Sep

4

PRISM – Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine

September 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment

PRISM Coalition – Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine. ‘The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) was established by The Executive Council of the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to educate policy makers and the American people about the risks posed by government intervention in scholarly publishing. The coalition is guided by the PRISM Principles, which affirm the key role that publishers play in peer review, access and dissemination, and preservation of knowledge, and which advocate sustainable business models to ensure continued investment and innovation in these essential contributors to scientific objectivity and integrity.

The PRISM Coalition was established to protect the quality of scientific research, an issue of vital concern to: a) scientific, medical and other scholarly researchers who advance the cause of knowledge; b) the institutions that encourage and support them; c) the publishers who disseminate, archive and ensure the quality control of this research and the physicians, clinicians, engineers and other intellectual pioneers who put knowledge into action.’

Update: Scientists, publishers and authors rage against PRISM. ‘Angry researchers, scientists and editors have called for action against the Association of American Publishers (AAP), one of the prime movers behind the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine.’

Sep

4

Peer Review: Old Problems, Novel Approaches

September 4, 2007 | 1 Comment

Help wanted. ‘A pall of gloom lies over the vital system of peer review. But the British Academy has some bright ideas. The Guardian’s Jessica Shepherd reports.

No fewer than three academic journals dismissed the economist George Akerlof’s paper The Market for Lemons as “trivial” and “too generic” when it was submitted in the late 1960s. Almost four decades later it was regarded as a seminal text and its author thought worthy of the Nobel prize for economics.
Peer review, when an academic submits a scholarly work to the scrutiny of other experts in the field for publication in a journal or for a grant, for example, has always been an imperfect science. But lately it has had more, and fiercer, critics.’

Aug

31

Two Nanotechnology Breakthroughs from IBM: Single-Atom Data Storage and Molecular Computers

August 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment

IBM Unveils Two Major Nanotechnology Breakthroughs as Building Blocks for Atomic Structures and Devices – Magnetic Atom Milestone Brings Single-Atom Data Storage Closer to Reality; Single-Molecule Switching Could Lead to Molecular Computers. ‘IBM announced two major scientific achievements in the field of nanotechnology that could one day lead to new kinds of devices and structures built from a few atoms or molecules.

Although still far from making their way into products, these breakthroughs will enable scientists at IBM and elsewhere to continue driving the field of nanotechnology, the exploration of building structures and devices out of ultra-tiny, atomic-scale components. Such devices might be used as future computer chips, storage devices, sensors and for applications nobody has imagined yet. The work will be unveiled tomorrow in two reports being published by the journal Science.

In the first report, IBM scientists describe major progress in probing a property called magnetic anisotropy in individual atoms. This fundamental measurement has important technological consequences because it determines an atom’s ability to store information. Previously, nobody had been able to measure the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom.
With further work it may be possible to build structures consisting of small clusters of atoms, or even individual atoms, that could reliably store magnetic information. Such a storage capability would enable nearly 30,000 feature length movies or the entire contents of YouTube – millions of videos estimated to be more than 1,000 trillion bits of data – to fit in a device the size of an iPod. Perhaps more importantly, the breakthrough could lead to new kinds of structures and devices that are so small they could be applied to entire new fields and disciplines beyond traditional computing.

In the second report, IBM researchers unveiled the first single-molecule switch that can operate flawlessly without disrupting the molecule’s outer frame – a significant step toward building computing elements at the molecular scale that are vastly smaller, faster and use less energy than today’s computer chips and memory devices.
In addition to switching within a single molecule, the researchers also demonstrated that atoms inside one molecule can be used to switch atoms in an adjacent molecule, representing a rudimentary logic element. This is made possible partly because the molecular framework is not disturbed.’

Aug

31

Nanofluids: No “Magic” Cooling Capabilities

August 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Not so super-cool after all: MIT researchers knock down theory about nanofluids. ‘MIT engineers have shown that nanofluids, which once held promise as a super-coolant, do not have the theoretical cooling capabilities many scientists believed they had.

Nanofluids are suspensions of tiny particles on the nanometer, or billionth of a meter, scale. When nanofluids were first engineered in the early 1990s, experiments showed that their thermal conductivity – a measure of their heat-removing capability – was much higher than expected.

Several new theories were offered in recent years to explain this anomalous behavior. Among them, the “microconvection” theory predicted an astonishing increase of several orders in the thermal conductivity of the fluid just by adding light nanoparticles less than ten nanometers in size.

MIT researchers recently conducted experiments to test the microconvection effect and found that nanofluids in fact do not have the advanced cooling properties ascribed to them. The team reports its findings in the Aug. 31 issue of Physical Review Letters.’

Aug

22

SciVee: YouTube for Scientists

August 22, 2007 | 1 Comment

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Scientists Get a YouTube of Their Own. ‘The National Science Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center are hoping that their new Web site — billed as a YouTube for scientists — will help demystify important research papers.
The site, called SciVee, will allow scientists to upload highly technical papers. But it will also let the researchers post accompanying video presentations that serve as quicker, more approachable guides to their work.’

SciVee. ‘SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science. SciVee, created for scientists, by scientists, moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice.’