| Toyota plant in Australia to build greener engines By 2010-09-10T07:09:23ZMELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Toyota will build a 300 million Australian dollars ($277 million) plant in Melbourne that will produce greener engines that deliver reduced carbon emissions, the company said Friday.... hosted.ap.org |
Publishing your science paper is only half the job | David Dobbs Scientists should be keen to get out of the lab and explain their findings to a wider publicDavid Dobbs blogs at WiredPerhaps the oddest and least predictable scientific conference I attend is ScienceOnline, a version of which met earlier this month at the British Library. That event, ScienceOnline London, or SOLO, is a spinoff of the original ScienceOnline held every January in the United States. Both started as science blogger gatherings and morphed into meetups of anyone interested in doing or communicating about science online – scientists, teachers, writers, network and data and design geeks, entrepreneurs. I go because I never know whom I'll meet – or what, on or off the official programme, will emerge as the hot issues.One idea that took a higher profile than I had expected this year was that the scientific establishment has come to wildly overvalue and overemphasise the scientific paper. This idea, discussed for several years now, got a push at SOLO in the opening address by Cambridge astrophysicist and Royal Society president Sir Martin Rees and gained traction from there. Yes, the paper's critics recognise that for over three centuries the scientific paper has allowed scientists to "pass arguments from mind to mind", as science writer Tom Levenson puts it in a lovely book about Newton, "without the need for face-to-face confrontation". Yet they argue that the scientific paper as we use it now – dried up, fossilised – has become less a conduit for science than a stone it must drag around.For starters (the argument goes), the paper offers, in this age of instant, data-rich communication, a horribly slow and expensive way to share data and ideas. As a result it consumes outsized portions of time, money, mental attention, and reputational weight. As Newcastle University computer scientist Phillip Lord put it during one panel, "When I look at formal scientific publishing now, I no longer see the benefits. I just see costs." Lord suggests scientists could do better publishing papers on Wordpress and sharing data using open notebooks.But what concerns people even more about the paper is that tenure decisions, grant awards, and even university ratings now focus so heavily on publication in high-impact journals that the paper has largely displaced the real currency of science – the data, methods and ideas that papers are supposed to communicate – with the papers themselves. The paper shouldn't be the currency of science, but a way to pass the real currency along.Ditching or devaluing the paper poses challenges, of course. How do you replace the filter of peer review? How would schools evaluate faculty? How would we properly credit and track the development of ideas?Good questions, and they sparked juicy debates at the conference. But set those aside for now. I want to consider another problem with the paper's overvaluation: it discourages scientists from engaging the public. How so? Because many seem to think that when they've finished the paper, they've finished their work.This struck me during one of the many discussions at SOLO of whether and how scientists should engage the public. A scientist in the audience said something that always gets said during such discussions: "What if you want to just do the work?" What if you want, in other words, to do the experiment or observation, analyse the data, write and publish the damn thing, and then get back to the lab and do it all again. Investigate, publish, rinse, repeat.It's a charming picture of science. But even as he said it, it occurred to me that a) that picture is painfully outmoded and b) stopping with the paper does only half the job. For starters, only a few people (0.6 on average, according to a statistic quoted by Rees) will read the paper. Fewer will understand it, and probably no one will tell the nonscientific world what it means or why it matters. And if you're a scientist, shouldn't you want everyone to know your work matters, and why? It's important, valuable work, right? Presumably that's why you do it – and why you think (as I do) that the public should help fund it.But here's the essential fact: science has no importance or value until it enters the outside world. That's where it takes on meaning and value. And that's where its meaning and value must be explained.Scientists implicitly recognise this at a limited scale: They want their colleagues to understand their work, so they go to conferences and explain it. But that's not enough. They need to go explain it at the Big Conference — the one outside of academe. They need to offer the larger world not just a paper meaningful only to peers, but a friendly account of the work's relevance and connections to the rest of life. That means getting lucid with letters columns or op-ed pages or science writers or science cafes or schoolchildren or blog readers. Those who can't hack that – stage fright, can't write, or just doesn't feel right – can support their peers who do engage the rabble. Write some code for them, maintain their web pages, give them rides, or grant them time off from inside the lab to take the lab's work outside. But do something. Because if you "just do the work," you're not finishing the work. You haven't got it out there.Some are already swinging into action. Many of the scientists at the SOLO event argued their community must do more to engage the public and make the case for research funding – unless, of course, they want to see massive budget cuts and a world where social and political discussion are shaped less by evidence than authority. Some of them, crying "No more Doctor Nice Guy!" are now organising British scientists to take to the streets.Getting your research out there and taking time out from the lab is a pain, no doubt. But if you're a scientist, surely you don't expect the rest of us to just assume your work is important. No. If you want the world to believe that your work is important and that modern life and a free society depend on a rigorous, evidence-based approach to things, you wouldn't ask us to take it on faith. You'd want to show us the evidence.David Dobbs is currently in London working on his fourth book. He writes for publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Wired, and Wired UK, and blogs at WiredPeer review and scientific publishingDavid Dobbsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Trial to save endangered cassowaries working so far The Queensland Government says a trial of new measures to prevent cassowary deaths on far north Queensland roads is working well so far. abc.net.au |
