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Medicine Biotech Science

Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells 198 198

Amenacier writes "Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the use of fat stem cells in repairing cardiac damage, or fixing such cardiac problems as holes in the heart. It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle through signals from the rat cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells, without any danger of rejection by the body. Quoting: 'The next step is to implant the human heart cells onto the damaged heart of a laboratory rat to see whether they repair the heart. Then they would be trialled in higher species such as sheep and pigs before human applications could be considered. Clinical application could be five years away ...'" The Age has a multimedia treatment (Flash) of the discovery.
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Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells

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  • by rubies (962985) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:07AM (#25464639)

    Nah. We've already got those.

    • by Rod Beauvex (832040) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:17AM (#25464701)
      I ask that all rat lovers mod parent down for such an insult to rats everywhere.
      • by gnick (1211984) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:52AM (#25464869) Homepage

        I ask that all rat lovers mod parent down for such an insult to rats everywhere.

        Pretty much off-topic, so I've foregone my karmic bonus. Mods, please be gentle.

        Rats rock. Best pets I've had. They're clean, loyal, friendly, and low upkeep. Terrific. They've even potty-trainable with less that 1-month of effort - I used to let mine run loose and kept ramps up so that they could return to their cages to crap.
        On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by dougisfunny (1200171)

          On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?

          People afraid of cloning

        • by Psiren (6145)

          What the hell is a "loyal" rat? Come to that, why the hell do I want to know?!

          • by gnick (1211984)

            A "loyal" rat is one that will not bite even if you coat your finger with peanut-butter, prefers your company to people that he doesn't know, and will jump in front of a ninja's throwing star to save you should the occasion arise.

        • by pz (113803) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @08:16AM (#25466513) Journal

          On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?

          The goal of the field is to use stem cells derived from the person being treated. The idea is it would run something like this: take a few vials of blood or a bit of adipose tissue (subcutaneous fat), send them to the lab to be turned into stem cells or precursor heart / kidney / pancreas / brain cells, inject into or near the appropriate tissue (maybe just give as a transfusion), and things will Just Work.

          The only -- ONLY -- reason people are in an uproar about this sort of work is because fetal stem cells are being used by many researchers in the field, and obtaining fetal tissue is politically charged. (There's good scientific reasons to use fetal stem cells that have to do with host rejection.) Once we can take adult cells and turn them back into pluripotent stem cells (fixing the telomeres along the way, even), or barring that can get the equivalent naive stem cells from placenta or umbilical cord tissue, we won't require fetal tissue any more and the whole issue will fade quietly as it should.

          Unfortunately, I'm on vacation, so don't have my references handy, but there are lots and lots and lots of people working on creating stem cells from adults, and there has been remarkable progress.

          So, this is a long-winded way of saying that I doubt anyone in research team from the article is considering the application for their work to be to use xenograft stem cells (from a different species), but to instead use human fat cells to create new heart tissue.

          • by jgtg32a (1173373)
            I was under the impression that there already were a couple of treatments in use that used Adult Stem Cells. The advantage of Embryonic Stem Cells is that they are more changeable then the adult Stem Cells.
            • by dbrutus (71639) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @10:15AM (#25467897) Homepage

              There are a bit over 70 treatments using adult or cord blood stem cells (list here []) with embryonic cells being used in zero treatments. The plasticity of embryonic stem cells is a disadvantage it seems due to the tendency towards tumor formation.

              • The plasticity of embryonic stem cells is a disadvantage it seems due to the tendency towards tumor formation.

                Tissue rejection is a bigger issue from what I've heard. In plenty of cases, it's possible to take embryonic stem cells and turn them into mature cells which will be less likely to make tumors, but it would still be foreign tissue you would reject.

                Of course, if you are not a woman who has given birth and saved your cord blood, that's not an option, and it doesn't appear that adult stem cells can fill all our stem cell needs, so we need IPS cells or embryonic stem cells. And also we've already learned a l

                • by dbrutus (71639)

                  We don't actually know that adult stem cells cannot fit all our needs. That's why there's ongoing research, it's not a mature field. The difference between the adult and the embryonic cells is that we know how to make the adult cells work in real treatments, we just need to extend what we know. With embryonic, we hope to get past the rejection and tumor and other problems and we've got no actual record of success to support that hope.

                  • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                    by philspear (1142299)

                    I would be a terrible scientist if I didn't preface this with the disclamer: I could be wrong in every word, current theories may be wrong and I could also not be current. Having said that...

                    The evidence suggests that adult stem cells are not pluripotent and are fate restricted. An adult stem cell population that could give rise to any cell type would be a big liability to the organism, as that would be a population of cells much closer to producing tumors than a fate-restricted stem cell.

                    It is unlikely t

                    • by dbrutus (71639)

                      Google does provide [] if you know how to ask. We've known that bone marrow can be induced to make CNS cells since at least 2002. You are, indeed, out of date.

                      This is not my field either but I cared enough to spend 90 seconds doing the search before I hit reply. You might ask why didn't you? In case you're wondering, the string I used was:
                      adult stem cells central nervous system

                      Finding this sort of thing isn't brain surgery. Perhaps pro-life people who you think are being unreasonable are merely better informed

                    • Perhaps pro-life people who you think are being unreasonable are merely better informed?

                      I'm going to call foul here. I never said anything about the pro-life movement, which I happen to agree with to an extent, certainly I didn't call them unreasonable, nor do I think they are. Don't know why you're getting so hostile. If I were to have a low opinion of pro-life people, you wouldn't exactly be helping it with your tone. This is a casual discussion.

                      I didn't do a google search, but I think I did a pubmed search with a similar string. Pubmed is an index of primary literature, the actual rese

        • by Hatta (162192)

          I used to let mine run loose and kept ramps up so that they could return to their cages to crap.

          Don't they chew your cords?

  • its only fair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare (444983) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .erauqssemitelcric.> on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:16AM (#25464697) Homepage Journal

    my fat cells are killing my heart cells

    might as well sacrifice a few of them to give back what they took

  • by gillbates (106458) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:17AM (#25464705) Homepage Journal

    That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!

    With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.

  • by retech (1228598) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:54AM (#25464881)
    So the plan was to get the entire world to bulk up [] and then sell their fat back to them as a means to save them...

    the first rule of stem cell research is you don't talk about stem cell research.
    • The beauty of using adult stem cells is that they can be taken from and used on the same person without fear of rejection because they are already marked as "self" by the body...foetal stem cells may still cause problems because they have their own unique DNA.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by wdef (1050680)
      The first rule about fat club is you don't talk about fat club.
  • Not realistic (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @02:17AM (#25464973)

    There's a lot of questions that have to be answered here - it's not as simple as they say it is. Adipose-derived stem cells are definitely nothing new - adult stem cells are widely studied and commonly used in bioengineering labs. The problem is that translating this into a clinically useful tool is far from reality, and there are a lot of fundamental issues that have to be resolved before something useful can be made:

    1. You have to isolate the stem cells from fat properly, which is not a simple task especially when you think about doing this en masse for many patients.
    2. Then you have to transform the cells, which is costly and takes time and never works completely.
    3. After you get the cells beating, they have to beat in rhythm with the electrical pulse from the heart.
    4. Then you have to ensure that they stay that way and don't require any additional growth factors or other biomolecules to keep their differentiation.
    5. You also need to anticipate possible immune responses, i.e. a host could reject its own cells.
    6. Then you have to consider the cost of growing these cells ex vivo and you probably have to do this in advance, especially if you want to use autologous cells (the patient's own cells), since it will take a lot of time and patience to grow the cell number to something substantial that can be injected.

    In Australia things might happen faster, but for the US, getting this particular system running is full of regulatory issues and problems that aren't going to be easily addressed - 5 years is frankly impossible. I'd say 10 years, and that's AFTER they get all of the animal studies up and running. Ah, and it will cost tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by wdef (1050680)
      To respond to your issues: 1. Isolate a few, then culture the rest? 2. Tranformation appears here to be quite simple and spontaneous. The rat cells are doing the work. 3. Rhythm can be synchronized with an electric current. 4. Additional maintenance - speculation until we know more. 5. Wondering how a host rejects its own cells - unless an autoimmune disease has been triggered? They all have the same HLA complex, or am I out of date? 6. Time to culture cells - so what? Heart failure is a slow and c
    • Yes, yes. It wasn't realistic that we'd fly in airplanes either. It wasn't realistic that we'd be able to transplant organs. It wasn't realistic that we'd put men on the Moon.

      Not one of the issues you list is insurmountable. You could say 'not ready' but 'not realistic' is just plain inaccurate.

  • Department (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mrbobjoe (830606)

    from the for-the-love-of-god-montressor dept.

    Eh? Was there a beating heart in The Cask of Amontillado? Maybe "the beating of his hideous heart" from The Tell-Tale Heart would have been more appropriate?

