（作者为美国普渡大学社会心理学教授Duane Wegener。他担任Wiley期刊Social Psychology and Personality Compass的编辑，撰写了题为“10 Things Scholars should do to get published”的文章。Wiley China Blog将其译成中文，分享给中国学者们） 大家好！我是Duane Wegener，今天我想跟大家谈谈新学者发表文章必须要做的十件事，虽然我对这十件事进行了排序，但是请注意，它们的重要性其实是不分先后的。我的建议很大程度上来源于我作为社会心理学实证类期刊编辑、以及最近作为Compass Journals 之一Social Psychology and Personality Compass编辑的经历。我明白不同的研究领域对于发表文章有不同的运作方式，所以我不敢保证自己对其它领域及其它领域的编辑流程有专业见地。但接下来我所说并不具有任何专业限制，也与心理学领域本身无关。我希望这些建议能更广泛的适用于不同学科分支、帮到来自不同专业背景的学者。我的学生们将这些视为我给他们文章发表和学术生涯发展的建议。文章发表和学术生涯发展有很多关联之处，你们会发现这“十必行”中的某些要点更多地是在谈论专业知识的准备与专业能力的训练，而并非文章发表过程本身（尽管，至少在我们的研究领域，毋庸置疑的是，一位学者的职业发展很大程度上取决于其发表的学术成果，而学术成果又取决于该学者是如何被训练的）。 现在开始谈谈“十必行”。 建议一：抓住每个当审稿人的机会 学者如何能不局限在自己写文发文的框框中积累更多文章发表经验呢？最好的方式之一就是——当审稿人，如果能成为目标发文期刊的审稿人则更好。新成员的名字通常不会立即出现在编委名单上，但对很多期刊来说，一半以上的稿件都是由特设审稿人评审的，即那些不出现在编委名单上的审稿人。 如果你曾发表过与提交文章相关主题的文章，那么期刊编辑可能会找到你的姓名和联系方式，邀请你做审稿人。他们也可能邀请在该领域发表过文章的你的导师或资深同事。如果你的导师或同事没时间审稿，或者愿意帮你获得审稿经验，他们可能会向编辑建议让你参与审稿。很多期刊编辑都乐于接受新的审稿人。 请认真对待这些机会。我曾作为学生参与过一项研究生课程项目，在项目中，一位资深编辑告诉我们，他会特地寻找研究领域的新学者参与审稿。通过这种方式，他能了解该领域新学者们的想法，并由此评估新学者们未来的学术能力。新审稿人所写的评论将决定编辑是否去阅读他们所写的文章，以及是否请他们参加该编辑组织的小型会议。 现在，一个学者完成审稿并不仅仅是要“取悦”期刊编辑，至少对于我们社会心理学领域来说，审稿过程中最重要的部分可能是可以在对投稿文章做出发表决定后，能看到其他审稿人的意见，这一点对于实证文章和综述文章同样有效。阅读其他审稿人的意见，可以让我们了解对于同一篇文章，其他人是如何评价的。他们和我发现了相同的问题吗?对于最重要的一些问题，我和其他人的意见相同还是相反？哪位审稿人的意见被编辑最终采用而做出了文章发表与否的决定？ 这些信息能帮助新学者融入研究领域——了解该研究领域特定期刊中，哪些理论被视为学术贡献，哪些论据论点被视为充分支持作者所阐述的理论。持续一段时间后，你很可能会发现，不同的学术期刊各有自己的特色（不同的编辑队伍的风格也会略有不同）。我并不建议大家将其他的审稿人的意见甚至最终的发表决定视为对文章的正确评判，事实上审稿流程中也会有很多错误，但参与这一过程能帮助你更好地“雕琢”自己的科研成果。 站在审稿人的眼光来看待自己的文章是一项非常宝贵的技能，而能了解到其他审稿人所想就更好了（如果你也是他们当中的一员）。至少从我的角度而言，将期刊审稿的任务加入到研究生课程项目中是至关重要的。它能帮助学生跳出文章作者的思维模式，站在读者的角度来看待问题。即使你的课程项目中没有大量的审稿工作，你也可以与自己的导师或其他学生合作，来增加这部分经历。 建议二：像专家一样写作 也许这部分建议无需言说，因为你本来就是、或本该成为自己研究领域的专家。但如果你的写作并不专业，可能最终无法成为一个专家。你应该给文章读者留下这样一种毋庸置疑的印象：你对专业领域的理论知识和相关研究烂熟于心。这意味着你应该对研究领域中的重要理论非常了解。如果你目前的研究重点并不在这些重要理论之上，记得在研究背景中引用它们。如果直接将这些背景理论全部置之不用，那么审稿人（尤其是站在该背景角度的审稿人）可能会认为你并不知道这些研究成果。相比单纯作为背景来引用，更好的做法是，如果你的研究是基于此领域早前的研究成果，请一定将这一点明确地呈现给读者。你的文章要点应该一目了然，不论它是对领域的变革性创新，还是对现有理论的延伸和扩展，该要点的特征和对应的数据支持都应清晰地提供给读者（如果这是一篇实证性文章），并且论点和论据应该在整篇文章中反复多次出现。 建议三：定位“高远”，不局限于现有数据 在你研究一棵特定的树的时候，不要忘记整片森林。对于一篇实证性文章，你的研究可能是针对某一类人、群组或者环境。但对绝大多数科学研究学科来说，我们找寻的是广义的、普适的研究方法和原则，这些方法和原则是超越任何一项具体研究的。我并非建议你丢弃研究目标或者做不合适的广义结论，但即便是非常具体的研究，对于其他领域的类似工作过程也可能产生影响。过度泛化的危险是必须承认的，所以你可以在提醒读者这一成果的局限性的同时，指出它在类似概念的研究领域中的用途。要真正地应用，或许还需要附加测试或加入其它相关理论的验证，但别忘记提醒读者，即便你研究的是一棵具体的树，你对更广阔的理论森林也会有所贡献。 建议四：保证研究的一致性 在研究中不当地使用理论，是毁灭自己试图建立的新理论的最直截了当的方式。有些文章会试图将两个不相关的研究结果放到一起，建立一个新的理论框架并进行检验，说“若得到某结果，则得到另一结果”，而且这种推理过程在该新框架中看似合理。如果没有现成理论可引用，人们常常会专注于与理论相符的结果，却忽略那些不相符的结果。更糟糕的是，我见过有人在不同期刊中发表并不一致的结果，但却没有在后发表的文章中提到之前的研究结果。简单看来，他们踩了“不诚实”的界限。即便审稿人没有发现另一篇文章，但这两篇文章会被所有读者看到，最终也会被发现。 当然，我现在也意识到人们对于某一现象的理解会随着时间的变化而变化。这可以理解，但需要注意的是，研究者在建立新的理论来解释该现象时，应该保证该学研究的可重复性（例如，在目前的研究之前，还有2个或更多的类似结论）。在首次发表自己的研究成果之前，保证该研究的可重复性可以避免传播不必要的、或者很快就会被修改的理论。我相信，一个高产的、但一直不断改变自己理论的学者的影响力，不会超过一位谨慎而保守的确保某个现象可以被解释、建立连贯且相对稳定的理论体系的学者。研究一致性的问题涉及到文章的方方面面。除上述之外，研究者不该对概念上相似的现象作不同类型的分析，否则会让人觉得该研究者在众多类型的分析模型中挑选出了最支持自己观点的那个。在很多情况下，解决一个问题可能有不止一种的统计方法，但方法使用的不一致性可能会使审稿人、编辑乃至读者起疑。 建议五：别指望审稿人或审稿过程能帮你把文章“写”完 我曾经在我研究领域的顶级期刊中发现过这种现象。有时一位颇有经验、本该对此相当了解的研究者，竟然提交一篇很不完善的初稿，好似在期待审稿人或编辑告诉他，要使得文章发表，还有哪些研究该做。还有些人会不管三七二十一，先将文章提交给顶级期刊，完全不理会自己的研究结果是不是值得在顶级期刊上发表。他们会将自己的每一篇文章都从顶级期刊投起，一旦被拒，再按照期刊的影响力层次排名，一个一个往下投稿。这两种并未做好准备的投稿方式（至少对于目标期刊来说）都是浪费时间，请不要做这样的事情。做好投稿准备不仅意味着文章与期刊在各种层面上的“匹配”，还意味着作者有花时间将文章写好。而这不仅表示文章写得足够清晰和完整，还表示作者花了足够的时间和精力修改文章的错别字、参考文献等。只有保证这些都做好之后，你才能给期刊投稿。 建议六：将文章投给“对”的期刊 这一点与建议五非常相似，但我仍认为这一点需要特别强调。因为如果文章没有投给对的期刊，投稿的过程是非常耗时耗力的。首先，请仔细了解待投稿期刊的投稿指引。如果这是一个实证性期刊，不要投一篇综述性文章，因为该期刊是绝对不会发表的。而且，如果这家期刊将你的文章送给了审稿人审核，你有可能得等上好几个月才能改投。记得使用该期刊的正确（标准）格式，否则审稿人可能会认为你并不特别了解该期刊，因为你连基本的标准投稿格式都不了解。前面提到过的，文章“价值”要与期刊“匹配”在此处仍然适用。不要将你写过的每一篇文章都从最好的期刊开始投起，也不要将审稿过程当成改善研究的过程。当你有自信文章可以被接收后再投稿，否则，请继续你的研究和写作，直到文章与你的目标期刊相“匹配”为止。作为一个新学者，最好的方式是一开始就投出一些比较有影响力的文章，同时将这些文章投给合适的期刊。并不是所有的实证性文章都足够投到研究领域的顶级期刊，也并不是所有理论结果都值得写到书本中的某一章节或是发表到理论性期刊中。期刊的审稿过程会因为稿件多次“乱投”而效率低下。 建议七：将研究视为一项投资 比起发表文章的建议，这一点更像是学术生涯发展的建议。但我认为它至关重要，尤其对于那些需要自己在实验室获取研究数据而非分析二手数据的实证性学科的研究者来说。在做实验或测量获得数据的过程中，你也许可以变换很多种操作和测量方式来得到支持理论的证据，但仅仅只专注于一个科研问题就像把自己的养老金全拿来投资一支股票一样，如果该项研究进展顺利，你的科研生涯也许会起步很快，但有时候，即便你的研究想法很好，实验结果也有可能不尽人意。所以最好的方式，是将研究力量分布在不同的问题上，而不要只有一种研究模式。这并不是说你需要研究不同的领域，或者解决几个完全不相关的问题，或者与不同的导师和合作者一起工作。我只是说专注于一个特定问题的研究方式有局限性。太多的新学者在产出方面掉队，就是因为陷入了为学生时期开始的研究寻找论据的泥潭。而对于做二手数据分析的学科来说，这一点就没那么重要了。因为这类分析会用不同的方法和假设去测试同一组数据。但即便是在这样的学科分支里，请不要特别偏好某一类假设而导致忽略了更有产出潜力的方法和问题。如同投资者会在一段相当长的时间内持续不断的投资，以保证盈亏平衡一样，科学研究的产出也需要持续的努力。有段时间你可能会特别高产，但事实上这个是你之前付出持续努力的结果。对于科研成果的产出来说，不要指望它会比股票市场的突然走高还要来的更迅猛。 建议八：与高产出学者合作 有些学者会过分宣扬科研合作、整合各方论点、解决挑战性问题的好处。他们有部分说辞是对的，因为有些学科之前确实需要通过合作才能比较有效的解决一个具体问题。但我这里要强调的是在一个学科内与人合作的好处。对于一个新学者来说，观察高产出学者获得研究成果的方法从而提升自己的产出能力是很重要的。与人合作也会从积极层面增加做科研的压力以促使研究完成。尤其是当你找到一个特别有效的合作者（或者不只一个）的时候，我特别相信更多的想法与见地的交流会使研究结果更棒。另外，如果一个研究小组中的成员分别牵头不同的课题，那么每个小组成员都可以参与多个课题，从而有更多发文机会。 当然这也存在潜在的风险，比如有些组员合作得不顺利，那么研究小组可能会以浪费时间和精力收场，而学术成果产出率则比不合作时还低。因此，合理地利用合作机会，找到合适的合作伙伴也是非常重要的。一旦找到这样的合作伙伴，一定要努力建议长期的合作关系；而如果合作并不顺利，最好尽早结束合作，再找寻其他机会。不过，如果是跟导师合作不顺利那就比较棘手了。在学术生涯早期的时候，放弃许多已经开始但还未完成的项目不太好，有时你必须坚持下去，强迫自己完成。但如果合作进展并不顺利，你好不容易熬完了一个项目，最好不要又开始一个新项目，比如自己的学位论文。为了让研究顺利进行，获得更高的学术产出，最好是寻找一些长期的合作伙伴。 同时，必须承认的是，如果学者总是在一个多作者的文章中的排名不靠前，那么大家并不会认为他的学术能力很强。因而，如果该学者并没有他担当主要作者的文章（对于社会心理学来说，主要作者即第一作者），这种合作研究也可能有损大家对其学术能力的看法。因此，团队中的每个合作者找到自己最独特和最有优势之处是至关重要的——这样保证了他们在自己有优势的领域中总能成为主要作者。你必须发展你的研究特长，这样人们会了解你是谁、你研究的是什么。而你完全可以在一个高产的研究团队中这么做。 建议九：预测编辑和审稿人的看法 这一点与前面所提到的站在审稿人的角度去写作直接相关，但比它多一点。你应该了解期刊的编委会，因为他们是最可能决定你文章发表与否的一批人。你不可能总是猜到审稿人是谁，但你通常可以在编委会中找到一个或两个关键人物，预测他们会对你的文章有什么看法。如果你能做到这一点，那么你可以直接按照这一两个人的视角和想法去写文章。同时，你还可以在文章的参考文献里引用与他们看法相关的文章，最后，阐述清楚你的研究与理论如何符合或超过了过去的工作成果。如何做到这一点，取决于你想要说明的问题，以及你的研究课题的优势。采用驳论与平铺直叙要好，如果一些理论相互冲突，你可以直接评判它们的优劣，这也比你仅仅除述出自己的观点，而期待别人找出相应理论来支持你的观点要好。如果你对自己的观点进行有强有力的数据论证、将自己的理论与其他人的区别开来则更好。但即便是这些情况下，你还是需要预测一下审稿人或编辑会用什么样的、与你自己不同的视角来审视你的结论。 建议十：将审稿人和编辑的初次评价视为文章修改的起点，而非文章发表的最终定论 很少有文章能够不经修改就得到发表，有些甚至要经过大量的修改才能发表，因此，即便看上去负面的审稿意见乃至拒稿信，也有可能为你最终成功发表文章提供路径。编辑们一般会在decisionletter中阐述清楚他们是否认为稿件经修改后足够发表。如果你不确定编辑在信里说的是什么意见，那么不妨回信询问。编辑的工作就是与读者沟通，说明怎样的修改会使文章足够发表（如果他们认为该文章有机会发表到该期刊上），或者为什么作者的文章无法发表（如果他们认为文章没有机会发表）。 如果编辑或审稿人认为你的文章当前无法发表，不要灰心，因为他们其实指出了你的研究中还有什么需要补充的（或者如果你的文章是理论性的，还有哪些问题你需要阐述得更清楚）。如果你是向实证性期刊投稿，那么只要你增加了足够的数据，便可以再次投稿。当然，当你这样做的时候，最好直接能解决decisionletter和审稿意见中的建议和问题。在大多数情况下，写一封CoverLetter来说明之前decisionletter和审稿意见中提出了哪些问题，并说明新修改的稿件是如何解决这些问题的，会很有帮助（或者如果你没有解决这些问题，阐述清楚为什么这些问题不是阻碍文章发表的原因）。 你对文章进行修改是为了向之前的审稿人和编辑意见做出反馈，并且将其改善为一篇足够发表的文章。作为一个新学者，可能很容易因为负面的评论和决定而感到沮丧。事实上，审稿流程也并不完美，因为不是每一个审稿人都是被审文章研究领域的专家，也不是所有的编辑最终都做出了正确的决定并给出了合理解释。但审稿人确是这样的一批人——在你文章发表后最可能读你文章的那些人，所以他们的意见是对于你的文章论点是否阐述清楚的很有价值的指标。同时他们能发现绝大多数读者看你文章时可能会产生的疑问，所以即便他们的意见有时并不是那么有理有据、或者并不像专家所言，这些评论也会给你修改文章很好的指导和帮助。 审稿过程是一个标准流程，所以你也该视之为如此。当收到审稿意见和decisionletter时，仔细阅读，想想你是否能解决这些问题，如果可以，怎么解决？这些问题仅仅是写作的修改，还是需要新的分析，需要新数据？如果新数据是必要的，那么你可能要考虑是否值得花时间获取一轮新数据。在一个人的学术生涯中，有时候等待是可以接受的，有时候也许经不起等待。你或许可以找到其他替代方案，在这些研究方案中，目前的数据已经足够支撑文章发表（这样文章的修改就仅剩写作和分析了）。不论是哪种情况，审稿意见都是非常有用的，请将之视为读者看到文章后的反应之缩影，然后好好修改文章。 最后还需要提到的一点，有些决定仅仅是需要你多与编辑做相应沟通。如果decisionletter或审稿意见中的某些关键点是明显错误的，最好的方式是将这些意见以有礼貌的方式反馈给编辑。我不建议在收到decisionletter或意见的10分钟后就迅速回复一封没有礼貌的邮件。此处其实是再次体现合作之优势的地方，因为学者们可以共同商量出一个委婉而有效的回复。先将审稿意见放在脑海里思考一下，随后再做出回复会有效得多。 上述方法仅适用于大部分问题来自于decisionletter和审稿意见错误的情况，并且这些问题仅通过写作和分析就能得到新的修改版本。如果你需要收集新的数据来保证文章的完整性，那么指出编辑的错误是百害而无一利的。所以，如果最初的拒稿原因仅仅是因为编辑对文章的错误理解，请再尝试上述方法获得发表机会。当然，和编辑说明这些问题的时候，请记得虚心承认是自己没有在初稿中没有将问题阐述清楚。因为人们对于“是你错了，我的文章应该被发表”这样强硬的态度通常是无法心平气和接受的。作为总结，我想说一些其他相关事宜。我意识到今天所给出的建议大多是对于实证性文章而言，因为在我的研究领域中，大部分都是实证性文章。对于那些发表在Compass Journal的观点性文章也同样适用，当然你也可以参考Michael Bradshaw的“why and how to write a good review article”的演讲。Greg Maney的“how to survive the review process”的演讲也很有参考意见。他的很多观点与我今天所讲述的建议相符。我们的不同观点可能说明获得审稿经历的途径并不唯一，你可以都参考看看，最终做出适合自己的决定和做法。 希望以上内容对大家有用，祝大家在文章发表过程中一切顺利！
Dear Mrs Liu, A year ago your article 'A framework for knowledge integration and diffusion' was published in Journal of Documentation . Since then this article has been downloaded 332 times . Emerald is interested in understanding more about how you disseminate and share your article so that we can support you better in doing so. In order to help us do this we would really appreciate it if you would take our If you would like some advice on disseminating your article more widely, please read ourhow to disseminate your worlguide, or check out some of our other how to ....guides on sharing and disseminating your research work. I'd like to thank you in advance for your help with the survey and I hope you find the above guides useful. If you have any feedback on the guides, or on your experiences with Emerald, please do contact us by replying directly to this message.
Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Please find herewith the 20th edition of the International Comparisons, which has just been published by the Economic Development Office of the Canton and Republic of Geneva. It emerges from this publication that Switzerland has maintained its rank among leading states in terms of competitiveness and innovation, for the fourth consecutive year (The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013, World Economic Forum). Despite the global economic crisis and increasing competition between countries, the International Comparisons 2012-2013 edition underlines Geneva’s attractiveness and provides a good overview of its most valuable assets. Geneva holds a unique economic position thanks to its competitive framework conditions (taxation, labour law, and social security system), the quality of its workforce and of its infrastructures, the stability of its institutions, as well as its diversified economic centres. The Economic Development Office of the Canton and Republic of Geneva is keen to assist you in your investement projects or in setting up business here. Our region is thus a highly suitable venue for companies seeking to make the best of the most favourable location. All the data published in the 2012-2013 edition of the International Comparisons is of particularly high repute and originates from independent sources. To find out more about the activities and services of the Geneva Economic Development Office,I would like to invite you to check out our website www.whygeneva.ch for details. On behalf of the State Council, I look forward to welcoming you to our region. Pierre-Franois Unger State Councilor in charge of the Department of regional affairs, economy and health Republic and Canton of Geneva 原文见 http://www.whygeneva.ch/images/stories/publications/nouvelles_publications/comp_int_en.pdf
今天收到一个邮件邀请投稿， I'm writing to you on behalf of the Chinese Advanced Materials Society and the Editors-in-Chief for the upcoming Journal of the Chinese Advanced Materials Society (JCAMS; ISSN: 2224-3682), which is being published by Taylor Francis publishing group. 很好奇， Chinese Advanced Materials Society，结果就去看了一下网站 http://www.thecams.org/ 有些晕，没搞懂，请教高明指点。。。
http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/education/2687931/Tips_for_Writing_Better_Science_Papers_The_Cover_Letter_1.html Have you ever struggled to write up your results into a publishable paper only to get it rejected? Richard Threlfall, Managing Editor, Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry , gives some insider tips on how to improve each section of your article and increase your chances of getting published. The Cover Letter Often overlooked in submissions, your cover letter is your chance to talk directly to the editor and to highlight all the most important results of your research. It can either make a great first impression or leave the editor uninspired, so it is a fantastic opportunity to make the editor sit up and take notice of your paper! It is a very bad idea to submit a cover letter that just says: Dear Editor, We are submitting our manuscript for consideration in your journal. It is not under consideration for publication anywhere else. Sincerely A. Author An even worse idea is not to submit a cover letter at all (which does happen)! Much like an introduction, a good cover letter explains to the editor the critical question your research addresses, how you have answered this question, and why it is of significance to the wider community. Consider the basic examples below: Dear Editor, Compound X has interesting biological and pharmaceutical activity. We made some improvements over a previous synthesis and believe it has wider applications in organic chemistry. Sincerely A. Author A letter like this poses more questions than it answers for the editor. A better start might be: Compound X is a potent anticancer agent. However, up until now, it could only be isolated in small amounts from Plantius planticus. Our total synthesis gives compound X in 99 % yield by … or We have synthesized catalyst A, which is 75 % more efficient than catalysts B and C for the industrially important hydrolysis of Y. This improvement in efficiency is caused by … Technical details (where appropriate) will add to the editor's understanding of your paper, but be careful not to put in an overwhelming set of numbers or to exaggerate. Lastly, suggest referees whether the journal requires you to or not. This shows you have a good knowledge of your field. The best cover letters are concise and give a clear explanation of the advances and discoveries made in the course of the research. Remember, journals receive many papers per day and editors see hundreds of manuscripts per year, so take every opportunity you can to get your work noticed!
SCI 投稿全过程信件模板一览 一、最初投稿Cover letter Dear Editors: We would like to submit the enclosed manuscript entitled “Paper Title”, which we wish to be considered for publication in “Journal Name”. No conflict of interest exits in the submission of this manuscript, and manuscript is approved by all authors for publication. I would like to declare on behalf of my co-authors that the work described was original research that has not been published previously, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed. In this work, we evaluated …… (简要介绍一下论文的创新性). I hope this paper is suitable for “Journal Name”. The following is a list of possible reviewers for your consideration: 1) Name A E-mail: ××××@×××× 2) Name B E-mail: ××××@×××× We deeply appreciate your consideration of our manuscript, and we look forward to receiving comments from the reviewers. If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact me at the address below. Thank you and best regards. Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@×××× 二、催稿信 Dear Prof. ×××: Sorry for disturbing you. I am not sure if it is the right time to contact you to inquire about the status of my submitted manuscript titled “Paper Title”. (ID: 文章稿号), although the status of “With Editor” has been lasting for more than two months, since submitted to journal three months ago. I am just wondering that my manuscript has been sent to reviewers or not? I would be greatly appreciated if you could spend some of your time check the status for us. I am very pleased to hear from you on the reviewer’s comments. Thank you very much for your consideration. Best regards! Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@×××× 三、修改稿Cover letter Dear Dr/ Prof..（写上负责你文章编辑的姓名，显得尊重，因为第一次的投稿不知道具体负责的编辑，只能用通用的Editors）: On behalf of my co-authors, we thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript, we appreciate editor and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Paper Title”. (ID: 文章稿号). We have studied reviewer’s comments carefully and have made revision which marked in red in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you and best regards. Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@×××× 四、修改稿回答审稿人的意见（最重要的部分） List of Responses Dear Editors and Reviewers: Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Paper Title” (ID: 文章稿号). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing: Responds to the reviewer’s comments: Reviewer #1: 1. Response to comment: (……简要列出意见……) Response: ×××××× 2. Response to comment: (……简要列出意见……) Response: ×××××× 。。。。。。 逐条意见回答，切忌一定不能有遗漏 针对不同的问题有下列几个礼貌术语可适当用用： We are very sorry for our negligence of ……... We are very sorry for our incorrect writing ……... It is really true as Reviewer suggested that…… We have made correction according to the Reviewer’s comments. We have re-written this part according to the Reviewer’s suggestion As Reviewer suggested that…… Considering the Reviewer’s suggestion, we have …… 最后特意感谢一下这个审稿人的意见： Special thanks to you for your good comments. Reviewer #2: 同上述 Reviewer #3: ×××××× Other changes: 1. Line 60-61, the statements of “……” were corrected as “…………” 2. Line 107, “……” was added 3. Line 129, “……” was deleted ×××××× We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in red in revised paper. We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. 五、文章接受后可以考虑感谢一下负责你文章的编辑或主编（根据需要） Dear Prof. ××××××: Thanks very much for your kind work and consideration on publication of our paper. On behalf of my co-authors, we would like to express our great appreciation to editor and reviewers. Thank you and best regards. Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@×××× 六、询问校稿信件（如果文章接受后时间较长） Dear ×××: Sorry for disturbing you. I am not sure if it is the right time to contact you to inquire about the status of our accepted manuscript titled “Paper Title” (ID: 文章稿号), since the copyright agreement for publication has been sent to you two months ago. I am just wondering that how long I can receive the proof of our manuscript from you? I would be greatly appreciated if you could spend some of your time for a reply. I am very pleased to hear from you. Thank you very much for your consideration. Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@×××× 七、文章校稿信件 Dear Mr. ×××: Thanks very much for your kind letter about the proof of our paper titled “Paper Title” (ID: 文章稿号) for publication in “Journal Name”. We have finished the proof reading and checking carefully, and some corrections about the proof and the answers to the queries are provided below. Corrections: 1. In ****** should be **** (Page ***, Right column, line***) 2. In **** the “*****” should be “****” (Page ****, Right column, line****) Answers for “author queries”: 1. *********************. 2. ********************** 3. ********************** We greatly appreciate the efficient, professional and rapid processing of our paper by your team. If there is anything else we should do, please do not hesitate to let us know. Thank you and best regards. Yours sincerely, ×××××× Corresponding author: Name: ××× E-mail: ××××@××××
DISCUSSION WITH EINSTEIN ON EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN ATOMIC PHYSICS NIELS BOHR Originally published in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, P. A. Schilpp, ed., pp. 200-41 The Library of Living Philosophers, Evanston (1949). WHEN invited by the Editor of the series, "Living Philosophers,"to write an article for this volume in which contemporary scientists are honouring the epoch-making contributions of Albert Einstein to the progress of natural philosophy and are acknowledging the indebtedness of our whole generation for the guidance his genius has given us, I thought much of the best way of explaining how much I owe to him for inspiration. In this connection, the many occasions through the years on which I had the privilege to discuss with Einstein epistemological problems raised by the modern development of atomic physics have come back vividly to my mind and I have felt that I could hardly attempt anything better than to give an account of these discussions which, even if no complete concord has so far been obtained, have been of greatest value and stimulus to me. I hope also that the account may convey to wider circles an impression of how essential the open-minded exchange of ideas has been for the progress in a field where new experience has time after time demanded a reconsider ation of our views. From the very beginning the main point under debate has been the attitude to take to the departure from customary principles of natural philosophy characteristic of the novel development of physics which was initiated in the first year of this century by Planck's discovery of the universal quantum of action. This discovery, which revealed a feature of atomicity in the laws of nature going far beyond the old doctrine of the limited divisibility of matter, has indeed taught us that the classical theories of physics are idealizations which can be unambiguously applied only in the limit where all actions involved are large compared with the quantum. The question at issue has been whether the renunciation of a causal mode of description of atomic processes involved in the endeavours to cope with the situation should be regarded as a temporary departure from ideals to be ultimately revived or whether we are faced with an irrevocable step towards obtaining the proper harmony between analysis and synthesis of physical phenomena. To describe the background of our discussions and to bring out as clearly as possible the arguments for the contrasting viewpoints, I have felt it necessary to go to a certain length in recalling some main features of the development to which Einstein himself has contributed so decisively. 原文见 http://minerva.tau.ac.il/bsc/3/3144/bohr.pdf
Entanglement and the thermodynamic arrow of time David Jennings and Terry Rudolph Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom Received 5 February 2010; published 23 June 2010 We discuss quantum entanglement in the context of the thermodynamic arrow of time. We review the role of correlations in entropy-decreasing events and prove that the occurrence of a transformation between two thermodynamic states constitutes a new type of entanglement witness, one not defined as a separating plane in state space between separable and entangled states, but as a physical process dependent on the local initial properties of the states. Extending work by Partovi, we consider a general entangled multipartite system that allows large reversals of the thermodynamic arrow of time. We describe a hierarchy of arrows that arises from the different correlations allowed in a quantum state and examine these features in the context of Maxwell’s Demon. We examine in detail the case of three qubits, and also propose some simple experimental demonstrations possible with small numbers of qubits. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.81.061130 PACS numbers: 05.70.Ln, 03.67.Mn I. INTRODUCTION For over a century, Maxwell’s demon has provided a setting in which to address the limitations that thermodynamics places on an observer free to perform measurements on a system and then act on their acquired information in some algorithmic way 1–4. As is now well appreciated, information has an energetic value. A demon 5 in possession of information about a physical state may transform this information into mechanical work 3,6. Specifically, given a system of dimension D in a state and the presence of a reservoir at a temperature T, the demon can extract W=kTln D −S amount of mechanical work from the reservoir, where S=−Tr log is the von Neumann entropy of the state. The demon fails in his attempt to violate the second law of thermodynamics because the demon’s memory, where he records the measurement results of the state, must be erased in order to operate in a cycle 7. Such an erasure of memory can only occur with an unavoidable dissipation of heat 8. As a concrete example, we may consider a gas of N particles that resides in a piston on one side of a movable partition and in thermal equilibrium with a reservoir at a temperature T, Fig. 1a. The demon, upon discovering what side of the partition the gas is on, may extract usable energy by deterministically acting on the piston system—if the gas is to the left of the partition, the demon puts the piston in contact with the reservoir, loads the partition with a mass M, tilts the piston as in Fig. 1b and allows the gas to expand slowly through the available empty volume. The expansion of the gas does work on the mass, elevating to a height h, which makes mechanical energy available. Indeed, the expansion can provide a maximum mechanical energy of NkT ln 2, which is extracted from the thermal reservoir Fig. 1c. A. Confounding Maxwell’s Demon In order to illustrate the possibilities that quantum entanglement can bring to the story, it is amusing to consider cases in which a “global demon,” with access to a large entangled quantum state, can confuse the traditional “local demon” who can only measure and act locally. The global demon can arrange that any thermodynamic process for the local demon can run “backwards”—heat can flow from a cold to hot and gases can contract instead of expand—driven by entanglement present in the state. As a concrete example, consider a system that consists of a reservoir and piston that are both in local thermal states, but with the global state of the system being pure. This state is prepared by the global demon, who may manipulate the global state as he pleases. The global demon ensures that the entanglement is local, in the sense that any part of the total system is entangled with its surroundings. Furthermore, for simplicity, we constrain the reservoir subsystems to couple to each other much weaker than to the piston subsystem 9. This situation is indicated in Fig. 2. Since thermality arises from entanglement between the different components of the system in a global pure state, when the local demon places the piston in contact with the quantum reservoir and releases the partition, instead of the gas expanding up the piston to fill the empty volume, the thermal state repeatedly expands forward and then contracts backward in the tube as energy flows into and out of the piston. The spontaneous contraction phase of the gas is identical to the usual spontaneous expansion of a gas but with time “running backwards.” For the local demon, the thermodynamic arrow of time has failed and he is unable to extract any net work despite having been given a piston that is on its own completely indistinguishable from a standard thermal state on one side of a partition, seemingly coupled to a standard thermal reservoir. The mischievous global demon, however, may further confuse the local demon by thermalizing the entanglement in the quantum reservoir that he has access to, using a different fully thermal, classical reservoir. Since the full system of dimension D is in a pure state, the global demon can extract kT ln D amount of work from the classical reservoir, which he may store as mechanical energy, leaving the quantum reservoir plus piston in a maximally mixed state. Then using only some of this mechanical energy he may convert the maximally mixed reservoir into a true thermal state at the original temperature T. At which point the thermodynamic arrow is returned, the global demon has converted the entanglement into mechanical energy and the local demon, unaware of all the entanglement that was present, will finally be PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 1539-3755/2010/816/0611309 061130-1 2010 The American Physical Society able to extract NkT ln 2 of work from the reservoir as he had originally hoped. B. Arrow of time There are many reasons to be interested in the arrow of time beyond simply fun stories about demons. The standard thermodynamic arrow applies to systems that are in isolation and amounts to a directionality for certain physical processes. The curious fact that certain processes are forbidden and certain states inaccessible is generally traced back to the initial conditions of the physical system. Furthermore, since all parts of the observed universe seem to obey a common “arrow of time,” the problem of resolving the thermodynamic arrow’s origin requires us to account for the particular initial conditions of our universe 10. The notion of an “arrow of time” is quite broad— extending from the uniform large-scale expansion of the universe, to the radiative arrow, and through to the individual, psychological perception of time 11,12. However, since the laws of physics are invariant under time reversal strictly CPT invariant, it is believed that any form of temporal directionality will stem ultimately from the initial conditions of the universe. Recent work by Partovi 13 has considered a specific pure entangled state that produced heat flow from a cold body to a hotter one, contrary to the usual thermodynamic arrow. In 13, Partovi identifies the large degree of entanglement present in the state as being responsible for this unusual behavior. We will see, in fact, that the negative heat flow he considers does not necessarily depend on the presence of entanglement in the state and, by adopting an information theoretic framework, we explore these and similar possibilities as a way of elucidating the properties of entangled quantum states and the connection with varied notions of “arrows of time.” C. Thermodynamic arrow and correlations A paradigmatic setting that captures the essentials of the thermodynamic arrow of time is in the context of heat flow between two systems A and B that interact in isolation, so that their total energy is constant. For simplicity, we assume that they do no mechanical work on each other, but may exchange energy in the form of heat, for which conservation of energy implies that QA+QB=0, where QA is the heat acquired by A and QB is the heat acquired by B. Ultimately, the key ingredient that dictates which states are accessible via the set of all interactions on the total state AB is the degree of correlations initially present between A and B. These correlations between the two subsystems are quantified by the mutual information, which is non-negative for all states and defined in terms of relative entropy as IA:B=SABA B=SA+SB−SAB, where, for example, SA=−TrA log A is the von Neumann entropy for the state A. The mutual information is a convenient measure of how distinguishable the state AB is from the completely uncorrelated product state A B. Of particular interest is when the reduced states at the initial time ti of subsystems A and B are thermal states for their respective individual Hamiltonians, HA and HB. Given temperatures TA and TB, the reduced states then take the form Atiexp−AHA and Btiexp−BHB, where X =1/kTX for subsystem XA,B. We may consider the most general process of switching on time-dependent interactions VABt between A and B that evolve the composite system into a new state ABt. For subsystem XA,B at a later time t, the two thermodynamic variables of central interest are the average energy UX=TrHXXt and the thermodynamic entropy SX therm. In what follows, we identify the thermodynamic entropy SX therm of subsystem X with the von Neumann entropy SXSX of the reduced state X. This identification of the information theoretic quantity with the thermodynamic variable has generated a long history of debate 14,15, however we do not add to this debate here since the operational and mathematical correctness of our analysis holds, independent of such interpretation issues. Locally at A the interaction results in the transformation Ati→Atf=TrBABtf, and so UA→UA+UA and SA →SA+SA, with similar expressions for B. The identification of the von Neumann entropy with the thermodynamic entropy then allows us to describe the resultant thermodynamic heat flow that occurs between the two subsystems A and B. These changes in local thermodynamic variables are constrained by the fact that a thermal state exp−H /Trexp −H minimizes the free-energy function F=TrH −S /. Consequently we have that TrtiH−Sti / TrtfH−Stf /, which more explicitly yields AUA − SA 0 (a) (b) (c) FIG. 1. Color online Uncorrelated case: The piston is in contact with a thermal reservoir of particles, at temperature T. Mechanical energy is extracted from the reservoir by the demon choosing which way to tilt the piston, conditional on his information about what side the gas is located. FIG. 2. Color online Entangled case: The local thermodynamic states of the piston and reservoir are indistinguishable from the uncorrelated cases, however, now entanglement is present in the system. In this case the piston both expands forward and contracts backward. Heat flows both into and out of the piston and the usual thermodynamic arrow no longer holds. DAVID JENNINGS AND TERRY RUDOLPH PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-2 BUB − SB 0 1 for the change in the thermodynamic variables defined at A and B. It must be emphasized that Eqs. 1 are kinematical restrictions on any transformation from initially thermal states, Ati ,Bti, to any other pair of local states Atf ,Btf. We consider transformations on the composite system that satisfy SABti=SABtf which includes unitary transformations and so IA:B=SA+SB. The only other restriction that we place on the transformation is that TrABtiHA+HB=TrABtfHA+HB. Since we don’t consider mechanical work, this amounts to requiring that there is zero net heat flow into the composite system, and the total energy before the interaction process equals the total energy afterwards. Writing QA=UA and QB=UB for the heat gained by A and B respectively, we obtain for these energy preserving processes that AQA + BQBIA:B, 2 where IA:B is the change in the mutual information between A and B. The special initial state ABti=Ati Bti in which correlations vanish was historically called the condition of Stosszahlansatz, or “molecular chaos.” If we consider A and B initially uncorrelated at some time ti then IA:B; ti=0, however interactions allow correlations to form between the two subsystems, and so at later times tf we have IA:B; tf 0. We immediately deduce that AQA+BQB0, or more explicitly in terms of temperature QA 1 TA − 1 TB 0. 3 In other words, heat can only flow from hot thermal states to cold thermal states in isolation. This is the standard thermodynamic arrow of time. This situation can be generalized to N initially uncorrelated thermal states and provides us with the constraint j Qj Tj 0, 4 which forbids certain types of heat flow; for example, if we partition the N thermal states in two, such that all the temperatures in the first group are lower than those in the second, then it is impossible for heat to flow from the first to the second. In general, however, initial correlations are expected to be present, IA:B; ti0, and so the change in mutual information can be negative. From Eq. 2 it is clear that there is no longer a constraint on the directionality of heat flow between A and B 16. As we shall now see, the correlations that make up the total mutual information can arise from classical correlations, or from a combination of classical correlations and quantum entanglement. D. Entanglement correlations Entangled quantum systems can possess far stronger correlations than are possible classically, and in fact the vast majority of quantum states are entangled 17,18. Work has been done previously on how quantum correlations affect macroscopic thermodynamic observables such as the susceptibility or the heat capacity, and it has been shown that measurement of these macroscopic observables can act as entanglement witnesses 19,20. We shall show that the thermodynamic transformations themselves also constitute entanglement witnesses. We should be careful to distinguish this research program from the one to do with formal analogies 21,22 between irreversible entanglement transformations and the second law of thermodynamics, on which much progress has recently been made 23, or from attempts to connect the second law of thermodynamics to Bell inequalities 24. Here we are interested in the physical effects which entanglement between systems and reservoirs has on the thermodynamical transformations of the systems. Recently in 13 Partovi considered how the presence of entanglement in a system affects irreversible thermodynamic transformations. The intriguing scenario he considered involves two subsystems A and B that are overall in a pure state AB and possess strong quantum correlations. Furthermore, he arranged that the local reduced states A,B =TrB,A AB AB are thermal states for the two subsystems and so locally indistinguishable from classical thermal mixtures. Despite being locally indistinguishable from classical thermal mixtures, the composite system behaves quite differently under any energy-conserving unitary. Since the total initial state is a pure state we have that SABti =0, which remains true at any later time. From a Schmidt decomposition for A and B we find that At and Bt are isospectral, SpecAt=SpecBt, and so their entropies are always equal. Consequently, any unitary transformation occurring on the composite system will have SA=SB. Once again, assuming i no mechanical work and ii no overall change in the total energy, the condition on the heat flow between A and B is AQA+BQBSA+SB. However, since SA=SB and QA=−QB we have that − SA1/A + 1/B 0, 5 and so SA=SB0. Energy conserving unitary interactions never increase the local entropies of either subsystem, in stark contrast to the uncorrelated situation of classically mixed thermal states, where SA+SB never decreases. The model in 13 emphasizes the crucial role of high correlations in the reversal of standard thermodynamic heat flow, and highlights that molecular chaos and maximal bipartite entanglement are the two extremes for correlations. However, the model in 13 also allows reversal of the thermodynamic arrow for intermediate levels of correlation, which need not be due to the presence of any entanglement. For example we may simply dephase AB to turn it into a classically correlated separable state that would produce the exact same reversal of the thermodynamic arrow. In addition, while the pure state AB allows local entropy decreases, and the reversal of the thermodynamic arrow, the isospectral constraint for the bipartite splitting of the pure state AB is very restrictive—the only way in which two different temperatures for A and B is achieved in 13 is to impose that the energy spectrum of A be a scaled version ENTANGLEMENT AND THE THERMODYNAMIC ARROW OF TIME PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-3 of the energy spectrum of B. Another undesirable feature of the model is that the initial thermal states that are considered in 13 squeezed Gaussian states of two oscillators are the only thermal states that are attainable in this setting—all other thermal states are inaccessible. In the next section, we extend the work of 13 to show that we may distinguish entangled systems from classically correlated system through violations of thermodynamic arrow and produce transformations between arbitrary thermal states without restrictions on the energy spectra. Furthermore, we analyze quantum systems in which the correlation structure is more complex and allows for a more subtle range of violations of the thermodynamic arrow. E. Classical correlations and entanglement witnesses Recently 25, the mutual information IA:B was given an operational meaning in terms of the minimal amount of local randomizing work that must be done on a bipartite system to reduce it to a product state and destroy all correlations. We will give here another thermodynamical interpretation—namely, the mutual information is a measure of the maximal amount that the isolated bipartite system may violate the thermodynamic arrow in the form of energy transfer from a colder subsystem to a hotter one. The total correlations, as quantified by IA:B, also contain classical correlations, which may be defined as IcA:B = maxMAMB HA:B, 6 where HA:B is the classical Shannon mutual information for the joint probability distributions generated by local POVM measurements MA MB at A and B 26. The classical mutual information IcA:B is always less than or equal to the total mutual information IA:B and vanishes if and only if the bipartite state is a product state 27. It is clear that for bipartite states AB the classical mutual information always obeys the bound 0IcA:Blog D, where D is the dimensionality of the smaller subsystem. On the other hand, while the quantum mutual information IA:B is always positive, it can in general take on values larger than log D. However, if we write the quantum mutual information as IA:B = SA + SB − SAB = SA − SAB − SB = SB − SAB − SA and restrict ourselves to separable states AB for which SAB is always greater than both SB and SA 28 we may deduce that IA:BminSA,SB and so IA:B seplog D over the set of separable states. This upper bound is saturated for perfectly correlated, zero discord, separable states AB = 1 D i i Ai i Bi , in which case IcA:B=IA:B=log D. However, for entangled states we can have IA:B log D, and so from Eq. 2 we see that certain types of heat flow are possible that are forbidden classically. In particular a quantity of heat IA:B / A−B can be transferred from the cold subsystem to the hot system, whereas classical correlations could only permit at most a quantity of heat log D/ A−B to flow from cold to hot. From this it follows that the reversal of the thermodynamic arrow of time is a kind of entanglement witness where quantum correlations present in the state allow much larger violations of the arrow than are classically possible, and so the detection of such large reversals must imply an entangled state. Standard entanglement witnesses correspond to an observable W that defines a plane TrW=0 in state space separating entangled states from separable ones, while for us, it is the set of energetically accessible states that acts as the witness. Instead of local observables, it is the transformations of the state that signal entanglement. The classical mutual information IcA:B has previously been considered in the context of the thermodynamic arrow as a candidate measure for the classical memory record that a system A has of events that affect B 29. The claim in 29 was that any event that decreases the entropy of B necessarily reduces the classical mutual information between A and B, and so entropy-decreasing events at B do not leave a memory trace in A. This was a proposed resolution to the empirical fact that we only observe entropy-decreasing events, namely the “arrow of time dilemma.” However, in 30 we demonstrate explicitly that this claim is false, and in reality quantum mechanics allows the exact opposite to occur. We show that large quantum correlations present in a state can be used up to reverse the thermodynamic arrow and at the same time increase the classical correlations between two subsystems. Quantum mechanics allows enhanced memory records of entropy-increasing events and so there can be no resolution of the arrow of time in terms of classical memory records. The process of dividing correlations into quantum and classical components has many subtle aspects and counterintuitive results exist, for example in the setting of multipartite correlations it is possible to have purely quantum multipartite correlations without any classical multipartite correlations being present 31. In the next section we consider multipartite quantum systems that are in a highly entangled pure state and analyze how the quantum correlations present allow arbitrarily large reversals of the thermodynamic arrow. II. LOCAL THERMAL STATES, GLOBAL STATES, AND A HIERARCHY OF ARROWS We now turn to an analysis of entanglement-assisted violations of the thermodynamic