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Today, we want to let you know that the documentary Paywall: The Business of Scholarship is now available in both English and Russian. This is a documentary exploring the crisis in scientific journal publication and the excessive fees that some publishers charge to access knowledge.

Holding scientific knowledge to ransom

Around 70% of scientific publications are hidden behind paywalls, restricting access to knowledge and holding back progress. We believe that this is unfair and that putting profit before the health of others is unacceptable, and this is one reason why we support the concept of open science here at LEAF.

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The move means grantees from these 11 funders—which include the national funding agencies in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France as well as Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics—will have to forgo publishing in thousands of journals, including high-profile ones such as Nature, Science, Cell, and The Lancet, unless those journals change their business model. “We think this could create a tipping point,” says Marc Schiltz, president of Science Europe, the Brussels-based association of science organizations that helped coordinate the plan. “Really the idea was to make a big, decisive step—not to come up with another statement or an expression of intent.”


Bold move is intended to trigger open-access tipping point.

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AI is massively transforming our world, but there’s one thing it cannot do: love. In a visionary talk, computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee details how the US and China are driving a deep learning revolution — and shares a blueprint for how humans can thrive in the age of AI by harnessing compassion and creativity. “AI is serendipity,” Lee says. “It is here to liberate us from routine jobs, and it is here to remind us what it is that makes us human.”

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The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

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TOKYO, Sept. 6, 2018 (ANA HD/JAXA PR) — ANA HOLDINGS INC. (hereinafter ANA HD) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ( JAXA ) are proud to announce the launch of “AVATAR X,” a multi-phased program to revolutionize space exploration and development using real-world Avatars (*1).

AVATAR X aims to capitalize on the growing space-based economy by accelerating development of real-world Avatars that will enable humans to remotely build camps on the Moon, support long-term space missions and further explore space from afar.

AVATAR X is part of “ANA’s AVATAR Vision (*2),” a breakthrough endeavor to advance and pioneer real-world Avatar technologies, and JAXA ‘s new research and development program “J-SPARC” ( JAXA Space Innovation through Partnership and Co-creation). Together with a growing list of public and private partners, AVATAR X hopes to catalyze new space-based businesses that will provide key services and an unprecedented level of access to space.

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Hoping to make up ground in the hotly contested artificial intelligence battleground, Chinese Internet giant Baidu Inc. is releasing a tool that allows businesses to create and deploy AI models without coding skills.

Announced Saturday, EZDL is a “no-code platform to build custom machine learning models,” designed with ease of use and security in mind, the company said.

“EZDL is a service platform that allows users to build custom machine learning models with a drag-and-drop interface,” Yongkang Xie, tech lead of Baidu EZDL, said in a statement. “It takes only four steps to train a deep learning model, built specifically for your unique business needs.”

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We are not alone in our concerns related to the current paywalling of science. Earlier this year, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York decided that this problem deserves the attention of decision makers and the general public, and they started producing a documentary in order to reveal the flaws of the existing system of scientific publications and to propose solutions. This documentary is Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.

The producer of the documentary, journalist and filmmaker Jason Schmitt, contacted university representatives, university and public libraries, open access publishing houses, and researchers around the globe to ask them if they have ever hit paywalls and how paywalls affected their professional activities.

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A prestigious $20,000 prize has been won by the designer of a futuristic ‘drone ambulance’. Vincenzo Navanteri, 34, from Italy was awarded the Prince Alvaro de Orleans-Borbon Grant, worth $20,000, at the 2nd FAI International Drones Conference and Expo held in Lausanne on 1 September 2018.

He won the grant to help him and his team develop their idea of a self-piloting drone ambulance that could carry a single person for up to 150km at 110km/h.

Collecting the award Navanteri, said: “It is a pleasure to receive this grant, and to use it for development. As a company it is what we need. And, more than my own business, it will support the general development of this type of technology.”

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I samband med UIC-dagen den 30 augusti delade Uppsala läns landshövding Göran Enander och Almi Uppsalas vd Bengt-Åke Ljudén ut två regionala SKAPA-priser som går till framstående innovatörer i länet. I år gick båda priserna till UIC-företagare. Peter Nilsson på APR Technologies tilldelades SKAPA-priset, och SKAPA-priset för unga innovatörer gick till Nils Weber på Bitroot.

SKAPA är Sveriges största innovationspris och delas ut till minne av Alfred Nobel. Priset syftar till att ge stöd åt innovatörer så att de kan utveckla sina uppfinningar till produkter och tjänster på marknaden.

Årets vinnare av SKAPA-priset för Uppsala län blev Peter Nilsson på UIC-bolaget APR Technologies som har utvecklat smarta och effektiva elektro hydrodynamiska pumpar för temperaturreglering. Innovationen Micro Thermal Regulator är en patenterad produkt som exempelvis kommer kunna tillämpas inom rymdindustrin. APR Technologies ingår i rymdinkubatorn ESA BIC Sweden som UIC driver tillsammans med Arctic Business Incubator i Luleå och Innovatum i Trollhättan.

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