Physics Nobel: Free Journal Articles and Resources from AIP

 

The American Institute of Physics congratulates this year's Nobel Laureates in Physics “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.” Sharing half the prize is Saul Perlmutter from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley. Sharing the other half jointly are Brian P. Schmidt from the Australian National University, and Adam G. Riess from Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute.

AIP is pleased to make available free of charge a selection of research papers these Nobel Laureates have published in our journals, Conference Proceedings, and Physics Today magazine. To view any of these materials go to http://journals.aip.org/Nobel2011.html.

We will build on this material throughout the day to bring you a host of additional resources, including an overview of the work done by these three scientists, plus related links, photos and interviews. 

Physics Nobel: Free Journal Articles and Resources from AIP

eXtension - Objective. Research-based. Credible.

 

eXtension - Objective. Research-based. Credible.

 

eXtension is an interactive learning environment delivering the best, most researched knowledge from the smartest land-grant university minds across America. eXtension connects knowledge consumers with knowledge providers - experts who know their subject matter inside out.

eXtension offers:

• Credible expertise
• Reliable answers based upon sound research
• Connections to the best minds in American universities
• Creative solutions to today's complex challenges
• Customized answers to your specific needs
• Trustworthy, field-tested data
• Dynamic, relevant and timely answers

eXtension is unlike any other search engine or information-based website. It's a space where university content providers can gather and produce new educational and information resources on wide-ranging topics. Because it's available to students, researchers, clinicians, professors, as well as the general public, at any time from any Internet connection, eXtension helps solve real-life problems in real time.

eXtension Foundation: The eXtension Foundation is a non-profit entity that exists to support the work of eXtension. Learn more about how you can support or sponsor this work at our eXtension Foundation.

Racial bias revealed in NIH funding grants from Daily Kos :: State of the Nation

 

Racial bias revealed in NIH funding grants

by Laurence Lewis

Reposted from Laurence Lewis by Laurence Lewis

NIH Logo (Wikimedia Commons)

If any aspect of our society had evolved beyond racial bias one would have expected it to be the world of science, particularly government-funded science. Not so. A new study published in Science Magazine begins with this extract:

We investigated the association between a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 applicant’s self-identified race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an award by using data from the NIH IMPAC II grant database, the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, and other sources. Although proposals with strong priority scores were equally likely to be funded regardless of race, we find that Asians are 4 percentage points and black or African-American applicants are 13 percentage points less likely to receive NIH investigator-initiated research funding compared with whites. After controlling for the applicant’s educational background, country of origin, training, previous research awards, publication record, and employer characteristics, we find that black applicants remain 10 percentage points less likely than whites to be awarded NIH research funding. Our results suggest some leverage points for policy intervention.

The study was conducted by Donna K. Ginther of the Department of Economics and Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy, Institute for Policy & Social Research, at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Her team included Raynard Kington, who was deputy director of the NIH and is currently president of Grinnell College, and Walter Schaffer, who is senior scientific adviser for extramural research at the NIH. They reviewed 83,188 applications for funding from 40,069 unique investigators during the 2000-2006 Fiscal Years, and controlled for several possible explanatory factors.

Throughout the education pipeline, blacks are less likely to graduate from high school, attend college and major in biomedical science, and obtain a Ph.D. in biomedical science. Nevertheless, upon entering the biomedical academic career track, black and white faculty members are equally likely to be tenured at institutions that grant doctorates and at Research I institutions. (3). Given our previous results, we expected to find that black scientists who made it to the stage of principal investigator would have similar chances of obtaining NIH funding, all other things being equal. We find it troubling that the typical measures of scientific achievement—NIH training, previous grants, publications, and citations—do not translate to the same level of application success across race and ethnic groups. Our models controlled for demographics, education and training, employer characteristics, NIH experience, and research productivity, yet they did not explain why blacks are 10 percentage points less likely to receive R01 funding compared with whites.

