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A constant vacuum energy of about -1 probably rules out some of the wilder ideas about the future of the universe, like the Big Rip, in which the end of the universe could be only a few tens of billions of years away.

So this is kind of good news....

There's definitely been discussion of the economic costs of trying to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 550 ppm or so. (If we proceed with business as usual, it's predicted to hit 800 ppm by 2100; it's never been higher than 300 ppm at any time in the previous 800,000 years.) According to the Economist:

... Sir Nicholas [Stern] has tried to assess the future costs of climate change--drought in Africa, floods in Europe, hurricanes in America, rising sea levels around the world--and has set them against the costs of cutting fossil-fuel usage enough to stabilise carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. His answer to the second part of this calculation is fairly uncontroversial. The costs of switching away from carbon should not be huge because of the rise in fossil-fuel prices and the fall in alternative energy prices. Sir Nicholas reckons that the world could stabilise concentrations at a reasonable level at a cost of 1% of GDP by 2050. Many other economists have looked at the matter, and most agree with Sir Nicholas.

In our work, we investigate whether, and to what extent, the unique physical phenomenon of long lifetime resonant electro-magnetic states can, with long-tailed bona-fide (non-radiative) modes, be used for efficient energy transfer. Intuitively, if both the drain and the source are resonant states of the same frequency with long lifetimes, they should be able to exchange energy very efficiently, while interaction with other environmental off-resonant objects could be negligible. Of course, intricacies of the real world make this simple picture significantly more complex. Nevertheless, via detailed theoretical, and numerical analyses of typical real-world model-situations and realistic material parameters, we establish that such a non-radiative scheme could indeed be practical for middle-range wireless energy transfer (i.e. within a room, or a factory pavilion). Important novel applications are thus enabled.

The author is credible; he has a good track record in non-linear optics.

There's a somewhat nutty exposition of this resonance phenomenon here by a radio ham. There's actually some decent physics in that article, if you ignore the nutty stuff. This phenomenon has been known for decades. There's a way to actively drive an antenna into resonance and increase the amount of power it receives. The problem is that if you have those resonant currents flowing in your antenna, most of the energy gets lost in resistive heating as the currents slosh around in the antenna. This idea might need superconductors to make it work.

This area hasn't been studied much recently because it relates to antenna design for waves much longer than the antenna. All the action is up in the gigahertz range today, where antennas are tiny. Almost nobody's working on better AM broadcast receiver antennas any more. Interestingly, those wierd ferrite-rod antennas that are inside AM broadcast radios use this phenomenon. There's a radio ham in Finland who built an active resonant ferrite rod antenna for 3 to 12MHz AM signals.

Right now, this power transmission scheme is just a theoretical concept. The physicist talking about it hasn't built one. So it's not yet clear if it can be realized. But it's standard EM physics.

If this is correct, then I was mistaken.

I've read the article. The same old debunked myths: Medieval Warm Period? Debunked.

Variations in the output of the Sun? Debunked.

It's all a left wing myth perpetrated by the UN to set up a World Government? - Left as a exercise for the reader.

I decided to look this up. For example, this paper describes how it can occur using the spin of a particle. Basically, if an observer in a different frame of reference observes an entangled state of this particle, that observer will see some degree of decoherence that gets worse as the frames of reference diverge. Mathematically, Lorentz transforms mix spin and momentum of the particle, ultimately destroying entanglement of the spin. What's interesting is that this paper describes a way to entangle the spins of multiple particles in a relativistically invariant way. I just scanned the begining of the paper so I don't know any more about it.

What? You can get the full text in PDF or PS by just scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.
Or, this direct PDF link instead.

While I can make no guesses as to the intent of the submitter, the article in question looks legit - it refers to a real future article in Physics Review E, which is a pretty well recognised peer reviewed journal dealing with Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter physics.

See http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=PLEEE8&Vo lume=74&Issue=3#MAJOR4

If it really came down to it, with all out war between the USA and a closely matched opponent, the USA has a ton more sticks to use than anyone else. Big flying ones that make the ground glow.