  • by maroberts (15852) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @04:17AM (#25465465) Homepage Journal
    Doctor Who []
  • by wdef (1050680) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @05:17AM (#25465703)
    Clearly a humongous discovery. Should these cells be made to repair damaged heart muscle, it will revolutionize medicine. And without all the tedious hoo-hah about embryonic stem cells. Cardiac cells, like neurons, cannot be replaced by the body when damaged. This in fact is why many people die from heart failure years after surviving heart attacks. Heart attacks cut off the oxygen supply to cardiac cells, which die and can only be replaced by non-functional scar tissue, which is like the body's spakfiller. You lose enough cells, the heart cannot pump properly.
    • And if they can grow new neurons it will be all for the better. If the heart and brain can be kept in good working order into old age, other tissues should be in better shape too.
  • by Monkey-some (1178115) on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @06:20AM (#25465953)
    I did saw "stem cells extracted from human farts..." had to re-read it a second time wondering where the science could ever stop
  • by kiick (102190)

    Liposuction + heart fix
    Come out thinner and heart-healthy, all in one swell foop (without all that tedious dieting and exercise).
    Someone is going to make a fortune.

  • Maybe I haven't been properly keeping up with the state of the art in tissue engineering lately. Actually, I'm sure I haven't.

    It seems to me though, that this is a massive discovery and a huge step forward in technology. So why is the only publication that they list a multimedia presentation on, The Age []? Shouldn't Science and Nature be all over this? At least it should be in the Journal of Tissue Engineering [].

UNIX enhancements aren't.


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Education Australia News Science

Academics Not Productive Enough? Sack 'em 356 356

ananyo writes "One hundred academics at the University of Sydney, Australia, have this week been told they will lose their jobs for not publishing frequently enough. The move is part of a wider cost-cutting plans designed to pay for new buildings and refurbishment to the university. Letters were posted to researchers on Monday 20 February, informing them their positions were being terminated because they hadn't published at least four 'research outputs' over the past three years. It is unclear which research fields the academics work in. Another 64 academics were told they had a choice between leaving and moving to a teaching-only position, he said."
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Academics Not Productive Enough? Sack 'em

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  • That'll work well. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sethstorm (512897) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:52AM (#39135765) Homepage

    So if they were to publish more to make up for a quota, wouldn't that'd lower the quality a bit?

    • by Samantha Wright (1324923) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:55AM (#39135781) Homepage Journal
      Yes. Any questions?
    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus (1223518) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:59AM (#39135817) Journal
      Of course not. How could quality be going down if the metric we are using because it is easy and convenient is going up? That would be difficult to model and therefore unthinkable. Why, it might even require me to have some subject-matter knowledge in the areas that my human resources do! I am way too focused on lining my bookshelf with copies of books about management fads for shit like that.
      • by hairyfeet (841228) <bassbeast1968&gmail,com> on Thursday February 23, 2012 @02:11PM (#39138717) Journal

        Has anyone else noticed that the word "quality" has become almost a dirty word, a word one never utters unless its with nostalgia for when people and companies actually gave a shit? Now some of it you can blame on the government because getting rid of lead solder was just fucking stupid because the amount of waste being made from devices failing earlier is causing more pollution than the lead was, but as we see in TFA even universities are getting into the "We don't give a shit about quality, just crank that shit out" business.

        Personally i think its sad how everything is becoming cheap and plastic and worthless, that's what it really is. Hell you can't even spend more and get quality as all you'll get is the same crap and if the company has a problem with the crap they'll just rig it so it'll last one day past the warranty and fuck you over, HP Nvidia laptop anyone? Maybe its just me but it seemed that people used to take pride in things, take pride in doing a good job, but not anymore. Now its get in, get out, get paid, fuck everything else. Now we are gonna see science and learning become yet more crap factories, just churning out endless piles of stupid useless shit to meet some stupid quota. Damned shame is what it is, just a damned shame.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:00AM (#39135829)

      I'd recommend a study on it. Seriously, right now unless you want to lose your job.

    • by TheRaven64 (641858) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:09AM (#39135899) Journal
      In general, I'd agree, but publishing just over one paper per year shouldn't be hard for any moderately competent researcher. At the very least, they can publish something saying 'we tried this approach, and now we can show why it's a bad idea'.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:13AM (#39135941)

        But which is more productive - writing up "this failed" for publication or getting to work on the next project? I'm a little biased here in that I'm a mathematician, so negative results are generally of the form "I wasn't able to show what I wanted to but still believe the conjecture is true/now believe it to be false.

        • by hvm2hvm (1208954) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:24AM (#39136035) Homepage
          In the short run you are better just continuing with the next approach. However if all the people keep publishing said "failures" and constantly look for other researchers' failures then in the long run, everyone does more research because they know what attempts are going to fail beforehand.

          Ideally, researchers would also publish the attempt when they get started on it s.t. there aren't too many people working on the same approach but then you need to factor in the fact that an approach might be to tough for a researcher in which case he should let someone else do it. (Of course, this also assumes that all people are honest and their skills perfectly quantifiable which is obviously wrong)
        • by crmarvin42 (652893) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:29AM (#39136111)
          This isn't necessarily an "either/or" senario. Writting up negative results is just as important as writing up positive ones. That way other researchers in the field know what not to try. My bias comes from the life sciences, where a lack of expected response to a product is just as important as its presence. You may not want to go out and write up a full journal article, and instead go the route of presenting an abstract at a relevent conference, but that still counts as a 'research output' most places, even if it is of lesser impact than a journal article.

          We academics are hired to perform a job, and as much of a PITA as publication can be, it is one of the major job requirements. Not doing a part of your job well enough is definitely grounds for termination, assuming the academic didn't have some sort of tenure protections.
          • by PlatyPaul (690601) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:48AM (#39136305) Homepage Journal
            Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.
            • by BeardedChimp (1416531) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:28AM (#39136667)
              If you don't publish, what prevents people from investing time in that less effective scheduling algorithm again and again?
            • by luis_a_espinal (1810296) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:30AM (#39136681) Homepage

              Speaking as a computer scientist: negative results in my field are massively discounted, unless you are proving impossibility. Producing a less accurate image feature, or a less effective scheduling algorithm, is not generally considered publish-worthy.

              ^^^ This. I'll dare to say that negative results are massively discounted not just in CS, but in other fields as well. It is a lot easier to publish a rosy (and completely irrelevant) scenario than a realistic, but modest negative one. That on itself is what makes academic publishing so hard. It's not the research process that makes it hard/impossible for many academics to publish so frequently, it is the publishing process itself that is anything short of corrupt IMO.

        • by Ihmhi (1206036) <> on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:31AM (#39136137)

          But which is more productive - writing up "this failed"

          Writing up "this failed" is absolutely just as (if not more) productive. Too many published papers are "this works" and not "this didn't work". A huge part of science, mathematics, etc. is failing and then explaining how and why you failed.

          What's the worst that can happen? "Oh noes, Professor Straya tried a completely logical methodology but it didn't work out?" The only fear is to be exposed as incompetent (contaminated experiment, bad methodology, etc.) and that's a good thing as well.

        • As a researcher writing papers is part of your job.
          Almost every job requires you to do something that sucks.

          Your paycheck doesn't come out of thin air. If it is a Government Grant then it is coming out of Tax Payers, if it is from the university it is from Students Tuition, Grants (Public (Government(Tax Payers)) and Private (Rich People/Companies), Alumni etc... Basically a group of people who hope to see their money put to good use, that will make their lives more profitable or help the general community
        • by FrangoAssado (561740) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @01:29PM (#39138119)

          That's a really interesting question. I don't know about Mathematics, but in Physics, its pretty damn important to publish negative results. Feynman used to tell a story to show that (available here []). Basically, the story goes something like this:

          Robert Millikan [], which was already a famous experimental physicist, published a (now famous) experiment that determined the charge of a single electron []. This was the first time such a thing had been done, so it was a really big deal. A lot of other physicists replicated the experiment, with lots of papers published all around. The thing about experiments is that the value measured always has an uncertainty, and experimenters make mistakes, so it's very common for later experiments to correct previously-measured values. The strange thing about this case is that, if you plot the "known" value for the electron charge over time, you get a curve that gradually grows from the value measured in the first experiment to the value we now know is correct (because today we have many different ways to measure the value, so we're pretty sure of it).

          So, why is the plot a gradual curve and not a straight jump to the correct answer? Why didn't the second experiment get the correct value right away? The answer is embarrassing. Since Millikan was so famous, subsequent experimenters didn't publish their results if the value they got was too far from the "currently accepted" value -- they thought of their results as "negative results", even though they probably had less error than the "currently accepted" value. The ones that got published were the ones with similar errors to the previous ones, or the ones that kept tweaking their setup (introducing all kinds of random errors) until they got a value that was closer to the original.

          Nowadays, physicists are very careful not to make mistakes like this. Part of that care means that you don't pay too much attention to the "expected" result, so you really should publish negative results. Of course, that's just the theory -- no one likes to publish negative results, because most of the time, they're just a waste of time.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Good luck getting something like that published for example in Computer Science. Reviewers won't even bother reading past the abstract. "No significant contribution", "nothing novel", etc.