arrow in a general multipartite setting. Once again, we consider an isolated system that may undergo a complex time-dependent interaction process between times ti and tf, but with the total energy, defined via a total Hamiltonian Htot, at time ti equal to the total energy at time tf. It is well known that most quantum states are highly entangled 18, however recently a deep theorem 32 has shown that if the total system is large, then any randomly chosen pure state that satisfies the total energy constraint has the property that any sufficiently small subsystem is highly likely to be in a thermal state. For generic large systems in a pure state, thermality of its subsystems naturally arises from the high degree of entanglement present in the state. Consequently, instead of entangled thermal states such DAVID JENNINGS AND TERRY RUDOLPH PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-4 as in 13 being artificial or exceptional, for large systems in a randomly chosen pure state they are actually quite typical. A. Local thermal states from an entangled state For simplicity we shall consider the multiple subsystems S1 , . . .SN, to be qubits, but it is clear that similar arguments apply to any higher dimensional subsystems. We take the reduced states, obtained by tracing out the other subsystems, to be initially thermal and the total system is assumed to be in a pure state with a fixed energy. We refer to the reduced states 1 ,2 , . . . as the thermal marginals for the subsystems. However, not all sets of thermal marginals may be obtained from a global pure state . For the case of qubits, if the marginal states for the individual qubits are given by i, then the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a pure state such that Trji =i are in terms of the smallest eigenvalue of each subsystem, i =minSpeci. The conditions are 33 i j i j 0 i 1/2 i = 1, . . . ,N. 7 Without loss of generality, we take the Hamiltonians of each qubit to be equal, and choose the ground state to have zero energy while the excited state has energy 1. Thus, Hi = 1 2 I+Zi, where Zi is the Pauli operator for the Z direction, and for qubits with thermal marginals, the total expected energy of the system is then E= i i. The parameter space for the set of states in terms of the smallest eigenvalues of its subsystems is defined by Eq. 7 and is an N-dimensional polyhedron PN, with the constant energy condition being a hyperplane that intersects PN on a subset TN−1 of dimension at most N−1. Each point in TN−1 corresponds to an accessible combination of thermal marginals, however there is in general more than one pure global state associated to such a point. As an example, in the case N=3, the region of parameter space is a diamond formed from two tetrahedra, while the constant energy condition corresponds to a plane that slices the diamond in triangular cross-sections, as depicted in Fig. 3. Each point in the diamond defines three qubit thermal states, however, since the overall state is a pure state, any other pure state may be reached by a general unitary transformation. It is the restriction to energy-conserving unitaries which means that only thermal states with parameters in the triangular region T2 are accessible. Such energy conserving unitaries could arise from time-dependent interactions Vijt, or, for example, from time-independent interactions of the form XiYj−YiXj. The diamond polyhedron has some nice features. The origin is the bottom vertex and corresponds to E=0, where all the qubits are at T=0, while E=3/2 is the other extreme point, where each qubit is maximally mixed, and T= . The centroid of any given constant energy triangle corresponds to all three qubits having equal temperatures and so would correspond to the standard equilibrium one would expect if the three subsystems were initially uncorrelated. For standard thermally mixed states free to interact, the total system would tend to evolve toward this configuration. However, from our analysis we see that this is no longer imposed. The overall state is pure and the total system can undergo unitary evolution to any other set of local thermal states in T2. The large degree of entanglement present has radically lifted the constraints of the thermodynamic arrow and allows the subsystems to transformation to otherwise inaccessible states. The triangle formed by the intersection of E=1 and the diamond forms the widest part of the polyhedron and is special in the sense that there is enough entanglement for two of the qubits to form a singlet state, but not too much that the singlet becomes impossible. In terms of temperature, for points on this triangle it is possible to unitarily transform along E=constant to a situation where two qubits are maximally mixed while the third is in a pure state. For E1 it is always possible to turn off the temperature of one qubit with the other two being at some finite temperatures, while for E1 this is no longer possible and each qubit always has some nonzero temperature. The diamond setting also provides a simple way to visualize the contrast between a system subject to the standard thermodynamic arrow and the highly entangled system discussed here. Figure 4 shows the constant energy region T2 for a system of three qubits with thermal marginals a, b and c. The centroid of the triangle corresponds to the equilibrium configuration Ta=Tb=Tc. The solid lines passing through the equilibrium point and intersecting the midpoint of the sides correspond to the situation where two of the subsystems have equal temperatures. These lines divide the triangle into six regions, labeled I–VI in Fig. 5, corresponding to the six choices of temperature orderings, TaTb Tc ,, TcTbTa. If the system is in a thermal configuration C with no correlations then Eq. 4 forces the system to evolve only in the direction shown in Fig. 4. The thermodynamic arrow therefore imposes a cone of accessible configurations for the thermal system, and gradually drives the system inexorably to FIG. 3. Color online The parameter space P3: The set of entangled states giving local thermal states possesses a diamond polygon parameter space. A triangular slice T2 with constant total energy is shown. Dark regions have low energies and temperatures, while bright regions have high energies and temperatures. ENTANGLEMENT AND THE THERMODYNAMIC ARROW OF TIME PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-5 thermal equilibrium at the center of the region a fun comparison is with black holes—the light cone of a person inside the event horizon always forces them to move radially inwards, eventually reaching the central singularity, while here we have in some sense a “thermal cone” that dictates how the system must evolve in time, ultimately reaching the central equilibrium point. It makes physical sense in this context to only consider a small transfer of energy that perturbs the initial thermal configuration into a neighboring thermal configuration. A state with Tb=Tc has no formal restriction from Eq. 4 on the amount of heat that may be exchanged between b and c, however, the configuration Tb=Tc is stable in the sense that a small transfer of heat will automatically induce a correcting directionality that returns the system to Tb=Tc. This is illustrated in Fig. 5 where given an initial thermal configuration C, subject to random heat exchanges and the constraint Eq. 4, the system starts in region I where Ta TbTc. Heat is exchanged, cooling c and heating a and b until the system crosses the Tb=Tc line into region II. At which point only fluctuations around this line are permitted by Eq. 4. Subsequently, the system a is heated up until the thermal configuration reaches the central equilibrium point, as shown in the diagram, at which point only small fluctuations from equilibrium are permitted. However, no constraint is present for our entangled state, which is free to execute a random walk and roam over the accessible region of parameter space T2, for example a given initial configuration Q may start in region V, but is free to move toward and away from equilibrium and can visit every point in the accessible parameter space, see Fig. 5. B. Global pure state We now present a highly entangled pure state for which the thermodynamic arrow is removed for interactions between any two of its subsystems, and so allows the most stark deviation from standard thermodynamical behavior. In general for N qubits in locally thermal states there exist a vast number of consistent pure states. However, it is straightforward to see that any set of thermal marginals ii=1 N can be obtained from a global pure state with a fixed energy E, of the form = i xiXi 00 + 1 − E/N − 1 11 8 with Xi the Pauli operator on qubit i, and each xi real and obeying the condition ixi 2=E/ N−1. Furthermore, these parameters are related to the parameters for PN through i= jixj 2 . The parameters xi specify a point on a hypersphere in RN of radius E/ N−1 and any unitary transformation that satisfies the energy constraint iQi=0 then corresponds to ON transformations on the subspace spanned by Xi 00 i=1 N . Heat transfer between any two qubits a and b can be mediated by an energyconserving interaction Hamiltonian such as Vab=YaXb −XaYb /2 and the evolution is then described by the unitary Uab=exp−i /2YaXb−XaYb. This unitary allows heat flow in either direction between the thermal reduced states a and b. While the reduced states a ,b are thermal, it is not the case that ab=Tria,b is a direct product of thermal states. The two-qubit process we gave, detects the quantum correlations present between a and b that are not accounted for by merely probing the qubits individually. A state such as Eq. 8 could clearly be used by a global demon to reverse standard thermodynamic behavior for a local demon, as described in the introduction, with an interaction such as Vab causing heat to flow both into and out of a thermal state. In addition, we see that quantum correlations in a pure state allow far more freedom than would be allowed by classically correlated states. C. Candidate experimental state? We now consider an interesting system consisting of 3 qubits A, B, and C in a line, where A is allowed to interact with B and B is allowed to interact with C. The state of the FIG. 4. Color online The parameter space T2: The standard thermodynamic arrow would constrain C to evolve only into the cone of states depicted, and this drives it steadily toward equilibrium, while the entangled state Q has no such restriction. Dotted lines are the isotherms for Ta, Tb, and Tc, while the solid internal lines represent Ta=Tb, Tb=Tc, and Tc=Ta. The center point corresponds to thermal equilibrium Ta=Tb=Tc. FIG. 5. Color online Contrast in system evolution due to random transfers of energy between subsystems. For C, subject to the constraint Eq. 4, the thermodynamic arrow forces the subsystems to the equilibrium configuration. The system Q is not restricted for the small fluctuations and performs a nondirected random walk through the accessible configuration space. DAVID JENNINGS AND TERRY RUDOLPH PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-6 total system is given by a mixed state ABC, and has the property that AB=ATA BTB and BC=BTB CTC for thermal marginals iTi, i=A,B,C with TA TBTC. Hence, the pairs AB and BC obey the thermodynamic arrow individually and we would expect heat only to flow from C to B and from B to A. However, if AC is given by AC = 1 2 + C − A 10 10 + − C + A 01 01 + 2 − C − A2 10 01 + 01 10 + A + C − 00 00 + 2 − A − C − 11 11 + A + C − 2 − A − C − 00 11 + 11 00 , then we are able to exploit correlations between A and C to for example transfer heat from A to B. The state AC at first glance looks complicated, but it may be obtained from a 3 qubit state ACD of the form Eq. 8 by tracing out D; the parameters A, C, must then obey similar relations to Eq. 7. The total state now takes the form ABC=AC B and we assume that the interaction Hamiltonians are once again given by VAB= 1 2 XAYB−YAXB and VBC= 1 2 XBYC−YBXC. In the event that only one of these interactions is switched on we have that the thermodynamic arrow is obeyed and heat always flows in the direction C→B→A. However, when both interactions are on, the heat flow becomes more complicated. If we assume the system ABC evolves under the unitary Ut , s=exp−itVAB−isVBC, then Figs. 6 and 7 show the contrast between heat flows for the entangled state ABC and for the uncorrelated product state A B C. For s=0 heat can only flow from B to A, however as can be seen from Fig. 6 by switching on s we are able to have system A, the coldest subsystem, emit heat into B. Figure 7 shows the expected heat flow patterns given the standard uncorrelated product thermal states. Here, the heat flow into A is always positive dark-colored regions, while the heat flow into C is always negative light-colored regions. It is clear that the presence of entanglement can dramatically alter this pattern. Figure 8 shows the difference QAQA p −QA e between the flow for A in the two cases of a product state QA p and an entangled state QA e . It is evident from this that the entanglement can increase the heat into A as well as out of A. Figure 8 also shows the region of parameter space for which heat leaves A and both B and C gain heat, which corresponds to a clear violation of the expected thermodynamic behavior. We can also ask if the system can act as an entanglement witness under heat flow. By analyzing the mutual information for the system we can show that range exists in the parameters A, C, for which the correlations present in the state ABC exceed log 2 and so allows heat flows that cannot be attributed to classical correlations between A and (a) (b) (c) FIG. 6. Color online Entangled system: The heat flow pattern into A,B,C for the correlated state ABC with A=0.15, B=0.2, C=0.3, =0.4, and parameters t for the interaction VAB and s for VBC. Here a light-colored plane is shown through Q=0 to highlight those regions where heat leaves the subsystem Q0, while the dark regions visible above this plane correspond to heat entering the system Q0. (a) (b) (c) FIG. 7. Color online Uncorrelated system: The heat flow pattern into A,B,C for the ordinary product state A B C, with parameters A=0.15, B=0.2, C=0.3, t for the interaction HAB and s for HBC. Here a light-colored plane is shown through Q=0 to highlight those regions where heat leaves the subsystem Q0, while the dark regions visible above this plane correspond to heat entering the system Q0. (a) (b) FIG. 8. Color online The first graph shows the difference in heat pattern for A in the two cases of an entangled state and a separable state. Here QA p is the heat gained by A in the product state case, while QA e is the heat gained by A in the entangled state case. Once again, light regions correspond to negative values, while dark regions correspond to positive values. The second plot shows the regions of s-t parameter space, in which A has lost heat and both B and C have gained heat. ENTANGLEMENT AND THE THERMODYNAMIC ARROW OF TIME PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-7 C. Figure 9 shows this region as part of the diamond polygon parameter space discussed earlier. The set of states for which it may act as an entanglement witness is shown as the semitransparent light-colored region. However, it must be emphasized that for a generic, correlated mixed state it is not always possible to unitarily eliminate all of the correlations present as the set of unitary orbits containing product states is a low dimensional submanifold of the manifold of all unitary orbits 34. D. Quiver of thermodynamical arrows As already mentioned in general there exists a multitude of global states tot associated with a given combination of thermal marginal states. For a given collection of marginals the full state can have a vast array of different consistent correlations. The set of such consistent states Q contains states that differ in the correlations that exist between different combinations of subsystems. Consequently, given subsystems S1 , . . .Sk, the reduced state 1k can vary for different global states tot in Q. It is easy to see that while we might demand the individual subsystems S1 , . . . ,SN to be thermal states, this thermality may appear at various levels of coarse graining on the collection of subsystems. For example we might have for a pair of subsystems Sa and Sb that ab=Trtot=a b, however for a triple of subsystems Sa ,Sb ,Sc the state abc is entangled. For such a situation, the thermodynamic arrow is present for any energy transfer process involving only the two subsystems a and b, however for processes involving three or more subsystems the correlations present allow violations of the thermodynamic arrow. Consequently, the different possible correlation structures that can occur in a state totQ correspond to a hierarchy of thermodynamic arrows. The set of states Q can be partitioned up as Q=A1A2, where a state is in Ak if there exists subsystems Sa1 , . . . ,Sak such that j =1 k Qj Tj 0 9 is observed for all transformations on a1. . .ak and no larger set of subsystems exist with this property. It is not clear, however, if a nontrivial partitioning can be defined in which, for a state in a given class, the thermodynamic arrow holds for all marginals on k subsystems. This classification of states in terms of their largest thermal marginal depends on the particular correlation structure of the global state without reference to where the subsystem are situated, however in more practical situations it makes sense to include a notion of locality. For example, we might consider a collection of subsystems S1 ,S2 , . . . located at various points in space. For a given subsystem Sa we may define the notion of an “arrow range,” Ra, which is the largest ra such that the reduced state ra on all subsystems within a distance ra of Sa is a thermal marginal. For the entire state tot we may then simply define a characteristic arrow range R as the average over the set Ri of ranges for each subsystem Si. States with large R do possess correlations, however these correlations are difficult to access in practice, requiring many coordinated, local pairwise interactions Vij in order to generate an effective multipartite interaction over the correlated state. On the other hand, states with small values for R , for example states of the form Eq. 8 or the state ABC considered in the previous section, have correlations that are more easily accessible through local pairwise interactions. This provides a simple generalization of the ‘local’ Maxwell demon introduced in the first section. A demon should not only be finite in terms of its memory resources, but also in terms of the correlation range R that it can probe. III. CONCLUSION Time, with its inexorable flow, is one of our oldest mysteries. In stark contrast, it is only in the last century that we have become aware of the quantum mechanical properties of Nature, and only in the past few decades that some of the subtleties and power of quantum correlations have revealed themselves. In this paper, we have examined some aspects of entanglement correlations, how they can reverse the standard thermodynamic arrow of time, and have shown that in this regard thermodynamic transformations may act as entanglement witnesses. We analyzed how highly entangled multipartite states can make ordinarily forbidden thermodynamic states accessible. Different correlation structures can give rise to the same set of local thermal states, and so processes involving several subsystems are in general required to exploit the entanglement present. The set of transformations on a system then possess a hierarchy of thermodynamic arrows, whether considered globally or in terms of local correlation ranges. The key aspect is to allow interactions that activate the correlations present, which we demonstrated with a mixed state example ABC in which the thermodynamic arrow is in place for interactions involving only A and B or for B and C, but by switching on an interaction with system C this can be dramatically modified. FIG. 9. Color online The region of parameter space for which reversal of the thermodynamic arrow in ABC can act as an entanglement witness is shown in semi-transparent light region, while the remainder of the space only possesses correlations that could be attributed to a classically correlated state. DAVID JENNINGS AND TERRY RUDOLPH PHYSICAL REVIEW E 81, 061130 2010 061130-8 It would be of interest to further explore the multipartite correlation structures that can occur in a quantum state—for example we might speculate that in the early, dense universe that R is small enough to allow any random physical interactions to exploit the correlations present, producing a gradual disappearance of the thermodynamic arrow the closer we get to the initial state of the universe. Of course such notions of locality rely on a classical space-time background, and so we could only push the issue of the special initial conditions into the sub-Planck scales, where a complete theory of quantum gravity would be required. Another setting of interest is that of quantum field theory, where thermality arises naturally due to observers possessing causal horizons, such as in the case of black holes or for accelerated observers. Once again, thermality can be viewed as arising from entanglement across the horizon, however it is unclear if these correlations could actually be utilized in any thermodynamic transformations. At a deeper level, it may also be fruitful to explore connections with the thermal time hypothesis due to Connes and Rovelli 35 or recent work by Padmanabhan 36 that attempts to relate the cosmological arrow of time for our expanding universe with the thermodynamic arrow by exploiting the thermodynamics of local space-time horizons. Finally, in a more grounded setting, it would be of interest to see if a mixed state ABC, or one like it, could be realized experimentally to see how easily one might exploit quantum correlations present in a state to affect its thermodynamic behavior. 1 J. C. Maxwell, Letter to P.G. Tait, 11th December, 1867. 2 J. C. Maxwell, Theory of Heat Longmans, Green, London, 1871, Chap. 12. 3 L. Szilard, Z. Phys. 53, 840 1929. 4 K. Maruyama, F. Nori, and V. Vedral, Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 1 2009. 5 Appropriately enough, Plato argued that the word “demon” comes from the Greek word daēmones meaning “one who has knowledge or wisdom.” 6 W. H. Zurek, Frontiers of Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics Plenum, New York, 1984. 7 C. H. Bennett, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 905 1982. 8 R. Landauer, IBM J. Res. Dev. 5, 183 1961. 9 Although we shall see later that this requirement is not needed. 10 R. Penrose, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1979. 11 H. Price, Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point Oxford University Press, New York, 1996. 12 H. D. Zeh, The Physical Basis of The Direction of Time, 4th ed. Springer, New York, 2001. 13 M. H. Partovi, Phys. Rev. E 77, 021110 2008. 14 L. Henderson, Br. J. Philos. Sci. 54, 291 2003. 15 O. R. Shenker, Br. J. Philos. Sci. 50, 33 1999. 16 S. Lloyd, Phys. Rev. A 39, 5378 1989. 17 A. Peres, Quantum Theory, Concepts and Methods Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993. 18 R. Clifton and H. 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2012年06月29日 By MaterialsViews编辑部 汤森路透ISI于2012年6月28日公布了最新的期刊影响因子，下面我们简要介绍一下材料科学类期刊的期刊的情况。 Advanced Materials 持续了2010年大幅增长的趋势，2011年的影响因子增长了28%达到13.877。全面的涵盖范围仍然是该期刊的最大优势， Advanced Materials 被收录在了ISI的6个不同的学科分类中，它成功吸引了来自材料科学、化学、物理学、生物科学和工程等各个领域的研究人员。 其它顶级的材料科学类期刊还有 Nature Materials （32.841）、 Nano Letter （13.198）和 ACS Nano （10.774）。 Chemistry of Materials 的影响因子增长了14%达到7.286， Journal of Materials Chemistry 增长了17%达到5.968。 Advanced Functional Materials 的影响因子增长了20%达到了10.179，进一步巩固了其在发表研究论文的材料科学类期刊中的领先地位。尤其需要感谢以下几篇文章获得的大量引用。 • Nanoscale Phase Separation and High Photovoltaic Efficiency in Solution-Processed, Small-Molecule Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells , by Thuc-Quyen Nguyen et al. • A Graphene Nanoprobe for Rapid, Sensitive, and Multicolor Fluorescent DNA Analysis, by Chunhai Fan et al. • The Energy of Charge-Transfer States in Electron Donor-Acceptor Blends: Insight into the Energy Losses in Organic Solar Cells , by Rene Janssen et al. Small 的影响因子也增加了14%达到8.349。它为在纳米、微米尺度从事材料、化学、物理、工程以及生物、医药领域的研究人员提供了一个顶级的交流的平台。“读者对我们刊物的期望非常高，我在此非常感谢我们的作者、审稿人和编委会成员们，正是他们的共同努力之下我们才能取得这样的成果”主编Jose Oliveira说到。 Advanced 系列材料期刊的强势发展也反映到了新创刊的刊物中。 Advanced Energy Materials 当年的引用率（本年发表的文章在本年内被应用的次数/本年发表的文章数）达到了1.950，这与 Advanced Materials （2.155）， Advanced Functional Materials （1.514），和 Small （1.221）基本持平。这也奠定了它在今后不可忽视的地位，该刊物在明年将有首个影响因子的公布。 Advanced Engineering Materials 新的影响因子达到了1.185，保持了其在工程领域的领先地位。该刊物是由著名的DGM、SF2M和SVMT等学协会支持，着重发表在工程材料领域（例如高温材料、孔材料、无损检测、生物医疗材料和技术模拟等）重要研究进展的。 Steel Research International 在创刊的第83年迎来的其影响因子高达61%的增长，达到0.733。该期刊的审稿严格、发表速度快，并且在年初进行了改版。 美国陶瓷学会的旗舰期刊 Journal of the American Ceramic Society 仍然保持了它在陶瓷研究领域的领先地位，影响因子保持持续增长达到2.272。该期刊所发表的研究成果的得到了读者们长期持续的关注和引用，其5年影响因子在材料科学的陶瓷类期刊中位居首位。 材料科学期刊影响因子 Nature Materials : 32.841 Nature Nanotechnology : 27.270 Advanced Materials : 13.877 Nano Letters : 13.198 ACS Nano : 10.774 Advanced Functional Materials : 10.179 Wiley期刊的优异表现 Steel Research International : +61% Advanced Materials : +28% Advanced Functional Materials : +20% Journal of Materials Chemistry : +17%
近两年，我多次接到生物医学科技搜索引擎BioMedLib的email，说我的论文被评为评为相关领域中发表的十大最佳论文之首。具体email附后。 另我发现，网上许多人都以自己的文章进BioMedLib十大最佳论文为豪。我还发现有人有这样的观点：“BioMedLib网站只要看到你发表了一篇文章，就根据你的文章研究内容进行检索，找出另外九篇文章，把你的文章自动放在第一，其它九篇放到后面，这个既不说明这十篇文章是某一领域的十佳文章，更不说明你的文章是十佳之首，说的直白点就是相似度检索，和研究水平毫无关系。” 是这样吗？ “BioMedLib十大最佳论文”到底是什么东东？有没有知情者。 =================================== BioMedLib: "Who is Publishing in My Domain?" =================================== For your article Shen HJ: . Yao Xue Xue Bao; 2006 Sep;41(9):888-92 PMID: 17111839 the following section is the top 20 articles published on the same topic since you published yours. Please sign up to continue receiving this service (view the following link in your browser). This literature-monitoring service is provided to you free of charge by BioMedLib. http://wipimd.com/nlnsrvys9034fnoi?srvyi=47091wft=wimsqt11=17111839.001qt03=shj@nuaa.edu.cnmld=BLD2045TTTeiREovadt01=D2045T The monthly "Who Is Publishing in My Domain" service also includes free full-text publications (free PDF downloads), plus publications citing your article. You will be able to customize these lists to your informational needs in the registration page. Please forward this email to your co-authors, so that they can sign up as well. You can also sign up for a different article. http://wipimd.com/nlnsrvys9034fnoi?srvyi=47091wft=wimscmpgn89116=BLD2045TTTeiREova Regards, Article Delivery Services www.WIPIMD.com Email correspondence: custserv@bmlsearch.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List 1: Top 20 Articles, in the Domain of Article 17111839, Since its Publication (2006) 1. .Shen HJ: Yao Xue Xue Bao; 2006 Sep;41(9):888-92 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=17111839%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 2. Molecular dynamics simulations of flexible polymer chains wrapping single-walled carbon nanotubes.Tallury SS, Pasquinelli MA: J Phys Chem B; 2010 Apr 1;114(12):4122-9 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=20205372%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 3. Molecular dynamics simulations of polymers with stiff backbones interacting with single-walled carbon nanotubes.Tallury SS, Pasquinelli MA: J Phys Chem B; 2010 Jul 29;114(29):9349-55 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=20593831%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 4. Molecular dynamics simulations of deformation and rupture of super carbon nanotubes under tension.Qin Z, Feng XQ, Zou J, Yin Y, Yu SW: J Nanosci Nanotechnol; 2008 Dec;8(12):6274-82 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=19205194%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 5. Probing diameter-selective solubilisation of carbon nanotubes by reversible cyclic peptides using molecular dynamics simulations.Friling SR, Notman R, Walsh TR: Nanoscale; 2010 Jan;2(1):98-106 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=20648370%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 6. Multicomponent ballistic transport in narrow single wall carbon nanotubes: analytic model and molecular dynamics simulations./spanMutat T, Adler J, Sheintuch M: J Chem Phys; 2011 Jan 28;134(4):044908 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21280799%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 7. The thermal conductivity and thermal rectification of carbon nanotubes studied using reverse non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations.Alaghemandi M, Algaer E, Bƒhm MC, Mƒ¼ller-Plathe F: Nanotechnology; 2009 Mar 18;20(11):115704 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=19420452%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 8. Application of molecular dynamics simulations for structural studies of carbon nanotubes.Brƒ³dka A, Ko…‚oczek J, Burian A: J Nanosci Nanotechnol; 2007 Apr-May;7(4-5):1505-11 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=17450918%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 9. Molecular dynamics simulation studies of structural and mechanical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes./spanMashapa MG, Ray SS: J Nanosci Nanotechnol; 2010 Dec;10(12):8083-7 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21121299%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 10. Kinetics of water filling the hydrophobic channels of narrow carbon nanotubes studied by molecular dynamics simulations.Wu K, Zhou B, Xiu P, Qi W, Wan R, Fang H: J Chem Phys; 2010 Nov 28;133(20):204702 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21133447%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 11. Molecular dynamics simulations on hydrogen adsorption in finite single walled carbon nanotube bundles.Knippenberg MT, Stuart SJ, Cheng H: J Mol Model; 2008 May;14(5):343-51 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=18286311%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 12. Investigation of the influence of thermostat configurations on the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes in molecular dynamics simulations.Heo S, Sinnott SB: J Nanosci Nanotechnol; 2007 Apr-May;7(4-5):1518-24 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=17450920%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 13. Acute and long-term effects after single loading of functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes into zebrafish (Danio rerio).Cheng J, Chan CM, Veca LM, Poon WL, Chan PK, Qu L, Sun YP, Cheng SH: Toxicol Appl Pharmacol; 2009 Mar 1;235(2):216-25 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=19133284%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 14. Stabilization of aqueous carbon nanotube dispersions using surfactants: insights from molecular dynamics simulations./spanTummala NR, Morrow BH, Resasco DE, Striolo A: ACS Nano; 2010 Dec 28;4(12):7193-204 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21128672%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 15. Molecular dynamics simulation study of ionic hydration in negatively charged single-walled carbon nanotubes.Guo X, Shao Q, Lu L, Zhu Y, Wei M, Lu X: J Nanosci Nanotechnol; 2010 Nov;10(11):7620-4 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21137996%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 16. Molecular dynamics simulations of ion transport through carbon nanotubes. I. Influence of geometry, ion specificity, and many-body interactions.Beu TA: J Chem Phys; 2010 Apr 28;132(16):164513 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=20441294%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 17. Catalyzed growth of carbon nanotube with definable chirality by hybrid molecular dynamics-force biased Monte Carlo simulations.Neyts EC, Shibuta Y, van Duin AC, Bogaerts A: ACS Nano; 2010 Nov 23;4(11):6665-72 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=20939511%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 18. Perylene-based nanotweezers: enrichment of larger-diameter single-walled carbon nanotubes./spanBackes C, Schmidt CD, Hauke F, Hirsch A: Chem Asian J; 2011 Feb 1;6(2):438-44 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21254422%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 19. Molecular dynamics analysis on buckling of defective carbon nanotubes.Kulathunga DD, Ang KK, Reddy JN: J Phys Condens Matter; 2010 Sep 1;22(34):345301 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=21403253%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches 20. Molecular dynamics simulation study of the structural characteristics of water molecules confined in functionalized carbon nanotubes.Huang LL, Zhang LZ, Shao Q, Wang J, Lu LH, Lu XH, Jiang SY, Shen WF: J Phys Chem B; 2006 Dec 28;110(51):25761-8 Go to the online record: http://bmlsearch.com/?kwr=17181218%5Bpmid%5Dcmpgn83301=BLD2045TTTeiREovaxpclps3=Matches
