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Domain: pomona.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to pomona.edu.
Stories · 2
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Who Owns Science?
immerrath writes "The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet] on a movement that is rapidly gaining support in the scientific community: the Public Library of Science(PLoS). The founders, Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, Stanford biologist Pat Brown and Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Eisen, argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone. This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers. For a while now, PLoS has been trying to get scientific journals to release the rights to scientific papers; many major journals have not complied -- in response, PLoS is starting PLoS-standard-compliant journals (for which they received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), to demonstrate the validity of the idea and persuade academic publishers to adopt the free access model. They even have a GPL-like open access Licence, and their journals have some very prominent scientists on the editorial board. Here is the text of an earlier Newsweek article about PLoS, and here is a Nature Public Debate explaining the issues. Michael Eisen received the 2002 Benjamin Franklin award for his work on PLoS. Don't forget to sign the PLoS open letter!" -
AirFiber Laser Networks: 622mbps
shinar writes: "In the LA Times, AirFiber announced the July/August avaliability of a new last-mile replacement for fiber: a wireless laser system delivering up to 622 mbps. It's a short-range system, mainly viewed as a delivery system within cities. It's being tested in Dallas, Tokyo, and Madrid, and projected for first commercial release in July or August. Not huge or revolutionary-a few other companies are working on the same sort of thing-but it might be a blessing for people in high-population density areas. "