nsf.gov · Domains · Slashdot Mirror

Re:not skewed by Anonymous Coward · 2014-06-06 04:03 · Score: 1 · on Lego To Produce Three Box Sets Featuring Female Scientists

This is the real world.

Re:A bad idea for reasons of basic economics by khallow · 2014-06-04 08:59 · Score: 1 · on EU Launches World's Largest Civilian Robotics Program; 240,000 New Jobs Expected

I have applied for EU finding and I can tell you that there is a lot of work that goes into proving that they got their money's worth.

So what? What fraction of this budget is that again? How many parts in a million? I get that you think you're doing science or whatever, but there's a better term for your role: hostage. Pay us all this money or the guy in the lab coat gets it.

I think it's the result of massive innumeracy, particularly of economics, from the public all the way up into the supposedly educated elite. The successful publicly funded parasite knows they need to show something (or more accurately have a lab coat hostage do that), but it doesn't need to be much. Money spent and shiny thing gained. Who cares about the zeros on the check?

At least consider the possibility that big research projects produce side effects that are beneficial but difficult to measure (say, WWW was invented initially for use in CERN).

And the WWW would have been invented for some other purpose, if CERN wasn't there. Nor is that development particularly expensive. It was done originally by a single person with some spare time. You never needed billions of euros to develop the most valuable thing ever to come out of CERN.

And my complaint is not that big projects don't occasionally produce something of value, but rather that they spend an unusually large amount of money in order to do so. The act of considering only part of the consequences of an action, namely just the benefits not the costs, is a classic example of economic innumeracy.

I cannot convince you of the validity of this claim, but true science is a high-risk and long-term endeavor of the kind that does not appear favorably in quarterly financial statements.

It's interesting how proponents always go immediately to the absurd extremes. But I used a term in my previous post, "centuries" which I think adequate describes my time horizon here. That's a bit longer than the next quarter, don't you think?

Nor can you "convince" me of the validity of your claim because it isn't falsifiable within a human lifetime. Shouldn't a justification for scientific research be at least a little bit scientific?

How about you try to get that "easy" money. Have a look at the requirements for application in the Horizon 2020 EU research program. You need several AAA laboratories (ideally, with multiple Nature/Cell/Science publications) in order to stand a chance.

What is easy for a large corporation or research organization is not necessarily easy for a person or small group due to economies of scale. I doubt Volkswagen or Bayer have the same trouble navigating this morass as you do.

Also, it's classic status signalling by the political elite who have reason to make it hard to obtain funding. Our research must be awesome - look at all the bullshit we put our scientists through! The thing is, just how much science are you really doing when you're spending so much time merely acquiring grants?

I think a huge part of the problem here is the capture of a portion of the most creative and industrious part of Europe into this web. In addition to the raw cost of just squandering massive amounts of public funding, we also have a lot of people jumping through hoops and otherwise engaging in near meaningless activity rather than doing something productive.

It is a distraction which encourages people to go into near useless occupations and pursuits (even then forced to spend a considerable part of their professional life not doing that). I think we will see a huge generational decline (or rather the continuation of this trend, to be honest) in the global effectiveness of scientific research as a result.

if you feel that basic research is not "productive"

And I do believe that "basic research" as used in the scientific community is not productive because it is explicitly not productive (for example).

Re:From many points of data by dinfinity · 2014-05-28 01:08 · Score: 2 · on Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy

Looking at the actual data ( http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/... ), it seems that answering the question in TFS with true is very much correlated positively with 'verbal ability', 'family income', 'formal education', 'science mathematics education', 'trend factual knowledge of science scale' (whatever that may be) and negatively with 'age'.
The same pattern is visible in the other questions, just more pronounced.

Considering the retarded way the 'uncorrelated' questions were posed, I can imagine that respondents just didn't want to answer them or gave the 'wrong' answer. 'The universe started with a big explosion' is a ridiculous (almost pejorative) mischaracterization of the Big Bang and I would feel very uncomfortable answering 'true' to it.

'Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals' is also questionable, especially due to the addition 'as we know them today' combined with 'of animals'. It implies that the question specifically addresses homo sapiens. Technically, home sapiens evolved from species that most educated people wouldn't regard as 'animals', but as proto-humans. This interpretation correctly renders the statement false.

Erroneous opening statement by damn_registrars · 2014-05-06 09:44 · Score: 4, Interesting · on The Exploitative Economics of Academic Publishing

Taxpayers in the United States spend $139 billion a year on scientific research, yet much of this research is inaccessible not only to the public

The largest - by dollar amount - government funding agency is The National Institutes of Health (NIH). For some time now they have required that research they fund is published in publicly-accessible ways. This means that all new grants they have handed out have been required to make their published results viewable by anyone, from anywhere.

Similarly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is planning to go the same way very soon.

So while the for-profit publishing model is generally bad, it is being chipped away at. And with each passing year, more of what taxpayers fund is made publicly accessible immediately; we are already at the point where only the oldest and longest-running NIH grants (and there aren't many left as very few grants go more than 5 years) are exempt from this policy.

Erroneous opening statement by damn_registrars · 2014-05-06 09:44 · Score: 4, Interesting · on The Exploitative Economics of Academic Publishing

Taxpayers in the United States spend $139 billion a year on scientific research, yet much of this research is inaccessible not only to the public

The largest - by dollar amount - government funding agency is The National Institutes of Health (NIH). For some time now they have required that research they fund is published in publicly-accessible ways. This means that all new grants they have handed out have been required to make their published results viewable by anyone, from anywhere.

Similarly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is planning to go the same way very soon.

So while the for-profit publishing model is generally bad, it is being chipped away at. And with each passing year, more of what taxpayers fund is made publicly accessible immediately; we are already at the point where only the oldest and longest-running NIH grants (and there aren't many left as very few grants go more than 5 years) are exempt from this policy.

Re:And Amazon's not the only one either! by russotto · 2014-04-26 15:54 · Score: 2 · on Amazon Embodies the Gender Gap in Tech

Try this on for size for US science and engineering degrees by gender. Here's the short version for bachelors degrees:

Agricultural sciences: slightly female
Biological sciences: strongly female
Atmospheric sciences: strongly male (but very small overall)
Earth and ocean sciences: strongly male
Computer sciences: strongly male
Mathematics: slightly male
Astronomy: strongly male (very small overall)
Chemistry: Parity. The parity persists through masters degrees but doctorates are strongly male. There has been rough parity in the Bachelor's degree since 2001.
Physics: Strongly male
Psychology: Strongly female -- and an extremely large number of recipients
Economics: Strongly male
Political science: Slightly female
Sociology: Strongly female
Engineering (each and every subfield): Strongly male
Health: Strongly female, huge number of recipients.

Except mathematics, chemistry, agriculture, and political science, all science and engineering degrees show a gender skew.

Re:It's been politicized by Catiline · 2014-04-12 14:48 · Score: 1 · on Study Rules Out Global Warming Being a Natural Fluctuation With 99% Certainty

I'm well aware of the problem.

Another indicator of public understanding of science focuses on understanding of how [scientists] generate and assess scientific evidence, rather than knowledge of particular facts. Past NSF surveys have used questions on three general topics—probability, experimental design, and the scientific method—to assess trends in Americans' understanding of the process of scientific inquiry.
...
Understanding of what it means to study something scientifically is considerably lower, at 18% in 2010. Correct responses on this question are lower, in part, because the task of expressing a concept in one's own words is more difficult than recognizing a correct response to a multiple-choice style close-ended survey question.

This is still much higher than I would expect based on occupation, since STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] fields account for only 6% of the workforce. However, even though, as you say, "[m]ost people are not in a position to understand themselves and their own thinking", this is not insurmountable. Surveys similar to the NSF one I linked shows that over the past 25 years, the literacy rate has doubled (from 10% in 1988); clearly, the public can learn to understand rational, scientific methods.

Even if this conclusion is wrong, what do you think the proper method is to deal with the irrational nature of humans? Set up some sort of inner cabal of "great minds" to run the world (ignoring the fact they're just as human, therefore just as irrational, as anyone else)? Try to find some inhuman ("angelic") agent to run the world, and hope their goals remain humanly comprehensible? Or just give up and go back to the caves?

Re:Projections by riverat1 · 2014-04-02 14:19 · Score: 1 · on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming

Scientists are not asking for power and any grants they get are already audited. If they don't produce good science with the grant money they receive they soon find that source of funding drying up. And if you think they are being forced to produce a particular outcome by the people giving those grants I suggest you do some research. In the US government grants are a matter of public record. A good place to start would be with the National Science Foundation. Go there and see if you can find any evidence of bias in the grant process. If you can come back to me with any actual evidence that is happening then I'll be more willing to listen to you.

Re:And not all the world's scientists... by riverat1 · 2014-03-31 17:11 · Score: 1 · on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming

That said, try to say that in the government grant funded, let's get ourselves an international tax (because that is REQUIRED before you can have an international army).

People keep saying that but government grants (in the US at least) are matters of public record. Has anyone ever gone through those grants to try and prove that assertion? I spent 3 or 4 hours one night going through National Science Foundation grants and didn't find anything to support it. If someone does a scientifically valid statistical study of government grant programs and comes up with evidence to support such a bias I'll listen. Until then it's just an unsupported assertion.

Re:What they're really afraid of, I think... by metlin · 2014-03-16 13:33 · Score: 1 · on The Billionaires Privatizing American Science

Are you serious? Is it that hard to use a search engine?

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries...

Re:The answer? by forand · 2014-03-10 14:02 · Score: 4, Informative · on How Engineers Are Building a Power Station At the South Pole

One cannot put a nuclear reactor on Antarctica at this point by international treaty: you can neither store nor dispose of waste there and taking it offsite costs too much. http://www.nsf.gov/geo/plr/ant...

Re:"Developed" = "Imagined" by nmr_andrew · 2013-12-27 06:12 · Score: 1 · on Metamaterials Developed To Bend Sound Waves, Deflect Tsunamis

Metamaterials Developed To Bend Sound Waves, Deflect Tsunamis

Is it really "developed" when it's not actually been made yet?

No, it's not, but making grandiose claims about what something could become in mere decades (just possibly, if everything falls perfectly into place) is how you try to get a bigger slice of the ever dwindling pie of research funding. You need to grossly oversell every result.

For those unaware, due to congressional meddling, the NSF effectively now requires you to tell it what great societal or economic problem your research is going to solve in the grant application, i.e. before you even get preliminary data. I'm afraid that overselling of all research is going to balloon in the next few years, as if it hasn't already.

Re:Shockingly? by sakonofie · 2013-12-21 06:03 · Score: 1 · on 90 Percent of Businesses Say IP Is "Not Important"

I thought the same thing initially, after all 1 IBM counts the same as 1 local coffee shop right? Of course most businesses don't care. But after digging into the survey's methodology details this 90% number is really bizarre. I suspect the actually number is quite a bit higher. By design, the companies they are strongly biased towards talking to R&D active companies. But the percentage of firms that don't care about IP among people that are actively invested in R&D is surprisingly high.
Looking into the importance question on just utility patents it turns out R&D inactive companies overwhelmingly do not care. R&D active companies tend to care significantly more. And unsurprisingly some industries really do care. For Computer and electronic products with active R&D, 44% say these are very important, 21 somewhat important, and 34 not important. (For nonactive R&D not important rises to 88%.) That 34% not important surprised me.

Re:Shockingly? by sakonofie · 2013-12-21 06:03 · Score: 1 · on 90 Percent of Businesses Say IP Is "Not Important"

I thought the same thing initially, after all 1 IBM counts the same as 1 local coffee shop right? Of course most businesses don't care. But after digging into the survey's methodology details this 90% number is really bizarre. I suspect the actually number is quite a bit higher. By design, the companies they are strongly biased towards talking to R&D active companies. But the percentage of firms that don't care about IP among people that are actively invested in R&D is surprisingly high.
Looking into the importance question on just utility patents it turns out R&D inactive companies overwhelmingly do not care. R&D active companies tend to care significantly more. And unsurprisingly some industries really do care. For Computer and electronic products with active R&D, 44% say these are very important, 21 somewhat important, and 34 not important. (For nonactive R&D not important rises to 88%.) That 34% not important surprised me.

But results include companies not performing R& by Theaetetus · 2013-12-21 05:13 · Score: 1 · on 90 Percent of Businesses Say IP Is "Not Important"

The problem with this logic is that the survey specifically targets businesses performing R&D. From TFA:

"The target population for BRDIS consists of all for-profit companies that have five or more employees and that perform R&D in the United States.”

Continuing in TFA:

If you examine the details, the survey results begin to make more sense. Larger companies tend to report intellectual property as being more important; businesses designated as especially “R&D active” also place more importance on various kinds of intellectual property.

And if you follow the link to the actual data tables in the report, you'll see that the various numbers pulled into the article - 96% say patents are not important, 54% in the "information" fields say copyright is not important, etc. - are all including the non-R&D active sets. If you do look at the target population that performs R&D, those numbers change, respectively, to 34% and 69% saying that they are important.

