Public Domain Day

This web page provides a landscape-scale picture window into the state of digital public access to literature.  The progress over the past few years has been spectacular.   

 From the banner as of December 29, 2020:

January 1, 2021 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1925 are open to all!

Public Domain Center: Public Domain Day 2021

 

 

Link: List of 50 Experts to pay attention to about COVID-19

 https://elemental.medium.com/50-experts-to-trust-in-a-pandemic-fe58932950e7

 

 

The Story of Bathybius

The subject of mis-identification of microscopic material  leads to some respected authorities in the annals of science.  Bathybius is a classic example.   Another one is the misinterpretation of the life cycle of Millepora spp.  by a staunch authority of Invertebrate Zoology, Sydney Hickson.  They may serve as a cautionary tale.  Conclusions are jumped at for many reasons.  Perhaps as evidence of a favorite theory (that is wrong). 

 The link here is to an article by a historian of science about Bathybius. 

 

Something that matters. How are we going to teach the kids about Nuclear Waste Dumps (etc.)?

This article by BBC hits the mark:

 How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years’ time

Some perspective: the atmosphere's thickness is something in proportion to the thickness of a layer of paint on a basketball.   

 

 

 

 

Teaching Environmental Science was an accident.  The most fortuitous accident of all.  As my grasp of the subject  matured, the fog lifted.  That was when I began prefacing every first class meeting with something like this:

  This course will be an introduction to the impact of humans on our world: our planet, to be sure, and also our community.  Throughout our history, we have treated the environment as a combined supermarket and rubbish heap.  My generation has caused its share of the damage; but during this generation, more than any other, the condition of our planet has become a focus of attention.

In 1969, a human snapped a photo of Earth, from the Moon.  This was not the first, but is a convenient marker for the time that the Earth became visible as a blue marble.  Perhaps this marked the beginning of an Era.

My parents and my grandparents were unaware of the impacts of the lifestyle they had elected to pursue, with improvements in health, medicine, onsumer goods, transportation,...  in every aspect of life.  With the Industrial Revolution---beginning in about 1750---came an explosion of goods---cooking pots, weapons, locomotive, steam engines, ushering in a consumer economy on a massive scale.  In the 1950s plastics appeared, refining this industry, making possible manufacture of previously unimaginable forms.  Refrigeration, electricity, commonplace plumbing, automobiles, roads.  This seemed to forebode a better life.  In cities, human existence was transformed.  Populations exploded.

But little attention had been given to consequences and side effects.  

While none of us from previous generations intended all of this trouble, it has happened, and today, in the 21st century, Environmental problems such as global warming, over harvesting of marine life and trees, destruction of ecosystems, pollution of rivers and streams, plastics and microplastics in the Oceans---all of these problems now threaten the existence of our own species and our lifestyles.  We have caused the extinction of numerous species, and accelerated the transport of other, robust species to places they do not belong.

 In the 1970s, perhaps, the problems became obvious enough that Universities began to offer degrees in Environmental Science, and some high schools began, around that time to offer courses in Environmental Science.  In recent times, almost all high schools in America and probably other coutries offer courses in Environmental Science.  Something has happened.

Why are we teaching these classes?   In a few words: we cannot be here to solve the problems that threaten the very existence of our children and students, so we need to help your generation and future generations to grapple with and solve them.  We are obligated to provide you with tools, and to help you to understand the problems, the science, and possible future scenarios.  Tools.  

 

I would argue that Nuclear Waste is a different kind of problem.  

Here's the core issue: Nuclear Waste does not go away, not in hundreds of lifetimes.  

To the children, and their children's children, for hundreds of generations: Here's the crux of your inherited problem.  Neither Mars, nor any other known planet, can save us.  This is our planet, and we are destroying its life nurturing abilities. I think plastics are terrible; but even plastics should no longer be a problem by then. 

When I look at that photograph of Earth from the Moon, it does not feel like a goodbye photo.   We need to do better.   Let's work on that.

For perspective, here is the first photo of Earth ever taken from space--in 1946.

 

 

 

The probability of this new idea: "Confidential Computing" being airtight: vanishing

Another claim of improved security/privacy:

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-google-cloud-confidential.html

I predict that before long this system will be hacked.  I base this on my understanding a little about limitations of the human brain.  The human brain evolved to solve problems, and we are the best at it.  Here's another challenge.  Add another to the list of perfected systems designed by humans.

• The Titanic
• Alcatraz
• Bank (etc) encrypted security systems  

Is anybody listening?

Does the National Academy of Sciences "encourage education?"

(Who is modeling inclusiveness in Science?  This article approaches this question  at a time when trust in science has eroded to a dangerous level.) 

As a student, I was told that the goal of education was to learn how to learn, that life-long learning is a highly cherished life habit.

As a teacher, I focused dutifully upon that objective.  I encouraged my students to do research, sometimes in the backyard, or maybe at the beach; and other times reading, or writing an email (before email, write a letter) to a researcher and ask a question.

You have the golden key, I told my students in the Pacific Islands.  Every organism you see or wonder about---almost every one---someone, some scientist or student, is an expert about it, is devoted to learning about it.

