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October 27, 2009

The Chemistry of Autumn Colors

Chemical of the Week has an informative article about where the fall color in trees and shrubs comes from, from a chemical standpoint. Written by University of Wisconsin-Madison Chemistry Professor Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, The Chemistry of Autumn Colors reveals why in the fall leaves go from green to yellow and red.

Summarizing he says:

The range and intensity of autumn colors is greatly influenced by the weather. Low temperatures destroy chlorophyll, and if they stay above freezing, promote the formation of anthocyanins. Bright sunshine also destroys chlorophyll and enhances anthocyanin production. Dry weather, by increasing sugar concentration in sap, also increases the amount of anthocyanin. So the brightest autumn colors are produced when dry, sunny days are followed by cool, dry nights.

For the complete discussion, see:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/fallcolr/fallcolr.html or the pdf version:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/PDF/fall_colors.pdf

Posted by florador at 4:43 PM

June 26, 2009

Federal Research Public Access Act, 2009

Yesterday, Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX) (re-)introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.1373), a bill that would ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies. S.1373 would require those agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from such funding no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The bill gives individual agencies flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for interoperability and public accessibility, and have provisions for long-term archiving.

The bill specifically covers unclassified research funded by agencies including:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation

S. 1373 reflects the growing trend among funding agencies and college and university campuses to leverage their investment in the conduct of research by maximizing the dissemination of results. It follows the successful path forged by the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as by private funders like the Wellcome Trust, and universities such as Harvard and MIT.

The Library has requested that our Washington government relations liaison contact our representatives in support of this bill.

If you would like to voice your opinion on this bill to our representatives, an easy way to do so has been provided at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access website:
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=sparc
You may use one of their pre-written forms, or compose your own.

Detailed information about the Federal Research Public Access Act is available at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Release09-0625.html.

Or read the text of the bill, online.

This memo was clipped from a longer message received from:

Heather Joseph
Spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and Executive Director of SPARC
Telephone: (202) 296-2296
Email: heather [at] arl [dot] org

Posted by florador at 12:08 PM

April 28, 2009

President Obama Addresses the National Academy of Science

On April 27th, 2009 President Obama addressed the assembled US National Academies members. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a 1863 congressional charter.

From the NAS Press Release:
"President Barack Obama announced new initiatives and investments in scientific research, innovation, and education, declaring once again to restore science to its rightful place. "The days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over," he said.

Calling science "more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, and our environment than it has ever been," Obama said he is going to make major investments -- 3 percent of the gross domestic product -- in research and innovation. This exceeds the amount invested in 1964 at the height of the space race. He emphasized the importance of using funds to encourage high-risk, high-return research and to support researchers at the beginning of their careers."

,,,

"The president committed to doubling the budgets of three key science agencies -- the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also announced the launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a new Department of Energy organization modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And Obama said he would triple the number of NSF graduate research fellowships."


Video:
http://edg1.vcall.com/video/nas/launch.asp
Audio only:
http://nationalacademies.org/podcast/20090427.mp3
Still photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalacademyofsciences/sets/72157617300994183/
Text:
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=65
Press Release from the NAS:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=20090427

Posted by florador at 11:38 AM

February 12, 2009

NIH Public Access Mandate in Jeopardy!

An email from ARL (Association of Research Libraries) concerning a recently submitted bill, supported by some of our largest publishers, that would reverse the NIH Public Access mandate, and also make it impossible for other government agencies to start similar programs.

The basis theses of the NIH mandate is that research publications that were supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health -- we have many researchers on this campus who are so supported -- must be made freely available to all within year of publication. The thought is that the citizens paid for the research so they should have access to it!

The publishers are saying that this infringes on their copyrights, but the mandate requires the authors to make available THEIR version of their work; that is, the version before they hand over copyrights to the publishers (which we're encouraging them NOT to do, but that's another story!)

Read on for more information as well as a recommendation that we contact our congressmen about this proposed legislation.

Katie Newman
U of Illinois Biotechnology Librarian
----------------

From: Jennifer McLennan
Subject: [SPARC-ADVOCACY] CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 ­ The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” ( http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.111hr801).

All supporters of public access – researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others – are asked to please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. As always, it’s important to let us know what action you’re able to take, via http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/log.html.

H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:

1. Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.

2. Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.

3. Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.

4. Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.

5. Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.

All supporters of public access -- researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others -- are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place.

Thank you for your support and continued persistence in supporting this policy. You know the difference constituent voices can make on Capitol Hill.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Heather or myself anytime.

All best,

Jennifer

--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

-------------------------

Draft letter text:

Dear Representative;

On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to oppose H.R. 801, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act,” introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. This bill would amend the U.S. Copyright Code, prohibiting federal agencies from requiring as a condition of funding agreements public access to the products of the research they fund. This will significantly inhibit our ability to advance scientific discovery and to stimulate innovation in all scientific disciplines.

