open access

Thank you to PHD comics for making this nice animation along with a voiceover describing open access publishing, starting with the current state of scholarly publishing and why it needs to change. I admit I am part of the problem-- I do submit to closed journals with a desire to get one of their names on my CV. But with the arxiv and other ways to put our content online, there is now the opportunity share every preprint with open access, and I hope that researchers continue to move in that direction. Hopefully before too long the most prestigious journals will be ones that were invented now as open access.

Air Pollution Sampling

Reading this article from yesterday about "microsampling air pollution" made me hopeful for my submitted NSF proposal on data methods for air pollution sensing. Just as in every area where "bigdata" is making a difference, sensor data collection could make a big impact on understanding our environment and the role it plays in our health.