SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded research, Open Access Day will create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content.

Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00 PM (Eastern) and 7:00 PM (Pacific) and feature appearances from:

Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S.
Joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for discovering split genes and RNA splicing, one of 26 Nobel Prize-winners to sign the Open Letter to U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access to publicly funded research, and currently at New England Biolabs, USA. [7PM Eastern]

Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D.
Philip E. Bourne is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology and the author of the popular PLoS Computational Biology Ten Simple Rules Series. He is Professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego, Associate Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, Senior Advisor to the San Diego Supercomputer Center, an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham Institute, and Co-Founder of SciVee. [7PM Pacific]

Librarians and student organizers are invited to host meetings around the broadcast. To see a list of participating campuses and to sign up, visit the Open Access Day Web site athttp://www.openaccessday.org. Additional international events will be announced shortly.

The event will also mark the launch of the new "Voices of Open Access Video Series." Key members of the research community, including a teacher, librarian, researcher, student, patient advocate, and a funder, will speak on why they are committed to Open Access.

"The momentum behind Open Access to research has been accelerating for some time now, even before the mandates at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Harvard University," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. "Events beyond the U.S. especially underscore the higher education community's commitment to having the access they need. Open Access Day will provide a perfect way for folks to come together, consider, and celebrate the ramifications of the global shift we're experiencing."

"Open Access Day is a great opportunity to inform everyone on campus about the nature and importance of Open Access," added Nelson Pavlosky, Co-Founder of Students for FreeCulture. "It's really an issue that impacts everyone in the university, whether they are professors who publish, students who research, or librarians who purchase journal subscriptions. Students for FreeCulture looks forward to working with SPARC and PLoS to inform our peers, as well as faculty, staff and administration, about how Open Access can help bring publishing into the 21st Century."

"Making full use of the Internet to share and reuse content without restriction is pushing scientific communication into the future," said Peter Jerram, CEO of PLoS. "Open Access Day acknowledges the enormous progress that's been made towards comprehensive access to research.  We are pleased to be partnering with the community on this special day. We would ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the commencement of our publishing activities in October by participating."

Open Access Day was inspired by the National Day of Action on February 15, 2007, led by Students for FreeCulture with support from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. This year, the same partners have joined forces with PLoS, the Open Access scientific and medical Web publisher. Open Access-supporting organizations are also invited to take part. For details, contact the organizers.

For details and to participate, visithttp://www.openaccessday.org.

About

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research.  SPARC is a founder of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

Students for FreeCulture (SFC)
Students for FreeCulture is a diverse, non-partisan group of students and young people who are working to get their peers involved in the free culture movement. Launched in April 2004 at Swarthmore College, it has helped establish student groups at colleges and universities across the United States. Today, chapters exist at over 30 colleges, from Maine to California, with many more getting started around the world. Students for FreeCulture was founded by two Swarthmore students after they sued voting-machine manufacturer Diebold for abusing copyright law in 2003. Named after the book Free Culture by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, it is part of a growing movement, with roots in the free software/open source community, media activists, creative artists and writers, and civil libertarians. Groups with which it has collaborated include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Downhill Battle. Students for Free Culture is on the Web at http://www.freeculture.org.

PLoS
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS publishes open access, peer-reviewed journals available online to anyone. PLoS celebrates their fifth anniversary on October 13, 2008. PLoS is on the Web at www.plos.org.  

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
Phone:       (202) 296-2296             
E-mail: Jennifer at arl dot org

More information can be found here:

• Open Access News
• The Stoa Consortium
• Open...
• Open Access Anthropology

In accordance with its commitment to ensure public availability of its research out-put, the Max Planck Society (MPS) has reached an agreement with the Public Library of Science (PLoS) for the central funding of publication fees of MPS scientists without burdening the budget of single Max Planck Institutes.

Like many Open Access journals, PLoS journals charge a fee for publication. For papers accepted in PLoS journals after July 1st, 2008, MPS will pay the publication fee directly to PLoS from central funds for all articles where the corresponding author is affiliated with a Max Planck Institute.

"PLoS is a top quality Open Access publisher. We are pleased to support a seminal publication model with this collaboration and thus facilitate publishing for our scien-tists in this interesting spectrum of titles", said Ralf Schimmer, head of the Depart-ment of Scientific Information Provision of the Max Planck Digital Library.