Nukes? Even Israel and Pakistan have nukes and it seems that soon Iran will have those as well. Don't you think the US might hesitate to be the one to start a full blown nuclear exchange? I'd be really surprised to see the US use nukes unless it was in response to a nuclear first strike by somebody else. The mere suggestion, not that long ago, by US officials that they were considering the implications of use micro-nukes as bunker-busters in tactical engagements stirred up a hornets nest.

Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.

Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.


Fact #3: Fact #1 isn't exactly hard fact.

Fact #4: The physics behind greenhouse gases like CO2 are well-established. Arrhenius figured it out over a century ago.

Fact #5: What's more uncertain is the impact of all the positive and negative feedback cycles. That's where it gets messy.

I concede that the historical pattern of solar intensity isn't as well documented as we would like it to be, due to the difficulty of measurement. But to present the solar intensity argument while ignoring the hard science behind greenhouse gases is preposterous.

Also, one of the dudes who found an increasing solar trend said "that does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned."

Nothing new to see here, folks! Sorry!

(Yes, I am an electrochemist)

Sure, it might be the fastest silicon BJT, but as TFA alludes to, there are InGaAs HBTs that are functionally equivalent to BJTs and have cutoff frequencies of 710 GHz. Specifically, I'm talking about the one discussed in this paper by Milton Feng's group at the University of Illinois.

The AIP's Physics News Update is a pretty fascinating look at the cutting edge, though it's a weekly.

The home pages for the Royal Society of Chemistry http://www.rsc.org/ and the public face of the American Chemical Society, http://www.chemistry.org/, as well as the American Physics Society http://www.aip.org/. It's a lot of foraging, but it will get you the technical gory details. If your local library has it, Chemical and Engineering News has roundups both in the front of the magazine, and in a one-page science-technology roundup. The rest of the mag is pretty much chemical industry, but has articles on particular areas at times.

As a previous poster mentioned, Science http://www.sciencemag.org/ and Nature http://www.nature.com/ are good all in one stops.

Personally, I start every monday lunch off with browsing the table of contents of JACS, J. Phys. Chem., Organometallics, Inorganic Chemistry, and J. Org. Chem. If you're not a chemist, these will probably bore you to death, but it's where I get my science news from, other than the Tuesday NYT.

This is not a bad idea, but like any other notion of harvesting energy from the kinetics of the planet, I think we ned to make sure we understand the full impact of removing that energy from the system that is the planet. Weather patterns rely on the energy inherent in air movement - and harvesting that, while seemingly innocuous, could be a bad idea. Aside from the other issues that come from wind-power farms, such as scaling, etc., this is something that must be considered before we start possibly causing unanticipated effects. Bear in mind, too, the scope and scale of ecological and meteorlogical impacts. Personally, I like the notion of an external source, myself, but I'm also aware of the limitations we face in trying to use it currently.

this is a link to their JAP abstract

it seems that the novelty is that they were able to transfer strained silicon thin films to a polymer substrate.

I am staff scientist at another DOE lab and spent time at Los Alamos as a graduate fellow a few years ago. From the coverage in the media and from the comments of many politicians (many of whom stood to gain much if UC were to lose out in favor of universities/companies from their home state in the LANL bidding wars), one would think that Los Alamos was full of nothing but incompetence, dishonesty, and arrogance. That simply was not the case -- Los Alamos has had a very similar track record when compared to both other government labs and industry. This was pointed out in a very informative and insightful opinion piece that appeared in Physics Today:

http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-57/iss-12/p60.html

While Los Alamos has certainly had its share of fiascos, I think a lot of bad press they received was because 1) They are the most visible government lab, and 2) Many politicians hoped that if they could humiliate the lab management enough, someone from their state could end up with the (now extremely lucrative) management contract.

(Posted anonymously out of fear of DOE muckety-mucks)

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents-- their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more... the recognition ATMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts. Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God). To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger

Um, not quite.

There are lots of other examples (this or this for instance)

Popular science nonsense? And I quote:

So how about you bone up on what the potential of quantum computing is, before making crazy statements and trolling like a big fat trolley-mc-troll.

