Educational Gaming

Bego,
Here is the information on the EduFrag project (using Unreal Tournament) you requested today at the conference call:
Wiki
Paper
Blog

Here is an example of how it is used as a race in class.

I would be willing to help in putting together a maze on a topic relevant to CWB.

Jean-Claude

ExxonMobil's inconvenient truth

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/16154788.htm Posted on Sun, Dec. 03, 2006 ExxonMobil's inconvenient truth By Laurie David At hundreds of screenings this year of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie. The producers of former Vice President Al Gore's film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer. The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said. In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other ``special interests'' might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer ``political'' endorsement of the film; and they saw ``little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members'' in accepting the free DVDs. Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden. Still, maybe the NSTA is just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place ``unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.'' One of those supporters, it turns out, is the ExxonMobil Corp. That's the same ExxonMobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers questioning the role of human-made emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits. It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, ExxonMobil is going after our kids, too. And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's ``Building a Presence for Science'' program, an electronic networking initiative intended to ``bring standards-based teaching and learning'' into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. ExxonMobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education. So much for special interests and implicit endorsements. In the past year alone, according to its Web site, ExxonMobil's foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school. And ExxonMobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. The oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox, through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars. NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called ``Running on Oil'' and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies have fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called ``You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel,'' a shameless pitch for oil dependence. The education organization also hosts an annual convention, described on ExxonMobil's Web site as featuring ``more than 450 companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching enhancements.'' The company ``regularly displays'' its ``many . . . education materials'' at the exhibition. John Borowski, a science teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free corporate lesson plans. Along with propaganda challenging global warming from ExxonMobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto. ``The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission,'' Borowski says. ``The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts.'' An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: ``Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.'' So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy. It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day. As for ExxonMobil -- which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions -- this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years. While NSTA and ExxonMobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching with all this, 50,000 DVDs are sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework. LAURIE DAVID, a producer of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' is a Natural Resources Defense Council trustee and founder of StopGlobalWarming.org. She wrote this article for the Washington Post.

© 2006 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.mercurynews.com

AIDS Day story

Here is what Magic Johnson has been doing recently.

Please also see the AIDSFreeAfrica website here.

Please give to your favorite AIDS charity today.

ELMO

High court to hear pivotal global warming case

Please see the link here.

ELMO

Sorption of Contaminants onto Engineered Nanomaterials

Referred by Elisabeth Easley.

New approach to arsenic removal using magnetite nanocrystals:

http://cohesion.rice.edu//centersandinst/cben/research.cfm?doc_id=5100

Media and NOAA

Do media policies equal scientific facts? Read this if you have time (quick read).

Quick excerpt:

Officials at NASA and the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA, pledged to cooperate with any inquiry but defended their media policies.

"We support and encourage a process of open, peer-reviewed science, and the role of our public affairs office, like any other organization, is to coordinate and ensure that media get timely, accurate and thorough information," said Richard Mills, spokesman for Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez.

ELMO

Nano-rust + magnets removes arsenic

Please see this article for a new approach to rusty nails removing arsenic from drinking water.

ELMO

Open Access Drug Resource: Forum in Buffalo Wed. Nov. 8th

Possibly of interest:

Stewart M. Brouwer of Professional Notes mentions an upcoming Forum in Buffalo, Wednesday, November 8.

I'm conducting a public forum at the University at Buffalo about developing a new open access drug resource, whole cloth, as a wiki. Potentially, it will be able to be harnessed as an alternative to pricey clinical drug information systems and online formularies, while doubling as a drug education aid for information literacy efforts.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Water hyacinth project for arsenic remediation update

The arsenic remediation project using water hyacinth root has been OKd by the California Department of Waterways.


Don Condley, the Supervisor at California Department of Waterways, said wecould come out and work with their people to obtain hyacinth root They will be harvesting between November and March. Chemists Without Borders had planned to do this in November, but now we might be able to make several trips. Here's what Don said:

They harvest between 15-30 55 gallon barrels of hyacinth per day, or if they are near a levy, they simply throw it up on the levy to dry out. Don suggested we would only need a couple of people to separate out the roots and put them in plastic bags.


Stay tuned.

ELMO

58 Open Access Chemistry Journals

As of today, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 58 titles under Chemistry.

The list of titles might be of interest to Chemists Without Borders members, as the journals are published in many countries - including Japan, China, Korea, Slovenia, Croatia, Thailand, Turkey, India, the USA, to name a few.

One way any Chemist can easily advance the cause of Chemists Without Borders is to make a point of reading or browsing through journals from developing countries. Cite a fellow researcher in a developing country - or invite them to participate in a research project.

To advance the cause of Chemists Without Borders' Chemistry Education, have students do at least one assignment using a resource such as the DOAJ list, and specify that students include the works of authors from developing countries.

Negroponte meets Gadafy: All Libyan pupils to get laptop and web access

One Laptop Per Child

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | All Libyan pupils to get laptop and web access

Open Chemistry Position Statement

Chemists Without Borders

Open Chemistry Position Statement

Synopsis

Within the vision of Chemists Without Borders, Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature is the library, a global library with equal access to our shared knowledge for all. Open Access is necessary to development of equitable access to chemistry education and research opportunities in both the developed and developing world. Chemists Without Borders strongly supports Open Access, as defined in the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda statements, and the measures necessary to implement open access, such as funding agencies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund, and educating researchers about Open Access.

Open Source Science promises more rapid advances in research through open sharing of research information at all stages of the reseach process. Open Source Science means more opportunities for collaboration, whether to facilitate Chemists Without Borders projects or provide researchers with more opportunities for participation in international research collaborations. Chemists Without Borders strongly supports Open Source Science within the context of Open Access.

Open Access

Definition (from the Budapest Open Access Initiative), at:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml

“By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

For the avoidance of doubt, open access from the perspective of Chemists Without Borders includes the freedom to extract data from the full-text, whether singly or in a collection of articles, and the freedom to download the supplemental data.

True Open Access means free availability immediately on publication, or before as preprints. There are many intermediary steps towards Open Access, such as free access to back issues of journals.

There are two main approaches to Open Access. Articles can be made openly accessible on publication by the journals themselves, using one of a variety of business models (open access publishing, or the gold road). Or, authors can publish in subscription-based journals, and self-archive their work in an open access archive or repository (self-archiving, or the green road).

Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature advances the vision of Chemists Without Borders in several ways. Indeed, with respect to this literature, open access epitomizes Chemistry Literature Without Borders, as it means equal, barrier-free access to scholarly knowledge for everyone, everywhere.