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all published articles. Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in PLoS journals, so long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. Thus, the contents of the seven Open Access journals of PLoS are freely accessible for the reader worldwide via internet.

"The Max Planck Society is one of the world's leading research organizations whose researchers have an international reputation for scientific excellence. We are delighted to be working with MPS so that more MPS researchers will be able to publish their work in PLoS journals, and for the broader promotion of Open Access to research literature", said Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing at PLoS.

The research institutes of the Max Planck Society perform basic research in the inte-rest of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. As co-initiator of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) MPS has actively supported change in scientific publishing in accordance with Open Access principles. MPS is advocating the position that research funding should include allocations for making research results freely available.

Max Planck Society: http://www.mpg.de

Max Planck Digital Library: http://www.mpdl.mpg.de

PLoS: http://www.plos.org

PLoS Open Access journals: http://www.plos.org/journals/index.php

Berlin Declaration: http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

The explosion of knowledge represented by the Internet and abetted by all sorts of digital technologies makes us more productive and gives us the opportunity to become smarter, not dumber.

Think of Wikipedia and its emergent spinoffs, like Wiktionary. Imperfect as they may be, the collective brainpower contained within these kinds of sites — and the hunger for learning and accurate information they represent — is something human history has never known before.

... consider the Public Library of Science: By breaking the publishing industry's choke hold on the circulation of scientific information, this powerful online resource arms scientists and the masses alike with the same data, accelerating new discoveries and breakthroughs.

Related Posts:

The evolution of the classroom

Maybe the schools are the problem

What is the Internet?

'm an (incredibly reluctant)academic, and one focusing on a literature-based degree to boot. That basically makes me a geek-to-the-second power when it comes to how much stuff I read. Not like that's anything new, though. From the moment Richard Scarry introduced me to his Busy, Busy World at the age of five, I knew I was a goner. Scarry and his freaky-deaky literary devices and mysterioso illustrations had completely usurped all free-will. From that point on, I was a slave to the written word...and to the images they forced into my mind. There was no escaping it. Henceforth, visions of bicycling foxes whizzing around the streets of London would pervade my thoughts at the most inopportune times -- like when I should be riding bikes with my disappointingly non-foxy friends. On the sidewalks of po-dunk Ohio rather than exotic London. I mean, how was I expected to settle for THAT?! It was then that the unavoidably negative side-effects of books impressed themselves upon me...and their grasp has only tightened these 27 years later. 

So...this new report published on the Public Library of Science (PLoS) website by some American and Dutch neuroscientists wasn't any big shocker as far as I'm concerned. Researchers performed a study on a focus group that was given visual, gustatory, and printed cues to trigger disgust. What their study essentially proved is that written material (provoking imagination) was just as likely to produce an emotion of disgust as actual visual cues of typically "disgusting" images. As such, we may deduce that books are as powerful as television and movies when it comes to controlling/causing certain emotions.

An excerpt for you:

Our findings of IFO involvement in all three modalities supports the idea that simulation through both pre-reflective (viewing someone else's disgust) as well as reflective (deliberate mental imagery and language) routes may therefore be complementary rather than independent of each other.

Again...this really isn't news to me. I mean, I'm at the point now where I'm pretty sure my dear Alfred colonized my subconscious before I even knew who he was. And although I'm a total film and pop-culture nerd too (One word: ANTM), I've never had my whole world shaken and ultimately uprooted by a movie or TV show. Big Brother originates on the page, after all. Plus, think about all the censorship that occurred in the pre-TV era, which isn't really that long ago. Society was well aware of the power of the written word, and the potential repercussions of such power... so they attempted to harness it.

But I realize that my experience is not typically "common," so I'm curious what yours has been (well, OK, that's not the only reason I'm curious about your experiences, but...). What are your thoughts about TV vs. Literary Mind Control?  And what might the role be of music? Would it also be considered complementary?

by David Rose

Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence.
The new generation of antidepressant drugs work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression, comprehensive research of clinical trials has found.
The researchers said that the drug was more effective than a placebo in severely depressed patients but that this was because of a decreased placebo effect.
The study, described as “fantastically important” by British experts, comes as the Government publishes plans to help people to manage depression without popping pills.

More than £291 million was spent on antidepressants in 2006, including nearly £120 million on SSRIs. As many as one in five people suffers depression at some point. With that in mind, ministers will today publish plans to train 3,600 therapists to treat depression. Spending on counselling and other psychological therapies will rise to at least £30 million a year.

The study, by Irving Kirsch, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull, is the first to examine both published and unpublished evidence of the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which account for 16 million NHS prescriptions a year. It suggests that the effectiveness of the drugs may have been exaggerated in the past by drugs companies cherry-picking the best results for publication.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which is due to review its guidance on treating depression, said that it would consider the study.

Mental health charities say that most GPs admit that they are still overprescribing SSRIs, which are considered as effective as older drugs but with fewer side-effects. SSRIs account for more than half of all antidrepressant prescriptions, despite guidelines from NICE in 2004 that they should not be used as a first-stop remedy.

American and British experts led by Professor Kirsch examined the clinical trials submitted to gain licences for four commonly used SSRIs, including fluoxetine (better known as Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor) and paroxetine (Seroxat).

The study is published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine. Analysing both the unpublished and published data from the trials, the team found little evidence that the drugs were much better than a placebo.

“Given these results there seems little reason to prescribe antide-pressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed,” Professor Kirsch said. “The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking antidepressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.” He added that the study “raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported”.

The data for all 47 clinical trials for the drugs were released by the US Food and Drug Administration under freedom of information rules. They included unpublished trials that were not made available to NICE when it recommended the drugs for use on the NHS. “Had NICE seen all the relevant unpublished studies, it might have come to a different conclusion,” Professor Kirsch said.

Tim Kendall, a deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, who helped to formulate the NICE guidance, said that the findings were “fantastically important” and that it was “dangerous” for drug companies not to have to publish their full data. He added: “Three of these drugs are some of the most commonly used antidepressants in this country. It’s not mandatory for drug companies to publish all this research. I think it should be.”

SSRIs are not prescribed to patients under 18 because of the risk of suicide.Drugs watchdogs in Europe are considering tighter controls on the development of new medicines, The Times reported this month, and may soon require regulators to monitor psychiatric effects and the risk of suicide more closely during clinical trials.

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said: “The authors have failed to acknowledge the very positive benefits these treatments have provided to patients and their families dealing with depression and their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice. This one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm and concern for patients.”

A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said: “Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine is an effective antidepressant.”

Source: Depression drugs dont work, find data review from The Times

By Mark Umbach at Pink News:

Many of you have probably read about the recent study that says the brain makeup of gay males is similar to that of straight women, and that holds true for gay women and straight men. (cited article here)

Now, I’m all for science and trying to figure things out, but in this matter, I’m trying dig a little bit deeper and figure out what exactly all this means. From science's standpoint, it would seem like the researchers are drawing comparisons between the sexual attractions of the subjects. Gay men and straight women are both attracted to men, and gay women and straight men are both attracted to women.

And I don’t think it would be a giant leap to infer that people reading the study are going to deduce that gay men tend to act more like women and gay women tend to act more like … playing into the biggest stereotype faced by the gay community.

(Funny timing, too, that the study was put out during this momentous week for gay rights in California).

The latter part of that comparison is where we’ll have to draw the proverbial line. The problem with a study such as this is that it makes such a sweeping generalization.

I know a lot of gay men. I also know a lot of gay women.

Part of the reason I’ve managed to become good friends with so many gay people is because I’m part of a community. More importantly, I’ve been able to meet so many different folks because in LA, I’ve been a part of three different sports organizations, all with different interests.

It is this last point that I would like to drive home.

Despite the fact that we may have similar brain structures, or what have you, the LGBT community is so non-homogeneous, that I just cannot come to terms with this study. Is the study saying that the brain shape dictates sexual attraction?

If that is the case, then, sure, there may be something to it.

But it cannot be ignored that people are going to read this article and draw from it that gay men are all feminine and dainty and that's all. Over the past six or seven years of being a gay man, I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of things. Over the past two years, however, I’ve come to terms with one bigger issue, and that’s the fact that we’re not all the same.

I know gay men who like to play baseball and football.

I know gay men who like to ice skate or swim.

And I know gay men who like to decorate and sew.

