There is a really cool web resouce, or better make that a hot resource.

The National Solar Radiation Data Base 1961-1990 (NSRDB) contains 30 years of solar radiation and supplementary meteorological data from 237 NWS sites in the U.S., plus sites in Guam and Puerto Rico.

and

The updated 1991-2005 National Solar Radiation Database holds solar and meteorological data for 1,454 locations in the United States and its territories. The National Climatic Data Center provides primary distribution of the NSRDB, but this site holds a solar research version of the NSRDB with additional solar fields (without meteorological data).

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/

This is the first of a series of entries concerning physics information literacy. Information literacy, in the broadest terms, involves knowing what resources are available and appropriate for a topic and how to extract information from those resources efficiently, not eventually, but efficiently.

Shamelessly extracted from a presentation by A. Ben Wagner, Physics Librarian, Univ. of Bullalo:
Three Essentials:
1. There are many tools out there, don’t get stuck using 1 or 2 to answer all your questions.
2. Know how it works.
3. [With the] fantastic development in search interfaces–there is so much [you can do] beyond throwing in a few random keywords.

Next time: Google vs. INSPEC — chaos vs. ordered systems.

The American Astronomical Society has officially announced the Institute of Physics will be publishing Astrophysical Journal, Letters and Supplement series.

AAS President J. Craig Wheeler said, “We are very pleased that IOP Publishing will be the new publisher of our cherished and prestigious journals and are very optimistic that our new partnership will lead to a necessary and valuable evolution of what it means to publish science journals in the globally-connected electronic age.”

IOP will begin accepting manuscripts in September, 2007 for publication in the Astronomical Journal and will begin publishing the journal with the January, 2008 issue. The Astrophysical Journal Part I, Part II Letters and the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series are scheduled to begin production with IOP on January 1, 2009.

If you have any questions about this publishing arrangement, please don’t hesitate to contact IOP at info@ioppubusa.com.

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7. Dikmen E, Novoselsky A, Vallieres M
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8. Behera SN, Gayen S, Prasad GVR, et al.
Electronic properties of ordered and disordered linear clusters of atoms and molecules
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