      • by godrik (1287354) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:25AM (#39136069)

        I agree with you. The point of OP remains. forcing people to have a publication count won't solve anything. Close to the deadline, people will start submitting crappy papers until they pass the quota.

        You can not put a simple counting rule to administrate people whose job is to understand, develop and bypass models. Researcher are the less suitable people for being subject to this type of rules.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:25AM (#39136073)

        What about:

        First year: "We have built up this experiment, and we are now collecting data."
        Second year: "We are still in the process of collecting data; up to now we haven't seen anything interesting."
        Third year: "We are still in the process of collecting data; up to now we haven't seen anything interesting."

        No journal would publish any of that.

        However, the following would make the headlines if the researcher hadn't been fired due to three years without publication:
        Fourth year: "We have proof for superluminal supersymmetric magnetic monopoles!"

        Yes, I'm exaggerating. But the point is, some things just need time.

        The right thing to do if someone has few publications is not saying "sorry, you've got too few publications, you're fired" but to ask "you've got very few publications, what are you doing?" And only if he can't give a good answer to that, firing him is justified.

      • by ceoyoyo (59147)

        It sounds like they're counting more than just papers. "Research output" sounds like it includes abstracts as well. Any non-tenured prof would probably get the sack if his 5 year review came up and he'd published so little.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by j33px0r (722130)

        One of the expectations when hired in many academia roles is to publish papers. If you don't want to publish papers then perhaps you should be taking on a different career or different position. If you are hired on as an assistant/associate professor at a major university, they will often only assign you 2-3 courses to teach per semester with summer courses being extra money in your pocket. Teaching 2-3 courses per semester is a part-time job and they are not typically paying you to be a member of a profess

    • by elrous0 (869638) *

      "Publish or Perish" has been a part of academia for as long as I can remember (in the U.S. anyway). When I was in academia, it was the ONLY way to get tenure. Unfortunately, this led to a lot of bad stuff like profs cooking numbers and fabricating sources just to get an article out of it and insisting on putting their names as co-authors on all their grad students' papers (even if they didn't write a word).

      • by crmarvin42 (652893) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:33AM (#39136157)

        ...insisting on putting their names as co-authors on all their grad students' papers (even if they didn't write a word)

        Not sure what the problem is here. Maybe it's because of the field you are in, but in my field (animal science) it is expected that your major advisor be on every manuscript. Usually becasue they played a major role in designing the experiment, procuring the funding, and paying the students stipend. My advisor's primariy contribution to the writing process of my manuscripts was as an editor, but he definitely made "meaningful intellectual contributions" to the research projects described, which has always been the bar for co-authorship in my opinion.

      • I'm going to throw a Car Analogy out here:

        Old guy walks back into bank, waits in line and when he gets to teller, asks her to validate his parking stub. She tells him no so he steps aside and requests to speak to bank manager. When manager comes over he informs them that he's closing his accounts (plural) with the bank due to poor customer service for the refusal to validate the parking stub he'd forgot to have done when he was first in. Same teller. Manager discovers that said customer holds account in ex

    • by iamwahoo2 (594922) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:10AM (#39136487)

      It is not a quota. Quota's are given in advance and you work to meet them. In this case the University needed to reduce research salaries. They just happened to choose this existing metric to make a decision on how to meet their salary reduction goals. There is no indication that this metric will be used in the future. It is very easy to criticize the use of this metric, but beeing currently part of a work force that requires similar efficiency improvements, I can tell you that their is no metric or means that will not be criticized for being unfair to some individuals. In my own personal opinion, this approach is a hell of a lot better than the typical practice of protecting the highest paid and longest retained individuals.

    • by Theovon (109752)

      It depends. Just because the university has required them to increase their research output doesn't mean the peer-reviewed venues are going to lower their standards. They won't get too far by just doing MORE research. They have to do HIGHER QUALITY research, so that they are able to publish in higher-tier venues. One of those counts a lot more than 10 publications in low-ranked journals that no one reads or cites.

      I'm a nobody grad student, yet I have papers in MICRO and HPCA. Mind you, I have a good ad

  • by MagusSlurpy (592575) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:53AM (#39135773) Homepage

    . . ."publish or perish" just because we appreciate alliteration.

    • by TheRaven64 (641858) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:11AM (#39135923) Journal
      And for people outside academia, here's the obligatory SMBC []...
      • by Coryoth (254751) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:45AM (#39136289) Homepage Journal

        The dilemma with "publish or perish" is that the metric is stupid. Saying its "Do your job or get fired" is all well and good, but it is more akin to being a programmer and the sole measure of "doing your job" is "number of lines of code written (including comments)" -- it's frustrating because it encourages and rewards what most would consider "doing your job badly".

        • by Theovon (109752)

          Bad analogy. What adacemics have to do is akin to writing more lines of code that are reviewed by 4 or 5 other distinguished academics. There are a few bad journals out there, but most venues work very hard to get good reviewers and accept the best papers. You can write all you want, but only the good papers get published. (There's a certain amount of randomness about which borderline papers get accepted, but the exceptional ones are not overlooked.) And not all venues count the same either.

    • RTFAing for some extra discussion material, it looks like they were told even as recently as late last year that producing only four publications every five years would be acceptable. The University is guzzling funds in construction projects instead, at the cost of its academic integrity and ability to attract researchers. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like kickbacks are involved. Unfortunately, like here in Canada, Australia has no functioning critical apparatus and outing people for corrup
  • I thought I smelled something awful.
  • Game show? (Score:5, Funny)

    by owenferguson (521762) <owenferguson&hotmail,com> on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:56AM (#39135791)
    Surely they could make this into some sort of a reality TV gameshow. "So you think you can publish!" People from the general public could read the various works, and vote by phone for who gets kicked out...
  • Good riddance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SirBitBucket (1292924) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:56AM (#39135797)
    There are far too many in "accedemia" who just get tenure and do nothing. How about schools focus on TEACHING, specifically undergrads.... Universities these days just worry about publishing and other things that get them grants, but don't care too much about the students, especially the undergrads, which is all the degree most of them are going to get... Put people out in their field and they will learn far more in a week than in a semester of school.
    • by mwvdlee (775178) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:08AM (#39135889) Homepage

      There are far too many in "accedemia" [...] How about schools focus on TEACHING

      Based on the evidence presented before me, I feel inclined to agree.

      • Re:Good riddance (Score:5, Interesting)

        by robthebloke (1308483) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:20AM (#39136575)
        Ex-Lecturer here! There are two aspects to every university. On one hand you have the academics. On the other you have the financial and admin side. Most academics care a great deal for their students! They may appear a bit aloof, they may appear to be thinking about other things, they may appear somewhat dis-interested in students, but if you understand what happens behind closed doors, you'd understand why. Most meetings between academics and admin depts go like this:

        Admin: We're doubling the intake of students next year, and we think you can do that with 25% less staff.
        Academic: We can't double intake, reduce teaching, and still maintain the quality.
        Admin: Sure you can, let me show you an excel spreadsheet.....
        Academics: Those sums are complete nonsense, it's simply not possible, here's the proof.
        Admin: Then let's take away your classrooms and computing equipment, and you can do all your lectures via skype.
        Academics: That's not going to happen.
        Admin: It is happening. Deal with it.
        Academics: Then we'll find our own funding....

        12 months later:
        Admin: You've got the largest amount of funding in the university, we're going to distribute that out to other courses.
        Academics: You can't. We're 100% funded by companies. You simply cannot take that money from us, the sponsors will not agree to it.
        Admin: Tough. We need to even up the distribution of funds. By the way, cut teaching staff by 25%.
        Sponsor: You've used the funding for things it was not intended, we're withdrawing all future funding
        Academic: We're f*****d
        Admin: No you aren't, simply go out and find more sponsors for the course. You did it last year, it should be easy to do again right?
        Academic: I quit.

        At least, that's why I no longer lecture anyway. It's a thankless task. You're constantly screwed over by admins trying to make a quick buck here and there. Your teaching suffers as a result, and the students end up thinking you're a lazy miserable so and so. If you concentrate entirely on teaching, your students get royally shafted. I've never met an academic who didn't have his/her students as their first priority. Most of what goes on behind the scenes is rarely, if ever, seen by the students..... so students often get the wrong idea about their lecturers.
      • by istartedi (132515)

        Everybody in macadamia is nuts!

    • by wisty (1335733)

      You get what you pay for. Academics are paid to publish, and (to a lessor extent) get good student ratings.

    • by langelgjm (860756) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:14AM (#39135953) Journal
      So, how exactly will firing professors for not publishing "enough" encourage professors to care more about students and teaching, and less about publishing?
      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:40AM (#39136225)

        It won't. Clearly. But you are missing the point.

        The whole publish or perish paradigm is set up because publishing professors typically have a stronger ability to get grants, which then help fund the university (which typically takes a portion of the grant money into a more general fund). Grant givers almost always look at the publication record of the applicants, and those who are publishing more are MUCH more likely to get the grant. And yes, this is even in cases where supposedly the grants are given 'blind'. Well-known authors in any field develop a distinct style and those who are familiar with the field are likely to recognize that style. Thus grants are given to people who are already productive.

        In the end, science research as funded via universities is a bit of a circular situation and it's all a bit self-congratulatory for the people at the top of their field. Which is of course why anyone wanting to do research in a field needs to attach themselves to one of the top researchers during under-grad/graduate years, so that they get the chance to be 2nd (or 3rd or 5th) author on a number of papers published by the BIGNAME. Then after they do that for a while, they get to be first author and BIGNAME moves to last author, but their names become strongly associated, and eventually the rising star gets to move into their own celebrity status, while the BIGNAME just keeps getting more recognition.

        If I sound bitter, it may be because this is system is hardly designed to foster innovation, and is hardly conducive to outsiders being brought in. The real rule is conformity to the status quo. If you start out trying to make your own name, or trying to publish things that go against the grain, then you will get quietly ignored by the publishers. Personally, I'm no longer in research, and I'm just as well off gone from that particular insanity.

        I have a good friend who has a PhD in astrophysics, but because all he really wants to do is teach, no one will ever know much about him. Will he ever make some great discovery about astrophysics? LIkely not, even though he's as intelligent as any person you'll likely meet. But because he has a passion for passing on the knowledge he has to new students of physics rather than spend years fiddling around with galactic simulations, he'll likely always have lower pay than most professors, and he'll likely never get mentioned as an important figure in astrophysics. And let's be honest, saying, "I inspired thousands of students to continue learning about physics" sounds trite and boring, but saying "I figured out why some stars go supernova and others don't" sounds much more 'important'. Honestly though, the professors that teach the rising students the basic grounding in a subject so that *the new students* of a subject can go on and make important discoveries are the ones that deserve a lot of credit. The professors that ignore students that aren't actively doing research *with them* are often (not always) doing little more than polishing an already sparkly name. Yes, they bring in money for the universities. Yes, the research they do is *often* important, and yes, we need people who are willing to do real research. Yet, at the end of the day, if we don't have people who are competent at actually *teaching*, then we are going to eventually get ourselves into trouble when all the students decide to go get an MBA so they can actually make a decent living.

        • by Theovon (109752)

          I have to agree with you on the issue of teaching. Some professors are brilliant at teaching, but they're looked down upon because they've taught at the expense of research.

          As for getting papers published, I don't know how it is in your area, but I'm in Computer Architecture, and I haven't seen any problems with bias towards big names. My advisor's former advisor is on the boards of some conferenes. But how can anyone tell when all of the submissions are double-blind? We actually try to figure out who s

    • by pavon (30274) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:15AM (#39135957)

      The professors who follow your advice and focus on teaching rather than publishing make up the bulk of the people being fired here (plus a few slackers who neither teach well nor publish). The ones being kept are the ones who can get grants and crank out papers like printing press, and most likely treat students as a low priority.

      • by mx+b (2078162) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:42AM (#39136251)

        Indeed. I recently interviewed for professor positions. I often seem to get blank/unimpressed expressions when I describe that my interest is teaching, making a good connection with students, and researching teaching methods to make my work more effective and beneficial to students. Personally, I love it. Fun job, and while my students don't believe me, I often learn as much as they do. It's wonderful to view subjects with fresh eyes, vicariously through my students. It also forces me to re-evaluate my own understanding when answering questions. I find it much more satisfying profession that research or industry work.

        The come back to this statement is usually "Well what research did you do for your doctorate, what research are you in now? What papers do you have published? Do you have industry experience?". I usually tell them the relevant info, followed by "...but that's not my primary interest, I enjoy working with students better than working in a lab".

        That never seems to go over well so far, but I feel like I need to stick to my guns on this subject. Universities and colleges should be focused on the students. This doesn't mean you can't do research part of the time, but students are what pay the bills, and ultimately I want enough students to come after me to continue any work I start long after I'm gone. What's the point of all of our hard work in research if we do not have a next generation to pass it to? If the next generation cannot understand it or further the research? In any case, I definitely feel like its harder to get in the door if you aren't obsessively focused on research.

        Quick Anecdote: I remember during graduate school, most of the professors that were "well-known" effectively ignored me and did their best not to give me time and answer questions or help in any manner. They just gave commandments about what to do in lab for them so they could publish more papers and get their name thrown around more; if you're lucky, they might include you as a co-author. My favorite professors, the ones I actually sat and had conversation with and learned what I know now from, were the ones that spent a lot of time on teaching, but in conversation I found out they constantly had to justify their existence to the bean-counters in the administration office; being a teacher or even doing teaching research wasn't enough. They had to come up with all sorts of things -- faculty sponsor of club/organization, etc. -- to prevent themselves from ending up on the chopping block. And now i find myself in the same situation. It's a sad state of affairs, really. Why can't we be allowed to do our job without side project interference?

    • Re:Good riddance (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nine-times (778537) <> on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:29AM (#39136103) Homepage
      The purpose of modern universities is not to teach students. They are businesses which make money by providing a resort town to 20-somethings, runing minor-league professional sports teams, and doing scientific research. The whole "education" thing is just a method of attracting 20-somethings to their resort, and publishing attracts more students than good classes do.
    • by ceoyoyo (59147)

      Universities aren't for teaching undergrads. They're for doing research and giving undergrads a chance to learn as part of that process. If you're an undergrad who doesn't intend to go to grad school and you want to be spoon fed, find a college with a good university transfer agreement.

      Not that a good professor shouldn't be able to teach, but the primary function of a university is not to pour knowledge into undergraduate heads.

    • One of my favorite Futurama scenes:

      Mayor Poopenmayer: Professor Wernstrom, can you save my city?
      Professor Wernstrom: Of course, but it'll cost you. First, I'll need tenure.
      Mayor Poopenmayer: Done.
      Professor Wernstrom: And a big research grant.
      Mayor Poopenmayer: You got it.
      Professor Wernstrom: Also, access to a lab, and five graduate students, at least three of them Chinese.
      Mayor Poopenmayer: All right, done. What's your plan?
      Professor Wernstrom: What plan? I'm set for life. Au revoir, suckers!
      Leela: That rat

    • by Creepy (93888)

      Sadly, the same thing happened at my university in the US. Here it seems to be school policy, at my school it was department policy. My favorite and most motivating teacher as an undergrad got canned under this policy. My second favorite teacher only survived because of his patents and pending patents were bringing in massive amounts of money, and the 4 worst teachers I ever had are still teaching today (I was going to say 6, but I just checked the department listing and #5 has since retired). If I had one

  • Tenure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Relayman (1068986) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @09:57AM (#39135805)
    That's why we have tenure in the United States. "Publish or perish" exists until the professor gets tenure and then it's not as much as an issue any more.
    • I thought we had tenure to better prevent students from learning from apathetic and burned out professors.

      • Re:Tenure (Score:5, Interesting)

        by O('_')O_Bush (1162487) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:06AM (#39135873)
        Or to prevent mixing whackos with experts breaking ground in radical directions. That is what tenure is supposed to grant, the freedom and protection to go iin new directions or challenge conventional paradigms without fear of being discarded for going against the status quo.

        But just like many well intended benefits of track record and experience (see also social security), it became interpretted by many as the start of a good paying and low effort pension.
      • Re:Tenure (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Samantha Wright (1324923) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:09AM (#39135897) Homepage Journal
        Yes; instead it ensures that they learn from apathetic and chronically absent professors. In some Canadian university departments we actually have a system of accountability for lecturers based on students' opinions; in the CS department where I'm doing my undergrad, a Scantron-based survey is incorporated into the decision to give raises. Even tenured bigshots who rake in huge multi-million dollar medical grants are prone. I've seen other departments also send out a round of automated e-mail when considering professors for tenure. The whole system works wonders for preventing the kinds of abuses and irregularities that might occur elsewhere.
    • It Tenure what makes schools in the United States so affordable and so superior to those in other countries?
      Or is it something more?

    • Re:Tenure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sohmc (595388) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:12AM (#39135929) Journal

      I'm not an academic but my understanding of tenure is to allow the professor to publish topics that may be controversial. That way, the school can't dump the professor for publishing something that goes against the grain.

      Of course, professors are still human and many of them abuse tenure but I'm sure there are professors that actually use the protection that tenure provides them to do extraordinary work that otherwise might have gotten them fired for not toeing the university line. (The easiest examples that comes to mind is global warming, creationism, etc.)