And I personally think that all of these things are fantastic. I think everyone should be who they want to be.

On the flip side, I certainly know straight women who like to play lacrosse or field hockey.

I know gay women who wouldn’t pick up a tennis racquet if Anna Kournikova were itching for a game of doubles.

I have to admit most of the straight men I know would, but not because of the tennis racquet. Some straight men would rather sit in the corner crocheting. I’m sure this new study will stir even more debate; let’s just hope it’s not used to reinforce stereotypes.

The real issue is that you cannot stereotype and place the entire LGBT community into one group.

We are as diverse as the population itself, and while this study certainly has its merits, the way it is being presented doesn’t sit well with me.

...

...

Hostess Fact: A comparison of the human, rat, and mouse genomes uncovered 481 sequences of 200 or more DNA bases that were exactly the same in all three species. (article) Obviously genetic, cellular and anatomic similarity isn't lacking in fellows humans or in other species, for that matter. What Marc makes so clear is that the "whole" self-gay or straight- is so much more than just a "sum" of its physical parts. It is that extra component that can't be quantified or analyzed with such black and white data...

...

Image via Wikipedia

In an expository news piece released in last week's issue of the journal Nature, Declan Butler describes how the Public Library of Science is attempting to stay afloat by using lower-cost, "bulk publishing" with PLoS One to offset mounting costs of publishing PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine.

The story has an element of shadenfreude to it, as those interviewed appear to take some pleasure out of saying publicly I told you so, considering PLoS's history of overconfidence in their financial model.

PLoS trumpeted its business model as being better than everyone else's, as being 'the one'

The blogosphere has reacted somewhat negatively to the Nature report, calling it a "hatchet job" and explaining Nature's approach in terms of competition and jealousy.

From the report, is clear that even with significant philanthropy, PLoS is unable to publish only high-quality, low acceptance journals. A model where one expends massive amounts of resources on manuscripts which are ultimately rejected does not scale well with a producer-pays model. PLoS has done what Joe Esposito described in his article Open Access 2.0 -- adopted a successful low-cost, highly automated publishing model for the bulk of its articles.

Manuscript submitted to PLoS One undergo light peer-review meaning that reviewers screen for serious methodological flaws, not the importance of the result. It is a bit puzzling that enough authors would be willing to pay $1,250 to publish in a generic, high-acceptance journal when the same amount of money would pay for open access in a journal such as PNAS or a high-prestige specialist journal offering an author-choice model.

And this is where the economics of traditional publishing need to be rethought. There is certainly some brand coat-tailing going on with the high-quality PLoS brand built from their flagship journals being conferred to PLoS One. In addition, authors of rejected manuscripts from PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine (those that don't include serious methodological flaws) are encouraged to resubmit to PLoS One. With the risk of completely missing the point on a blog that is followed by veteran publishers, let me speculate on how this makes economic sense:

1. Most manuscripts submitted to PLoS Biology or PLoS Medicine, like manuscripts submitted to all top-tiered journals, are undoubtedly of exceptional quality.
2. An editor has already invested time in vetting that manuscript - time that would be essentially wasted if the manuscript was simply rejected.
3. The author has already expressed the intention and willingness to pay author processing charges and publish in a fully open access journal.
4. PLoS could guarantee a faster publication with light peer-review (now half-completed) than sending the author away to seek an outlet with another journal.
5. As a result, it doesn't seem like a hard sell to an author that a rejected manuscript be published in PloS One. This may explain the success of the journal.

Now back to my earlier question about whether an author is getting equal value paying PLoS One $1,250 as they would seeking another outlet, especially when PLoS is using PLoS One to subsidize its flagship journals. What this subsidy means is that PLoS One authors are paying too much, and PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine authors are paying too little.

In an efficient market where authors are sensitized to the true costs of publishing and where competition leads to commensurate value for each dollar spent, this does not sound like an efficient market for publishing.

A new study, published in the Public Library of Science, has found that prayer and meditation actually affect our bodies, "right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA."

Researchers found that those who meditate "suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes" than those who didn't.

And when they had the nonmeditating group do some sort of relaxation exercise like repeating thoughts, prayer, sounds, or movement for ten minutes a day over a eight week period, they found that the group was also "suppressing stress-related genes, although at lower levels than those of the long-term meditating people."