More telling, go to the data chart for new or improved products or processes by businesses who performed or did not perform R&D. For companies that did not perform any R&D, 88% did not create or improve any products or processes. Accordingly, it's pretty reasonable to consider that they wouldn't see much value in IP over that time. For companies that did perform R&D, 65% created new products or processes, and that starts getting a lot closer to the percentage saying that IP is important.

So, sure, depending on what numbers you cherry pick, you can "support" almost any conclusion, but you're not telling the entire story.

Re:Former ESL teacher in Shanghai... by the+eric+conspiracy · 2013-12-03 14:47 · Score: 1 · on New Education Performance Data Published: Asia Dominates

Did you read the article? It isn't just the Chinese. R&D spending is growing. Other nations are increasing their R&D too. Except in the US R&D funding has been dropping as a percentage of GDP since 1985.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/s2194/conten2a.htm#7

Re:Science isn't critical thinking... by tbannist · 2013-11-27 01:28 · Score: 1 · on Getting Evolution In Science Textbooks For Texas Schools

It's true much of the current definition of species is somewhat arbitrary.

There is some magic component that we just have not seen yet which triggers these events.

Apparently Will Ratcliff and Michael Travisano from the University of Minnesota have already demonstrated the evolution from single-cell to multi-cell in the laboratory. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

What about other sciences? by turp182 · 2013-11-26 11:19 · Score: 3, Informative · on Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought

Are women a minority in other sciences?
Based on enrollment in engineering studies they are a distinct minority (17.7% in 2009 per the NSF PDF):
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab2-9.pdf

Given that, I would expect that under 20% of software engineers would be women (in no year did the % enrolled exceed 20%).

An individual, regardless of gender, must choose to go into engineering(software included), usually via a degree program (I went actuarial and then moved into software development - but I had a lot of software development experience previously, into architecture/process optimization now).

As an alternate example, men only represent about 10% of the Registered Nurse population (not sure of the year):
http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics

I see no issue or sexism based on the number of women entering engineering sciences. I imagine the stats generally follow the % by gender that seek such degrees.

Re:You're an idiot... by Derek+Pomery · 2013-10-20 13:10 · Score: 1 · on Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture

You know, actually, I read something interesting a while ago.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=127688&preview=false

Sooo, as I read that, as sea ice shrinks, ozone hole shrinks.

Which is kinda interesting given past few decades.

It'll be interesting to see if that changes if sea ice/snow increases as it has in antarctic for a while.
(this year was slightly improved over past for the arctic too)

NSF not writing checks by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-06 12:20 · Score: 5, Informative · on Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You?

Those of us who are funded at least partly by NSF grants are potentially in trouble. For people who have money in their account from an active grant that will last a few months - all the better. For those whose paycheck depends on the next installment from a grant, tough luck. The worst affected will be folks who had payments and grant reviews in progress.

More info @ http://www.nsf.gov./ The most relevant portions:

Payments: No payments will be made during the shutdown.
Issuance of New Grants and Cooperative Agreements: No new grants or cooperative agreements will be awarded.

Re:More ripping off the taxpayer by grumpy_technologist · 2013-08-17 11:28 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Dishwasher-Size, 25kW Fuel Cell In Development

I know!

How dare they take research dollars and research new technologies?
How dare they follow through with successful research by *forming a business in the U.S. of A.* the very country that funded the research.
How dare they take advantage of NSF-funded programs to transfer successful research to US-based businesses? It's almost like they (congress, policymakers, and business) wanted this to happen.
How dare they use a volunteer-based peer review system to verify the findings and disseminate the results?
Finally, how dare they use the NSF-mandated Data magagement plan to make all data available to the public and other researchers? Clearly they are trying to dupe us all now!

Source: NSF funded researcher. Disclaimer: NSF-funded researcher.

Re:More ripping off the taxpayer by grumpy_technologist · 2013-08-17 11:28 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Dishwasher-Size, 25kW Fuel Cell In Development

I know!

How dare they take research dollars and research new technologies?
How dare they follow through with successful research by *forming a business in the U.S. of A.* the very country that funded the research.
How dare they take advantage of NSF-funded programs to transfer successful research to US-based businesses? It's almost like they (congress, policymakers, and business) wanted this to happen.
How dare they use a volunteer-based peer review system to verify the findings and disseminate the results?
Finally, how dare they use the NSF-mandated Data magagement plan to make all data available to the public and other researchers? Clearly they are trying to dupe us all now!

