knowledge commons
The idea of a "knowledge commons" was referenced in the book, "Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture" by Eric Holt-Giménez in the context of agroecological knowledge inherent in agrarian communities in Latin America.
abstract independently existing “object”
Since forever, apparently, science has relied on Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover," in a sense. Not a god exactly, but some real or imagined unaffected observer whose presence serves as a fixed point from which to accumulate data. Why are we tempted to think this way? Aren't we all moving? What fixed point is there? I'm tempted to go back to the analogy of floating baskets tied together. There is an illusion of being grounded, but we aren't really.
This is the meaning of the “Day of Resurrection,” spoken of in all the scriptures, and announced unto all people. Reflect, can a more precious, a mightier, and more glorious day than this be conceived, so that man should willingly forego its grace, and deprive himself of its bounties, which like unto vernal showers are raining from the heaven of mercy upon all mankind?
I think this meaning is that "Resurrection" is the return of a Manifestation in another human frame. And this is stated to be clearly more glorious than the literal interpretations of past scripture.
Why is it clearly more glorious?
This is one of the most important decisions in an EFA (Thompson, 2004; Warne & Larsen, 2014), and these decisions can make g artificially easier or harder to identify.
Deciding the number of factors to retain can be extremely subjective. But that was why it was so important to pre-register our work. We wanted to choose methods for making this decision before seeing the data so that no one could accuse of us of trying to monkey with the data until we got the results we wanted.
For the sake of transparency, we find it important to explicitly state deviations from our preregistration protocol. First, in our preregistration, we stated that we would search for (cognitive OR intelligence) AND the name of a continent or population. However, searching for a continent was not feasible in finding data sets. We also had difficulty generating a list of population groups (e.g., ethnic groups, tribal groups) that would be useful for our search procedures.
This was my second time I pre-registered the study and the first time my student co-author had. We are still getting the hang of it.
he would extend this to "science" tout court-does not use value-free lan-guage, that value-free language does not exist, and that we cannot posit a purely transparent language devoid of distracting ornament, through which we transact business with pure facts.
This reminds me of an article I read in my Feminist Epistemologies class, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles," which shook me to my core. It argues that science and culture are intertwined and that they influence and reinforce one another. The scientific descriptions of egg, sperm, reproduction, and ovulation she provides to support her argument show how dangerous the perpetuation of the idea of "value-free" and/or unbiased language can be (and is).
Value-free language and the possibility of a self-contained discipline make possible both modern sci-ence and that mapping of humanistic inquiry onto a scientific model which has created modern social science as well.
And yet, any mapping of humanistic inquiry onto a scientific model would lead to the creation of incomplete maps, of certain lies. One of those lies? If you can't use the scientific method to come to know something, then that something isn't knowledge/true/truth/fact.
A comment at the bottom by Barbara H Partee, another panelist alongside Chomsky:
I'd like to see inclusion of a version of the interpretation problem that reflects my own work as a working formal semanticist and is not inherently more probabilistic than the formal 'generation task' (which, by the way, has very little in common with the real-world sentence production task, a task that is probably just as probabilistic as the real-world interpretation task).
There is a notion of success ... which I think is novel in the history of science. It interprets success as approximating unanalyzed data.
This article makes a solid argument for why statistical and probabilistic models are useful, not only for prediction, but also for understanding. Perhaps this is a key point that Noam misses, but the quote narrows the definition to models that approximate "unanalyzed data".
However, it seems clear from this article that the successes of ML models have gone beyond approximating unanalyzed data.
But O'Reilly realizes that it doesn't matter what his detractors think of his astronomical ignorance, because his supporters think he has gotten exactly to the key issue: why? He doesn't care how the tides work, tell him why they work. Why is the moon at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a stabilizing effect on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here? Why does gravity work the way it does? Why does anything at all exist rather than not exist? O'Reilly is correct that these questions can only be addressed by mythmaking, religion or philosophy, not by science.
Scientific insight isn't the same as metaphysical questions, in spite of having the same question word. Asking, "Why do epidemics have a peak?" is not the same as asking "Why does life exist?". Actually, that second question can be interested in two different ways, one metaphysically and one physically. The latter interpretation means that "why" is looking for a material cause. So even simple and approximate models can have generalizing value, such as the Schelling Segregation model. There is difference between models to predict and models to explain, and both have value. As later mentioned in this document, theory and data are two feet and both are needed for each other.
This page discusses different types of models
and explores the interaction between prediction and insight.
Chomsky (1991) shows that he is happy with a Mystical answer, although he shifts vocabulary from "soul" to "biological endowment."
Wasn't one of Chomsky's ideas that humans are uniquely suited to language? The counter-perspective espoused here appears to be that language emerges, and that humans are only distinguished by the magnitude of their capacity for language; other species probably have proto-language, and there is likely a smooth transition from one to the other. In fact, there isn't a "one" nor an "other" in a true qualitative sense.
So what if we discover something about the human that appears to be required for our language? Does this, then, lead us to knowledge of how human language is qualitatively different from other languages?
Can probabilistic models account for qualitative differences? If a very low, but not 0, probability is assigned to a given event that we know is impossible from our theory-based view, that doesn't make our probabilistic model useless. "All models are wrong, some are useful." But it seems that it does carry with it an assumption that there are no real categories, that categories change according to the needs, and are only useful in describing things. But the underlying nature of reality is of a continuum.
To Guide Data Collection
This seems to be, essentially, that models are useful for prediction, but prediction of unknowns in the data instead of prediction of future system dynamics.
Without models, in other words, it is not always clear what data to collect!
Or how to interpret that data in the light of complex systems.
Plate tectonics surely explains earthquakes, but does not permit us to predict the time and place of their occurrence.
But how do you tell the value of an explanation? Should it not empower you to some new action or ability? It could be that the explanation is somewhat of a by-product of other prediction-making theories (like how plate tectonics relies on thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and rock mechanics, which do make predictions).
It might also make predictions itself, such as that volcanoes not on clear plate boundaries might be somehow different (distribution of occurrence over time, correlation with earthquakes, content of magma, size of eruption...), or that understanding the explanation for lightning allows prediction that a grounded metal pole above the house might protect the house from lightning strikes. This might be a different kind of prediction, though, since it isn't predicting future dynamics. Knowing how epidemics works doesn't necessarily allow prediction of total infected counts or length of infection, but it does allow prediction of minimum vaccination rates to avert outbreaks.
Nonetheless, a theory as a tool to explain, with very poor predictive ability, can still be useful, though less valuable than one that also makes testable predictions.
But in general, it seems like data -> theory is the explanation. Theory -> data is the prediction. The strength of the prediction depends on the strength of the theory.
Theseunderstandings of spatial technologies build on les-sons from science and technology studies (STS)research that describes the processes by which dataand technologies come to assume and reify social andpower relations, worldviews, and epistemologies(Feenberg1999; Pinch and Bijker1987; Wajcman1991; Winner1985)
Good summation of Bijker's and Winner's STS work
Le commerce de l’échange savant dont les règles, les formes et les lieux peuvent être mis en cartes produit diverses sortes de validations qui permettent à leurs bénéficiaires d’entrer dans la négociation de situations matérielles : l’expression République des Lettres couvre, et mêle tout à la fois ces formes, ces lieux et un bon nombre de ces situations. Alors que l’échange et la validation des savoirs par les institutions académiques sont soumis à des conditions d’accès étroites et à des délais de publication encore plus longs pour les mémoires reçus par les sociétés que pour ceux de leurs propres membres, les périodiques savants s’ouvrent à des contributions d’origines très diverses qu’ils publient rapidement.
cohabitation et complémentarité des formes de communication savante (voir l'intervention de Judith). Le périodique apparaît comme une ouverture.