Bringing out the inner chimp | Carole Jahme Pauline Fowler describes the joys and frustrations of sculpting prosthetics that can make a believable ape out of a human actor. Carole Jahme visits her at workWhen I ask Pauline Fowler what her job is, she sighs before replying, "Sculptor, but I usually say director of a company, as it takes so long to explain." Let me try instead. She and her jointly run company, Animated Extras, design and make animatronics, prosthetics, silicone bodies, puppets and any other effects for film and TV that are not pyrotechnic or special CGI effects. Fowler's job is to keep the magic going and her spells are wide ranging. She was responsible for the subtle aging of Kate Winslet in The Reader (for which Fowler was short-listed for an Oscar) and she created the prosthetics used by Nicholas Cage in Kick Ass. She makes the bodies and parts for Silent Witness and designs ape actor Peter Elliott's gorilla and chimpanzee costumes. Her partner, Nik Williams, controls the animatronics on set.I asked Fowler how she researches ape costumes. "The primates are a well documented group, there's a great deal of data for me to work from. But I usually go to London Zoo or to Aspinall's Zoo and I take a video. I've read several of Jane Goodall's books and I have watched all of her National Geographic documentaries. Understanding the structure of the soft tissue and muscles and how they work and how the hair moves when the animal moves is a big part of what I do."I try to keep up with the latest scientific research but it depends on the job. Yesterday an animated penis came in, I have a wide variety of things to bring to life. But it's Pete's job to give the ape a character with a personality and emotional depth, a lot of the final effect is down to Pete. I have to turn Pete into a chimp, not create a real chimp and, as Pete's not a typical chimp shape, there's a lot of subtle compromise."It's all about the angle of the sculpt. For example, chimps have a muzzle but humans don't, humans have a forehead, but chimps don't. Humans have a nose but chimps don't, and Pete needs a chimp brow-ridge, but his eyes are at a fixed point, I can't change the width. Chimpanzees have different teeth: there are many morphological differences between humans and chimps."I wondered how many times she'd worked with Elliott. "Oh many times, I can't remember, there's been lots of gorilla commercials and we do a lot of work for mainland Europe. Gorillas in the Mist worked so well because it was cleverly shot. [Elliott played Digit, Dian Fossey's special gorilla.] Getting the impact shot is all about the tilt, a three-quarter head-down shot works well. They came in tight, over the shoulder and showed elements of a gorilla's body."A manmade construct worn by a man can only look like a man in a suit, there's always a trade off. I much prefer to sculpt and animate a creature that will not have a man inside. When I make a chimp puppet there's the challenge of realism and anatomical accuracy. Making an ape mask that will fit a human skull is a technical exercise. A gorilla suit is much easier to create than a chimp suit. With a chimp there's more comprise, a chimp's legs are short and bandy with thin ankles, they've got long, strong skinny arms, you always need arm extensions."I was curious to know if anthropomorphism played a part in her work? "I anthropomorphise the orangs, the males are like depressed generals. I'd like to create an orangutan, that's the only ape species I've not done. Chimps are funny and unstable, I don't anthropomorphise chimpanzees, probably because they are more aggressive." Fowler pauses for a moment. "The mountain gorillas are so endangered. The silverbacks are like your average bloke, quiet and lugubrious. I prefer sculpting pigs and dolphins and other emotionally intelligent animals to chimps. I find chimps a bit annoying."Animated Extras also made the Australopithecine afarensis, the Neanderthal and Homo habilis suits for the BBC's Walking with Cavemen, enabling the public to trace the evolution of the Homo lineage on film. Paleoanthropogist, Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum, was consultant.I asked Fowler how she would go about animating an Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4m years ago. The 45% complete fossil, known as "Ardi" was discovered in Ethiopia by Tim White's team in 1992 just 75km from the location of the famous "Lucy" fossil. "Well Ardi was short, stood about three and half to four feet tall. She had long arms. If you are going to make suits you need small people and arm extensions. Children are hard to work with so you need adult midgets, not dwarfs, you need average human proportions, but smaller. But finding enough midgets who can act is tough. You could blue screen Ardi and put in the environment later or have it as a CGI construct. There's several ways you could animate Ardi. But the colour of Ardi, her hair and size and shape of the soft tissue is informed guesswork, soft tissue doesn't usually fossilise. I always liaise with an expert and we find a realistic compromise."Was there was anything she couldn't do? "I did the tigers in Gladiator; when creating living creatures I think the big cats and human new-born babies are the hardest. Their bodies move as one, in a fluid way, whereas dogs have a chunky movement and they are easier to do. In this business, 'less is more'. All a new-born baby needs when sleeping in a cot is a subtle, animatronic bladder."Animal behaviourAnimal researchBiologyZoologyAnimalsCarole Jahmeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Senate passes legislation to split Telstra The Federal Government has secured passage through the Senate of its legislation to split Telstra's wholesale and retail operations. abc.net.au |