Science & Technology

Controversial blog list of predatory publishers, journals disappears from the web

Dalmeet Singh Chawla
Science Magazine
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 17:00 UTC

A popular blog that lists "potential, possible, or probable predatory" publishers and journals has disappeared, but it is not clear why.

The blog—started in 2010 by librarian Jeffrey Beall of the University of Colorado in Denver (CU Denver)—now states: "This service is no longer is available."

Beall declined to comment. But a CU Denver spokesperson told Science Insider that Beall made a "personal decision" to take down his list of low-quality journals that charge authors a fee to publish, often with little or no review or editing. The spokesperson says the blog was not hacked, nor was it taken down as a result of legal threats, and Beall will remain on the school's faculty. The spokesperson could not confirm whether the blog's removal is permanent.

"I'm surprised and concerned," says pseudonymous science blogger Neuroskeptic. "Beall's list is (was?) extremely valuable because predatory journals are a huge problem."

Some are circulating a cached version of Beall's list on Twitter. Others speculated on social media that the shutdown may have something to do with the transfer of its lists to the company Cabell's International in Beaumont, Texas. But the firm has publicly said it is in "no way involved" with the blog's closure. Nevertheless, Cabell's noted that it has been developing its own blacklist, working with Beall as a consultant, since 2015, and plans to launch it later this year.

Lacey Earle, vice president of business development at Cabell's International, tweeted that Beall "was forced to shut down blog due to threats & politics."

Comment: To read more on Jeffrey Beall and the corrupt publishers he exposed, see: Corruption in Science: Who's afraid of peer review?

Artificial intelligence headset composes tailor-made music

Sputnik
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 19:57 UTC

An artificial intelligence headset that records brain waves, links them to the individual's moods, and then composes original music to uplift its user's feelings has been invented.

The device, developed by a team of Japanese scientists from Osaka University and Tokyo City University and a research institute in Belgium, was unveiled on January 16, Japanese newspaper Asahi reported.

To design the headset the scientists recorded the brain waves of volunteers while they listened to different music samples ranging from J-Pop to nursery rhymes. Based on this data, they create a personalized "emotional music model" for each individual. The AI first studied the relations between the music and the emotions of a particular person and then writes the ideal musical composition.

The story reminds of the famous quotation from the movie "I, Robot" and makes us think again in what unexpected way computers might become better than us.

Who needs men? Female shark reproduces without males after years alone

Alice Klein
New Scientist
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC

Who needs men? A female shark separated from her long-term mate has developed the ability to have babies on her own.

Leonie the zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum) met her male partner at an aquarium in Townsville, Australia, in 1999. They had more than two dozen offspring together before he was moved to another tank in 2012.

From then on, Leonie did not have any male contact. But in early 2016, she had three baby sharks.

Intrigued, Christine Dudgeon at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues began fishing for answers.

Comment: See also: Female termites found to clone themselves via asexual reproduction

Researchers find rare lymphocytes in meninges surrounding brain

Josh Barney
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:18 UTC

© Sachin Gadani, UVA School of Medicine
Researchers found “type 2 innate lymphocytes” – already known to occur in the gut, lungs and skin – in membranes surrounding the brain, near where previously unknown vessels connect the brain and immune system.

The University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered a rare and powerful type of immune cell in the meninges around the brain, suggesting the cells may play a critical but previously unappreciated role in battling Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, meningitis and other neurological diseases, in addition to supporting our healthy mental functioning. By harnessing the cells' power, doctors may be able to develop new treatments for neurological diseases, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injuries - even migraines.

Further, the researchers suspect the cells may be the missing link connecting the brain and the microbiota in our guts, a relationship already shown important in the development of Parkinson's disease.

Unexpected Presence

The cells, known as "type 2 innate lymphocytes," previously have been found in the gut, lungs and skin - the body's barriers to disease. Their discovery in the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain, comes as a surprise.

They were found as UVA researcher Jonathan Kipnis explored the implications of his lab's game-changing discovery last year that the brain and the immune system are directly connected via vessels long thought not to exist.