Our under-standing of the gap is driven by technological exploration through artifact cre-ation and deployment, but HCI and CSCW systems need to have at their corea fundamental understanding of how people really work and live in groups, or-ganizations, communities, and other forms of collective life. Otherwise, wewill produce unusable systems, badly mechanizing and distorting collabora-tion and other social activity.
The risk of CSCW not driving toward a more scientific pursuit of social theory, understanding, and ethnomethodology and instead simply building "cool toys"
The gap is also CSCW’s unique contribution. CSCW exists intellectually atthe boundary and interaction of technology and social settings. Its unique intel-lectual importance is at the confluence of technology and the social, and its
CSCW's potential to become a science of the artificial resides in the study of interactions between society and technology
Nonetheless, several guiding questions are required based on thesocial–technical gap and its role in any CSCW science of the artificial:• When can a computational system successfully ignore the need fornuance and context?• When can a computational system augment human activity withcomputer technologies suitably to make up for the loss in nuance andcontext, as argued in the approximation section earlier?• Can these benefits be systematized so that we know when we are add-ing benefit rather than creating loss?• What types of future research will solve some of the gaps betweentechnical capabilities and what people expect in their full range of so-cial and collaborative activities?
Questions to consider in moving CSCW toward a science of the artificial
The final first-order approximation is the creation of technical architecturesthat do not invoke the social–technical gap; these architectures neither requireaction nor delegate it. Instead, these architectures provide supportive oraugmentative facilities, such as advice, to users.
Support infrastructures provide a different type of approximation to augment the user experience.
Another approximation incorporates new computational mechanisms tosubstitute adequately for social mechanisms or to provide for new social issues(Hollan & Stornetta, 1992).
Approximate a social need with a technical cue. Example in Google Docs of anonymous user icons on page indicates presence but not identity.
First-order approximations, to adopt a metaphor from fluid dynamics, aretractable solutions that partially solve specific problems with knowntrade-offs.
Definition of first-order approximations.
Ackerman argues that CSCW needs a set of approximations that drive the development of initial work-arounds for the socio-technical gaps.
Essentially, how to satisfy some social requirements and then approximate the trade-offs. Doesn't consider the product a solution in full but something to iterate and improve
This may have been new/radical thinking 20 years ago but seems to have been largely adopted by the CSCW community
Similarly, an educational perspective would argue that programmers andusers should understand the fundamental nature of the social requirements.
Ackerman argues that CS education should include understanding how to design/build for social needs but also to appreciate the social impacts of technology.
CSCW’s science, however, must centralize the necessary gap between whatwe would prefer to construct and what we can construct. To do this as a practi-cal program of action requires several steps—palliatives to ameliorate the cur-rent social conditions, first-order approximations to explore the design space,and fundamental lines of inquiry to create the science. These steps should de-velop into a new science of the artificial. In any case, the steps are necessary tomove forward intellectually within CSCW, given the nature of the social–tech-nical gap.
Ackerman sets up the steps necessary for CSCW to become a science of the artificial and to try to resolve the socio-technical gap:
Palliatives to ameliorate social conditions
Approximations to explore the design space
Lines of scientific inquiry
Ideological initiatives include those that prioritize the needs of the peopleusing the systems.
Approaches to address social conditions and "block troublesome impacts":
Stakeholder analysis
Participatory design
Scandinavian approach to info system design requires trade union involvement
Simon’s (1969/1981) book does not address the inevitable gaps betweenthe desired outcome and the means of producing that outcome for anylarge-scale design process, but CSCW researchers see these gaps as unavoid-able. The social–technical gap should not have been ignored by Simon.Yet, CSCW is exactly the type of science Simon envisioned, and CSCW couldserve as a reconstruction and renewal of Simon’s viewpoint, suitably revised. Asmuch as was AI, CSCW is inherently a science of the artificial,
How Ackerman sees CSCW as a science of the artificial:
"CSCW is at once an engineering discipline attempting to construct suitable systems for groups, organizations, and other collectivities, and at the same time, CSCW is a social science attempting to understand the basis for that construction in the social world (or everyday experience)."
At a simple level,CSCW’s intellectual context is framed by social constructionism andethnomethodology (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Garfinkel, 1967), systemstheories (e.g., Hutchins, 1995a), and many large-scale system experiences (e.g.,American urban renewal, nuclear power, and Vietnam). All of these pointed tothe complexities underlying any social activity, even those felt to be straightfor-ward.
Succinct description of CSCW as social constructionism, ethnomethodlogy, system theory and large-scale system implementation.
Yet,The Sciences of the Artificialbecame an an-them call for artificial intelligence and computer science. In the book he ar-gued for a path between the idea for a new science (such as economics orartificial intelligence) and the construction of that new science (perhaps withsome backtracking in the creation process). This argument was both charac-teristically logical and psychologically appealing for the time.
Simon defines "Sciences of the Artificial" as new sciences/disciplines that synthesize knowledge that is technically or socially constructed or "created and maintained through human design and agency" as opposed to the natural sciences
The HCI and CSCW research communitiesneed to ask what one might do to ameliorate the effects of the gap and to fur-ther understand the gap. I believe an answer—and a future HCI challenge—is toreconceptualize CSCW as a science of the artificial. This echoes Simon (1981)but properly updates his work for CSCW’s time and intellectual task.2
Ackerman describes "CSCW as a science of the artificial" as a potential approach to reduce the socio-technical gap
A female student taking a math test experiences an extra cognitive and emotional burden of worry related to the stereotype that women are not good at math.
If this is part of the probl;em how do you solve it? why doesnt it effect other careers
Orbiting instruments are now so small they can be launched by the dozens, and even high school students can build them.
A great way to get students interested in science as a career.
The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields occurs globally.
Where exactly globally?
At a time of once-in-a-generation reform to healthcare in this country, the leaders of HM can’t afford to rest on their laurels, says Dr. Goldman. Three years ago, he wrote a paper for the Journal of Hospital Medicine titled “An Intellectual Agenda for Hospitalists.” In short, Dr. Goldman would like to see hospitalists move more into advancing science themselves rather than implementing the scientific discoveries of others. He cautions anyone against taking that as criticism of the field. “If hospitalists are going to be the people who implement what other people have found, they run the risk of being the ones who make sure everybody gets perioperative beta-blockers even if they don’t really work,” he says. “If you want to take it to the illogical extreme, you could have people who were experts in how most efficiently to do bloodletting. “The future for hospitalists, if they’re going to get to the next level—I think they can and will—is that they have to be in the discovery zone as well as the implementation zone.” Dr. Wachter says it’s about staying ahead of the curve. For 20 years, the field has been on the cutting edge of how hospitals treat patients. To grow even more, it will be crucial to keep that focus.