Equity in access to the scholarly literature is a necessary step towards equity in chemistry education. In the short term, Chemists Without Borders is likely to be primarily composed of individuals from wealthy countries helping those in the developed world. The goal of Chemists Without Borders, however, must be a world where no one area is more needy than another, except perhaps temporarily in response to an environmental crisis. In this world, Chemists Without Borders is a global community of scientists where any region could be either a recipient of help, or a helper, depending on the circumstances. Equity in access to chemistry education brings us closer to this goal.

In the short term, more equity in access to the scholarly literature means more partners for Chemists Without Borders in the developing world, more students and faculty from the developed world with the means to participate, and better and more reliable access to the research literature for Chemists Without Borders volunteers in the field.

It has been shown that the research article that is Open Access has more impact, that is, an article that is open access is more likely to be read and cited. If those who research topics of importance to the developing world (and Chemists Without Borders) openly share the results of their research, answers can be found faster. Also, when authors in developing countries share their work as open access, they have more impact; their work is more visible, searchable, and retrievable.

It seems likely that the Open Access impact advantage will enhance the prestige of authors and universities in the developing world, attract further research on the topics of interest to the these authors, occasionally attract the attention of potential business partners, and increase the authors’ chances of attracting funding or opportunities such as international collaboration on research projects. For example, if an author in the developing world publishes their work as open access, a Chemists Without Borders member is more likely to read their work, and this could lead to a partnership on a Chemists Without Borders project.

Open Source Science

Definition:
Research already in progress is opened up to allow labs anywhere in the world to contribute experiments. The deeply networked nature of modern laboratories, and the brief down-time that all labs have between projects, make this concept quite feasible. Moreover, such distributed-collaborative research spreads new ideas and discoveries even faster, ultimately accelerating the scientific process. Thanks to Jamais Cascio.

There are many approaches to the sharing of scientific information throughout the research process; Chemists Without Borders encourages experimentation with approaches that meet the criteria of open access along with open source. One example is blogging of experiments; there are many other approaches to open source science, and more will be developed as the potential of the world wide web unfolds.

Open source science has a powerful potential to advance research in and about the developing world, as it allows researchers who may not have as much expensive equipment to participate in collaborative research in a meaningful way.

References

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm

Suggested Actions

Educate chemists and chemistry students about open access and open source science, for example through the Chemists Without Borders blog and newsletter.

Create an open archive for chemistry; help develop and support policies requiring deposit of research articles, for example funders' and universities' policies (note: some resources – technology, expertise – required).

Write letters to funding agencies supporting open access policy initiatives in development, for example the Federal Research to Public Access Act in the U.S.

Encourage chemists to publish in open access journals and/or self-archive their work. Encourage chemistry publishers to move to open access business models and revise authors’ agreement to facilitate self-archiving.

Endorsed October 12, 2006


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Chemists Without Borders versus CWB

Chemists Without Borders

Please avoid using the meaningless abbreviation CWB. The only names we have are Chemists Without Borders and possibly Chemie Sans Frontieres.

Thanks,

Bego

DRAFT Open Chemistry Position Statement

See the Open Access Position Statement. This DRAFT is available for historical purposes.

Chemists Without Borders

DRAFT Open Chemistry Position Statement(and Suggested Actions)

This is the Second Draft of what was originally titled the Open Access Open Source Position Statement, reflecting comments from CWB members requesting a stronger statement on open chemistry in general, open source science, and open data.

Synopsis

Within the vision of Chemists Without Borders, Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature is the library, a global library with equal access to our shared knowledge for all. Open Access is necessary to development of equitable access to chemistry education and research opportunities in both the developed and developing world. CWB strongly supports Open Access, as defined in the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda statements, and the measures necessary to implement open access, such as funding agencies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund, and educating researchers about Open Access.

Open Source Science promises more rapid advances in research through open sharing of research information at all stages of the reseach process. Open Source Science means more opportunities for collaboration, whether to facilitate CWB projects or provide researchers with more opportunities for participation in international research collaborations. CWB strongly supports Open Source Science within the context of Open Access.

Open Access

Definition (from the Budapest Open Access Initiative), at:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml

“By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

For the avoidance of doubt, open access from the perspective of Chemists Without Borders includes the freedom to extract data from the full-text, whether singly or in a collection of articles, and the freedom to download the supplemental data.

True Open Access means free availability immediately on publication, or before as preprints. There are many intermediary steps towards Open Access, such as free access to back issues of journals.

There are two main approaches to Open Access. Articles can be made openly accessible on publication by the journals themselves, using one of a variety of business models (OA publishing, or the gold road). Or, authors can publish in subscription-based journals, and self-archive their work in an open access archive or repository (self-archiving, or the green road).

Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature advances the vision of Chemists Without Borders in several ways. Indeed, with respect to this literature, open access epitomizes Chemistry Literature Without Borders, as it means equal, barrier-free access to scholarly knowledge for everyone, everywhere.

Equity in access to the scholarly literature is a necessary step towards equity in chemistry education. In the short term, CWB is likely to be primarily composed of individuals from wealthy countries helping those in the developed world. The goal of CWB, however, must be a world where no one area is more needy than another, except perhaps temporarily in response to an environmental crisis. In this world, CWB is a global community of scientists where any region could be either a recipient of help, or a helper, depending on the circumstances. Equity in access to chemistry education brings us closer to this goal.

In the short term, more equity in access to the scholarly literature means more partners for CWB in the developing world, more students and faculty from the developed world with the means to participate, and better and more reliable access to the research literature for CWB volunteers in the field.

It has been shown that the research article that is OA has more impact, that is, an article that is open access is more likely to be read and cited. If those who research topics of importance to the developing world (and CWB) openly share the results of their research, answers can be found faster. Also, when authors in developing countries share their work as open access, they have more impact; their work is more visible, searchable, and retrievable.

It seems likely that the OA impact advantage will enhance the prestige of authors and universities in the developing world, attract further research on the topics of interest to the these authors, occasionally attract the attention of potential business partners, and increase the authors’ chances of attracting funding or opportunities such as international collaboration on research projects. For example, if an author in the developing world publishes their work as open access, a CWB member is more likely to read their work, and this could lead to a partnership on a CWB project.

Open Source Science

Definition:
Research already in progress is opened up to allow labs anywhere in the world to contribute experiments. The deeply networked nature of modern laboratories, and the brief down-time that all labs have between projects, make this concept quite feasible. Moreover, such distributed-collaborative research spreads new ideas and discoveries even faster, ultimately accelerating the scientific process.