This is a wonderful world.  Knowledge is cool.  So many ways.

Today I was engaged in one of my deepest passions: browsing the Internet, reading about scientific research.  As a sophomore in College I had a Venus fly trip as a "pet," used to feed it flies.  So when I saw news today that the mechanism of the Venus Fly Trap's snap trap had been figured out, I was eager to learn about this---as eager as my young students about corals.

I read the article, and was eager to learn more, so I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page---after navigating through a thicket of advertising.  The original report of this research was published by the National Academy of Sciences, in PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  This is indeed fortunate, I should have thought---as a public institution, it has always seemed obvious to me that there should be no secret about these publications.  Aha!   I found the abstract, a summary of the research result, but without any of the juicy morsels, here.  If you, like me, click on this link you will discover quite a page.  Prominently displayed will be a diminutive button that says "PDF."   I was thrilled.  This would be the gateway to the original article.  I taught students to at least try to read original articles.  With the right thinking, it can only shed more light on the findings that were reported elsewhere.

However, I was to encounter an impediment---one that, frankly, I have encounted hundreds if not thousands of times.

Let's zoom in:

See that, on the bottom of this image?   This is actually a good deal compared to many other scientific publishers.  I can remember many articles that would cost 52.00 for 7 days of access!

My poor students would be unable to pay that amount.  Out in the islands, there isn't even a library they could visit and access it that way.

Whos is the National Academy of Sciences?

I decided to dig in.  That National Academy of Sciences seems like a prestigious title.  What do they do?   Accumulate research findings for their prestigious members, who can doubtless afford to subscribe.  Let's find out how much a subscription would cost:

For just some guy like me (or my poor students) this would cost 235.00.  If I want to just subscribe to 3 or four scientific journals, it would cost not much less than 1,000.00.

I looked into this organization that deprives students reasonable access to the publications of the esteemed scientists who publish behind their walls:  at this point I had about HAD IT!   Here's the nice "Mission" statement: (The good parts are in Red.)

Mission

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Approximately 500 current and deceased members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM, formerly the Institute of Medicine) -- were founded under the NAS charter in 1964 and 1970, respectively. The three Academies work together as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The National Academies also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine. The National Academies' service to government has become so essential that Congress and the White House have issued legislation and executive orders over the years that reaffirm its unique role.

Clearliy the National Academy of Sciences has a limited perspective on what constitutes public understanding in matters of science, engineering and medicine.  Does this walled garden approach " encourage education?".

No.  Not so far as I can see.

 

More About Scientific Publications

How many scientific publications are there?  According to Vice, there are 8,000 FAKE science journals.  One source I found via a google search had these statistics on their site:

How many science journals?

with one comment

• Estimation: <> 25-40,000 journals
• 96% are published online
• 8-10% are published under Open Access models
• 20% of science articles are available free of charge
• How many articles have been published ever (means since 1665)? est. 50 millions
• Growth: 1.4 million of articles per year
• There are 2,000 publishers but Top 3 (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley)  account for 42% of articles published
• Elsevier itself publishes 250,000 articles a year in 2,000 journals
• The biggest platform of ejournals, ScienceDirect, provides 240 million of downloads per year to 10 million of users
• The cost of publishing a single online scientific journal article is estimated at $10,000
• To purchase an article for an individual: $30-40
• Average cost of a subscription for a library: $3,792 (average cost for a chemistry journal) up to $10,000
• The most expensive: Biochimica & Biophysica Acta, $20,930 a year!

Speaking of Elsevier, the University of California Library system has had enough, and has not renewed their contract with Elsevier to provide access.  If I understand this well, the Library encourages publication in Open Access journals.   Much of the research at the University is publicly funded.   How do publishers justify to blockade the public from the reports of this research?

This has been a problem for a long tiome.  The phrase "Peer Reviewed Journals" has been a weapon in that hands of some of the publishers.

There is no time, nor do I have the energy at this point, to rant further about my personal battle to access science literature while teaching and researching in Micronesia.  I will say, however, that no small number of research projects bear consequences for islanders: publications about global warming, sea level rise, parasites, tropical diseases, nutrition.... to name a few.  Even articles about the cultures of the islands themselves are "paywalled," a term meaning to demand payment for admittance to access.

There is hope.  The Public Library of Science is a group of journals that were organized to provide scientists publication access, with peer review, in a totally open access manner.  Check it out: https://plos.org/

The Business of Publishing

I saw two news items today, on opposite ends of the spectrum (from amazing to abjectly horrible).

I. Archive.Org sued

Putting a positivie spin on it, Slashdot.org fielded this

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/06/11/194226/activists-rally-to-save-internet-archive-as-lawsuit-threatens-site

II. One more University (MIT) faces down Elsevier

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/06/11/2114259/mit-ends-elsevier-negotiations

Just how long have we known about climate change anyways?

CO2 and other sad tales.

 

Notice the red line at the right of the CO2 trace. Also notice how many thousands of years are represented. The red line is what we have been doing. Even the clean air from the lockdowns does not help this problem.  


