World Association of Young Scientists

The British Council has offered to cover the accommodation and transportation of promising Young British Scientists to attend BioVisionAlexandria.NXT and BioVisionAlexandria 2010 from 10-15 April 2010, that will be held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt.

The criteria of the applicants:

a. British Nationality
b. Age does not exceed 35 (by the first of January 2010)
c. Master’s and Ph.D. students or Post-doctors, working in the field of life sciences
d. Having scientific results that they could present in the conference poster session

If you fit the criteria, please send the below to :Heba.maram@bibalex.org

1- Updated CV
2- 2 supporting letters from your professors
3- Abstract of your research
4- Copy of your passport

Deadline to apply is the 28th of March 2010. NO applications will be accepted after that.

for more information on BioVisionAlexandria: www.bibalex.org/bva2010

HELLO EVERYBODY.......!

CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME THAT IF EVOLUTION HAS REALLY OCCURED THEN WHY SOME SPECIES GOT VARIED WILE OTHER REMAIN SAME..

IF EVOLUTION HAS OCCURED THEN ALL OF THE ORGANISMS MUST EVOLVE TO BE THE MOST ADVANCE LIFE FORM THAT IS HUMAN BUT WE SEE MANY ANIMALS STILL NOT CHANGED WHY IS IT SO...?

Vedic school of thought emphasizes on the holistic learning module that facilitates all the senses to be utilized in total. It beautifully integrates the head, hand and heart and inspires the odyssey of learning process to knowledge acquisition and finally to wisdom, and this wisdom translates in to a blissful living. The question is, is there a need for the revival of current school of thoughts in the educational system? The answer is a big yes if not now, then when?

http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2010/03/vedic-education-for-revolutionary-le...

The psyche of a researcher has a tendency of escaping and what suffers at large is nation’s science. The solution to this lies in no more reviews but original views which should be loudly propagated. My notion lies in defining our own problems of malnutrition, sanitation, safe drinking water and diseases pertaining to the above which definitely would add value to the life of people at large.

GO TO THE LINK....
http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2010/03/research-career-a-tale-of-bankrupt-i...

This blog is focused on science, simply because that is what I do most of my time. The same applies to the "What would [X] look like if it were invented today?" series of blog posts, and while it has not escaped my notice that X=Humanities would be a possible configuration, I did not feel particularly competent to write that part, nor did my infrequent calls for people from the humanities or social sciences to participate in the open science debates here or at Friendfeed result in much feedback from that end. However, I came across a piece recently (and read it today) that has a great potential to fill this gap (a case for UU, as discussed yesterday). It was written in a very personal and engaging style by Lisbet Rausing for a printed magazine (The New Republic), so its major drawback is that it has no hyperlinks and that the only non-text element is this image of a traditional library of paper documents. But the text was explicitly placed in the Public Domain, such that it can be adapted for the web, for which I have set up a document anyone can edit — please feel free to do so, and to tell your colleagues and friends in the humanities and social sciences about it.

For stimulation, I paste in below Lisbet Rausing's original of March 12, 2010 at 12:00 am, entitled "Toward a New Alexandria". The text (which should not be changed, though corrections may be added) is well worth a second read even in this non-enhanced form, and I will leave it to you to judge whether a more webby version can add value to that.

I have no precise idea what the environmental footprint of this blog is but I just saw mention here of a blog with about 15000 visits producing about 3.5kg of CO₂ per month and that there is an initiative dedicated to raising awareness on the issue and to planting trees in order to alleviate some of the impact. More on the initiative via the Friendfeed group dedicated to it:

 
In particular, I came across the Wellcome Trust's Strategic Plan 2010-20 and ICSU's Strategic Plan 2012-2017.

Furthermore, as a follow-up to our previous conversations, Janet Haven from the Open Society Institute's Information Initiative sent me some supplementary questions in relation to their strategy (in which open science may or may not play a role, but it is now kind of short-listed as a potential major strategic element), on which I will briefly reflect here before passing on the ball to you.

Finally, a major scientific society asked me for input about the likely advantages and drawbacks of allowing, as per default, all content of the scientific sessions of their conferences to be broadcast live in any medium, and whether it would be sensible to make this a standard requirement whenever they sign the contract with the organizers of an upcoming conference.

I find the last item a bit daunting for tonight, so I will just link to a blog post on a related discussion (that of how to signal which way of broadcasting a conference is OK) and invite your comments, so that, hopefully, I can send them a useful reply within a few days.

Some days ago, science funding made an important step towards arriving in the web era: Fundscience.org — a non-profit platform dedicated to opening up science funding to the eyes of the interested public — issued its first call for submissions of research proposals (deadline for submissions: April 1). Both the number of grants available in this first round (up to 3; yes, three) and their volume (up to US$ 50,000, or packages of 5,000 CPU cycles) are small in comparison to what established science funders have on offer but the call's conditions contain the seed of a new culture in science funding, one in which funding decisions are made less and less behind closed doors.

Yesterday was the deadline for submissions of "[p]roblems that, if solved, would advance the knowledge and capabilities in an area of your research". You can vote on them until Sunday, March 21 — two of the submitted problems will be turned into prizes (US$30k & 20k) for those coming up with a solution. My proposal (including the text contained in the supplementary file) is pasted in below:

Test the efficiency of public versus non-public peer review, both for research proposals and scholarly manuscripts. The results of this test would provide food for thought for the whole scientific community (which is based on non-public peer review) and the society at large (which ultimately pays the bills).

TWAS is now accepting applications for its postgraduate, postdoctoral, visiting scholars and advanced research fellowship programmes. The fellowships are offered to scientists from developing countries and are tenable at centres of excellence in various countries in the South, including Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan and Thailand. Eligible fields include: agricultural and biological sciences, medical and health sciences, chemistry, engineering, astronomy, space and earth sciences, mathematics and physics.

Please see www.twas.org > Programmes > Exchange for detail.