Source: NSF funded researcher. Disclaimer: NSF-funded researcher.

Re:And what most folks are missing... by Namarrgon · 2013-07-31 18:58 · Score: 1 · on Global Warming 5 Million Years Ago In Antarctic Drastically Raised Sea Levels

Finding it hard to follow your train of thought, but if I understand you right...

There are multiple factors, not one "root cause". Orbital precession isn't enough by itself, but when combined with orbital eccentricity and obliquity AND favourable topology, then you get an ice age. That's why they don't occur at *every* orbital cycle - and why they can sometimes occur between cycles (e.g. if intense volcanism causes enough cooling to trigger an ice age by itself).

If you want a specific example, try this paper, which describes how, 116,000 years ago, a pattern of ice sheet formation and melting every few thousand years was triggered by the Bering Strait being shallow enough that whenever sea levels lowered sufficiently through ice formation, the Strait closed, which changed the salinity mixing of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This intensified the Atlantic's meridional current, which warmed parts of Greenland and North America sufficiently to melt enough ice to re-open the Strait - and the pattern repeated.

This pattern was eventually broken 34,000 years ago when (yes) we reached a point in our orbital cycle that kept temperatures cool enough, and the Strait closed long enough, to stabilise the climate, so that when it opened once more 10,000 years ago, the climate remained stable enough to allow our civilisation. So as you see, it's not so simple that there's a single "root cause" we can pin it on, but that doesn't mean we don't know what did it - we can see (and simulate) how multiple factors combined and interacted to result the ice ages we can see in the ice core record, which gives us a pretty solid explanation as to the causes of all the ice ages over the last 116,000 years.

Re:and the other way around by darkstar949 · 2013-06-26 10:11 · Score: 1 · on Why Engineering Freshmen Should Take Humanities Courses

They effectively do. And by "high school level", I don't mean "I just barely passed the required courses", I mean "I did well enough to get into a science degree in college".

Like I said, most high schools do offer college prep courses, but there is no universal "track" that you can take through high school. There are just too many school districts and educational requirements that vary on a state-by-state basis to really make any sweeping declarations about them.

Anthropology is a very mixed bag, like most humanities.

Except that because of it being a mixed bag it's not really a considered part of the humanities. The NSF considers it to be a STEM field. However, it is a broad enough field that it effectively kind of straddles the line between humanities and STEM with different disciplines being more on one side or the other.

Most science departments have given up on the humanities to teach anything useful. They teach their own writing classes, their own logical reasoning, and their own rhetoric (scientific talks).

Do you have actual evidence to support that claim? Logical reasoning excluded since it can be tough to decide where it belongs, it's news to me that "most" of the science departments are teaching their own writing and rhetoric classes. For one thing, I don't see that succeeding given how university inter-departmental politics work and I'm even more skeptical that most STEM departments would even be that effective at teaching writing and rhetoric. I can see workshops on writing being done (been to some myself) and likewise for scientific talks, but for a STEM department to attempt to teach general writing and rhetoric would be doing a disservice to its student. Don't forget, rhetoric is not the same as giving a scientific talk and its a field onto itself for a reason.

Re:Good, this is an urgent problem by clarkkent09 · 2013-06-25 11:36 · Score: 1 · on Obama Reveals Climate Change Plan

Wind is almost at price parity with dirty coal.

First of all, almost at price parity is not the same thing as at parity. Secondly, please provide a link to research that makes that claim and I will probably be able to help you locate misleading data, biased interpretation and outright lies in it. There is a lot of that sort of thing going on as the competition for funding $$$ heats up among both real and fantasy scientists.

All of this thanks to huge R&D investments in Germany, China and USA. The free market comes after.

A little bit of perspective: two-thirds of R&D funding in the USA comes from the private sector, both for-profit and non-profit: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf07317 In fact, private money going into scientific research in the USA is pretty close to being greater than the total R&D spending of China and Germany put together: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending Five years ago this was definitely true, today more doubtful due to Chinese increase in spending.

Another thing is that private spending would likely be much higher if the government didn't create both free research (hey, why should private businesses pay for it then) and unfair competition, both of which needlessly push private money out and burden the taxpayer instead. This is overall, not specific to solar/wind, so I don't know, possibly you are right when it comes to just those areas.

Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again by blue+trane · 2013-04-30 04:00 · Score: 1 · on SOPA Creator Now In Charge of NSF Grants

This new amendment recalls the Mansfield Amendment ( http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2000/nsb00215/nsb50/1970/mansfield.html ), which is listed by J. Storrs Hall in "Beyond AI" as being one of the causes of the "AI Winter" during the 1970s. (See http://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_AI.html?id=j6ofAQAAIAAJ page 82.)

Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again by Ded+Bob · 2013-04-30 02:18 · Score: 1 · on SOPA Creator Now In Charge of NSF Grants

You know, frivolous stuff like robotics research.

I understand that he may not understand everything, but a lot of what is in his list is frivolous. Here is another NSF-funded robotics research "project": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hwBOBeDFHw If they want to play, then they can do it on the universities' dimes. The universities certainly charge enough to pay for this.

Referencing some more from here: http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.serve&File_id=2dccf06d-65fe-4087-b58d-b43ff68987fa

How about this: http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0909289 This does not benefit the U.S. society all that much. It seems like something that the travel industry should pay for.
We even paid to research if terrorism affected John McCain's chances for the 2008 election: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/10/01_terror.shtml His campaign or the GOP could have researched that themselves.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-26 04:17 · Score: 0 · on New Study Suggests No Shortage of American STEM Graduates

There's a huge difference in the job market for pure scientists (the "S" in STEM), and IT folks. The job market for someone with a PhD in, say Astronomy is terrible. Lumping these folks together with the legions of code hackers is ridiculous.

Okay, but there's only like 200 PhDs in astronomy a year, so say ~10k astronomy PhDs in the entire workforce.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf10308/

Re:Writing LaTeX directly is often unnecessary by EvanED · 2013-02-15 12:49 · Score: 1 · on Collaborative LaTeX Editor With Preview In Your Web Browser

OK, so before I begin, I should state a very big disclaimer that I actually haven't really used any e-readers (I'm too cheap). However, I have thought about what formats to use for typesetting technical textbook-like material, and played around with a couple toolchains a small amount. (I'm also very familiar with Latex.) It would be a useful thing for me to know, so take the following post with a hefty grain of "if you disagree back at me, feel free to give reasons why and I will certainly consider them."

My decision a while back was that I felt like what would be ideal would be to offer things in two formats: the first would be a print version in PDF formatted to work well on letter paper (e.g. use the full width for figures and tables where it's useful; put occasional information, cross references, figure captions, etc. in the margins; and push the text width a little wider that Latex gives you by default), and the second would be a reflowable version like HTML and/or EPUB.

The first problem is that the output quality isn't as good (see kindle and how it renders equations)

I sort of feel like this would likely be overruled by the increase in ease of reading the textual portions. I find reading full-page PDFs like I envision annoying enough on my 11.5" laptop screen (it's a convertible tablet so it is natural enough to hold in portrait mode), so I can't imagine trying to read the print version I'd envision on a screen that's much smaller like an iPad or Kindle.

And besides, you could always render equations (especially displayed ones) into images and include them, no?

This means that equations and figures in particular change location all the time meaning it is difficult to get a feel in the book where everything is. Familiarity with location is lost. For a novel this isn't an issue but for complex layout it because a hindrance rather than a virtue.

Here I mostly disagree, for two reasons.

First, I suspect that most people would be spending almost all of their time with your book or whatever with one format. So if the book looks different on two different devices... who really cares?

Second, it seems like most of the problem of that would go away if you have the ability to navigate to cross references easily. If the text says "See figure 1", it doesn't much matter that it moves around. I'm not sure that all platforms have something like this (in particular, does the Kindle?), but at least it seems like more general-purpose tablets are likely to.

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are.

Re:Well if a "scientist" makes a model then by riverat1 · 2013-02-05 15:07 · Score: 1 · on Updated Model Puts Earth On the Edge of the Habitable Zone

As OneAhead pointed out the funding information you seek is available, just not all in one place. Why would you expect anyone to compile it all and hand it to you on a silver platter? Maybe you should do everyone a favor and start compiling it yourself. The National Science Foundation is a good place to start. Every research institution probably has a web page trumpeting grants their scientists have received.

The rest of your post is just political claptrap that has nothing to do with climate science.

Actually, that is an example of cherry picking... by denzacar · 2013-01-23 20:51 · Score: 1 · on Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct

...and confirmation bias.
Also, the article is VERY light on data and heavy on rationalization for its theories.