"We report a novel and spectacular instability of a fluid surface in a rotating system. In a flow driven by rotating the bottom plate of a partially filled, stationary cylindrical container, the shape of the free surface can spontaneously break the axial symmetry and assume the form of a polygon rotating rigidly with a speed different from that of the plate. With water, we have observed polygons with up to 6 corners. It has been known for many years that such flows are prone to symmetry breaking, but apparently the polygonal surface shapes have never been observed. The creation of rotating internal waves in a similar setup was observed for much lower rotation rates, where the free surface remains essentially flat [J. M. Lopez et al., J. Fluid Mech. 502, 99 (2004).]. We speculate that the instability is caused by the strong azimuthal shear due to the stationary walls and that it is triggered by minute wobbling of the rotating plate."

My Dad worked on creating "custom fog" for the Navy. He studied propagation, e.g. this civilian paper. Then he developed a method of modifying droplet size distribution in fogs over the ocean. The end product (details classified) allows ships to create a fog bank on demand over large bodies of water (within 1 or 2 hours) that blocks enemy frequencies, but has "holes" for friendly scanner frequencies. The details include taking temperature/humidity/droplet profiles by altitude of the atmosphere over the target area.

Ummm... http://www.aip.org/pnu/2006/split/772-1.html

I don't know where this comes from, I majored in biochemistry and chemical engineering at school, and my graduating class in ChemE was nearly half women (45% I'd, say) and in biochemistry it was more than 50% (7 of 13). Mind you even good odds did me no good.

For those of you who were born stupid, the emission of radiation by spark gaps was first discovered by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz - the same one that the Hertz in megahertz is named after - back in 1887. It was Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen who discovered that this phenomenon could be used to produce X-rays in 1895 Here is a paper on building an Xray tube USING SPARK PLUGS. http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=RSINAK000072000010003983000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes Here are several scientific papers on the production of X-rays by spark gaps in various gaseous media. http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/icfa/fall97/pape r2/paper2.pdf http://www.webcom.com/sknkwrks/xray.htm http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com/_PatentLibrary /_FischerXRaySparkGap/index.htm Morons.

• The Discovery of Global Warming
  
• Real Climate
  
• A Few Things Ill Considered
  

• The Discovery of Global Warming
  
• Real Climate
  
• A Few Things Ill-Considered
  

Why didn't they already made hidraulic lenses (http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/86/103902/1) glasses? With pressure-adjusted focus they wouldn't need batteries, just a mechanical setup (screw actuator) to work.

Here

Woah, I knew there were a lot of global warming (or "human causation") deniers on slashdot, but I hadn't checked here in a while - didn't realize it was this bad! No wonder I don't come here much any more.

For all y'all's edification, I STRONGLY recommend:

The Discovery of Global Warming
Real Climate
A Few Things Ill-Considered

I'll come back when y'all have read those, ok?

It scarcely mattered what the Milankovitch orbital changes might do, wrote Murray Mitchell in 1972, since "man's intervention... would if anything tend to prolong the present interglacial." Human industry would prevent an advance of the ice by blanketing the Earth with CO2. A panel of top experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975 tentatively agreed with Mitchell. True, in recent years the temperature had been dropping (perhaps as part of some unknown "longer-period climatic oscillation"). Nevertheless, they thought CO2 "could conceivably" bring half a degree of warming by the end of the century.(27) The outspoken geochemist and oceanographer Wallace Broecker went farther. He suspected that there was indeed a natural cycle responsible for the cooling in recent decades, perhaps originating in cyclical changes on the Sun. If so, it was only temporarily canceling the greenhouse warming. Within a few decades that would climb past any natural cycle. "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" he asked.(28*)

Meanwhile in 1975, two New Zealand scientists reported that while the Northern Hemisphere had been cooling over the past thirty years, their own region, and probably other parts of the Southern Hemisphere, had been warming.(29) There were too few weather stations in the vast unvisited southern oceans to be certain, but other studies tended to confirm it. The cooling since around 1940 had been observed mainly in northern latitudes. Perhaps cooling from industrial haze counteracted the greenhouse warming there? After all, the Northern Hemisphere was home to most of the world's industry. It was also home to most of the world's population, and as usual, people had been most impressed by the weather where they lived.(30*)

The engineering behind the ramjet and scramjet couldn't be any more different. Ramjets are basically scramjet engines that purposefully slow the air intake so that combustion can occur. In a scramjet the big problem is that the air is moving so fast that when you ignite the fuel/air mixture, the combustion will actually take place outside the engine. It would be ridiculous to slow the air, so the problem lies in how you get the mixture to ignite sooner. To this end they are testing ionizing mixtures, etc. Some scramjet geometries are highly classified.

