July 2010 Archives

Molloy ordered the Forest Service to comply with the federal laws by Dec. 31, 2011, threatening contempt sanctions if the agency fails to do so.

He also ruled that the critical habtiat designation for lynx wrongly excluded large amounts of habitat.

In particular, the court ruled that tens of thousands of acres in southwest Montana, north and central Idaho and throughout Colorado should have been considered for protection.

A fundamental principle is at stake, often described in shorthand as academic freedom. More to the point, it's the understanding that government will not without extraordinarily compelling reasons intrude on the process of scientific discovery. It's a principle on which liberals and conservatives alike can agree.

The ill-advised investigation in Charlottesville transgresses a long-honored boundary, with implications that extend far beyond the Albemarle County courthouse where the university has filed a petition to block the subpoena. That is why I, along with other higher education leaders, scientists and scholars (including even some of Professor Mann's scientific detractors), support the university's legal battle.

Asbestos with muscovite -- Image via Wikipedia

Asbestos is vilified in the United States and banned in the European Union, but growing usage in the developing world has stoked fears of more asbestos-related deaths.

[T]he trouble [with] value of statistical life (VSL) calculations is they are based on willingness (and ability) to pay. Since environmental quality (and health and safety) is a normal good -- people want more if it when their incomes increase -- environmental quality (and health and safety) will be valued lower in places that have lower incomes. This naturally leads to lower VSL calculations and the policy implications are clear. The net benefits of many policies will be positive in rich countries and negative in less rich countries. But, this is not because lives are worth less in less rich countries but because less rich countries can't afford as much environmental quality (and health and safety) as rich countries. Sad, but true. (John Whitehead)

• Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward.
• We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness prevail.
• Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you.

• We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. Never sacrifice the requirement of scientific soundness for social relevance and interpret "social relevance" broadly (not just in terms of immediate utility), but always seek problems that are both socially relevant and scientifically sound.
  

I am, however, concerned by the provision of the bill requiring free online public access within 6 months of publication. As Judy Jernstedt, editor of the American Journal of Botany, and I wrote to Senators Lieberman and Cornyn in September, if federally funded research is available free of charge from an easily accessible and permanent repository after only 6 months, personal and institutional subscriptions to journals publishing that research are likely to decline, and they may decline substantially. If they do, not-for-publishers, like the Botanical Society of America, will no longer be able to publish their journals and the results will be less public access to science, not more.

Like many not-for-profit publishers, the Botanical Society of America has already adopted policies that enhance public access to science. You can read the letter Judy and I sent on p. 146 of the December 2009 issue of the Plant Science Bulletin (please ignore the typo "imbedded" for "impeded").

Texas A&M University, which is trying to cut $60 million campuswide, hopes to save $82,000 by ceasing to stock the bathroom essential in dormitories.

"We looked at what areas can we cut and not negatively affect our students' academics, and it was that," said Sherylon Carroll, associate vice president for communications.

The toilet paper elimination would begin in August 2011, giving the university enough time to inform the students and ensure that campus stores are stocking it. At that point, toilet paper will no longer be provided in residence hall bathrooms shared by up to four people; the university will continue to supply it in larger bathrooms, administrative office areas, and public areas.

I completely understand why so many Sciencebloggers are upset,¹ but it's sad to see Scienceblogs falling apart. Will anyone replace them?

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The Naked Presenter teaches readers how they can reach an audience by stripping away all that is unnecessary to get at the essence of the message. The naked presenter approaches the presentation task embracing the ideas of simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity, and passion. She presents with a certain freshness. The ideas may or may not be radical, earth shattering, or new. But there is a "newness" and freshness to her approach and to her content. And if she uses slideware, her slides fit well with her talk and are harmonious with her message. The slides are in sync, and are simple and beautifully designed, yet never steal the show or rise above serving a strong but simple supportive role.

Just as the author's first book helped presenters become visual communicators, Resonate helps you make a strong connection with your audience and lead them to purposeful action. The author's approach is simple: building a presentation today is a bit like writing a documentary. Using this approach, you'll convey your content with passion, persuasion, and impact.

Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate. Because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe. Therefore, emissions reductions choices made today matter in determining impacts experienced not just over the next few decades, but in the coming centuries and millennia. Policy choices can be informed by recent advances in climate science that quantify the relationships between increases in carbon dioxide and global warming, related climate changes, and resulting impacts, such as changes in streamflow, wildfires, crop productivity, extreme hot summers, and sea level rise.

• 5-10% less rainfall in Mediterranean, southwest North American, and African dry seasons.
• 5-10% more rainfall in Alaska and other high latitude areas in the northern hemisphere.
• 3-10% more heavy rainfall in most areas.
• 5-10% less streamflows in some river basins, including the Arkansas and the Rio Grande.
• 5-19% less corn production in the US, Africa, and India.
  