Hospitalists can learn these skills through residency and fellowship training. In addition, through mentorship models that create evergrowing
It’s important to remember that utopia and dystopia aren’t the only terms here. You need to use the Greimas rectangle and see that utopia has an opposite, dystopia, and also a contrary, the anti-utopia. For every concept there is both a not-concept and an anti-concept. So utopia is the idea that the political order could be run better. Dystopia is the not, being the idea that the political order could get worse. Anti-utopias are the anti, saying that the idea of utopia itself is wrong and bad, and that any attempt to try to make things better is sure to wind up making things worse, creating an intended or unintended totalitarian state, or some other such political disaster. 1984 and Brave New World are frequently cited examples of these positions. In 1984 the government is actively trying to make citizens miserable; in Brave New World, the government was first trying to make its citizens happy, but this backfired. As Jameson points out, it is important to oppose political attacks on the idea of utopia, as these are usually reactionary statements on the behalf of the currently powerful, those who enjoy a poorly-hidden utopia-for-the-few alongside a dystopia-for-the-many. This observation provides the fourth term of the Greimas rectangle, often mysterious, but in this case perfectly clear: one must be anti-anti-utopian.
For a while now I’ve been saying that science fiction works by a kind of double action, like the glasses people wear when watching 3D movies. One lens of science fiction’s aesthetic machinery portrays some future that might actually come to pass; it’s a kind of proleptic realism. The other lens presents a metaphorical vision of our current moment, like a symbol in a poem. Together the two views combine and pop into a vision of History, extending magically into the future. By that definition, dystopias today seem mostly like the metaphorical lens of the science-fictional double action. They exist to express how this moment feels, focusing on fear as a cultural dominant. A realistic portrayal of a future that might really happen isn’t really part of the project—that lens of the science fiction machinery is missing. The Hunger Games trilogy is a good example of this; its depicted future is not plausible, not even logistically possible. That’s not what it’s trying to do. What it does very well is to portray the feeling of the present for young people today, heightened by exaggeration to a kind of dream or nightmare. To the extent this is typical, dystopias can be thought of as a kind of surrealism.
These days I tend to think of dystopias as being fashionable, perhaps lazy, maybe even complacent, because one pleasure of reading them is cozying into the feeling that however bad our present moment is, it’s nowhere near as bad as the ones these poor characters are suffering through. Vicarious thrill of comfort as we witness/imagine/experience the heroic struggles of our afflicted protagonists—rinse and repeat. Is this catharsis? Possibly more like indulgence, and creation of a sense of comparative safety. A kind of late-capitalist, advanced-nation schadenfreude about those unfortunate fictional citizens whose lives have been trashed by our own political inaction. If this is right, dystopia is part of our all-encompassing hopelessness. On the other hand, there is a real feeling being expressed in them, a real sense of fear. Some speak of a “crisis of representation” in the world today, having to do with governments—that no one anywhere feels properly represented by their government, no matter which style of government it is. Dystopia is surely one expression of that feeling of detachment and helplessness. Since nothing seems to work now, why not blow things up and start over? This would imply that dystopia is some kind of call for revolutionary change. There may be something to that. At the least dystopia is saying, even if repetitiously and unimaginatively, and perhaps salaciously, Something’s wrong. Things are bad.
Freedom of intramural expression means that teaching personnel is not only allowed to teach according to their knowledge, but that they can take part in the administration of their institutions. This is supported by the freedom of extramural expression, which gives teachers the capacity to share their research outcomes and disseminate the knowledge acquired.
participation in activities to share research outcomes.
Researchers now typically engage in a range of ‘questionable research practices’ in the hunt for the glory of publication, with such conditions leading to mental health issues in a higher proportion than any other industry.
'publish or perish' culture creating mental health issues.
Unless you need to push the boundaries of what these technologies are capable of, you probably don’t need a highly specialized team of dedicated engineers to build solutions on top of them. If you manage to hire them, they will be bored. If they are bored, they will leave you for Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, … – places where their expertise is actually needed. If they are not bored, chances are they are pretty mediocre. Mediocre engineers really excel at building enormously over complicated, awful-to-work-with messes they call “solutions”. Messes tend to necessitate specialization.
At the same time, we now have several years of experience launching and running new and innovative publications in broad fields. For example, PeerJ – the Journal of Life & Environmental Sciences covers all of biology, the life sciences, and the environmental sciences in a single title; whilst PeerJ Computer Science is targeted towards a more well-defined community. In 2013 we also launched a preprint server (PeerJ Preprints) which covers all the areas in which we publish; and we have developed a comprehensive suite of journal and peer-review functionalities.
New journals released by PeerJ
Tamper-proof evidence for photographs, videos and preprints using timestamp, blockchain etc.
Preprints
Timestamps for prepritns
Blockchain for open scholarly publishing:
Blockchain for scholarly publishing
To ensure that research findings are shared widely and are made freely available at the time of publication, Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have today (Monday) joined cOAlition S (opens in a new tab) and endorsed the principles of Plan S.
First charitable funders to join Plan-S
Open Science has the potential to make the scientific enterprise more inclusive, and bridge North-South divides in research,
Open science towards reducing the north-south divide
This problem disproportionately affects white girls and children of color. (There's a complicated exception for some children of Asian heritage, who have another set of stereotypes to cope with.) School-aged girls slightly outperform boys in math and science, but men take up a higher fraction of positions at each successive level of academia, from undergraduate science majors to faculty positions to administrative positions with the power to hire and promote. In other words, the message of braininess corresponding to scientific skill is applied more heavily to boys and men than to women.
Science writer Kat Arney delved into this issue in detail in a recent column for the (UK) Royal Society of Chemistry. As she points out, the problems with the "brainy scientist" stereotype are manifold: that science is a meritocracy, and that non-scientists are somehow less valuable.
Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science
Latour on science and truth.
At a meeting between French industrialists and a climatologist a few years ago, Latour was struck when he heard the scientist defend his results not on the basis of the unimpeachable authority of science but by laying out to his audience his manufacturing secrets: “the large number of researchers involved in climate analysis, the complex system for verifying data, the articles and reports, the principle of peer evaluation, the vast network of weather stations, floating weather buoys, satellites and computers that ensure the flow of information.” The climate denialists, by contrast, the scientist said, had none of this institutional architecture. Latour realized he was witnessing the beginnings a seismic rhetorical shift: from scientists appealing to transcendent, capital-T Truth to touting the robust networks through which truth is, and has always been, established.
A paradigm shift in the rhetoric of science, from metanarratives of truth to the mechanics of truth manufacture.
tl;dr: data engineer = software, coding, cleaning data sets data architects = structure the technology to manage data models and database admin data scientist = stats + math models business analysts = communication and domain expertise
Questions about the inclusivity of engineering and computer science departments have been going on for quite some time. Several current “innovations” coming out of these fields, many rooted in facial recognition, are indicative of how scientific racism has long been embedded in apparently neutral attempts to measure people — a “new” spin on age-old notions of phrenology and biological determinism, updated with digital capabilities.
Each aspect of the scientific cycle—research design, data collection, analysis, and publication—can and should be made more transparent and accessible.
Cmp. article draft from 2011 related to science in general, not particularly for education science.
Sorry, but your soul just died . . .
It's interesting the use of the word "soul" here as a means to define the unquantifiable part of what makes us human taken from the article mentioned previously. Much of the author's argument has thus far been biotech based and "soul" is at first what the author describes as the chemicals that makes us feel, whereas "soul" is traditionally used as the essence of who we are while our body is just a vessel for that "soul" to live through.