Here's a good link that talks about the combustion issue: http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-4/p24.htm l

And of course some general information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet

For those who want to read the original article, the final published version is here (for a fee, looks like):
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000096000008088702000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes

It's available for free (possibly a draft version) from the arXiv network:
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0602091

Bon apetit.

last i checked, physics hasn't changed too much

Maybe you need to check more often then every 350 years. Fortunately, the Journal of Applied Physics has some RSS feeds.

... but in essence it just looks like bad journalism. Lot's of great dicoveries start with WTF observations, but in this case no such thing actually seemed to have occured. If you look at the original science article here:

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000096000007075003000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes

There is no mention of any "unexplained energy source". Not in the abstract and not in the full text (you need to be on a university network for full access). Not even a note or a possible speculation or anything. All results exactly as predicted by theoretical models.

So looks to me some science writer got the assignment to report a temperature record, which was too boring and got spruced up with some misquotes or out of context quotes, which was enought to get slashdotted. And not one in a million nerds checks out the source of this bull? Well, that's sad but easy to say as I'm just an anonymous coward ...

Cheers.

Very cool list, worth signing up for.

For the curious, here's the actual abstract from the research paper, as published in Physical Review Letters:

Ion Viscous Heating in a Magnetohydrodynamically Unstable Z Pinch at Over 2×109 Kelvin

Pulsed power driven metallic wire-array Z pinches are the most powerful and efficient laboratory x-ray sources. Furthermore, under certain conditions the soft x-ray energy radiated in a 5 ns pulse at stagnation can exceed the estimated kinetic energy of the radial implosion phase by a factor of 3 to 4. A theoretical model is developed here to explain this, allowing the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion temperature plasma through the generation of fine scale, fast-growing m=0 interchange MHD instabilities at stagnation. These saturate nonlinearly and provide associated ion viscous heating. Next the ion energy is transferred by equipartition to the electrons and thus to soft x-ray radiation. Recent time-resolved iron spectra at Sandia confirm an ion temperature Ti of over 200 keV (2×109 degrees), as predicted by theory. These are believed to be record temperatures for a magnetically confined plasma.

Also, there's a press release from Sandia National Labs.

• Steve McIntyre's Site - basically geared toward discounting the statistical existence and/or importance of the 'hockey stick' temperature graph. Specifically, this is a discussion of the statistical errors involved in using multiple proxies (like tree rings, ice cores, etc) to model correlations.
• Climate Audit site - this is key to address your point; this site has a lot of scientists/researchers who dissent from populist view of anthropomorphic climate change, at least based on the current models. There is some important, and sometimes subtle, stuff here.
• A New Temperature Reconstruction - one of the stories linked to in the above site; worth a look.
• The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change - simply emphasizes that rapid climate change HAS occured historically and that human causes are not required; note that the swings in temperatures, etc, are MUCH larger than the 1-5 C shifts many take as catastrophic.
• Some have asserted that the AGW phenomenon is an example of Pathological Science. Note specifically the criteria:
  • The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
  • The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
  • There are claims of great accuracy.
  • Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
  • Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
  • The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.

Yeah, really the article is a lotta crap. I don't know why they couldn't link to a decent summary like AIP's Physics News Update.

TOKAMAK is in Russian: "" (toroidal chamber in magnetic coils).

Fission is what powers nuclear power plants and atomic bombs. It works by splitting the atom (lot's of energy is released on splitting the atom's nucleus.)

Fusion is what powers the Sun by combining atoms into bigger attoms (even more energy is released.)

To combine two atoms together, it is necessary to overcome nuclear forces that are very strong. In the Sun, it happens because the gravity that pulls the Sun together heats up the atoms so much. The atoms become very fast and slum into each-other at huge speeds (above 10,000,000K to do this) and overcome the nuclear forces and join into bigger atoms. This releases more energy than fission (splitting atoms.)

If we can find out a way to use Fusion to actually generate power, we will have virtually endless supplies of power (just use hydrogen from water to combine it into Helium for example.)

