The Tenth Planet

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NASA’s PR machine is gearing up to announce today the discovery of Sedna, a Pluto-like object way the hell out in the Kuiper belt, the farthest solar system object yet found, etc.

This will of course spark the usual debates over whether Sedna is really a “planet”, whatever that means. The definitional problem, as expressed in terms of Pluto, has generated undless debate. My suggestion is that we stipulate that Sedna is a planet, given that its characteristics are as planet-like as Pluto’s, but primarily because that makes the whole thing a lot more fun. A tenth planet! How cool is that?

Open Access University Press

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Kudos to Cornell University for the launch of the Open Access University Press. University press-type books will be made freely available on line, and can be purchased through on-demand publishing. This leverages technology to perform the function university presses were always intended to achieve – making high-quality academic information available to the people who need it. Unlike commercial publishing, most university press publishing is primarily about getting the work out there to the tiny, non-profitable audience that needs it. This has the potential to do that.

Books published by academic university presses tend to have a narrow audience. Interestingly, in the Internet-First model, authors do not receive advance royalties, but are paid when each print on- demand copy is ordered. “Faculty members value having their scholarship read, and the Open Access approach provides immediate, worldwide access,” says Cooke. “Our first authors are all distinguished faculty with no need to build up their r?sum?s. They have no pressing financial need or were smart enough to know they weren’t going to get much money anyway.”

It’s hard to imagine a very large audience for the Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home, but that’s the whole point, eh?

The Lead-Out

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I now think Lance Armstrong has a good chance of winning this year’s Tour de France. I was not so sure. The machine no longer looked invincible last year. He looked good, but it did not look like fun. This year? If there’s a moment, a clue, it perhaps is the third stage of the Tour of Murcia a week ago, when Armstrong moves to the front, the super domestique leading out Postal sprinter Max van Heeswijk. Let’s let Max tell it:

“Lance pulled very hard the last few hundred meters and provided me with a very good lead out. He said it had been a long time since he last did a lead out but it was perfect. He went really hard into the last corner. He’s a great champion.”

Or Michael Barry:

With just over a kilometer to go, Pavel was on the front stringing the peloton out into a single line. Next I did a hard effort on the front and then Lance took Max to the line. Lance went through the last corner without touching his brakes at full speed. At the line Max won by a good bike length over Zabel with the next riders coming across the line in single file.

It is rare the team does a lead out and very rare Lance is even close to the front in a final sprint. It was an extreme adrenalin rush and everybody on the team gave everything they had to get Max to the line in position to win.

The Texan doesn’t have to mix it up. He’s not being paid to lead out a sprint. That’s just fun.

Climate’s Coal Mine Canaries

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Pikas, pygmy possums and tiny flowers in the high Swiss Alps are climate changes “canary in the coal mine,” signalling changes underway, according to a news piece in today’s Science by Kevin Krajick (sub. req.):

Alpine ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and recent studies suggest that mountain dwellers–from delicate flowers in the Swiss Alps to pygmy possums in Australia–are in trouble. Although it can be difficult to tease out other factors, including fire suppression and livestock grazing, a growing number of researchers fear that if the heat keeps rising, many alpine plants and animals will face quick declines or extinction.

“People always thought the whole world could go to hell, and pikas would be fine. Actually, they may be canaries in the coal mine,” says wildlife biologist Andrew Smith of Arizona State University in Tempe.

The basic problem is that the critters up on the top of a mountain are trapped. You see these “island ecosystem” effects all the time, little isolated populations in high country. Where flatland plants and animals can in many cases drift north, south, east or west as their ecosystem home moves, high country critters can only go up. And if they’re already at the top of the mountain?

High-mountain biota are trapped, however, and those living in the alpine are in the tightest corner of all. Comprising just 3% of the vegetated terrestrial surface, these islands of tundra are Noah’s ark refuges where whole ecosystems, often left over from glacial times, are now stranded amid uncrossable seas of warm lowlands.

These islands are shrinking. The lowest elevation at which freezing occurs in mid-latitude mountains has climbed 150 meters since 1970. (On average, each rise of 100 meters in altitude corresponds to a 0.5?C drop in mean temperature.) This appears to be hastening local extinctions that have been proceeding slowly since the last glacial age. Fossils show that pikas, for example, once ranged widely over North America but have contracted to a dwindling number of high peaks during warm periods of the last 12,000 years, says U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ecologist Erik Beever.

Planet Malkovich

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Abe Fettig helpfully pointed me to instructions on creating topic-based RSS feeds in Movable Type, allowing a solution to the Planet Malkovich problem. So with Abe’s help, I herewith am now able (if I cut and pasted correctly – man I love the commons that is free/open software) to offer category-based RSS feeds.

It’s rather hard to imagine anyone but the Planet GNOME crowd caring about any of these feeds. Is there a Planet Cycling? If there is, why would they give a hoot about my feeble drabblings? Planet Fleck Family? Nobody but Mom cares about that, and she doesn’t need an RSS feed. No doubt Planet Birds would have a burning interest in entries about the ornithology of my suburban back yard. Anyway, here they are: