Communication in Science

Science, the peer-reviewed general science journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has published a special issue on Communication in Science: Pressures and Predators; helpfully, this particular issue is available free-of-charge. 

Table of Contents is here. There are multiple articles of particular interest to librarians, and articles about scientific meetings, presenting (how to do so well), publishing sensitive information. 

From the introduction -- 

Science 4 October 2013: 
Vol. 342 no. 6154 pp. 56-57 
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6154.56

INTRODUCTION

Scientific Discourse: Buckling at the Seams

Richard Stone, Barbara Jasny

Thomas Edison built an empire on his 1093 patents. But one innovation he considered a failure has had a lasting impact on how scientists communicate. He bankrolled the startup of Science, among the first general science journals, which debuted on 3 July 1880 with a bland description of the U.S. Naval Observatory and a cover plastered with classified ads. Science faltered at first, but in the end it thrived, and so did scientific discourse.

The mid-20th century saw a key innovation, the anonymous referee. This mechanism depends on trust, in both the integrity of submissions and in peer reviewers. That trust is being tested by a disruptive change in scientific communication: open access. Unlike "traditional" journals, which rely largely on subscription revenue, many open-access publications earn their daily bread through publication fees from authors. Profit is linked to volume, seemingly boundless on the Internet.

Although the open-access world includes many legitimate journals, abuse is prevalent, as a Science investigation has found. Over the past 10 months, contributing correspondent John Bohannon submitted faux papers with blatant scientific flaws to 304 open-access journals (60). More than half accepted the paper.

Granted, some "traditional" print publications might have fallen for our hoax, too. But with open-access journals proliferating, debate is needed about how to ensure the credibility of scientific literature. Open-access pioneer Vitek Tracz believes that anonymous peer review is "sick and collapsing under its own weight." As a remedy, Tracz has launched a new open-access journal in which reports—including all supporting data—are reviewed after they are posted online (66). The findings and ex post facto reviews become a living document that proponents say will offer a more nimble forum for revising knowledge as it accumulates.

Continues. . . 

And, of course, there is an infographic -- 

LTE Is Not Officially 4G

Finally! A cogent treatment of LTE versus 4G wireless! 

Via Android Authority, Robert Triggs writes about LTE and whether it is really 4G or not. 

4G vs LTE – key differences explained

October 4, 2013 

Anyone who’s been in the market for a new smartphone recently isn’t just spoilt for choice when it comes to awesome Android handsets, but there’s an ever growing range of data packages and network types to choose from as well.

Of course, you’re likely familiar with the older 3G standard, but newer handsets are often listed with a variety of “next generation” communication technologies, advertised as 4G, LTE, and sometimes 4G LTE. While that may make them appear virtually identical on the store shelves, there are actually some drastic differences between the technology advertised and the actual 4G mobile communication standard.

The 4G standard

All the way back in March 2008, the International Telecommunications Union-Radio (ITU-R) decided on a set of specifications for its new 4G standard. The ITU-R is the United Nation’s official agency for all manner of information and communication technologies, and aims to help promote and regulate various communication standards across nations.

The ITU-R decided upon a set of requirements for bandwidth, spectral efficiency, and a load of other technical points, for future 4G networks. But the most important point for us users is the peak download speeds, which are defined as 100 Mbit/s for high mobility devices, such as mobile data speeds on your smartphone while driving in car, and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility local wireless access. To put that in some perspective, typical current download speeds are often in the range of 10Mbit/s, while 4G should offer 100 times faster downloads at a rate of 1Gbit/s.

Article continues at link. 

Update on Thursday, February 6, 2014 at 04:36AM by williamgarrity

TechHive -- FAQ: How is LTE-Advanced different from regular LTE?

Generation Touch

"Generation Touch." This resonates -- "This generation has grown up differently than everyone who came before it (including me). They have grown up in a world of constant mobile connectedness. They are as different from prior generations as were Baby Boomers who grew up with the first televisions, and earlier generations who grew up with the very first cars or electricity. They have never really known a world without Internet, mobile devices or social media."

