Community blog entries

Please Commit To Providing Green OA Before Committing To Pay For Gold OA!

September 17, 2009 by Stevan_Harnad

What follows is a critique of the "Compact for Open-Access Equity."

The Compact states:

"We the undersigned universities recognize the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals contents. Those universities and funding agencies receiving the bene?ts of publisher services should recognize their collective and individual responsibility for that funding, and this recognition should be ongoing and public so that publishers can rely on it as a condition for their continuing operation.

"Therefore, each of the undersigned universities commits to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds. We encourage other universities and research funding agencies to join us in this commitment, to provide a suf?cient and sustainable funding basis for open-access publication of the scholarly literature." /signed/

My critique is based on points that I have already made many times before, unheeded. All I can do is echo them yet again (and hope!):

How your emotional state affects how you hear speech

September 17, 2009 by The Quantum Lob...

I found an interesting study by Wang et. al investigating how the current emotional state that we find ourselves in modulates the auditory response of speech early in the sensory processing stream at the cortical level. Here's their abstract.

Process Outgrowth in Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells: Role of the Growth Cone?

September 16, 2009 by jenwjw

“Process” or axon outgrowth is a phenomenon well studied in neuronal cells, and is a process that requires, for the most part, a specialized structure at the tip of growing axons known as the neuronal growth cone.

NHS vs US

September 15, 2009 by BlueGenes

It's been a month since the clamour and bustle about healthcare reform during the US Congress' summer break in August. The British blogosphere was then alight with spirited defenses of the NHS, like this piece from David Colquhoun. As Congress gets back to work, Obama is countering his critics with speeches on several of his main policy areas. Now that the dust has settled, I'd like to take a closer look at it. Please let us know what you think in the comments, either here on ScienceBlog or at Blue-Genes.net, where a spirited discussion has already started.

Coffee on the brain, spatial memory impairment, and how the immune system may help

September 14, 2009 by The Quantum Lob...

I'm constantly on the lookout for new research findings further substantiating sleep's significant effects on memory...perhaps in an attempt to finally convince myself that continuously misplacing my keys is NOT a normal part of young adulthood...and that 5 hours of shut-eye just isn't cutting it anymore (note to self: resist late night treks to Starbucks).

Under Observation - Restless Atoms Cause Materials to Age

September 14, 2009 by prandd

Atoms have the habit of jumping through solids - a practice that physicists have recently been able to follow for the first time using a brand new method. This scientific advance was made possible thanks to the utilisation of cutting-edge X-ray sources, known as electron synchrotrons.

Hydrino fractional quantum states only exist from a relativistic perspective.

September 11, 2009 by froarty

Fractional quantum state hydrogen can only exists from a relativistic perspective . The Hydrino was dismissed by mainstream physicists because it was defined as having a ground state lower than the Bohr radius.