Via Nature:

Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.

While the debate between the merits and pitfalls of Open Access and Peer Review rages on, those with the greatest economic stake in its outcome are pulling no punches in trying to ensure their survival.

This is a very clever "periodic table" listing different visualization methods.

You can mouse over each "visualization element" to see an example of each one.

It also distinguishes between different visualization categories: data visualization, information, concepts, strategies, metaphors and compound visualization.

This could be a very useful neat little tool to help explain to someone the differences between two visualization methods, or to learn about new ones.

Link.

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about the dichotomy between scientists and engineers. While similar in many ways, scientists and engineers have proven to be very different in terms of adaptability, use of resources, and application of theories. While these and other differences are essential to both groups, I can't help but feel that both scientists and engineers would stand to gain much from opening up dialogue with each other a bit more.

I myself studied civil engineering here in Montreal, though I later abandoned that career choice because, well it was a career choice, not a personal choice. In other words, it seemed like a good idea because I could get a decent job afterwards, with a decent starting salary. That's the reason so many of us do what we do in this capital-driven economic system we've built(indeed, we're programmed to think this way from a very young age), but in the end, it seemed like an awfully shallow reason to become an engineer, scientist or anything, really.