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Unified Medical Language System®'s (UMLS®) Summer ReleaseThe Summer edition (2003AB) of the UMLS Knowledge Sources was made available for download from the Knowledge Source Server on July 17, 2003. On August 4, the data became searchable on the Server. CD-ROMs of the data will be sent to UMLS licensees who have requested them. The 2003AB edition of the UMLS Metathesaurus® includes 900,551 concepts and 2.5 million concept names in 102 source vocabularies. Sixty-four point six percent of the concepts have no added licensing restrictions. Compared to the January 2003AA release, there are 25,296 more concepts and 100,558 more names in the 2003AB concepts file, MRCON. Two new vocabularies added in this release are Gene Ontology (GO2002_12_16) and FDA National Drug Code Directory (MTHFDA_2003_01). The following 14 sources were updated:
The total number of Semantic Types (135) and the number of Semantic Relationships (54) remain the same. For more information on the UMLS and the Knowledge Source Server, please see the UMLS home page at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/. More specific documentation of UMLS changes, including the addition of an RxNorm filter to MetamorphoSys®, can be found at: http://www/nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/UMLSDOC.HTML#s01 [this link was removed because it is no longer valid]. 
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Regional Offerings of NCBI's Three-Day Course: Introduction to Molecular Biology Information ResourcesSeptember 5, 2003 [posted]The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) three-day course on Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources will be offered in various regions of the United States during the 2003-2004 academic year. It will also continue to be offered on-site at NLM one to two times per year. The course is approved for 20 MLA continuing education credits. There is no cost for registration, although participants must cover their own travel, hotel, and meals. The dates and locations for the regional courses are summarized below. The upcoming courses page shows the details for each course, including exact address and instructors. That page also links to a registration form at NLM's National Training Center and Clearinghouse. Registration is currently available for the 2003 courses, and will soon be available for the 2004 dates. Please note that each regional course must have a minimum of 12 registrants one month prior to the course date in order to be held. This is due to the cost of providing the course and the time needed by the intructors to make travel arrangements. There will be four regional offerings of the course during the 2003-2004 academic year:
Regional courses may also be considered for the 2004-2005 academic year, depending on demand.
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NLM® Profiles in Science™ Web Site Adds Papers of Anatomist Florence R. SabinSeptember 11, 2003 [posted]As part of its Profiles in Science project, the National Library of Medicine® has collaborated with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and the American Philosophical Society to digitize and make available online the papers of distinguished anatomist and medical researcher, Florence Rena Sabin (1871–1953). Recognized during her lifetime for her innovative work on the origins of the lymphatic system, blood cells, and immune system cells, as well as on the pathology of tuberculosis, Sabin was also a trailblazer for women in science. She was the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In her retirement years, she pursued a second career as a public health activist in Colorado, for which she received the Lasker Award in 1951. This online exhibit is designed to introduce you to the various phases of Dr. Sabin's scientific career and professional life. In addition to articles, correspondence, and speeches, the exhibit includes a wide range of photographs of and drawings by Dr. Sabin. You can visit the exhibit at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/RR/. NLM Profiles in Science was launched September 1998 and also includes the papers of Fred L. Soper, Christian B. Anfinsen, Oswald T. Avery, Julius Axelrod, Donald S. Fredrickson, Joshua Lederberg, Barbara McClintock, Marshall W. Nirenberg, Linus Pauling and Martin Rodbell. This continuing project can be viewed at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/.
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Just-In-Time Training to Learn How to Use PubMed®'s Cubby FeatureOctober 2, 2003 [posted]NLM is pleased to announce new just-in-time short animated presentations for users who wish to learn how to use PubMed's Cubby feature. These demos were produced with Qarbon.com Inc.'s Viewlet™ technology. There are three presentations:
Viewlets are SWF files (based on Flash 5 technology) that play via a browser with a Flash 5 (or later) plugin. There is an automatic audio narrative. If you wish to mute the sound, this may be accomplished from the Volume control on your desktop. These demos are currently available from within the Cubby section of PubMed's Help and from the NLM Web site at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/dist_edu.html. Watch for additional just-in-time animated demos in the near future.
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MEDLINE® Language Definitions Change to Croatian and SerbianOctober 6, 2003 [posted]December 17, 2003 [updated] The definitions of two language codes–"scr" and "scc"–used in NLM databases have changed to reflect current usage of Croatian and Serbian as two separate languages:
[Update: In addition to Croation and Serbian, "Bosnian" is also recognized as a separate language. Starting December 15, 2003, the language term "Bosnian" is to be applied when indexing articles in the sole MEDLINE-indexed journal that is published in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Medicinski Arhiv, unless it is clear that another language is appropriate.] For a complete list of language codes used in MEDLINE, please see the MEDLINE Language Table.
