|
|
iterations KnowledgeWall®
Display
This page provides
a sampling of the Weak
Signal® Research being conducted by iterations.
New articles will be posted here approximately once per month.
Please e-mail the webmaster
with your contributions, questions and comments.
Past Knowledge Wall pages can be accessed
from the Site Index
page.
| July, 2001 |
|
Agent Title
|
Agent Author
|
Agent Source
|
Agent Date
|
Keywords
|
|
|
Declan Butler
|
|
June 28, 2001
|
databases, publishing,
|
| "A powerful congressional committee has
passed a budget bill which, if enacted, could close down
PubScience, a free search service for the physical sciences
literature, operated by the US Department of Energy (DoE)." |
|
|
|
|
|
June 28, 2001
|
databases, publishing, editorial
|
| A Nature (a for-profit scientific journal)
editorial claiming that "a congressional committee
has erred in its appropriate desire to support free enterprise." |
|
|
|
Seth Shulman
|
Technology Review
|
June 2001
|
databases, libraries, commonwealth, information,
IP, copyright,
|
| Shulman expresses concern that the pay-per-use
publishing model is destroying our notion of publicly accessible
information - the library. |
|
|
|
Joyce M. Latham
|
First Monday
|
July 2001
|
databases, library, community, public, commons,
|
| "It is the position of this paper that
the public library in the United States today is an essential
avenue for the development of debate on the entire range
of topics - political, social, economic, and recreational
- that engage the American public. In order to fulfill that
function the public library must be immune to the imposition
of any particular orthodoxy of belief. The public librarian,
functioning as a professional, is fully equipped to determine
the policies and practices that will ensure that function.
The public library patron must be unencumbered by apprehension
when approaching a librarian for assistance in research."
|
|
|
|
Dan Gillmor
|
San Jose Mercury News
|
June 13, 2001
|
database, library, Paul Allen, encyclopedia,
|
| Dan Gillmor's column about Paul Allen's project
to create "The Final Encyclopedia," the ultimate
reference and information tool -- a computing machine providing
fast and useful access to humanity's collective knowledge. |
|
|
|
Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Adrienne Fairhall
|
|
June 28, 2001
|
linguistics, language, innovation, printing,
|
|
Printing technology co-evolved with the written representation
of language.
An interesting essay on "the transition from manuscript
to print," concluding that it "was a two-way
negotiation between the new technologies of page and type
reproduction and the written representation of language
itself," with "far-reaching repercussions, addressing
in advance the challenge of our own transition to purely
digital representations of text."
|
|
|
|
Fred Pearce
|
New Scientist
|
July 4, 2001
|
climate change, Kyoto Protocol, economics, environment,
philosophy of science,
|
| "With the Kyoto Protocol on the verge
of collapse, the search is on for a formula to get us off
the hook of global warming. One of the main contenders is
a proposal by a professional violinist with no scientific
training. Aubrey Meyer has entranced scientists and enraged
economists and many environmentalists with his idea, but
it is winning high-profile backers, such as China and the
European Parliament. He says it embraces science, logic,
fairness, even art. Could it yet save the world?" |
|
|
|
Steve Bunk
|
The Scientist
|
July 9, 2001
|
environment, climate change, living systems,
Biosphere 2, Gaia,
|
|
"Columbia's western campus takes on global warming."
A short article providing a bit of an update on the status
of one of the world's largest living laboratories.
|
|
|
The Arsenic Eliminator
|
Fenella Saunders
|
Discover
|
July 2001
|
environment, arsenic, water, economics, solution,
|
|
Xiaoguang Meng and George Korfiatis at the Stevens Institute
of Technology in New Jersey have developed a water filtration
system cheap enough for villagers in Bangladesh.
Yet for some reason lowering the arsenic levels in drinking
water in the US to 10 parts per billion is "too expensive"?
|
|
|
|
Marina Chicurel
|
|
June 8, 2001
|
genetics, genomics, evolution, biology,
|
| "Intriguing hints from cell and molecular
biologists suggest that they might, but evolutionary biologists
are not yet convinced." |
|
|
New Genetics’ Drain on Public Health
|
Robert Pollack
|
San Jose Mercury News
|
July 8, 2001
|
health, genomics, commonwealth, medicine,
|
|
"Our fascination with genome research limits what's
done for disease prevention."