  • Dare I say... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by buddyglass (925859) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:05AM (#39135853)
    Good? If you're not teaching full-time then you'd better be publishing. If you're not teaching or publishing, what the hell are you doing? A hard quota on papers-per-time-period seems like a terrible idea, but sacking guys who legitimately aren't producing (or moving them to full-time teaching) seems like a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you have some Nobel laureate on staff and want to keep him around just to beef up your department's "cred".
    • Re:Dare I say... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by betterunixthanunix (980855) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:23AM (#39136033)
      Except that the demand for publishing lots of papers results in:
      1. Researchers chasing low-hanging fruit and ignoring hard problems.
      2. Researchers taking one good result and publishing lots of tiny variations on that result, essentially publishing the same paper over and over again.
      3. Lack of cooperation and secrecy among researchers

      Research is not about the quantity of results that are published, it is about the quality and importance of those results.

    • Re:Dare I say... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gardyloo (512791) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:41AM (#39136239)

      If you're not teaching or publishing, what the hell are you doing?

      Actually doing the research which the publications should be based upon, and which will be taught in 30 years. Editing or writing textbooks. Pulling in grants which will pay for research equipment, laboratory space, materials and expendables, travel, publication costs, and incidentally feed, house, and clothe you, your students, and the higher-ups. Serving on administrative councils which are necessary evils, but massive time-sinks. Writing and running necessary simulations so that future research projects can be green- or red-lighted before these time-sinks are encountered again.

      If you think that time researching in a University is spent either in the classroom, or at one's desk pumping out papers left and right, you're sorely mistaken.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As a academic who recently saw the light and left for industry, I can tell you exactly what they're doing (at least in the U.S.): activities related to grantsmanship and serving on committees! Getting a grant is a mixed blessing. First, you have to figure out how exactly to spend the money, including hiring people to actually do the work (e.g. graduate students, post docs, etc). Then, you need to write regular progress reports and keep track of the time and effort for people working on the project (account

  • by gweihir (88907) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:05AM (#39135865)

    Or rather not. Counting publications is a completely useless metric. In most fields you can publish things just a little different than what you published before, i.e. basically worthless. There are conferences as well that basically take everything. The only thing this does is waste money and time. Stupid.

  • by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:19AM (#39135989)

    As an academic early in his "career" (postdoc) I'm skeptical about absolute publication quotas. While it is true that in Southern Europe, where I live, many academics are lazy, it is my impression that in certain domains, especially in the humanities, many of the people that publish a lot are mediocre to say the least. The peer reviewing system in the humanities already gives a huge advantage to people publishing intellectually modest to plain stupid papers, as it is much easier to get an uncontroversial paper that only makes minor points past the reviewers than a controversial paper with new ideas. (This is probably not such a problem in natural sciences, because they have better evaluation criteria.)

    Sure, the top people in the field almost always publish a lot -- 4 or more papers a year is quite common -- but I claim that in the middle field this measure does not work. Too much publication pressure primarily encourages people not to strife for substantial results, but in the end its these rare gems that drive research.

    That being said, 4 papers in 3 years is a very low demand, as long as we're not talking about indexed papers in A-tier journals. At least people should be able to demonstrate that they have written something even if they don't get all of it published in time. But perhaps there should also be an upper limit---no more than 3 papers a year.

    • by PlatyPaul (690601)
      Varies field-to-field. Publishing 5 times in a year is not a big deal in computer science, but publishing 5 times in a year in economics is (from what I hear) impossible even for the cream of the crop.
  • by MikeRT (947531) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:21AM (#39136011) Homepage

    Another 64 academics were told they had a choice between leaving and moving to a teaching-only position, he said

    If the teaching-only position is an option for most of them, then that seems to be a reasonable compromise. The West simply doesn't have the money anymore to throw at professors who are neither prolific researchers nor teachers. There are plenty of students who work very hard for the university who could benefit from having their stipends increased by cannibalizing the salaries of "researchers" who don't really publish much of anything.

    I think this quote might hint at who is really being targeted:

    “The mood is bloody,” agreed Jake Lynch, Director of the university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. “The union accurately reflects the frustration of many researchers.”

    There are a lot of humanities, liberal arts and social sciences professors who claim to be "researchers" but aren't productive in any sense that the sciences or engineering disciplines would recognize. Based on the friends I had in the sciences and engineering, I can't believe that most of the professors overseeing the researcher graduate students aren't regarded as highly productive by their universities because they put in solid time and effort every year at the very least guiding the researchers doing the grunt work. Admittedly, that's an American experience, but I have a feeling that their College of Arts and Letters, not Science and Engineering, is what is starting to feel the bean counters' medusa-like gaze...

  • by bigsexyjoe (581721) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:23AM (#39136031)

    The professors' union has a good point. Enrollment is increasing and management miscalculated the student fees they would need to take in. So now the professors have to:
    a) publish more
    b) teach more
    leaving little time for:
    c) publish papers that are risky and innovative (the kind that actually move human knowledge forward)

    You have wonder how we can encourage the best and the brightest to be academics. We work them to death making them earn a degree, we work them to death making them actually get hired, then they have to still build their reputation. And know they are saying that they'll get fired for not publishing more when they are already teaching more.

  • Screw that. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GauteL (29207) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:24AM (#39136049)

    It is my experience that many academics these days are pushed into "pork" activities, that is industry oriented work that brings in money for the university, but has little or no academic value.

    In the UK it is particularly common that research fellows are hired for specific pork-based projects on short-term contracts, and also has to cover teaching due to a shortage or unwillingness of staff on higher pay-grades. Actual research you're meant to do on your spare time.

    Well screw that. These days an academic career gives you less pay, longer work hours and less job security than an industry job. You're much more likely to get a permanent job in industry. In academia you have to go through 4-5 short term contracts before you're likely to get a permanent job.

    I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the sacked academics has been pressurised into pork work for years and then get let go when the bacon runs out, because they've been too deep in pig fat to publish.

  • Publish Failures! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GiantRobotMonster (1159813) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:25AM (#39136067)

    We need a lot more people publishing "We tried X to do Y, but it didn't work because of Z."
    They may not be exciting and sexy, but they are good data points to have.

    Are there a whole lot of academics out there who aren't writing anything at all?
    Are they writing absolute crap, that journals are rightly refusing to publish?
    Are they perhaps keeping all of their research secret, so that they can commercialise it themselves and diddle their institutions at the same time?

    Enquiring minds want to know.

  • by geogob (569250) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:28AM (#39136091)

    Although I agree that some people deserve the boot, such a policy - like most academic policies nowadays - only encourage production of large quantities of low-quality material. (That just a polite way of saying "huge piles of shit").

    Going through published material is really depressing. Most of it is either republished stuff (à la "the same article few months ago : now with a new figure") or stuff that wouldn't even find its way into a textbooks due to lack of interest.

    The groups I've been working with are on the top of our field. These groups published very little (maybe a paper or two per year, for the whole group), but always groundbreaking content or content of high interest for the community - and thus hold very high reputation in the community. I like it that way. Rather than wasting my time writing worthless papers (because writing a good paper takes time if you are not writing it with 3 keyboard keys - ctrl, c and v), I rather do actual work and publish it when it's mature enough.

    Sadly, this view is not very common and I believe we get through with our way only because we are closer to engineering than to what people refer to as scientific research.

  • by sirwired (27582) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:33AM (#39136151)

    Professors are supposed to be teaching AND researching. If the focus was on teaching (especially undergrads) we wouldn't need professors for that kind of work; any post-doc would do, and do it for cheap.

    While turning professors into publication factories would indeed be a BAD idea, four "research outputs" over three years is not exactly a high bar to cross.

  • by Rogerborg (306625) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:47AM (#39136301) Homepage
    You've bungied in and saved academia with the power of Metrics! Now that you've determined the method to use to judge people whose work you can't even begin to comprehend, you can bag your non-performance-related flat fee and sproiiiing off to your next lucrative challenge!
  • by Reverse Gear (891207) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:58AM (#39136395) Homepage

    I know from my brother who is working on a university in mathematics research that 4 publications in 3 years is extremely many in his subject, he has worked extremely hard for 3 years to make 2 publications in topology.
    I have been told it is a common problem for mathematicians that they don't make as many publications as in other fields of science, in geophysics working as researcher (which I don't I work in the private) it would be a reasonable demand with 4 publications on 3 years.

  • by pacc (163090) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @11:42AM (#39136799) Homepage []
    After 10 years of teaching he knew that he had to publish something great or give up research and becoming a professor.

    This proves that you only need one paper, if it also give you the Nobel prize.

  • by bizitch (546406) on Thursday February 23, 2012 @03:49PM (#39139879) Homepage

    Just need to modify the SCIgen Automatic CS Paper Generator a bit and voila! Instant publishing ;) []

UNIX enhancements aren't.

