NASA Follows NIH To Make All Research It Funds Open Access

from the good-to-see dept

We've written in the past about how the National Institute of Health (NIH) requires any research it funds (and it funds a lot) to be published under open access rules via its own PubMed Central platform after a certain period of time. There have been some efforts in Congress to require other government funded research to go down the same path, and some other agencies have worked on some similar ideas on their own. Now, NASA has announced that it will be requiring all research published via the $3 billion NASA spends each year to to also be published on the PubMed system (and also within in 12 months, as the NIH requires)

The provisions of NASA’s policy on articles track with those in the current NIH Public Access policy, and will require NASA-funded researchers to deposit articles into the PubMed Central database, to be made accessible with no more than than a 12 month embargo. However, the NASA plan notes that, “publishers may petition for longer embargo periods, but strong evidence of the benefits would be needed.” This language is notable, as it seems to suggest that any determination of changes in embargo length will be measured against the public good, rather than specific industry concerns.

Also, it looks like the plan will include efforts to make the raw data more available as well:

One final item that is tucked away at the end of the NASA plan, but is worth noting: the Agency will explore the development of a “research data commons” along with other departments and agencies, for storage, discoverability, and reuse of data with a particular focus on making the data underlying peer reviewed scientific publications resulting from federally funded scientific research available for free “at the time of publication.” This is an idea that appears to be gaining traction in the federal agency community, and is well worth tracking closely.

It's good to see more government agencies moving in this direction. It would be even nicer to see shorter time frames for the embargo, and even further commitment to releasing the data beyond just "exploring," but this is good for science, data, learning and innovation.

Filed Under: federally funded research, nasa, nih, open access

DailyDirt: Out Into Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The promise of large-scale human expansion into space has been around for a long time, and we've already passed countless fiction-proposed deadlines for such a development. Still, while we're not living in moon cities as many may have predicted, we're constantly taking unprecedented steps outwards. Here are just a few of the latest:

• The NASA robot that helps out on the ISS now has a pair of brand new legs. They're nine feet long with seven joints and grapplers on the end, allowing it to perform lots of new tasks. [url]
• Scientists are researching whether earthly microorganisms could survive on Mars — to make sure we don't accidentally take them there. Though we haven't built any extraterrestrial human colonies, we have to be careful about unintentionally creating other ones. [url]
• Meanwhile, the solar system keeps getting bigger, with the recent discovery of a new planetoid. VP113 lies beyond Neptune and the Kuiper belt. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: mars, moon, nasa, planets, space

DailyDirt: To Space And Back

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The biggest challenge to modern space exploration isn't figuring out how to do it, it's marshalling the necessary resources and support — especially for cash-strapped government agencies like NASA. Here are just a few of the latest ways that people are working to make space a little more accessible (and a little more popular).

• SpaceX has successfully tested a recoverable rocket booster that could shave millions off the cost of a space launch. The booster delivered cargo to the ISS then performed a controlled ocean landing, leaving it intact for re-use. [url]
• NASA's ongoing efforts to drum up space-excitement via social media have garnered this Tron-like crowdsourced design for a new spacesuit prototype. The agency's many PR programs are hit-and-miss, but the new suit does look pretty damn cool. [url]
• A 2008 project where Japanese children sent cherry seeds into space has resulted in something of a minor mystery, with the resultant trees blooming years ahead of schedule. The experiment wasn't strictly scientific, but the results still defy explanation, and remind us that there are still a lot of simple things we don't know about space — and plenty of reasons to keep going back. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: exploration, nasa, space
Companies: spacex

Fighting To Free Knowledge Paid For By Taxpayers -- And Winning

from the adding-a-pebble-to-the-cairn dept

One of the pioneers of open access is Michael Eisen, who helped found what has become the leading open access publisher, Public Library of Science, back in 2000. Since then, he's been a pugnacious defender of the public's right to read the research it has paid for, so perhaps it's no surprise that he decided to take direct action in the following case involving NASA:

The Mars Curiosity rover has been a huge boon for NASA -- tapping into the public's fascination with space exploration and the search for life on other planets. Its landing was watched live by millions of people, and interest in the photos and videos it is collecting is so great, that NASA has had to relocate its servers to deal with the capacity.

