NASW news
If you have ever written anything published in book form, you need to check the terms of the Google Book Settlement. Unfortunately, the documentation is about as user-friendly as an income tax return, and time is running out for opting out of the settlement. Help is now available. Kristine Smith, chair of the digital rights management committee of Novelists Inc., has compiled a nice set of examples of how to fill out the Google Book Settlement claims, which covers books and articles published in the past, sometimes the distant past. Read them here (PDF).
Apr. 18, 2009The administrator of the Google settlement has asked NASW, through the Authors Coalition, to distribute the following notice to all our members. It contains important information about the rights of authors and other copyright owners under the settlement. Please give it your careful attention.
Mar. 16, 2009Three days after the U.S. House of Representatives renewed a 2003 bill that promotes exploration into the adverse health effects of nanoparticles, scientists convened to debate what form that assessment should take. The symposium, "Driving Beyond Our Nano-Headlights?", took place on 14 February at the AAAS meeting in Chicago.
NASW and three other journalism organizations have submitted a joint letter to The Honorable John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and The Honorable Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ranking Republican of the House Judiciary Committee, urging them to reject a recently introduced bill that would severely limit public access to taxpayer-funded scientific research.
Mar. 2, 2009Scott Gaudi has a simple answer when asked about the number of Earth-like planets in the universe. "They're everywhere. Common as dirt," says Gaudi, an astronomer at Ohio State University. He spoke on 15 February at the AAAS meeting in Chicago during a session titled "From Enlightenment to Lunar Theories to Extrasolar Planets."
Charles Darwin received ample tribute at the AAAS meeting in Chicago, which opened 200 years after the scientist's birth and 150 years after the publication of his watershed work On the Origin of Species. One speaker took the talk of origins back to a more primal stage, spotlighting the formation of the first organic molecules in the dusty neighborhoods of young stars.
In a 13 February symposium on "The Cosmic Cradle of Life," Anthony Remijan of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) unveiled a new resource that may help astrochemists trace the genesis of the ingredients for life on Earth -- and possibly life elsewhere in the universe.
Scientists need to look beyond their laboratories to include not just microscopes and beakers but lawmakers on Capitol Hill, said a panel of professors and policy experts on 14 February at the AAAS meeting in Chicago.
Across the country, institutions of higher learning are implementing science policy courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Despite this trend, more programs of study are needed. Together, the panelists encouraged science students, and their institutions, to supplement biological, chemical, or physical science preparation with exploration into the process of policymaking, drafting legislation, and lobbying for a cause.