Although our models do not fully explain the funding gap, the greatest differences between blacks and whites that we observed were in the effect of previous training and the probability of receiving a priority score. Although more research is needed to discern the basis for the award differences, it is possible that cumulative advantage may be involved (15). Small differences in access to research resources and mentoring during training or at the beginning of a career may accumulate to become large between-group differences. This suggests that more analysis on the impact of NIH training may be warranted. In addition, further research into the review process could help to understand why variables that increased the likelihood of an application receiving a priority score for the full sample did not have the same impact for applications from black investigators.

More bluntly, as reported by Mará Rose Williams of the Kansas City Star:

“It wasn’t just a gap, it was a huge unexplained gap despite the best efforts of me and my research team trying to pound it into submission,” Ginther said.

The only good news also comes from Williams:

NIH Director Francis Collins told Science magazine he was “deeply dismayed” by the study findings. “This is simply unacceptable,” he said.

“As uncomfortable as it makes us, we must acknowledge that the differences observed may reflect biases that are insidiously interwoven into the basic fabric of the merit/reward system of science,” Collins said.

Institutional racism in the heart of academic science. And while Collins no doubt will conduct his own investigations, this also demands attention from the White House and Congress.

Daily Kos :: State of the Nation

AIP Creates New App for Authors and Reviewers

 

AIP Creates New App for Authors and Reviewers

iPeerReview provides mobile access to submitted papers

Melville, NY, August 03, 2011 - AIP Publishing, a division of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) (www.aip.org), announces the release of its new app, iPeerReview. The new app allows authors and reviewers to use their iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices to access a broad range of information on papers submitted to any of AIP's journals in Peer X-Press, AIP's manuscript submission and review system.

"iPeerReview is an integral part of our comprehensive strategy to make all AIP content - both live and in production - more accessible to our users," said Evan Owens, AIP's chief information officer, publishing. "We recognize that our authors and reviewers need fast, convenient access to their papers during the review process, and now we've created an app with a clean, streamlined design, which can deliver these papers - anytime and anywhere they need them."

Once logged in, users can perform a number of activities related to their papers. They can access a list of all active and completed papers, view the status history of a paper, view and save a paper in PDF format, email a paper, and link to a paper on AIP's Scitation platform if it is in production or to Peer X-Press if it is under review.

When users access iPeerReview, they can either log in or access papers that they have previously saved to their device. The app will determine if they are an author, a reviewer, or both. In the event that they are both an author and a reviewer, iPeerReview will allow them to access both sets of papers under separate tabs.

To download the app, search for iPeerReview in the iTunes App Store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ipeerreview/id385565904?mt=8# or visit AIP Labs http://labs.aip.org/.

About AIP

The American Institute of Physics is an organization of 10 physical science societies, representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in physics. AIP pursues innovation in electronic publishing of scholarly journals and offers full-solution publishing services for its Member Societies. AIP publishes 13 journals; two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. AIP also delivers valuable resources and expertise in education and student services, science communication, government relations, career services for science and engineering professionals, statistical research, industrial outreach, and the history of physics and other sciences.

AIP Creates New App for Authors and Reviewers

Scientists on Twitter - Astronomers, Biologists, and Chemists, and more - Science Pond

 

Scientists on Twitter - Astronomers, Biologists, and Chemists, and more - Science Pond

About Science Pond

Welcome to the pond! For this Twitter experiment we'll need science nerds of all stripes, including scientists, bloggers, journalists, educators, and students. The criteria for inclusion: on-topic feeds in English that are interesting and useful--to your peers at the very least. If you're still not sure, this seems like the perfect time to quote Albert Einstein: "Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character."

Science Blogging Aggregated

 

Science Blogging Aggregated

Scienceblogging.org (also Scienceblogging.com) is a new central clearinghouse for all your science needs. Built by Anton Zuiker, Bora Zivkovic and Dave Munger, the page will aggregate RSS feeds from all the major (and some minor) science blogging networks, group blogs, aggregators and services. As the site develops further, it will also encompass other online (and offline) science communication efforts, including Twitter feeds, links to major scientific journals and magazines, ScienceOnline annual conference, and the Open Laboratory annual anthology of the best writing on science, nature and medical blogs.

We are asking the community to help. Let us know when we make an error, when a new network arises or a new RSS feed goes live.