So what does NASA do to reward this outpouring of public interest (not to mention to $2.5 billion taxpayer dollars that made it possible)? They publish the first papers to arise from the project behind a Science magazine's paywall

It's a great point: here was a fantastic opportunity to build on the evident excitement among the general public brought about by the Mars Rover project, and to deepen people's interest in science, and yet NASA prevented that by stupidly locking up its papers behind a paywall. Eisen decided to do something about it:

This whole situation is even more absurd, because US copyright law explicitly says that all works of the federal government -- of which these surely must be included -- are not subject to copyright. So, in the interests of helping NASA and Science Magazine comply with US law, I am making copies of these papers freely available here

Unlike the tragic story of Aaron Swartz, who also believed that knowledge should be shared, this one has a happy ending:

As of today [27th September] these articles are now available to download from the JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] website. I assume this was done in response to this post and the attention it received. (They were not there on the 26th when the press releases went out -- I looked. And you can see from the PDFs that they weren't downloaded from the Science website until the 27th.) Let's hope that in the future that all NASA papers -- and indeed the results of all government funded research -- are made immediately freely available.

It's great news that Eisen's actions did not end in the usual legal threats from publishers, but in the release of the papers on the JPL site. However, as he points out, this isn't about a few papers from NASA, however interesting they may be. This is about free access to all research that the public funds. Despite huge advances over the last decade, we're still some way from achieving that, which makes Eisen's latest victory for open access all the more welcome.

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Filed Under: knowledge, michael eisen, nasa, open access, publishing, taxpayer funding

DailyDirt: Searching For Life Forms

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we've been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it's probably good that NASA hasn't given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.

• Recently, some UK scientists claimed to find evidence of alien life in the Earth's upper atmosphere, suggesting that alien life is just raining down from space all the time. The concept of panspermia is interesting, but the evidence for it isn't quite convincing yet. [url]
• There are a bunch of ways to look for aliens, such as a search for extraterrestrial technology (SETT) to find non-natural shapes in space. Looking for alien crop circles on exoplanets ain't easy, though. [url]
• Some astronomers are looking for evidence of Dyson Spheres -- a massive array solar panels that advanced alien civilizations might use for sustaining enormous energy needs. This search is actually being funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. [url]
• NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't detected much methane in the Martian atmosphere, so the odds of finding familiar living organisms seems a bit more distant. Mars was most likely suitable for Earth-like life at some point, but it's looking pretty dead right now. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, astrobiology, biology, curiosity, dyson sphere, et, extraterrestrial, life, mars, nasa, seti, sett, templeton foundation

Angered By The NSA, But Confused By Acronyms, Brazilian Hacker Defaces NASA Websites

from the take-that,-surveillancestronauts! dept

If you're going to go after the world leader in untargeted data collections, you might as well be just as unfocused. After details of the NSA's spying efforts in Brazil drove the president to cancel her trip to the US, some of that anger spilled over to the public. And a certain member of the Brazilian public, one "BMPoc," decided to lash out in the most internet of ways -- by defacing websites linked with the intelligence agency. The only problem was BMPoC was one letter off.

Multiple NASA websites were defaced last week by a Brazilian hacktivist who may have misread the sites' URLs, because he wasn't protesting about the US space agency giving joyrides to inhuman stowaways – he was protesting against NSA spying.

“BMPoC” hit kepler.arc.nasa.gov and 13 other sites with messages protesting against US spying on Brazil, as well as a possible US military intervention in Syria.

Ah, NASA. The non-spy agency whose efforts over the years have resulted in a number of technological advancements we take for granted. NASA is a very, very, VERY outwardly focused agency, which perhaps explains why its internal controls are so lax it's referred to as the "low hanging fruit" of the government website defacement field.

What the hacker lacked in accuracy, he made up for in successful hits and enthusiasm. The following warning graced unsuspecting NASA aficionados for several hours earlier this week.

NASA HACKED! BY #BMPoCWe! Stop spy on us! The Brazilian population do not support your attitude! The Illuminati are now visibly acting!

Obama heartless! Inhumane! you have no family? the point in the entire global population is supporting you. NOBODY! We do not want war, we want peace!!! Do not attack the Syrians.

Coherent, it is not, thanks to the language barrier, a fundamental misunderstanding that all acronyms are not created equal, and the obligatory Illuminati reference. NASA, duly chastened by orders to cease all "spy" and change its unsupported attitude, released the following statement.