Call for Papers SCA2012 - 2012 International Conference on Social Computing and Its Applications, Nov. 1-3, 2012, Xiangtan, China. Website: http://kpnm.hnust.cn/confs/sca2012/ Theme: Social Media, Mining and Analytics Key dates: Submission Deadline: June 30, 2012 Submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sca2012 Publication: Proceedings will be published by IEEE CS Press. Special issues: Distinguised papers will be selected for special issues in World Wide Web Journal; The Computer Journal; or Journal of Systems and Software. =========== Introduction Social computing is concerned with the intersection of social behaviour and computing systems, creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Various social computing applications such as blogs, email, instant messaging, social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), wikis, and social bookmarking have been widely popularised where people interact socially via computing space. Such applications have been profoundly impacting social behaviour and life style of human beings while pushing the boundary of computing technology simultaneously. While people can enjoy or even indulge in the benefits such as freedom and convenience brought about by social computing, various critical issues such as privacy protection, touch-screen based arty HCI design, and modelling of social behaviour in computing space still remain challenging. SCA (Social Computing and its Applications) is created to provide a prime international forum for both researchers, industry practitioners and environment experts to exchange the latest fundamental advances in the state of the art and practice of Social Computing and broadly related areas. Scope and Topics Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to: * Fundamentals of social computing * Modelling of social behaviour * Social network analysis and mining * Computational models of social simulation * Web 2.0 and semantic web * Innovative HCI and touch-screen models * Modelling of social conventions and social contexts * Social cognition and social intelligence * Social media analytics and intelligence * Group formation and evolution * Security, privacy, trust, risk and cryptography in social contexts * Social system design and architectures * Information retrieval, data mining, artificial intelligence and agent-based technology * Group interaction, collaboration, representation and profiling * Handheld/mobile social computing * Service science and service oriented interaction design * Cultural patterns and representation * Emotional intelligence, opinion representation, influence process * Mobile commerce, handheld commerce and e-markets * Connected e-health in social networks * Social policy and government management * Social blog, micro-blog, public blog, internet forum * Business social software systems * Impact on peoples activities in complex and dynamic environments * Collaborative filtering, mining and prediction * Social computing applications and case studies Submission Guidelines Submissions must include an abstract, keywords, the e-mail address of the corresponding author and should not exceed 8 pages for main conference, including tables and figures in IEEE CS format. The template files for LATEX or WORD can be downloaded here. All paper submissions must represent original and unpublished work. Each submission will be peer reviewed by at least three program committee members. Submission of a paper should be regarded as an undertaking that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register for the conference and present the work. Submit your paper(s) in PDF file at the SCA2012 submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sca2012. Publications Accepted and presented papers will be included into the IEEE Conference Proceedings published by IEEE CS Press (Indexed by EI). Authors of accepted papers, or at least one of them, are requested to register and present their work at the conference, otherwise their papers may be removed from the digital libraries of IEEE CS and EI after the conference. Distinguished papers presented at the conference, after further revision, will be published in special issues of high quality SCI indexed international journals which are: World Wide Web Journal; The Computer Journal; and Journal of Systems and Software. Honorary General Chairs * Jiawei Han, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA * Kyu-Young Whang, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea General Chairs * Irwin King, the Chinese University of HongKong, Hong Kong * Wolfgan Nejdl, L3S, Germany * Feiyue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China General Vice Chairs * V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland, USA * Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, China * Jinho Kim, Kangwon National University, Korea Program Chairs * Aoying Zhou, East China Normal University, China * Guandong Xu, Victoria University, Australia * Nitin Agarwal, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA Program vice-Chairs * Tim Butcher, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia * Akiyo Nadamoto, Konan University, Japan * Xiaoqing (Frank) Liu, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA * Tiejian Luo, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Workshop Chairs * Wookey Lee, Inha University, Korea * Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China Steering Committee * V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland, USA * Irwin King, The Chinese University of Hongkong, China * Igor Hawryszkiewycz, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia * Jinjun Chen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia (Chair) * Feiyue Wang, Chinese Academia of Science, China * Wesley Chu, University of California, USA * Shaun Lawson, University of Lincoln, UK * Jianhua Ma, Hosei University, Japan * John Yen, Pennsylvania State University, USA * Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, China * Adrian David Cheok, National University of Singapore, Singapore * Craig Standing, Edith Cowan University, Australia * Laurence T. Yang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada (Chair) Publicity Chairs * Ting Liu, Harbin Institute of Technology, China * Zongda Wu, University of Science Technology of China, China Publication Chairs * Jinjun Chen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia * Jianxun Liu, Hunan University of Science and Technology, China
Call for Papers CGC 2012 ,2012 International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing 1-3 Nov. 2012, Xiangtan, China. Website: http://kpnm.hnust.cn/confs/cgc2012/ Key dates: Submission Deadline: June 30, 2012 Submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cgc2012 Publication: Proceedings will be published by IEEE CS Press. Special issues: Distinguised papers will be selected for special issues in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience; Future Generation Computer Systems; or International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. =========== Introduction Cloud computing is positioning itself as a new emerging platform for delivering information infrastructures and resources as IT services. Customers (enterprises or individuals) can then provision and deploy these services in a pay-as-you-go fashion and in a convenient way while saving huge capital investment in their own IT infrastructures. It has evoked a high degree of interest internationally with many challenges such as security and privacy remaining open. Green computing, in general, aims to enable computing and IT infrastructures to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly. With dramatically increasing demand on computing and storage systems, IT infrastructures have been scaled tremendously which results in huge amount of energy consumption, heat dissemination, greenhouse emission and even part of climate change. As such, green computing has come to the picture seeking solutions for computing and IT infrastructures to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly. While customers can enjoy green atmosphere as well as cost saving and convenience because cloud computing accommodates their IT infrastructures in the cloud, how to green the cloud becomes increasingly challenging and extremely important in terms of global energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. CGC (Cloud and Green Computing) is created to provide a prime international forum for both researchers, industry practitioners and environment experts to exchange the latest fundamental advances in the state of the art and practice of Cloud computing and Green computing as well as joint-venture and synergic research and development across both areas. Scope and Topics Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to: * Fundamentals of cloud computing * Architectural cloud models * Programming cloud models * Provisioning/pricing cloud models * Volumn, Velocity and Variety of Big Data on Cloud * Resource scheduling and SLA for Big Data on Cloud * Storage and computation management of Big Data on Cloud * Large-scale scientific workflow in support of Big Data processing on Cloud * Big Data mining and analytics * Multiple source data processing and integration on Cloud * Visualisation of Big Data on Cloud * MapReduce for Big Data processing * Distributed file storage of Big Data on Cloud * Data storage and computation in cloud computing * Resource and large-scale job scheduling in cloud computing * Security, privacy, trust, risk in cloud computing * Fault tolerance and reliability in cloud computing * Access control to cloud computing * Resource virtualisation * Monitoring and auditing in cloud * Scalable and elastic cloud services * Social computing and impacts on the cloud * Innovative HCI and touch-screen models and technologies to cloud * Mobile commerce, handheld commerce and e-markets on cloud * Intelligent/agent-based cloud computing * Migration of business applications to cloud * Cloud use case studies * Fundamentals of green computing * Energy aware software, hardware and middleware * Energy efficient IT architecture * Energy efficient resource scheduling and optimisation * Energy efficient clustering and computing * Large-scale energy aware data storage and computation * Energy aware control, monitoring and HCI design * Energy efficient networking and operation * Energy efficient design of VLSI and micro-architecture * Intelligent energy management * Green data centers * Energy aware resource usage and consumption * Smart power grid and virtual power stations * Energy policy, social behaviour and government management * Teleworking, tele-conferences and virtual meeting * Low power electronics and energy recycling * Green computing case studies * Energy efficient Internet of Things * Energy efficient cloud architecture * Energy aware data storage and computation in cloud computing * Energy aware scheduling, monitoring, auditing in cloud * Case studies of green cloud computing. Submission Guidelines Submissions must include an abstract, keywords, the e-mail address of the corresponding author and should not exceed 8 pages for main conference, including tables and figures in IEEE CS format. The template files for LATEX or WORD can be downloaded here. All paper submissions must represent original and unpublished work. Each submission will be peer reviewed by at least three program committee members. Submission of a paper should be regarded as an undertaking that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register for the conference and present the work. Submit your paper(s) in PDF file at the CGC2012 submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cgc2012. Authors of accepted papers, or at least one of them, are requested to register and present their work at the conference, otherwise their papers may be removed from the digital libraries of IEEE CS and EI after the conference. Publications Accepted and presented papers will be included into the IEEE Conference Proceedings published by IEEE CS Press (pending). Authors of accepted papers, or at least one of them, are requested to register and present their work at the conference, otherwise their papers may be removed from the digital libraries of IEEE CS and EI after the conference. Distinguished papers presented at the conference, after further revision, will be published in special issues of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience; Future Generation Computer Systems; or International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. Honorary Chairs Ramamohanarao Kotagiri, The University of Melbourne, Australia Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee, USA Deyi Li, Chinese Academy of Engineering, China General Chairs Ivan Stojmenovic, University of Ottawa, Canada Albert Zomaya, The University of Sydney, Australia Hai Jin, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China General Vice-Chairs Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, USA Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology, Austria Laurence Yang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada Program Chairs Jinjun Chen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Peter Brezany, University of Vienna , Austria Jianxun Liu, Hunan University of Science and Technology, China Program Vice-Chairs Ivona Brandic,Vienna University of Technology, Austria, Yang Yu, Sun Yat-Sen University, China Ching-Hsien (Robert) Hsu, Chung Hua University, Taiwan Workshop Chairs Zizhong (Jeffrey) Chen, Colorado School of Mines, USA Rajiv Ranjan, The University of New South Wales, Australia Wangchun Dou, Nanjing University, China Steering Committee Mohammed Atiquzzaman, University of Oklahoma, USA Rajkumar Buyya The University of Melbourne, Australia Jinjun Chen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia (Chair) Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee, USA Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology, Austria Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, USA Hai Jin, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China Andrzej Goscinski, Deakin University, Australia Anthony D. Joseph, UC Berkeley, USA Jordi Torres, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain Manish Parashar, Rutgers University, USA Laurent Lefevre, INRIA, France Ivan Stojmenovic, University of Ottawa, Canada Laurence T. Yang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada (Chair) Award Chairs Guojun Wang, Central South University, China Panel Chairs Jinjun Chen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Jian Cao, Shanghai Jiao Tong Universtiy, China
写好英语（中文）科技论文的诀窍（转载周耀旗教授文) 下面这是个从网上转载的文章，希望能被更多的人看到。文中有几处乱码的地方，搞不清楚原文是什么，但还是能猜一下，我用 ... 标识那里原来是有乱码的位置。如果谁认为我转载侵犯了版权啥的，请给我发email。 写好英语（中文）科技论文的诀窍（转载周耀旗教授文) (按：此文由周耀旗教授撰写。现部分转载如下。由于格式关系，不能转载图表。请点击mentor100.com看原文。虽然文章是关于英文写作的，很多原则和技巧也适合中文的科技文章写作。） 写好英语科技论文的诀窍： 主动迎合读者期望，预先回答专家可能质疑 周耀旗 印地安那大学信息学院 印地安那大学医学院计算生物学和生物信息中心 以此文献给母校中国科技大学五十周年校庆 我的第一篇英语科技论文写作是把在科大的学士毕业论文翻译成英文。当我一九九零年从纽约州立大学博士毕业时，发表了20多篇英语论文。但是，我对怎样写高质量科技论文的理解仍旧处于初级阶段，仅知道尽量减少语法错误。之所以如此，是因为大多数时间我都欣然接受我的博士指导老师Dr. George Stell和 Dr. Harold Friedman的修改，而不知道为什么要那样改，也没有主动去问。这种情况一直持续到我去北卡州立大学做博士后。我的博士后指导老师Dr. Carol Hall建议我到邻近的杜克大学去参加一个为期两天的写作短训班。这堂由Gopen 教授主办的短训班真使我茅塞顿开。第一次，我知道了读者在阅读中有他们的期望，要想写好科技论文，最有效方法是要迎合他们的期望。这堂写作课帮我成功地完成了我的第一个博...后基金申请，有机会进入哈佛大学Dr. Martin Karplus组。在哈佛大学的五年期间，在Karplus教授的指导下，我认识到一篇好的论文需要从深度广度进行里里外外自我审查。目前，我自己当了教授，有了自己的科研组，也常常审稿。我觉得有必要让我的博士生和博士后学好写作。我不认为我自己是写作专家。我的论文也常常因为这样或那样的原因被退稿。但是我认为和大家共享我对写作的理解和我写作的经验教训，也许大家会少走一些我走过的弯路。由于多年未用中文写作，请大家多多指正。来信请寄： yqzhou@iupui.edu 。 欢迎访问我的网站： http://sparks.inxxxxatics.iupui.edu 。 导言 通常来讲，研究生和博士后从他的导师那儿得到研究方向。经过多次反复试验，得到一些好的结果。接下来他们需要对得到的数据进行总结和分析，写成论文。一篇精写的论文更容易被高档杂志接受。而写得不好的论文很可能被退稿。论文的数量和质量是学生和导师事业发展的敲门砖。不成文，便成仁，是学术生涯的写照。 很多学生以为当结果到手的时候研究就结束了。他们写的草稿，常常把原始数据放在一起，没有对方法和数据进行详细分析，没有对当今论文的评述。事实上，写作是研究不可分割的一部分。此刻是弄懂方法的成功与失败，寻找结果的解释及其隐含的意义，以及与其他相关研究进行比较的时候。 我们为什么需要在写作上如此认真努力？原因很简单。一个研究结果只有在被别人使用时才有意义。而想被别人使用，文章必须能引起其他科学家的兴趣，而且得保证其他人能看懂并可以重复和再现你的结果。只有可以被理解的研究才会被重复，也只有可以被再现的工作才能导致别人的引用和跟踪。而你的论文被引用的数量常常用来衡量研究的影响力。从某种角度看，写作就象是把你的工作成果推销给其他的科学家。 为了更好的推销，科学论文必须满足它独特的顾客：由聪明能干的科学家组成的尖端读者。它必须能先说服（通常也是竞争对手的）同行们，因为他们的评审是文章在发表前的第一道关口。同时，它也必须满足一般读者的要求。为了达到这个目标，我们首先要理解他们需要什么？ 读者需要什么 你的文章的潜在读者可能有刚进入这领域的新手，大学生和研究生，也有专家（潜在审稿人)，他们对你的领域会有不同程度的了解。因此，写文章的时候应该力求简单到可以被新手理解，同时深刻到可以引起专家的兴趣。 所有的科学家（不论是学生还是他们的导师)往往都很忙。大量期刊杂志使他们不可能仔细阅读每一篇论文。他们通常希望能在最短时间内找到文章最重要的信息。典型的情况是如果文章标题不吸引人，他们或许就会跳过这篇论文，如果文章的摘要没有包含重要的新方法或新结果，他们不会去读这篇文章。即使已经决定要读的论文，他们也会跳过很多段落直接去找自己最感兴趣的地方。因此，保证文章的结构能使读者很快找到所需的信息非常重要。文章的关键在于结构，不在于语法。语法错误易改，结构错误则往往让人无从下手，不知所云。我审过一些国内同行的论文，结构问题很常见。 总之，一篇文章只有在不需太多努力就可以理解的情况下才会被广泛地引用。文章清晰的关键就是使读者能在他们想找的地方找到他们需要的东西。这也就是说，要想让读者不费力理解你的论文，你必须费力去满足他们的期望. 读者期望什么 读者对句子的期望 读者希望在句子的开始看到熟悉的信息。句子是文章的最小功能单元。最容 易理解的句子是整句都在说读者知道的东西。但这对科技论文是不可能的， 因为只有新的东西才会被发表。事实上科技论文通常会包含很多新术语。所 以一个容易理解的句子应该从读者熟悉的信息（或刚刚提过的）开始而以新 信息结束，并在它们之间平滑地过渡。好文章的所有句子都应该这样从旧到 新地平滑过渡。帮助你写好一句开头的金科玉律是问问你自己：“我以前有 没有提过这个概念？”大多数文章很难读是因为很多新概念在没有被介绍之 前就使用了。例如： Samples for 2-dimensional projection of kinetic trajectories are shown in Figure 7. The coil states are loosely gathered while the native xstates can xxxx a black cluster with extreme high density in 2-dimensional projection plane. 这里从第一句到第二句信息无法流动。“The coil states”不知道是从何而来的。读者会发现下面改动后的句子更容易明白。 Kinetic trajectories are projected onto xx and yy variables in Figure 7. This figure shows two populated states. One corresponds to loosely gathered coil states while the other is the native state with a high density. 在这个新段里，新插入的第二句使每句均能从旧信息出发到新信息结束。第一句与第二句之间以“Figure”相连而第二句与第三句之间以“two states”相连。而新信息“coil states”则出现在第三句的最后。整段环环相连，成为一个整体。再看一个例子： The accuracy of the model structures is given by TM-score. In case of a perfect match to experimental structure, TM-score would be. 在第二个句子里，旧信息“TM-score”被埋在中间，被新信息“a perfect match to experimental structure”打断了。这里建议修改如下： The accuracy of the model structures is measured by TM-score, which is equal to 1 if there is a perfect match to the experimental structure. 科技写作中的最大问题就是新旧信息顺序颠倒。新信息和旧信息对作者来说可能不是很好区分，因为他非常熟悉所有的信息。 为了避免这种问题，不管什么时候，每当你开始写新句，你应该问问自己，这些词前面有没有被提到过。一定要把提到过的放前面，没提过的放后面。 读者想在主语之后立刻看到行为动词。对一个说明谁在做什么的句子，读者 需要找到动词才能理解。如果动词和主语之间相隔太远，阅读就会被寻找动词 打断。而打断阅读就会使句子难以理解。这里有个例子： The smallest URFs (URFA6L), a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetrip hosphatase (ATPase) subinit 6 gene has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene. 同样的句子，将动词放在主语之后： The smallest of the URFs is URFA6L, a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subinit 6 Gene; it has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene. 这样新的句子就更加平衡了。尽量避免过长的主语和过短的宾语。这就像头重脚轻的人很难站稳。短的主语紧跟着动词加上长的宾语效果会更好。 读者期望每句只有一个重点，这个重点通常在句尾。比较下面两个句子，我 们可以感觉到他们着重强调不同的东西。 URFA6L has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+-ATPasesubunit 8 gene. Recently discovered yeast H+-ATPase subunit 8 gene has a corresponding animal equivalent gene URFA6L. 很明显，前面的句子是关于一个最近发现的酵母基因，而第二句则着重强调了它有一个和动物一致的基因。另外一个例子： The enthalpy of hydrogen bond xxxxation between the nucleoside bases 2-deoxyguanosine (dG) and 2-deoxycytidine (dC) has been determined by direct measurement. 这个句...看起来好像是...强调“direct measurement”。 这不太像是原作者的目的。颠倒一下会使句子更加平衡。 We have directly measured the enthalpy of hydrogen bond xxxxation between the nucleoside bases 2-deoxyguanosine (dG) and 2-deoxycytidine (dC). 新的句子更简单而且更短，同时避免了头重脚轻的症状。总之，句尾是读者对该句最后的印象。把最好的，最重要的，和想要读者记住的东西放在句尾。 读者对段落的期望 每一个段落都应该只讲一个故事。在一段里表述多个观点会使读者很难知道该记住什么、这段想表达什么。一段的第一句要告诉读者这一段是讲什么的。这样读者想跳过这段就可以跳过。一段的最后一句应该是这段的结论或者告诉读者下一段是什么。段落中的句子应该由始到终通过逻辑关系连接，实现由旧信息到新信息的流动。比如这一段： The enthalpy of hydrogen bond xxxxation between the nucleoside bases 2-deoxyguanosine (dG) and 2-deoxycytidine (dC) has been determined by direct measurement. dG and dC were derivatized at the 5 and 3 hydroxyls with triisopropylsilyl groups to obtain solubility of the nucleosides in non-aqueous solvents and to prevent the ribose hydroxyls from xxxxing hydrogen bonds. From isoperibolic titration measurements, the enthalpy of dC:dG base pair xxxxation is -6.650.32 kcal/mol. 很难知道作者在这段里想表达什么。从这段的起始和结束看来，焓(enthalpy)应该是他想表达的重点。下面是重新组合后的段落。 We have directly measured the enthalpy of hydrogen bond xxxxation between the nucleoside bases 2-deoxyguanosine (dG) and 2-deoxycytidine (dC). dG and dC were derivatized at the 5 and 3 hydroxyls with triisopropylsilyl groups; these groups serve both to solubilize the nucleosides in non-aqueous solvents and to prevent the ribose hydroxyls from xxxxing hydrogen bonds. The enthalpy of dC:dG base pair xxxxation is -6.650.32 kcal/mol according to isoperibolic titration measurements, 首句描述了整段的主题。原段里的第一句颠倒是为了 1） 使新信息“dG”和“dC”在句子最后并强调他们。 2）更好地跟下面一句衔接。 原段里的第二句被分成两部分，这样每一部分只表达了一个观点。最后一句时总结整段。 再看另一个例子： Large earthquakes along a given fault segment do not occur at random intervals because it takes time to accumulate the strain energy for the rupture. The rates at which tectonic plates move and accumulate strain at their boundaries are approximately unixxxx. Therefore, in first approximation, one may expect that large ruptures of the same fault segment will occur at approximately constant time intervals. If subsequent main shocks have different amounts of slip across the fault, then the recurrence time may vary, and the basic idea of periodic main shocks must be modified. 在这个例子里，前两句共同阐明了积累张力的速度（Rate Of Strain Accumulation)。然而，第一句里的旧信息并没有放在第二句的开始。读者读到第三句的时候通常就不明白这段到底要讲什么了。更清晰的描述应该如下： Large earthquakes along a given fault segment do not occur at random intervals because it takes time to accumulate the strain energy for the rupture. The rates of strain accumulation at the boundaries of tectonic plates are approximately unixxxx. Therefore, nearly constant time intervals (at first approximation) would be expected between large ruptures of the same fault segment. , the recurrence time may vary; the basic idea of periodic main shocks may need to be modified if subsequent main shocks have different amounts of slip across the fault. 新段现在着重阐明了地震的发生频率。下划线标明了以前描述过的旧信息。很明显，新旧信息的连接是理解这段的关键。从旧信息到新信息的流动是使读者轻松阅读的最佳方式。写文章的目的不是去测试读者的阅读能力，而是考验作者的表达能力。不能怪人没看懂，只能怪自己没写清楚。常常听到这样的抱怨：那审稿人连这都不懂! 审稿人也可以说：连这个也写不清楚。 读者对表格和图示的期望一些没有耐心的读者会直接通过图表来判断一篇文章是否值得一读。怎样能使读者不需读正文就能理解图表是至关重要的。对于表来说，由于我们是从左向右阅读的，我们熟悉的信息应该出现在左边而新的信息出现在右边。例如，下面列出的表1和表2是仅仅调换了两列。比较一下那个表格更易理解。 （请点击见原文）原文此处应有一个链接的 审稿人要什么? 文章在发表前必须经过审稿人的评审。他们一般是相关领域的专家甚至是你的竞争者。他们会尽力寻找你文章中的毛病。有时，由于不同的观点和竞争的需要，审稿人或许会试图阻止你的文章发表。因此，文章必须写得理由充足。在被别人挑剔之前，自己必须首先鸡蛋里挑骨头，预先回答审稿人的可能质疑。 怎样满足审稿人？ 1). 只提出“一”个中心命题。论文里的观点太多，不但不好写，问题也容易多， 读者也不易记住你要说什么。 2). 在这个中心命题的基础上，用一个迷人(但决不能夸张)的标题来吸引审稿人 的兴趣。审稿人只审批感兴趣的论文。如果你不能引起审稿人的兴趣，那最好 不要发表那篇文章。编辑们有时候会很郁闷，因为找不到有兴趣的审稿人。无 偿审稿也只有科学界才有。 3). 合理解释每一个参数，合理说明每一个步骤。审稿人没时间考虑细节。程序 和参数的合理化显示出你知道你在做什么，而不是凑数据。即使你是在凑数据， 也要把凑数据的过程合理化。 4). 问问你自己是否提供了足够重复你工作的所有细节。审稿人(或读者)越容易 再现你的工作，他就越可能接受你的文章。当然，审稿人并不会真正去重做你 的工作，但你必须通过你的描述使他相信可以重做。 5). 必须有说服力！尽量做彻底而不是半成品的工作！用多方面测试来证明你的 中心命题。要使文章象律师证明无罪官司，预先回答一切可能提出的疑问。 6). 引用所有重要的研究工作，特别是经典力作。写作的时候要再做全面文献检 索。为了达到这些目标，写科学论文的时候必须遵照一定的框架结构。 文章的结构 典型的科学论文包括标题，摘要，引言，方法/实验步骤，结果，讨论，感谢，和参考文献。这样的结构是用来帮助读者快速找到他们感兴趣的信息。把信息放错地方会使读者糊涂。常犯的错误是混淆事实(结果)和解释(讨论)。讨论是对结果的解释及说明它的意义，而不是重复结果的描述。 一篇论文是从摘要，引言开始，这里建议从方法和结果部分开始写，因为你对方法和结果最熟悉，此外只有更好地理解方法和结果，才能确定中心命题。而标题，引言和讨论的写作都需要中心命题。我们应该从最熟悉的事情开始，就像读者从他们最熟悉的地方开始理解一样。 方法/实验步骤 如果文章是关于新的方法，技术，或算法，要非常详细地写它的新颖之处。要用有逻辑的、合理的方式来描述它。这会帮助读者抓住新方法的要领。如果这个方法使用参数，则要把每一个参数(或参数的取值)合理化，或者是以前用过的，或者可以从物理或数学推导出来，或者通过了广泛的测试及优化。如果无法保证它的合理性，那就必须描述改变它会造成的影响(实际的结果应该在结果部分或讨论部分，方法部分仅包含影响的描述)。如果没有测试它们的合理性，你应该解释为什么 (做的代价太贵了？太费时间了？或者需要延期到将来做)。参数改变造成的影响可以衡量方法是否Robust。 Robust的方法应该是在参数改变很大的时候，结果也不会太大变化。 对于新方法的发展，你同样需要设计不同的方法来测试。让人信服就需要做尽可能多的测试。你所能找到或设计的测试越多，你的工作就越会被其他人所接受和使用。 当完成了方法部分以后，问一问自己以下的问题：1)新的术语是不是都定义了？ 2)如果你是第一次读这部分，你能否得到重复整个工作的所有信息？记住，不要隐藏任何窍门或使用的捷径。人们如果不能重复你的结果的话就不会相信你的论文。永远不要弄虚作假！别人不是傻子。一山更比一山高。聪明的大有人在。如果你伪造数据，心存侥幸不会被人发现。如果真的没人发现的话，那就是没有任何人想重复或使用你的结果，那只能说明你的结果根本不值得发表，毫无意义。若要人不知，除非己莫为，这是千真万确的真理。 结果部分 当你开始写结果部分时，先考虑一下结果的意义。也就是说，你理解你的结果吗？这些结果是不是告诉了你更深刻的东西？你能从很多不同角度来理解结果吗？你能设计证明或者反驳你的一些解释的新测试吗？ 如果你发现了新现象，你必须证明你的结果不是你方法制造出来的(讨论部分的一个好内容)。它可以在不同的条件下重复吗？如果你发展了一个新方法，你必须证明这个方法的重要性。它是否改进了现有的方法？你的结果部分必须用不同的角度或多重测试来支持新发现或验证新方法的重要性。 一旦你对结果有更好的理解，你需要决定卖点，也就是说这篇文章最有意义的一个观点是什么？确定这篇文章的中心命题之后要组织所有的段落来证明、支持它，用数据(有必要的话再加数据)来证明它。同时也要排除其他可能性。放弃与中心命题无关的数据，即使这些数据是很辛苦得来的。 标题 当你有了中心命题之后，就该决定文章的标题了。标题可以为你的方法，你的结果或结果的隐含意义做广告。文章的标题一般只有一句。应该把最重要，最吸引人的信息放进标题。比如，标题 “Steric restrictions in protein folding: an alpha-helix cannot be followed by a contiguous beta-strand” 主要突出了结果。另一方面，标题“Interpreting the folding kinetics of helical proteins” 突出了结果的含义。用标题 “Native proteins are surface-molten solids: Application of the Lindemann criterion for the solid versus liquid state” 的话，同时突出了方法和结果的含义。注意标题 “Native proteins are surface-molten solids” 是结果的解释，而不是结果本身。用既广泛又具体的标题，这样才能吸引更多的读者。 引言部分 中心命题和标题都决定了以后，就该写引言了。第一件该做的事就是围绕中心命题来收集所有相关文献。搜索并研究所有最近和相关的文章(通过对中心命题关键字的搜索或用引用索引)。确认你有所有最新的论文。引用所有重要的文章。如果你不引用别人的文献，别人也不会引用你的！如果你想谁引用你的工作，你要先引用他的。你引用的文章章越多，他们越可能阅读并引用你的文章。因为人们更加关注引用他们的论文。仔细读你所引用的文章，避免引用错误。在引用上，不要偷懒。 引言的第一句最难写，因为它决定了你整个引言的走向。我的办法是把第一句和文章的标题连起来。在第一段以最基本和常见的术语来定义标题里用的一些术语。从这个术语，引入研究的领域和它的重要性。第二段应该对这个研究领域作一个鉴定性的论述。如果中心命题是关于解决一个问题的方法。这一段就应该指出这个当前研究中现存未解决的问题。描述解决这个问题的难度或挑战。第三段引入你提出的办法和它大致会带来什么效果。你可以大略地描述你的结果和它的含义。这里有个...子。 