"What this does is to break the train of everyday thought -- you no longer have stressful thoughts and because of that the body is able to return to a healthy state," said Dr. Herbert Benson, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute Mind/Body Medicine and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

If you pray or meditate, let us know if you have found less stress in your life, and if you receive any other benefits?

Read full article here.

Over 15% of American's have tried cocaine and nearly 45% have chanced some reefer. These statistics hugely over shadow even the US' closest rival and The Netherlands, with liberal narcotics policies and capitals like Amsterdam.

Did someone say narcotics reform?

"White Light/ White Heat" - The Velvet Underground (Verve Records 1967) White Light/ White Heat

"We are at a unique point in the history of the planet. This is not the first time one group of organisms has brought on a mass extinction event. One can look, for example, to the “oxygen holocaust” created by the first photosynthetic bacteria when the earth was half its current age. But this is the first time it is being done by organisms who, “by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence,” quipped Gould, comprehend the impact of their actions. We can either continue utilizing the short-term survival instincts that served us well in the past but are now maladaptive—growing our population exponentially and consuming the planet’s precious resources unsustainably, jeopardizing biodiversity, entire ecosystems, and the earth’s very ability to support life—or we can use our intellect to reveal long-term survival instincts, looking beyond our immediate desires to consider our long-term needs, voluntarily limiting our growth and consumption and so becoming responsible stewards of all life on earth.

"In terms of biodiversity loss, nowhere is this issue more poignant than with the Amphibia (Stuart et al. 2004). Of the ~6000 described species, 32% are threatened with extinction, likely in our lifetimes. Another 23% are so poorly known, and likely also threatened, that we can only call them Data Deficient. And with estimates of another 3000-6000 undescribed amphibian species so rare as to have avoided our detection to date, the anticipated losses in this single clade are staggering, on par with those faced by the Dinosauria 65 million years ago, an event the amphibians survived. Recent estimates suggest that the background extinction rate amphibians currently face is, on the conservative end, 200-2700 times higher than anything they have seen in their 360-million-year history (Roelants et al. 2007), and perhaps as much as 25-45 thousand times higher (McCallum 2007). This is the greatest extinction event in the history of amphibians and the greatest taxon-specific conservation challenge in the history of humanity.

"And in terms of hotspots of amphibian diversity, the new study published in PLoS Biology today by Andreone et al. rightly focus on the significance and uniqueness of the Malagasy amphibian fauna. Habitat destruction and global warming are already straining Malagasy amphibians. And with a susceptibility of at least some Malagasy amphibians to the chytrid fungus, Bd, in captivity (pers. obs.), this precious jewel of biodiversity is an open Petri dish waiting for the first spore to land. Thus the call of Andreone et al. for conservation action that is “pro-active, rather than reactive, or simply post-mortem” could not be more timely or wise. We have watched Bd impacting amphibians on every continent where they are found, and in almost every case, even when we knew where it was going and when, our response has been a salvage operation after the outbreak because we lacked the timely resources to do otherwise. This is unconscionable and unethical. As responsible stewards we must act now to safeguard biophilic havens like Madagascar, protecting key habitat areas and safeguarding in captivity those species that would otherwise succumb to threats that cannot be controlled in the wild. ACSAM is the recipe for how to proceed.

"Although as individuals we lack the money to effect the requisite changes called for by Andreone et al., we have something more powerful than money—a vote. We must demand action from the governments of the world, to support addressing this conservation crisis and all environmental ills. And if they refuse, then we must use our vote to replace them with someone who will respond appropriately. There is no political issue more paramount that protecting the future of all life on earth. The current amphibian extinction crisis in the perfect test: if we cannot perform an act so simple as saving the frogs, then what hope do we have for ourselves? Like the frogs of Madagascar, we have only one home, we are endemic to planet earth. It is time for us to start using our superior intellect for the long-term benefit of the world, of ourselves. Onward!" (Article courtesy of PLoS.)