There are many approaches to the sharing of scientific information throughout the research process; CWB encourages experimentation with approaches that meet the criteria of open access along with open source. One example is blogging of experiments; there are many other approaches to open source science, and more will be developed as the potential of the world wide web unfolds.

Open source science has a powerful potential to advance research in and about the developing world, as it allows researchers who may not have as much expensive equipment to participate in collaborative research in a meaningful way.

References

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm

Suggested Actions

Educate chemists and chemistry students about open access and open source science, for example through the CWB blog and newsletter.

Create an open archive for chemistry; help develop and support policies requiring deposit of research articles, for example funders' and universities' policies (note: some resources – technology, expertise – required).

Write letters to funding agencies supporting open access policy initiatives in development, for example the Federal Research to Public Access Act in the U.S.

Encourage chemists to publish in open access journals and/or self-archive their work. Encourage chemistry publishers to move to open access business models and revise authors’ agreement to facilitate self-archiving.

Last revised October 11, 2006

CWB members: this position statement will be brought forward for voting at the next meeting, likely mid-October. Watch for more details in the next newsletter. Comments and questions are welcome, via blog, CWB list, at the next meeting, or contact me directly. If you are commenting on the blog, please indicate whether you are a CWB member.

The first draft open access position statement was highlighted on Peter Suber's Open Access News.

Thanks to Jamais Cascio via Jean-Claude Bradley for the definition of open source science.

Heather


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Melting glaciers and the implications.

Here's a story about how global warming will affect the global water supply, especially in South America and Asia, where they are less equipped to deal with water shortages.

Food for thought.

ELMO

AcademicBlogs: The Academic Blog Portal

Chemistry bloggers - add your blog to the Chemistry section of Academic Blogs: the Academic Blog Portal.

Thanks to Steve Bell via Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Ig Nobel prize winnners...

Read it and laugh.

ELMO

ps- sat next to Dudley Herschbach a few years ago near Boston, and was very impressed. Nice guy.

What you won't find...

Here' s what you won't find in the US news.

(Oil companies squabbling over extraction rights in Russia, and Russia pushing its own agenda...)

ELMO

ps- can anyone predict what this will do to oil prices?

"Dead" embryos produce live tissue

This is interesting.

Side note that the research is done in Serbia.

I should add that my partner is a diabetic (type 1, since 16) with recent kidney failure, and I am hopeful that someone will accomplish succesful technologies to combat these awful diseases.

ELMO

Pill Pushers Go Into Overdrive, Forbes, 4/28/2006. Perspective on pharmaceuticals and advertising

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/0,70760-0.html

Thanks to Bob Hansens for this article.

DRAFT Open Access Position Statement

Please see the Open Chemistry Position Statement, endorsed October 12, 2006.

Chemists Without Borders

DRAFT Position Statement on Open Access and Open Source Science (and Suggested Actions)

Synopsis

Within the vision of Chemists Without Borders, Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature is the library, a global library with equal access to our shared knowledge for all. Open Access is necessary to development of equitable access to chemistry education and research opportunities in both the developed and developing world. CWB strongly supports Open Access, as defined in the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda statements, and the measures necessary to implement open access, such as funding agencies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund, and educating researchers about Open Access.

Open Source Science promises more rapid advances in research through open sharing of research information at all stages of the reseach process. Open Source Science means more opportunities for collaboration, whether to facilitate CWB projects or provide researchers with more opportunities for participation in international research collaborations. CWB strongly supports Open Source Science within the context of Open Access.

Open Access

Definition (from the Budapest Open Access Initiative), at:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml

“By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

True Open Access means free availability immediately on publication, or before as preprints. There are many intermediary steps towards Open Access, such as free access to back issues of journals.

There are two main approaches to Open Access. Articles can be made openly accessible on publication by the journals themselves, using one of a variety of business models (OA publishing, or the gold road). Or, authors can publish in subscription-based journals, and self-archive their work in an open access archive or repository (self-archiving, or the green road).

Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature advances the vision of Chemists Without Borders in several ways. Indeed, with respect to this literature, open access epitomizes Chemistry Literature Without Borders, as it means equal, barrier-free access to scholarly knowledge for everyone, everywhere.

Equity in access to the scholarly literature is a necessary step towards equity in chemistry education. In the short term, CWB is likely to be primarily composed of individuals from wealthy countries helping those in the developed world. The goal of CWB, however, must be a world where no one area is more needy than another, except perhaps temporarily in response to an environmental crisis. In this world, CWB is a global community of scientists where any region could be either a recipient of help, or a helper, depending on the circumstances. Equity in access to chemistry education brings us closer to this goal.

In the short term, more equity in access to the scholarly literature means more partners for CWB in the developing world, more students and faculty from the developed world with the means to participate, and better and more reliable access to the research literature for CWB volunteers in the field.

It has been shown that the research article that is OA has more impact, that is, an article that is open access is more likely to be read and cited. If those who research topics of importance to the developing world (and CWB) openly share the results of their research, answers can be found faster. Also, when authors in developing countries share their work as open access, they have more impact; their work is more visible, searchable, and retrievable.

It seems likely that the OA impact advantage will enhance the prestige of authors and universities in the developing world, attract further research on the topics of interest to the these authors, occasionally attract the attention of potential business partners, and increase the authors’ chances of attracting funding or opportunities such as international collaboration on research projects. For example, if an author in the developing world publishes their work as open access, a CWB member is more likely to read their work, and this could lead to a partnership on a CWB project.

Open Source Science

There are many approaches to the sharing of scientific information throughout the research process; CWB encourages experimentation with approaches that meet the criteria of open access along with open source. One example is blogging of experiments; there are many other approaches to open source science, and more will be developed as the potential of the world wide web unfolds.

Open source science has a powerful potential to advance research in and about the developing world, as it allows researchers who may not have as much expensive equipment to participate in collaborative research in a meaningful way.

References

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm

Suggested Actions

Educate chemists and chemistry students about open access and open source science, for example through the CWB blog and newsletter.

Create an open archive for chemistry; help develop and support policies requiring deposit of research articles, for example funders' and universities' policies (note: some resources – technology, expertise – required).

Write letters to funding agencies supporting open access policy initiatives in development, for example the Federal Research to Public Access Act in the U.S.

Encourage chemists to publish in open access journals and/or self-archive their work. Encourage chemistry publishers to move to open access business models and revise authors’ agreement to facilitate self-archiving.

Last revised July 27, 2006

CWB members: this position statement will be brought forward for voting at the next meeting, likely mid-October, as we discussed at last Thursday's meeting. Watch for more details in the next newsletter. Comments and questions are welcome, via blog, CWB list, at the next meeting, or contact me directly. If you are commenting on the blog, please indicate whether you are a CWB member.