TOKAMAK is a machine that generates large thoroidal electromagnetic fields ( a donut type of a field), and inside the donut's tunnel, it is possible to hold superfluid material - plasma in a suspended state.

The plasma is created by speeding up the atoms within the thorus. Fast atoms then will hit into each other at higher speeds, and once the speeds are high enough to merge them, you get a thermonuclear reaction. Until recently it was impractical to use TOKAMAKs for energy generation, because the amount of energy spent on heating up the atoms was greater than the energy retrieved from the reaction.

1-2 years ago I heard the news that there was a break even somewhere in the world, but I can't confirm it.

(Some history: Work of Lev Davidovich Landau (a Soviet physicist,) on superfluidity of Helium and plasmas allowed further work on TOKAMAKs which were invented in the 1950 by another Soviet - Andrei Saharov)

" Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state "
  That patent sounds suspiciously like this :(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory), and based on the above, this:(http://proceedings.aip.org/getabs/servlet/Ge tabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS00074600000100143 0000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes)

As far as the swining on a swing (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.ht m&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,368,227.WKU.&OS=PN/6,368,227&R S=PN/6,368,227), I would hope prior art would invalidate this one- if not, then [insert diety here] help us...it's over- too late.

A new optical device might allow astronomers to view extrasolar planets directly without the annoying glare of the parent star. It would do this by "nulling" out the light of the parent star by exploiting its wave nature, leaving the reflected light from the nearby planet to be observed in space-based detectors.

About ten years ago, the presence of planets around stars other than our sun was first deduced by the very tiny wobble in the star's spectrum of light imposed by the mutual tug between the star and its satellite. Since then, more than 100 extrasolar planets have been detected in this way. Also, in a few cases the slight diminution in the star's radiation caused by the transit of the planet across in front of the star has been observed. Many astronomers would, however, like to view the planet directly, a difficult thing to do.

Seeing the planet next to its bright star has been compared to trying to discern, from a hundred meters away, the light of a match held up next to the glare of an automobile's headlight. The approach taken by Grover Swartzlander and his colleagues at the University of Arizona is to eliminate the star's light by sending it through a special helical-shaped mask, a sort of lens whose geometry resembles that of a spiral staircase turned on its side.

The process works in the following way: light passing through the thicker and central part of the mask is slowed down. Because of the graduated shape of the glass, an "optical vortex" is created: the light coming along the axis of the mask is, in effect, spun out of the image. It is nulled, as if an opaque mask had been placed across the image of the star, but leaving the light from the nearby planet unaffected.

The idea of an optical vortex has been around for many years, but it has never been applied to astronomy before. In lab trials of the optical vortex mask, light from mock stars has been reduced by factors of 100 to 1000, while light from a nearby "planet" was unaffected (see figure).

Attaching their device to a telescope on Mt. Lemon outside Tucson, Arizona, the researchers took pictures of Saturn and its nearby rings to demonstrate the ease of integrating the mask into telescopic imaging system. This is, according to Swartzlander (520-626-3723, grovers@optics.arizona.edu), a more practical technique than merely attempting to cover the star's image, as is done in coronagraphs, devices for observing our sun's corona by masking out the disk of the sun. It could fully come into its own on a project like the Terrestrial Planet Finder, or TPF, a proposed orbiting telescope to be developed over the coming decade and designed to image exoplanets.

Foo et al., Optics Letters, 15 December 2005 Summary of articles related to optical vortex on Swartzlander's Web page

Someone more patient than I can put in the links to the figures. See http://aip.org/pnu/2005/755.html for everything.

Tracking the world's average temperature from the late 19th century, people in the 1930s realized there had been a pronounced warming trend. During the 1960s, scientists found that over the past couple of decades the trend had shifted to cooling. Many scientists predicted a continued and prolonged cooling, perhaps a phase of a long natural cycle or perhaps caused by human activities. Others insisted that humanity's emission of gases would bring warming over the long run. In the late 1970s, this group's views became predominant. By the late 1980s, it was plain that the cooling spell, whose cause remained mysterious, had been a temporary distraction. For whatever reason, unprecedented global warming was underway.

[... Global Cooling because of natural cycles] A panel of top experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975 tentatively agreed with Mitchell. True, in recent years the temperature had been dropping (perhaps as part of some unknown "longer-period climatic oscillation"). Nevertheless, they thought CO2 "could conceivably" bring half a degree of warming by the end of the century.

