Sleepless in academia

The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and means of coping and resisting, ­sometimes collectively, although one of the major responses—working harder and sleeping less—might be considered somewhat short of empowering. We also look at what the prospects are for changes in university policies and practices.     

Teaching Traditions in Science Teachers’ Practices and the Introduction of National Testing

Our main interest in this article is to explore whether Swedish teachers changed their teaching and assessment practices in relation to the new national tests in science education that were introduced 2009. Data was collected using a web-distributed questionnaire, which was answered by 407 teachers. The concept of teaching traditions is used to capture patterns of what is emphasized by teachers in terms of goals and content in teaching and the design of the questionnaire was based on the concept of curriculum emphases. The results show two distinct groups of focus, which are compared with two traditions within science education: the Academic and the Moral tradition. The main content where teaching has been changed is in making science more applied than before, where applied not only means the application of science knowledge to practical technical issues, but also to moral and political issues.     

Optimal pruning for tree-structured vector quantization

Tree-structured vector quantization (VQ) is a technique designed to represent a codebook that simplifies encoding as well as vector quantizer design. Most design algorithms for tree-structured VQ used in the past are based on heuristics that successively partition the input space. Recently, Chou, Lookabaugh and Gray proposed a tree-pruning heuristic in which a given initial tree is pruned backwards according to certain optimization criterion. We define the notion of an optimal pruned tree subject to a cost constraint and study the computational complexity of finding such an optimal tree for various cost functions. Under the assumption that all trees are equally probable, we show that, on the average, the number of pruned trees in a given tree is exponential in the number of leaves. Furthermore, we prove that finding an optimal pruned tree subject to constraints such as entropy or the expected-depth is NP-hard. However, we show that when the constraint is the number of leaves, the problem can be solved in polynomial time. We develop an algorithm to find the optimal pruned tree in O(nk) time, where n is the size of the initial tree and kis the constraint size.     

Assessing basic research: Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy

As the costs of certain types of scientific research have escalated and as growth rates in overall national science budgets have declined, so the need for an explicit science policy has grown more urgent. In order to establish priorities between research groups competing for scarce funds, one of the most important pieces of information needed by science policy-makers is an assessment of those groups' recent scientific performance. This paper suggests a method for evaluating that performance.After reviewing the literature on scientific assessment, we argue that, while there are no simple measures of the contributions to scientific knowledge made by scientists, there are a number of ‘partial indicators’ — that is, variables determined partly by the magnitude of the particular contributions, and partly by ‘other factors’. If the partial indicators are to yield reliable results, then the influence of these ‘other factors’ must be minimised. This is the aim of the method of ‘converging partial indicators’ proposed in this paper. We argue that the method overcomes many of the problems encountered in previous work on scientific assessment by incorporating the following elements: (1) the indicators are applied to research groups rather than individual scientists; (2) the indicators based on citations are seen as reflecting the impact, rather than the quality or importance, of the research work; (3) a range of indicators are employed, each of which focusses on different aspects of a group's performance; (4) the indicators are applied to matched groups, comparing ‘like’ with ‘like’ as far as possible; (5) because of the imperfect or partial nature of the indicators, only in those cases where they yield convergent results can it be assumed that the influence of the ‘other factors’ has been kept relatively small (i.e. the matching of the groups has been largely successful), and that the indicators therefore provide a reasonably reliable estimate of the contribution to scientific progress made by different research groups.In an empirical study of four radio astronomy observatories, the method of converging partial indicators is tested, and several of the indicators (publications per researcher, citations per paper, numbers of highly cited papers, and peer evaluation) are found to give fairly consistent results. The results are of relevance to two questions: (a) can basic research be assessed? (b) more specifically, can significant differences in the research performance of radio astronomy centres be identified? We would maintain that the evidence presented in this paper is sufficient to justify a positive answer to both these questions, and hence to show that the method of converging partial indicators can yield information useful to science policy-makers.     