This draft open access position statement has been highlighted on Peter Suber's Open Access News.

Heather


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Internet access anywhere - Think of the possibilities!

Going to Amazon
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
Posted on Wed, Sep. 20, 2006

If the Internet can reach the middle of the Amazon jungle, then it can probably reach anywhere.

That's why Intel has decided to provide wireless Internet access to the remote Brazilian city of Parintins, which is home to 114,000 people on an island in the Amazon river. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett will christen the service today as an example of how the company can bring the Internet to poorer regions of the world.

In the past couple of months, more than 60 employees from Intel and its partners have set up the first high-speed wireless Internet connection in the city as a showcase for WiMax, the long-range version of WiFi wireless Internet that Intel has championed. The project is part of the Intel World Ahead philanthropic program, which seeks to bring wireless Internet access to less-modern parts of the world over the next five years.

``If we can be successful here, we will replicate this in other isolated communities around the world where electricity and telecommunications are unreliable,'' said Oscar Clarke, general manager for Intel Brazil. ``If Parintins can do it, it can be done anywhere.''

Parintins is certainly isolated. There are no roads to the city. It can only be reached by a 12-hour boat ride from Manaus, the nearest large city, or by airplane. Two hydroelectric plants supply electricity, but to only parts of the island.

The city needs Internet access in part for medical reasons, because it has only 32 doctors and one hospital, Clarke said.

WiMax is particularly well suited in this case because one WiMax radio tower can cover 30 miles or so, giving coverage to the entire city. The 300-foot WiMax tower is connected via a satellite link to the rest of the Internet.

Intel is donating a total of 65 computers to the hospital, a community center, and two local schools. Of the 190 schools in the city, only one has Internet access right now.

The city started as a native Indian village and is now famous for its Parintins Folklore Festival, which draws crowds from around the country. Barrett will fly into the city and visit four locations, each of which has a WiFi wireless Internet network that links into the WiMax network. Clarke said Intel was able to set up the network in just six weeks.

Other companies that assisted with the project include Cisco Systems, Proxim Wireless, Brazilian long-distance provider Embratel, Brazilian telecommunications firm CPdQ, Brazilian educational non-profit Bradesco Foundation, and the Amazonas State University.
Contact Dean Takahashi at dtakahashi@ mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5739.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/15562334.htm

AIDS affects children too, or have we forgotten that?

Victoria Hale Named 2006 MacArthur Fellow
Founder & CEO of the Institute of OneWorld Health Recognized for Pioneering Non-Profit Pharmaceutical Company

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named Victoria Hale, Ph.D., founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for OneWorld Health (iOWH), a 2006 MacArthur Fellow today. These prestigious Fellowships are awarded to individuals who have developed original and creative ideas that have the potential to make important contributions in the future. Dr. Hale is being honored as a Pharmaceutical Entrepreneur for creating a nonprofit model of drug development that is driven by the neglected health needs of people in the developing world.

"The MacArthur Fellowship will give OneWorld Health increased visibility and help us form entrepreneurial partnerships to ensure that people with the greatest need gain access to the new medicines we are developing. It will also help me look at ways to apply the model of OneWorld Health in other areas of global health," said Dr. Hale.

The MacArthur Foundation does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations for Fellows. Only twenty to twenty-five Fellows are chosen through a meticulous review process analyzing their work and overall promise. Fellows are awarded an unrestricted grant of $500,000 distributed over the course of five years.

Dr. Hale's recent honors include selection as an Ashoka Senior Fellow for leading work in social innovation (2006), Executive of the Year by Esquire Magazine (2005), the Economist Innovation Award for Social and Economic Innovation (2005), and the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2005).

Learn more about the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program.

Read the article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the MacArthur Fellows announcement.

http://www.oneworldhealth.org/media/e_newsletter_macarthur.php

Global Warming Propaganda funded by..... Tobacco Companies

This is ALMOST unbelievable.

ELMO

AIDS affects children too, or have we forgotten that?

This editorial appeared in the San Jose Mercury News last week.

    Posted on Thu, Sep. 14, 2006   

AIDS affects children too, or have we forgotten that?

By Ruthann Richter

In all the bluster of the recent International AIDS Conference in Toronto, where did the children go? It was stunning how little attention was paid to them, with hardly a mention of children in all the talk about how to contain the epidemic and treat those in need.

The epidemic is 25 years old, yet we are still at a stage where children are largely ignored in the policy arena and receive minimal funding to meet their needs, both physical and psychological. That is the case despite that 2.3 million of the world's children -- most of them in sub-Saharan Africa -- are now living and dying with HIV. And an additional 15 million are growing up without the nurturing hand of a mother or father because AIDS has taken them away.

``It is impossible to understand how, in the year 2006, we continue to fail to implement policies to address the torrent, the deluge, of orphan children,'' Stephen Lewis, the U.N. envoy for AIDS in Africa, said in closing the mammoth conference Aug. 18. ``I appeal to everyone to recognize that we're walking on the knife's edge of an unsolvable human catastrophe.''

While the number of orphans is escalating, only 3 to 5 percent of them receive any help from government programs, a figure Lewis called ``chilling.'' And though young children are particularly susceptible to the ravages of HIV, with 60 to 70 percent dying by their fifth birthday, fewer than 5 percent of those infected benefit from treatment.

The Clinton Foundation certainly must be credited for advancing the cause of children, helping bring down the cost of pediatric antiretrovirals to less than $200 a year and making these lifesaving drugs available to more than 10,000 children. But as Clinton himself acknowledged at the conference, it's a small fraction of the more than 500,000 youngsters with advanced disease who desperately need treatment to live.

Children continue to be discriminated against on many fronts. Kenyan pediatrician Ruth Nduati, the only plenary conference speaker who focused on children's issues, observed that while adults get free testing for HIV in Kenya, children have to pay a fee -- hardly an option for youngsters often living on the edge of starvation. And while there are 280 sites in the East African country that now hand out anti-AIDS drugs, only 76 of them offer them to children.

During my travels in Kenya, I visited a number of projects to help youngsters -- small, grass-roots programs run by local activists who have rushed in to fill the gap. These programs operate on shoestring budgets, without the benefit of aid from governments or global organizations, which have been woefully absent from the movement to care for orphans and vulnerable children.