"A Brazilian hacker group posted a political message on a number of NASA websites. ... Within hours of the initial posting, information technology staff at the Ames Research Center discovered the message and immediately started an investigation, which is ongoing," he said. "At no point were any of the agency’s primary websites, missions or classified systems compromised."

In other words, the attack was about as harmful as graffiti. Perhaps even safer considering it wasn't scrubbed off the "walls" by a group of low-level criminals putting in community service hours.

Other than the wrong acronym and the Illuminati, BMPoC is absolutely correct. Brazilians do not support the NSA's spying or attitude and most of the world is very definitely not supportive of the US engaging with Syria. (Well, "engaging" by way of bombs, missiles and boots on the ground, anyway.)

If the secret to fighting a successful battle is knowing your enemy, BMPoC is no Sun Tzu (or even Ambrose Burnside, for that matter). On the plus side, website defacing is much more anonymous and less prone to crippling embarrassment than an in-person protest -- especially one that finds the protester a few blocks away from his or her intended target, yelling at equally confused people about actions they never took and things they never said.

Filed Under: brazil, hackers, nasa, nsa, nsa surveillance, protest

DailyDirt: Get Your Own Satellite

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Private space technology is becoming ever more affordable. Not too long ago, only large governments were able to send stuff into space. Now, large companies can do it, and even some wealthy individuals can control their own satellite (or their own part of one). Here are just a few (more) interesting projects that suggest satellites will be ever more accessible to regular folks (and not just for satellite TV or internet access).

• George Clooney controls a satellite that has spied on Sudan since 2010. The Satellite Sentinel Project promotes human rights by keeping an eye on possible war crimes. [url]
• NASA couldn't continue operating its GALEX satellite due to budget constraints, so it's lending the aging satellite to Caltech to keep it running and observing ultraviolet wavelengths in our galaxy. This is the only satellite currently observing UV events, and this science mission is being privately funded to keep it going. [url]
• The European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) mission aims to put a micro-satellite in low Earth orbit to provide students hands-on experience with an active space project. It will be launched in 2015-2016 and stay in orbit for at least 6 months. [url]
• The Arkyd project has succeeded in achieving its Kickstarter goal, making a crowdfunded satellite a reality. Planetary Resources is expected to deliver a functioning satellite sometime around August 2015. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: arkyd, caltech, esa, galex, george clooney, inexpensive space projects, micro-satellite, nasa, satellite, satellite sentinel project, science, space, sudan
Companies: esa, kickstarter, nasa, planetary resources

DailyDirt: Spaceworthy Engines That Will Take Us 'To Infinity And Beyond!'

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Humans -- not content to be stuck on this planet and itching to find alien life -- are hard at work developing better ways to send satellites and spacecraft into orbit and outer space. If we actually want to colonize Mars by 2023, then some new propulsion technologies might be in order. Here are a few examples of various efforts going on around the world.

• MIT researchers have developed a penny-sized rocket thruster that runs on jets of ion beams. The thruster is flat and square, like a computer chip, and covered with 500 microscopic tips that emit ion beams strong enough to propel a shoebox-sized satellite. Placing several of these thrusters on a small satellite could enable it to move to change its orbit, as well as turn and roll. [url]
• Engineers in the UK are testing some key technology for a propulsion system that could one day take a spaceplane, like the Skylon vehicle, straight into orbit without all the multiple propellant stages required with current throw-away rockets. The Sabre propulsion system, which is part jet engine and part rocket engine, burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust. [url]
• Researchers at The Australian National University are working on a plasma thruster that could eventually be used to send satellites to Mars. The plasma thruster could be ready by 2014, and initial missions will attempt to send old satellites into "graveyard" orbits using the thruster. [url]
• The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA are both testing solar sail technology as a form of primary propulsion for spacecraft. The solar sail technology relies on the concept that surfaces exposed to electromagnetic radiation will experience "radiation pressure," which exerts a small pushing force against the surface. Japan's Ikaros 27-square-meter solar sail gets only 0.0002 pounds of force due to radiation pressure from the sun, but over a long period of time, incredibly high speeds could be achieved. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: exploration, jaea, nasa, plasma thrusters, propulsion, rockets, skylon, solar sail, solar system, space

DailyDirt: Exploring Mars

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Over the next few years, we should be learning quite a bit more about our Martian neighbors. The Curiosity Rover is just starting out, but if it performs as well as its predecessors, then it should provide tons of interesting data about Mars and its geological history. When Curiosity ceases to function, maybe we'll be more willing to send manned missions, but robots seem to be doing a pretty good job so far. Here are just a few interesting tidbits on the red planet.

