-
Recent Posts
- Team unearths what may be secret weapon against antibiotic resistance
- Hazing: How to hide in nearly plain sight | Student Science
- 3quarksdaily: Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas: Interview with Peter Unger
- Thirst for water moves and shakes California | Student Science
- Digital displays get flexible | Student Science
Recent Comments
- Jeff Ollerton on 56 Indicators of Impact
- Jodie on 56 Indicators of Impact
- Brigitte on From Peer Review to the Wisdom of Crowds? Open Access & Peer Review | History Workshop
- Adam on Scenes from another academic conference
- Altmetrics: achieving and measuring success in communicating research in the digital age | Hazel Hall on 56 Indicators of Impact
Archives
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
Categories
- Accountability
- Basic News
- Broader Impacts
- Calls for papers
- Climate Change
- Conferences Upcoming
- Convergence
- Creative & Visual Science
- CSID Publications
- Degrowth Economics
- Economics & STEM Research
- Environmental policy
- Field Philosophy
- Future of the University
- Gas Fracking
- Globalization
- Graduate Studies
- Innovation
- institutionalizing interdisciplinarity
- Interdisciplinarity
- Libraries
- Metrics
- Multidisciplinarity
- NASA
- New Books
- New Lexicon
- NIH
- NOAA
- NSF
- Occupy Wall Street
- Open Access
- Peer Review
- Philosophy & Politics
- Public Pedagogy
- Public Philosophizing
- Science and technology ramifications
- STEM Policy
- Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security
- TechnoScience & Technoscientism
- Transdisciplinarity
- Transformative Research
- Uncategorized
- US Science Agencies
Meta
Author Archives: Alexander Mosiak
New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years
“Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said the study’s author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups. “The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability,” he said. “Fluids could move … Continue reading
Jobs Few, College Graduates Flock to Unpaid Internships
Confronting the worst job market in decades, many college graduates who expected to land paid jobs are turning to unpaid internships to try to get a foot in an employer’s door. While unpaid postcollege internships have long existed in the … Continue reading
Stanford’s President: Distance Learning is a “Tsunami”
Hennessy, [Stanford's President], believes that online learning can be as revolutionary to education as digital downloads were to the music business. Distance learningA threatens one day to disrupt higher education by reducing the cost of college and by offering the … Continue reading
Posted in Future of the University, Open Access
Leave a comment
Goethe and the Search for the Spirit of Science
This excellent article in the Guardian explores the role of imagination in science. Pardon the length of this block quote, but it was too good to not post: Is it just me or has the dialogue between science and religion … Continue reading
Academia Becomes Occupied With Occupy Movement
Academics across the country have embraced the movement since it emerged in September, organizing classes, publishing reams of commentary and issuing calls to “occupy” not just Wall Street but also sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy or the entire “academic vampire squid”itself, as … Continue reading
The Case for the Liberal Arts
Stanley Fish strikes again… Early on in his new book, “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be,” Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University quotes the economist Richard Vedder and the former university president William Brody to the effect that little has … Continue reading
Posted in Future of the University
Leave a comment
Robo-Readers Used to Grade Test Essays
A rather complacent article in Inside Higher Education touts a study out of the University of Akron that compares grades assigned to standardized test essays by humans and those assigned by computers. The news that they found no significant difference is … Continue reading
‘Huge’ Water Resource Discovered Under Africa – Cui Bono?
Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface. The team have produced … Continue reading
Texas Higher Education Must Confront Hard Choices, Penn Study Finds
Texas higher education falls below the national average on most measures of college readiness, enrollment and graduation rates, and below the best-performing states on all of them, the researchers say. Moreover, huge inequities persist in Texas higher education. For example, … Continue reading
Posted in Future of the University
Leave a comment
More Americans Linking Global Warming to Extreme Weather
A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 … Continue reading
Heart, Soul, and Social Science
Can the medical profession’s often myopic technophilia be reformed by incorporating cross-cultural, social, and ethical questions into the MCAT? Prof. Piers J. Hale knew something was up when his students at the University of Oklahoma were clamoring this spring to … Continue reading
Reforming Laws Governing Student Debt
“Student debt poses a large and growing threat to the stability of our economy,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan testified March 20 before a U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing in Washington on the looming student debt crisis. “Just as the housing … Continue reading
Trying to Find a Measure for How Well Colleges Do
This NY Times article focuses on the pressure to quantify collegiate academic quality (but not so much on the motivating factors behind it): “There’s a real shift in attitudes under way,” said David C. Paris, executive director of the New … Continue reading
100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School
Is it too much to call a blog “magisterial?” Well, I’m going to do it anyway: 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School is a magisterial effort. Nobody is going to agree with all (or even most) of what this … Continue reading
Republican Meteorologist: Conservatism and Conservation Aren’t Mutually Exclusive
ThinkProgress posts a message from a critically endangered species: a Republican who believes climate change is occurring: I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a … Continue reading
The Disposable Professor Crisis
While top executives in college and university settings are busy voting on large pay increases and fringe benefits for themselves, the educators and workers who oversee daily operations and interact with students are increasingly being left in the cold. In … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment
What Isn’t for Sale?
In this essay for The Atlantic, Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel (whose course on Justice is available for free online) asks a much-needed question: what are the hidden social costs of free market triumphalism? While it is certainly true that … Continue reading
After Kony, could a viral video change the world?
According to YouTube, 60 hours of video material are uploaded to it every minute – an hour a second. In the midst of such abundance, how can anything get noticed? Attention is now the scarcest commodity in cyberspace – which … Continue reading
Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest
Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime and a response to the political wave of change that began in Tunisia early last year. However, that’s not the whole story. … Continue reading
NSF: Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists publishing a paper this week in the journal Science. “What we’re doing today really stands out in the geologic record,” says lead … Continue reading
Low-carbon technologies ‘no quick-fix’, say researchers
A drastic switch to low carbon-emitting technologies, such as wind and hydroelectric power, may not yield a reduction in global warming until the latter part of this century, research published today suggests. Furthermore, it states that technologies that offer only … Continue reading
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Don’t be too worried about the environment – it’s bad for your health. Or so goes the sophistical argument presented in this analysis of risk perception: Even today, when media warnings about the latest health or safety risk are commonplace, … Continue reading
Census Finds Bachelor’s Degrees at Record Level
More than 30 percent of American adults hold bachelor’s degrees, a first in the nation’s history, and women are on the brink of surpassing men in educational attainment, the Census Bureau reported [last] Thursday. The figures reflect an increase in … Continue reading
Gleick apology over Heartland leak stirs ethics debate among climate scientists
The outing of the researcher who exposed the Heartland Institute’s efforts to discredit climate change has thrown the scientific community into tumult, with fierce debates raging on Tuesday over whether to brand his actions heroic, or misguided… “Heartland has been subverting … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability, Climate Change
Leave a comment
Obama pushes the question: What are students, taxpayers getting for their college dollars?
During his State of the Union address, Obama put higher education on notice: “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down,” he said. “Higher education can’t be a luxury— it’s an … Continue reading