Friday, October 17, 2003

1. SPACE RACE: SHENZHOU-5 VERSUS MERCURY-5.
On Wednesday, China successfully launched the Shenzhou-5 space capsule into orbit with taikonaut Yang Liwei on board and returned him safely to Earth after 14 orbits. The first American to reach orbit, John Glenn, circled Earth a mere three times in the Mercury-5 capsule - 3 years before Yang was born. And this is only the beginning; China hopes eventually to construct a permanent base on the moon. Americans should welcome China's new direction. Sending humans into space offers no military, economic, or scientific advantage; rather it's a symbolic demonstration that China has arrived as an economic power and can now afford to waste vast sums of money. Perhaps the U.S. could help by offering China complete plans for the space shuttle. This would serve the cause of world peace by diverting China's resources from more dangerous adventures.

2. SPACE SCIENCE: ATTACK OF THE GIANT TOMATOES.
According to a Chinese news agency, Yang Liwei carried a bag of vegetable seeds into space. There have been stories coming out of China for several weeks that exposure of seeds to space radiation produces huge tomatoes and other vegetables. When it was pointed out to the news agency that most mutations are harmful, WN was assured that in China the radiation effect is always positive, leading to bigger and better vegetables that will revolutionize agriculture.

3. PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE: THAT ANSWERS THE FIRST QUESTION.
It's a grand experiment: a free online scientific journal supported entirely by fees paid by the authors (WN 27 Jun 03). Page charges to defray some of the cost of publishing a peer- reviewed journal are nothing new, but the Public Library of Science, a non-profit located in San Francisco, charges a flat fee of $1,500 for each article. That's still pretty modest compared to research costs, but can such a journal compete for readers with the established journals? The first open-access journal, PloS Biology, was launched Sunday night. In under eight hours, PloS servers were completely overwhelmed. Clearly, it's publishing made for a democracy. If the idea really takes off, it will have a huge effect on the entire organization of science. One reason for high interest in the first issue of PloS-Biology is a startling article about thought-controlled robots.

4. THOUGHT CONTROLLED ROBOTS: I THINK, THEREFORE THE ROBOT IS.
Duke University researchers report in PLoS-Biology that brain activity of rhesus monkeys, picked up with probes inserted into the brain, has been used to carry out complex reaching and grasping motions of a robot arm. It should now be possible to build a wi-fi remote version. It's then only a matter of time until the courts must confront the issue of responsibility for crimes committed by robots.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.