Scientopia

 

Scientopia

Scientopia is a collective of people who write about science because they love to do so. It is a community, held together by mutual respect and operated by consensus, in which people can write, educate, discuss, and learn about science and the process of doing science.  In this we explore the interplay between scientific issues and other parts of our lives with the shared goal of making science more accessible.

As a community, we strive to be welcoming of anyone with an interest in science and its place in our world, regardless of any feature, whether extrinsic or intrinsic, which may act or have historically acted as a barrier to full participation in science or discourses about science. 

ScienceBlogs

 

ScienceBlogs

About ScienceBlogs

Science is driving our conversation unlike ever before.

From climate change to intelligent design, HIV/AIDS to stem cells, science education to space exploration, science is figuring prominently in our discussions of politics, religion, philosophy, business and the arts. New insights and discoveries in neuroscience, theoretical physics and genetics are revolutionizing our understanding of who are are, where we come from and where we're heading. Launched in January 2006, ScienceBlogs is a portal to this global dialogue, a digital science salon featuring the leading bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines. Today, ScienceBlogs is the largest online community dedicated to science.

We believe in providing our bloggers with the freedom to exercise their own editorial and creative instincts. We do not edit their work and we do not tell them what to write about.

We have selected our 80+ bloggers based on their originality, insight, talent, and dedication and how we think they would contribute to the discussion at ScienceBlogs. Our role, as we see it, is to create and continue to improve this forum for discussion, and to ensure that the rich dialogue that takes place at ScienceBlogs resonates outside the blogosphere.

ScienceBlogs is very much an experiment in science communication, and being first also means being first to encounter unforeseen obstacles. We are learning as we go (and as goes the blogosphere) and appreciate your understanding and patience.

ScienceBlogs was created by Seed Media Group. We believe that science literacy is a pre-condition for progress in the 21st century. At a time when public interest in science is high but public understanding of science remains weak, we have set out to create innovative media ventures to improve science literacy and to advance global science culture. To learn more about what we do and why we do it, please visit seedmediagroup.com.

PLoS Blogs Network

 

PLoS Blogs Network

About PLoS Blogs

PLoS has always engaged in debate about science and medicine. Starting with the launch of our main blog, plos.org, back in 2006, PLoS quickly realized how informal communication can catch readers’ attention. PLoS ONE then launched their journal blog, everyONE in March 2009. Two months later, the editors of PLoS Medicine started Speaking of Medicine to interact with those interested in global health.

PLoS Blogs has been set up to bring a select group of independent science and medicine bloggers together with the editors and staff who run our blogs. Our independent network is made up of writers who love science and medicine, and scientists and physicians that love to write. Here, you’ll find an equal mix of blogs from journalists and researchers tackling diverse issues in science and medicine.

Here are the details of our network:

• Our Blog network is 100% ad-free
• All material is posted to the blog under the Creative Commons Open Access License (CCAL 3.0 Commercial)

  “With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit.”

• There are three very distinct types of blogs on the PLoS Blogs network: the official PLoS blog, the PLoS journal blogs (collectively known as The PLoS Blogs), and blogs from the independent network (a.k.a. The PLoS Blogosphere)
  1. The official PLoS blog: This content is produced, edited, and/or maintained by PLoS staff.
  2. The journal blogs: This content is produced, edited, and/or maintained by PLoS journal staff: The current journal blogs are Speaking of Medicine (PLoS Medicine’s blog) and everyONE (PLoS ONE’s blog).
  3. Our independent network of bloggers (The PLoS Blogosphere): This content is produced, edited, and/or maintained by the authors.
• All of the content in The PLoS Blogosphere came from the minds of the authors. PLoS does not screen, edit, or otherwise meddle with content on the these blogs in any way. Our bloggers and our users are held to exactly the same standards, and the community guidelines apply to everyone that uses our site. If a blogger has posted content that you believe violates our site abuse policy, please contact PLoS here.
• Bloggers monitor their own comment threads: All comments will be reviewed by the author of the blog where you leave your thoughts. Just follow our simple community guidelines and we’ll all get along just fine.