Meanwhile in 1975, two New Zealand scientists reported that while the Northern Hemisphere had been cooling over the past thirty years, their own region, and probably other parts of the Southern Hemisphere, had been warming.(29) There were too few weather stations in the vast unvisited southern oceans to be certain, but other studies tended to confirm it. The cooling since around 1940 had been observed mainly in northern latitudes. Perhaps cooling from industrial haze counteracted the greenhouse warming there? After all, the Northern Hemisphere was home to most of the world's industry. It was also home to most of the world's population, and as usual, people had been most impressed by the weather where they lived.(30*)

[...] Returning to old records, in 1986 the group produced the first truly solid and comprehensive global analysis of average surface temperatures (including the vast ocean regions, which most earlier studies had neglected). They found considerable warming from the late 19th century up to 1940, followed by some regional cooling in the Northern Hemisphere but roughly level conditions overall to the mid-1970s. Then the warming had resumed with a vengeance. The warmest three years in the entire 134-year record had all occurred in the 1980s.(35) Convincing confirmation came from Hansen and a collaborator, who analyzed old records using quite different methods from the British, and came up with substantially the same results. It was true: an unprecedented warming was underway, at least 0.5C in the past century.(36)

1. a Newsweek article claiming the next Ice Age was near,
2. "a panel of top experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences" saying that increasing CO2 levels would counteract any "Global Cooling"
3. scientists saying that "there is no global cooling trend, the southern hemisphere is warming" and hypothesizing that air polution was the reason for the "local cooling".

Why did you say you'd not seen an explanation, and then admit you had?

Human contributions are small relative to the natural cycles (biology, oceans, volcanoes), but enough to put things out of balance. That's what the fuss is all about. Without any greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, Earth's average temperature would be about -20 degrees C, so there's obviously a major natural greenhouse effect. We're providing an artificial perturbation that has recently amounted to enough to be noticeable, and will continue to grow relentlessly unless we start perturbing the system less.

I strongly recommend Real Climate and The Discovery of Global Warming, sites that explain the science in understandable terms from real experts (I would take stuff from Wikipedia with a big lump of salt).

Because the restricted journal is known for agressive sifting of wheat from chaff, and rigorous reviewing of the wheat? That journal also (or therefore) has a high-impact factor as well, which ensures that people will actually read your paper.

I've had this go-round with other people before, since as an assistant professor, I chafe at having to pay page-charges, which reduces the amount of money available for research. I admit that journals cost something to publish, but the cost shouldn't determine whether I publish, especially given that promotion depends to a certain extent on quantity. One nice, 20-page, thorough article in J. Chem. Phys. http://jcp.aip.org/ is not going to make up for five MPU fragments published in Inorg. Chim. Acta. http:///http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journalde scription.cws_home/504086/description#description />, as far as promotion is concerned. Allegedly that JCP paper will get a heavier weight, but unofficially, it's number, with a few good ones in the better journals interspersed for status that matter.

This emphasis on quantity (especially when your packet leaves your department, and hits the administrative staff of the Dean's office, who aren't from your field), is what fuels the explosion of journals, and the corresponding explosion of frankly pointless publications. A system that rewarded impact of a paper, and quality of journal, would help, as presumably fewer, but longer and more thorough, papers would be published. This would lead to fewer journals, which would require smaller staffs to administer, and hence lower costs. Yes, new journals are needed now and then, but there are also generally older ones that can be gracefully retired.

I don't know how things are done in other sciences, but in chemistry the senior journal editors for ACS receive a stipend, office expenses, and technical support. (not necessarily great; just last year ACS upgraded their software to run on Windows > Win95, and replaced the computers) This costs money. On the other hand, the reviewers are free, and the content is free. A system that allows them to recoup the publishing cost, but then liberates the content after an appropriate period, would seem to make at least some sense.