In this editorial, Pollack makes the distinction between
improving the health of the individual and improving the
health of the entire community. While these are not mutually
exclusive goals, they involve a different set of priorities.
|
|
|
|
Thomas Eisner and Paul R. Ehrlich
|
|
June 29, 2001
|
health, pathogens, antibiotics, disease,
|
| An editorial reporting that "We have
recently received, from a highly placed scientific source,
a remarkable document. It was appended to an e-mail announcement
about a computer virus and appears to be the keynote address
from a convention of the World Pathogen Association (WPA).
The text bears the label "as delivered" and is entitled
"Our Infective Future: The New Agenda." In it, the WPA leader,
the Presidential Prion, announces a profound change in policy
that should be of grave concern to humanity, because it
portends a shift in the goals of our major predators. We
are grateful to Science for communicating the text in its
entirety." |
|
|
|
David Paydarfar and William J. Schwartz
|
|
April 6, 2001
|
innovation, knowledge creation, algorithm, health,
medicine
|
|
An editorial in which the authors present a 5-step algorithm
for the process of knowledge creation. Steps include:
- Slow down to explore
- Read, but not too much
- Persue quality for its own sake
- Look at the raw data
- Cultivate smart friends
|
|
|
|
Goldie Glumenstyk
|
The Chronicle of Higher Education
|
June 22, 2001
|
science policy, academic, industry, corporate,
pharmaceutical, Novartis,
|
| "Critics of Berkeley-Novartis pact can't
point to business intrusions, but fears persist." |
|
|
|
Ann Thayer
|
|
July 2, 2001
|
philosophy of science, Web, Internet, Innocentive,
research, e-business,
|
|
"Just-launched Innocentive is the first independent
e-business venture of drug producer Eli Lilly & Co. Developers
of the site hope it will expand scientific collaboration
by becoming an online home for posting scientific problems
that researchers will be rewarded for solving."
Innocentive
is the latest example in the growing marketplace of websites
offering the opportunity to both post challenges to others,
as well as to solve challenges posted by others. Other
examples include Bounty
Quest and HelloBrain.
|
|
|
|
Fred Pearce
|
New Scientist
|
July 2, 2001
|
IP, patents, intellectual commons, agriculture,
|
| "The threat that plant breeders could
lose free access to varieties of the key food crops that
feed the hungry ended on July 1. Governments from 161 nations
agreed on an "international understanding" that
will prevent many of the word's plant varieties from being
covered by restrictive patent agreements." |
|
|
|
Jeffrey A. Chester
|
Technology Review
|
June 2001
|
Internet, AOL Time-Warner, walled gardens, choice,
Code,
|
| "Left unchecked, cable firms will funnel
Internet traffic to their own content - and the Web won't
be worldly or wise." |
|
|
The Telecom System
|
|
Technology Review
|
June 2001
|
Internet, web, telecommunications, broadband,
|
| How that e-mail gets to your desk. A nice
graphic from the monthly "Visualize" column showing
the basics behind the modern telecommunication network. |
|
|
|
David Voss
|
|
June 29, 2001
|
Web, Internet, communication, telegraph,
|
| This short Nota Bene piece on communications
technology includes a discussion of "The Once and Future
Web, Worlds Woven by the Telegraph and the Internet"
a play by Jerry James, and a website
from the National Library of Medicine. |
|
|
|
Will Knight
|
New Scientist
|
July 4, 2001
|
wireless, ID, chip, counterfeit, privacy,
|
| "A tiny integrated circuit, that can
transmit information wirelessly and is small enough to be
embedded in paper, has been developed by Hitachi. It provides
a new way to authenticate bank notes, legal documents and
other products." |
|
|
|
Henry Jenkins
|
Technology Review
|
June 2001
|
media, convergence,
|
| "What's all this talk about "media convergence,"
this dumb industry idea that all media will meld into one,
and we'll get all of our news and entertainment through
one box? Few contemporary terms generate more buzz - and
less honey. Consider this column a primer on the real media
convergence, because it's on the verge of transforming our
culture as profoundly as the Renaissance did." |
|
|
|
Philip S. Anton, Richard Silberglitt, and James
Scheider
|
RAND
|
2001
|
technology, bio, nano, materials science, information,
RAND, K-Base,
|
| "Various technologies have the potential
for significant and dominant global effects within the next
few decades. This report provides a quick look at global
technology trends in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and
materials technology and their implications for information
technology and the world in 2015." |
|
| A note on access:
Sources marked with an * require a subscription for most
access. Please contact Jeff
if you would like help getting copies of these articles. In addition
to providing you with a copy of the article, this will inform us
about how useful these particular items are to the ValueWeb ®
and whether or not we should pursue getting an institutional subscription
to these journals. |
|
