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Thursday, 07 February 2008 |
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What's This? is an argument for the speedy return of Bob Park's What's New.
- Budget Causes Excitement for Scientists:
The White House is pleased with their budget proposal (press release) and initial review shows good news for science with decent increases at the NSF, DOE Office of Science, and NIST. At over $3 trillion total, it also includes putting the government on track to actually balance this behemoth by 2012, which is a job for another administration.
- More Money for Holes in the Ground:
The budget provides almost $650 million for coal research, a $197 million increase from the previous year. This is touted as an "investment in advanced technologies that can produce power from coal with significantly lower carbon emissions." Of course, since this research does not change the chemical process of burning coal, the emissions are exactly the same as they always have been, awful. The new money provides the means for collecting these byproducts and pressing them deep into the ground. Because, after all, people vote based on the environment they see today, not the environment that is dug up decades from now.
- We Need Bigger Ad Budgets:
Physicists are said to be happy with the budget proposal even though they expect these advertised increases to be cut by the time the budget is passed into law. The New York Times says that Dr. Ray Orbach, Undersecretary of Science at the Department of Energy, believes "physicists needed to be more active in advocating for their research" (quoted from the Times, not Dr. Orbach). If scientific research is truly vital to the United States, then shouldn't government leaders support it financially right now and then convince the public it was the right thing to do later? After all, these same leaders can engage the nation in armed conflict when they deem it to be in our best interests. Besides, if physicists spent their time shaking hands and gaining support for their work, then they would never be able to actually get work done; just like politicians?
- What's the Fine for Copying 1 GB of Accelerator Data?:
When the World Wide Web was first promoted to the public in 1989, researchers at CERN were using it to share material with each other. The point was that electronic files allowed for inexpensive duplication and transfer. Even though huge data files were not necessarily being sent around the world, information was. The public is more interested in music and movies than physics data, so they use the web for the inexpensive duplication and transfer of digital media. The PRO-IP Act in Congress hopes to stop this behavior, in part, by
increasing the potential liability for "stealing" 50 songs from $150,000 to a whopping $7.5 million. The free exchange of information stops as soon as someone can sell that information instead. Finally, physicists have a reason to be happy that no one wants to pay for basic research.
- They are the Deciders:
A letter from the Managing Editor of Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, Reinhardt Schuhmann, provides a historical account of the way the journals have used peer review throughout their long histories. The ways in which past editors have not used peer review is the point, however, and Schuhmann finds that history provides "precedent for our recent efforts to turn away some submittals without review." This point is well-taken in the case of PRL and the editors should be commended for keeping it svelte even as the number of submitted articles increases without bound. An additional tactic that might serve to reduce the overall size of the journal is to prevent articles from having
two whole pages of authors and institutions followed by the PRL limit of four pages of physics.
- There is Endless Energy for Sensational Reporting:
The Feb. 1, 2008 What's New discussed the ways in which the public interprets physics results to suit their own beliefs regarding science fiction and the supernatural. As The Toronto Star showed this week, it's not necessarily physicists who are misleading the public. Thane Heins may have invented a more efficient electric motor, but the article is titled, "Turning physics on its ear," and uses variants of perpetual motion multiple times. All of this while the scientist involved says that after observing the device he does not believe it violates any laws of physics. In physics, we get more excited by results as time progresses and they are verified and better developed. Such a process attracts the attention of more researchers. This is the opposite of the news industry in which all of the excitement must be expended as soon as possible in order to attract the attention of more consumers.
The opinions expressed in this article are not those of a Ph.D. physicist, but they will be.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 April 2008 )
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