Five By Five -13 Feb

1. Scientific publishing: The price of information via The Economist —There is a growing revolution in the scientific community, a rejection of the status quo involving scientific journals. Many prominent academics are advocating a more open, less commercial model of publishing, where companies like Elsevier don’t get to make hundreds of millions based on labor and writing provided by academics.

#academia #academicpublishing #newmedia

2. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure via The American Society Of Civil Engineers — ASCE gave the US an overall D in infrastructure in 2009, and estimates that $2.2 trillion needs to be invested over the following five years, which has obviously not been done. ASCE estimated that less that $1 trillion would be spent. We can expect a serious degradation of infrastructure — roads, aviation, dams, bridges, energy, water systems, schools, parks, rail and transit — and at least a few spectacular disasters before we even start to pay attention.

#infrastructure

3. Data Philanthropy: Public & Private Center Data Sharing for Global Resilience - Robert KirkPatrick via Global Pulse — KirkPatrick fashions the term data philanthropy — ‘the private sector shares data to support more timely and targeted policy action’ — and suggests that the architecture of releasing and reusing big data in the public center is still unformed, but has great promise. Issues of privacy, sharing, and tools are obvious, but the need for world resilience is even more clear.

#bigdata #dataphilanthropy #robertkirkpatrick #globalpulse

4. How Rapidly Cities Are Growing - Arjan de Raaf via Infographic List — Interesting infographic that show the number of people per hour migrating to the world’s largest cities. Delhi is adding 49 people per hour.

#migration #cities #urbanization #infographic

5. U.S. Space Science Confronts New Economic Reality - Adam Mann via Wired.com — Despite claims of American exceptionalism and innovation, funding for space science is dwindling and various agencies are having to make draconian choices on astronomy, exploration, and other space research. NASA may be backing out of two international space missions to Mars, for example, and meanwhile the costs of the planned James Webb Space Telescope have grown from $1B to $8.7B.