Assessing secondary structure assignments of protein structures by using pairwise sequence-alignment benchmarks The secondary structure of a protein refers to the local conxxxxation of its polypeptide backbone. Knowing secondary structures of proteins is essential for their structure classification1,2, understanding folding dynamics and mechanisms3-5, and discovering conserved structural/functional motifs6,7. Secondary structure inxxxxation is also useful for sequence and multiple sequence alignment8,9, structure alignment10,11, and sequence to structure alignment (or threading)12-15. As a result, predicting secondary structures from protein sequences continues to be an active field of research16-18 fifty six years after Pauling and Corey19-20 first predicted that the most common regular patterns of protein backbones are the α-helix and the β-sheet. Prediction and application of protein secondary structures rely on prior assignment of the secondary-structure elements from a given protein structure by human or computational methods. Many computational methods have been developed to automate the assignment of secondary structures. Examples are DSSP,STRIDE, DEFINE, P-SEA, KAKSI,P-CURVE, XTLSSTR, SECSTR, SEGNO, and VoTAP. These methods are based on either the hydrogen-bond pattern, geometric features, expert knowledge or their combinations. However, they often disagree on their assignments. For example, disagreement among DSSP, P-CURVE, and DEFINE can be as large as 25%. More beta sheet is assigned by XTLSSTR and more pi-helix by SECSTR than by DSSP. The discrepancy among different methods is caused by non-ideal configurations of helices and sheets. As a result, defining the boundaries between helix, sheet, and coil is problematical and a significant source of discrepancies between different methods. Inconsistent assignment of secondary structures by different methods highlights the need for a criterion or a benchmark of “standard” assignments that could be used to assess and compare assignment methods. One possibility is to use the secondary structures assigned by the authors who solved the protein structures. STRIDE, in fact, has been optimized to achieve the highest agreement with the authors’ annotations. However, it is not clear what is the criterion used for manual or automatic assignment of secondary structures by different authors. Another possibility is to treat the consensus prediction by several methods as the gold standard. However, there is no obvious reason why each method should weight equally in assigning secondary structures and which method should be used in consensus. Other used criteria include helix-capping propensity, the deviation from ideal helical and sheet configurations, and structural accuracy produced by sequence-to-structure alignment guided by secondary structure assignment. In this paper, we propose to use sequence-alignment benchmarks for assessing secondary structure assignments. These benchmarks are produced by 3D-structure alignment of structurally homologous proteins. Instead of assessing the accuracy of secondary-structure assignment directly, which is not yet feasible, we compare the two assignments of secondary structures in structurally aligned positions. We assume that the best method should assign the same secondary-structure element to the highest fraction of structurally aligned positions. Certainly, structurally aligned positions do not always have the same secondary structures. Moreover, different structure-alignment methods do not always produce the same result. Nevertheless, this criterion provides a mean to locate a secondary-structure assignment method that is most consistent with tertiary structure alignment. We suggest that this approach provides an objective xxxxuation of secondary structure assignment methods. 在这个例子里，标题推荐了一个评估指派蛋白质二级结构的方法。第一段以二级结构的定义开始（与标题相连)。整段描述了二级结构的重要性。最后一句过渡到指派二级结构的计算方法（下一段的主题)。注意“计算方法”放在句子的最后是为了强调而且和第二段的开始连接在起来。第二段则聚焦在计算方法中存在的问题。旧信息“计算方法”逐渐的变到了“他们的不一致”。第三段的第一句把主题从“不一致”（旧信息）转变成了“评估的办法”（新信息)。然后，介绍了这个领域已有的工作。第四段引入新方法并讨论了新方法的优点。第五段（这里没有给出）将会简要地讨论结果。每一个引言应该包括研究领域的介绍和意义，做这工作的具体原因，结果和隐含的意义。一般而言，读者读完引言，对论文的来龙去脉就应该清清楚楚了。 讨论部分 现在到了你写论文的最后一部分。很多人认为讨论部分最难写。他们常常不知道该写什么。学生常常不能把结果从他们的解释，含意和结论中分离出来。此外，他们不善于思考可能存在的其他解释。好的讨论通常以得到的结果和解释的评论开始。其它可用于讨论的内容有：参数改变对结果的影响，与其他研究相比还有待解决的问题，将来或正在进行的工作（防止别人从事你显而易见的，立刻就能实现的后续工作)。这里有一段文章中的讨论部分。 One question about the complex homopolymer phase diagram presented here is whether it is caused by the discontinuous feature of the square-well potential. We cannot give a direct answer because the DMD simulation is required to obtain well-converged results for the thermodynamics. However, the critical phenomena predicted for a fluid composed of particles interacting with a square-well potential are as realistic as those predicted for a fluid composed of particles interacting with a LJ potential. Also an analogous complex phase diagram is found in simulations of LJ clusters. The present results for square-well homopolymers may well be found in more realistic homopolymer models and even in real polymers. 一段探究了可供选择的解释。 摘要部分 整篇文章写完了。你需要写文章的摘要了。典型的摘要包括课题领域的重要性（回到标题)，要研究的问题，你方法的独特性，结果的意义和影响。这里有个例子。 How to make an objective assignment of secondary structures based on a protein structure is an unsolved problem. Defining the boundaries between helix, sheet, and coil structures is arbitrary, and commonly accepted standard assignments do not exist. Here, we propose a criterion that assesses secondary-structure assignment based on the similarity of the secondary structures assigned t structurally aligned residues in sequence-alignment benchmarks. This criterion is used to rank six secondary-structure assignment methods: STRIDE, DSSP, SECSTR, KAKSI, P-SEA, and SEGNO with three established sequence-alignment benchmarks (PREFAB, SABmark and SALIGN). STRIDE and KAKSI achieve comparable success rates in assigning the same secondary structure elements to structurally aligned residues in the three benchmarks. Their success rates are between 1-4% higher than those of the other four methods. The consensus of STRIDE, KAKSI, SECSTR, and P-SEA, called SKSP, improves assignments over the best single method in each benchmark by an additional 1%. These results support the usefulness of the sequence alignment benchmarks as the benchmarks for secondary structure assignment. 前两句陈述了问题。第三句提出了解决办法。这些句子后面跟着结果。整个摘要以总结收尾。 总结 认真对待写作。尽你最大努力花时间写作。它是科学研究的重要一环。文章 没写好，没人看，没人用，等于没发表。 除非这个研究是全面彻底的，而且你试了所有可以支持你结论的方法，否则 不要去发表。 重新思考，并合理解释为什么做这项工作，做了什么，什么是最重要的发现？ 为什么用这个方法？为什么用这些参数？什么是以前做过的（更新文献搜索)？ 不同在什么地方？ 要从批判的角度来看你的工作。只有这样，才能找到弱点，进一步发展。我 的许多论文是在反复讨论中大幅度修改，许多计算经常要重做。只有理顺和 理解结果，文章才会更有意义。 要能回答所有合理的质疑。如果你自己有疑问，一定要搞清楚，否则别人又 怎会相信。 不要隐藏任何事实，不做假，不要低估其他科学家的智慧。让你的研究可重 复。把所有的材料和数据上网。 从头（标题）到尾（结论或讨论）要从旧信息过渡到新信息。永远不要在句 子的开头引入新信息。切忌在术语被定义之前使用它们。 ...段首要有阐明整段主题的句子，在段尾要有连到下段的过渡 句。从标题到结论都要连贯。句句相扣，段段相连，让一篇论文是一个整体 而不是杂乱无章地把句子堆积在一起。这样才能使读者享受阅读你的文章。 写，重写，再重写。没有人能第一次就写好。不花时间，不下功夫，写不好。 我的文章一般要修改十次以上。 感谢 此文中的一些例子出自 “The Science of Scientific Writing” by G. D. Gopen and J. A. Swan, Scientific American, 78, 550-558, 1990. 我在杜克大学Gopen教授1995年年度短训班受益非浅。我要特别感谢我的导师 Martin Karplus(哈佛大学)，George Stell (纽约州州立大学－石溪校区), Harold L. Friedman (纽约州州立大学－石溪校区) 和 Carol Hall (北卡罗来纳州立大学)的鼓励和指导。没有他们，我不会有那么多机会练习英文写作。最后，我要感谢我的学生和博士后。他们对科学的贡献使我可以继续写论文，基金申请，或评论。此文中的一部分例子来自与他们合作的文章。此文初稿是用英文写的。由于我的中文打字速度太慢，特别感谢徐贝思帮我翻译成中文初稿。如果有不妥的地方是我的问题，请多指教。 二零零七年六月一日于印地安那
4个月前曾遭美国政府禁止发表的两项流感病毒研究，其中一项论文经修改今天终于发表在《自然》杂志。另外一项研究则有望不久之后发表在《科学》杂志。请看CBC有关报道。 Man-made bird flu paper published after controversy For some, affair raises questions on ethics of creating risky versions of virusThe Associated PressPosted: May 2, 2012 3:51 PM ETLast Updated: May 2, 2012 3:46 PM ET Four months ago the U.S. government sought to block publication of two studies about how scientists created an infectious form of bird flu. Now a revised version of one paper is seeing the light of day with the U.S. government's blessing. The revision appears online Wednesday in the journal Nature. S cientists have worried that as flu virus strains mix in nature, they could produce a deadly bird flu that transmits easily, setting the stage for a pandemic. (Sushanta Das/Associated Press) It's the near-conclusion to a drama that pit efforts to learn how to thwart a global flu epidemic against concerns about helping terrorists create bioweapons. The second paper, which is more controversial because it involves what appears to be a more dangerous virus, is expected to be published later in the journal Science. For some experts, the affair underscores a more basic question about whether creating potentially risky versions of bird flu is a good idea. "Clearly, research like this can be beneficial" for dealing with the bird-flu threat , said Dr. Eric Toner of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's biosecurity centre. But there's the question of calculating risk versus benefit, he said. "If we're taking a highly lethal virus and making it more transmissible, it's a tough judgment …These sorts of decisions should be made in advance of the research being done, not when the papers are ready for publication." The bird flu that has spread among poultry in Asia for several years now can be deadly, but it rarely sickens people. And people generally catch it from chickens and ducks, not from other people. Scientists have worried that as virus strains mix in nature, they could produce a deadly bird flu that transmits easily from one person to another. That could set the stage for a flu pandemic. The new studies come from two teams of scientists, one in a U.S. lab and another in the Netherlands. They created virus strains that spread easily among ferrets, which were used as a stand-in for people. The researchers wanted to study what genetic mutations helped the virus spread. That way scientists could identify such red flags in wild viruses and act quickly to avoid potential pandemic, as well as test vaccine and drugs. The journals Nature and Science each planned to publish one of the studies. Weapons blueprint? But the federal government, which funded the research, asked the scientists not to publish details of their work. Officials were worried that the full papers would give bioterrorists a blueprint for creating weapons. That led to a wide-ranging debate among scientists, many of whom argued that sharing details of such work is essential in fighting the threat of dangerous viruses. Both teams eventually submitted revised versions of their research to a U.S. biosecurity panel. That group and, later, federal health officials agreed to support publication. For one thing, the panel said, it would be difficult for others to do harm using the data provided, and for another, scientists had good reasons for publishing the results. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research being reported Wednesday, said last month that the changes to his paper "were mainly a more in-depth explanation of the significance of the findings to public health and a description of the laboratory biosafety and biosecurity." He and colleagues essentially created a hybrid of bird and human flu viruses, and identified mutations that let it spread through the air between ferrets. None of the infected animals died. The researchers also found evidence that existing vaccines would protect people against the hybrid. The researchers said they didn't know whether the four mutations they identified would make a bird flu in nature more transmissible. But they said the results should help scientists find other such mutations and understand what makes bird flu spread in people. More transmissible virus The other paper reviewed by the committee, from a team headed by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is going through peer review at the journal Science. The committee had more concerns about this paper, recommending publication of key parts by a split vote, versus its unanimous support of publishing all of the Kawaoka paper. One difference is that while Kawaoka basically added a bird flu portion to an ordinary human flu virus , Fouchier's team made a bird flu virus more transmissible through mutating it. Kawaoka's approach appeared to produce less risk, Paul Keim, acting chair of the federal biosecurity advisory panel, told a Senate committee recently. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/05/02/bird-flu-censorship.html
Wiley 公司作为科学出版界大佬,对于博客作为科学传播的媒介也在推动,最近收到他们的邮件,希望去其网站建博客发表研究内容和观点,看来电子媒体的影响是越来越大了,也受到了重视,科学博客本来是作为一个文化消遣性的交流媒体,会不会有一天与期刊杂志一样成为主流科学媒体,特存证. "This has been designed to keep you up- to-date with the latest tools for promoting yourself and your published content. It contains lots useful information and advice on topics such as: social media, Google, blogs, video and audio broadcasts! Designed on a blog page we encourage you to interact with the content and each other, feel free to post comments, questions and offer feedback. We encourage you to post about your positive marketing experiences, expertise and share any tips and tricks you’ve learned."
A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do by R. W. Hamming Little has been written on managing your own research (and very little on avoiding other people managing your research); however, your research is much more under your control than you may realize. We are concerned with great research here. Work that will get wide recognition, perhaps even wine Nobel Prize. As most people realize, the average published paper is read by the author, the referee, and perhaps one other person. Classic papers are read by thousands. We are concerned with research that will matter in the long run and become more than a footnote in history. If you are to do important work then you must work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way. Without any one of the three, you may do good work but you will almost certainly miss real greatness. Greatness is a matter of style. For example, after learning the elements of painting, you study under a master. While studying you pay attention to what the master says in discussing your work, but you know that if you are to achieve greatness then you must find your own style. Furthermore, a successful style in one age is not necessarily appropriate for another age. Cubism would not have gone over big during the realism period. Similarly, there is no simple formula for doing great science or engineering, I can only talk around the topic. The topic is important because, so far as we have any solid evidence, you have but one life to live. Under these circumstances it seems better to live a life in which you do important things (important in your eyes, of course) than to merely live out your life. No sense frittering away your life on things that will not even appear in the footnotes. choosing the problem I begin with the choice of problem. Most scientists spend almost all of their time working on problems that even they admit are neither great or are likely to lead to great work; hence, almost surely, they will not do important work. Note that importance of the results of a solution does not make the problem important. In all the 30 years I spent at Bell Telephone Laboratories (before it was broken up) no one to my knowledge worked on time travel, teleportation, or anti-gravity. Why? Because they had no attack on the problem. Thus an important aspect of any problem is that you have a good attack, a good starting place, some reasonable idea of how to begin. To illustrate, consider my experience at BTL. For the first few years I ate lunch with he mathematicians. I soon found that they were more interested in fun and games than in serious work, so I shifted to eating with the physics table. There I stayed for a number of years until the Nobel Prize, promotions, and offers from other companies, removed most of the interesting people. So I shifted to the corresponding chemistry table where I had a friend. At first I asked what were the important problems in chemistry, then what important problems they were working on, or problems that might lead to important results. One day I asked, "if what they were working on was not important, and was not likely to lead to important things, they why were they working on them?" After that I had to eat with the engineers! About four months later, my friend stopped me in the hall and remarked that my question had bothered him. He had spent the summer thinking about the important problems in his area, and while had had not changed his research he thought it was well worth the effort. I thanked him and kept walking. A few weeks later I noticed that he was made head of the department. Many years later he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering. The one person who could hear the question went on to do important things and all the others -- so far as I know -- did not do anything worth public attention. There are many right problems, but very few people search carefully for them. Rather they simply drift along doing what comes to them, following the easiest path to tomorrow. Great scientists all spend a lot of time and effort in examining the important problems in their field. Many have a list of 10 to 20 problems that might be important if they had a decent attack. As a result, when they notice something new that they had not known but seems to be relevant, then they are prepared to turn to the corresponding problem, work on it, and get there first. Some people work with their doors open in clear view of those who pass by, while others carefully protect themselves from interruptions. Those with the door open get less work done each day, but those with their door closed tend not know what to work on, nor are they apt to hear the clues to the missing piece to one of their "list" problems. I cannot prove that the open door produces the open mind, or the other way around. I only can observe the correlation. I suspect that each reinforces the other, that an open door will more likely lead you and important problems than will a closed door. Hard work is a trait that most great scientists have. Edison said that genius was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Newton said that if others would work as hard as he did then they would get similar results. Hard work is necessary but it is not sufficient. Most people do not work as hard as they easily could. However, many who do work hard -- work on the wrong problem, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and have very little to show for it. You are aware that frequently more than one person starts working on the same problem at about the same time. In biology, both Darwin and Wallace had the idea of evolution at about the same time. In the area of special relativity, many people besides Einstein were working on it, including Poincare. However, Einstein worked on the idea in the right way. The first person to produce definitive results generally gets all the credit. Those who come in second are soon forgotten. Thus working on the problem at the right time is essential. Einstein tried to find a unified theory, spent most of his later life on it, and died in a hospital still working on it with no significant results. Apparently, he attacked the problem too early, or perhaps it was the wrong problem. There are a pair of errors that are often made when working on what you think is the right problem at the right time. One is to give up too soon, and the other is to persist and never get any results. The second is quite common. Obviously, if you start on a wrong problem and refuse to give up, you are automatically condemned to waste the rest of your life (see Einstein above). Knowing when you persist is not easy -- if you are wrong then you are stubborn; but if you turn out to be right, then you are strong willed. I now turn to the major excuse given for not working on important problems. People are always claiming that success is a matter of luck, but as Pasteur pointed out, "Luck favors the prepared mind." A great deal of direct experience, vicarious experience through questioning others, and reading extensively, convinces me of the truth of his statement. Outstanding successes are too often done by the same people for it be a matter of random chance. For example, when I first met Feynmann at Los Alamos during the WWII, I believed that he would get a Nobel Prize. His energy, his style, his abilities, all indicated that he was a person who would do many things, and probably at least one would be important. Einstein, around the age of 12 or 14, asked himself what a light wave would look like if he want at the speed of light. He knew that Maxwell's theory did not support a local, stationary maximum, but was what he ought to see if the current theory was correct. So it is not surprising that he later developed the special theory of relativity - he had prepared his mind for it long before. Many times a discussion with a person who has just done something important will produce a description of how they were led, almost step by step, to the result. It is usually based on things they had done, or intensely thought about, years ago. You succeed because you have prepared yourself with the necessary background long ago, without, of course, knowing then that it would prove to be a necessary step to success. Personal traits There traits are not all essential, but tend to be present in most doers of great things in science. First, successful people exhibit more activity, more energy, than most people do. They look more places, they work harder, they think longer than less successful people. Knowledge and ability are much like compound interest -- the more you do the more you can do, and the more the opportunities are open for you. Thus, among other things, it was Feynmann's energy and his constantly trying new things that made one think he would succeed. This trait must be coupled with emotional commitment. Perhaps the ablest mathematician I have watched up close seldom, if ever, seemed to care deeply about the problem he was working on. He has done great deal of first class work, but not of the highest quality. Deep emotional commitment seems to be necessary for success. The reason is obvious. The emotional commitment keeps you thinking about the problem morning, noon and night, and that tends to beat out mere ability. While I was at Los Alamos after the war, I got to thinking about the famous Buffon needle problem where you can calculate the probability of a needle tossed at random of crossing one of a series of equally spaced parallel lines. I asked myself if it was essential that the needle be a straight line segment (if I counted multiple crossing)? No. Need the parallel lines be straight? No. Need they be equally spaced or is it only the average density of the lines on the plane? Is it surprising that some years later at Bell Labs when I was asked by some metallurgists how to measure the amount of grain boundary on some micro photographs I simply said, "Count the crossings of a random line of fixed length on the picture?" I was led to it by the previous, careful thought about an interesting, and I thought important, result in probability. The result is not great, but illustrates the mechanisms of preparation and emotional involvement. The above story also illustrates what I call the "extra mile." I did more than the minimum, I looked deeper into the nature of the problem. This constant effort to understand more than the surface feature of a situation obviously prepares you to see new and slightly different applications of your knowledge. You cannot do many problems such as the above needle problem before you stumble on an important application. Courage is another attribute of those who do great things. Shannon is a good example. For some time he would come to work at about 10:00am, play chess until about 2:00pm and go home. The important point is how he played chess. When attacked he seldom, if ever, defended his position, rather he attacked back. Such a method of playing soon produces a very interrelated board. He would then pause a bit, think and advance his queen saying, "I ain't afraid of nothing'." It took me a while to realize that of course that is why he was able to prove the existence of good coding methods. Who but Shannon would think to average over all random codes and expect to find that the average was close to ideal? I learned from him to say the same to myself when stuck, and on some occasions his approach enabled me to get significant results. Without courage you are unlikely to attack important problems with any persistence, and hence not likely to do important things. Courage brings self-confidence, an essential feature of doing difficult things. However, it can border on over-confidence at time which is more of a hindrance than a help. There is another trait that took me many years to notice, and that is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. Most people want to believe what they learn is the truth: there are a few people who doubt everything. If you believe too much then you are not likely to find the essentially new view that transforms a field, and if you doubt too much you will not be able to do much at all. It is a fine balance between believing what you learn and at the same time doubting things. Great steps forward usually involve a change of viewpoint to outside the standard ones in the field. While you are leaning things you need to think about them and examine them from many sides. By connecting them in many ways with what you already know.... you can later retrieve them in unusual situations. It took me a long time to realize that each time I learned something I should put "hooks" on it. This is another face of the extra effort, the studying more deeply, the going the extra mile, that seems to be characteristic of great scientists. The evidence is overwhelming that steps that transform a field often come from outsiders. In archaeology, carbon dating came from physics. The first airplane was built by the Wright brothers who were bicycle experts. Thus, as an expert in your field, you face a difficult problem. There is, apparently, an ocean of kooks with their crazy ideas; however, if there is a great step forward it probably will be made by one of them! If you listen too much to them then you will not get any of your own work done, but if you ignore them then you may miss your great chance. I have no simple answer except do not dismiss the outsider too abruptly as is generally done by in the insiders. "Brains"" are nice to have, but often the top graduate students do not contribute as much as some lower rated ones. Brains come in all kinds of flavors. Experimental physicists do not think the same way as theoreticians do. Some experimentalists seem to think with their hands, i.e., playing with equipment lets them think more clearly. It took me a few years to realize that people who did not know a lot of mathematics still could contribute. Just because they could not solve a quadratic equation immediately in their head did not mean I should ignore them. When someone's flavor of brains does not match yours may be more reason for paying attention to them. Vision You need a vision of who you are and where your field is going. A suitable parable is that of the drunken sailor. He staggers one way and then the other with independent, random steps. In n steps he will be, on the average, about 3n steps away from where he started. but if there is a pretty girl in one direction he will get a distance proportional to n. The difference, over a life time of choices, between 3n and n is very large and represents the difference between having no vision and having a vision. The particular vision you have is less important than just having one - there are many paths to success. Therefore, it is wise to have a vision of what you may become, of where you want to go, as well as how to get there. No vision, not much chance of doing great work; with a vision you have a good chance. Another topic I must discuss is that of age. Historically, the greatest contributions of mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and astrophysicists are done when they are very young. On the other hand, apparently in music composition, politics, and literature, the later works are most valued by society. Other areas seem to fall in between these extremes, and you need to realize that in some areas you had better get going promptly. People often complain about the working conditions they have to put up with, but it is easily observed that some of the greatest work was done under unfavorable conditions. What most people believe is the best working conditions for them is seldom, if ever, true. In my opinion the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has ruined more good people than it has helped. You have only to judge their work before they were appointed and afterwards to come to this conclusion. There are exceptions, to be sure, but on the average the supposed ideal working conditions seem to sterilize people. Another obvious trait of great people is that they do their work in such a fashion that others can build on top of it. Newton said, "If I had seen farther than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Too many people seem to not want others to build on top of their work but rather they want to hoard it to themselves. Don't do things in such a fashion that next time it must be repeated by you, or by others, but rather in a fashion that represents a significant step forward. Selling I must now take up the unpleasant topic of selling your ideas. Too many scientists think that this is beneath them, that the world is waiting for their great results. In truth, the other researchers are busy with their own work. You must present your results so that they will stop their own work and listen to you. Presentation comes in three forms: published papers, prepared talks, and impromptu situations. You must master all three forms. Lots of good work has been lost because of poor presentation only to be rediscovered later by others. There is a real danger that you will not get credit for what you have done. I know of all too many times when the discoverer could not be bothered to present things clearly, and hence his or her work was of no importance to society. Finally, I must at least address the question of whether greatness is worth the large effort it requires. Those who have done really great things generally report, privately, that it is better than wine, the opposite sex, and song put together. The realization that you have done it is overwhelming. Of course I have consulted only those who did do great things, and have no dared to ask those who did not. Perhaps they would reply differently. But, as is often said, it is in the struggle and not the success that the real gain appears. In striving to do great things, you change yourself into a better person, so they claim. The actual success is of less importance, so they say. And I tend to believe this theory. No one ever told me the kinds of things I have just related to you; I had to find them out for myself. Since I have now told you how to succeed, you have no excuse for not trying and doing great work in your chosen field. About the author: Dr. Richard Hamming is best known for the Hamming code, Hamming distance and the Hamming spectral window along with numerical methods.
