CAS numbers are not public domain, are they?

"Work created before the existence of copyright and patent laws also form part of the public domain. The Bible and the inventions of Archimedes are in the public domain. However, copyright may exist in translations or new formulations of this work." [Wikipedia]

As posted by Tony is the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) discouraging using their CAS services for assigning correct CAS numbers to structures for any third party database. Wikipedia is a source of structures, which is public domain due to its GNU FDL. Still, this does not imply that any translation of structures, e.g. CAS numbers, are in the public domain, too. Honestly, this raises a serious problem for curating CAS numbers on Wikipedia and this raises indeed the question, if they should not be dropped from Wikipedia, and any other information source, at all? Is it not better having no information, than having wrong information?

A CAS number is for me only one certain translation of a chemical structure. In this case, the only source and creator for CAS numbers is the American Chemical Society. CAS claims that their services can not be used for curating other data sources. Does this also mean that people can not use CAS numbers from publications?

"The public domain can also be defined in contrast to trademarks. Names, logos, and other identifying marks used in commerce can be restricted as proprietary trademarks for a single business to use. Trademarks can be maintained indefinitely, but they can also lapse through disuse, negligence, or widespread misuse, and enter the public domain. It is possible, however, for a lapsed trademark to become proprietary again, leaving the public domain." [Wikipedia]

And does this also mean that scientists are basically not allowed publishing CAS numbers and structures in scientific publications? How can CAS numbers then be used at all, if we can not store this information?

Many questions, and who will answer them? And, if they got answered what is the way forward for getting curated structures within the public domain? I would say (again, this time in nicer words): 'get organized scientists worldwide!' If CAS can do it, we can do it? It may take longer to get the party started, but if we do not start it will never happen.
"An ideal collaborative resource would be designed for large-scale data mining, contain curated historical data, and have data standards and deposition tools that could constantly bring in data from the published literature. ... In other words, the party might take longer to get started than hoped for, but it should be worth the wait." [M. Baker, DOI 10.1038/nrd2148]

Source: CAS numbers are not public domain, are they?

Biotechnology to get separate ministry in India

The government is planning to upgrade the department of biotechnology (DBT) to the status of a full-fledged ministry. At present DBT is under the Union ministry of science and technology and is responsible for promoting researches for development of genetically modified (GM) crops and other biotechnological applications in agriculture and health sciences.

Speaking at the 22nd Foundation day of DBT , the Union science and technology minister, Kapil Sibal said, "DBT is 22 years old where 27 people are working. As the 21st century would be the century of biotechnology with researches and applications being carried out across the globe, the time is ripe that DBT be upgraded to the status of an independent ministry or a commission."

He said that DBT had an annual budget of Rs 9,000 crore as compared to Rs 450 crore budget for the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). He said that biotechnology had the potential for improving agricultural productivity and combating climate change. It can help in sustaining 9% growth rate in the Economy and achieving 4% growth rate in agriculture. Biotechnology had also given lot of employment opportunities to women, he said.

Smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research

Yes i am talking about the development in the field of literature search and scientific publication search. Looking beyond NLP some of the advancements and service models based on NLP and other advanced methods. Today to the user's delight there are quite a few companies and organization that provide services that absolutely make an scientist life easy!

These services revolve around customized alert services for selected search terms, specific research area of interest even more so pertaining to a list of custom key-word and search terms that the service providers allow the user to choose form. The scientist can simply subscribe to such service, sit back and wait for daily updates. The updates are provided on a day to day basis at his desktop.

He gets abstract summarization, full text summarization so that he need not actually go through the ordeal of reading through pages of scientific literature. Some once else does the job for him and just pick up the right things that he would look for in such papers. It is a very interactive service where on a daily basis the user can keep track of the quality of the service and set it right so that he can make sure that he just gets the right things he ever wants and nothing else other than that.

Over and above the service is provided using cutting edge technology, attractive web interface. Such interface come in all colour with floating dockable modules which is easy to use and some smart tools too. These smart tools enable the user to track, analyze, visualize and develop relationships among blocks of data that is being provided as "lego blocks".

"Knowledge is power" but knowledge is money too big money these days!

As an estimate companies providing such services are looking at a market size of $770 million worldwide which spans across verticals like bio-cheminformatics, knowledge management and content database. While the estimated market size for computational chemistry and knowledge management for life science vertical is approximately $400 million.

Controversies in science

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/controversiesinscience

RSS