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+ - Fly Eyes Used for Solar Cells->

disco_tracy writes: Rsearchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells.
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+ - Japan Considers '911' Calls From Twitter, Social Networks->

itwbennett writes: "The Japanese national Fire and Disaster Management Agency today hosted the first of 3 panels to discuss allowing emergency calls to be placed through social networks. For the event, Twitter's Japanese blog posted entries on how to use the service during emergencies, one of which advised: 'If your circumstances allow, please add #survived to your tweets. This will help when family and friends that are worried about you search on your welfare.'"
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Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Following up on a report earlier this week claiming that an eruption of Mikeno produced an avalanche that killed dozens, it appears that those reports were false. Current news claims that an overflowing river on Nyiragongo in the Congo produced an avalanche on the slopes of the volcano. This avalanche killed 46 people and have wiped out at least 200 homes and UN Peacekeepers in the Congo have been helping with the recovery from the avalanche. So, it seems that the landslide was caused by heavy rains rather than any sort of volcanic eruption. Nyamuragira, next door to Nyiragongo, erupted earlier this year and both volcanoes are very active.

  1. #1 Raving
    May 19, 2010

    Good evening. I am glad the gorillas are safe for now.

  2. #2 Ekoh
    May 20, 2010

    While people are enthralled at the on going eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, and some are concerned about the small possibility of Katla erupting and themuch, much smaller possibility of some catastrophe resulting, it is important to keep in mind volcanoes such as Nyiragongo. Due to a combination of factors (frequent activity, very fluid lava in a lava lake on a steep sided volcano, possible fissure eruptions on the flanks and a densely populated area in the path of both) the potential of a real catastrophe in the area is quite high. Just something for the world to keep in mind when it moans over delayed air traffic.

  3. #3 iPod iPad
    November 20, 2010

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  4. #4 Hello Kitty Costume
    November 24, 2010

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  6. #6 Kelly Barach
    November 28, 2010

    Just read it and went gosh, I know why I was poor in the debate class. – If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. – Mark Twain 1835 – 1910

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    December 5, 2010

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  9. #9 Alexander Sorokin
    December 17, 2010

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Academic Freedom and Aids Denialism

There is an interesting development in the area of Aids Denialism (and by extention climate change denialism and the rest of it) in Italy:

The University of Florence has launched an inquiry into the teaching activities of an academic who assisted on a course that denies the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and supervised students with dissertations on the same topic.

The Italian university’s internal ‘special commission’ will examine the “teaching behaviour and responsibility” of molecular biologist Marco Ruggiero, a university spokesman told Nature.

Details and more here.

  1. #1 F
    March 22, 2012

    “Hilariously transparent crypto-apologist troll doesn’t realize MS Word is not document exchange format.”


text:
Events of Interest On

Science and Islam
Book DisplayThe Science, Religion, and Ethics Program of the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy is sponsoring several activities examining the connections between science and Islam.

Prominent among these is a presentation by physics Professor Nidhal Guessoum of the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. More information about his presentation is available HERE.

Also featured is a display of books and articles dealing with this subject (see image at left). Selected books, including Professor Guessoum's latest book and books about Muslim Nobel Laureates in Chemistry and in Physics, as well as articles from Science and Nature, are on display in the case near room 1145 of the Chemistry Building (first floor of the Shain Research Tower.) A list that includes the books and articles on display, as well as many others, is also available.

For more information contact


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Final Activity

The Bill of Rights

Amendment 1

Amendment 2

Amendment 3

Amendment 4

Amendment 5

Amendment 6

Amendment 7

Amendment 8

Amendment 9

Amendment 10

Teacher Notes

For each of the following examples decide which amendment is involved, and which rights are being violated. What is the right thing to do according to The Bill of Rights?

  1. Mrs. Jones hears a knock at the door. She opens the door and finds 3 police officers asking if they can come into her home to talk about neighborhood safety. She is very friendly and so she says yes. While sitting in the living room one of the officers sees a bomb under the sofa and gets up to get it. Mrs. Jones is immediately arrested.
  2. Sam Davis is planning a public meeting in front of the town library to protest against a new city tax for playgrounds. He has filed all of his permits and the city has said that he can have his meeting. The night before the meeting, however, the mayor finds out that Sam was arrested 2 years ago in another town for starting a riot. On the day of the meeting, police show up to prevent the meeting and Sam is not allowed to hold his meeting.
  3. Gina DeLong has lived in her home for 26 years. During that time the city has tripled in population, traffic is a mess, and there just are not enough roads. Tuesday morning the sheriff came to her house and told her that she had to move because a new road was going to be built right through her house. When she complains that she has lived there for so long and doesn't want to move, she is told, "Too bad, you have 30 days to get out."
  4. Kennedy Elementary School is a normal school, so it surprised everyone when the principal, Mrs. Salinas, decided that all students could have extra holidays from school for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Most of the students were happy, but some parents were mad because they didn't have baby-sitters.
  5. Hans Schlemming was new to this country. In Germany he was an auto mechanic. On Saturday night he was coming out of a store and the police arrested him for stealing. He said he didn't do anything, but the police were convinced that they had the right person. When he told them that he wanted a lawyer, one of the policemen said, "You don't need a lawyer, you guilty pig. You and your German friends killed my grandfather during the war. I know that you're guilty. We're locking you up and throwing away the key."
  6. Stephanie Manus was arrested, tried, and convicted of kidnapping. There was no doubt that she was guilty. The judge said, "I can either send you to prison for 12 years or I can make you shave your head and make you stand on the freeway for 8 hours a day so that you will know what it is like to be scared." "Prison is too good for you," said the judge.
  7. Mr. Wiegold had worked in the same place for 36 years and only had one raise. He felt like the boss owed him something, so one day he took a computer home and kept it. When the boss found out he had him arrested. Mr. Wiegold demanded a trial because he said he was innocent. But the boss and the police said he didn't get a trial because they already caught him with the stolen computer, he was guilty.
  8. At a gun collecting show, George Samuels picked out 13 guns that he wanted to add to his expensive collection of guns from the 1800s. When he tried to pay for the 13 guns he was told by a security guard that he wasn't allowed to take so many guns. The security guard would only allow George to buy 5 guns because the Constitution allows citizens to have one gun per family member.
  9. Trina Lening and her friends had recently robbed a liquor store. Trina's friend Lori did not help, she was sick at home. When the police picked up all of the girls the following Friday, they arrested the whole group including Lori. At the trial, Lori said that she was innocent and could prove it because she had witnesses. But her witnesses were her friends, and if they said she wasn't there, it would mean that they were at the liquor store.
  10. The city of Manville was in crisis. For 3 days there had been riots and fires. The National Guard was called out to restore peace. When officers showed at Mrs. Mayberry's door demanding some food and a place to sleep she was so afraid of their guns that she let them in and gave them what they wanted.

Work by yourself and decide which amendment is the most important for citizens living in this country. If you could only have one amendment to protect you, which would it be? Then work in a small group of 3 or 4 and compare your answers. Try to decide by agreement which amendment is the most important to the group.


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History of Highland Cattle

HIGHLAND CATTLE are an ancient breed of cattle that has nibbled on Scottish grass from the 6th century. It is still not known if the cattle evolved in Scotland or whether they came from Scandinavia with the Norse Invaders. Many Scholars think that the Highland Cattle are the end result of combining two ancient Asiatic breeds, the Bos Longifrons and the Bos Primigenius. The Highland Cattle inherit their long horns from the Longifrons and inherit their long hair from the Primigenius. Highland Cattle are dual purpose cattle and have provided a supply of milk and meat for many hundreds of years and are still successfully used to provide milk and high quality meat in many countries.

history of highland cattle, Scottish, Longifrons, cows, bulls, milk, meat, Ceallach of EnnerdaleHighland Cattle were imported into Australia in the 19th century, arriving in Victoria in 1841 and later spread to South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. The recent history of Highland Cattle began in 1954 when two in-calf cows and a bull were imported into South Australia and then during the 1980’s the interest in Highland Cattle rose with articles in newspapers and television shows. Showcasing Highland Cattle at various shows created more interest and even more live cattle were imported.

A.I. programmes started by importing semen from various bulls from Scotland and this still is the case today by the breeders of the highest quality Highland Cattle. Bulls are sourced from the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and United States. The technology also exists to transfer embryos from other countries by following strict quarantine protocols. Highland Cattle are now not brought in live because of danger of introducing diseases not present in Australia for example Foot & Mouth disease and BSE (Mad Cow disease).

The Highlands coat is long on the top and short underneath with the longer hair being coarser so that the animals are protected from the cold weather, yet they moult and can also live in hotter climates as seen here in Australia. The animals are usually docile and easy to handle and this is a reason that makes them so popular – but they do have an established pecking order and this becomes very obvious when they are in their herds. Highland Cattle are known for longevity from other breeds of cattle and can still be calving at 18-20 years of age. They usually calve easily without assistance and are extremely good mothers – these important traits are in danger of being lost in many of the modern commercial breeds of cattle. ‘Longevity reduces replacement cost’

Back to Welcome Back to the top


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Poultry Farming

PDF Document This document is available as a PDF download here.