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MEDLINE® UI/PubMed® ID Matcher Available on NCBI's E-Utilities Web SiteOctober 7, 2003 [posted]In the July-August edition of the NLM Technical Bulletin, the Technical Notes announced that the MEDLINE Unique Identifier was to be discontinued and that the discontinuation process would be implemented in two stages. (Please see Technical Notes. NLM Tech Bull. 2003 Jul-Aug;(333):e1.) In early September 2003, the first stage of the process was carried out, namely, the positions of the MEDLINE Unique Identifier (UI) field and the PubMed Identifier (PMID) field on the MEDLINE display format in PubMed were switched, so that the PMID now displays first. As mentioned in the July-August Technical Note, when MEDLINE is updated with 2004 MeSH vocabulary in December 2003, the PMID will be the only unique number used in PubMed and on records distributed to licensees. As promised, NLM has recently made a MEDLINE UI/PubMed ID Matcher available online, in order to help users make changes to projects and services that currently depend on the UI field. OLDMEDLINE UI's can be matched using this utility as well. This utility can be reached from the PubMed sidebar, by clicking on E-Utilities, or by going directly to the Web page. [8/24/2010: The link to the MEDLINE/PMID Matcher was removed because it is no longer available.]
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UMLS® Basics Training Class Slides Now AvailableOctober 7, 2003 [posted]The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Basics Training Class slides are now available in a Portable Document Format (PDF) on the UMLS Information Web site. This version was used for a NLM class in June 2003 where the target audience was medical librarians and informaticians. Note: The material is available in Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF documents require the use of the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader, which can be downloaded from Adobe's Web site at no charge. The next class will be offered on February 23, 2004 at NLM. To register go to the NTCC Web site. This class will also be offered at the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association in May, 2004, in Washington, DC. Details will be available in the NLM Technical Bulletin at a later date.
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New Clinical Alert IssuedOctober 20, 2003 [posted]The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has issued a new Clinical Alert: A Canadian-led international clinical trial found that post-menopausal survivors of early-stage breast cancer who took the drug letrozole after completing an initial five years of tamoxifen therapy had a significantly reduced risk of cancer recurrence compared to women taking a placebo. Links to Clinical Alerts can also be found from these NLM Web sites:
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NLM® and National Institute on Aging Launch NIHSeniorHealth Web SiteOctober 24, 2003 [posted]NIHSeniorHealth, developed by the National Institute on Aging and NLM, was officially launched on October 23, 2003. The content of NIHSeniorHealth, written by contributing institutes at the National Institutes of Health, is health information tailored to older adults and the individuals who care for them. The ten topics currently addressed are: Alzheimer's Disease, Arthritis, Balance Problems, Breast Cancer, Caring for Someone with Alzheimer's, Colorectal Cancer, Exercise for Older Adults, Hearing Loss, Lung Cancer, and Prostate Cancer. Based on research concerning the ways in which cognition changes with age, special features have been incorporated into the site, such as large print and short, easy-to-read segments of information. In addition, this is a talking Web site: users can click the "Turn Speech On" button at the top of a page to hear the text read aloud, and on any page, users can simply click on the content to hear the information. Where appropriate, MedlinePlus and NIHSeniorHealth are linked, in order to guide users between the two sites. The four institutes that provided the text for the site are the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). For more information on the launch of NIHSeniorHealth, please read the press release at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/press_releases/nihseniorhealthpr03.html. You can access NIHSeniorHealth at: http://nihseniorhealth.gov/.
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NLM® Announces a New Version of the PubMed® TutorialOctober 28, 2003 [posted]The National Library of Medicine is pleased to release a new version of the PubMed Tutorial. As always, the tutorial is available from the PubMed sidebar.
This new version incorporates changes to PubMed through June 2003. Some of the changes include:
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Biochemistry, 5th edition Added to NCBI BookshelfOctober 28, 2003 [posted]The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has added a new book to the Bookshelf:
Biochemistry. Berg, Jeremy M.; Tymoczko, John L.; and Stryer, Lubert. The books in Bookshelf may be searched directly from the Bookshelf site, via links from the Links pull-down menu from relevant PubMed® citations, or through the new Entrez Global query feature.
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2004 MeSH Browser & MeSH Files for Download AvailableOctober 28, 2003 [posted]The MeSH Browser now has an optional link to 2004 MeSH. Stay tuned for a forthcoming NLM Technical Bulletin article detailing upcoming MeSH vocabulary changes. 2004 MeSH is also available for download in XML and ASCII formats. ASCII MeSH and XML MeSH are now updated weekly. The updates are run every Sunday and are available Monday morning.
For questions concerning distribution, format, etc. contact:
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