Education as a practice has placed a much higher value on observation and hands-on experience than on scientific evidence, Seidenberg said. "We have to change the culture of education from one based on beliefs to one based on facts."
Therefore, well controlled basic science studies are important in resolving outstanding fundamental questions regarding means of treatment in a consistent and well established model
Yes, but on the other hand, basic science is expensive and does not provide return on investment. That is not good for the economy and businesspeople.
Actually, no, it hasn't, no matter what the Bunny's sign says. The scientific method is designed specifically to root out bias and false assumptions, including political ones. Sure, individual scientists can be political, but the scientific method is not. Its ideological agnosticism is why it works so well. In fact, the self-correcting nature of science means it is the best source of secular knowledge that humankind possesses.
What about people who don't have PhD's? Are they scientists, too? In any world in which credentials matter, the answer is no. (I describe a major exception to the rule below.) Just like getting an MD or a JD is a prerequisite to being called a doctor or a lawyer, in general, getting a PhD in the natural sciences is the prerequisite to being called a scientist.
Social scientists measure the strength of these links using a variety of indicators, such as how often a person calls another, whether that call is reciprocated, the time the two people spend speaking, and so on. But these indicators are often difficult and time-consuming to measure.
Negative values included when assessing air quality In computing average pollutant concentrations, EPA includes recorded values that are below zero. EPA advised that this is consistent with NEPM AAQ procedures. Logically, however, the lowest possible value for air pollutant concentrations is zero. Either it is present, even if in very small amounts, or it is not. Negative values are an artefact of the measurement and recording process. Leaving negative values in the data introduces a negative bias, which potentially under represents actual concentrations of pollutants. We noted a considerable number of negative values recorded. For example, in 2016, negative values comprised 5.3 per cent of recorded hourly PM2.5 values, and 1.3 per cent of hourly PM10 values. When we excluded negative values from the calculation of one‐day averages, there were five more exceedance days for PM2.5 and one more for PM10 during 2016.
What changes have the years brought to the farm? (Most of the animals who were alive during the Rebellion are dead.The farm is now prosperous. Other animals have been bought to replace the dead ones. The windmill has been finished,but instead of generating electricity to help all the animals, it is used for milling corn to make money for the pigs.Napoleon tells the animals that the truest happiness “lay in working hard and living frugally.” And they do that.)
Very interesting questions
Astrology proven by artificial intelligence.
Unfailing experience of mundane events in harmony with the changes occurring in the heavens, has compelled my unwilling belief.
Kepler was not happy to believe in astrology, but he was a scientist.
Kepler's famous metaphor comparing astrology to the 'foolish daughter' of the 'wise mother' (astronomy) has often been cited as evidence of his disbelief. Seen in context, however, the foolish daughter represents a particular style of astrology — popular astrology — which was not to Kepler's taste. He was always careful to distinguish his reverential vision of the celestial harmonies from the practices of the backstreet astrologers and almanac-makers "who prefer to engage in mad ravings with the uneducated masses".[7] Kepler's astrology was on another plane altogether. Before condemning him for his blatant intellectual snobbery, however, consider how many 'serious' astrologers today feel exactly the same way about Sun-sign columns. Kepler was neither the first nor the last astrologer to pour scorn on those who practise apparently inferior forms of the art. His disapproval stems from his conviction that astrology is nothing less than a divine revelation, "...a testimony of God's works and... by no means a frivolous thing". Unfortunately, Kepler's salary as Imperial Mathematicus was rarely paid (the Imperial treasury owed him 20,000 florins by the end of his career) so he was obliged to scratch out a living by giving astrological advice to wealthy clients and composing astrological almanacs for the 'uneducated masses' he so despised. Reluctantly, Kepler conceded that "the mother would starve if the daughter did not earn anything". In another famous turn of phrase, he warned those learned professors who had grown sceptical of astrology that they were likely to "throw the baby out together with the bathwater" if they rejected it entirely. So Kepler was undoubtedly an astrologer — but he was no respecter of astrological tradition. His ideas seem radical even by the standards of mainstream astrology today. For a start, he dismissed the use of the 12 houses as 'Arabic sorcery'. While accepting that the angles were important, he could see no justification for conventional house division. "Demonstrate the old houses to me," he wrote to one of his correspondents, "Explain their number; prove that there can be neither fewer nor more... show me undoubted and striking examples of their influence." [8] He even went so far as to question the validity of the signs of the zodiac, arguing that they were derived from human reasoning and arithmetical convenience rather than any natural division of the heavens.[9] He had no time for elaborate schemes of planetary sign rulership and saw no reason why some planets should be classed as benefic and others as malefic. Kepler left no astrological convention unchallenged. His rigorous questioning hints at a massive reformation of astrology, on a scale which Ken Negus has compared to the reformation that Martin Luther brought about in the Church.
Kepler's project for astrology, analogous to Luther's project for chistianity.
Excellent example of badly used statistics.
Last month at Portland State University, when biologist Heather Heying made the point that women and men are biologically different, protesters in the audience screamed and excoriated her and tried to damage the sound system before they were removed. “We should not listen to fascism. Nazis are not welcome in civil society,” a protester scowled.
The belief that sexism is at the root of fascism, although well founded, causes hyperactivists to censor scientists.
beenary code
http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/convert-text-to-binary/
binary is anything with two and only two states, a code that is binary represents information using only these two states.
Ce paradoxe de l’information, à l’interface entre mécanique quantique et relativité générale, ne sera jamais vraiment résolu tant qu’on ne disposera pas d’une théorie qui unifie ces deux cadres.
Cela paraît difficilement réalisable puisque les deux théories semble se contre-dire. Peut-être devons nous accepter deux états de la matière, puisque nous ne faisons jamais l'expérience directe des comportements quantiques.
Car
Ouah mais c'est fantastique dis donc ! je ne pensais pas que l'espace était plein de surprises...
there’s something unusual about the core-mantel boundary under Africa that could be having an important impact on the global magnetic field,”
Hard to believe nobody has inserted a Vibranium joke here...
Some 1,800 miles beneath southern Africa is an area called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province, a heavy region that might be pressing down on the hot liquid iron at the Earth’s core that is responsible for generating the magnetic field in the first place.
The African Large Low Shear Velocity Province. Someone could have named that after themselves and didn't...
Computer Science, B.S.
Como hipótesis provisional sostengo que la dependencia de formas de racionalidad y análisis logocéntrico de larga data sigue siendo fundamental para la producción académica crítica (¡incluyendo este libro!) y que, a pesar de su notable productividad, tiene consecuencias para ir más allá de las ontologías dualistas. Para desarrollar esta hipótesis, aunque de forma rudimentaria, comienzo recordando el argumento de Varela y sus colegas sobre los límites de la racionalidad abstracta y su insistencia en unir la reflexión y la experiencia. Esto es precisamente lo que trató de hacer la fenomenología; sin embargo —argumentan Varela, Thomson y Rosch— no pudo contestar, completamente, las preguntas radicales que planteaba. ¿Por qué? Su respuesta es relativamente simple pero las consecuencias son de largo alcance. La fenomenología se estancó, precisamente, porque su análisis de la experiencia sigue estando “dentro de la corriente principal de la filosofía Occidental [...] hizo hincapié en el contexto pragmático y encarnado de la experiencia humana, pero de una manera puramente teórica” (Varela et al. 1991: 19). ¿Puede esta afirmación17ser aplicable a la teoría social en su conjunto, tal vez incluso a aquellas tendencias que problematizan sus dualismos estructurantes?