High-tech military lasers could heat the Earth's atmosphere and create a giant surveillance lens in the sky

Nicolas West
Activist Post
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 20:52 UTC

One thing that can safely be said about the military-industrial complex is that they are never short of ideas. Often outlandish and costly ideas, but they do offer up a continuous stream of mind-melting possibilities. Case in point: heating the Earth's atmosphere with lasers to create a "giant magnifying glass" for enhanced surveillance.

One of the more recent military trends is the development (and imminent implementation) of lasers and electronic warfare. The concept has appeared in new proposals for drones and anti-drones that utilize the electromagnetic spectrum for "death ray" weapons like the Falcon Shield and the High Energy Laser system.

Now, scientists at BAE Systems, one of the largest defense contractors in the world, is looking to combine the use of lasers and advanced optics to literally manipulate the atmosphere into becoming both a surveillance device and a "deflector shield" to protect against the laser weapons of the future. The system is called Laser Developed Atmospheric Lens (LDAL).

Giant 'wave' traversed Venus in December 2015 - Largest-ever observed in solar system

Andrew Liptak
The Verge
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 13:57 UTC

The Japanese probe Akatsuki has observed a massive gravity wave in the atmosphere of Venus. This is not the first time such a wave was observed on the Solar System's second planet, but it is the largest ever recorded, stretching just over 6,000 miles from end to end. Its features also suggest that the dynamics of Venus' atmosphere are more complex than previously thought.

An atmospheric gravity wave is a ripple in the density of a planet's atmosphere, according to the European Space Agency. (This isn't a gravitational wave, which is a ripple in space-time.) We have these waves in Earth's atmosphere, too; they interfere with weather and cause turbulence. Scientists have observed atmospheric gravity waves on Venus before: the European Space Agency's Venus Express spotted several before the end of its mission in 2014. Since its initial observations, Akatsuki has spotted several smaller structures with its infrared cameras in April and May 2016.

Akatsuki spotted this particular gravity wave, described in a paper published today in Nature Geoscience, when the probe arrived at the planet on December 7th, 2015. The spacecraft then lost sight of it on December 12th, 2015, because of a change in Akatsuki's orbit. When the probe returned to a position to observe the bow-shaped structure on January 15th, 2016, the bright wave had vanished.

Comment: They don't actually know that it's a gravity wave, contrary to the certitude in the above article. From the New York Times:

In a paper published Monday by the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists working on the mission describe their observations in detail and suggest it was a "gravity wave" — a disturbance in the winds caused by the underlying topography that propagated upward.

The bow-shape arc appeared above Aphrodite Terra, a highland region about the size of Africa that rises up to three miles from the surface. Scientists working on data from the European Space Agency's Venus Express reported finding a similar disturbance in the atmosphere.

The authors of the new paper said that numerical simulations provided preliminary support for the idea, but that they still could not explain how the gravity wave forms and propagates in the lower atmosphere. Or why the prominent smile was seen in December 2015 and not since.

In October 2014, Comet Siding-Spring passed so close to Mars that it caused that planet's atmosphere to glow.

Also, sometime between 2012 and 2014, Mars acquired 400+ fresh meteor craters.

Back in March/April 2012, 'clouds' were spotted on Mars for the first time (in what 'should have been' an 'impossibility').

We don't know how this all connects, but we suggest that these events (and more besides) all indicate significant changes taking place at a solar system-wide level.

Military spy laser concept aims to transform Earth's atmosphere into a giant magnifying glass to snoop on enemies

Shivali Best
MailOnline
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 20:59 UTC

© BAE Systems
BAE Systems is working on a new type of directed energy laser and lens system, which could allow the military to spy on enemy activity, as well as form a 'deflector shield' to protect aircraft from enemy attacks

The idea of a laser that can turn Earth's atmosphere into a giant magnifying glass may sound like science fiction.

But engineers say that this could be a reality within the next 50 years.

BAE Systems has come up with a concept for a laser that creates structures in the Earth's atmosphere with similar properties to lenses.

This could help it spy on enemies as well as act as form a 'deflector shield' to protect aircraft from enemy attacks.