This is US happening to the Atmosphere. I didn't mean United States. Pun not intentional, but interesting. 

Remember Marshall MacLuhan's The Medium is the Massage?  We have a collective short memory.   McCluhan categorized media as hot or cold (IIRC). I wonder what he'd say about Facebook. A clearly incendiary "medium" (is that a fair category?). I know and am related to people who seem to have had their brains eaten out by Triffids that Facebook infected them with. I have noticed that I myself get sucked in to the "conversations" as I try to overwhelm their echo chambers. 

 Some media, such as the movies, were "hot"—that is, they enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with "cool" TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part of the viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which due to their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition", requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value^{.(From Wikipedia)}

 

This graph is for real. Taken from https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data

Have you noticed? (Blue Skies and Birds)

This too may soon pass. 

    Lockdown yields first global sound map of spring dawn chorus birds

A massive disconnect: Publicly funded research behind paywalls [Opinion]

An increasing number of scientific journals allow at least some of their articles to be available to the public.  Some publishers are more onerous than others; for example, Elsevier, subscriptions to which the University of California libraries have refused to renew.  This is a nuisance to many, but the libraries have pledged to help obtain these articles.

To some, pay-walled articles are an even more insidious barrier.  As a science teacher in Micronesia, access to up-to-date scientific information is of crucial importance, especially on issues which may affect the peoples of the islands.  Global climate change is not a proprietary issue only in the West, where most publishers reside; it is beyond immoral to sequester such knowledge.

I unexpectedly found myself teaching environmental science.  As a recent graduate with a BA in Zoology, and as a graduate student in Marine Biology, I was in a wonderful position to explain the science to the most innocent victims of fallout from the higher standard of living touted by alien visitors from far shores.  All was not well; every aspect of life in the islands was being profoundly altered by the infusion of the "good life," of consumer goods and a new life style.   New political realities were foisted off on islanders, with promise of more and more and better and better.

As an educator, it has been incumbent upon me to ride the crest of the wave of scientific knowledge, to interpret  consequences unforseen even by the purveyors of these changes.

Today, a series of articles came to my attention, focused on plastics.  Plastics, as it turns out, must be seen by third world peoples as a miracle material.  But the greatest part of the miracle, and the least part of the consequences, fall to the corporations and investors who have generated this consequential avalanche on the planet.

Here is a screenshot of the what I encountered when I tried to download a pdf from the website heralding this article, or perhaps group of articles.

In the lower right hand corner of this image may be seen a disclosure of funding sources.  Clearly this publication is a product of research funded by public funds.

I am not now living in Micronesia, so I can obtain copies of these papers.  It is a reminder of the many, many publications I was unable to read when they were needed most.

A rhetorical question suggests itself.  In Micronesia, very few persons work, and the "minimum wage" of less than $1.00/hour  is far from sufficient to feed an extended family of a dozen or more; it was insufficient for a family member I knew to drive his motor boat once a week to the district center island.  It is common to say that subsistence for a government worker is subsidized by "local production," that is to say, breadfruit, sea cucumbers, fish, taro, sweet potatoes... the list goes on, and many persons are involved.  

Not only this!  A wholesale change is sweeping through the islands: the concept of "family" is undergoing a profound re-definition.  On Guam, I heard the complaint that younger family members no longer cared to share their income with the extended family.  A wedge has been driven.  Ways have fallen.  Culture has been redefined, in much the same way that Hawaiian music and culture have been profoundly reshaped by forces of tourism. 

So you see, it is not merely that the benevolent colonial masters have swooped down upon islands with a toxic package of gifts; with the proprietary walling in of knowledge, the islands are just as helpless as the consumers of the developed countries, in the face of insurmountable changes to health, environment, food supply, natural resources.

Plastics.  Just one part of the story.

Why do people distrust science? A thought.

It's close to universal: secrecy cloaking specialist knowledge.  A medicine man on a Pacific Island is terrified of the consequences of revealing his knowledge of a cure or cures, and chooses his successor carefully.  Is that appalling?  The cure might be lost.  On the other hand, loose lips sink ships.  This appears to represent a mechanism for ensuring the continuity and fidelity of knowledge over generations.

In Western societies, Physicians write prescriptions in handwriting that is almost impossible to read, and in Latin, no less.  What's the difference?

We live in a time of peril, due to global climate change, and a plethora of other anthropogenic woes: introduced species, extinct species, plastic pollution, toxic waste, radioactive pollution, to name but a few.  Coral reefs are dying.  Scientists working on these problems often with public funding, yet their results are often hidden behind "paywalls." 

I almost laughed, when I saw that almost every article in Science Magazine bears an icon similar to this one.  But it isn't funny.

Climate scientists I follow are concerned with science communication. Yet, how can scientists communicate with the public when their work is turned to the profit of the publishing giants, which seldom grant free access to the articles in their pages, or online. 

Yay!  For the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and libraries like the University of California Library System that stands up to the publishers who demand obscene subscription charges for access to articles generated by even the faculties of these institutions. 

How are people going to trust something when they are prevented from knowing about it?