Cucurbita pepo by Evan Swigart (photography) and T. Michael Keesey (vectorization)
Monthly Archives: November 2013
Where are the senior women in STEM? | Dawn Bazely
So, here\’s the thing: I\’m a female Biology professor, and when I was an undergraduate (1977-81 UofT), there were more or less 50:50 male to female students in my classes. This bottom-up input of women into Biology has been happening for decades. So, thirty years on, where are the other female Full Professors? In fact, where are the senior women in the government, industry and even in Biology-related NGOs?
Lethal Autonomous Robots (“Killer Robots”) | Center for Ethics & Technology | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA
Lethal Autonomous Robots (\”Killer Robots\”)
Monday, 18 November 2013 05:00 pm to 07:00 pm EST
Location:
Global Learning Center (in Tech Square), room 129
WATCH the simultaneously streamed WEBCAST at:
http://proed.pe.gatech.edu/gtpe/pelive/tech_debate_111813/
Debate and Q&A for both
Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs) are machines that can decide to kill. Such a technology has the potential to revolutionize modern warfare and more. The need for understanding LARs is essential to decide whether their development and possible deployment should be regulated or banned. Are LARs ethical?
What’s Impact? Whose Specialty?
I gave a webinar presentation yesterday for ASERL. It was recorded and can be viewed here.
Here’s the abstract:
What’s ‘Impact’? Whose Speciality? J. Britt Holbrook, Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, discusses his research on developing indicators for the impact of scholarly communication. Holbrook argues that, although libraries, librarians, and information scientists can play a useful role in developing such indicators, there are inherent risks in too much standardization. Our common goal should be to develop impact indicators that maximize the creativity and freedom of individuals to conduct excellent research.
Comments welcome, of course.
PhyloPic Phryday Photo
Cryolophosaurus by Brad McFeeters (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey)
Apparently NSF Grant Applicants Still Allergic To Broader Impacts
The Consortium of Social Science Associations held its Annual Colloquium on Social And Behavioral Sciences and Public Policy earlier this week. Amongst the speakers was Acting National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Cora Marrett.* As part of her remarks, she addressed how the Foundation was implementing the Coburn Amendment, which added additional criteria to funding political science research projects through NSF.
The first batch of reviews subject to these new requirements tookplace in early 2013. In addition to the usual criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts, the reviewers looked at the ‘most meritorious’ proposals and examined how they contribute to economic development and/or national security. For the reviews scheduled for early 2014, all three ‘criteria’ will be reviewed at once.
Since researchers don’t like to be told what to do, they aren’t happy. But Marrett asserts through her remarks that this additional review will not really affect the…
View original post 183 more words
‘Big Data’ Is Bunk, Obama Campaign’s Tech Guru Tells University Leaders – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education
“The ‘big’ there is purely marketing,” Mr. Reed said. “This is all fear … This is about you buying big expensive servers and whatnot.”
Also funny what he says about his own education ….
PhyloPic Phryday Photo
Cetacea by Scott Hartman
Me on the Web, According to ImpactStory.org and Altmetric.com
Impact Story is one of the two altmetrics tools that allow individual researchers to find out something about the social media buzz surrounding their activities; the other is Altmetric.com. Although other developers exist, I can’t seem to figure out how I, as an individual, can use their tools (I’m looking at you, Plum Analytics).
There are a few major differences between Impact Story and Altmetric.com from a user standpoint. First, Impact Story is not for profit, while Altmetric.com is a business. Second, Impact Story steers one to create a collection of products that together tell a story of one’s impact. Altmetric.com, on the other hand, steers one to generate figures for the impact of individual products. Third, Impact Story allows for a range of products, including those tagged with URLs as well as DOIs; Altmetric.com only works with DOIs. This means that Impact Story can gather info on things like blog posts, while Altmetric.com is focused on scholarly articles. Finally, and this is a big difference, Impact Story deemphasizes numbers, while Atlmetric.com assigns a number, the Altmetric score, to each product.
Here is my latest Impact Story.
Here is one of my products according to Altmetric; here’s another; and another.
It’s interesting to see how Impact Story and Altmetric differ, both in their approaches and in terms of what they find on the same products.
I think the implications of these tools are enormous. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts!
jbrittholbrook 