But let's address the "scientific/engineering academia" issue first.

An overwhelming 88% of faculty members committing
misconduct were male, compared with 69% of postdocs, 58%
of students, and 42% of other research personnel (Fig. 1). The
male-female distribution of postdocs and students corresponds
with the gender distribution of postdocs and students in science
and engineering fields (4).

"88% of male faculty members" is clearly NOT a trend.
In all other cases male-female distribution of misconduct MATCHES the general male-female distribution.
If anything, this indicates that faculty members in general are held to higher standards of scrutiny.
Or that students and postdocs are held to lower standards than the faculty members - if you want to look at it that way.

So, no. Neither men nor women commit more misconduct than "their average fair share".

Now... the other thing.
This is a clear case of a study NOT finding results it went looking for, so instead it changes the goal.
I.e. Percentages match in the case of "all science and engineering fields" - let' narrow the field to only "life sciences".
Whoomp! There it is! There are more misconducts among males in general, than there are males in life sciences.
Ergo - Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct.

Hold on a second... I do not think it means what they think it means.

There are 58% of male students committing misconduct, but only about 45% of students in life sciences are male?
There are 69% of male postdocs committing misconduct, but only about 61% of postdocs in life sciences are male?
There are a whooping 88% of male faculty members committing misconduct, but only about 71% of faculty members in life sciences are male?

Where does any of that say how many male (or female) LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCHERS (of any academic level) have committed misconduct? NOWHERE.

They are taking the entire set A, extracting a subset B out of it, then comparing the sizes of incidences of characteristic C in the entire set TO THE SIZE OF THE SUBSET B.
Not to the incidence of C in the subset B.

They are presenting us that Ca > B. NOT that Ca => Cb NOR that Ca <= Cb. Meanwhile, they are claiming that Cb > Ca.

I.e. "Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct."

Oh and...
Those 72 cases (9 of them women) of misconduct in academia, women being only one third of their "predicted number among life sciences faculty"?
Life sciences faculty has male-female distribution of about 70% to 30%, right?
70% of 72 people is 50 people.
88% is 63 people.

That's 13 more guys "then there should be", or 13 less gals, when using the faulty math comparing 88% overall numbers with unrelated numbers in life sciences.
Compared to "ALL science and engineering" distribution of 74-26%, or 53-19 people - those 63 guys are 10 more guys "than there should be".

You wanna know how many "science, engineering, and health doctorate holders employed full time in academic institutions" article's main source claims there were in 2006?

72.500 females, 161.200 males, 233.700 total.
Out of that, 39,3%, 30,9% and 33,5%, respectfully, were employed in life sciences.
Or 28492, 49810, and 78289.

10 more guys "than there should be". See? There they are, right there.
Forty-nine thousand eight hundred AND TEN.
Assholes.

Re:folding@home by robotkid · 2013-01-03 10:31 · Score: 1 · on Einstein@Home Set To Break Petaflops Barrier

I believe Folding@Home is a seperate standalone project, so it's all or nothing. In addition, there are a LOT of protein folding projects. I'd really like to see them work together - or explain why they are different.

Not only are there a lot of projects like this, most of them - whatever their intrinsic scientific merit - have very little direct application to fighting disease. Sure, the people directing the projects like to claim that they're medically relevant, but this is largely because the NIH is the major source of funding. It's also really difficult to explain the motivations for such projects to a general audience without resorting to gross oversimplifications. (This isn't a criticism of protein folding specifically, it's all biomedical basic research that has these problems.) My guess is that it will take decades for most of the insights gleaned from these studies to filter down to a clinical setting.

The project that is arguably more relevant to disease is Rosetta@Home, but that's because of the protein design aspect, not the structure prediction. (In fact, Rosetta doesn't even do "protein folding" in the sense that Folding@Home does - it is a predictive tool, not a simulation engine like Folding@Home.)

Someone please mod this up, as a researcher in the same field as F@H I can attest this is all quite correct.

First, I should preface this by saying I've interacted with several of the F@H folks professionally and they do excellent work. And that the NIH is under no pretenses when it funds this work that cures will magically pop out tomorrow - they think of it as a seed investment for a decade or two in the future. In terms of tax dollars spent, it's a good investment considering many biomedical labs spend more just keeping their mice alive every year than all the F@H lab's salaries combined (especially since the computing time is donated by volunteers).