Some programs, like the Mji Wa Neema (House of Hope) orphanage in Naivasha, are run by faith-based organizations, in this case the local Catholic Church. The parish priest, Father Daniel Kiriti, has been recast in the role of HIV activist, for he sees the orphans literally collecting at his doorstep. One child, only hours old, arrived early one Sunday morning -- a small package in a paper bag borne by a parishioner who had rescued her from the parish fence. Tolea, as she is called, is now thriving at the orphanage despite infection with HIV.

At another project in Gilgil, a retired nurse and a local cafe owner have cobbled together a home of last resort for children who have no other place to go. One resident, 2-year-old Mary Maishon, was within weeks of starving to death when they rescued her last year. Both her parents had died of AIDS, and her grandfather had virtually abandoned her. She had been living under a piece of cardboard and plastic with her 4-year-old sister and 3-year-old cousin. Mary had been crippled by malnutrition, unable to walk, and too traumatized to talk. She is alive today only because of the efforts of a few community activists working with scarce, donated funds.

It's unforgivable that the world continues to turn its back on children like Mary and Tolea. Saving the younger generation is not only the right thing -- the human thing -- to do, but it is also important for global security and stability. As Lewis warned, if we don't intervene now, ``We are inviting the whirlwind, and we will not be able to cope.''
RUTHANN RICHTER, director of media relations at the Stanford University School of Medicine, writes frequently on the topic of children and AIDS. She wrote this article for the Mercury News.


© 2006 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.mercurynews.com

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15515972.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Blue Obelisk

Open source chemistry folks, especially those going to ACS in San Francisco - might want to check out The Blue Obelisk Movement - sounds like this group has much in common with CWB! Thanks to
Peter Murray-Rust, via Peter Suber on Open Access News, for the tip.

ACS Open Access Option

The American Chemical Society has just announced its Open Access Option. Authors can make their work immediately openly accessible for a fee from $1,000 to $3,000 per article, depending on whether they are ACS members and their institutional libraries are subscribers. Kudos to ACS, and many thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.

The clock may be ticking...

Here is an interesting article regarding the "tipping point" before the point of no return for our climate.

Your thoughts?

ELMO

Peter Murray-Rust on Openness and Ethics in Science

Cambridge's Peter Murray-Rust, a chemist and leader of the open data movement, talks about Openness and Ethics in Science. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

California set to cap CO2 emissions

Lets see what happens...

ELMO

One TOPAZ for every village: PLoS Blog

A beautiful vision from Richard Cave on PLoS Blog. Thanks to Open Access News.

One Laptop per Child is closer to reality with the Children’s Machine (CM1). One of the key features is that it “creates its own mesh network out of the box. Each machine is a full-time wireless router. Children—as well as their teachers and families—in the remotest regions of the globe will be connected both to one another and to the Internet.” Each laptop will participate in an ad-hoc network with each laptop operating in a peer-to-peer fashion. This opens up a slew of possibilities for the laptops.


Why not have a TOPAZ server running in every village that could be browsed by every CM1 in the nearby network? The TOPAZ repository can contain Open Access articles published on medicine, neglected tropical diseases, etc. This would help build science and health capacity in low-income countries. But the TOPAZ repository isn’t constrained to just Open Access – it can contain any type of object from video presentations to textbooks.

Take a TOPAZ server and add every piece of educational material licensed by Creative Commons. Load the repository up with course material from MIT Open Courseware and Connexions Repository, textbooks, lesson plans, music lessons from Berklee Shares, museum resources, architectural solutions, agricultural information, etc. Setup a peer-to-peer TOPAZ network for information to be sent to remote repositories as soon as it is available. Put this in a village surrounded by CM1s and imagine the possibilities.

There’s talk that the CM1 will revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. The reality is that the CM1 laptops will be used by children and shared by their families. If the information is available, then the CM1 will truly revolutionize education.

Chemical Blogspace

CWB open source chemistry folks will like Chemical Blogspace.

Description:
Chemical blogspace collates posts from chemistry blogs and then does useful and interesting things with that data. For example, you can see which papers are currently being discussed by organic chemists, or which web pages are being linked to by chemoinformaticians.

It's sort of like a hot papers meeting with the entire chemistry blogging community.

Thanks to Open Access News and Richard Akerman from Science Library Pad,

Should we send a suggestion to add our blog, and Useful Chemistry? So far, all the categories are more traditional subdisciplinary ones. Should we suggest a category? Perhaps CWB should be its own category?

PLoS One: good news for chemists who depend on research funding

From Open Access News: PLoS One is Making a Splash.

PLoS ONE has had more submissions (70) in its first three weeks than any other PLoS journal in the same period.

PS: Congrats to PLoS and congrats to authors for seeing the value here and supporting something new.

Heather's Comment:

PLoS, the Public Library of Science, is an open access publisher competing for the top quality market. PLoS One, a new journal providing quality peer review for articles from any discipline, is receiving lots of submissions - already 70 since it was first announced 3 weeks ago. Why is this important for chemists without borders?. While this is good news for all researchers, PLoS One is particularly important for chemists, who currently have much fewer open access options than other disciplines. Physicists, for example, have been self-archiving virtually all their work, from the preprint stage, in arXiv for many years. In most other disciplines, the majority of journals allow authors to self-archive preprints and the author's own peer-reviewed postprint. In some areas, such as medicine, the full open access publishing options are substantial and growing rapidly. Up to this point, however, chemists have been at a disadvantage, with fewer open access publishers and self-archiving options. With funders beginning to require open access, and greatly preferring immediate open access, chemists were at a disadvantage until PLoS One.

I wonder how many of those first 70 submissions were from chemists?

Chemistry Central: new open access website

BioMedCentral (BMC), the world's largest open access publisher - today launched Chemistry Central, a new open access website currently featuring chemistry article from BMC journals, with plans to offer new open access chemistry journals, beginning with Chemistry Central Journal.

For CWB members from the research community, this is a wonderful opportunity to publish open access with a publisher who has already established impressive impact factors in the area of biomedicine, and ensuring that your research results are readily available to colleagues around the globe.

Would it make sense for CWB to consider creating its own peer-reviewed journal, perhaps?

More information, commentary and reactions can be found on today's Open Access News.

