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 Saturday, December 21, 2002
Public Release: 19-Dec-2002
Nature
A drop of ocean water tells a story
Scientists are still learning what's in a drop of ocean water, according to this week's Nature magazine. And the answers have implications for the whole planet, says co-author Craig Carlson, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. About ten thousand bacterioplankton of the type SAR 11 are found in every drop of seawater. And yet, as explained in the article, which gives the first accurate quantitative assessment of SAR 11, scientists are only beginning to understand what these organisms do.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Gail Gallessich
gail.g@ia.ucsb.edu
805-893-7220
University of California - Santa Barbara
[Eurekalert - Biology]
This is why you have to be careful with modeling things like the carbon cycle or climates. Here is an organism that makes up 50% of the microbial community and we know little about it. In fact, it was only identified in the 1990s. This report is tre first to show how prevalent it is. will this have effects on computer modeld? Maybe. How large an effect? Don't know. Now, this is not to say that models are not incredibly important. Nor do you need to know everything about a system to create useful models. But there are always new things that we discover and that will need to be added to the models. That is what keeps science interesting, even if it infuriates the politicians. 9:09:19 PM 
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Kevin Marks on Eric's Argument. Kevin's got some smart stuff to say about Eric's argument about the Net's economic value. Kevin even manages to explain what I put so fumblingly. Kevin points to a NY Times article that concludes: The same economic forces that lead to premium and discount sellers in the offline world are at work in the online world. But the differences in transaction costs make the price differences both more extreme and easier to observe, This suggests that the Net is both commoditizing some businesses and leaving room for added-value providers.... [Joho the Blog]
This is absolutely right. People will get free things because they are cheap but many will pay more for added-value. Look at DVDs vs. VHS vs. TV. It is happening in scientific publishing and will in other venues also. 8:09:47 PM
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Guess who said it: "Nobody knows. Probably you'll .... Guess who said it: "Nobody knows. Probably you'll do your work, and after that somebody comes for you to arrest you...." Answer: Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov reflecting on his experience in the United States and the chill it has sent through the programming world. [FOS News]
The real difficulty with the DMCA is that an intelligent person can not know beforehand if their work will be illegle.It is only after they are arrested. Thus has a very chilling effect on any research. 7:47:33 PM
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Gordon Fletcher, Averting the crisis in medical pu .... Gordon Fletcher, Averting the crisis in medical publishing - open access journals, He@lth Information on the Internet, 30 (December 2002) 6-7. Abstract: "Scientific and medical publishing is in turmoil. The current system of distributing research papers in a vast number of journals, which are increasing in price, is unsustainable. Some subscription prices have increased by as much as 140% over 10 years leading to cries that publishers are restricting the communication of medical research. Little is being done by the big publishers to address the crisis in scholarly communication. However, a range of organisations and initiatives are trying to change things for the better. These include PubMed Central, the Public Library of Science, the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative. In addition, the online publisher BioMed Central stands alone as the first commercial publisher to adopt a business model that aims to deliver open access publishing to the biological and medical research communities." [FOS News]
Look at what Highwire Press is doing. Most scientific associations publish prestigious journals. With web-based publishing, they have the ability to publish almost any paper of sufficient quality. Why try to get published in a specialty journal published by a commercial publisher charging $1200 a year for access when you can get into say, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science whose online access charge is $125. And anyone can get free access after 6 months to a year or access the entire journal for 24 hours for a reasonable fee. I just do not see what business model a commercial publisher can have that will succeed against this. A scientist wants as many people to see their work.
BioMed Central does more than provide journal access. It is trying to use the new medium for novel publication methods. Put together a proper review board to vet articles, and you can start your own publication. They also have something called the Faculty of 1000 which reads and vets papers, making it a little easier to find important articles. This is something a commercial publisher can provide that the professional association can not. Plus the wrotres retain their copyright, something few journals do today. Access to journal articles will not be a reason to subscribe but value-added material will still be very important. 7:46:12 PM
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Molting habits may have led to extinction of once-hardy trilobite [Science Blog]
Trilobites are some of my favorite fossils. This is also an interesting idea. They died because their molting patterns left them vulnerable to predators and to extreme changes in the environment. Those species that could adapt become some of the modern oceanic arthopods. Those that could not died off. That's natural selection. 7:23:22 PM
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Well, I bummed a phone line and got the connection up so I'll spend a few moments catching up on email and reading. 6:58:44 PM
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