Most critically, H.R. 801 would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing the results of the crucial biomedical research funded by their taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in life-saving research and scientific discovery.

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.

H.R. 801 affects not only the results of biomedical research produced by the NIH, but also scientific research coming from all other federal agencies. Access to critical information on energy, the environment, climate change, and hundreds of other areas that directly impact the lives and well being of the public would be unfairly limited by this proposed legislation.

[Why you support taxpayer access and the NIH policy].

The NIH and other agencies must be allowed to ensure timely, public access to the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars. Please oppose H.R.801.

Sincerely,
(name)

[END LETTER TEXT]

Posted by florador at 1:12 PM

December 3, 2008

HighWire Press: Over 2 Million Subscription-free Articles

Recently HighWire Press announced that they had reached the milestone of 5 million articles from scholarly societies and academic presses. Over two million of these are freely accessible to all.

Societies that contract with HighWire Press to provide online access to their journals are free to specify the terms of access to their journals, including the embargo period for their journals. An increasing number of societies, recognizing the scholarly mission of their society, have chosen to -- at their own expense -- have their complete back files digitized and made freely accessible. Often these free articles are available not only through the HighWire Press site, but are also being deposited into PubMed Central.

The HighWire Press home page provides the current statisitics for the number of articles and the number of openly-accessible articles -- as of this moment, 5,008,753 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers; 2,013,535 articles are freely accessible by all.

HighWire Press maintains a page where the embargo period for their journals is listed -- http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl. There are nearly 50 journals that are completely free. Of the over 1100 journals served through HighWire, it appears that at least 255 have some free access to their back files content. The embargo period for those that offer free back file access to their journals is usually 12 months, but can be as short as 2 months or as long as 5 years.

Posted by florador at 12:03 PM

May 20, 2008

Creationism Being Taught by 1 in 8 High School Biology Teachers

The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) is reporting on a recent study that indicated a significant percentage of high school biology teachers are teaching some form of creationism. The study, "Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait" was published in the prestigious open access journal, PLOS Biology, by Penn State researchers Michael B. Berkman, Julianna Sandell Pacheco, and Eric Plutzer.

From the CHE article (with local links added):

One in eight teachers said they taught creationism as a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," reports a team led by Michael B. Berkman, a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University at University Park.
The Penn State researchers surveyed 939 high-school biology teachers who were randomly selected from a list that includes most of the biology teachers in the country. They found that treatment of evolution varies widely: Some 38 percent of teachers devote more than 11 hours to the subject, while 11 percent provide less than 2 hours for the topic, if they cover it at all.
A quarter of teachers said they discussed creationism or intelligent design for at least an hour, but nearly half apparently bring it up to criticize it, say the survey authors. Some 40 percent of the teachers who raise the topic of creationism say that when they talk about it, they describe it as a valid religious perspective that is inappropriate for a science class.
The survey suggests that the personal beliefs of teachers and their training both make a big difference in how much time they devote to discussing evolution. Teachers were most likely to devote few hours to the topic if they held beliefs consistent with creationism. Those who spent the most class time on evolution had taken the most college-level credits in biology and had taken at least one class in evolutionary biology, according to the Penn State researchers.
Randy Moore, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, has conducted his own surveys of high-school biology teachers and also of college students, to see what they learned in high-school biology classes. His findings and those of other researchers suggest that 15 percent to 30 percent of biology teachers are teaching creationism, which federal courts have deemed a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In a study, "Creationism in the Biology Classroom: What Do Teachers Teach & How Do They Teach It?" [U of I access] published in The American Biology Teacher [U of I access] in February, Mr. Moore found that 27 percent of the 1,465 college freshmen he surveyed had encountered creationism in a high-school biology class. A previous study found that 15 percent of biology teachers do not accept evolution as scientifically valid. The new survey, he said, is valuable because "it documents what many biologists would find astounding: that biology teachers are teaching creationism." Despite considerable evidence showing the persistence of creationism in American classrooms, he said, "college faculty don't believe this."

Posted by florador at 11:32 AM

December 10, 2007

NIH Looks to Revise Peer Review Process to Help Young Researchers

From the Chronicle of Higher Education (12.10.07) [U of I access link]

NIH Panel Unveils Big Ideas for Revamping Peer Review and Grant Making

A committee studying ways to improve peer review and grant making at the National Institutes of Health called for major changes on Friday. They include slashing the length of grant applications and placing more weight in grant reviews on the scientific effects of the proposed research.

The working group, created by the advisory committee to NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni, also suggested providing more grants for young scientists who have never before received one. The agency should review grant proposals from such applicants separately from those of established, older investigators. The younger scientists make up a diminishing proportion of the agency's grantees, raising concerns about the future vigor of the biomedical-research work force.

In addition the working group proposed ways to improve the quality and efficiency of the NIH's peer review. One way was to require senior, established researchers to serve on the agency's review panels, which are made up largely of outside academics, as a condition of receiving certain grants. Those veterans are increasingly unwilling to volunteer because of the time commitment involved, but they possess the expertise and experience needed for quality reviews, the panel found....

