Thanks to Michael White, Patent Librarian extraordinaire who posted this on his blog – The Patent Librarian’s Notebook

The European Patent Office has created a new classification scheme for green technologies and applications related to the mitigation of climate
change. The new category, identified as Y02 in the ECLA classification, has two main subclasses:

* Y02C – CAPTURE, STORAGE, SEQUESTRATION OR DISPOSAL OF GREENHOUSE
GASES [GHG]
* Y02E – REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES [GHG] EMISSION, RELATED TO
ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION [N1006]

Each subclass is further subdivided into dozens of sub-groups. Here’s
the scheme for biofuels:

* Biofuels [N1006] Y02E50/10
* CHP turbines for biofeed [N1006] Y02E50/11
* Gas turbines for biofeed [N1006] Y02E50/12
* Bio-diesel [N1006] Y02E50/13
* Bio-pyrolysis [N1006] Y02E50/14
* Torrefaction of biomass [N1006] Y02E50/15
* Cellulosic bio-ethanol [N1006] Y02E50/16
* Grain bio-ethanol [N1006] Y02E50/17
* Bio-alcohols produced by other means than fermentation
[N1006] Y02E50/18

Currently, there are about 17,000 patent documents classified under Y02.

In “Measuring citations: Calculations can vary widely”, published in ScienceNews October 5, 2009, Janet Raloff reports on findings by Abhaya Kulkarni and his colleagues who compared three indexing services: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Not surprisingly the results were different between these services, because they index different publications. Perhaps the most important part of the article though is the point Kulkarni makes about the implications of not counting citations from non-high impact factor journals. Implications that might include: research that gets little or no credit if it is not cited in high-impact factor journals; or a failure to gauge the true influence of a particular piece of research if it is not cited in journals with high impact factors.
See the full article here: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48057

UBC Engineering student helps collect scientific data for Canada’s Arctic submission to the United Nations

Alexander Forrest, a UBC civil engineering PhD candidate, is part of a team supporting the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to collect scientific data for Canada’s Arctic submission to the United Nations.

Forrest has been working with International Submarine Engineering Ltd. as a support engineer and will assist in AUV operations next year when two AUVs operate thousands of metres under the ice to survey the seabed.

Canada, the U.S., and Denmark are collecting scientific data to establish sovereign rights to parts of the Arctic Ocean under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Canada has until 2013 to provide its submission to the United Nations. Russia and Norway have already made submissions to the UN.

More at UBC This Week.

**image by cam17