See this piece by Josh Elman in TechCrunch -- 

Generation Touch Will Redraw Consumer Tech

Ten years ago, young adults and those in their late teens were among the fastest and earliest adopters of new social networks — Friendster, Myspace, and ultimately Facebook — and many other products that define us today. So we should be looking to today’s generation, who people often refer to as Millennials, to predict how we will all live and connect 10+ years from now. This generation has grown up differently than everyone who came before it (including me). They have grown up in a world of constant mobile connectedness. They are as different from prior generations as were Baby Boomers who grew up with the first televisions, and earlier generations who grew up with the very first cars or electricity. They have never really known a world without Internet, mobile devices or social media.

In the past decade alone, many of the fundamentals of technology have changed, and as a result, so has this generation’s priorities:

• This generation owns and carries significantly more mobile phones than desktop or laptop computers.
• In a recent study, 65 percent of teens polled would rather go without a car than their mobile phone.
• Interfaces are radically different: no longer are terms such as "keyboard shortcuts," "save," or even "click" as relevant as terms such as "gestures," "share," and "tap." [I would add, "swipe."]
• As people are always connected (both to the Internet and to each other socially), there is less and less sense of privacy than ever before.

I like to call this group “Generation Touch” or GenT. 

Article continues at link. 

MOOCs

From today's  The New York Times, a basic introduction to MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Course -- the kind of article you'd give to your elderly aunt. 

A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course

By ALAN FINDER

ONLINE course work has been a staple of American higher education for at least a decade. But over the last few years, a new, more ambitious variant known as a MOOC — massive open online course — has challenged traditional assumptions of what an online course can be. MOOCs have exploded in that short time, redefining who can enroll in college courses, as well as where, when and even why people take online classes.

Available globally to hundreds of thousands of people at a time, these classes depend on highly sophisticated digital technology, yet they could not be simpler to use. Signing up takes less time than creating an iTunes account. You can create a user name and password and start exploring the rapidly expanding course offerings.

The major Web sites already provide dozens of courses, as diverse as basic calculus and European intellectual history. It is both new and experimental, and as much as MOOCs have evolved since beginning in recent years, enthusiasts expect many more changes. From an early focus on technical and scientific courses, for instance, offerings now include the humanities and social sciences.

While there are some significant differences among the major MOOC Web sites, they share several main elements. Courses are available to anyone with access to the Internet. They are free, and students receive a certificate of completion at the end. With rare exceptions, you cannot earn college credit for taking one of these courses, at least for now.

“For a decade, people have been asking, ‘How does the Internet change higher education,’ ” said Edward B. Rock, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is the institution’s senior adviser on open course initiatives. “This is the beginning. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”
Navigating the world of MOOCs begins with three major Web sites.

Article continues at link.

We Are Our Own News Media

This has been lurking in my reading list. . . Something that was particularly remarkable (but not new) about the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers was the role private individual and coporate social media played in distributing news about the incident real time. (The first such application of social media that I can remember was the use of Twitter in sharing information about the January 2009 crash of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River.)

See this story in the Harvad Gazette -- 

Your own news platform

Technological advances show great promise, some peril in chronicling marathon manhunt

April 22, 2013 | Editor's Pick 

By Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer money.msn.com

During the massive manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, millions of people around the world watched television news crews as they conveyed the latest bits of information from the perimeter of the search zone.

But Harvard Professor David Liu was tuned into UStream, a website where anyone can share his or her own video. Someone had pointed a camera at a scanner that was tuned to Boston police radio traffic, and was streaming the audio and video onto the Internet. It wasn’t visually interesting, but the audio during the manhunt was riveting.

While traditional media sources, at the request of police, refrained from reporting information gleaned from the scanners, more than 250,000 people worldwide were tuned in to the UStream channel, listening to police and FBI agents gathered near a boat in a Watertown backyard. The listeners heard officers discussing the suspect’s every movement, as well as talk of flashbang grenades, the boat’s 40-gallon fuel tank, where to focus a helicopter’s spotlight, and when to bring in the negotiation team.

Article continues at link.