第一次看到这个名词:insulator element(金山词霸把它译成绝缘体) A role for insulator elements in the regulation of gene expression response to hypoxia Nucl. Acids Res. (2012) 40(5): 1916-1927 first published online November 8, 2011 doi:10.1093/nar/gkr842 摘要:Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) up-regulates the transcription of a few hundred genes required for the adaptation to hypoxia. This restricted set of targets is in sharp contrast with the widespread distribution of the HIF binding motif throughout the genome.(提出问题:HIF binding motif多,target少;顺式作用元件多,调节的目标蛋白少) Here, we investigated the transcriptional response of GYS1 and RUVBL2 genes to hypoxia to understand the mechanisms that restrict HIF activity toward specific genes(以两个具体的基因为研究模型). GYS1 and RUVBL2 genes are encoded by opposite DNA strands and separated by a short intergenic region (~1 kb) that contains a functional hypoxia response element equidistant to both genes. However, hypoxia induced the expression of GYS1 gene only(特殊情况出现) . Analysis of the transcriptional response of chimeric constructs derived from the intergenic region revealed an inhibitory sequence whose deletion allowed RUVBL2 induction by HIF(发现inhibitory sequence,这个就是绝缘子). Enhancer blocking assays, performed in cell culture and transgenic zebrafish, confirmed the existence of an insulator element within this inhibitory region that could explain the differential regulation of GYS1 and RUVBL2 by hypoxia(进一步实验). Hence, in this model, the selective response to HIF is achieved with the aid of insulator elements(为什么调节靶蛋白少了?因为顺式作用元件后面接了个绝缘子,呵呵有点意思) . This is the first report suggesting a role for insulators in the regulation of differential gene expression in response to environmental signals. 启示: 根据这个例子基因间序列也可能是有功能的,所以图位克隆的时候如果预测基因区无多态性,可以暂缓考虑跳楼.这个绝缘子估计目前用任何软件都预测不出来.
L. Lü, M. Medo, C. H. Yeung, Y.-C. Zhang, Z.-K. Zhang, T. Zhou, Recommender Systems , Phys. Rep. ( to be published ). P. Holme, J. Saramki, Temporal Networks, Phys. Rep. ( to be published ).
第一期的 Applied Physics Letters 出版于1962年9月。第一年 两周一期，每期 发表 大概 8篇论文。到2011年，每周一期发表论文85篇左右。2012年是该刊创刊以来的第50周年，也就是第100卷。最近其网站上公布了创刊以来引用次数前50名的论文，共53篇，详细见下， 中国只有一篇上榜：来自香港科技大学的汤子康团队（第33篇） 。 有些工作还是非常经典的：如有机发光二极管（第1篇），多孔硅（第2篇），双异质结蓝光二极管（第6篇），高分子发光二极管（第9篇）等等。 Top 50 Most Cited Papers from 50 Years ofApplied Physics Letters 1. Organic electroluminescent diodes C. W. Tang and S. A. VanSlyke Appl. Phys. Lett.51, 913 (1987) 2. Silicon quantum wire array fabrication by electrochemical and chemical dissolution of wafers L. T. Canham Appl. Phys. Lett.57, 1046 (1990) 3. Vapor-liquid-solid mechanism of single crystal growth R. S. Wagner and W. C. Ellis Appl. Phys. Lett.4, 89 (1964) 4. Electronic analog of the electro-optic modulator Supriyo Datta and Biswajit Das Appl. Phys. Lett.56, 665 (1990) 5. Multidimensional quantum well laser and temperature dependence of its threshold current Y. Arakawa and H. Sakaki Appl. Phys. Lett.40, 939 (1982) 6. 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Voigt Appl. Phys. Lett.68, 403 (1996) 49. Resonant tunneling through quantum wells at frequencies up to 2.5 THz T. C. L. G. Sollner, W. D. Goodhue, P. E. Tannenwald, C. D. Parker, and D. D. Peck Appl. Phys. Lett.43, 588 (1983) 50. Whispering‐gallery mode microdisk lasers S. L. McCall, A. F. J. Levi, R. E. Slusher, S. J. Pearton, and R. A. Logan Appl. Phys. Lett.60, 289 (1992) 51. MgxZn1−xO as a II–VI widegap semiconductor alloy A. Ohtomo, M. Kawasaki, T. Koida, K. Masubuchi, H. Koinuma, Y. Sakurai, Y. Yoshida, T. Yasuda, and Y. Segawa Appl. Phys. Lett.72, 2466 (1998) 52. Combined shear force and near‐field scanning optical microscopy E. Betzig, P. L. Finn, and J. S. Weiner Appl. Phys. Lett.60, 2484 (1992) 53. Photosensitivity in optical fiber waveguides: Application to reflection filter fabrication K. O. Hill, Y. Fujii, D. C. Johnson, and B. S. Kawasaki Appl. Phys. Lett.32, 647 (1978) http://apl.aip.org/apl_50th_anniversary
Software Notes Software notes published in Ecography provide the basic rationale behind the software, its basic functions, and sample usage, output, and interpretation. A link to a persistent website where the software may be downloaded is provided in each case. Recent Software Notes: Using multivariate analysis to deliver conservation planning products that align with practitioner needs Simon Linke, Matthew Watts, Romola Stewart, Hugh P. Possingham http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1600-0587
解决一个科学问题的研究是逐步进展的过程，研究该问题时，不同科学家不断基于一些思路提出解决方法（信息科学主要指算法），一个新的技术途径提出时，可能不完善，通过学术论文阅读，其它学者可以对该方法进行改进，当该技术途径完善得差不多时，要进一步得到更好的效果，也不可能了，所以后来研究者会提出新的研究技术途径，以此循环。所以科研工作者要做有价值的成果，一般来说要基于世界范围内科研现状来做，阅读文献是必要的。一个好的论文综述就是能够理清科学问题解决的内在规律，让后继者能够通过该综述文献理解到当前为此该科学问题解决的现状（包括最优效果和已有技术途径），从这些现状中，能够找到未考虑的子问题和现有技术存在的可以改进的空间。如果对科学问题进建立一个统一框架时，能将现有解决方案纳入该框架之中，则是高级别的综述文献（例如《Communication contention in task scheduling》，published on "IEEE Transcactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems"）。
Current Faculty Publications Gutman Library Collection Development January – December 2010 Current Faculty Publications lists items published by core GSE faculty. GSE faculty may order journal articles unavailable online from Gutman’s document delivery service (links below as needed). Boles, Katherine Troen, V., Boles, K. C. (2010). Team spirit: Teachers work together to establish and achieve key goals. Journal of Staff Development, 31(1), 59-62. Check HOLLIS for availability Boudett, Kathryn Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., Russell, M. K. (2010). Key elements of observing practice: A data wise DVD and facilitators guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Check HOLLIS for availability City, Elizabeth Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., Russell, M. K. (2010). Key elements of observing practice: A data wise DVD and facilitators guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Check HOLLIS for availability City, E. A. (2010). Will unbundling provide the best education for all? Phi Delta Kappan, 92(3), 62-64. Link to Full Text Collins, John Carr, J. A., Collins, J., O'Brien, N. P., Weiner, S., Wright, C. (2010). Introduction to the Teachers College Record special issue on education informatics. Teachers College Record, 112(10), 2519-2521. Link to Full Text Collins, J. W., Weiner, S. A. (2010). Proposal for the creation of a subdiscipline: Education informatics. Teachers College Record, 112(10), 2523-2536. Link to Full Text 原文见 http://www.gse.harvard.edu/library/faculty-publications.pdf
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Education The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | Paul S. Boyer | The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. ( Hide copyright information ) Copyright Education Overview The Public School Movement Collegiate Education The Rise of the University Education in Contemporary America Overview From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 and Massachusetts's public‐school law of 1647 to America's vast and diverse modern‐day educational system, education has been a central thread in the national experience, a focus of reform effort, and a subject of urgent public debate. The founders and early leaders of the new nation viewed an educated electorate as crucial to their republican experiment. As nineteenth‐century municipalities expanded their public‐school systems, religious bodies founded colleges to educate and nurture their young. While some turn‐of‐the‐century reformers looked to the public schools to “Americanize” the immigrant masses, the philosopher John Dewey viewed the schools as incubators of a more just and humane social order. In the same era, research universities arose to promote scientific inquiry, scholarly endeavor, and professional training. In the 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act , Congress granted generous educational benefits to returning World War II veterans. When the Russians launched the space satellite Sputnik in 1957, Congress responded with increased funds for education, especially in math and science. When the civil rights movement arose in the 1950s, schools became a prime battleground. Brown v. Board of Education , the Supreme Court 's landmark 1954 civil rights decision, outlawed racial segregation in the public schools. Soon, women and other disadvantaged groups would also demand equal access to educational opportunities. As the twentieth century ended, politicians vied to propose strategies for improving American education. The underlying point is clear: There are few better ways to approach American history as a whole than to examine the nation's centuries‐long effort to educate its citizens. Paul S. Boyer The Public School Movement The people who devised the U.S. Constitution and wrote about the nature of republican government often emphasized the importance of education. However, proposals to create state systems of common schools, such as those put forward by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and Benjamin Rush in Pennsylvania, did not succeed in the early national period. New state legislatures resisted both governmental innovation and increased taxes. Still, by comparison with other countries, local primary schools were widely available. They were funded locally by a patchwork of tuition payments, property taxes, in‐kind contributions, endowments, and church support. Thus, the rhetoric of republicanism did not translate into a movement to create free public schools. Beginnings of the Public School Movement . By the 1840s conditions were more auspicious for such a reform. Industrialization and urbanization led to visible social problems. The immigration of large numbers of Roman Catholics led native‐born Protestants to worry about how to assimilate newcomers while maintaining the hegemony and institutions they had created. By this time state governments had become more active in shaping institutions and the economy. The Whig party in particular advocated such state activism and thus championed legislation that required towns to provide free education through property taxes. In many states, Whigs also promoted legislation to consolidate small, rural districts into town‐level school systems, and they created state school boards and superintendents to oversee the creation of rudimentary state systems of public schools. Into these superintendencies came some of the famous school reformers, like Horace Mann of Massachusetts, Henry Barnard of Connecticut, and John Pierce of Michigan. They worked to consolidate district schools and promoted longer school terms, normal schools for teacher training, higher school expenditures per pupil, and innovations in curriculum and pedagogy. By 1860 such systems were the general rule in the Northeast and the Middle West , while they failed, after considerable debate, in the South . During the postwar Reconstruction period, southern legislatures created fledgling public school systems, and by the late nineteenth century they were mostly tax‐supported. However, harshly unequal per‐pupil expenditures for segregated black schools forced African Americans to provide supplementary funds from their meager resources. Gilded Age to the 1950s . The public school movement in the nation as a whole went through a period of consolidation in the Gilded Age . The teaching force had become largely female, and normal schools proliferated; a male‐dominated profession of school administration was emerging; city school systems with age‐graded classes became the model; and the public high school surpassed the private academy as the predominant provider of secondary education. Late nineteenth‐century immigration, urbanization, labor strife, and the depression of the 1890s helped launch another period of reform. Like the Antebellum Era , this was a time of accelerated population movement, transformative economic reorganization, and cultural anxiety. In education, this turbulence led to reform proposals that varied greatly in their assumptions and goals. Some, following John Dewey , believed that schools should recognize the individuality of children, appeal to their interests, make learning an active process, and produce citizens who were good critical thinkers. Others, like David Snedden, looked more to teaching of specific content and attitudes, tailoring programs to categories of children and training them for specific roles, depending upon predictions about their likely occupational destinations. These predictions were often made on the basis of family background and, increasingly, standardized tests scores. The Progressive‐Era values of efficiency and scientific measurement prevailed. In school policy the progressive administrators adopted a corporate model of school‐board governance and a hierarchical model for school systems, with a superintendent firmly in charge of all activity. Some of the features of child‐centered progressive education made their way into the public schools. Surviving records suggest increasing concern for the interests of children, widespread use of the project method, and somewhat more active classrooms. As Robert and Helen Lynd said of the schools of Muncie, Indiana, in the 1930s, however, “in the struggle between quantitative administrative efficiency and qualitative educational goals in an era of strain like the present, the big guns” were all on the side of efficiency. ( Middletown in Transition , p.241). By 1940 most children aged five to sixteen were enrolled in school for at least a part of the year; 73 percent of high‐school aged youths were in school. In the hundred years since the beginning of the common school reform movement, the states had created public school systems quite similar from state to state. Local school districts were governed by the states on such matters as the length of the school year, teacher certification, and some basic curriculum requirements. Schools were otherwise governed locally. They were inclusive, with less than 10 percent of school children in private schools. Still, the public schools were often Protestant in outlook and in some of their religious practices, like Bible reading and daily prayers. Furthermore, the public schools were highly segregated by race, either formally or informally, not just in the South and not only for African Americans, but more generally across the nation, with regard to all people of color. Finally, financial resources for public schools varied greatly from state to state and district to district. New Currents of Reform, 1960–2000 . A new phase of public school reform addressed some of these remaining issues. Tackling problems like equity of funding, racial integration, and other group rights was the hallmark of educational reform in the 1960s and 1970s, and it coincided with the expansion of the federal role in education. The Supreme Court 's Brown v. Board of Education (1954), declaring legalized school segregation unconstitutional, laid the groundwork for racial integration, but it gained momentum only when subsequent cases, beginning in the mid‐1960s, defined the demands on local school systems and provided mechanisms for enforcement. Bolstered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration launched a “War on Poverty,” which attempted to promote equality of opportunity through compensatory education, Head Start for preschool‐aged children, school integration, and job training programs. Court decisions and executive activism led to substantial integration of southern schools, and the legislation that aimed at equalizing opportunity proved popular despite ambiguous evidence of the programs' effectiveness. The quest to secure group rights expanded in the 1970s. Federal legislation defined and made mandatory the recognition of educational rights of women, language minorities, and children with disabilities. The Supreme Court (in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , 1973) ruled that equalization of resources across districts was not required by the Constitution. However, many states had voluntarily implemented partial equalization formulas, and in the 1980s and 1990s several state supreme courts demanded such equalization, citing specific language regarding equal educational opportunity in their state constitutions. While the ambitious federal agenda eventually encountered a backlash from weary bureaucrats and defenders of various traditions, it also installed a new recognition of diversity in the practices, procedures, and expectations of local school systems, much of it reinforced by new state laws and regulations. Integration efforts also encountered backlash from both whites and blacks, when the negative aspects of busing children were often not matched with improved school achievement by minorities. This disappointment, coupled with the heavy concentration of nonwhite citizens in many large cities, hindered the government's efforts to bring school integration to the North and West. In the face of these obstacles, aggressive, liberal school reform declined. The shift of mood was reflected in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Public school reformers changed their emphasis from equity and inclusion to concerns about the content of the curriculum and the quality of learning across all groups. Reforms were implemented in many states to require more and better coursework from high school students, recruit and train better teachers, and change the structure of school systems to enhance professional control by principals and teachers in local schools. Some educators and parents concluded that it was too little, too late. Disillusionment with the public schools grew. Many people called for school reform outside the structure of the public school system, either through “voucher” payments to private schools or the creation of “charter” schools, variously regulated in different states but everywhere freed from some of the supervision and rules of public systems. The popularity of free‐market models, as well as the growing proportion of the population without school‐aged children, contributed to the sense of crisis. Supporters of public schools worried that the civic and integrative purposes of schools would founder if people abandoned a common, public system. The “public school movement” of the previous century and a half had, in truth, been many movements, many efforts to reform public schools, which had become a focal point for debates about America's values, its children, and its future. The twenty‐first century would face the question of whether there would be a public school system, and, if so, how it would restore public confidence in its ability to provide high‐quality education and assist in the imperative task of unifying a diverse population, those twin mandates established in the 1840s. See also Americanization Movement ; Americans with Disabilities Act ; Civil Rights Legislation ; Civil Rights Movement ; Depressions, Economic ; Education: Collegiate Education ; Education in Contemporary America ; Education: The Rise of the University ; Intelligence, Concepts of ; Poverty ; Protestantism ; Segregation, Racial ; Taxation. Bibliography Lawrence A. Cremin , American Education , 3 vols. 1970–1988. David B. Tyack , The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in America , 1974. Carl Kaestle , Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 , 1983. Diane Ravitch , The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 , 1983. James D. Anderson , The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 , 1988. Carl F. Kaestle Collegiate Education Since the founding of Harvard College in 1636, American colleges have responded to society's perceived needs. From the late nineteenth century on, American institutions of higher learning have focused on three goals: the transmission of knowledge, especially of Western civilization; the creation of new knowledge in an increasing array of academic disciplines; and the integration of young people into the upper economic and social strata through training and socialization. Young people attended college not just to further their education, but to learn the elite's values and mores and to make the connections considered vital to success. These broad academic and social aims have been met at a variety of diverse institutions, which mirrored American society itself: public and private institutions, small colleges and large universities, rural residential and urban commuter schools, secular and denominational colleges, as well as women's and historically black colleges. In their myriad admissions procedures, faculty recruitment, and curricular approaches, American colleges have expressed America's democratic ideals as well as its overt and subtle patterns of class and racial discrimination. Colonial and Antebellum Era Beginnings . The European university was a model for American higher education, but a distinctive American tradition emerged as early as the eighteenth century. By the time of the Revolutionary War , nine colleges had been established, primarily to provide denominational education for future ministers and upper‐class gentlemen. However, the College of Philadelphia and King's College in New York (later the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, respectively), founded in the 1750s, embraced nonsectarian and utilitarian principles and soon introduced such “practical” subjects as English literature and legal and medical education . In the Antebellum Era , even the most conservative colleges confronted the conflict between classical and contemporary American influences: What role did the past and its tradition of education for the clergy and for “gentlemen” have in a dynamic society bent on progress? What was education's function in a society geared to individual opportunity and mobility ? Balancing meritocratic and democratic values, the traditional curriculum was soon augmented by scientific and other modern studies, though often after considerable internal debate. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's first technical college, started in 1824. By contrast, the Yale College faculty defended the classical curriculum in an 1828 report. Still, with fewer than one hundred students graduating annually, Yale by 1847 had established a School of Applied Chemistry, soon renamed the Sheffield School after a benefactor, thereby opening the door to instruction in science , modern languages, history, and other popular subjects. Beginning in the Colonial Era , both public and private colleges solicited government support. After the Revolution, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 promoted broad educational opportunity through the allocation of federal land grants to schools and colleges. The Morrill Land Grant Act (1862) and the Hatch Act (1887) stimulated the creation of state land‐grant colleges and universities and other publicly funded agricultural, technical, and teachers' colleges. In the later nineteenth century, the state‐university movement was led by midwestern and western institutions such as the state universities of Michgan, Wisconsin, and California. At the same time, philanthropists such as Leland Stanford and Ezra Cornell founded private colleges and universities where, in Cornell's words, “any person find instruction in any study.” Throughout the 1800s, the United States became a “land of colleges” as religious‐sponsored institutions, from rural Protestant denominational colleges in the Middle West to urban Catholic colleges, were formed to cater to local, first‐generation students. In Indiana, for example, between 1835 and 1844, Presbyterians formed Wabash College, the Methodists started Indiana Asbury (now DePauw University), and the Baptists established Franklin College. Typical of the evolution of Jesuit higher education was the Loyola University of Chicago, which began as St. Ignatius College in 1870. Over time these schools deemphasized the parochial impulses of their founders to satisfy their students' social and professional aspirations. Nevertheless, higher education remained the prerogative of a small minority of the population. In 1915, fewer than one in twenty young people went to college. 1865–1920 . Women's colleges and the historically black colleges, which provided opportunity and training to women and minorities excluded from, or made to feel unwelcome at, private and public colleges and universities, grew rapidly in the Gilded Age . Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley colleges were the first of the so‐called Seven Sisters women's liberal arts colleges. Predominantly white benevolent societies and missionary bodies, black religious organizations, and wealthy individuals and corporate philanthropic foundations started and maintained private black liberal arts colleges, such as Fisk and Howard universities, to prepare an educated leadership class as well as to enable individual students to move into the mainstream, national culture. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially during the Progressive Era , entrepreneurial academic leaders, research‐focused faculty, and ambitious young people transformed the traditional college into the forward‐looking university, the stepping‐stone to respectability and individual success, by expanding the curriculum and stimulating increased enrollment. Subject areas formerly considered inappropriate to a liberal education, such as agriculture and social work , now became accepted courses of study as colleges and universities sought to meet the increasing demand for more practical education and training. The nation's first undergraduate business school, the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1881. Since 1920 . By the 1920s, the day of the so‐called self‐made man had passed; the college‐educated fraternity man became the arbiter of taste and training in American life. The boom in college enrollment after World War I forced Americans to confront the contradiction between their belief in individual opportunity and their desire to preserve the existing structure of social privilege. If a college education earmarked a student for future occupational achievement and social status, was higher education in a democracy a privilege or a right? How many and who should attend? What criteria should apply? Between the world wars, elite liberal arts colleges drawing from a national pool of applicants emerged, but they were selective institutions often rooted in class and ethnic prejudice. Most well‐known schools limited the number of Jewish and Catholic students. More subtle class distinctions among students were often reflected in student life on campus, for example in fraternity and sorority organizations. Admissions policies became a battleground between traditional institutional prerogatives and democratic social policy. Despite decades of rapid enrollment growth, the 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education concluded that American collegiate education still had not realized its democratic potential because of its high cost, restrictive curriculum, and racial and religious discrimination in admissions. Free and universal access to at least two years of postsecondary work, the commission insisted, should be a public policy goal. During the twentieth century, the federal government encouraged the growth of colleges and universities through financial support for individual students as well as through institutional support for faculty and research. In World War I, Washington created the Student Army Training Corps and the Reserve Officer Training Corps, but the number of participating students paled in comparison to the millions of veterans who flocked to college after World War II thanks to the Servicemen's Readjustment Act , or GI Bill of Rights (1944). The National Defense Student Loan Program of 1958, a response to the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite, encouraged increased enrollment, particularly in science and engineering programs. President Lyndon B. Johnson 's Great Society reforms in the mid‐1960s and subsequent domestic social policy initiatives included grant programs for disadvantaged students and general loan programs for a broader range of students. By the end of the twentieth century, the federal government was allocating well over ten billion dollars a year to college and university research and development activities, mostly from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation , as well as the Department of Defense. As enrollments grew and a college degree became highly valued, institutions found their niche in an increasingly differentiated structure. Name changes often signaled an institution's expanded offerings and its quest for prestige: the teacher‐training “normal school” became, often around 1920, the “state teacher's college”; then the “state college”; and, finally, in the 1950s and 1960s, the “state university.” Over one thousand public two‐year junior and community colleges were established during the twentieth century to expand access to post‐secondary education. At the same time, a select number of liberal arts colleges and research universities emerged at the apex of the higher education pyramid. In 1995, over 12.2 million undergraduates were enrolled in nearly 3,700 institutions, about 11 million of them in public institutions. At the end of the twentieth century, colleges and universities constituted a significant industry in the United States, with annual expenditures in excess of $175 billion. Moreover, numerous high technology and biotechnology companies were affiliated with schools or their faculty. Intercollegiate athletics, especially football and basketball, supervised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) , figured prominently in the nation's popular culture and media. From its beginnings in the 1630s, the American college had come a long way. See also African Americans ; Anti‐Semitism ; Biological Sciences ; Biotechnology Industry ; Earth Sciences ; Education: Education in Contemporary America ; Education: The Rise of the University ; Land Policy, Federal ; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations ; Physical Sciences ; Protestantism ; Roman Catholicism ; Social Class ; Social Science ; Sports: Amateur Sports and Recreation ; Women's Rights Movements. Bibliography Frederick Rudolph , The American College and University , 1962. Laurence R. Veysey , The Emergence of the American University , 1965. Lawrence Cremin , American Education , 3 vols., 1970–1988. Frank Bowles and and Frank A. DeCosta , Between Two Worlds: A Profile of Negro Higher Education , 1971. Frederick Rudolph , Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 , 1977. Harold Wechsler , The Qualified Student , 1977. Barbara M. Solomon , In the Company of Educated Women , 1985. David O. Levine , The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–1940 , 1986. Helen L. Horowitz , Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present , 1987. David O. Levine The Rise of the University The original institution for advanced education in America was the liberal arts college. Soon after the Revolutionary War , however, the term “university” arose, with several meanings implied. The University of the State of New York (1784–) and the short‐lived University of Maryland (1784–1805) were overarching structures, designed to encompass individual colleges much like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The idea of a national university, first advocated by Benjamin Rush in 1787, envisioned an institution providing advanced studies for college graduates. The most common usage of the term, however, implied a college possessing one or more professional schools, much like the universities of continental Europe. The Pre‐modern University . By the 1820s, Harvard and Yale, each with a full complement of professional schools, exemplified what might be called the premodern university. American realities were a far cry from European models, however. Schools of medicine and law were essentially proprietary undertakings that accepted students whether or not they had attended college. In the colleges, all students took the same course, and no modern subjects were taught in depth. The only postbaccalaureate course, theology, was intended to train ministers rather than scholars. In the 1850s, critics lamented the inability of American institutions to cultivate and teach advanced knowledge. Henry Tappan in University Education (1851), praising the scientific achievements of German universities, advocated an American university that would teach beyond the collegiate level. As president of the University of Michigan (1853–1863), Tappan established an earned master's degree and encouraged faculty scholarship. More characteristic of the era, however, were the “scientific schools” established at Harvard and Yale. These new units accommodated both scientific studies and advanced learning without disturbing the separate operations of the college. Yale awarded the first American Ph.D.s in 1861 for work done in its scientific school. The American University Takes Shape . Following the Civil War , scientific schools, new institutes of technology, and colleges spawned by the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act offered practical science‐based instruction. However, the issue of advanced learning reemerged most strongly at Harvard and the new Johns Hopkins University (1876). Charles William Eliot assumed the presidency of Harvard in 1869 with a clear vision of reform. His elective system allowed students to choose their own studies and permitted the learned Harvard faculty to teach advanced subjects. Believing that professional studies should be pursued at the postgraduate level, Eliot restructured Harvard's professional schools accordingly. Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins from 1876 to 1901, designed it largely as a graduate university committed first and foremost to the advancement of knowledge and the professional organization of scholarship. Clark University, which opened in 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts, solely for graduate studies, carried this notion even further. By 1890, a lively debate raged over the relation of the colleges to the emerging universities. Suggestions for shortening or subordinating the college course, however, were overcome by the college's resilience as a social and educational institution. Instead, the universities arose upon a collegiate base: a large faculty engaged in undergraduate teaching would also pursue scholarship and train future scholars. The new universities of Stanford (1891) and Chicago (1892), created through philanthropy, conformed in their own fashion to this pattern. This template also suited the stronger state universities, which included undergraduate professional schools as well as the arts and sciences core. The new universities proved highly popular. Their mushroom growth outdistanced all other types of institutions for the next quarter‐century, transforming American higher education. In 1900, the leaders in graduate education organized the Association of American Universities to define good practice in graduate education and also serve as an unofficial accrediting agency for colleges. The professional associations and learned journals of the various academic disciplines established a new canon of academic knowledge that ineluctably reshaped undergraduate colleges. Simultaneously, the new philanthropic foundations created by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller employed their wealth to bolster standards in higher education—standards largely derived from universities. The college at the heart of the American university became a source of considerable strength. Educators debated the nature of liberal education in an era of growing academic specialization, but the universities benefited from the high social value placed upon the collegiate experience. The collegiate dimension also ensured that American universities would differ markedly from one another. After World War I , these differences became more pronounced as public and private universities were shaped by different forces. The major state universities continued to grow by accommodating the burgeoning ranks of high‐school graduates. The wealthy private universities looked for support largely from their alumni, who favored greater investment in educational quality, both in the classroom and collegiate life. Although private universities restricted enrollments, their relative affluence allowed them to hire and retain distinguished faculty. The role of advancing knowledge was nevertheless furthered most notably in the interwar years by philanthropic foundations. Before World War I, universities could finance separate expenditures for research only through special gifts or endowments. The latter, for example, funded university museums and observatories , producing the characteristic American pattern of separately organized university research institutes. But such funds were rare. After the war, however, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations sought to advance the natural and social sciences, principally through academic research. Foundation support of academic research had a double‐barreled effect. While it proved decisive in raising American science to world‐class status in many fields, especially nuclear physics, it was also instrumental in inducing universities consciously to expand their internal research capacity as a way of attracting foundation grants. By the 1930s, however, it became apparent that private research support was inadequate for the growing scientific needs of universities. World War II and Beyond . The services of university scientists during World War II demonstrated the value of academic research as a public investment. However, the blueprint for broad government support of pure science envisioned by Vannevar Bush in Science—The Endless Frontier (1945) was not followed and research funding remained, with slight alternations, in military channels. University research underwent unprecedented expansion in the early postwar period, but largely in defense‐related fields. University leaders continue to argue for greater support for disinterested basic research, and after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellites in 1957, they got their wish. Sputnik touched off a surge in civilian federal support for basic academic research. The National Science Foundation , created in 1950, now received significant appropriations to support research. The National Institutes of Health , aided by the spirit of the times and a powerful lobby, enormously increased its external grants. All told, federal support for academic research increased by 200 percent from 1959 to 1964, stimulating the most frenetic pace of academic development since the 1890s. In a veritable “academic revolution,” the values and specialized approach of the university graduate schools spread throughout American higher education. Numerous institutions now transformed themselves into “research universities” and their doctoral graduates filled the faculties of other institutions. Pundits such as the sociologist Daniel Bell ( The Coming of Post‐Industrial Society , 1973) identified the university as a central institution of the postindustrial, knowledge‐based societies. At this moment of apparent triumph, American universities were sorely tested. Beginning in 1965, disaffected students protested against the complicity of universities in the Vietnam War and Cold War militarism, and the alleged irrelevance of theoretical, disciplinary scholarship. The federal government, meanwhile, demanded more applied knowledge from its huge investment in university research. Universities themselves advocated a new national agenda of egalitarianism and social meliorism, but those concerns ill fit their natural propensities toward pursuing excellence in science and scholarship and training society's elite. American universities finally overcame the malaise of the 1970s by embracing a new role of economic relevance in the 1980s. Swept along by the revolution in the biotechnology industry , universities forged partnerships with American industry. Although this new role enlarged and complicated the university's mission, it was largely accommodated, as in the past, by adding ancillary units to the academic core. The twentieth‐century American university succeeded most emphatically in the mission that had been most problematic in the previous century: the advancement of knowledge. At century's end, universities conducted approximately half of the nation's basic research. To maintain this role, they had to adapt continually to rapidly changing frontiers of knowledge. The close link between research and graduate education has made American universities the world's chief magnet for advanced students and scholars—the position occupied by Germany a century before. Having become huge, complex organizations, serving American society in numerous and contested ways, American universities retained a resilience and strength stemming from the core mission they fashioned at the end of the nineteenth century: advancing knowledge through free, systematic, rational inquiry. See also Agricultural Education and Extension ; Education: Collegiate Education ; Engineering ; Gilded Age ; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations ; Physical Sciences ; Sixties, The ; Social Sciences ; Servicemen's Readjustment Act ; Sports: Amateur Sports and Recreation. Bibliography Edwin E. Slosson , Great American Universities , 1910. Richard Storr , The Beginnings of Graduate Education , 1953. Laurence Veysey , The Emergence of the American University , 1965. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds., The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America , 1979. Roger Geiger , To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1914 , 1986. Richard M. Freeland , Academia's Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945–1970 , 1992. Roger Geiger , Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II , 1993. Burton R. Clark , Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in the Modern Universities , 1995. Roger L. Geiger Education in Contemporary America Few subjects generated more partisan rhetoric and less consensus in the 1990s than the fate of the public schools. The nation's schools have always had strident critics and impassioned defenders, but the demand for educational reforms echoed throughout the land as the twentieth century ended. Presidential hopefuls routinely aspired to become the “education president,” even though public schools were largely funded and controlled by state and local officials. Governors' task forces, big‐city mayors, and local worthies all favored school reforms and improvements, from charter schools to high‐stakes testing, from voucher plans to more funding for Head Start. In his final State of the Union message in January 2000, President Bill Clinton , proclaiming education central to the good life, called for a “twenty‐first‐century revolution in education, guided by our faith that every child can learn. Because education is more than ever the key to our children's future, we must make sure all our children have that key. That means quality preschool and after school, the best‐trained teachers in every classroom, and college opportunities for all our children.” What was at stake, he concluded, was the American dream. The centrality of education in everyday life in 1990s America was nothing short of astounding. The nation made impressive emotional and financial investments in its schools. By 1997, more than 46 million pupils were enrolled in the public schools. In 1995, roughly 65 percent of public‐school pupils were white, 35 percent minority (including 17 percent African American and 14 percent Hispanic American), reflecting America's ethnic and racial diversity. The teaching force (86 percent white) numbered well over 2 million, and the country spent many billions of dollars on salaries, school construction and repair, and innumerable school‐related services and programs, from school transportation to hot lunches to educating children with special needs. All this occurred in the Western world's most decentralized school system. Compared to European ministries of education, the U.S. Department of Education (created only in 1976) was relatively weak, poorly funded, and vastly less important in educational matters than state and local governments. Formal control over the nation's tens of thousands of schools resided in the hands of lay people elected or appointed to the school boards of more than fifteen thousand independent districts. The enormous reach and diversity of this vast educational enterprise, ranging from inner cities to suburbs and rural America, gave ample scope to critics and friends alike. The schools most often attracted criticisms as numerous campaigns for educational reform gained popularity. As in the past, many stakeholders in the schools—parents, politicians, educators, teachers, and pundits—joined the debate. Characterizing the countless reformers of the 1990s is complicated by the willingness of so many people to voice their complaints and offer proposals for improvement. One large strand of reform reflected the broad influence of a seminal report, A Nation at Risk (1983), published by a national commission under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education during the early years of Ronald Reagan 's presidency. Despite the occasional insults they hurled at the department, Republicans effectively used this report as a catalyst for larger national debates on the public schools. Indeed, they set the terms of most subsequent educational debates. Written at a time of national preoccupation with Japan's seemingly invincible economy and presumably superior educational system, A Nation at Risk blamed America's schools for the nation's economic woes and low industrial productivity. The sustained economic growth of the United States in the 1990s, in contrast, did not cause politicians to see public schools more favorably. Instead, Republicans and increasingly Democrats, too, chanted a familiar mantra: that the public schools were failing and test scores were unimpressive, reflecting permissive, liberal school policies and practices, leading to incivility and even violence in the classroom. Only more testing, accountability, and school choice could possibly save the beleaguered schools. Other interest groups agreed, while adding their own spin to school improvement. Evangelical Christians, among the strongest advocates of independent church schools and home schooling, lobbied conservative legislators to guarantee equal time for the teaching of “creation science” in biology classes and for voluntary prayer in the public schools. Back‐to‐basics zealots scrutinized textbooks for hints of anti‐Americanism, whole‐language teaching, and “secular humanism.” Admirers of free markets and liberty, energized by the collapse of communism abroad, pressed for public aid to private schools, whether through tuition tax credits or vouchers, whose constitutionality in pilot programs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and other places remained unclear. Conservatives differed on the means but not the ends: to restore competitiveness, discipline, high achievement, and character training to the schools. That might mean ending social promotion, tightening graduation standards, and expunging the permissiveness widely perceived as the offspring of 1960s‐era social turmoil. Jeremiads on the state of youth and the schools proliferated. As Great Society liberalism became less influential within the Democratic party and identity politics gained momentum, left‐of‐center activists lost political clout. Many eloquently defended the public schools, but Republican criticisms of education remained popular throughout the 1990s. To oppose higher standards, testing, discipline, and market solutions to school improvement seemed out of step with the times, while holding schools more accountable, weakening teachers' unions, and upgrading the curriculum and graduation requirements had considerable appeal. Like sporting events, the test scores of school districts were publicized by the local media, to applaud the high achievers and chastize the rest (usually the poorest, nonwhite districts). Schoolteachers had long been criticized for their failures, so much of this was familiar, but it was persistent. After all, the left had offered many of the same criticisms of the nation's schools in the 1960s, calling them racist, sexist, class biased, and unable to educate the poor and minorities well. By the 1980s and 1990s conservatives threw most of the stones and set the agenda for most policy debates. More liberal or left‐of‐center educational activists remained on the defensive throughout the 1990s. Faculty who trained teachers on the nation's campuses had difficulty refuting attacks on teacher‐certification programs. With few exceptions, schools of education were widely regarded as diploma mills. Teachers' unions faced considerable hostility in this age of accountability, even though Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers and other union leaders endorsed more teacher and student testing and tougher standards. Civil‐rights and feminist leaders in turn divided on the issue of single‐sex education, despite the long tradition of coeducation in the public schools, and liberals and activists similarly split on the question of racial integration, with a resurgence of support for racial separatism. African American parents in inner cities, whose children often faced the greatest educational hurdles, increasingly embraced the idea of “school choice,” even voucher plans, in defiance of traditional black leadership. Culture wars, debates over standards, and occasionally struggles for economic justice preoccupied many activists. In a seemingly endless battle over religion in the classroom, groups such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union spent much time and money in court challenges to the teaching of “creation science” and the reestablishment of school prayer. Battle lines formed over attempts to frame national history standards; while white liberals and Afrocentrists debated academic content, Congress loudly rejected a more multicultural approach to social studies and history teaching. California residents reflected the conservative mood by voting down state‐sponsored bilingual education programs, further alienating liberal elites from the masses of voters. As liberal groups filed lawsuits on behalf of poor districts, some states declared existing school‐funding formulas unconstitutional; legislatures proved less diligent in sharing the public purse with poorer districts. Despite splits within both conservative and liberal ranks, Republicans largely shaped late twentieth‐century educational debates. Democratic aspirants for office realized that conservative times required more moderate approaches to educational and social issues. Reacting to the wholesale rejection of liberalism in presidential elections in the 1980s, a new generation of politicians like Arkansas governor Bill Clinton shifted the Democratic party rightward. A leader in the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, Clinton joined with Republicans late in the decade to frame a series of national goals for America's schools for the year 2000. Less concerned with how to educate poor and minority children well, or with difficult issues related to multiculturalism, economic inequality, and racial injustice than with standards, discipline, competition, testing, and accountability, the goals reflected the broader public mood. While Democrats often resisted endorsing voucher or choice plans that included private and church‐related schools, the two major parties had become nearly indistinguishable on most educational issues. When President Clinton linked the fate of the public schools with the American dream in his 2000 State of the Union address, he tapped deep convictions about education's role in shaping the public good. To most students climbing the educational ladder, however, school seemed like a series of courses, tests, and quizzes on a wide variety of academic subjects. They often perceived the school as a social as much as an academic institution: a place offering sports teams, clubs, and peer groups. As a new century dawned, however, adults continued to argue mostly about how to toughen standards, enhance competition, and tighten discipline in institutions that seemed forever in need of reform. The administration of President George W. Bush (2001 – ) strongly backed “school choice” plans that funneled tax dollars to private, usually church-related schools. In 2002 a closely divided Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland's tuition‐voucher arrangement. The administration's showcase education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, became law in 2002. Drafted by conservatives alarmed by the public schools' alleged academic failings, this measure, among other provisions, required every public school to administer standardized tests to all children from grades three through eight in reading, math, and science. Critics, including teachers, school administrators, and many state officials, charged that the measure represented an unprecedented level of federal meddling in public education, historically a local matter, forced instructors to “teach to the test”, discriminated against schools with large immigrant enrollments, and provided insufficient funds to pay for the new federal mandates. See also Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ; Cultural Pluralism ; Evolution, Theory of ; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of Education) ; Post–Cold War Era. Bibliography Diane Ravitch and Maris Vinovskis, eds., Learning from the Past: Historical Perspectives on Current Educational Reforms , 1994. Wayne J. Urban and and Jennings L. Waggoner Jr. , American Education: A History , 1996. William J. Reese ; Updated by Paul S. Boyer
收到主编Murugan Ramalingam的邮件： Articles that have been published in the Journal of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering are now available for free download with effect from today, December 08, 2011. 到 http://www.aspbs.com/jbt.html 试了下，果然免费。 我下载了杂志的2个介绍材料，供感兴趣的朋友参考。 WelcometotheJournalofBiomaterialsandTissueEngineering.pdf preface.pdf （这个是各个洲的一些编委的致辞）
Published online 21 September 2011 | Nature 477 , 371 (2011) | doi:10.1038/477371a Column: World View China's new forests aren't as green as they seem Impressive reports of increased forest cover mask a focus on non-native tree crops that could damage the ecosystem, says Jianchu Xu. Jianchu Xu In the United Nations' 2011 International Year of Forests, China is heralded as a superstar. Almost single-handedly, the country has halted long-term forest loss across Asia, and even turned it into a net gain. Since the 1990s, China has planted more than 4 million hectares of new forest each year. Earlier this month, President Hu Jintao pledged that China would do even more. He told a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Beijing that the nation would increase its total area of forest by 40 million hectares over the next decade. China, he said, is ready to make new contributions to green, sustainable growth. It sounds impressive, but we risk failing to see the wood for the trees. In China, 'forest' includes uncut primary forest, regenerating natural forest and monoculture plantations of non-native trees. The last of these accounts for most of the 'improvement' in forest cover. The State Forestry Administration has claimed that total forest cover in China reached 20.36% in 2008. Most of this results from the increase in tree crops such as fruit trees, rubber and eucalyptus, not recovery of natural forest, yet Chinese data do not record this shift. The change threatens ecosystem services, particularly watershed protection and biodiversity conservation. “I have seen massive tree plantations on the Tibetan Plateau, in areas where forests never grew.” Exotic tree species are being planted in arid and semi-arid conditions, where perennial grasses with their extensive root systems would be better protectors of topsoil. Plantation monocultures harbour little diversity; they provide almost no habitat for the country's many threatened forest species. Plantations generate less leaf litter and other organic inputs than native forests, so soil fauna and flora decrease, and groundwater depletion can be exacerbated by deep-rooted non-native trees that use more water than native species. Afforestation in water-stressed regions might provide wind-breaks, and tree plantations offer some carbon storage. But these benefits come at a high cost to other ecological functions. Why the intense focus on forest cover? China has long promoted the planting of tree crops. Since 1999, the Grain for Green programme has resulted in some 22 million hectares of new trees on sloping farmland. The programme began after the 1998 Yangtze River floods, which the government blamed on loss of tree cover, although reductions in riparian buffers and soil infiltration capacity probably also had a major role. Since 2008, forest tenure reform has encouraged the privatization of former collective forests, with more than 100 million hectares affected. Privatization can benefit local economies. But in the absence of any management framework, it has also promoted conversion of natural forests into plantations: smallholders often fell natural forests for immediate income, then plant monoculture tree crops for long-term investment. Although the Chinese government has shown that it understands environmental fragility, its scientific and policy guidelines do not adequately address the country's diversity of landscapes and ecosystems. I have seen massive tree plantations on the Tibetan Plateau, in areas where forests never grew before. Local governments face the need to respond to the national imperative for increased forest cover by planting fast-growing species, while also generating the biggest local economic benefits possible. This explains why unsuitable species such as aspens are planted in north China, whereas eucalyptus and rubber trees proliferate in the south. Perhaps the International Year of Forests can help decision-makers to focus on the various meanings of 'forest', and the trade-offs each type entails. Natural recovery is still the best way to restore damaged forests, but restoration requires targeted involvement using the best science. Afforestation can restore ecosystem function only if the right species are planted in the right place. Further studies are needed on how the mix of species affects ecosystem functions. Sloping lands, for example, benefit from perennial root systems and associated soil microfauna, but trees are not the only, or necessarily the best, way to establish these root systems. China's forestry mandate should focus on enhancing environmental services, but policy-makers cannot ignore rural livelihoods. Technical know-how should be provided to local foresters and farmers. Doing away with narrow, one-size-fits-all management targets would also help. The country, with its state-managed market economy, can afford direct payments for forest ecosystem services, but they should only be offered for natural or regenerated forests with proven biological or ecological value. As an ecologist and agroforestry practitioner, I would like to see China establish parallel forest-management programmes for recovery and restoration of natural forests, and for incorporating working trees into farmlands. Each should include best practices from ecosystem science; a clear definition of tree crop plantations for timber or non-timber products would clarify the separate systems. A dual strategy would require increased collaboration throughout China's land-management ministries, well supported by interdisciplinary research. But it could ensure that China's massive investment in forests provides maximum benefits, to both local livelihood and the environment. Jianchu Xu is a senior scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre and a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Formin Mediated Actin Cytoskeleton Organization ---Not Only for Tip-growth The actin cytoskeleton is an important regulator of cell expansion and morphogenesis in plants. Formins have been found to exist in many eukaryotic organisms including animals, fungi and plants , and are involved in many fundamental cellular processes including cytokinesis, cell motility and polarity by regulation of actin dynamics. Previous studies of actin in plants mainly focused on tip growth of pollen tubes and root hairs. My recent work identified a Class II formin BUI1 ( BENT UPPERMOST INTERNODE1) in rice and found that BUI1 could modulate actin dynamics and cell polar expansion. BUI1 encodes the class II formin FH5. Mutation of BUI1 results in severely disruption of the actin cytoskeleton and consequently inhibition of cell expansion. In collaboration with Dr. HUANG Shanjin’ group from the Institute of Botany, CAS, we dissected the biochemical functions of BUI1 and found that BUI1 could efficiently promote actin filament assembly and actin bundling. Thus, our study identified a rice formin protein BUI1 that regulates de novo actin nucleation and spatial organization of the actin filaments, which are important for proper cell expansion and rice morphogenesis. The identification of BUI1 also reveals a new regulatory mechanism underlying the development of rice internodes. Link: Plant Cell 2011 23: 661-680. First Published on February 9, 2011; doi:10.1105/tpc.110.081802 BENDED UPPERMOST INTERNODE1 Encodes a Class II Formin Critical For Actin Dynamics and Rice Development (A) Wild type (Zhejing 22) (left) and bui1 (right) plants. (B) Panicle exsertion of wild type (the left one) and bui1 (the right three). (C) and (D) Longitudinal sections of the uppermost internodes of the wild type ( C) and bui1 ( D) at heading stage. (E) and (F) F-actin organization in the root elongation region cells of the wild type (E) and bui1 (F) . (G) and (H) BUI1 promotes profilin/Oregon-green-actin polymerization. (I) and (J) BUI1 bundles actin filaments.