The role of social embeddedness in professorial entrepreneurship: a comparison of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and Stanford

Professorial entrepreneurship has recently attracted much attention. This paper draws upon historical research, a survey of faculty, and an Internet-based methodology for identifying professorial affiliations with entrepreneurial firms at two of the premier electrical engineering and computer science departments in the US, The University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. We employ the concept of “nested embeddedness” to explain why the faculty members in these two institutions have different levels of entrepreneurship and corporate involvement. EE&CS faculty at both universities were found to be socially embedded in departments and disciplines that supported and placed value on entrepreneurial activities. However, while being embedded in a university environment with a history of success and high level of support for entrepreneurship, EE&CS faculty at Stanford had a significantly greater level of corporate involvement, including the founding of start-ups. Although significantly less than Stanford, the level of corporate involvement among EE&CS faculty at Berkeley was also substantial. This suggests that being embedded in an academic department and disciplines with cultures that are supportive of entrepreneurial activity can help counteract the disincentives created by a university environment that is not strongly supportive of these activities.     

Commentary: the coalition for improving maternity services:

A consumer advocate, two childbirth educators, and a certified nurse-midwife each provide commentary on the effectiveness of and potential uses for the Evidence Basis for the Ten Steps of Mother-Friendly Care.     

Mindset change in a cross-cultural context

Imagine you are Thai and a member of a management team from a European company that acts in an Asian emerging market. Imagine you are a European expat with the assignment to double the turnover from that Asian company in a few years. Imagine you are a Change Maker and they ask you to facilitate the (multinational) management team of that Asian company to develop a market strategy and translate it into a business plan, and you have to deal with cultural differences. How do you manage a small-scale change process based on the principles of action learning in that specific multinational context? That's the essence of this account of practice.     

What good is a scientist in the classroom? Participant outcomes and program design features for a short-duration science outreach intervention in K-12 classrooms

Many short-duration science outreach interventions have important societal goals of raising science literacy and increasing the size and diversity of the science workforce. Yet, these long-term outcomes are inherently challenging to evaluate. We present findings from a qualitative research study of an inquiry-based, life science outreach program to K-12 classrooms that is typical in design and excellent in execution. By considering this program as a best case of a common outreach model, the "scientist in the classroom," the study examines what benefits may be realized for each participant group and how they are achieved. We find that K-12 students are engaged in authentic, hands-on activities that generate interest in science and new views of science and scientists. Teachers learn new science content and new ways to teach it, and value collegial support of their professional work. Graduate student scientists, who are the program presenters, gain teaching and other skills, greater understanding of education and diversity issues, confidence and intrinsic satisfaction, and career benefits. A few negative outcomes also are described. Program elements that lead to these benefits are identified both from the research findings and from insights of the program developer on program design and implementation choices.     

A summer program designed to educate college students for careers in bioinformatics

A summer program was created for undergraduates and graduate students that teaches bioinformatics concepts, offers skills in professional development, and provides research opportunities in academic and industrial institutions. We estimate that 34 of 38 graduates (89%) are in a career trajectory that will use bioinformatics. Evidence from open-ended research mentor and student survey responses, student exit interview responses, and research mentor exit interview/survey responses identified skills and knowledge from the fields of computer science, biology, and mathematics that are critical for students considering bioinformatics research. Programming knowledge and general computer skills were essential to success on bioinformatics research projects. General mathematics skills obtained through current undergraduate natural sciences programs were adequate for the research projects, although knowledge of probability and statistics should be strengthened. Biology knowledge obtained through the didactic phase of the program and prior undergraduate education was adequate, but advanced or specific knowledge could help students progress on research projects. The curriculum and assessment instruments developed for this program are available for adoption by other bioinformatics programs at http://www.calstatela.edu/SoCalBSI.     

Subtypes, severity, and structural stability of peer victimization: what does latent class analysis say?

This study uses latent class analysis (LCA) to empirically identify victimization groups during middle school. Approximately 2,000 urban, public middle school students (mean age in sixth grade = 11.57) reported on their peer victimization during the Fall and Spring semesters of their sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Independent LCA analyses at each semester yielded 3 victim classes based on victimization degree rather than type (e.g., physical vs. relational). The most victimized class always represented the smallest proportion of the sample, decreasing from 20% in sixth grade to 6% by the end of eighth grade. This victimized class also always reported feeling less safe at school concurrently and more depressed than others 1 semester later, illustrating the validity of the LCA approach.