[...] [...] Lo que esta formulación quiere transmitir es que la reflexión no es sólo sobre la experiencia; la reflexión es una forma de la experiencia [...] Cuando la reflexión se hace de esa manera puede cortar la cadena de patrones y percepciones habituales de pensamiento para que pueda ser una reflexión abierta a posibilidades distintas de las contenidas en la representación actual que tenemos del espacio de la vida
Quizás se requieren materialidades nuevas para romper estas lógicas que hacen academia crítica desde los logos, métricas y formas de la academia clásica. En ese sentido la experiencia, que está en el centro de lo hacker, artítistico y activista es clave, pues enactua en discursos no siempre logocéntricos. Es decir, esas reflexiones (usualmente escritas) que son también una experiencia, atravesadas por otras materialidades que dan cuenta de ellas pueden ayudar a deconstruir su expresión logocéntrica.
Dynamic dispatch
a.k.a. Dynamic Method Dispatch
Making things even more maddeningly complicated, seemingly similar foods can differ wildly in nutrition profile. A local, farm-fresh carrot will probably be less diluted in its nutrients than a mass-produced baby carrot that's been bagged in the grocery store. A hamburger at a fast-food restaurant will have different fat and salt content compared with one made at home. Even getting people to better report on every little thing they put into their bodies can't completely address this variation.
In a recent study published in the journal Cell, Israeli scientists tracked 800 people over a week, continuously monitoring their blood sugar levels to see how they responded to the same foods. Every person seemed to respond wildly differently, even to identical meals, "suggesting that universal dietary recommendations may have limited utility," the researchers wrote. "It's now clear that the impact of nutrition on health cannot be simply understood by assessing what people eat," said Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale, "as this is strongly influenced by how the nutrients and other bioactive compounds derived from foods interact with the genes and the extensive gut microbiota that individuals have."
I asked 8 researchers why the science of nutrition is so messy. Here’s what they said.
Today, scientists' success often isn't measured by the quality of their questions or the rigor of their methods. It's instead measured by how much grant money they win, the number of studies they publish, and how they spin their findings to appeal to the public.
Really unfortunatel
The natural selection of bad science
Virtual Worlds (Slowly!) Emerging from Disillusionment Trough In Gartner's 2012 Hype Cycle
ethics of video games in archaeology
Reminds me of this historian’s talk at Pint of Science Montreal 2015. (Sadly, not finding online traces of the event apart from my own section.)
the commissioners are aware that they have to encounter much difference of opinion
I interpreted this statement as the founders of the University recognizing how the students who will attend the school will come to face many different views than their own. Students may encounter this “difference of opinion” both inside and outside of the classroom, as these views can foster debate within Discussion sections of classes or within political debate forums. The evident variety of opinions creates a well-rounded student, as they learn to consider many different points-of-view to gain a better understanding of a subject. -Komal Kamdar
Climate Science Special Report Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume 1
In the '80s and '90s--as strange as it may seem to say this--we had such luxury of stability. Things weren't changing quite so quickly in the '80s and '90s. And when things are changing too quickly, as one of the characters in Pattern Recognition says, you don't have any place to stand from which to imagine a very elaborate future.
People with scientific training are adopting these practices as well, either by offering services on sites such as Upwork or finding projects through their previous academic networks.
One of the main ways computers are changing the textual humanities is by mediating new connections to social science. The statistical models that help sociologists understand social stratification and social change haven’t in the past contributed much to the humanities, because it’s been difficult to connect quantitative models to the richer, looser sort of evidence provided by written documents.
DH as moving English more toward the statistical...
You have probably heard about the hunt for dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to permeate the universe, the effects of which we can see through its gravitational pull. But our models of the universe also say there should be about twice as much ordinary matter out there, compared with what we have observed so far.
Two separate teams found the missing matter – made of particles called baryons rather than dark matter – linking galaxies together through filaments of hot, diffuse gas.
To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences which advance the arts & administer to the health, the subsistence & comforts of human life:
I believe this sentence very accurately characterizes the intentions and the foundations of the New College Curriculum; The New College seeks to provide students with a core knowledge of the arts (especially how they are applied in our society) that can be further strengthened and complemented in studies of math and science should students so choose in the future. This sort of foundation, outlined in both the document and the mission of the New Curriculum, is important because it can allow students to examine a wide range of academic fields before studying concrete methods of applying those fields practically. Since I am taking the Art: Inside/Out Engagement, I also sought to interpret this sentence in taking "arts" literally to mean art in its various expressive forms. In this way, this sentence helps develop the important concept that art and maths/sciences in no way exist in conflict with each other; while many believe these two subjects to be on opposite sides of an academic spectrum, this section of the Rockfish Gap Report helps to remind that art and science can freely interact and engage with each other to work for the benefit of both.
To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences which advance the arts & administer to the health, the subsistence & comforts of human life:
This quote really highlights the warmthness the arts bring in accordance with the kinds of truths the mathematical and physical sciences bring. Our world thrives off of the marriage between the two. A simple example would be a garden sheer. We need the sheer to trim hedges and plants. The handles would have to be long enough to create enough torque to cut foliage. However, a focus on art and design further advances the tool by including finger grooves in the handles for better grip. Art and design also determine how pointy the sheers are. Sloped triangular tips cut more aerodynamically than just two crude rectangles. With this, we see how intertwined the mathematical and physical sciences are with the arts, working in unison to create ease and comfort in life. Fully realized, the garden sheer makes cutting easy for us.
rest might be appropriated to the modern languages, or to the commencement of the course of science
Both science and language are integral parts of societal advancement, and more often than not, these concepts work together as language acts as a medium to share new information and ideas. Furthermore, I feel that by stating the commencement one must take to science from such a young age reflects the nature of true science. Good science will take years of dedication, with even more time to allow for revisions to theories. The RFG seems to support this idea of science as a slow but steady way of understanding the phenomena of the natural universe.
A Global Database of Society
interesting
Through Open Humans, you can gather valuable data about yourself and find cool projects to share it with.
We’re delighted to announce that the California Digital Library has been awarded a 2-year NSF EAGER grant to support active, machine-actionable data management plans (DMPs).
A language already fraught with all the eminent sciences of our parent Country the future Vehicle
As communication has always played a key role in the scientific method, language truly does act as a vehicle to the future. Unfortunately, today the communication of science has its flaws due to the general public's lack of common access to scientific journals. University students presently have access to countless scholarly scientific sources as this document intended, yet the emphasis on the importance of communication of science suggests a more global goal. Thus, the university should do all it can to work with organizations such as the Center for Open Science in order to allow for a stronger bond between language and science in the community within and beyond UVa.
Kuhn (1970, p. 167) commented that science education tends to elide the processthrough which knowledge has been constructed, whereas students of other subjectsare exposed to varying interpretations over time. As a result, he suggested, sciencestudents are blind to the history of their subject, seeing it only as unproblematicprogress. The interview data suggest that this is indeed a point of difference betweenthe ‘arts’ and ‘science’ students in this sample. While both of them tend to have adualistic view of science itself, the ‘arts’ students seem to be more at ease with arelativistic view of knowledge in history.
Kuhn on lack of training science students receive on how knowledge is constructed.