Among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and hypertension, taking at least 1 antihypertensive medication at bedtime significantly improves blood pressure (BP) control, with an associated decrease in risk for cardiovascular events, according to new research. Ramón C. Hermida, PhD, and colleagues from the Bioengineering and Chronobiology Laboratories at the University of Vigo, Campus Universitario, Spain, published their findings online October 24 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology . According to the researchers, the beneficial effect of taking BP medication at night has been previously documented, but "the potential reduction in risk associated with specifically reducing sleep-time BP is still a matter of debate." The current prospective study sought to investigate in hypertensive patients with CKD whether bedtime treatment with hypertension medications better controls BP and reduces CVD risk compared with treatment on waking. The study included 661 patients with CKD who were randomly assigned either to take all prescribed hypertension medications on awakening or to take at least 1 of them at bedtime. Ambulatory BP at 48 hours was measured at least once a year and/or at 3 months after any adjustment in treatment. The composite measure of cardiovascular events used included death, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, revascularization, heart failure, arterial occlusion of lower extremities, occlusion of the retinal artery, and stroke. The investigators controlled their results for sex, age, and diabetes. Patients were followed for a median of 5.4 years; during that time, patients who took at least 1 BP-lowering medication at bedtime had approximately one third of the CVD risk compared with those who took all medications on awakening (adjusted hazard ratio , 0.31; 95% confidence interval , 0.21 - 0.46; P .001). A similar significant reduction in risk with bedtime dosing was noted when the composite CVD outcome included only cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke (adjusted HR, 0.28; 95% CI, 0.13 - 0.61; P .001). Patients taking their medications at bedtime also had a significantly lower mean BP while sleeping, and a greater proportion of these patients had ambulatory BP control (56% vs 45%; P = .003). The researchers estimate that for each 5-mm-Hg decrease in mean sleep-time systolic BP, there was a 14% reduction in the risk for cardiovascular events during follow-up ( P .001). According to Dr. Hermida and colleagues, "treatment at bedtime is the most cost-effective and simplest strategy of successfully achieving the therapeutic goals of adequate asleep BP reduction and preserving or re-establishing the normal 24-hour BP dipping pattern." The authors suggest that a potential explanation for the benefit of nighttime treatment may be associated with the effect of nighttime treatment on urinary albumin excretion levels. "We previously demonstrated that urinary albumin excretion was significantly reduced after bedtime, but not morning, treatment with valsartan," they note. In addition, this reduction was independent of 24-hour changes of BP, but correlated with a decline in BP during sleep. 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/752348
Folic acid supplements taken from 4 weeks before to 8 weeks after conception have been linked to a significantly lower prevalence of severe language delay in children, according to a study published in the October 12 issue of JAMA . "Severe language delay is associated with a range of childhood neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism, and is also associated with difficulties in achieving literacy," lead author Christine Roth, ClinPsyD, from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, told Medscape Medical News . Even though half of the children who are rated as having language delay at age 3 years, especially if it is in the moderate range, grow out of it by the time they reach school age, many continue to struggle with language difficulties, said Dr. Roth, who is also a visiting researcher at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City. Studies have shown that periconceptional folic acid supplements reduce the risk for neural tube defects, but none of the trials have followed-up to investigate whether the supplements have effects on neurodevelopment that only show after birth, she said. "Unlike the United States, Norway does not fortify foods with folic acid, increasing the contrast in relative folate status between women who do and do not take folic acid supplements," she noted. With this in mind, Dr. Roth set out to specifically study periconceptional folic acid use and language delay. The analysis included 19,956 boys and 18,998 girls born to mothers participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study between 1999 and 2008. The researchers used data on children born before 2008 whose mothers returned the 3-year follow-up questionnaire by June 2010. The investigators found that 204 children (0.5%) had severe language delay, defined as minimal expressive language (only 1-word or unintelligible utterances). Of the 9052 children whose mothers took no folic acid supplements, severe language delay was reported in 81 children (0.9%), but among the 7127 children whose mothers did take folic acid supplements, severe language delay was reported in 28 children (0.4%). "If in future research this relationship were shown to be causal, it would have important implications for understanding the biological processes underlying disrupted neurodevelopment, for the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders, and for policies of folic acid supplementation for women of reproductive age," senior author Ezra Susser, MD, DrPh, from the Mailman School of Public Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, said in a statement. Dr. Roth added that Norwegian women should follow the current recommendations of starting to take a folic acid supplement of 0.4 mg daily 1 month before becoming pregnant and continuing through the second to third month of pregnancy. "This means, of course, that women who might become pregnant should take supplements, so that they will be taking supplements if pregnancy does occur." However, she stops short of saying that the findings should be used in creating formal policy recommendations. "Our study does offer some further evidence in favor of the current recommendations, but we caution that it is premature to use it as a basis for formulating policy recommendations," she said. The study was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Research, the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Norwegian Research Council. Dr. Roth and Dr. Susser have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. JAMA . 2011; 306:1566-1573. Abstract 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751599
Current guidelines to diagnose miscarriage are insufficient and unreliable, and following them may result in the inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies, according to the results of a systematic review and 3 studies published online October 13 in Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology . "This research shows that the current guidance on how to use ultrasound scans to detect a miscarriage may lead to a wrong diagnosis in some cases," Professor Basky Thilaganathan, MD, editor-in-chief of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology , said in a news release. "Health professionals need clearer evidence-based guidance to prevent this happening." Nearly 2 decades ago, a landmark study from Cardiff, United Kingdom, first showed that early pregnancies may be erroneously diagnosed as a miscarriage. Investigators of the present studies suggest that their findings will facilitate a more precise definition of miscarriage, and they stress the importance of intervening only when the diagnosis of miscarriage is unequivocal. Systematic Review of Accuracy of First-Trimester Ultrasound Findings of the systematic review , which looked at the accuracy of first-trimester ultrasound in diagnosing early embryonic death, indicated that the evidence base for the current guidelines is old and unreliable. "The majority of ultrasound standards used for diagnosis of miscarriage are based on limited evidence," senior review author Shakila Thangaratinam, MD, from the Women's Health Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, said in a news release. The reviewers searched MEDLINE from 1951 to 2011, Embase from 1980 to 2011, and the Cochrane Library in 2010, and found 8 relevant studies with 4 test categories, enrolling a total of 872 women. These studies assessed the accuracy of first-trimester ultrasonography in pregnant women for the diagnosis of early embryonic demise. The reviewers calculated accuracy measures including sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios for abnormal and normal test results for each study, and for each test threshold. Only 2 tests had a lower limit of the 95% confidence interval (CI) for specificity greater than 0.95: an empty gestational sac with mean diameter of 25 mm or more, and absent yolk sac with a mean gestational sac diameter of 20 mm or more (specificity, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.96 - 1.00 for both). However, even a 95% CI of 0.96 to 1.00 indicates that up to 4 of every 100 diagnoses may be a false-positive. On the basis of their findings, the reviewers concluded that few high-quality prospective data exist on which to base guidelines for the accurate diagnosis of early pregnancy demise. Their findings were limited by the small number and poor quality of the published studies, small sample sizes, the age of the studies (most were performed 20 years ago), the enrollment of symptomatic as well as asymptomatic women, and heterogeneity in tests and outcome assessment. None of the studies evaluated the reproducibility and repeatability of early pregnancy measurements, and only half had access to an endovaginal probe. "Before guidelines for the safe management of threatened miscarriage can be formulated, there is an urgent need for an appropriately powered, prospective study using current ultrasound technology and an agreed reference standard for pregnancy success or loss," the review authors write. They note that most pregnancy screening tests, such as those for Down syndrome or gestational diabetes, require optimal sensitivity but can tolerate a low false-positive rate (FPR). However, it is essential to have a highly specific test with a zero FPR for threatened early pregnancy loss, for once early embryonic demise is diagnosed, the uterus is evacuated. The only conclusive criterion to diagnose miscarriage is documented spontaneous expulsion of histologically confirmed pregnancy tissue or retained products in the uterus in a woman with previous ultrasound findings of intrauterine gestational sac. Most of the studies identified in this review did not use rigorous standards to diagnose early pregnancy demise. Research Studies "Many of us in clinical practice have been concerned for some time about possible errors relating to the diagnosis of miscarriage," Professor Dirk Timmerman, MD, PhD, from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, who coauthored the research studies, said in a news release. "We are pleased that our data have identified where these errors might occur, so that we can prevent mistakes happening in the future." Current practice to confirm clinical suspicions of miscarriage is to measure gestational sac and embryo size using ultrasound, but cutoff values to define miscarriage are not always reliable. If repeat measurement 7 to 10 days later shows no growth, clinicians often assume there has been a miscarriage. However, a multicenter observational study by Yazan Abdallah, MD, from Imperial College London, Hammersmith Campus, United Kingdom, and colleagues of 1060 women showed that even normal, viable pregnancies may not measurably grow in size during this time. There was an overlap in mean gestational sac diameter (MSD) growth rates between viable and nonviable pregnancies, and there was no cutoff for MSD growth below which a viable pregnancy could be safely excluded, suggesting that criteria to diagnose miscarriage based on growth in MSD and crown–rump length (CRL) are potentially unsafe. In this study, a cutoff value for CRL growth of 0.2 mm/day was always associated with miscarriage, and finding an empty gestational sac on 2 scans more than 7 days apart was highly likely to indicate miscarriage, regardless of growth. "By identifying this problem, we hope that guidelines will be reviewed so that inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies cannot happen," senior author Tom Bourne, PhD, from University Hospitals, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, said in the news release. "We also hope backing will be given to even larger studies to test new guidelines prospectively. Currently there is a risk that some women seeking reassurance with pain or bleeding in early pregnancy may be told they have had a miscarriage, and choose to undergo surgical or medical treatment when the pregnancy is in fact healthy." A second multicenter, observational cross-sectional study of 1060 women, also performed by Dr. Abdallah and colleagues, investigated the limitations of current definitions of miscarriage using MSD and CRL measurements. When embryo and yolk sac were both absent, the FPR for miscarriage was 4.4% using an MSD cutoff of 16 mm, 0.5% using a cutoff of 20 mm, and 0% using a cutoff of MSD 21 mm or greater. If a yolk sac was present, but not an embryo, the FPR for miscarriage was 2.6% using an MSD cutoff of 16 mm, 0.4% using a cutoff of 20 mm, and 0% using a cutoff of MSD 21 mm or greater. For a visible embryo with no detectable heartbeat, using a CRL cutoff of either 4 or 5 mm yielded an FPR for miscarriage of 8.3%, and there were no FPRs using a CRL cutoff of 5.3 mm or greater. On the basis of their findings, the investigators concluded that some current definitions used to diagnose miscarriage are potentially unsafe, and that current national guidelines should be reviewed to avoid inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies. They also suggested that using an MSD cutoff of more than 25 mm and a CRL cutoff of more than 7 mm could minimize the risk for a false-positive diagnosis of miscarriage. The last study was a small cross-sectional study that showed that when different clinicians measure the same pregnancy in the first trimester using transvaginal sonography, variation in CRL or MSD may be up to 20%. If the first measurement is an overestimate and the second measurement, taken a few days later, is an underestimate, the false conclusion could be reached that there had been no growth. The higher interobserver variability for MSD would caution against diagnosing miscarriage from this measurement in the absence of a visible embryo or yolk sac. "These errors could lead to a false diagnosis of miscarriage being made in some women," lead study author Anne Pexsters, MD, also from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, said in a news release. "For most women, sadly there is nothing we can do to prevent a miscarriage, but we do need to make sure we don't make things worse by intervening unnecessarily in ongoing pregnancies," Dr. Bourne concluded. "We hope our work means that the guidelines to define miscarriage are made as watertight as we would expect for defining death at any other stage of life." Some of the study authors report various financial relationships and/or support with/from the Research Foundation–Flanders, the Imperial Healthcare National Health Service Trust National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, Research Council, Ambiorics, MaNet, Optimization in Engineering, and/or Belgian Federal Science Policy Office. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol . Published online October 13, 2011. Review full text , Abdallah study 1 , Abdallah study 2 , Pexsters study 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751613
Banana threat averted? Not quite yet by Jeremy on October 10, 2011 Strange news from Scidev.net , which reports that: esults of a field study in Davao City, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, show that two Cavendish varieties are highly resistant to Panama disease. These varieties, he said, were produced in Taiwan by selecting improved mutants from the Cavendish variety. Why strange? For one thing, because Cavendish bananas have long been resistant to Panama disease. That’s why they are so widespread, because they replaced Gros Michel, the previous dominant variety, which was wiped out commercially by Panama disease in the 1950s and 1960s. To give credit, Scidev.net explains that the threat is a new form of Panama disease, which is caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum , known as Tropical Race 4. Cavendish was resistant to race 1 of Fusarium wilt, to which Gros Michel was susceptible. Tropical Race 4 attacks Cavendish too. But not, according to the report, all Cavendish plants. Some clones, like those ones from Taiwan, are showing resistance. Strange too because the thrust of the Scidev.net piece is that Filipino scientists are calling on the government to establish a National Research, Development and Extension Center for Banana. But hang on. Tropical Race 4 is a global menace. The very fact that Taiwanese selections are showing promise on Mindanao in the Philippines should give pause. Wouldn’t it be much more efficient for all governments in the region and beyond to contribute to a global effort? The big banana concerns were to some extent to blame for the demise of Gros Michel and the march of Panama disease, as they abandoned infected plantations and brought new areas into cultivation until there was nowhere left to run and they had to switch. This time around, they could support a globally co-ordinated effort to find and distribute more resistant varieties.
Both BRCA1 and BRCA2 germ-line mutations are associated with early ovarian cancer, but new observational data suggest that each might require different treatment strategies, according to a report published in the October12 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that women with high-grade ovarian cancer live longer and respond better to platinum-based chemotherapy when their tumors have BRCA2 genetic mutations than when they have wild-type BRCA. The same does not hold true for BRCA1 mutations. The analysis looked at 316 cases of high-grade serous ovarian cancer; 29 tumors had BRCA2 mutations and 37 had BRCA1 mutations. This suggests that stratification according to BRCA status will become more important in ovarian cancer clinical trials, senior author Wei Zhang, PhD, from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told Medscape Medical News. The findings also suggest that combining drugs that damage DNA (such as platinum) with newer drugs that block DNA repair might be particularly effective in these cancers, said Dr. Zhang. However, an expert not involved with the study questioned the findings because of the small number of patients with BRCA mutations. "It is fundamentally unsound to evaluate clinical epidemiology with sample sizes of 35 and 27 (BRCA1 and BRCA2) — or 37 and 29, depending on whether one looks at abstract or table — and draw firm conclusions. The power is low," said Paul Pharoah, MD, senior clinical research fellow at Cambridge Cancer Center in the United Kingdom, in an email. He reviewed the study for Medscape Medical News. The study is also partly in error, said Dr. Pharoah, who has conducted a similar study in these patients but with much a larger sample size. "I know from our dataset (over 10 times the sample size) that both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are associated with improved survival . This was statistically robust. So Yang's conclusion is partly wrong," he said, referring to study lead author Da Yang, PhD, who is also from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Lack of Statistical Significance With Overall Survival Differences According to the authors, BRCA2 and BRCA1 are both tumor-suppressing genes that affect DNA repair, but in different ways. BRCA2 mutations change the RAD51 protein, which is required for the repair of double-strand DNA breaks by homologous recombination. Without RAD51, the tumor cell cannot repair DNA damaged by antitumor treatment. In contrast, BRCA1 is involved in multiple functions (including DNA damage response and checkpoint control). A mutant BRCA1 can cause failure in a function and set the cell up for tumorigenesis without making it more vulnerable to drugs such as cisplatin. "Uncovering the separate potential effects of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations takes us a step toward a more personalized approach to treating ovarian cancer, and perhaps other cancers," Dr. Zhang said in a press statement. "This paper suggests that those 2 genes, and the many others involved in DNA repair, are prime targets for further research." This teasing apart of BRCA1 and BRCA2 roles in ovarian cancer is possible because of The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA). TCGA reported more than 400 high-grade serous ovarian cancer cases in which an exhaustive analysis of each tumor's genome and comprehensive clinical data on each patient were combined. "TCGA gave us enough analytical power to differentiate between BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and to conduct a survival analysis," said Dr. Yang. The outcome measures in the study were overall survival, progression-free survival, and chemotherapy response. The analysis showed 5-year survival of 61% with BRCA2 mutations and 25% with wild-type BRCA. Three-year progression-free survival was 44% with BRCA2 mutations and 16% with wild-type BRCA2. Overall survival was not significantly different between BRCA2 and BRCA1 mutations (P= .17), but the progression-free survival difference was (P=.05). BRCA1 mutations did not affect either overall survival or progression-free survival. The response rate to platinum chemotherapy was 100% in patients with BRCA2 mutations, 82% in those with wild-type BRCA2, and 80% in those with BRCA1 mutations. Response duration was 18 months with BRCA2 mutations, 11.7 months with wild-type BRCA2, and 12.5 months for BRCA1 mutations. In an accompanying editorial, VictorR. Grann, MD, MPH, and RamonE. Parsons, MD, PhD, from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, write that the study "provides a major advance in the understanding of the use of new treatments for ovarian cancer among patients with BRCA mutations by demonstrating a difference in the response among patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations diagnosed with ovarian cancer." They and the study authors all say that the next step is to enroll these patients in randomized clinical trials to test whether BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers respond differently to treatment. However, Dr. Pharoah's research represents a challenge to this opinion. He and his group have investigated BRCA mutations and clinical outcomes using the same TCGA data plus additional cases collected worldwide — producing a much larger dataset of more than 1100 BRCA1 mutation carriers, 300 BRCA2 mutation carriers, and 2000 noncarriers. They reported their data at the 2011 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. That study has been submitted for publication. Dr. Pharoah also emphasized the fact that the overall survival differences between the 2 mutation types in the study by Dr. Yang and colleagues was not statistically significant. "There is no significant difference between BRCA1 and BRCA2 (which is not highlighted in the abstract or press release). Thus, it is not a sound conclusion that BRCA2 but not BRCA1 is associated with improved survival. This apparent contradiction is all a problem with sample size and an overestimation of statistical significance. With just 35 BRCA1 cases, the power to detect a difference with noncarriers is limited, so the conclusion is not sound." Dr. Pharoah added that "even where a result is statistically significant, it is more likely to be wrong when the sample size is small than when it is large — a fact that is very rarely appreciated." The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. JAMA. 2011;306:1557-1565, 1597-1598. 来源 ： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751334
稿件被审稿人拒绝，再也正常不过了。不过有的审稿人实在可恶，写出不负责任的拒稿意见。以下就是几例这样的审稿意见。 1) Although the results seem interesting and correct, the ideas and methods are standard and the results and examples are simple. Hence I do not think this paper deserves to be published in XX. 2) The studied problem is interesting, but, overall, the paper does not reach the high standards of XX. 3) The argument here is standard and not suprizing. the paper does not meet the high standards of XX. 4) Although the paper has some merit it does not contain new ideas. Most of the ideas have appeared in the literature. As a result the paper does not meet the standards of XX. 5) The argument in Section 3 is standard (once the results in Section 2 are derived). Many authors are now presenting results similar to section 2. Unfortunately this paper does not meet the HIGH standards of XX.
http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia8/chinanano.txt 打ChinaNano2007会议的假 作者：与会者 由国家纳米科技指导协调委员会主办、国家纳米科学中心承办的“2007中国 国际纳米科学技术会议（ChinaNANO 2007）”于2007年6月4日在北京召开，会议 为期三天。http://www.chinanano.org/ 本人参加了这次会议，觉得会议的组织以及举办的过程中有一些问题值得改 进。 本次会议吸引国内某些人员与会的最大卖点恐怕是其论文宣称可以发表在 Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology（影响因子2.194）上。 1． 宣传有误导的嫌疑 在第二轮会议通知中说：“The accepted manuscripts will be published in “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (JNN)” by American Scientific Publishers. The manuscripts will be reviewed following the normal peer-review process of the JNN. ” 而在最后一轮通知中没提评审的问题直接说The proceeding of ChinaNANO 2007 will be published by American Scientific Publishers in its periodical “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology”, which will be available for general sales. 事实是绝大多数文章都不可能出现在Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology上；事实是不少人误认为交了钱就很有可能（最起码超过一半的 可能）文章被发表。 2． 没有同行评议意见就退稿，千篇一律的退稿信见附录1。 我相信组委会并没有象他们说的那样following the normal peer-review process of the JNN。难道JNN拒稿从来不附加审稿意见吗？唯一的解释就是组 委会并没有把所有文章送审，大家被骗了。从会议结束到收到拒稿信的时间将近 6个月，不送审还压稿这么久是很不道德的行为。没看就把多数人的文章贬的一 无是处真是头一回见,中国人的婉转哪里去了? 3．不参加会议在主席台还有牌位 开幕式主席台上大概有十个座位左右，都是大牛。但有一个座位是空着的， 很难看，只有一个叫路甬祥的牌位在那里空荡荡。后来主席宣布此公太忙来不了， 他百忙之中找人捎了一封贺信（全无新意，大意见附录2），听着主席宣读贺信， 我等真是感激泣零,人家那么忙还没忘了我们。一封信也要占个座真是神气。 4．只交钱不参加会议的不少。 是误导的结果。后来证明是为大会做捐献了。建议以后参加会议的动机不要 只是为了发文章，否则很容易被组委会利用敛财。 5．组委会回信拖沓 参会前有许多问题需要和组委会沟通，我有好几封email如石沉大海，最后 只能打电话才能解决问题。即使回信也很慢。 整体感觉ChinaNANO 2007会议是一部骗钱的机器。 附录1： Dear Author, The review procedure of your submission to the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology has been completed. Your paper has been reviewed by experts in the field. However we are unable to accept it for publication.Many meritorious papers are submitted to the CHINANANO 2007 this year, and only a small fraction can be published. We are unable to publish original work that has considered scientific value unless it meets the strict standards of the journal, and fits within our scope of interest and expertise. Thank you for your submission to Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Yours sincerely, Guest Editor The Organizing Committee of ChinaNANO2007 附录2： 全国人大副委员长、中国科学院院长路甬祥院士专门为大会的召开发来贺信。 他在贺信中对我国纳米科技发展给予充分肯定。他指出，我国是世界上最先开始 纳米科技研究的国家之一，研究工作所取得的成就已为国际学术界所认同。路甬 祥院士进一步强调纳米科技发展要与产业结合。他指出，伴随中国经济的高速发 展，今天，中国的纳米科技不仅仅在学术研究领域产生了深远的影响，其发展已 经开始进入工业产品的新阶段中。 (XYS20071214) 作者：与会者 由国家纳米科技指导协调委员会主办、国家纳米科学中心承办的“2007中国 国际纳米科学技术会议（ChinaNANO 2007）”于2007年6月4日在北京召开，会议 为期三天。http://www.chinanano.org/ 本人参加了这次会议，觉得会议的组织以及举办的过程中有一些问题值得改 进。 本次会议吸引国内某些人员与会的最大卖点恐怕是其论文宣称可以发表在 Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology（影响因子2.194）上。 1． 宣传有误导的嫌疑 在第二轮会议通知中说：“The accepted manuscripts will be published in “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (JNN)” by American Scientific Publishers. The manuscripts will be reviewed following the normal peer-review process of the JNN. ” 而在最后一轮通知中没提评审的问题直接说The proceeding of ChinaNANO 2007 will be published by American Scientific Publishers in its periodical “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology”, which will be available for general sales. 事实是绝大多数文章都不可能出现在Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology上；事实是不少人误认为交了钱就很有可能（最起码超过一半的 可能）文章被发表。 2． 没有同行评议意见就退稿，千篇一律的退稿信见附录1。 我相信组委会并没有象他们说的那样following the normal peer-review process of the JNN。难道JNN拒稿从来不附加审稿意见吗？唯一的解释就是组 委会并没有把所有文章送审，大家被骗了。从会议结束到收到拒稿信的时间将近 6个月，不送审还压稿这么久是很不道德的行为。没看就把多数人的文章贬的一 无是处真是头一回见,中国人的婉转哪里去了? 3．不参加会议在主席台还有牌位 开幕式主席台上大概有十个座位左右，都是大牛。但有一个座位是空着的， 很难看，只有一个叫路甬祥的牌位在那里空荡荡。后来主席宣布此公太忙来不了， 他百忙之中找人捎了一封贺信（全无新意，大意见附录2），听着主席宣读贺信， 我等真是感激泣零,人家那么忙还没忘了我们。一封信也要占个座真是神气。 4．只交钱不参加会议的不少。 是误导的结果。后来证明是为大会做捐献了。建议以后参加会议的动机不要 只是为了发文章，否则很容易被组委会利用敛财。 5．组委会回信拖沓 参会前有许多问题需要和组委会沟通，我有好几封email如石沉大海，最后 只能打电话才能解决问题。即使回信也很慢。 整体感觉ChinaNANO 2007会议是一部骗钱的机器。 附录1： Dear Author, The review procedure of your submission to the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology has been completed. Your paper has been reviewed by experts in the field. However we are unable to accept it for publication.Many meritorious papers are submitted to the CHINANANO 2007 this year, and only a small fraction can be published. We are unable to publish original work that has considered scientific value unless it meets the strict standards of the journal, and fits within our scope of interest and expertise. Thank you for your submission to Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Yours sincerely, Guest Editor The Organizing Committee of ChinaNANO2007 附录2： 全国人大副委员长、中国科学院院长路甬祥院士专门为大会的召开发来贺信。 他在贺信中对我国纳米科技发展给予充分肯定。他指出，我国是世界上最先开始 纳米科技研究的国家之一，研究工作所取得的成就已为国际学术界所认同。路甬 祥院士进一步强调纳米科技发展要与产业结合。他指出，伴随中国经济的高速发 展，今天，中国的纳米科技不仅仅在学术研究领域产生了深远的影响，其发展已 经开始进入工业产品的新阶段中。 (XYS20071214)
经过又一轮盲审，本届全美数学建模邀请赛Ａ／Ｂ／Ｃ三题的最佳解决方案出炉。 清华大学－Ａ题 电子科技大学－Ｂ题 洪堡州立大学－Ｃ题 最佳方案（稍微有些缩略的版本）将在The UMAP Journal第３２卷第２期刊出 －－－－来自组委会发给所有Ｏｕｔｓｔａｎｄｉｎｇ／ｆｉｎａｌ ｐａｐｅｒｓ导师的信的一部分－－－－ The Outstanding MCM and ICM papers to be published in The UMAP Journal Vol. 32, No. 2 are those from: A. Tsinghua University B. University of Electronic Science and Technology C. Humboldt State University The papers were selected "blind," that is, without knowing which institutions they came from. I regret that we could not publish all the Outstanding papers.
现在在Nature and Science 上发表论文很容易，你信么？ 看看下面引自某论坛的帖子，你就信了 “原来有一本期刊杂志叫做Nature and Science，只要在这上面发篇文章，就能往简历里写上paper published on Nature and Science。这本杂志自然也成为了很多学者的厚爱，连这种文章Comparison Analysis of Foreign Capital Used in China’s Northeast Three Provinces都能发表。” 期刊网址 https://www.msu.edu/~isa/ ps：原帖如此，对帖子中的论文无轻视之意。
标签: published