George Will: "Academia may now be beyond satire"

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Fri, 13 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC

Note to readers: This Sunday column by George Will appeared in my local newspaper this week, and I thought it relevant to repeat the headline and excerpts of it here, because what Will discusses is relevant to the fractured state of climate science. Peer review has turned into "pal review" due to the small population of qualified researchers in climate, and many of the same lessons taught by an exercise in taunting the peer review process in 1996 are germane to the publication of climate science today, where there seems to be an air of "anything goes as long as it goes with our thinking". On the opposite side, we have garbage papers accepted by people who transposed their names to get past what they feared would be gatekeeping.

Publishing a paper in a peer reviewed journal is by no means a guarantee of accuracy. Just look what happened to Eric Steig with his much ballyhooed front cover paper espousing warming in Antarctica in the world's most prestigious journal Nature, in 2009. Climate skeptics soon discovered that the warming in Antarctica was nothing more than a mathematical artifact of some shonky Mannian-style methodology (Michael Mann was a co-author), due to familiar problems Mann had with his hockey-stick methods, and the paper was quite rightly trounced by a rebuttal paper. But, it took a huge amount of work, ten months of peer-review, and the headlines that original flawed paper received still reverberate today.

Comment: Going back to 2007, and all but forgotten:

New Peer-Reviewed Study Finds 'Global Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence'

For a different take on the issue of climate and other aspects of our world, have a read from Pierre Lescaudron (Author) and Laura Knight-Jadczyk (Contributor) book: Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World.

As for George Will, the Pulitzer Prize columnist (a little removed from the discussion of peer review), you can get a sense of where he is coming from with his college commencement speech, which was never heard on campus:

The speech every 2015 college grad needs to hear

The Search for DNA - On Mars

Adela Talbot
PHYS.org
Fri, 13 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC

Astrobiologist alumna Alexandra Pontefract, PhD'13 (Geology), knows finding DNA on the Red Planet will be no easy feat. But it is possible. What's more, if DNA is found, it's not far-fetched to think it would be proof of shared ancestry between Earth and Mars.

"There is a really good argument for the fact that if there was life on Mars, it would have shared ancestry with Earth. That's because back towards the origins of the solar system, between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, Earth and Mars had formed, and there is evidence they were both habitable at that point in time," said Pontefract.

"At the time, there was something going on called the Late Heavy Bombardment, and meant the inner solar system was being hit with lots and lots of meteorites. There was a big exchange of rocks between Mars and Earth. There have been studies that have shown biology can survive being ejected from a planet and survive in space. We know it's possible; it's really amazing."

SpaceX successfully lands Falcon 9 rocket after carrying 10 iridium satellites into orbit

RT
Sat, 14 Jan 2017 20:52 UTC

© Gene Blevins / Reuters
SpaceX Falcon rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, U.S., January 14, 2017

SpaceX has successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket after delivering a payload of millions of dollars worth of satellites into orbit, less than four months after a similar mission was scuppered by a fiery explosion.

Consistently sending hardware into orbit is one of the chief goals of Elon Musk's SpaceX, but Saturday's launch was the first delivery mission since August 30 when things went pear-shaped.

In the first stage of Saturday's mission to and from low orbit, the Falcon 9 successfully carried a payload of 10 Iridium satellites into space from Vandenberg Air Base, California.

The reusable rocket then made a safe landing to the Pacific Ocean droneship, 'Just Read the Instructions.'

New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good...

parzival

Bill Gates is going to be the one with the uncertain future,,, * New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer...

parzival

The more we hear about adverse affects the more we will merely shrug. It's a catch 22. Is that an asteroid trail in the photo?

sass

Welcome to the new normal. The more sensory exposure we have about such things, the less it is an issue.

sass

more misbehaving phuqqin' jewzskies starring on the sott; speaks for itself

Jibrish

Science & Technology

Controversial blog list of predatory publishers, journals disappears from the web

Artificial intelligence headset composes tailor-made music

Who needs men? Female shark reproduces without males after years alone

Researchers find rare lymphocytes in meninges surrounding brain

High-tech military lasers could heat the Earth's atmosphere and create a giant surveillance lens in the sky

Giant 'wave' traversed Venus in December 2015 - Largest-ever observed in solar system

Military spy laser concept aims to transform Earth's atmosphere into a giant magnifying glass to snoop on enemies

George Will: "Academia may now be beyond satire"

The Search for DNA - On Mars

SpaceX successfully lands Falcon 9 rocket after carrying 10 iridium satellites into orbit

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