Seven of the ‘arts’ students described a process of this sort, compared with only twoof the ‘science’ students. There was, however, another approach to revision, involvingonly one revision cycle. This was mentioned by five interviewees, four of whom werefrom ‘science’ backgrounds. Um ... rewriting? No. I can probably, once I’ve got the, I’ve got the feel of it, it probablytakes me a couple of hours to write, and then, shuffling stuff around, ... it’ll probably takeme, I don’t know, a morning or something to do a fair draft of it. (Ewan, 2002, science)Only one ‘arts’ student mentioned using a single revision cycle, and he had originallygraduated in science before starting his OU arts study
science vs arts revision cycles: science students one draft; arts multiple moving things around.
Although some ‘science’ students reported similar problems, it was only ‘science’students who talked in terms of ‘padding out’ their answers in order to reach therequired length: I’m more this, get all the facts down, yes it’s only three hundred words, but that’s it in anutshell. And it’s a lot harder then to flower it up to say either five hundred words or athousand words. (Larry, 2002, science)I’m not used to waffling I think that’s the problem. A lot of the art students say oh I’vewritten too much, ... and I have the opposite problem I kind of write down what Ithink the answer’s and I’ve only got like 200 words and I have to pad it out. (Ruth,2003, science)The tendency for some ‘science’ students to write relatively short essays may berelated to their conceptions of knowledge. If it is seen as factual, then once the factshave been stated, the student might see the task as complete; as Larry said, ‘that’s itin a nutshell’. If knowledge is relativistic, however, then competing views are equallyworthy of consideration and greater elaboration is needed to make a case
how science students see "waffling"
Do you have questions about how best to moderate your online community? CivilServant, software created at the MIT Center for Civic Media, helps online communities do your own A/B tests of moderation practices.
This is an interesting SaaS system for exploring how to create good moderation systems.
Researcher with an interest in reproducibility.
Singularity containers can be used to package entire scientific workflows, software and libraries, and even data.
Very interesting, basically Singularity allows containers to run in HPC environments, so that code running in the container can take advantage of the HPC tools, like massive scale and message passing, while at the same time keeping the stuff in the container safer.
This is interesting, could it become something like the LOCCS / CLOCCS for software? I like that you can check if your own code is already in their archive.
It's a French initiative, and was founded by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Institute_for_Research_in_Computer_Science_and_Automation. I don't know what their long term sustainability model is going to be.
Spectral Python (SPy) is a pure Python module for processing hyperspectral image data. It has functions for reading, displaying, manipulating, and classifying hyperspectral imagery. It can be used interactively from the Python command prompt or via Python scripts
out of 878 potentially relevant studies published between 1992 and 2017, only 36 directly compared reading in digital and in print and measured learning in a reliable way. (Many of the other studies zoomed in on aspects of e-reading, such as eye movements or the merits of different kinds of screens.)
But Dunkin emphasized having data isn’t enough: EPA’s working to make it more accessible. To help crowdsource data from citizen scientists and regulators at the state, local and tribal level, it’s critical to create data standards, she said.
How can EPA's data standards be made inter-operable with RDF-based efforts such as researchobject.org.
MIT is running a master's program in data, economics, and development policy with unique admission requirements. Anyone can apply after completing five online courses through edX with in-person exams.
The students who exerted more self-control were not more successful in accomplishing their goals. It was the students who experienced fewer temptations overall who were more successful when the researchers checked back in at the end of the semester.
Reduce the number of distractions you get better results.
there are two different measurements for the length of a foot in the United States: the International Foot (also commonly called the foot) and the U.S. Survey Foot. The International Foot (which we were all taught in school) is defined as 0.3048 meters, whereas the U.S. Survey Foot is defined as 0.3048006096 meters. The difference of the two equates to 2 parts per million.
For example, in a measurement of 10,000 feet, the difference would be 0.02 feet (just less than one-quarter of an inch). In a measurement of 1 million feet, the difference is 2 feet.
The science division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reportedly had no staff members as of Friday.
This is so depressing....
Some factors that may contribute to erosion of public trust in science stem from outside of the scientific community, such as hype and exaggeration of scientific findings by the media and scientific facts or advice given by popular non-scientist celebrities. For example “the popular press greatly exaggerates the definitiveness of vitamin D research.”17 Health advice given by celebrities also contributes to public confusion, noted Caulfield. For example, a systematic review on the advice given by Dr. Oz found that almost half of the TV celebrity’s advice conflicts with scientific literature18. “When you have that kind of confused message around science, it is no surprise that the public is so incredibly confused”, Caulfield said.
protected platform whereby many expert reviewers could read and comment on submissions, as well as on fellow reviewers’ comments
Conduct prepeer review during the manuscript development on a web platform. That is what is happening in Therapoid.net.
intelligent crowd reviewing
Crowdsourcing review? Prepeer review as precursor to preprint server.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
Mendeley is proud to be partnering with Pint of Science for the third year running.
Find out more about this event here.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
American Council on Science and Health
This may be a front group. Investigate, find additional sources, and leave research notes in the comments.
Commons search results display text that has been extracted from PDFs to show search terms in context. If preprints are displayed, they can be displayed as PDFs. All pages are tagged with schema.org meta tags to ensure that content is discoverable.
Prakash’s lab introduced the Paperfuge, a 20-cent centrifuge inspired by an ancient spinning toy, which can be used to diagnose diseases like malaria.
The Initiative for Open Citations I4OC is a collaboration between scholarly publishers, researchers, and other interested parties to promote the unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data.
Alan Kay is on quora.
I never regret the eleven months which hardened my resolve, to go beyond 98 'Nos' to get to the precious, unexpected 'Yes's'. I was nobody, I was selling nothing, I could be nobody selling anything.
Numbers
Statistics
Alienation
whose story are we telling 'objectively'?
KEY "Whose story are we telling?"
Pacific Science Congress
The Pacific Science Congress is in core meeting for the Pacific Science Association. These meetings take place every four years in various locations throughout the Asia- Pacific Rim and Basin. Various scientists, at different levels of expertise, present at the congress. Presentations are based on the central theme and have anywhere between 1000 and 2000 people in attendance. Each meeting has a President and a Secretary-General who represent them. The first meeting took place between August 2 and 20, 1920 in Honolulu, HI. The meetings and the
Starting in 1969, there have been twelve Pacific Science Inter-Congresses. These meetings are smaller and focus on a more central theme. They, like the Pacific Science Congresses, take place every four years, staggered between them. They also are located in similar locations in the Pacific region.
The article quotes Dr. Ian McTaggart-Cowan, who was speaking on August 26, 1975, during the 13th Pacific Science Congress in Vancouver, Canada at the University of British Columbia. Dr. McTaggart Cowan was the President for this meeting. For that year, the Pacific Science Congress's theme was “Sublethal Effects of Pollution on Aquatic Organisms”. Since this meeting, there hasn’t been another meeting in Canada or one with focus on the issues Arctic Canada faces. The most recent congress took place summer of 2016 in Taipai, Taiwan, with the theme “Sceince, Technology, and Innovation: Building a Sustainable Future in Asia and the Pacific.” These meetings are so important because they bring together a group of scientists with similar studies and interests. By presenting and sharing their ideas, scientists can work together to have a conscious and sustainable Pacific.
