Inspec, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)’s bibliographic database, now has more than 10 million records and it was a journal article from IOP Publishing’s Nanotechnology that pushed the database over the 10 million mark.

Inspec stores articles from more than 4,000 scientific and technical journals, and contains conference proceedings, as well as books, reports and dissertations on topics ranging from physics to electronics and mechanical engineering, dating back to 1969.

Nina Couzin, publisher of Nanotechnology, said, “Inspec is a phenomenal resource for science and engineering academics and professionals worldwide and it is a great honour to have helped Inspec reach this symbolic landmark.

“It is wonderful that such a forward-thinking article, in a field of research that will play an important part in our future, is helping commemorate a service that has so successfully documented the past 40 years of advances in science and technology. Surely this is a sign that Inspec has a very bright future.”

The Nanotechnology article, ‘High throughput cell nanomechanics with mechanical imaging interferometry’, by a group of researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles, describes a new method for cell-screening which could help provide quicker and earlier detection of cancer cells.

The research team hopes that their method which screens the nanomenchanics of up to hundreds of cells simultaneously can find application in hospitals as soon as possible.

Jim Gimzewski, one of the researchers, said, “Our goal is to make these methods available within standard optical microscopes so that they can be used by pathologists, microbiologists and medical staff who use this technique on a daily basis for medical diagnosis.”

Simon Thomson, General Manager at Inspec, said, “Over the last 4 decades, the Inspec scientific editorial team has consistently added an invaluable layer of indexing and classification to the leading physics and engineering literature from around the world.

“The team at Inspec is extremely proud to reach this historic landmark and the article appearing in Nanotechnology is a wonderful reflection of scope and quality of the original research abstracted in the database.” (iop.org)