Contract poultry farming is when a company and a farmer decide to produce breeders, broilers, turkeys, quail or commercial laying hens by signing a contract between them. This arrangement has been successful for over 50 years and is one of the most secure and financially successful forms of agricultural production. Success is achieved when both entities do their part to achieve maximum performance from the birds. The company furnishes the feed that has been formulated by professional nutritionists to satisfy all the performance needs of the birds. A prospective poultry producer is expected to furnish and maintain the best possible housing, equipment and daily management to assure maximum performance. Marketing needs may change your types of production such as sizes of the birds. The industry produces small birds for Cornish hens, very large birds for deboning and all sizes in between. Cooperation by the companies and poultry producers will help both be successful. Below are some facts that may help you decide if poultry farming is for you.

Poultry Houses

  1. A contract to grow poultry must be made with a poultry company before building any poultry houses.
  2. Property should be located where access to the complex facilities - feed mill, processing plant, hatchery etc. - is relatively easy.
  3. Poultry houses must conform to industry standards and may vary from company to company.
  4. Poultry house equipment must conform to industry standards and may vary as well.
  5. Poultry house locations are regulated by the S.C. DHEC
  6. The areas around the poultry buildings must be able to accommodate feed trucks, catch and haul equipment and other traffic.
  7. Size and number of houses will be decided upon with the poultry company before any construction.
  8. If you are considering purchasing an existing poultry operation, the company that you will be growing for needs to visit the property along with you to determine if it is suitable for growing birds. At this time, building improvements and extra equipment can be discussed.

  1. The lending agency that you decide to use will help you with the financial arrangement.
  2. Levels of income from the proposed poultry operation need to be reviewed with company personnel. Study the contracts carefully. You cannot plan on getting average pay on the contact each flock. You should plan to have reserves to cover your expenses in the case of low pay periods and longer times due to market conditions etc. There is no set amount of income you can expect to receive; however, the financial swings in poultry are less than other commodities.
  3. Enough insurance to cover the cost of buildings and loss of income following a disaster - storm, ice etc. is a must. It should be reviewed annually to determine that the farm is adequately covered.
  4. Money management and cash flow are very important as well as a good financial record keeping system for the poultry operation.
Other Considerations
  1. Your poultry company will have a management program that all growers are expected to follow. Your field representative will work closely with you on what is expected and the best ways to produce a quality product. You need to discuss the time required to manage your houses so that you may plan for labor needs.
  2. Keep your buildings and equipment properly maintained and in top working order. Preventative maintenance is a daily job. More maintenance is required on an older house and equipment.
  3. Always be ready in advance for bird arrival. Your field representative will work with you to prepare your houses. The first few days are critical to good performance.
  4. The house must be at the proper temperature (to program specifications), feed and water ready and environmental controls working properly.
  5. Be prepared to spend considerable time with your flock, especially during the first few days, to assure proper environment and husbandry.
  6. Keep good flock records-mortality, feed deliveries, vaccinations, etc.
  7. Collect and dispose of dead birds daily, along with monitoring feed, water and air. Good housekeeping is vital to success.
  8. Your main job is to manage the flock throughout the production period. Report problems to your field representative immediately.
  9. Be aware that the size of the birds produced and time between batches may vary according to market demand.
  10. Vacation needs to be scheduled around flocks.
  11. Be vigilant in your biosecurity. Allow only authorized personnel on the farm, avoid going to other farms yourself and avoid contact with all other forms of poultry.
Critical Management Factors
  1. Temperature - Should be kept at optimum level regardless of age of birds or season. Your system should be able to respond to changing weather conditions night and day.
  2. Ventilation - replaces oxygen used by birds, removes moisture and ammonia and must continually be monitored.
  3. Feed and water - Keep plentiful and clean according to production program.
  4. Husbandry - study the flock daily for signs of discomfort, disease, proper feed and water consumption. With experience, you should be able to look at the birds and determine if they have a problem.
  5. Understand that you are working with a live animal that may have special needs.
  6. Culling chickens is a key part of the job.
Outside the House
  1. Disposal of dead birds must be done according to state regulations. Your field manager will recommend proper methods.
  2. Depending on the size of your operation, you may need additional equipment.
  3. Keep a supply of spare parts for in-house equipment, so that problems can be solved quickly.
  4. No run off water should be able to get into the house. Keep drainage around the houses open and operable.
  5. All access roads need to be in good shape with easy access to feed bins and poultry houses.
  6. Weeds and grass need to be mowed around the house and farm to reduce rodent and other problems.
  7. Understand environmental challenges created by poultry operations such as dust, smell, nutrient management, etc.
  8. No chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides or medications should be used in or around poultry houses without approval by company.

The suggestions listed above may not fit all situations and company programs. Work closely with your field representatives to conform to company policy and assure success in your operation.

  1. It is recommended that you work in a poultry operation before getting into the business.
  2. Understand that this is a long term decision.
  3. This list may not necessarily reflect what will happen on every farm.


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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

And the winner is

Challenge 55 – Christmas Flowers, produced some lovely cards. The winner of the challenge as chosen by Random.Org is……

challenge55 winner

Number 6 – Karin

Kerst Kerststerren 1

Congratulations Karin. You will be entered into our Christmas Draw.


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Archive for April, 2012

Script Notes: THE USUAL SUSPECTS 2: BEAR TRAP (Part 2) Apr 17

In Part 1 of my review, I discussed this unofficial sequel script’s spurious providence and mysterious writer. I also started off with a critique of the cover page and page one.

To reiterate, these posts are meant to be educational for writers to see what goes on in the minds of script readers (or at least mine) while they’re plowing through your script. Most of the comments I post here are meant to convey what I’m thinking and wouldn’t necessarily be included in any official script notes that I provide.

So with that out of the way, let’s see where we stand at the end of page 1.

At this point we’ve seen some heavily armed pirates attack a container ship. Some decent action, but due to some formatting and stylistic choices, I already have a few indications that the writer is an amateur. Let’s see if that holds steady or changes on page 2…

Page 2

Page 2
(Click image to open/enlarge in a new window)

  • A nice metaphor: “All the monitors are alive with data…”
  • I like the evil Unseen Woman. Why don’t we get to see her full face? It’s interesting and sets up a mystery that my brain wants to solve. We’re also seeing a glimpse of the antagonist or co-antagonist, I assume.
  • On the previous page, the action broke off abruptly. I like how we get to find out how the events play out, but from a different, unexpected vantage point.
  • I’m not particularly fond of this sentence: “The early dawn casts eerie shadows on a still dark sky.” However, it certainly gives me a sense of the tone that the writer is going for.
  • The page ends with me wanting to find out more about the two “out of place” individuals. [Note: At a recent gathering with my professional screenwriting friends, we all compared notes as to what our primary mandates were when writing a script. I said, “To make every scene entertaining or engaging in some way.” One of my friends said, “To end each page with a hook, so they want to see what happens on the next page.”]

  • There’s an odd extra line space above the line: “The woman’s lips.”
  • Jumping Jehosaphat! What’s up with the irregular dialogue formatting?! A big red flag just got raised. I mean, come on, this is version 10 of this script and there’s still such an obvious, basic formatting issue? In a 133 page script, where you should be desperate for places to trim your pages down, it’s simply unacceptable.
  • Speaking of this dialogue block, why do we have both a parenthetical and a line description telling us to focus on this woman’s lips. In a script, redundancy = bad.
  • While we’re on that parenthetical, why isn’t it offset from the dialogue margin?
  • Paragraph 4: “It’s” — An incorrect homonym error. Should be “Its.”
  • Second to last paragraph: “A hand, extended from the wheelchair.” I like the direction of the shot (to focus on the hand), but why can’t that be written in the active present tense? That is, “A hand extends from the wheelchair.”
  • Same goes for the sentence that follows. “An expensive gold watch on the wrist, holding a passport, outwards, towards the face of the waiting, indifferent, female IMMIGRATION OFFICER.” It’s also a bit clumsy because the way it’s written, it seems that the gold watch is holding the passport.

Amateur Suspicion Level 4.2

Whoa boy! We’ve shot past threat level 3 and have jumped to “Confirmed!” That dialogue formatting faux pas was huge. Remember, this isn’t the first draft of this script. This is version 10.3. (Have I mentioned before why it’s a terrible idea to put a version number on a spec script?)

There are also a bunch of “little” issues with this page, which I’m mentally combining with the “little” issues of the last pages. Collectively I can say with certainty that these “little” issues don’t happen with such frequency in professional scripts. Especially not in the first few pages which are vitally important for impressing your reader.

I know there are many people who don’t get all worked up about “little” formatting or stylistic problems in their writing. But if you don’t realize how important it is to avoid these issues, you have a steep uphill climb ahead of you if you want your work to be taken seriously, and get noticed (in the right way).

Remember, readers are looking for any reason to discount your script. Don’t hand them any! These types of issues are easy to fix. They just take some care, and learning.

