Noisy oil exploration
disrupts marine life
Fossil-fuel operations in
the Arctic will inevitably
compromise habitat — regardless
of spills (Nature 472, 163; 2011).
The seismic airgun surveys
used for hydrocarbon
exploration and for monitoring
deposit conditions can disrupt
foraging behaviour of bowhead
whales at long distances. They
also seriously diminish fisheries
catches of haddock and other
Arctic species, and have halted
the migration of fin whales (a
non-Arctic species) at a range of
more than 175 kilometres.
Bowhead and beluga whales
avoid oil-derrick operations.
Many other noises associated
with fossil-fuel exploration
and production — such
as construction, shipping,
transport helicopters and
underwater acoustic telemetry
— have a deleterious impact
on the marine acoustic
environment.
We do not yet know about
the impacts of noise from
thruster-stabilized exploration
Data archiving is a
good investment
We have found that ongoing
financial investment in data-
archiving infrastructure yields an
impressive scientific return, and
believe that it should be whole-
heartedly supported by research
funding agencies (see, for
example, go.nature.com/nzftf3).
We used Dryad (see http://
datadryad.org), an international,
open, cost-effective data
repository for the biological
sciences, to estimate the cost
of archiving data from more than
10,000 publications. We found
that these could be curated and
the data preserved at an annual
cost of about US$400,000.
As an example of how much
research is typically published
per grant dollar, core grants in
population and community
ecology from the US National
Science Foundation averaged
3–4 publications per $100,000
of grant between 2000 and
2005 (S. Reyes, A. Tessier and
S. Mazer, unpublished results).
That is, $400,000 invested in
original research resulted in
about 16 papers.
Dryad cannot yet tell us how
effective data archives are in
facilitating primary research
publications, but the Gene
Expression Omnibus (GEO)
database at the US National
Center for Biotechnology
Information offers some insight.
To estimate data reuse, we
searched the full text of articles
in PubMed Central for mention
of any of the 2,711 data sets
deposited in GEO in 2007.
We excluded articles whose
authors’ names overlapped
with those depositing the data
set. Extrapolating the 338 hits
in PubMed Central to all of
PubMed, we estimate that the
Address education
inequality in India
Narrowing the educational
achievement gap between
different social groups in India
remains a major challenge,
despite 60 years of affirmative-
action policy (Nature 472,
24–26; 2011). Using publicly
available data from the country’s
top medical school, the All
India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS), we found that
performance was poor among
students admitted under a
government scheme for socially
disadvantaged groups.
All government and
government-aided institutions in
India allocate a fixed percentage
of places on educational courses
to socially and economically
disadvantaged students. But in
1995–2005, out of more than
600 indigenous tribes with access
to such positions, one small group
from northern India accounted
for 36% of students admitted to
the AIIMS.
Between 1998 and 2006,
socially deprived students
accepted into the AIIMS
scored 13.6% less in the
entrance exam than students
from non-disadvantaged
social classes (P < 0.001). In
1989–98, such students also
had double the dropout rate of
non-disadvantaged students
(6% versus 3%; P > 0.05). In
the ten years for which data
are available (1995–2005),
61.4% of students admitted to
Fund experiments on
atmospheric hazards
The radioactivity released from
Japan’s damaged Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant has
increased the urgency to fund
tracer experiments that will
improve models of atmospheric
dispersion and reinforce
confidence in emergency
procedures.
The last major tracer
experiments were conducted
in the mid-1990s. So the
predictive capabilities of current
atmospheric-dispersion models
have not been properly tested,
hindering their evaluation and
development.
To generate more
observational data, multiple-scale
atmospheric tracer experiments
should use non-hazardous,
climate-neutral substances and a
realistic release term with varying
source strengths. Modellers
could estimate emissions in
real time using a limited set of
observations without knowing
the actual release rates, and later
improve their models and data-
reconstruction methods on the
basis of the real source terms and
measurements.
Stefano Galmarini European
Commission Joint Research Centre,
Italy. Andreas Stohl Norwegian
Institute for Air Research, Norway.
Gerhard Wotawa Central
Institute for Meteorology and
Geodynamics, Austria.
gerhard.wotawa@zamg.ac.at
Establishing an environmental-
extension system at the township
level could also help to prevent
overuse of fertilizers and
pesticides.
Peng Gong, Lu Liang and
Qiang Zhang Institute for
Global Change Studies, Tsinghua
University, China.
penggong@tsinghua.edu.cn
GEO 2007 data sets made
third-party contributions to more
than 1,150 published articles
by the end of 2010, and reuse
continues to accumulate rapidly
(H. A. Piwowar, T. J. Vision and
M. C. Whitlock Dryad Digital
Repository doi:10.5061/dryad.
j1fd7; 2011).
Assuming that Dryad has a
comparable rate of reuse and
collects at least 2,500 data sets
annually, an investment of
$400,000 in one year should
contribute to more than 1,000
papers in the next four years —
far more than the accepted value
for a research dollar.
Heather A. Piwowar Dryad,
and the National Evolutionary
Synthesis Center, Durham, North
Carolina, USA.
hpiwowar@nescent.org
Todd J. Vision Dryad, and the
University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Michael C. Whitlock
Dryad, and the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver,
Canada.
platforms and from sea-floor
processing equipment such as
wellhead chokes, separators
and re-injectors, which operate
out of sight and under extreme
pressures.
In collaboration with the
World Wildlife Fund and the
Natural Resources Defense
Council, we are developing a
peer-reviewed website that can
be understood by a lay audience
in order to explore some of
these issues (see go.nature.
com/5vuebe).
Michael Stocker Ocean
Conservation Research,
Lagunitas, California, USA.
mstocker@msa-design.com
government-reserved positions
had to resit examinations in at
least one subject, compared with
15.2% of non-disadvantaged
students (P < 0.001).
To address such inequality,
India should adopt measures
that have proved successful in
other countries. These include
wider access to quality primary
education; standardized
assessment of students; and
academic support for students
who are lagging behind. More
research to assess this inequality
is also needed to inform
education policy.
Manas Kaushik, Subha Ramani
Boston University, USA.
mkaushik@post.harvard.edu
1 9 M A Y 2 0 1 1 | V O L 4 7 3 | N A T U R E | 2 8 5
CORRESPONDENCE COMMENT
© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved