daniel's blog

More in an article entitled "A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone Technology", published recently by Yair Granot, Antoni Ivorra and Boris Rubinsky in PLoS ONE.

The title of this post is a sentence taken from a report on citation statistics prepared by the
International Mathematical Union (IMU). Another such take-home message is "Research is too important to measure its value with only a single coarse tool." Given that citation statistics are heavily used in assessing research and researchers, young scientists might gain a lot from investing some time to familiarize themselves with this subject.

For details, see
http://pyrn.ways.org/pyrn-second-life .

The Mother-Child Health International Research Network have recently released a video documentary about a project of their's which helps pre-term infants in Columbia to significantly increase their chances of survival. Take a look!

WAYS has long been offering tools for social interaction between young scientists - every registered user can blog, announce science events like conferences, or comment on what others have written. Now we have started a collaboration with the German science news channel Wisskomm, which will bring you science news in video format on a weekly basis. For the moment, the service is in German only, but an English version is being planned. To get an idea on how this will look like, take a look below:

Winners will be presented at the International "Water and Film" Events in Istanbul (18 to 21 March 2009, cf.
announcement).

Submission deadline: Aug 15, 2008. Details at
http://www.expozaragoza2008.es/WaterTribune/Watercinema/seccion=... .

The Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
would like to invite you to a Leipziger Neuromusik Gesprächskreis by

Dr. Petr Janata

Department of Psychology and Center for Mind and Brain,
University of California, Davis, USA.

The event entitled "Neuroimaging studies of music-evoked autobiographical memories and emotion" is scheduled for

02 July 2008, 17:00 (CET).

For more information, please visit www.cbs.mpg.de/news/calendar/17 .

Conference:
http://www.iue.it/MaxWeberProgramme/AcademicCareers/ACOconferenc...
CfP:
http://www.iue.it/MaxWeberProgramme/AcademicCareers/ACOconferenc... (deadline September 3, 2008)

I am wondering how far we can get with "Open X" movements in science and research, and I will combine my musings about this with a recommendation to attend a satellite event at the Euroscience Open Forum 2008 in Barcelona.

First, let's consider how far we have come in terms of opening up the research process:
* Open Access in the narrow sense, i.e. to published or at least peer-accepted research results, is real for a substantial share of research output and rapidly gaining ground (for most recent updates, click here).
* Open Access to the scholarly review process is gaining ground (public or interactive peer review, e.g. here).
* Open Access to empirical data (Open Data) is moving forward, too.
* Open Access to software (Open Source) is driving many aspects of society, including wikis and many research projects.
* Open Access to encyclopedic knowledge is becoming real on the heels of Wikipedia and Citizendium.
* Open Access to lab notebooks is being experimented with at OpenWetWare.

To sum up, there are not too many aspects of research that currently remain entirely in the dark. They basically boil down to grant writing (an attempt is here) as well as the associated review and grant allocation procedures, bookkeeping (which is partly open in much of Scandinavia, within the wider framework of Open Government), the actual research and data analysis, and to writing up the results for publication.

I do not see any technical issues prohibiting complete openness of the whole research cycle, and so I deem it a valid
target to aim at, already at the current stage of technology. However, people more involved with the practical implementation of these things may have more complex views on these matters, and so I am glad to see that such topics found their way into the program of ESOF 2008, in the form of a satellite event entitled Collaborating for the future of open science where experts will discuss them.

seen at
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/06/03/nobel-laureate-... :
2007 Nobel laureate Oliver Smithies is financing a series of lectures with his Nobel Prize money. These lectures are being planned at all four of his former academic homes, and they are dedicated to the young scientists' perspective at a scientific career. Wouldn't it be cool if these conferences could be made available online for all of us to watch, e.g. via the World Lecture Project?