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call 8-17-2006 notes

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call, 8-17-2006

1. Agenda

1.1 Introductions
1.2 Open Access
1.3 Legal
1.4 Funding
1.5 Education
1.6 Conference Presentations
1.7 Arsenic Project
1.8 Communications
1.9 Vaccines & Medicines
1.10 Personnel & Roles
1.11 Unfinished Business
1.12 Feedback

2. Introductions

2.1 Steve Chambreau
2.2 William Doria
2.3 Bego Gerber
2.4 Rolande Hodel - in absentia
Steve, Bego, amazing confference... Jonson&Jonson just blew my mind - in a positive way - I'll give you a summary - maybe for the newsletter when I am back - can you bring up the topic that AIDSfreeAFRICA is looking for volunteers with technical and accounting expertise to join us in Cameroon Jan-Feb 2007? Sorry I will have to miss the call. Cheerfully, Rolande "The humanity of our world will be measured against the fate of Africa," said Horst Koehler, German President and former managing director of the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund, in his inauguration address in 2004. Dr. Rolande R. Hodel, Ph.D. 125 South Highland Ave. #3-B1 Ossining, NY 10562 914-923-2073 AIDSfreeAFRICA, Inc. http://www.AIDSfreeAFRICA.org Community Partnerships Against AIDS Programs Bamenda/Cameroon http://www.copaapcam.org


2.5 Heather Morrison
» See document: http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/2006/07/draft-open-access-position-statement.html
2.6 Meghann Mouyianis
2.7 Brian Wagner

3. Legal Issues

3.1 Perry on vacation
3.1.1 Will move our 501(c)3 to top of his pile on his return
3.2 Steve has large list of things to work on

4. Open Access

4.1 Feedback@chemistswithoutborders.org email ready
4.2 Newsletter attachment public statement
4.3 Bill Doria: New issue for him
4.4 Schools moving towards making their work accessible
4.5 Support Open Source science a al Jean-Claude Bradley
4.5.1 Doing things in new ways
4.5.2 E.g., Human Genome Project
4.6 Chemistry slowest to implement owing to being major publisher with vulnerable budgets
4.7 Peer reviewed articles published as open access
4.8 Some journals charge publishing fees, others do not
4.9 NIH prefers open access
4.10 Wellcome Trust (UK) insists on open access to results
4.11 Research Councils (UK) 4/8 requiring open access to the work they fund
4.12 Make existing work open before applying for new funds

5. Funding

5.1 Colin Scholes - fundraising

6. Personnel & Roles

6.1 Director of Development
6.2 Director of Public Relations
6.3 Director of Information Technology
6.4 Director of Communications Technology
6.5 Director of Education
6.6 Director of Vaccines and Medicines
6.7 Director of Water Purification or Remediation
6.8 Director of Legal Affairs
6.9 Director of Human Resources
6.10 Project Leaders and Organizers
6.11 Graphic designer
6.12 Web designer
6.13 Other key players and roles

7. Education Project

7.1 Bill Doria will connect with Gary DeBoer re pharmaceutical testing
7.1.1 Bill may be able to start testing this coming semester
7.2 Arsenic Project
7.2.1 Will need hands in November
7.3 Meghann is teacher with teacher contacts

8. Conference Presentations

8.1 PowerPoint
8.2 Quicktime
8.3 Approvals
8.4 Nov 10 deadline for Chicago ACS Conference

9. Arsenic Project

9.1 Have protocol and equipment list from State of CA
9.2 Attempt to tag along with their crews instead of doing it ourselves
9.3 Sign a liability waver
9.4 What will we do with it when we get it?
9.5 How much will we need for first project?
9.6 Ask foreign members what resources local communities might have

10. Other Business

10.1 Next conference call
10.1.1 7 AM GMT, 8-24-2006
10.1.2 6 PM PST, 9-7-2006

11. Topics not dicussed this time

11.1 Communications
11.2 Vaccines & Medicines
11.3 Unfinished Business

12. Feedback

12.1 Plus
12.1.1 Very informative
12.1.2 Better idea of what group stands for
12.1.3 Better feel for what we're trying to do and what the possibilities are
12.1.4 Easier to identify goals
12.1.5 Sense that things are coming together
12.1.6 Seems like we are getting close to practical implementations
12.2 Minus
12.2.1 Didn't review conference call ground rules

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call 7-27-2006

Steve's notes:





Bego's notes:

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call, 7-27-2006
1. Agenda
1.1 Introductions
1.2 Open Access
1.3 Legal
1.4 Funding
1.5 Education
1.6 Conference Presentations
1.7 Arsenic Project
1.8 Communications
1.9 Vaccines & Medicines
1.10 Unfinished Business
1.11 Feedback
2. Introductions
2.1 Steve Chambreau
» See also: : Conference Presentations
» See also: : Legal issues
2.2 Bego Gerber
» See also: : Funding
2.3 Rolande Hodel
» See also: : Vaccines & Medicines
» See also: : AIDSfreeAFRICA
2.4 Brian Wagner
» See also: : Arsenic Project
2.5 Brian Lynch
The CINF Division of ACS has explored recording of conference symposia via iPod technology [see Martinsen, D. P., ACS Chem. Biol. 1 [4], 195-197 [2006]]. Posting of sessions to the Internet reaches out to a much larger number of chemists than those able to attend in person. Brian Lynch and Lai Im Lancaster, St Francis Xavier University

» See also: : Communications
2.6 Heather Morrison
» See document: http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/2006/07/draft-open-access-position-statement.html
» See also: : Open Access
2.6.1 Hi Bego - I will be able to attend this time! Can you add a question about supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 to the agenda? cheers, Heather
2.7 Gary DeBoer
» See also: : Education Project
3. Legal issues
3.1 AIDSfreeAFRICA
3.2 501(c)3
3.3 Perry Israel
RE: Conference Call Invitation for 07/27/2006 06:00 PM Bego--Unfortunately, I will be on an airplane at that time so I'll miss the call. However, I should soon have a Form 1023 for the group. Perry