Nei motivational speech e nelle riunioni di self-help non manca quasi mai la storia dei due animaletti caduti nel secchio di latte. A volte sono topi o ranocchi, altre volte insetti. L'altro giorno in metropolitana un grosso signore di colore con in testa un basco alla Che Guevara e gli occhiali da sole alla Morpheus ne stava leggendo una versione a me nuova, nella quale le protagoniste erano due cavallette. Le bestiole cadono in un secchio pieno di latte. Una resta passiva, si lamenta ed annega nella sua resa di fronte alle avversità. L’altra invece si dimena indomita al punto da riuscire a trasformare il latte in burro, salvandosi grazie alla forza d'animo, alla caparbia, eccetera.

Passiamo ora dal secchio di latte ad un posto meno piacevole e più gore: un ascidio di Nepenthes. Il genere Nepenthes è uno di quelli volgarmente classificati tra le "piante carnivore", i vegetali splatter che avendo scelto di vivere in una nicchia evolutiva sgradita a tutte le altre piante o quasi (i terreni poveri d'azoto come torbe, sfagni, o addirittura spazi epifiti) ha messo a punto una batteria di stratagemmi assai ingegnosi per integrare le carenze alimentari. Assumendo ad esempio l'azoto non dal suolo ma dalle proteine degli insetti (e se gli capita anche da piccoli vetebrati poco accorti), che catturano e digeriscono tramite apposite trappole.

Per poter raggiungere il loro scopo, gli adattamenti evolutivi necessari alle Nepenthes sono stati assai numerosi e terribilmente mirati. Senza farla troppo lunga, innanzitutto si è dovuto formare l'ascidio, una foglia profondamente modificata a forma di sacchetto, conformata in maniera tale da soddisfare diverse esigenze oltre a quella fotosintetica. L'insetto, ad esempio, deve essere attratto verso l'ascidio, ragion per cui la trappola è colorata e secerne una sostanza zuccherina in nettarii extrafiorali. Deve entrare facilmente ma non deve riuscire a fuggire, per cui esistono sia barriere fisiche (l'apertura a margine revoluto, talvolta internamente spinificata) sia chimico-fisiche (la parete interna è squamata e spesso ricoperta di cera, che impedisce la presa alle zampe degli insetti) sia chimiche (la base dell'ascidio è piena di un liquido digestivo con doti particolari, come vedremo tra poco. Inoltre, dato che questo genere è tipico di foreste tropicali umide (sud-est asiatico, Borneo e dintorni), è necessario evitare che troppa acqua entri nell'ascidio, diluendo il liquido digestivo e limitandone l'efficacia. Ecco quindi che sopra l'apertura troviamo un opercolo a mò di ombrellino.

Fino a qui, si tratta di informazioni reperibili su qualunque sito di appassionati di carnivore. La parte che ci interessa di più ora è relativa al liquido digestivo, che solo digestivo non è, a quanto emerge leggendo un articolo apparso su PLoS One (Public Library of Science, un editore open access). La pubblicazione, dal titolo A Viscoelastic Deadly Fluid in Carnivorous Pitcher Plants, mostra una serie di dettagli molto interessanti circa il comportamento del liquido digestivo, fatti a partire da specie come Nepenthes rafflesiana, nelle quali il rivestimento interno degli ascidi non è scivoloso. Quello presente nelle trappole digestive è un liquido molto vischioso, che avvolge rapidamente la preda, tanto più rapidamente ed efficacemente quanto più questa si agita in preda al panico nel tentativo di fuggire. Non solo il movimento accelera l'imbibizione e blocca zampe ed ali, ma determina anche variazioni di consistenza nel fluido, che per effetto del minimo calore prodotto e dell'azione meccanica assume una consistenza sempre più collosa e rigida. La sfortunata preda non annega (quasi tutti gli insetti camminano letteralmente sull'acqua grazie al loro esoscheletro idrofobo o nuotano per brevi periodi e facilmente sfuggirebbero se il liquido avesse le medesime proprietà dell'acqua), ma viene letteralmente avvolta e soffocata come in una pozza di sabbie mobili, dando tempo alle sostanze digestive di fare il loro dovere. Nella versione online dell'articolo sono presenti anche alcuni filmati in Quicktime (editoria telematica vs. editoria cartacea, uno a zero) che mostrano la dinamica dell'intrappolamento. Abbastanza agghiacciante, ma la Natura non accetta buonismi.

