Funders Call for Bio-Preprints

SOURCE: ARXIV/PREPUBMED/BIORXIV mapping studies and experiments of which the Windpean Atlas project, of acollection wind- €14-millionthe (US$14.9-million) New Euro greatest inhilly or forested regions. Mann leads Denmark near Copenhagen. And losses are researcher at Technical the University of up to 30%,says Jakob Mann, awind-energy change amount the of produced energy by wind. But just can a 10% shift in wind speed National Laboratory inLivermore, California. a meteorologist at Lawrence the Livermore community,”energy says Wharton, Sonia atmospheric models for entirethe wind- “Lessons translate will learned into improved able to apply findings their inother locations. datadetailed from Perdigão, researchers be will works on project. the “It’s brilliant.” where world,” inthe he says. “What to we do is are portable to any trying lion from National the Foundation. Science ing at Perdigão, are who with $3.4mil funded Notre Dame inIndiana. fluid-dynamics engineer at University the of 100–500 metres, says Harindra Fernando, a wind mappingscale down to resolutions of Perdigão experiment is first to the push large- terns of on 1 scale the techniquelaser-based lidar. wind flow in three dimensionsscale using the second. And 22 instruments study will small- to ridges, the and 20 times per perpendicular ture, humidity and other factors, along both to measure direction, wind speed, tempera includes 54 masts outfitted with instruments restthe throughout February. The set-up up and and running, researchers install will engineer at is who working Cornell at site. the biggest gusts, says Barthelmie, a wind Rebecca steadythe avoiding winds while damage by the can help turbine engineers advantage take of of ridges. the Knowing where such gusts occur doorthe off trailer atemporary on office one to 40 8 across and down two steep ridges at around one turbine. Winds at site the generally sweep industry, and Perdigão the ridges already host replace data going back 30 years,” says Palma. 1980s.“We’reUK, inthe going to update and ment on and based around in Askervein, a hill measure Porto inPortugal and headof project. the at specialist University the a wind-energy of of atmospheric flow, says Palma, José Laginha of sort that— the detail can improve models ridge that windaffected patterns on next the in 2015found turbulence downwind of one project in Portugal is largest. the

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------M a c m i l l L a all together.”all and wide, there’s a central place that brings it that, although this content is distributed far Trust. “We want away to find of ensuring at London-based Wellcome the services tal quickly,”very Kiley, says Robert of head digi supporttheir for concept. the othereral leading announced funders also Health (NIH), Wellcome the Trust and sev preprint site. The USNational Institutes of prints,to issued build afundingcentral a call group of biologists that advocates for pre preprintthe literature for insights. anyify confusion and make it easier to mine — a move that its backers argue should clar a ‘one-stop shop’ for life-sciences preprints all and scientists is throwing its weight behind ences and paleorXiv for palaeontology. for even AgriXiv sci agricultural chology; psyArXiv forChemRxiv forpsy chemistry; too, provide opportunities for life sciences: up past year, inthe and or will, these, soon tion on arXiv too. But other sites have sprung bioRχiv,biology-focused and sec abiology ing roster of venues for preprints. There’s the arXiv —life has sciences afast-growserver gravitate to one repository ‘preprint’ —the BY EWENCALLAWAY Biomedical scientists argue for centralized server. hub bio-preprints Funders call for n

PUBLISHING PEPINTS ONTHEISE attracts tentimesasmanypreprints, mostlyinphysics,computerscienceandmathematics. Life scientistsare increasingly postingpreprints online,althoughthemucholderarXivserver P “The landscape could become“The fragmented On 13February, ASAPbio, agrass-roots Now, a coalition of biomedical funders The details of the service are inchoate:The details of service the its u

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r e s e heartedly as physical scientists have. Physics biologists to embrace preprints as whole Proponents hope that acentral site lure will ALL YOUR PREPRINTS HERE plansDC to launch soon. inWashington Society American Chemical with arXiv and with ChemRxiv, which the print sites, ASAPbio wants site the to mesh ing content from pre other biology-focused director of ASAPbio. But as well as aggregat and funders, their says Jessica Polka, the fields scientific on depend specific will scope moment, researchers want who to mine Francisco, and a founder of ASAPbio. At the biologist at University the of San California, literature for insights, says Ron Vale, acell scientists automated use software to mine the sitethe in 1991. University inIthaca, New York, founded who Ginsparg, atheoretical physicist at Cornell prefer ‘one-stop shopping’,” says Paul ‘Preprintsscripts in2016(see on rise’). the server, bioRχiv, around posted 5,000manu whereas largest the life-sciences preprint physics, mathematics and computer science, more than 100,000manuscripts each year in in winning grants and handles jobs. ArXiv mining priority for a discovery, as well as prints are now accepted indeter currency findings online before And rivals. their pre asjournals, researchers race to release their months before publication in peer-reviewed manuscripts routinely appear at arXiv.org 2016 r v e A central preprint help could also service “One of lessons the of arXiv is that users d . 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 2006 Eight websites: arXiv q-bio Nature Precedings PeerJ BioRχiv The Winnower Preprints.org Wellcome OpenResearch F1000 Research 2008 Preprints 2010