3.3.1 Form 1023 coming soon
3.3.2 Enter Sub-topic
3.4 By-Laws
3.4.1 Membership issues
3.4.2 Voting issues
3.5 Previous topics
3.5.1 Trademarks
Ÿ Search
Ÿ Register words
Ÿ Register hexagon
Ÿ Doctors Without Borders
Ÿ Charitable
Ÿ Education
Ÿ Recruitment
Ÿ Registration fees
Ÿ Stacy will create list of categories
4. Open Access
4.1 Take an advocacy position!
4.2 Get feedback
4.3 Decision date
4.3.1 8/17/2006
4.4 Resolution calling for support
4.4.1 Annual General Meeting of Members
4.5 Union of Concerned Scientists
4.6 Cautions
5. Funding
5.1 Recruitment
5.1.1 Monthly invite others
5.2 Create a list of talking points for recruitment
5.3 Newsletter section talking points
5.3.1 What we need
5.4 Business Plan
5.5 Budget
5.6 Rotary Clubs
5.7 Lists of Funding Sources
6. Education Project
6.1 Arsenic water remediation
6.1.1 C&EN article
6.2 Pharmaceuticals recycling
6.2.1 Two professors interested
6.2.2 Santa Barbara city collection program
6.2.3 America's Heart Medical Supplies
6.3 Other ideas
6.4 Action in Chemistry for textbooks
6.4.1 Graphical image
7. Conference Presentations
7.1 Scimix
7.1.1 Chemistry Clubs
7.1.2 Hand out flyers
7.2 Engineers Without Borders
7.2.1 Team up
8. Arsenic Project
8.1 Permission from CA to harvest as much as we want
8.2 Access after October 15
8.3 Plan
8.3.1 Picking crew
8.3.2 College students
8.3.3 Holiday weekend
8.3.4 Harvesting
8.3.5 Drying
8.3.6 Grinding
8.3.7 Write protocols
8.4 Other technologies
8.4.1 No universal solution
8.5 Equipment needed
8.6 Grinders
8.7 Dryers
9. Communications
9.1 Recording for Internet and podcasts
9.2 VoIP
9.3 Foreign participants
9.4 Scheduling
10. Vaccines & Medicines
10.1 Malaria
10.1.1 Pooling money
10.1.2 Bob Hansens
11. Other Business
11.1 Colin Scholes - fundraising
11.2 Blog
11.2.1 Rolande's wish list
11.2.2 Newsletter
11.3 Email addresses
11.4 Schedule next meeting
12. Unfinished Business
13. Feedback
13.1 Plus
13.1.1 Tons of notes
13.1.2 Very productive
13.1.3 Very lively keeps me awake
13.1.4 All had input
13.1.5 Gets things done
13.1.6 Setting deadlines
13.2 Minus
13.2.1 Steve's hand

Steve's notes:

Open Source Open Thread

Chemists Without Borders has been asked to take a position on open source access. Please let us know your opinions on this in comments. Please sign with first name and last initial.

ELMO

Conference Call notes 6/7/06

Here are the conference call notes from last Thursday:





ELMO

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call 6-15-2006

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call, 6-15-2006
1. Attendees
1.1 Steve Chambreau
1.2 Erin Orazem
» See also: : Education Project
1.3 Bego Gerber
1.4 Stacy Don
» See also: : Trademarks
2. Legal issues - Steve Chambreau & Stacy Don
2.1 AIDSfreeAFRICA
2.2 501(c)3
2.3 Trademarks
2.3.1 Search
2.3.2 Register words
2.3.3 Register hexagon
2.3.4 Doctors Without Borders
Ÿ Charitable
Ÿ Education
Ÿ Recruitment
2.3.5 Registration fees
2.3.6 Stacy will create list of categories
3. Feedback
3.1 Interesting
3.2 Good short updates
3.3 Provided ideas
3.4 Do webcast
3.5 Excited
3.6 Encouraging re progress
4. Funding
4.1 Recruitment
4.1.1 Monthly invite others
4.2 Create a list of talking points for recruitment
4.3 Newsletter section talking points
4.3.1 What we need
4.4 Business Plan
4.5 Budget
4.6 Rotary Clubs
5. Other Business
5.1 Colin Scholes - fundraising
5.2 America's Heart Medical Supplies
5.3 Blog
5.3.1 Rolande's wishlist
5.3.2 Newsletter
6. Conference Presentations
6.1 Scimix
6.1.1 Chemistry Clubs
6.1.2 Hand out flyers
6.2 Engineers Without Borders
6.2.1 Team up
7. Education Project
7.1 Arsenic water remediation
7.1.1 C&EN article
7.2 Pharmaceuticals recycling
7.2.1 Two professors interested
7.2.2 Santa Barbara city collection program
7.3 Other ideas
8. Email addresses

Undo your CO2 emissions

I came across this very interesting site (Terrapass). It allows consumers to compensate for their automobiles' CO2 emissions by paying for an equivalent amount of energy from a non-polluting source. There is also an affiliate program. I'm wondering whether we should promote the program on our website, inviting users to become affiliates, sending their revenues back to Chemists Without Borders to support the work. What do you think?

Bego

AIDSfreeAFRICA wish list

Chemists Without Borders is collaborating with AIDSfreeAfrica, a non profit organization focusing on "empowering people in Africa to produce their own essential drugs, diagnostics and diagnostic reagents, in short pharmaceuticals, by helping to build factories and a pharmaceutical infrastructure in Africa." (Rolande Hodel)

Please see the website for more info:

http://aidsfreeafrica.org

If you know any individual or organization who would be willing to donate any of these items, please contact Rolande Hodel at:

RRHodel@aol.com





(post updated 11/10/06)

ELMO

Heather's bio (continued)

Here is the continuation of Heather's bio from the June '06 CWB newsletter:

I encourage all Chemists Without Borders members (and, indeed, all chemists) to openly share their research. Open access is about making the results of research immediately openly available over the world wide web to anyone, anywhere. There are two main approaches to open access: publishing in an open access journal, and self-archiving in an open access archive. To learn more about open access, start with Peter Suber's Open Access Overview, at: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Open access is the key to two elements which I believe are important to CWB goals. Open access to our knowledge about chemistry will become a keystone for the chemistry education aspect of CWB. Currently, access to chemistry information is very uneven, with the best access in the wealthiest countries, and the least access in the developing world. Subscription or purchase of chemistry information is very expensive. Open access will make it possible for more people to learn about chemistry in the developing world, which in turn will mean educated partners for CWB, and more areas of the world that can contribute to charitable efforts, rather than only being beneficiaries. OA can also directly support CWB workers in the future, as they will have ready access to knowledge they might need to solve problems in the field. Open access, when it involves immediate sharing of information, is also key to more rapid advances in our understanding. It was open sharing of information and working together that made it possible to map the human genome in record time. Think what might happen if we applied the same approaches to ameliorating environmental problems, finding low-cost pharmaceutical solutions to common problems, or sustainable, environmentally friendly energy sources. CWB can help make open access a reality through advocacy efforts with funding agencies, universities, researchers, and students, as well as by setting up a chemistry-focused open access archive for open sharing of chemistry research. Collaboration Research There are a great many resources that could be brought to resolving the kinds of issues CWB would like to address, from water remediation to affordable pharmaceuticals to environmental issues. There are about 6 billion humans on this planet, a very great many brains, other talents, and willingness to work; there are natural resources, and manmade resources, even if they are not immediately available where they might be needed. Resolving CWB issues, one might argue, is not a resource issue at all, it is, rather, a matter of coordinating efforts. Even as the more hands-on projects proceed, it might be worthwhile for CWB and other similar organizations to move forward at the same time to advance our understanding of how different peoples can quickly come to work together effectively for the good of all.


