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Revision as of 16:22, 14 October 2008 by imported>James F. Perry (update AOTW)
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A new wiki encyclopedia project—and more!

  • We aim at reliability and quality, not just quantity.
  • We welcome collaboration with everyone who has knowledge, broad or narrow, about any of the world's innumerable subjects.
  • We write under our real names—and are both collegial and congenial.
  • We now have [[:Category:CZ Live|Template:Articles number+ articles]] and are gathering speed.
  • Eduzendium participants write for academic credit.

Write for the Citizendium—knowledge is fun!

  • Sign up—we need both authors and editors (you might be both!)
  • Then, get a quick start.
  • Remember, we are an open, young project—it's easy to get involved!

Learn about us

Important new community pages

  • WatchKnow will be a free, non-profit, K-12 educational video contest, currently under planning and development.
  • Myths and Facts: Citizendium may be different from what you think!
  • We are organizing Workgroup Weeks--our biggest initiative yet. Citizens, get involved, and watch our numbers multiply!
  • Cleanup -- helps to develop, keep and maintain a coherent structure for entries in Citizendium

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Some of our finest [ about ]

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Draft article of the Week [ about ]

Snapshot from a simulation of liquid water. The four thin green lines from the molecule in the center of the picture represent hydrogen bonds.

In chemistry, a hydrogen bond is a type of attractive intermolecular force that exists between two partial electric charges of opposite polarity. Although stronger than most other intermolecular forces, the typical hydrogen bond is much weaker than both the ionic bond and the covalent bond. Within macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids, it can exist between two parts of the same molecule, and figures as an important constraint on such molecules' overall shape.

As the name "hydrogen bond" implies, one part of the bond involves a hydrogen atom. The hydrogen atom must be attached to one of the elements oxygen, nitrogen or fluorine, all of which are strongly electronegative heteroatoms. These bonding elements are known as the hydrogen-bond donor. This electronegative element attracts the electron cloud from around the hydrogen nucleus and, by decentralizing the cloud, leaves the atom with a positive partial charge. Because of the small size of hydrogen relative to other atoms and molecules, the resulting charge, though only partial, nevertheless represents a large charge density. A hydrogen bond results when this strong positive charge density attracts a lone pair of electrons on another heteroatom, which becomes the hydrogen-bond acceptor. [more...]


New Draft of the Week [ about ]

Although bound up with the tradition of the ‘special library’, information management differs from such earlier concepts in its focus on all kinds of information and a concern for the relationship between information provision and organizational performance. In many special libraries there had long been responsibility for managing internal documentation of various kinds, especially research reports. The history of this development is usefully explored by Black, Muddiman and Plant [1] who note the emergence of information management concepts following the end of the First World War, with the formal organization of ‘information bureaux’ in the establishment of ASLIB (the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux) in the UK in 1924. Some techniques, however, were even older, witness Kaiser’s work on indexing [2][3]. Indeed, we can date many of the ideas of what is now called ‘information management’ (although ‘documentation’ is used as a near equivalent in much of Europe) to the founding by Otlet and La Fontaine of the International Institute of Bibliography in 1895 [more...]