I don't know a good solution. I think one would be that the journal gets limited copyright to your paper (say first year), after which you can deposit the raw copy at a service such as http://arxiv.org/. You can't change the content, but the formatting is left up to the author. Alternately, since the Feds probably paid for your research in the first place, after one calendar year, an electronic copy of the journal issue is deposited with the Library of Congress, and then mirrored by other academic or government labs. In this system, you still pay a service such as CAS for advanced searching (or take your chances with Google), and someone still buys the bound form, thereby creating money for the publisher, but the results are then placed into the commons after a short period. A system where I the author pay a flat fee (to help weed out dilettantes), the subscribers pay something (for prompt access), and the paper is then archived in a non-exclusive form after some brief period (1-2 years), is probably the fairest.

A different random thought is that maybe publishers should prune minor journals, and articles that would have gone there go to a publicly supported forum such as http://arxiv.org/. You would then have three tiers; peer-reviewed journals, publicly reviewed web-only publication (authentication of reviewers would be an issue, but not insurmountable; affiliation and verification by archive maintainers would do), and unreviewed conference proceedings. The economics of the above is probably worth investigating.

Of course, at the moment I'd be happy if our local library was allowed to scan a

The reason right now is that nobody would pay any attention to such a publication.

I'm confident that this will change. Scientists, as a group, are generally doing science for the love of it, to better society, etc. (they usually are not doing it for the money, that's for sure!). Thus, as a group they are remarkably interested in "doing the right thing." Hence the ongoing debate in the scientific community, with more and more scientists putting support behind the notion of open access. As more open access journals are created, and gain reputation, I think the status quo will change.

As I describe in another post, the highly recognized American Institute of Physics is experimenting with allowing authors to cover the administrative costs, thereby making the publication open-access. Also, the journals from the Public Library of Science are making significant strides towards becoming high-quality yet totally open access. This directory lists nearly 2000 open access journals online. Granted the quality is highly variable. Some are great, some are not. We'll see how they work out.

A noble sentiment, however there is no mechanism available that provides for making this material available for free yet also allows for the funding of the needs of scientific article publication. There are some pilot programs in place, but at least so far they are not proven to work. Until this evolves to a trustworthy process the traditional methods will have to continue.

There are many mechanisms that are being debated. Obviously there will be growing pains, and obviously the most important thing is for these new open-access journals to gain a decent reputation... and/or for established journals to start experimenting. Luckily both of these things are happening. Thus, the future is bright for open access in academia (in my opinion, at least).

The reason right now is that nobody would pay any attention to such a publication.

I'm confident that this will change. Scientists, as a group, are generally doing science for the love of it, to better society, etc. (they usually are not doing it for the money, that's for sure!). Thus, as a group they are remarkably interested in "doing the right thing." Hence the ongoing debate in the scientific community, with more and more scientists putting support behind the notion of open access. As more open access journals are created, and gain reputation, I think the status quo will change.

As I describe in another post, the highly recognized American Institute of Physics is experimenting with allowing authors to cover the administrative costs, thereby making the publication open-access. Also, the journals from the Public Library of Science are making significant strides towards becoming high-quality yet totally open access. This directory lists nearly 2000 open access journals online. Granted the quality is highly variable. Some are great, some are not. We'll see how they work out.

A noble sentiment, however there is no mechanism available that provides for making this material available for free yet also allows for the funding of the needs of scientific article publication. There are some pilot programs in place, but at least so far they are not proven to work. Until this evolves to a trustworthy process the traditional methods will have to continue.

There are many mechanisms that are being debated. Obviously there will be growing pains, and obviously the most important thing is for these new open-access journals to gain a decent reputation... and/or for established journals to start experimenting. Luckily both of these things are happening. Thus, the future is bright for open access in academia (in my opinion, at least).

You're quite right... Many scientific societies use the journal money to fund other (often worthwhile) activities. But we should be clear. No one is saying that the scientific societies should be given less money. We are saying that journals should make all published articles available at no charge.

They just have to adapt their payment model. Consider this example. Reviews of Scientific Instruments is a journal that offers authors the option to pay a surcharge ($2000) so that their article is freely available online, instead of being available online to subscribers only (more details here). An author might do this if he has a particular ideology (believes that publicly funded research should be freely available), but he might also do this simply because it gets his papers MORE EXPOSURE. More scientists will read it, cite it, and therefore the work will become more useful, important and influential. In the future, it's quite possible that all journals will always operate in this way: the authors pay a fee to the journal, and then the articles are freely available. In fact, some journals have switched to this mode and it seems to work.