• Analysis of two Martian meteorites suggests that Mars may have contained much more water than previous estimates. During the formation of Mars, water was likely to be present in the Martian mantle in similar proportions as the Earth's mantle. [url]
• The Mars Curiosity Rover isn't the only spacecraft to try to land on an astronomical object in our solar system. At least twelve other unmanned crafts have hit moons, asteroids or other planets: the Soviet Union's Luna 9, NASA'a Surveyor 1 on the moon, the Lunokhod 1 on the moon, Russia's Venera 7 on Venus, Soviet Mars 3, the Viking 1 and Viking 2 spacecrafts on Mars, the Mars Pathfinder, the NEAR Shoemaker on an asteroid, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Huygens probe of Titan, Japan's Hayabusa probe, and the Mars Phoenix lander. [url]
• The 11-year-old Mars Odyssey probe is serving as a "real time" communications relay for Curiosity, allowing Curiosity to focus more of its energy on exploring Mars. Two other Mars satellites (NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the European Space Agency's Mars Express) are also re-transmitting signals from Curiosity, but with delays of several hours. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: curiosity, esa, exploration, mars, nasa, odyssey probe, satellites, space, spacecraft, unmanned

Curiosity's Mars Landing Video Disappears From YouTube Due To Bogus Copyright Claim

from the happens-once-a-month dept

We hear from copyright system supporters that bogus copyright takedowns are rare and we only highlight the "exceptions." Of course, it seems like there are an awful lot of these exceptions. The latest is that with the massive success of last night's Mars landing of the Curiosity Rover, NASA posted the video to YouTube for those who didn't watching the thrilling, suspenseful landing live... except, if you checked out NASA's own YouTube page a few hours later, you got this:
screenshot courtesy of Motherboard It's back now, but as Vice's Motherboard blog explains, this kind of thing happens all the time. They spoke with Bob Jacobs, NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications, who said that this happens about once a month, and almost always happens with NASA's popular videos.

“We spend too much time going through the administrative process to clear videos slapped with needless copyright claims,” says NASA’s Bob Jacobs. “YouTube seems to be missing a ‘common sense’ button to its processes, especially when it involves public domain material paid for by the American taxpayer.”

Jacobs is quite reasonably annoyed at the lack of consequences for these bogus takedowns:

“There seems to be few consequences for companies that engage in such activities, which often include legitimate news organizations. We do agree that people who make false copyright claims against our material should be held accountable, regardless of their automated systems.”

What's amazing here is that Scripps is a repeat offender with NASA. Back in April, people noticed that it had forced the removal of NASA's (again, public domain) footage of the Boeing 747 that carried the space shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian (its "final journey"). But, of course, there aren't many (or even any) serious consequences for these kinds of mistakes. While it's not clear what happened, it seems likely that Scripps replayed the footage itself somewhere, and via some semi-automated process uploaded it to YouTube's ContentID, in which it claimed copyright on all its works. But, of course, it was actually broadcasting public domain video from NASA. Unfortunately, YouTube can't recognize that Scripps is the latecomer here, rebroadcasting others' public domain material, and thus took down the material, only to have it corrected later.

Given that Scripps is now a repeat offender, it seems that perhaps YouTube should cut it off from automatically censoring others' videos.

Oh, and if you want to know one of the reasons we're so concerned about a possible broadcast treaty (which the US government is now supporting), it's because it actually would make these kinds of claims quasi-legal, in that broadcasters who broadcast public domain material could then claim a separate "broadcast right" over that footage. Even without that, we see operations like Scripps abusing the law. Do we really want to expand that power?

Now, since the video is back up, here's the actual (public domain) footage, in case you missed it (and if you did miss it, you should watch it, as it really is incredible):

Filed Under: bogus takedown, contentid, copyright, curiosity, dmca, landing, mars, nasa, public domain, takedowns
Companies: scripps