That said, I've always been disappointed that they do not use their unique standing with the public enthusiast computing community to educate and provide the context of what is it they are actually doing and how it is unique among the literally hundreds of other similar protein folding research groups out there. I don't think it's hypocritical to claim basic research can have real world impact on real-world problems, but providing the proper context for an individual researcher's findings is sadly often at odds with their PR goals (in this case, convincing people to donate cycles to F@H and not to other similar projects). But so goes all of biomedical research, as the poster shrewdly notes, despite this being taxpayer funded research performed largely at non-profit, educational institutions.

FYI, federal grants are public record and you can search them to see brief descriptions of current funded research to get at least an idea of how much larger the field is than any one research group. Try one of the links below with the search term "protein folding" if you want a sense of how big this field truly is (and note that it does actually include projects run by actual doctors seeing actual patients). Considering the overall research budget is comprised of less than 2 cents from every tax dollar collected, it's not a bad ROI (obviously I'm biased as a federally funded researcher myself).

http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/

Re:Simpler than that by hawkfish · 2012-11-16 12:26 · Score: 1 · on Climate Treaty Negotiators Are Taking the Wrong Approach, Say Game Theorists

You're missing the point.

The people telling us that we're heading for disaster are the ones with financial stake in it. The larger their possible financial gain, the louder they make the noise. You've gone on and taken what you've heard for granted without bothering to check the sources, telling yourself "He works in a dentist office and wears a doctor's coat. He must know teeth better than anyone. As long as I pay him enough to avoid dentures in my near future, we all win!"

The people that tell us we are not heading for disaster are the fossil fuel industries. Now, who has more money: Exxon Mobil or climate scientists funded by the NSF? Since you seem to have trouble with numbers, I'll do the math for you: a single fossil fuel company makes six times more annual profit than the entire national grant funding for all sciences.

You are right to ask the old question Qui bono?. I just can't figure out why you got the wrong answer. Maybe because you are an anonymous troll?

Re:Not just the GBT by Jeremy+Erwin · 2012-09-28 05:25 · Score: 1 · on Astronomy Portfolio Review Recommends Defunding US's Biggest Telescope

I didn't see a link to the actual portfolio review (pdf)

Programs at risk:

Our portfolios for Scenarios A and B do not include the Nicholas U. Mayall, Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO (WIYN), and 2.1-meter telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the Very Long Baseline Array, nor the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope. We recommend that AST divest from these facilities before FY17.

Scenarios A and B are as follows:

This Portfolio Review Committee was convened to recommend AST portfolios best suited to achieving the decadal survey goals under two budget scenarios: (A) AST purchasing power drops to 90% of FY11 levels, then rises to 106% of FY11 by FY22, and (B) AST purchasing power drops to 80% of FY11 levels by mid-decade, and remains flat through FY22. By FY22, the projected AST budget is only 65% in Scenario A and 50% in Scenario B of the budget NWNH assumed in recommending an AST portfolio. Indeed the AST budget is already $45M short of NWNH projections for FY12. This presents a considerable challenge in implementing the strong NWNH recommendations for both new facilities and for maintaining the strength of the grants programs. AST must find the proper balance between current facilities and new endeavors, between large projects and small grants, and between risk and reward. It must continue to invest in the training of a highly skilled and creative workforce.

So to get the GBT back on line would require that austerity be fucked long and hard.

Re:Please justify NASA's existence by noobermin · 2012-09-16 06:46 · Score: 2 · on NASA To Face $1.3 Billion Cut Next Year Under Sequestration

lol u mad

If you want to make a point and engage in actual debate, then using a mocking tone like that won't convince or intrigue anyone. It just serves to circle-jerk up people who agree with you and enrages people against your opinion, the latter of which is considered trolling.

I'll bite by saying this: more money is already spent on feeding the hungry (food-stamps) and some amount goes to NSF, some of which goes to climate research, I'm sure. Not as much as nasa, but then again, it's priorities, I guess.

Paying down the debt, true. Then again, more revenues would help too.

Re:Research and Development by rgbrenner · 2012-06-10 13:29 · Score: 4, Informative · on European Scientists Make a Case For a Return To the Moon

And that trip to the moon cost $150 billion (in 2010 dollars). OF COURSE it brought about new discoveries, inventions, tools, etc-- IT WAS $150 BILLION! Saying that we discovered new things in the process of spending that much money does not mean we should automatically do it again.