I usually like to stay out of these things, but Omerna brought up a pet peeve. You can, in fact, test evolution on a human timescale. Head down to your local library and check out "The Beak of the Finch", by Jonathan Weiner. It was written a couple of years ago, and won the pullitzer.
It discusses relatively recent (over last twenty years or so) research done on finches in the Galapogos islands. Essentially, the research showed that beak size varied significantly at a population level due to climactic fluctuations during the study period. Furthermore, the researchers observed changes in allelic frequencies in the population over the same time period(1) that were consistent with the observed phenotypic changes.
In other words, they were able to watch evolution happening over a very short period of time. Pretty cool stuff... it basically clinches Darwin's hypothesis. Of course, you can never "prove" something, only "disprove" it, but you sure can stack the circumstantial evidence pretty high.
(1) This is, by the way, essentially the scientifically accepted definition of evolution: A change in allelic frequencies in a population over time. This is one point that creationists get wrong *all* the time...
In my experience, it's often better to give secretaries anything they want... I work in academia, and if the departmental secretaries aren't happy, nobody's happy. Also, happy secretaries are productive secretaries. I used to work in industry, and it was the same story there.
If, by spending a couple of thousand dollars, you can make your department's secretary happy (not to mention the number of karma points you'll earn with him or her), it's so worth it.
So, the article says that the paperless program is for the business, technology, and "liberal arts" programs, but what will happen when they try and implement this in the science programs?
My concern arises from the fact that most scientific journals don't have their pre-199x back-issues digitized. Most have their old abstracts online, but when it comes to full-text articles, most of the subject-specific journals simply don't go back far enough. As an example, look at the journal "Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton", whose full-text electronic archives don't go back any further than 1996 or so.
JStor and a few other databases have done admirable jobs at breaking the pre-1990 barrier, but only for a very few titles.
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It discusses relatively recent (over last twenty years or so) research done on finches in the Galapogos islands. Essentially, the research showed that beak size varied significantly at a population level due to climactic fluctuations during the study period. Furthermore, the researchers observed changes in allelic frequencies in the population over the same time period(1) that were consistent with the observed phenotypic changes.
In other words, they were able to watch evolution happening over a very short period of time. Pretty cool stuff... it basically clinches Darwin's hypothesis. Of course, you can never "prove" something, only "disprove" it, but you sure can stack the circumstantial evidence pretty high. (1) This is, by the way, essentially the scientifically accepted definition of evolution: A change in allelic frequencies in a population over time. This is one point that creationists get wrong *all* the time...
If, by spending a couple of thousand dollars, you can make your department's secretary happy (not to mention the number of karma points you'll earn with him or her), it's so worth it.
My concern arises from the fact that most scientific journals don't have their pre-199x back-issues digitized. Most have their old abstracts online, but when it comes to full-text articles, most of the subject-specific journals simply don't go back far enough. As an example, look at the journal "Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton", whose full-text electronic archives don't go back any further than 1996 or so.
JStor and a few other databases have done admirable jobs at breaking the pre-1990 barrier, but only for a very few titles.