Annotated from the Pacific Science Association's website www.pacificscience.org.
sons
Perelman's arguments remind me a lot of Thomas Kuhn (summarized on page 1196 in the overview of modern and postmodern rhetoric). Kuhn challenged the binary between communal argument and science, which seems to also be what Perelman is doing.
Elsevier is doing just that in their analysis of 20 years of global research from a gender perspective, published today
Interesting angle to work in the significance of the day.
Hence magic is put under a microscope, or even test by a knowl-treated as an early uncritical attempt to do what edge of exactly equivalent conditions in the past, science does, but under conditions where judg- when you tum to political exhortation, you are ment and perception were impaired by the involved in decisions that necessarily lie beyond nai'vely anthropomorphic belief that the imper- the strictly scientific vocabularies of description. sonal forces of nature were motivated by per- And since the effective politician is a "spell-sonal designs.
To what extent does imagination play in this early "bad science"? And how is imagination hindered/lost or accelerated/sustained in the paradigms of modern "good science"?
Great course
Batman v. Superman:
Still need to figure that one out...
f science deals with the abstract and the universal, rhetoric is near the other end, dealing in significant part with the particular and the con-crete.
I was surprised by this distinction; I tend to think of science as dealing with the concrete and rhetoric as dealing more often with the abstract. I wonder if Weaver's distinction was more common in his time than now.
But don’t discount Netflix for beautifully shot science documentaries on everything from microbes to food to the mysteries of space.
Need to check these out!
The Yale Science Building will be a seven-level structure that includes a rooftop greenhouse, aquatics and insect labs, state-of-the-art imaging technology, a quantitative biology center, innovative physics labs, and a 500-seat lecture hall. It has an expected completion date of late 2019.
It sounds like it will be really cool and useful!
For the newer departments of learning (most of them departments of science), writing was more important than speaking, both as a pedagogical tool and as the practical expression of knowledge.
One of the recurring themes in our readings: science's influence on rhetoric
And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he secs on all sides the eyes of the universe tele-scopically focused upon his action and thought. It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence.
There’s a really interesting link to be made with Willard here. Nietzsche is taking on the philosopher (as well as Enlightenment thinking), as philosophers tend to position themselves at the center of universe because they are on the search for truth. He challenges the science of it, saying that the telescopic (read: narrow) inquiry is futile as they are on a search for something that is not there. In other words, the more a philosopher tries to focus in on “the truth,” the more a philosopher loses sight of the purpose of the inquiry.
Likewise, Willard takes on patriarchal exegesis as though it, too, is a science. By using the telescopic metaphor (similar to Nietzsche), she makes it clear that a search for truth in such a narrow sense is useless to the human endeavor. From “The Letter Killeth”:
“We need women commentators to bring out the women’s side of the book; we need the stereoscopic view of truth in general, which can only be had when a woman’s eye and man’s together shall discern the perspective of the Bible’s full-orbed revelation…while they turn their linguistic telescopes on truth, I may be allowed to make a correction for the “personal equation” in the results which they espy” (1126).
Although Willard does suggest that the truth can be reached (a “full orbed revelation”), it is not until both halves — the woman’s and the man’s — is taken into account. Again, the more a male preacher tries to focus in on "the truth," the more he loses sight of the purpose of the inquiry. Really, all of humanity is a stake for Willard.
I don't know. There’s something going on with eyes and telescopes and science and philosophy and exegesis, but I’m not quite sure how to articulate it…
We also think that there is too much of a disconnect between research and the people who it serves.
This should be corrected.
Morris Pelzel on Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.
the presentation and arrangement of symbolic data is crucial, and any given arrangement may be more or less conducive to discovery. That is why Engelbart’s observation about “playing” with and “rearranging” the materials we are dealing with strikes such a resonant chord. Even if we are only dealing with text, the ease of recombining and manipulating our words and phrases enables our writing to more quickly reach a suitable form of expression.
as we are social animals, our intellects work most effectively, not in isolation but in connection with others. When thoughts and ideas are externally represented, they thereby enter to some degree a public space,
These are called “vestigial” characteristics.
Interesting!
With Anenke, a French orthodontics company, they are patient-testing a new process that uses digital scanning to create a dental device which is printed with safe polymers.
A new way to make braces!
“We’ve figured out how to print custom wood grain by taking sawdust and plastic, combining it into a filament and extruding or forcing it out,” says Tibbits.
Printing wood!
Tibbits has pioneered the field of 4D printing — that is, using 3D printers to create material that then transforms into a predetermined shape (TED Talk: The emergence of 4D printing).
I've never heard of 4D printing!
At MIT’s International Design Center, Self-Assembly Lab founder Skylar Tibbits, co-director Jared Laucks and their team are inventing smart materials that can automatically take shape in useful — and sometimes surprising — ways.
This would be a fun project to work on!
“A lesson about every single element on the periodic table.”
This is a fascinating idea! I'm going to try to watch more of them!
The climate scientists gave the conspiracy theorists an opening by letting their advocacy color their science, which compromised the legitimacy of their enterprise and, ironically, weakened the political movement itself.
Check out this book on the intersection of science and democracy.
With scientific claims, the only definitive answer is to reexamine the original research data and repeat the experiments and analysis. But no one has the time or the expertise to examine the original research literature on every topic, let alone repeat the research. As such, it is important to have some guidelines for deciding which theories are plausible enough to merit serious examination.
"The superiority of Scientific Evidence Reexamined":
"Allow me now to ask, Will he be so perfectly satisfied on the first trial as not to think it of importance to make a second, perhaps u third, and a fourth? Whence arises this diffidence'! Purely from the consciousness of the fallibility of his own faculties. But to what purpose, it may be said, the reiterations of the at-tempt, since it is impossible for him, by any efforts, to shake off his dependence on the accuracy of his attention and fidelity of his memory? Or, what can he have more than reiterated testimonies of his memory, in support of the truth of its for-mer testimony? I acknowledge, that after a hundred attempts he can have no more. But even this is a great deal. We learn from experience, that the mistakes or oversights committed by the mind in one operation. arc sometime!-., on a review, corrected on the second, or perhaps on a third. Besides, the repetition, when no error is discovered, enlivens the remembrance, and so strengthens the conviction. But, for this conviction. it is plain that we are in a great measure indebted to memory. and in some measure even to experience." (Campbell 922)
After a brief training session, participants spent six hours archiving environmental data from government websites, including those of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department.
A worthwhile effort.
An anonymous donor has provided storage on Amazon servers, and the information can be searched from a website at the University of Pennsylvania called Data Refuge. Though the Federal Records Act theoretically protects government data from deletion, scientists who rely on it say would rather be safe than sorry.
Data refuge.
“But if we want to defend the role of science in policy making, scientists need to run for office.
This would be an interesting development.
Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics
This is the most awesomest research Centre ever!!
Some or the new instruments or science arc, ./ """\ \ themselves, sciences; others arc arts; still others, c\v,W{' . producL'i of either art or nature
How is his usage of "sciences" and "arts" here different (or not) from "technology"? In other words, to what extent is he saying that instrumental developments in science and art are the result of new technology?
He explicitly describes technological advances like the microscope, telescope, and mariner's needle, but can the other developments be attributed to technology in more implicit (but nonetheless important) ways?
science (and politics) of eugenics
The tight relation of science and politics is strong in someone like Locke.
One of those values is the principle of material honesty. One material should not be used as a substitute for another. Otherwise the end result is deceptive.
Great principle!