Well said. Comments?

ELMO

ACS Letter to NIH on PubChem

A letter from the American Chemical Society (ACS) to the National Institute of Health on Pubchem has been obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the SPARC Open Access Forum. The ACS apparently expects the NIH to avoid making chemistry information available, or creating links and relationships between different kinds of materials, to avoid competition with "private databases".

PubChem's aim is to disseminate information in the public interest. Building the relationships between different elements facilitates the process of chemistry research.

Why is ACS, a nonprofit organization, fighting the public interest in the interests of private, commercial-like profits, and why is it doing so clandestinely? CWB members - please ask ACS, or friends who are ACS members, about this.

I have sent a letter to the current President of ACS, E. Ann Nally, called Open Access: Transformative Change, explaining very pleasantly the potential of new web-based technologies to rapidly advance research in chemistry - and why this is important. For example, by openly sharing information and working collaboratively, the world's researchers and research funders succeeeded in mapping the human genome in record speed. We could be taking the same basic approach and applying it to finding sustainable, environmentally-friendly energy sources, solutions for malaria, AIDs, bird flu, and so forth.

So far, I have not received a reply.

Solar-powered donkey libraries

Solar-powered donkey libraries, an extension of the new Prince Rupert Library, are bringing books, literacy - and electronic gadgets, including computers and internet access - to children throughout Zimbabwe.

Perhaps a future partnership opportunity for a CWB chemistry education program?

Environmental Research Letters: new OA journal

Environmental Research Letters is a new, open access journal from the Institute of Physics. ERL is the first open-access journal that will cover the whole of environmental science.

ERL will serve the entire environmental science community, including both specialist researchers and the wider public, by providing free access to wide-ranging content on topics extending across environmental science. The journal will offer a combination of research letters, commentaries, job and other advertisements, reviews and news items. ERL will be completely free to read online and published authors in the journal will be required to pay an article publication charge....

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Necessity is the mother of invention: open access, the developing world, and the cost-efficient solution

CWB members may be interested in my blogpost, Necessity is the mother of invention: open access, the developing world, and the cost-efficient solution. My point is that scientists in the developing world have far more incentive to seek cost-effective solutions than scientists in the developed world; therefore, we in the developed world can benefit cost-wise from reading their research. This idea very much relates to Bego's point about low-cost medications which are not being made, simply because there is little or not profit involved in making them - one of the reasons for CWB.

An easy way to support FRPAA

Many thanks to CWB members who have inquired about how to support the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. Here is an easy - and fun - way to do this! Simply write a quick note of thanks and congratulations to the Senators for introducing this bill. We all tend to ignore our political leaders when things are going well, and speak up only when we are unhappy. Like the rest of, politicians need to know when they are getting it right, too!

Sample message:

Dear Senator_

Kudos for introducing (supporting) the Federal Research Public Access Act! As a member of Chemists Without Borders, I can assure you that making the results of federally funded research openly accessible will make a tremendous difference to the work of CWB volunteers, whether we are working in the field in developing countries, or helping to develop and support chemistry education, here in the U.S. or around the world.

To send these messages, go to:
Senator John Cornyn's web site (co-introduced the bill)
Senator Joe Lieberman's web site (co-introduced the bill)

Senator Jeff Sessions is the first co-sponsor of the bill; it wouldn't hurt to thank him, as well.

If anyone would like more background or help with a more detailed thank-you, please contact me.

Chemists Without Borders Conference Call 5-18-2006

Click images to expand them

Video Game Aims To Engage Students

This interests me greatly. Video Game Aims To Engage Students I've been thinking about this kind of thing for a long time. Imagine a video game, of the type popular today, where saving the world required objects or characters to acquire certain attributes of chemical, historical, literary nature, for example. An atom seeks to acquire an electron, Henry VIII a wife, Lady MacBeth sees a dagger.

Now consider Nicholas Negroponte's $100, hand-cranked, PC intended for every youngster in the developing world MIT Media Lab & $100 Laptop. What if such educational games were available in multiple languages, to meet the needs of developing countries? In developed countries, children grow up integrating technology into their neural networks just as they do language - it becomes second nature to them, as was the television to us. Unless children in the developing countries have the same opportunity to assimilate technology as they are growing, they will be persistently delayed and disadvantaged.

The big commercial game companies like EA have not seen a market opportunity in education. Could this become an attractive opportunity for the open source development community? How might Chemists Without Borders promote and catalyze such a development? Whom do you know who knows someone who knows someone .... who'd be interested in this?

Cheers, Bego

U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006

Senators Cornyn and Lieberman yesterday introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act. If passed, this bill will mean free access to the results of research funded by 11 U.S. federal agencies for everyone - no later than 6 months after publication.

The following agencies would be included: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

This will make an enormous difference in access to the chemical literature, and not only for students and faculty throughout the U.S. For chemists and CWB volunteers around the world, this could mean the difference between ready access to the latest knowledge in areas like environment science and medical, and no access. For those who might be in a position to develop chemistry education programs in developing countries, this initiative will provide a needed resource to help this to happen.

Please follow the link above to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access web site for information on how to support this bill.

H2O Museum?!

Here is a follow up to the Water Day post.

ELMO

A Whole World of Concrete

Straight from the press:

AUBURN, Maine (AP) — Termites wouldn't like the house that Mike Mercier has built.

Mercier built his house out of concrete — 85 yards of it. From the outside, the new 2,300-square-foot ranch-style home doesn't look a lot different from most. The basement and foot-thick exterior walls are made of concrete — but so are the floors, windowsills, countertops and end tables.

Mercier and his wife are often asked if their bed is concrete. It is not.

Mercier, who has run a concrete contracting business for three decades, said he got the idea of building a concrete house from an exhibit he visited at a World of Concrete convention.

Construction involved no wood framing or plywood, just windows, siding and interior Sheetrock. Hollow foam blocks were stacked and angled inside the walls before concrete was pumped around it. Even some of the furniture inside is molded concrete.

"The end tables are so cute," said Sue Mercier.

The walls are so soundproof that the Merciers' dog has a hard time hearing people come up the driveway now.

Such a home is energy efficient, because foam and concrete homes use less oil to heat, Mercier said. But a concrete home costs 10-15 percent more to build than a traditional wood-frame home, he added.



I don't know about cute endtables, but I have a friend who is an architect who has said this is a very good idea. I would be interested to hear any feedback in the comments.

ELMO