Monthly Archives: June 2013

Back to the lab

June 25, 2013 Today I am back in the lab at Cachan. This morning we had a group meeting so that one of the students could practice presenting her research. Tomorrow is her dissertation defense! Her presentation and the critique of her … Continue reading

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The constancy of change

June 25, 2013 Bonjour! Today I really want to understand the historical narrative of disciplinary education in Europe and America, so I re-read and took extensive notes on Disciplinarity: An Introduction by David R. Shumway and Ellen Messer-Davidow. It outlines … Continue reading

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A day of my moveable feast

June 24, 2013 Hello! I am starting the beginning of my fourth week of my internship here in Paris! Wow, time goes by very quickly. Today I read a great article called Disciplinarity: An Introduction by David R. Shumway and … Continue reading

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The silent philosopher

June 23, 2013 So how should I act in the lab? There are many ways to interact with scientists, but are some better than others? One can look back on past philosophers to classify typical ways that they have interacted … Continue reading

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Bibliography of Transdisciplinarity Literature 2012

Our friends at td-net have just released a valuable resource: A Tour d’Horizon of Literature Related to Transdisciplinarity Published in 2012 The number of publications in the field of inter- and transdisciplinary research has been steadily growing during recent years … Continue reading

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A little bit of science, a little bit of thinking

Hello! It is la fête de la musique here in France! There are instruments everywhere, and concerts on every corner of Paris until 6am in the morning. Unfortunately it has rained all week, and I don’t know how well a … Continue reading

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Hirschman on creativity

Nice Albert O. Hirschman quote brought to us by Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker: …The only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it … Continue reading

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Academic Sustainability

The academy may be filled with leftists–so we are told–but it has yet to apply its Marxist interpretive skills to its own situation. For the academy suffers from epistemic overproduction. We can expect a crash. This overproduction shows itself both … Continue reading

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The idea

As I mentioned in my last post I have found a new focus for the philosophical part of my internship: the state of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity both in Paris and in Bianca’s lab. Now, yes this is an impossible task. For one, I … Continue reading

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Metrics 2.0: who will be the ‘Google of altmetrics’?

An interesting summary of presentations on altmetrics, including a set of interesting questions: BMJ Group blogs: BMJ Web Development Blog » Blog Archive » Metrics 2.0: who will be the ‘Google of altmetrics’?.

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A review of the week part 2

Alright so what did I do this week? What did I learn? How should I focus this post? Well, as you know from my first post, my internship has two main parts: one is my work in the microbiology lab … Continue reading

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A review of the week

Good morning! It looks like it will be a cloudy day here in Paris. Today I indulged and slept in until 10:30am, and had a slow breakfast. I am living in the 8th arrondissement with a host family who I … Continue reading

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Limiting Knowledge Production

What? Now why would anyone want to do that? The field of sustainability studies can be seen as being about two things: limits and technology. We are concerned about sustainability because we fear that we are approaching (or have already … Continue reading

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BYOI: ORCID and Impact Story | Amber at Warwick: academic technology

Interesting post and slides from Amber at Warwick — a philosopher-information-technologist. BYOI: ORCID and Impact Story | Amber at Warwick: academic technology. I think there’s something right about the notion that this is “cool social scholarship.” But is it too … Continue reading

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Unsuccessful lab results

Hello again! Today I spent my morning and afternoon in the lab. I ran a PCR, and analyzed the sample. It did not work. Eliza, the kind graduate student who is teaching me each experiment, said that these results never … Continue reading

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Developing indicators of the impact of scholarly communication is a massive technical challenge – but it’s also much simpler than that | Impact of Social Sciences

Developing indicators of the impact of scholarly communication is a massive technical challenge – but it’s also much simpler than that | Impact of Social Sciences.

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A meeting of scientists from around Europe

June 11, 2013 It is quite the week of meetings here in Paris! Unfortunately this is the last one that I have scheduled for a while. I really like going to Bianca’s meetings. So far each meeting has allowed me … Continue reading

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Meeting at l’université Pierre et Marie Curie

June 10, 2013 Happy Monday! Today I met Bianca Scalvi’s group at Marco Lagomarsino’s lab at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie. The meeting’s purpose was for Bianca to explain the idea of ‘noise’ inside a genome to Marco’s theoretical team. … Continue reading

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The adventures continue, however some days are “office days”

**Sorry for the delay on the (supposedly) daily updates. I encountered some internet problems. But I still wrote each day in a word document….so now I just need to spend some time uploading each blog post. Enjoy! June 07, 2013 … Continue reading

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New Peer Review Pilot at NSF: Applicants as Reviewers? | CHS Sponsored Programs

For this pilot project, instead of a traditional review panel, all principal investigators submitting proposals to the Sensors and Sensing Systems (SSS) will be required to review seven competing proposals! The program officer will then compile the final rankings and … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education | Impact of Social Sciences

McGettigan’s new book is specifically about the situation in the United Kingdom, but I think it offers critiques that would elucidate aspects of the American system as well. McGettigan’s argument is that this market talk drives a wider discourse of … Continue reading

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A day outside of the lab

Today instead of going to the lab at ENS-Cachan I went along with Bianca to a seminar that was held in Gif, a small town outside of Paris. Marco Consentino Lagomarsino, a theoretical biophysicist, gave a presentation titled: “A multi-point … Continue reading

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A Practicum in the Philosophical Implications behind Scientific Research

Hello! This is the first of a series of blogs to come about the adventures of a young student of philosophy in Paris, France. In the attempt to learn the ropes of interdisciplinary studies I am conducting an experiment for … Continue reading

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Alternative alternative metric

Maybe more ways our 56 Indicators can be used to assist in a different approach to success: not only in Academia but the general day to day of living a measured life and working in a measurable way. Finding new … Continue reading

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Book Review: Peer Review, Research Integrity, and the Governance of Science: Practice, Theory, and Current Discussions | LSE Review of Books

The fact that this scholarly book about fairness and integrity in research is edited by (mostly) U.S. scholars but published by a Chinese press should not mislead readers into believing that this is a boastful text seeking to bestow upon … Continue reading

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