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peer-reviewed papers face myriad hurdles, Other funders that have come out in support central preprint service emphasize that it’s no from publisher copyrights to disparate web- of the central service include the UK Medical replacement for peer-reviewed journals. They sites that make bulk-downloading difficult. Research Council, the Howard Hughes Medical note that the vast majority (more than 80% in “We’re trying to think of preprints as data,” Institute (HHMI), the Canadian Institutes of some fields) of arXiv posts wind up in journals. says Vale. It would be both technically and Health Research and the European Research “We really see this as a complement to the jour- legally straightforward for computers to crawl Council. “That’s going to send a strong mes- nal system, rather than anything that could be through the collection of preprints on the sage to the science community that this kind threatening,” says Polka, who adds that a central central site, where they would appear under of communication is encouraged,” says Vale. service will not attempt to organize peer review. an open-access licence. That would be a missed opportunity, says Polka would not say how much ASAPbio CULTURAL CHALLENGE Rebecca Lawrence, managing director of expects the site to cost, but arXiv funding totals Jason Hoyt, chief executive of the journal London-based F1000Research, which posts about US$925,000 a year, paid for by a global PeerJ (which also operates a preprint service), papers before they are peer reviewed (but collective of more than 200 research institu- says he supports a central preprint site and does not consider these as preprints). She tions and funders. Ginsparg says expenses for that his company might bid to help create would like to see peer review occur through the life-sciences site should be around $5 a it. But such a site will succeed only if it can a central preprint service, thereby reducing manuscript, once it is publishing tens of thou- induce a large proportion of life scientists to the influence that traditional journals have sands of manuscripts each year. Funders who view preprints as the dominant currency for on scientists’ careers. support the site have not yet committed to pay- career progression, he says. “The challenge is “It’s a great shift in the right direction,” ing for it, but Kiley expects that they will do so to overturn the thinking in biology.” she says, “but I think we need to go a lot once details have been hammered out. ASAPbio and the funders supporting a further.” ■

CHEMISTRY Elusive triangulene created by moving atoms one at a time Researchers used microscope tip to make unstable hydrocarbon with ‘molecular surgery’.

BY PHILIP BALL have tried hard, and failed, to make already,” the method is unlikely to work for those with says Leo Gross, who led the IBM team at the complicated shapes or structures. esearchers at IBM have created an firm’s laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. Triangulene is similar to a fragment of elusive molecule by knocking around The creation of triangulene demonstrates graphene, the atom-thick material in which atoms using a needle-like microscope a new type of chemical synthesis, says Philip carbon atoms are joined in a hexagonal mesh. Rtip. The flat, triangular fragment of a mesh Moriarty, a nanoscientist who specializes in The new molecule is made up of six hexagons of carbon atoms, called triangulene1, is too molecular manipulation at the University of of carbon joined along their edges to form a unstable to be made by conventional chemical Nottingham, UK. In conventional synthesis, triangle, with hydrogen atoms around the synthesis, and could find use in electronics. chemists react molecules together to build up sides (see ‘Radical triangle’). Two of the outer This isn’t the first time that atomic manipula- larger structures. Here, by contrast, atoms on carbon atoms contain unpaired electrons that tion has been used to create unstable molecules individual molecules were physically manipu- can’t pair up to make a stable bond. that couldn’t be made conventionally — but this lated using a microscope. Such a molecule is highly unstable because one is especially desirable. “Triangulene is the But making molecules one at a time will the unpaired electrons tend to react with any- first molecule that we’ve made that chemists be useful only in particular situations. And thing around them. “As soon as you synthesize it, it will oxidize,” says Niko Pavliček, a member of the IBM team. So far, the closest conven- ADICAL T IANGLE tional synthesis has come to making molecules Triangulene is a at molecule made up of a hexagonal of this sort involves buffering the reactive mesh of carbon and hydrogen atoms (left). IBM researchers 2 made the molecule by manipulating atoms with a scanning edges with bulky hydrocarbon appendages . 1 SOURCE: REF. probe microscope, and then imaged it (right). The IBM team turned to a scanning probe microscope, which has a needle-sharp tip that Unpaired ‘feels’ a material’s shape. The technique is usually electron used to image molecules, by measuring attrac- tive forces between the tip and sample, or the electric currents that pass between them. The IBM team has shown3 that, if the tip has a small molecule such as carbon monoxide attached to it, force microscopy can provide images of such high resolution that they resemble the ball-and-

Hydrogen atoms on each corner not shown. stick diagrams of chemistry textbooks. Gross’s team has already demonstrated4