Low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas could have caused brain damage in former service members, according to scientists working with the DoD. More than 100,000 US troops were exposed to that toxin in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War. — Read the rest
John Mark Ockerbloom says,
— Read the restNature published an article yesterday about big scholarly publishers meeting with a PR firm to propagandize against open access. The report has to be read to be believed, but here's a sample that gives a good picture of the type and degree of spin proposed:
From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
I've been playing with this time-stopping test off and on all day, with surprising results. The page has a little analog clock with a sweeping second hand. If you follow the instructions by looking about 20 seconds ahead of the second hand, the second hand will appear to stop. — Read the rest
James Boyle, an amazing academic copyfighter, has written a positively brilliant column for the Financial Times on the crazy way that IP policy gets made — without any evidence, without any followup. In particular, Boyle writes about database copyright, which Americans don't have and which Europeans do have — and how the European database industry is atrophying under this punishing regime that allows companies to own collections of facts. — Read the rest
