. Calatayud, C. Esteban, B. Alamar, and M. L. Ballestar, Cuadernos de Reflexión Attitudes, 2005.
REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, JAPAN, SAUDI ARABIA, EGYPT, INDIA, BANGLADESH] — John Barry, Bruce Blank, and Michel Boileau, for using postage stamps to test whether the male sexual organ is functioning properly—as described in their study “Nocturnal Penile Tumescence Monitoring With Stamps.”
REFERENCE: “Nocturnal Penile Tumescence Monitoring With Stamps,” John M. Barry, Bruce Blank, Michael Boileau, Urology, vol. 15, 1980, pp. 171-172.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [CANADA, CHINA, SINGAPORE, USA] — Lindie Hanyu Liang, Douglas Brown, Huiwen Lian, Samuel Hanig, D. Lance Ferris, and Lisa Keeping, for investigating whether it is effective for employees to use Voodoo dolls to retaliate against abusive bosses.
REFERENCE: “Righting a Wrong: Retaliation on a Voodoo Doll Symbolizing an Abusive Supervisor Restores Justice,” Lindie Hanyu Liang, Douglas J. Brown, Huiwen Lian, Samuel Hanig, D. Lance Ferris, and Lisa M. Keeping, The Leadership Quarterly, February 2018.
As always, winners from previous years, as well as all kinds of stuff, may be found on the Improbable Research website.
Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library Open House
Please join us for an open house on Thursday, September 27, 4-6pm in the new Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library! This move represents a tremendous amount of work from any people throughout the Library and the School of Public Health – please come by and help us celebrate!
Public Health Library merges with Bioscience & Natural Resources Library

On June 4, two important libraries in the Life & Health Sciences Division will come together under one roof as the Marian Koshland Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library. The Sheldon Margen Public Health Library — located in 1 University Hall, at Oxford Street and University Avenue — will close June 1.
For more details, read the story at Library News.
Celebrating our library students!

Cal Day 2018 at the Bioscience Library: Bears, bugs, dinosaurs, and more!
Come by the Bioscience and Natural Resources Library on Cal Day, Saturday, April 21, 10am – 3pm. Marvel at the dinosaurs in the Valley Life Sciences Building and peruse the library’s collection of dinosaur books for all ages. View research posters by Integrative Biology honors undergraduate students. Watch the documentary about renowned scientist Marian Diamond, My Love Affair with the Brain. See reproductions of engravings from the Banks’ Florilegium, a collection that documents plants collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Daniel Solander during Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the south Pacific Ocean. Other unusual and rare items from the Life and Health Science libraries will also be on display.
Date: April 21, 2018
Time: 10 am – 3 pm
Location: Look for the table display near the Bioscience Library (2101 VLSB)