arissa Posted June 2, 2014 Report Share Posted June 2, 2014 They found a eyeless cavefish in southern Indiana and I just read the story about it, they are saying it is the first new species of cavefish in almost 50 years. I hope they find more, it seems we have taken a back seat when it comes to development and exploration lately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eclogite Posted June 3, 2014 Report Share Posted June 3, 2014 The fish is described in a paper published in the Open Access journal, Zoo Keys. I am intrigued by your comment "it seems we have taken a backseat.......". Who is the 'we' you refer to? Americans? Scientists in general? Icthyologists in particular? Regardless, what makes you feel that particular "we" has taken a back seat? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arissa Posted June 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted June 3, 2014 Americans yes. The older I get the more I feel that the term "lazy American" seems true. It could just be some of the news outlets but sometimes it is really hard to find decent and recent news considered what we in this country are doing, or not doing for that matter. It kind of reminds me of how it was all the rave of going up into space to explore and then poof something happened and space exploration too a nose dive into the ground. Most of the things I find out about (new speices like this for example) are rarely coming from any American. I guess it just kind of makes me feel bad for the country I call home, it seems like we should be doing more or at least for people like me who are fans, we should be hearing more about what is being done rather than trying to find news like a "needle in a haystack". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eclogite Posted June 5, 2014 Report Share Posted June 5, 2014 Americans yes. The older I get the more I feel that the term "lazy American" seems true. It could just be some of the news outlets but sometimes it is really hard to find decent and recent news considered what we in this country are doing,Do you look at the weekly Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? http://www.pnas.org/content/current In this weeks issue there are around one hundred (100) research papers. The majority of the papers are authored exclusively by Americans, or researchers working in American institutions, or contain a preponderance of American based scientists. The abstracts are available immediately and the full papers 18 months(?) after publication. Some papers are available in full immediately. Do you use Google Scholar? For example, using the search term "new species" and restricting the search to 2014, turned up 20,900 hits. Adding USA to the search reduces this to a little over 5,000. To develop your analogy I think this is more like finding a needle in a needle factory. You get far more than you want, or likely need. it seems like we should be doing more or at least for people like me who are fans,That might be nice, but I do feel the tools are there for you to be able to locate this information yourself. And finally, I would challenge your patriotic take on the subject. Science should have no frontiers. It might be nice to see ones own country advancing knowledge, but isn't the important and the fun thing that knowldge is advanced? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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