Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist - 4 views
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Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world? Whose monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist? You won't guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but - wait for it - to academic publishers.
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fully agree ... "But an analysis by Deutsche Bank reaches different conclusions. "We believe the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process … if the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40% margins wouldn't be available." Far from assisting the dissemination of research, the big publishers impede it, as their long turnaround times can delay the release of findings by a year or more." very nice also: "Government bodies, with a few exceptions, have failed to confront them. The National Institutes of Health in the US oblige anyone taking their grants to put their papers in an open-access archive. But Research Councils UK, whose statement on public access is a masterpiece of meaningless waffle, relies on "the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies". You bet they will. In the short term, governments should refer the academic publishers to their competition watchdogs, and insist that all papers arising from publicly funded research are placed in a free public database. In the longer term, they should work with researchers to cut out the middleman altogether, creating - along the lines proposed by Björn Brembs of Berlin's Freie Universität - a single global archive of academic literature and data. Peer-review would be overseen by an independent body. It could be funded by the library budgets which are currently being diverted into the hands of privateers. The knowledge monopoly is as unwarranted and anachronistic as the corn laws. Let's throw off these parasitic overlords and liberate the research that belongs to us."
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It is a really great article and the first time I read something in this direction. FULLY AGREE as well. Problem is I have not much encouraging to report from the Brussels region...
Erdős-Bacon number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 2 views
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ever heard of the Erdős-Bacon number? :-)
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and actors probably ask who cares about Erdős :) The network of actors who co-star in movies is a famous one among networks people. Kevin Bacon became famous in that network because of fans of his who could from memory trace the paths of a large number of actors back to him :) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon#History If you have you publications in http://academic.research.microsoft.com/, it gives you a nice tool to visualize your graph up to Erdős. Apparently I have a path of length 4, and several of length 5: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/VisualExplorer#36695545&1112639
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and for the actors http://oracleofbacon.org/
981.pdf (Objet application/pdf) - 6 views
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Where do you want to go to do academic research and still have a decent salary ? certainly not sweden, France or Germany... prefer the UK, US or the top... Switzerland !
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Sure, 44k for a full professor, that's a bad joke! Just my experience from conferences: high saleries do not make good research, I rather suspect there's something like an optimal salery. People with too high saleries often seem to feel obliged to make much noise (whatever the reason might be), the result is not research but PR campagns.
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I agree ! Just a correction, net salary for a full professor starting in France: 36456 euros/year... For a McF (equivalent junior prof.): 20160 euros/year, and of course a shitload of admistrative tasks and teaching. I don't know why i still dream to have a position...?
VPN Gate Overview - 4 views
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interesting academic experiment by Japanese students from Tsukuka ....
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The idea seems similar to the one used by Tor (https://www.torproject.org/), which afaik is the go-to solution if you plan criminal activity over the internet.
Suburban space oddities | 1843 - 0 views
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"The forecasts were the product of a series of "summer studies" led by NASA's Ames Research Centre and Stanford University, at which top academics, scientists, and engineers gathered to imagine how future space colonies could look. Artists gave life to the blueprints, producing a stunning series of images that look like a cross between CGI real-estate models (complete with would-be residents smugly sipping wine) and the fantastical worlds of Isaac Asimov."
StarCraft AI Competition | Expressive Intelligence Studio - 4 views
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The Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz will be hosting a StarCraft competition: This competition enables academic researchers to evaluate their AI systems in a robust commercial RTS environment. The final matches will be held live with commentary. Exhibition matches will also be held between skilled human players and the top performing bots.
Check your country impact on science!!! - 8 views
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Did you know that papers in space science are among the most quoted? Check how your country is doing .... you will be surprised :)
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this might also be an indication / point to an issue with their data concerning space science publications ... quite surprising indeed that all Europeans are doing so well in this field
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Something should be wrong, for Spain I can read: Economics & Business 4.54 -28 Only minus 28!
The big data brain drain - 3 views
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Echoing this, in 2009 Google researchers Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira penned an article under the title The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data. In it, they describe the surprising insight that given enough data, often the choice of mathematical model stops being as important - that particularly for their task of automated language translation, "simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models based on less data." If we make the leap and assume that this insight can be at least partially extended to fields beyond natural language processing, what we can expect is a situation in which domain knowledge is increasingly trumped by "mere" data-mining skills. I would argue that this prediction has already begun to pan-out: in a wide array of academic fields, the ability to effectively process data is superseding other more classical modes of research.
Why mental illness is on the rise in academia - 2 views
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Interesting discussion is going about, on how work anxiety is spreading in academia, with possible mental consequences. And with robust links to the "Doing What You Love" motto of life/work. Could be proven an unsustainable model though. Recalling of Higgs' recent declaration, that today's Academia productivity demands would be hectic for him, could point to the direction of the problem and the solution...?
Physics Limericks - 0 views
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Always check your units! Your units are wrong! cried the teacher. Your church weighs six joules - what a feature! And the people inside Are four hours wide, And eight gauss away from the preacher! How Fermi could estimate things! Like the well-known Olympic ten rings, And the one-hundred states, And weeks with ten dates, And birds that all fly with one... wings. For things moving free or at rest, Observe what the first law does best. It defines a key frame, Inertial by name, Where the second law then is expressed.
Massively collaborative mathematics : Article : Nature - 28 views
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peer-to-peer theorem-proving
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it seems that i should visit you guys at estec... :-)
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urgently!! btw: we will have the ACT christmas dinner on the 9th in the evening ... are you coming?
Open innovation and Apple .... - 6 views
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interesting blog entry
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this guy is actually one of the most fervent supporters of open innovation and tries to promote it whereever he can ... his problem is that at least at first view Apple does not confirm his theory ...
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lol, the 'about' page is priceless bullshit: http://www.15inno.com/about-15inno/ "Corporate Mind Exchange (CMX) events in which corporate innovation leaders discuss relevant challenges and issues. No academics, consultants or start-ups; just corporate practitioners." We are doing it wrong, Leo. We don't need no stinking Universities! "Network groups in which 12-20 innovation leaders from different companies meet 4-6 times annually to discuss challenges and issues. Workshops and events with thought leaders and practitioners." What the hell are "innovation/thought leaders"?
The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.
He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."
Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.
Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize - and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".
Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "
By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."
Higgs revealed that his career had also been jeopardised by his disagreements in the 1960s and 7