E l'esergo al titolo del post? L'esistenza di un polimero viscoelastico naturale e biodegradabile ma resistente all'acqua (il liquido mantiene queste proprietà anche se viene diluito del 90% in acqua, altra ottimizzazione evolutiva visto il clima molto piovoso) è terribilmente promettente nella produzione di antiparassitari biologici in grado, as esempio, di bloccare o interferire con la colonizzazione di afidi, bruchi e formiche sulle piante da fiore e da frutto. Oppure ancora per aumentare l'adesione e la permanenza di altri insetticidi nebulizzati. Qualcuno ci lavorerà.

Per gli insetti disgraziatamente finiti negli ascidi di Nepenthes rafflesiana vale dunque un altro adagio più cinico: se finisci nella sabbie mobili non agitarti, affonderesti più in fretta. La lezione a riguardo potrebbero averla imparata alcuni simbionti delle Nepthentes come un ragnetto, Misumenops nepenthicola, che entra negli ascidi e muovendosi al rallentatore, si ciba di prede della pianta o dei loro resti senza restare intrappolato. Pianino pianino, in slow motion, anche il ragnetto si è fatto strada verso la sua nicchia evolutiva.

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A Viscoelastic Deadly Fluid in Carnivorous Pitcher Plants
Laurence Gaume, Yoel Forterre

Background. The carnivorous plants of the genus Nepenthes, widely distributed in the Asian tropics, rely mostly on nutrients derived from arthropods trapped in their pitcher-shaped leaves and digested by their enzymatic fluid. The genus exhibits a great diversity of prey and pitcher forms and its mechanism of trapping has long intrigued scientists. The slippery inner surfaces of the pitchers, which can be waxy or highly wettable, have so far been considered as the key trapping devices. However, the occurrence of species lacking such epidermal specializations but still effective at trapping insects suggests the possible implication of other mechanisms.

Methodology/Principal Findings. Using a combination of insect bioassays, high-speed video and rheological measurements, we show that the digestive fluid of Nepenthes rafflesiana is highly viscoelastic and that this physical property is crucial for the retention of insects in its traps. Trapping efficiency is shown to remain strong even when the fluid is highly diluted by water, as long as the elastic relaxation time of the fluid is higher than the typical time scale of insect movements.

Conclusions/Significance. This finding challenges the common classification of Nepenthes pitchers as simple passive traps and is of great adaptive significance for these tropical plants, which are often submitted to high rainfalls and variations in fluid concentration. The viscoelastic trap constitutes a cryptic but potentially widespread adaptation of Nepenthes species and could be a homologous trait shared through common ancestry with the sundew (Drosera) flypaper plants. Such large production of a highly viscoelastic biopolymer fluid in permanent pools is nevertheless unique in the plant kingdom and suggests novel applications for pest control.

The authors, Greg W. Fegan and Trudie A. Lang, manage numerous clinical trials for the Kenya Medical Research Institute–Wellcome Trust Collaborative Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya. Like many other research organizations in developing countries, their work largely focuses on finding treatments for “neglected diseases” such as malaria, hookworm, and encephalopathies. They clearly communicate the inability for proprietary eClinical software to be a widely useable solution in such settings due to costly and restrictive licensing. 
 

However, Fegan and Lang define the appeal of open source as something greater than financial savings (although this is a strong motivation). In addition to freedom from license fees, open source clinical trial software built with open components and open standards is more “modifiable and amenable for use with existing software already employed.” Perhaps the most significant point made is that open source can be a more powerful way to promulgate standards and better leverage the collective efforts of disparate research institutions.
 

Indeed, the authors also point out that the impact of a well designed and supported open source eClinical system “can be beneficial to all clinical researchers” and urge “international health research organisations to combine their efforts and spending power and assist with the development of systems that are open to all and truly fit for purpose.”
 

The paper closes with the following call to action:

“Research organisations and funders should combine efforts to produce an open-source solution for trial data management. A shared platform could then be easily established, and would bring wider benefits such as electronic submission to regulators, automated sharing of data, and contribution to important public databases such as pharmacovigilance and drug-monitoring registries.

We believe that an open-source approach to a truly designed-for-purpose data-management system for clinical trials is attractive. Such a system would save money by eliminating the reliance on the use of expensive database software systems and their administrators. This would empower and enable a wider variety of people to conduct trials, as the question of capturing, cleaning, and extracting data would not be overly daunting or expensive. This point is significant, as it may encourage more investigators in resource-poor settings to take part in high-standard research that would otherwise be out of reach and beyond their capacity. Surely this would increase the scope and variety of trials that are conducted. Our hope for this article is that it will begin a debate on this topic, and lead to a concerted effort to lobby the international research and donor community to make sure this barrier to trial conduct is understood and addressed.”

I encourage you to read the full article online at the PLoS website.

First, here is something close to the heart, an open journal site that presents experiments in video format. JoVE.

Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer reviewed, open access, online journal devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format.

For a sample, view this experiment on "A Craniotomy Surgery Procedure for the Chronic Imaging of the Brain" by clicking on the screen shot below. Have I mentioned that I love film? Woot! Have fun!

Thanks, Gaurav Parikh for sharing this site.

WorldVistA is an open source, low cost software that handles electronic health records. It was originally created by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for use in their hospitals and facilities. Now, the rest of the world can use it too.

WorldVistA's mission is to improve healthcare worldwide by making medical information technology better and universally affordable.

WorldVistA seeks to help those who choose to adopt the VistA system to successfully master, install, and maintain the software for their own use. WorldVistA will strive to guide VistA adopters and programmers towards developing a community based on principles of open, collaborative, peer review software development and dissemination.

Here are excerpts of Thomas Goetz article on the New York Times, "Physician, Upgrade Thyself," when this software was first introduced to the public.

Health care providers have been dreaming about electronic records for so long that the idea has begun to seem like vaporware, a never-to-be-realized fantasy similar to flying cars and jetpacks. But there is already a clear software standard, an open-source system that’s low-cost, easy to use and readily available. It could be the key to the health care system we ought to have already.

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Want to see the best knee surgeon in the country? If he’s using WorldVistA, he can check out your online records at his house or office. If you switch jobs and move to a new insurance plan, you won’t need to build a new medical history and FedEx old records around. With your permission, your files will be accessible to your new providers instantly. In this way, electronic medical records generate better care and lower costs.

WorldVistA isn’t perfect. It isn’t as customizable as some proprietary systems, and its graphical interface isn’t as intuitive or as polished. Worse, its back-office functions — staffing and billing — aren’t all that strong. Major hospitals and health maintenance organizations in search of a Cadillac are free to spend the dollars to buy one.

But for the vast majority of health care providers, WorldVistA is what they’ve been waiting for: a low-cost, simple-to-use system that makes it easier to provide quality health care.

I end today's post with another personal favorite, PLoS Medicine or the Public Library of Science Medicine.

PLoS Medicine believes that medical research is an international public resource. The journal provides an open-access venue for important, peer-reviewed advances in all disciplines. With the ultimate aim of improving human health, we encourage research and comment that address the global burden of disease.

PLoS Medicine...is an open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal published monthly online by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization.

Here is a message from the PLoS founders,"A Medical Journal for the Internet Age."

The Internet is awash with medical information. Eight hundred million people have direct access to the Internet [1], and in the United States over 60% have searched for health or medical information on the Web [2]. Go to any search engine and type in the name of a disease or drug, and you will be directed to hundreds of sites, ranging from the sound and useful to the quackish and dangerous. Google “medical” and you get 85 million pages, “drug,” 40 million, and “health,” 230 million.

But something is conspicuously missing. The most reliable medical information on the Internet—the contents of peer-reviewed medical journals—is hidden from the public and most of the world's physicians. Although most medical journals are available online, their publishers limit access to those who choose, and can afford, to pay for access. This should not, and need not, be so.

I agree!

I thought a few other people might enjoy some of their articles.

Adventure Doc

Pues en respuesta a esta pregunta, durante este semestre académico, nos dimos a la tarea de buscar bases de datos gratuitas con texto completo. Las mismas pueden ser accedidas desde cualquier parte sin necesidad de nombre de usuario o clave de acceso.

Bases de datos gratuitas     

www.scielo.org

http://dialnet.unirioja.es/

http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/

http://www.plos.org

http://www.imbiomed.com.mx/index3.html (Revistas médicas latinoamericanas)

http://www.doaj.org/ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

Esperando que la informacion presentada, les sea de utilidad.

Saludos