News Tidbits

The Good:

• Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has launched a free online database of 7,800 chemicals, called Common Chemistry. It is intended mostly for use by the general public, but may be of use to students and researchers at CMU, as well. Here is the press release.
• NSF is spending stimulus money. From the linked story, "The ARRA funds set aside for new solicitations will be divided equally between facility updgrades and lab instrumentation purchases. NSF will invest $200 million to fund repairs and renovations to existing academic research facilities. Projects will be awarded up to $10 million each and can include research spaces such as buildings, mobile research facilities, and virtual facilities that use broadband-based technologies to bring scientists together. The other $200 million will fund the purchase and development of shared-use instruments. Up to $6 million each will go to individual projects."

The Bad:

• The Global Positioning System (GPS) may deteriorate in the near future. Maybe Galileo will be here in time, or maybe not (by the way, here is an article discussing interoperability between the systems).

The Incredibly Beautiful:

• We thought we'd share some Hubble photos.