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Category: Research

The Social Progress Index 2014

A new indicator of human well-being and potential delivered, the Social Progress Index for 2014,  uses non-economic data to map the nations of the world and to determine their relative rank in achieving social progress. interneticon Discover it on-line here.

A recent article and the latest RSA Short focus on the issues of economic growth and how there are omissions in the singular pursuit of economic growth, as a proxy for the development of the human condition.

It is an interesting idea that there should be a non-economic proxy for human well-being, regularly and cogently calculated, which serves as a measurer of human development. The pursuit of which leavens the aggressive one-sidedness of capital by pivoting economic activity into a pursuit for human happiness.

Could the Social Progress Index be the proxy long awaited?

Poorer countries are often compared using to the UN’s Human Development Index, though this tends to be highly-correlated with GDP, with all the limitations that implies. One of the strengths of the SPI is that, by only using social and environmental indicators and excluding all economic measures, it is easier to compare how countries with similar GDP are doing relative to each other.
Matthew Bishop – The Economist

In this 2014 analysis the United Kingdom ranks 13th in the world in terms of the values subscribed to by the index. The top three world nations are New Zealand, Switzerland and Iceland.

The interneticon data clusters used for the index are divided across three main headings – basic human needs, the foundations of well-being and opportunity. The U.K. does well in global terms with regard to water and waste infrastructure for example, as to be expected, and has a good score on the opportunities available for individuals to change their lives. We do poorly on rankings around  equality and inclusion.

This short video compares and contrasts Gross Domestic Product outcomes with the SPI…

The new index is fostered by the Social Progress Imperative. A movement that subscribes to the goal of developing and guiding access to social investment ‘…which creates a shared language and common goals to align different organizations and achieve greater social impact’.  interneticon Find the Imperative on-line here.

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The Science Museum Group Journal

The Science Museum Group have just launched the first issue of their bi-annual on-line journal. interneticon See the first edition here.

A collaboration between  the Science Museum (London), the Museum of Science & Industry (Manchester), the National Railway Museum (York) and the National Media Museum (Bradford). The Group has achieved Independent Research Organisation (IRO) status with major UK Research Councils.

The Science Museum Group Journal is an open access publication. Designed to be freely available to all readers and ‘knowledge distributors’…( a conversationsEAST concept? Ed.) The articles can be freely copied and adapted, as long as the appropriate attribution is given, under the terms of the interneticon Creative Commons Attribution licence.

(Care should be taken of course, if the articles contain imagery or data that is subject to copyright by other individuals or organisations).

Ian Blatchford, Director of The Science Museum, writing in this first issue opines…

Academic publishing is going through a period of extraordinary change and its future is somewhat uncertain, but the Science Museum Group Journal takes advantage of being born in a digital age, with all the opportunities that this offers. One of the greatest of these, perhaps, is the ability to share our extraordinary library of images, film and multi-media, not just as wallpaper but as an important and often beautiful primary source in its own right…

Reading the first issue a couple of articles shone out for us as a wonderful way to use the internet to contextualise history.

Florence Grant, a post-doctoral researcher at Yale Centre for British Art writes about George Adams assembling large amounts of ‘philosophical instruments’ for George III in the 1760’s.

The illustrations in the piece echo the research findings about the importance of using old engravings in the design process for new instrumentation – cutting and pasting in the modern vernacular…long before Microsoft Word. interneticon Read more here…

Similarly,  Alice Cliff’s piece on William Bally and his phrenological specimens uses graphics to effect, helping us understand the variety and scope of this Manchester made 3D archive.

The article reveals that Bally used interneticon a pantograph to create his specimens. A piece of equipment well known to sign makers in the mid 20th century before the arrival of the micro-chip and the keyboard. interneticon Read more here…

We enjoyed exploring the first issue of this new journal – academically sound, rigorously produced and open to all. If we may be permitted a thoroughly unprofessional salutation…way to go Science Museum Group!

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Crowdfunding Science

Here at conversationsEAST we have gone USA! We have picked up the news that science crowd funding site, Microryza, has relaunched as Experiment.com

Although only functioning for U.S. researchers at the moment, the Experiment team do have plans to offer non-U.S. researchers the opportunity to call for investment on the site.

Begun by a group of young researchers, frustrated at budget cuts and an inability to link science research to interested investors, they have re-designed and relaunched Experiment.com as a result. Worth a look, just to test the concept.

The RSA also supports Fellow’s project through crowd funding too. Check out the RSA KickStarter page below.

Here at conversationsEAST we think that ethical, impact investing along the Experiment and KickStarter model has a powerful future too. We share the excitement of connecting researchers in the bio-tech, renewable energy sectors.

Renewables particularly, with a concept of initial demand, at launch, for capital infrastructure, followed by the development of a smooth, much lower cost, lower environmental impact production flow, is a model that will seriously challenge traditional business matrices in the mainstream energy sector for the next generation.

Lets call our conversationsEAST impact investment model PowerStarter.

Are there any Fellows out there in any sector ready to contribute to a  non-profit , web based project communication and investor linking bulletin board, a la Experiment?

Write to the conversationsEAST team and declare your interest. emailIcon4 Contact Us

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Climate Data – Microsoft contributes

Microsoft Research has recently announced its commitment to provide large amounts of cloud computing resources to help research projects contribute to the White House Climate Data initiative, a response to the Climate Action Plan sanctioned by President Obama. interneticon

The programme involves Microsoft Research providing 40 successful bidders with 180,000 hours of cloud computing time, using Windows Azure, and facilitated with 20 Terabytes of cloud storage.

Microsoft will also provide researchers with training and classes to ensure that project teams are best equipped to exploit cloud data mechanics.

Microsoft further commits to the deployment of FetchClimate, a climate data resource for past and present observations and for climate-prediction information. FetchClimate will be available as a fast, free, intelligent environmental information-retrieval service and as a cloud-based system that can be adapted to the specific needs of new projects.

interneticon You can read more about FetchClimate, a Microsoft free on-line tool tool, here.

The process for research teams to apply is not complicated. Short, three pages, submissions must be sent in by June 15th, 2014.

interneticon The on-line application form is here.

interneticon The call for proposals FAQ is here.

If you do, the very best of luck. See you in the cloud.

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Research – the gender gap

The Times Higher Ed. have recently published an article detailing the results of the Research Councils UK findings on how successful women are in research bids.

The findings are particularly remarkable when looking at female success rates for large grants. In the age cohort 50 to 59 years of age, women are about half as likely as men to be successful.

Research grants by gender image
Source: Research Councils UK

Even in the lower age range the success of men bidding for grants under one million pounds exceeds women. The male gender bias is apparent across all age ranges, widening the gap as scientific careers progress, arguably.

This is, as far as we know, the first time that such research grant data has been published with gender segmentation. It is truly shocking to think that young women scientists, just at the start of their career, are doomed to an intellectual life hampered by lack of resource and opportunity.

Should this be a 21st Century state of affairs…now we know?

interneticon You can find the original Times Higher Ed. web article here.

pdfIcon4 You can find the Research Council data here.

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DataUp updated

The Open Source, award winning data curation programme, DataUp was recently subject to a comprehensive set of updates, which were launched at 2014 International Data Curation Conference in San Francisco.

The new version of DataUp gives administrators the opportunity to select and define metadata, as well as auto-define the meta values loaded by users and can now run  a Data Quality Check, at an administrator level, to verify the data input from system users. Checking to see that entries and uploads comply with repository requirements.

This release is the fruit of much work done at the California Digital Library, and was supported by the interneticon Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.  interneticon Microsoft Research says of DataUp in its endorsement…

Presently, DataUp supports two different types of repositories, though more can be added via repository adapters: (1) a personal or organizational Microsoft OneDrive repository or (2) a repository that adheres to the ONEShare standard developed by the California Digital Library.

You can read more about DataUp on the interneticon California Digital Library web page here. New users can get started on-line by simply logging in with their existing Microsoft account details from this page. interneticon

dataUpLogoButtonIf you are interested in Open Source software, cloud applications and research data access and manipulation DataUp is a useful tool. Not the only cloud based service available to researchers, but readily accessible and easy to get started with we would argue.

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News Desk image by Markus Winkler, Creative Commons, Unsplash...

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