One of the big changes would transform the peer-review committees of outside scientists who now review and rate applications for NIH grants, making them operate more like the editorial boards of scholarly journals. The committees, called study sections, would "outsource" grant applications to specialists in the discipline to review technical aspects. The study sections would be made up of generalists who would discuss the applications' scientific significance, broadly construed.

Further Reading:

Updated:
Read comments left at the Scientist (magazine) website about the NIH proposal.


Posted by florador at 2:57 PM

October 29, 2007

Science Has a Serious Marketing Problem

The Scientist (Vol 21, Issue 10) ran an interesting article, "The Future of Public Engagement" about the need for scientists to "frame" their research for public consumption. They should not just "dumb down" their science, so "the public" can understand it. Rather

...scientists must learn to focus on presenting, or "framing," their messages in ways that connect with diverse audiences. This means remaining true to the underlying science, but drawing on research to tailor messages in ways that make them personally relevant and meaningful to different publics. For example, when scientists are speaking to a group of people who think about the world primarily in economic terms, they should emphasize the economic relevance of science - such as, in the case of embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that expanded government funding would make the United States, or a particular state, more economically competitive.

How framing works..

Frames simplify complex issues by lending greater importance to certain considerations and arguments over others. In the process, framing helps communicate why an issue might be a problem, who or what might be responsible, and what should be done. A typology of frames specific to science-related issues summarizes a common set of frames specific to science.

The article gives examples from research in successes in communicating stem cell research, plant biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

Some scientists already frame their communications. Consider, for example, E.O. Wilson's Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. In his book, by recasting environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also one of personal and moral duty, Wilson has generated discussion among a religious audience that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books.

Perhaps because I just read a similar idea in Alan Alda's book "Things I Overheard While Listening to Myself", this Scientist article resonated for me. In his book, Alda suggests that, along with all the science classes students take, perhaps they should also be taking communication classes!

We can't leave the popularization of science just to the science news writers. Their articles certainly help. But citizens need to hear about research from the scientists themselves. Last night I watched a wonderful program on Nature about colony collapse in honeybees, "Silence of the Bees". Two of our scientists from the U of I entomology department, May Berenbaum and Gene Robinson (together with other scientists) spoke eloquently of the catastrophe that will occur if honeybees continue to decline. One couldn't help but be drawn into the story and into the CSI-like research effort that's going on to solve this problem.

Posted by florador at 1:29 PM

September 18, 2007

Illinois Biotechnology Organization Formed

The Illinois Biotechnology Organization (IBO) was recently formed by several graduate students and post-docs for the purpose of "gathering together students, post-doc, professors etc. that are involved in the biotechnology area at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana."

At the IBO website one will find gathered together University links of significance to biotechnology as well as a page of links that point to information about biotechnology.

The IBO is planning its first event, a social hour, for Monday, October 29th from 7-9 PM. It will be held in Room 210 of the Illini Union. All are welcome to attend, but it is requested that you register by October 22nd by sending an email to:uiuc.ibo@gmail.com.

The IBO social hour is being held in conjunction with the 2007 Biotechnology Job Fair, which is being held on Tuesday, October 30th, from 9-12 and 1-3:30, in the Illini Union. Deadline for registration for the Job Fair is October 1st.

Posted by florador at 11:14 AM

September 14, 2007

Lehigh University Offers Free Online BioScience Course

Lehigh University (Bethlehem PA) is offering a totally free online biology course, Bioscience in the 21st Century. It is described as:

A multidisciplinary survey course in which several theme-based topics in bioscience and their social/ethical considerations will be explored. ...
A major goal of the course will be to communicate the importance of a systems-driven, multidisciplinary approach in bioscience. Several contemporary issues (e.g., obesity, infectious diseases, cancer, stem cell biology, advances in cell biology and medicine, genome-based medicine, neurophysiology-related topics, bioinformatics, interfaces between organic chemistry and biology, advances in engineered biomedical systems, advances in bioimaging, social/ethical considerations) will be discussed.
Lectures will be presented by faculty from different disciplines in order to highlight cross-disciplinary perspectives on fundamental problems and potential solutions in bioscience. This course is envisioned as the initial tool for shaping an intellectual approach to bioscience that routinely values interconnections among disciplines and reduces/eliminates the tendency to compartmentalize learning “by subject.”
A second goal of the course is to provide scientific literacy for non-majors and the public. Students who are not formally registered for the course are encouraged to attend lectures based on their interests. Course materials including the syllabus, course materials, and all lectures are available on the web with full access for the entire Lehigh community and interested members of the public.
Lecturers will include Lehigh University professors from a variety of departments, as well as special guests. Check for weekly postings of lectures, and class resources.
This virtual classroom opportunity is funded through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The grant recognizes Lehigh’s innovative approach to preparing students to address emerging issues in modern biology and biomedical research.

Check out the