I appreciate what the Royal Society is saying, but ultimately they have to adapt to a new world. There are other systems by which they will receive the same amount of money, be able to maintain the same quality of activities, and yet make the information freely available.

You're quite right... Many scientific societies use the journal money to fund other (often worthwhile) activities. But we should be clear. No one is saying that the scientific societies should be given less money. We are saying that journals should make all published articles available at no charge.

They just have to adapt their payment model. Consider this example. Reviews of Scientific Instruments is a journal that offers authors the option to pay a surcharge ($2000) so that their article is freely available online, instead of being available online to subscribers only (more details here). An author might do this if he has a particular ideology (believes that publicly funded research should be freely available), but he might also do this simply because it gets his papers MORE EXPOSURE. More scientists will read it, cite it, and therefore the work will become more useful, important and influential. In the future, it's quite possible that all journals will always operate in this way: the authors pay a fee to the journal, and then the articles are freely available. In fact, some journals have switched to this mode and it seems to work.

I appreciate what the Royal Society is saying, but ultimately they have to adapt to a new world. There are other systems by which they will receive the same amount of money, be able to maintain the same quality of activities, and yet make the information freely available.

What follows is a summary of what impact a $34 million reduction has on nuclear physics in the US. Anybody who doubts that there is a program behind this reduction may answer the question how much money is being spent per day in Iraq. Science is an all-time low in the US. Here we go...

---

FYI
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News
Number 168: November 22, 2005

Senators Express Concern Over Layoffs and Run Times at RHIC and
Jefferson Lab

Before the Senate passed the FY 2006 Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill last week, senators discussed the negative
impacts that a reduction in funding for the DOE Nuclear Physics
program will have on two key facilities. As it now stands, the
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
will have to reduce operating times, and, at least at RHIC, reduce
staffing.

When the Bush Administration sent its FY 2006 budget request to
Congress, it sought an 8.4% or $34.0 million reduction in the
Nuclear Physics program budget, from $404.8 million to $370.7
million. The Administration acknowledged this cut would result in a
29% reduction in run time at the Jefferson Accelerator Facility and
a 61% reduction in run time at RHIC.

Going into the conference to settle on the final version of the FY
2006 bill, it appeared that the Administration's suggested cut in
the Nuclear Physics program budget would be rejected. The House's
initial version of the bill had recommended FY 2006 funding a bit
higher than what was then the current level. The Senate bill came
in even higher, at almost $420 million. A DOE senior official
called the outlook "very encouraging" at a meeting of the DOE/NSF
Nuclear Science Advisory Committee in early September (see
http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/128.html.)

Despite this promising outlook, the final appropriations bill funded
the Nuclear Physics program at the level requested by the
Administration, cutting the budget by 8.4% to $370.7 million (see
http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/160.html.)

Laboratory officials are grappling with the projected impacts of the
reduced budget. RHIC's scheduled December 2006 run will be delayed
until late in FY 2006. It will be combined with the run for 2007 to
afford the longest possible time for experimentation. Brookhaven's
current hiring freeze will be extended, and officials estimate there
could be as many as 100 scientific and support position layoffs
between now and next October 1.

There is language in the FY 2006 Energy and Water Development
Appropriations bill allowing DOE to reprogram, or shift, money from
one program to another, as confirmed in the discussion that took
place on the Senate floor that appears below. Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton (D-NY) lead this November 14 discussion,
highlighting the severe impacts of the reduced funding levels. She
was joined by Senator John Warner (R-VA), who expressed concern
about the reduced funding level, stating, "At the Jefferson Lab we
need to invest in the 12GeV upgrade necessary to sustain the pace of
scientific discovery, not cut programs." Senator Charles Schumer
(D-NY) and Senator George Allen (R-VA), expressed similar concerns.
Their statements, and responses by Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), the
chairman of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Subcommittee and Senate Minority Leader (and appropriations
subcommittee ranking member) Harry Reid (D-NV), follow:

"MS. CLINTON: First, I want to compliment the chairman and ranking
member of the Energy and Water Subcommittee for their hard and
successful work in leading the development of the Energy and Water
bill that is before the body today. I know it is especially
difficult to fund all of th