Maybe things will turn around on the next few pages…

Page 3 – 11

While it’s easy to dismiss a script because of its many “amateur moves,” it’s also the job of the reader to determine whether the story has merit. Now that I’ve established a baseline technical skill level, I can relax about the “little” issues and focus more on the overall set up. So I’m going to critique pages 3 through 11 collectively.

Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap - Pages 3-6     Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap - Pages 7-11

Pages 3-6 and Pages 7-11
(Click images to open/enlarge in a new window)

There were a lot of things done right in the first 10 or 11 pages, and the setup itself is good!
We were introduced to the key antagonists in interesting ways:
  • A mysterious female character (there was only one key female character in The Usual Suspects, so if I’m right, I’m not sure how mysterious she is — but still, a cool device).
  • An old man — is this Keyser Soze? His disguise at the airport (while it didn’t fool the person watching for him — if that was his intention) is an interesting scenario.

We were also introduced to the intriguing protagonist, who is whisked away in a helicopter to start his mission. He’s not the first choice for the mission, which gives him something to prove at the outset and makes us more likely to root for him.

The catalyst for the movie is quite clear — a nuclear bomb may have been loaded onto an airplane — whose pilot may be a Syrian terrorist! Meanwhile, there’s a mysterious ship that’s being pursued.

I don’t know any other way to say this — the writing was not of a professional caliber, and it’s hard to ignore. Everyone starts as an amateur, and this writer obviously has some good instincts, but a lot more care needs to be taken to elevate the material to the next level.

  • Learning when to start and end a scene is a critical skill for screenwriters to learn. If you can, always try to end your scene on a “button.” For example, here’s an excerpt from the top of page 3.

Good morning Mr. Walker. Welcome to the United Kingdom. May I ask the purpose of your visit.

I’m here to set the world on fire.

And what’s the real reason for your visit to the UK sir?

The extra line at the end with the Immigration Officer weakens the power of the Old Man’s great line. And why on earth is the old man off camera during that terrific moment?!Note: The way the scene ends on page 11, is a great example of  ending the scene on a button (so it’s hit and miss in this script).

  • In a recent article I talked about the importance of sentence variety in your scripts. On page 4, take a look at the last scene. 6 out of the 8 sentences start with “The.” Also on this page, the phrase, “Misty forest” is used twice in close proximity. And the word “misty” is used a third time after that on this page.
Honestly, I could point to something different on every page of this script, so there’s no need to belabor the point here. The writer’s skills are still developing.

If you’re going to write a sequel (to a script you have no rights to),  as a spec writing sample — your writing better knock the reader’s socks off. You already have one strike against you by even writing an unauthorized sequel (because it’s a common amateur move). So you had better wow the reader with your writing abilities.

There are a ton of rules that you have to learn to write scripts proficiently. And there’s almost always a correlation between the lack of these core writing skills that you see right away, and the bigger structural and plot issues that will manifest themselves later in the story.

At this point, I’ve seen enough problems to make me not want to spend my time reading the remainder of the script. However, if you’d like to read the latest version of the script in its entirety (we’re now at version 11.1), please do and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I wish Blink well. He’s a good sport, and like I said, he’s got some good instincts. He just needs to keep writing and shore up his writing skills a little. I look forward to hearing about his developing projects and will personally be cheering him on.

Do you find this kind of critique helpful?

Category: Script Notes, Writing  | 4 Comments

The Usual Suspects 2?An Official Sequel Script?

A while ago, I posted an article discussing the protagonist of The Usual Suspects. In the comments section, a “couple of people” had written about a sequel script that was “leaked from CAA.” So I became curious.

As suspected, both comments were written by the same individual trying to promote his own unofficial script. Can’t blame a guy for trying, but it reminded me of all the times I’d heard from amateurs who’d written a script based on someone else’s material (without permission), who were actually hoping to sell it.

It’s not gonna happen.

Anyway, the author of The Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap (who goes by the pseudonym: “Blink”) had a special kind of moxie, so I decided to contact him. He turned out to be a good sport, who fully admits that he never expected anything to come of his script, and that it was mostly written for fun.

However… Here’s where it gets interesting

He claims that his script, as a writing sample, landed him a six figure step deal to write another script!

BOOM! (That’s the sound of my head exploding!)

Yup, according to Blink, his unorthodox approach landed him a professional writing gig.

Now, of course, I can’t confirm there’s an actual deal in place. And the pseudonym doesn’t help. He claims the pseudonym is being used out of fear of being sued for using characters he doesn’t own. Personally I don’t think he needs to worry on that front. As long as he doesn’t try to sell the script, it’s just fan fiction. I think he’s probably more concerned about the spurious claims of his script being “leaked from CAA.”

But if it’s true, congratulations! It was a bold ploy (or a whimsical pursuit) that seems to have paid off big.

I don’t recommend anyone else follow his lead though, as you’re much better off focusing your efforts on an original feature film spec. If you knock it out of the park, chances are you’ll sell or option it — AND find yourself in contention for writing assignments.

Script Notes and Thoughts

Regardless, Blink seems pretty open about his script and marketing efforts. He even agreed to let me publicly critique the first few pages. I thought it could be a very worthwhile exercise to show screenwriters what runs through the twisted minds of script readers (or at least mine) while they’re reading your  script.

I’ve included images of each page, so you can play along…

Remember, these are all things that I’m thinking in my head, and wouldn’t necessarily cite in my official script notes.

Cover Page

Yes indeed — the mental critique starts on the Cover Page! First impressions can often be quite revealing.

The Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap - Cover PageCover Page
(Click image to open/enlarge in a new window)

  • I really like the subtitle of the script — “BEAR TRAP.” (Note: If this were an original spec script, it’s rarely a good idea to use a subtitle.)

  • “Screenplay by Blink” is not centered correctly. It looks like there’s an extra space or two in front of Blink which is throwing off the symmetry. [Sloppy? Intentional?]
  • The revision number. Unless you’re writing a shooting script, never put the revision number on your script. Producers, agents, managers, etc. know your script has gone through many iterations, but they still need to believe it’s a fresh script that’s hot off the presses. It’s a weird thing, but trust me on this one.

After the cover page, we’re already inside threat level 2. Let’s see how the first page goes…

Page 1

The Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap - Page 1 Page 1
(Click image to open/enlarge in a new window)

  • An exciting pirate attack to kick things off!
  • Decent use of verbs and evocative language (e.g. churns, scramble, scuttle)

  • Why doesn’t the quote have a period at the end of it?
  • “T-MINUS 976.54.02″ — What does that mean? 976 days? 976 hours? 976 minutes?
  • A monster sentence right out of the gate! — ”Three modern 15 meter open launches, bristling with deck mounted cannons and machine guns, and black men dressed in singlets, assault rifles, and ammunition belts, power through the water towards the container ship about 1000 meters away.” — Perhaps it can be broken up a bit, to give emphasis to the different shots that would no doubt be used. It also took me a second to know that we were now looking at separate boats, and not part of the container ship. Maybe if the phrase “15 meter open launch boats” was used instead of “15 meter open launches” then dummies like me could more readily visualize things.
  • A quick scan shows a 6 line paragraph. That’s probably a couple lines too long for an action sequence.
  • There’s duplication of action. In the 6 line paragraph, there’s this sentence: “Others stand observing in-board navigation and GPS screens, holding on tight as the vessels crash through the water.” But then in the next paragraph we repeat the information: “Onboard the lead launch, the men are intense, but calm, as they watch the screens on the dashboard, or tightly grasp their weapons as they brace themselves on the squabs.” We already know they’re watching screens and bracing themselves.
  • In the action lines there are a couple uses of single dashes (-) instead of double dashes (–). It’s something you commonly see in amateur scripts, and rarely in professional scripts.
  • The last sentence of the opening scene: “A few crew members scuttle for cover on the deck, as shells continue to spray the vessel.” — I thought the use of the word “spray” was an odd choice for cannon fire. How fast and frequently can these cannon’s fire? Perhaps there’s a better word. “Bombard”? Or perhaps changing the sentence to: “… as shells, bullets continue to spray the vessel” would work better.
  • The first sentence of the second scene: “The 60 meter luxury super yacht, the ‘ISIS’, lies moored, inconspicuous amidst the indulgent opulence all around it.” — I’m being told that there’s “indulgent opulence” all around the yacht. But what does that mean? Are there obese men in floating lounge chairs eating caviar in the water? Is it referring to the opulence of Monaco? The other boats? How is it opulent? What are we seeing? Be careful when using vague conceptual descriptions.

Okay, let’s see where we’re at after page one in my mental and completely subjective assessment:

Uh oh. It’s creepin’ up (and so is the length of this post)! I think that’s enough for today. I’ll look at a couple more pages in the next post.

In the meantime, if you’d like to take a peek at Blink’s unauthorized sequel script in its entirety, you can find it here: The Usual Suspects 2: Bear Trap (302 KB PDF)

Do you find this kind of critique helpful? Let me know.

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Category: Script Notes  | 5 Comments