FIRST Competition this weekend

The Colorado Regional FIRST Competition (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) will be held at DU this weekend, March 26th-28th. I am really looking forward to seeing some of the robots in the event.

They have several good videos showing what you might see this weekend.

One of the 48 teams (give or take) that is competing is the "University of Denver & Standing Ovations for All & Ricks Center Middle School" team.

Senior finds error in supercollider algorithm

A physics undergraduate student at Princeton discovered a discrepancy between her predictions and scientific results at the LHC. Essentially, double images were coming out of the system, so she and her professors recommended an algorithm to remove the double images.

Xiaohang Quan ’09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world’s largest particle accelerator.

Quan... traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS ’98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Open science is good for researchers

One of my blogger friends, Bora Zivkovic, did a presentation (see the video) at the Columbia University Libraries Scholarly Communications Program on February 19, 2009.

Open science refers to information-sharing among researchers and encompasses a number of initiatives to remove access barriers to data and published papers, and to use digital technology to more efficiently disseminate research results. Advocates for this approach argue that openly sharing information among researchers is fundamental to good science, speeds the progress of research, and increases recognition of researchers. Panelists: Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Coordinator of E-Learning for the School of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University; Barry Canton, founder of Gingko BioWorks and the OpenWetWare wiki, an online community of life science researchers committed to open science that has over 5,300 users; Bora Zivkovic, Online Discussion Expert for the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and author of 'A Blog Around the Clock.'

The NIH public access policy will persist

This is very good news for Open Access proponents.
"Washington, D.C. – March 12, 2009 – President Obama yesterday signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision making the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy permanent. The NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peerreviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central (PMC). Full texts of the articles are made publicly available and searchable online in PMC no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.

The NIH policy was previously implemented with a provision that was subject to annual renewal. Since the implementation of the revised policy the percentage of eligible manuscripts deposited into PMC has increased significantly, with over 3,000 new manuscripts being deposited each month. The PubMed Central database is a part of a valuable set of public database resources at the NIH, which are accessed by more than 2 million users each day."For more information, go to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access website.

Obama Reverses Bush's Embryonic Stem Cell Ban

From the Denver Post this morning -- "President Barack Obama this morning overturned a Bush administration ban on using federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and signed an order intended to restore 'scientific integrity to government decision making.'"

About time...