Should be applied to science as well: scientific publication is meant to spread ideas and findings, not to evaluate researchers!
In Python, as well as in any other object-oriented programming language, we define a class to be a description of what the data look like (the state) and what the data can do (the behavior). Classes are analogous to abstract data types because a user of a class only sees the state and behavior of a data item. Data items are called objects in the object-oriented paradigm. An object is an instance of a class.
Class = General description of form and functions of data. Object = A member or instance of a class.
Bullshit is much harder to detect when we want to agree with it. The first and most important step is to recognise the limits of our own cognition. We must be humble about our ability to justify our own beliefs. These are the keys to adopting a critical mindset – which is our only hope in a world so full of bullshit.
How can people practically identify and expand the limits of thier cognition? Beliefs have the persistent habit of reinforcing themselves. It would be nice if the author had pointed to actual recourses for 'adopting a critical mindset.
Montreal Neurological Institute
sharing all data associated with its research; no patents for 5 yrs (see video) - first major research institute of it's kind - check if this is really true?
European Union, Japan and the United States
Find out specifically which of these are "open" and if they are all focused on neuroscience?
Another 23 percent showed signs of accepting the story to some degree, the researchers said.
The headline for this article is really deceptive. Or the summary of the statistics is sloppy. Or both. Either way, this is dangerous from a political perspective, as is evident in the comments field. From bipartisan, lazy accusations of "fake news" to disbelief in the accounts of survivors of abuse, this story will be used in nasty ways that go far beyond what it deserves.
Every theorem of mathematics, every significant result of science, is a challenge to our imagination as interface designers. Can we find ways of expressing these principles in an interface? What new objects and new operations does a principle suggest? What a priori surprising relationship between those objects and operations are revealed by the principle? Can we find interfaces which vividly reveal those relationships, preferably in a way that is unique to the phenomenon being studied?
Speech, writing, math notation, various kinds of graphs, and musical notation are all examples of cognitive technologies. They are tools that help us think, and they can become part of the way we think -- and change the way we think.
Computer interfaces can be cognitive technologies. To whatever degree an interface reflects a set of ideas or methods of working, mastering the interface provides mastery of those ideas or methods.
Experts often have ways of thinking that they rarely share with others, for various reasons. Sometimes they aren't fully aware of their thought processes. The thoughts may be difficult to convey in speech or print. The thoughts may seem sloppy compared to traditional formal explanations.
These thought processes often involve:
Nielsen considers turning such thought processes into (computer) interfaces. "Every theorem of mathematics, every significant result of science, is a challenge to our imagination as interface designers. Can we find ways of expressing these principles in an interface? What new objects and operations does a principle suggest?"
Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss
The participants with relatively strong spatial abilities tended to gravitate towards, and excel in, scientific and technical fields such as the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer science.
Democratizing science does not mean settling questions about Nature by plebiscite, any more than democratizing politics means setting the prime rate by referendum. What democratization does mean, in science as elsewhere, is creating institutions and practices that fully incorporate principles of accessibility, transparency, and accountability. It means considering the societal outcomes of research at least as attentively as the scientific and technological outputs. It means insisting that in addition to being rigorous, science be popular, relevant, and participatory.
(courses.csail.mit.edu/18.337/2015/docs/50YearsDataScience.pdf)
nice reference !
Buridan begins to explore the idea of inertia, also known as Newton’s First Law
Everyone knows Newton
Credibull score = 5.98 / 10
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Activities such as time spent on task and discussion board interactions are at the forefront of research.
Really? These aren’t uncontroversial, to say the least. For instance, discussion board interactions often call for careful, mixed-method work with an eye to preventing instructor effect and confirmation bias. “Time on task” is almost a codeword for distinctions between models of learning. Research in cognitive science gives very nuanced value to “time spent on task” while the Malcolm Gladwells of the world usurp some research results. A major insight behind Competency-Based Education is that it can allow for some variance in terms of “time on task”. So it’s kind of surprising that this summary puts those two things to the fore.
The point of replication isn't to shame researchers — it's to build better science
Performance CategoryDesign Categoriesi. StructureFrame design, shape and materials –for functionii. MobilityThrusters: number, power, orientationiii. SensorsCameras, lights, sonar, touch sensors, compass, GPSiv. ToolsArms, claws, rakes, wrenches, hammersv. Ranging DistanceTether length: waterproofing required vi. Buoyancy/ BallastFixed or variable, location and materialsvii. ControlsRC via wire or signal via fibre optic cableviii. Other?Depends on the specific mission
Are you doing science projects? Maybe you can use an old mission scope to have students ask questions about. That way some of the questions we will need to face will be answered before we actually get the mission for this year.
Hi there, I am using this open source tool to promote open science by make open annotations directly on the was as a platform for collaboration. You also can jot down your comments in the context where it belongs.
Page 187 On hyper authorship
"hyper authorship” is an indicator of "collective cognition" in which the specific contributions of individuals no longer can be identified. Physics has among the highest rates of coauthorship in the sciences and the highest rates of self archiving documents via a repository. Whether the relationship between research collaborators (as indicated by the rates of coauthorship) and sharing publications (as reflected in self archiving) holds in other fields is a question worth exploring empirically.
scientific data will not be "all digital "anytime soon, however. Substantial amounts of important "legacy data "remain in paper form, both public and private hands. Estimated 750 million specimens in the US natural storymaker history museums, for example, black digital descriptions. And effort is underway to digitize the descriptions of large-scale, using barcoding technics. Digitizing historical documents such as newspapers, handbooks, directories, and land-use records will benefit the sciences in addition to the humanities and social sciences. These records are used to establish historical patterns of weather, crop yields, animal husbandry, and so forth. And untold wealth of scientific data lies in private hands. Individual scientists often keep the records of the research career in their offices of oratories, only by storage limited only by storage space on the shelves and refrigerators, freezers, and digital devices.
Page 47
Communication is the essence of scholarship comment as many observers have said in many ways. Scholarship is an inherently social activity, involving a wide range of private and public interactions within the research Community. Publication comment as the public report of research, is part of a continuous cycle of Reading, Writing, disgusting, searching, investigating, presenting, submitting, and reviewing. No scholarly publication stands alone. Each new work in a field his position relative to others through the process of citing relevant literature.
Neil Fraser says Vietnam is doing well with computer science education.
"If grade 5 students in Vietnam are performing at least on par with their grade 11 peers in the USA, what does grade 11 in Vietnam look like? I walked into a high school CS class, again without any advance notice. The class was working on the assignment below (partially translated by their teacher for my benefit afterwards). Given a data file describing a maze with diagonal walls, count the number of enclosed areas, and measure the size of the largest one."
Q&A session with Alan Kay, June 2016.
Initially, the digital humanities consisted of the curation and analysis of data that were born digital, and the digitisation and archiving projects that sought to render analogue texts and material objects into digital forms that could be organised and searched and be subjects to basic forms of overarching, automated or guided analysis, such as summary visualisations of content or connections between documents, people or places. Subsequently, its advocates have argued that the field has evolved to provide more sophisticated tools for handling, searching, linking, sharing and analysing data that seek to complement and augment existing humanities methods, and facilitate traditional forms of interpretation and theory building, rather than replacing traditional methods or providing an empiricist or positivistic approach to humanities scholarship.
summary of history of digital humanities
hyperuniform distribution - Appears random at smaller scales, but more predictable at larger scales.