Schneider will be missed by many for his energy, wit, ferocity, overloaded e-mail messages, guitar strumming and many other facets.

An entire forest can seem to flash at the same time.

Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure.

Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

1. Non-tenure track instructors rarely have a long-term commitment from the institution that hired them. That's why they're non-tenure track. While all of the non-tenure track instructors I know care a lot about their students, they are often less interested in the long-term health and vitality of the institution where they're working than those of us fortunate enough to be tenured.²Can you blame them?
2. Tenure allows faculty are free to pursue their research and creative work in whatever direction it leads them, even if that direction is inconvenient or uncomfortable for the institution that employs them, so long as it meets appropriate professional standards. Instructors who lack tenure are less likely to pursue those lines of work. Institutions that encourage such challenges and countries that value such institutions will be leaders not only in higher education, but also in science and the arts. They will be richer economically, culturally, and artistically.
   

A new species from the iris family found near Worcester, is to be named Moraea vuvuzela by SANBI botanist Dr John Manning to commemorate South Africa's hosting of the first Soccer World Cup on the African continent. (source)

Climate change is no longer a concern just for environmentalists, but for business and governments. Biodiversity is following a similar trajectory.

Businesses need to start thinking about ecosystems as an extension of their asset base, part of their plant and machinery, says Jon Williams, a partner at PwC. And ecosystem protection, or the impact of ecosystem loss, needs to be factored into investment appraisal and capital allocation decision-making.

"We are eating into the planet's capital rather than living off its interest," says Mr Williams.

And yet, according to PwC, only two of the world's largest 100 companies identified biodiversity and ecosystem loss as a strategic issue in a recent survey, while only a quarter of 1,100 global chief executives think biodiversity loss is a threat to their business growth.

In case you don't recognize PwC, that's PricewaterhouseCoopers, the international consulting firm. A press release from PwC on 22 May describing results of a corporate survey for TEEB was headlined "Biodiversity threat will eclipse climate change economic impacts but still miss CEO and valuations radar - PwC study".

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said the scale of the cuts was "unprecedented" and would have an "undeniable impact on the student experience".

"Student to staff ratios, which are already high, will become some of the highest in the developed world," she said.

"Lecturers that survive the cull will have less time to give individual students as they pick up the workloads of former colleagues and there will be fewer support services for students.

"The government will effectively be asking students to pay more for less at a time when our international competitors are investing in higher education."

[T]he dispute underscores a more far-reaching debate in academia: Whether the old business model of scientific publishing, in which researchers turn their work over to commercial entities for free, then pay through the nose to access it in print or online, hasn't reached the point of ultimate absurdity.

...

The industry business model was developed, like most publishing, back in the days when you printed on paper or not at all. Typically, a researcher writes a report detailing the results of what may be millions of dollars of funded research, and submits it gratis to a commercial publisher.

The publisher has it reviewed by a panel of other researchers, also working for free, then prints it in bound form or posts it online behind a pay wall, so it can't be read except by customers who pay through the nose for the privilege. The UC system says it pays an average of $4,465 a year for each of the 67 Nature journals it subscribes to, a fee Nature proposes to raise to an average of $17,479.

1. Grind your plant material in a buffer.
2. Centrifuge the mixture and mix the supernatant with a GES buffer.³
3. Use the resulting mixture in PCR.

Image via Wikipedia

That possibility is almost too unfair to believe: the University of California likely has no legal recourse against the Nature monopoly, while the monopoly might have recourse if the free labor calls it quits. But that's the product of one hundred years of antitrust law evolution in the hands of pro-corporate courts. As Justice Holmes, who shaped many of these antitrust laws, said: "this is a court of law, not a court of justice."

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"This is a sprawling complex story. By creating both an editor with an overview and specific beats, we hope to help our journalists continue to focus on their elements of the story," [Mike] Oreskes said. "Designating an oil spill editor to take overall command of the story, and be free to focus exclusively on all the elements of the story, is one part of that commitment."

In addition to the three new hires, who will focus exclusively on the oil spill, the AP has about 20 full-time staffers in the Gulf who are involved in the coverage and another 50 or so reporters and editors who have been working on the story in the region, Oreskes said. ("Why the AP is Assigning Oil Spill Editor, Reporters", by Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter Online)¹

Penn State Professor Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

This nationwide event enables scientists to meet with their members of Congress in their own district rather than in Washington, DC, and allows elected officials to learn first-hand about the science and research facilities in their district. This initiative is an opportunity to show elected officials how science is conducted and to showcase the people, equipment and facilities that are required to support and conduct scientific research.