Today I resigned from the editorial board of a well respected journal in my field – Genomics. No longer can I work for a system that provides solid profits for the publisher while effectively denying colleagues in developing countries access to research findings.

It has not been an easy decision. Some may feel that I'm grandstanding or making a futile gesture. And it may be a toxic career move. Scientists are expected to contribute to the community by reviewing papers and serving on editorial boards. But I cannot stand by any longer while access to scientific resources is restricted.

Experts had predicted the crash – which follows a year-long ‘speculative uke bubble’ during which legions of middle-aged men took up the inexpensive instrument in the hope it might make them feel alive again – although they have been shocked by its severity.

I own one of these and can confirm that I can successfully strum the chords to When I'm Cleaning Windows quite slowly :-(

3 minutes per month? I'm bringing even those averages down :-)

The change has come in for criticism from a number of search experts. "Search engines are supposed to send you away to the best information, even if they don't have their own in stock," noted Danny Sullivan, who added that Google has previously been excellent at providing links to the most suitable information. "Today's change is one of the few times where I'm thinking 'What the hell are you doing, Google?' "

He thinks that Google's move, which clearly promotes its own nascent service – which was only launched last year, but which Google said had 40m users last October – could attract antitrust scrutiny, because it is only listing information from Google+ posts, and because it is offering suggestions of users to follow on Google+.

In the US, it is illegal for a company which is dominant in one field to use that dominance to gain competitive advantage in another.

The "says Twitter" bit feels a bit like one of those situations where a football player waves his/her empty hand in front of the ref to try and get another player sent off.

On the other hand, this development does seem at odds with the "do no evil" mantra at Google, and in particular with the last bullet point of point 6 of their philosophy:

We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

??

The teaching of computer science in school is to be dramatically overhauled, with the existing programme of study scrapped to make way for new lessons designed by industry and universities, Michael Gove will announce on Wednesday.

In a speech, the education secretary will say the existing curriculum in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has left children "bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers".

Instead he will, in effect, create an "open source" curriculum in computer science by giving schools the freedom to use teaching resources designed with input from leading employers and academics, in changes that will come into effect this September.

Great news in many ways.

My only concern (based on my experience as a primary school governor and a parent of 3 kids who have been thru UK secondary schools) is whether your average teacher (ICT-focused or otherwise) has the necessary skills and understanding to move beyond the 'boring' curriculum.

So I think there's a huge level of up-skilling (and mindset changing) required here. I don't think there;ll be any quick wins.

Still, it's a start... and we should be grateful for that.

Sobolev spaces

This photo was taken in the former office of Sandy Davie, a recently retired professor at the University of Edinburgh. The writing on the board is the result of conversations with another professor, Istvan Gyongy, about partial differential equations in Sobolev spaces. It’s a great example of a typical mathematician’s blackboard, with chalk being drawn over old chalk  and some evidence of half-hearted rubbing out with hands. Mathematicians usually prefer to make this kind of a ‘mess’ rather than interrupt the flow of ideas to clean the board properly.

 

 

January 5, 2012 | Categories: Analysis, Differential equations | Leave A Comment »

Blackboards (though an occasional white board seems to have been allowed in), alive and kicking!

Nice image from the last evening of the Field of Light experience at the Holbourne Museum in Bath.