• July 1, 2008

K-State IT in the news: Food webzine, cyberbullying, digital media program

by Betsy Edwards, Information Technology Assistance Center
published July 1, 2008

Here's a roundup of recent technology news at K-State.


Researchers: New requirements for NIH grant recipients

by Marty Courtois, Information Technology Assistance Center
published July 1, 2008

New policies from the National Institutes of Health affect K-State faculty and researchers who have received grants from NIH.

As of April, all accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts (not the published article) arising from NIH funding must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. Depending on individual publisher policies, public access to the manuscript may be delayed up to 12 months.

About 300 journals have agreed to submit accepted manuscripts to PubMed Central on behalf of the author. If you publish in other journals, you must submit your manuscript through the NIH Manuscript Submission System.

In addition, all new applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number (PMCID) when citing an article that falls under this policy and is authored by the investigator or arose from the investigator's NIH grant. The NIH Manuscript Submission ID (NIHMSID) may be used until the PMCID is issued.

Details on these new policies and assistance with compliance are available on the NIH Public Access Policy and Submission System page provided by K-State Libraries.


Microsoft Office 2007 tip: Microsoft Office Ribbon

by Cathy Rodriguez, Information Technology Assistance Center
published July 1, 2008

The user interface for Microsoft Office 2007 has a completely new look and feel. Typical menus (File, Edit, etc.) have been replaced with the Ribbon. The Ribbon is a series of tabs that group similiar functions together.

Image of Microsoft Office Button

For example, in Office Word 2007, the Page Layout tab includes commands for setting the orientation of the page, changing margins, spacing, paragraph formatting, and more. Everything related to page layout is on this tab. You no longer have to search through various menus to find the commands. They are all in one place.

The tab content is also contextual — meaning that some commands will only be available when you are working with specific types of objects. For example, the commands for editing a table will not be visible until a table has been created and the cursor is inside the table.

To learn more about the Ribbon, watch the YouTube video Welcome to MS Office Ribbon.

Security tip of the week

Provide "full headers" when reporting e-mail scams

by Harvard Townsend, IT security
published July 1, 2008

Another round of spear phishing e-mail scams hit the K-State campus Sunday morning (June 29), including one that targeted a specific academic college. The criminals continue to refine their ability to make the scams appear legitimate, and people are still replying to the scams with their password despite all the warnings. Many K-Staters who received one of the new scam e-mails forwarded a copy to K-State's IT security officer and/or abuse@k-state.edu, the address for reporting suspected abuse of IT resources. It is indeed helpful for people to report the scams, but in most cases the forwarded messages do not have the information needed for us to take corrective action.

When forwarding an e-mail message to report a problem or suspected abuse, always include the "full headers" of the message. This additional information provides important clues like the origin of the message, its path through the Internet from its origin to its destination, the program used to send the mail (like K-State's Webmail), the address to which replies will be sent, the message's spam filter score, and more.

Everyone is used to seeing the "Subject:", "From:", "To:", and "Date:" headers since those are displayed by default. However, the other headers are normally hidden, so you have to explicitly turn on "full headers" to see them all and forward them to someone else. Unfortunately, there is no standard way to do this in various e-mail systems, so you have to determine how to do it in your specific e-mail client.

To view full headers in K-State's WebMail, click Message Source when viewing an e-mail message:

screenshot of message-source option on WebMail menu

This will open a new window that shows the message with full headers. To send it to someone, highlight all of the text in the new window, copy it, and paste it into a new e-mail message.

The WHOA website (Working to Halt Online Abuse) has instructions for viewing full headers in other popular e-mail clients used at K-State, such as Thunderbird, Pegasus, Outlook, Macintosh OS X Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail.

K-State Online

How to print class-attendance worksheet with photos?

by K-State IT staff
published July 1, 2008

How do I print my attendance worksheet including pictures?

  1. On the Course Tools page under Assessment Tools, click Attendance.
  2. Click the with pictures link to open the worksheet that contains the students' ID pictures. (Note: The blank worksheet opens in a new tab or window.)
  3. Print using your web browser's print function.

Is this an e-mail scam?

by Aimee Hagedorn, Betsy Edwards, Information Technology Assistance Center,
published July 1, 2008

I received the following message in my K-State mailbox. Is this an e-mail scam or a real notice? 

VERIFY YOUR K-STATE WEBMAIL ACCOUNT NOW

Dear K-State Webmail users,

This message from Kansas State University messaging center
is for all K-State Webmail account users.We are currently
conducting a maintenance exercise which is meant to
upgrading our database and e-mail account center. This
exercise involves the deactivation of dormant
/unused/invalid email accounts to make room for further
upgrading. This maintenance exercise is geared towards
initiating better services for all K-State Webmail users.

This message is a scam and you should not respond to it. Refer to the IT Security page for a comprehensive list of recent scams.

For more information on e-mail scams, see these IT security resources:

Spotlight

Instructables, the "World's Biggest Show & Tell" how-to site

by Sarah Silva, Information Technology Assistance Center
published July 1, 2008

Instructables.com, which bills itself as the "World's Biggest DIY & How To Show & Tell", is a site where you can post and view instructions about how to create anything and everything.

From the useful to the unusual, the written and video instructions are organized into categories such as art, crafts, food, games, going green, kids, technology, and more. Learn how to grow a square watermelon, weave a plastic bag rug, or tie the world's best shoe knot. Share your knowledge and get some back in return.

All these instructions and so much more can be found at instructables.com. It's a site no DIYer will want to miss!