Dealing with Irreproducibility Researchers discuss the growing pressures that are driving increases in retraction rates at AACR. FLICKR, UNIVERSITY OF EXETERRecent years have seen increasing numbers of retractions, higher rates of misconduct and fraud, and general problems of data irreproducibility, spurring the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and others to launch initiatives to improve the quality of research results. Yesterday (April 7), at this year’s American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting, researchers gathered in San Diego, California, to discuss why these problems to come to a head—and how to fix them. “We really have to change our culture and that will not be easy,” said Lee Ellis from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, referring to the immense pressure researchers often feel to produce splashy results and publish in high-impact journals. C. William Sellers, global head of oncology at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, described a similar experience.
Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community [ Top of page ] What was that? How can we change ourselves in ways we cannot predict? More directly, how do we modify our nature to enable such unpredictable changes? Figure 1 - Complex Adaptive Behavior The only way to meet the continuously unpredictable challenges ahead of us is to match them with continuously unpredictable changes of our own. To describe a community that “dynamically reinvents itself by continuously learning and adapting” in response to environmental changes harks to theoretical developments in the philosophy of science that matured in the 1990s collectively known as Complexity Theory. . . . . . . The objective that was identified at the outset of this article was that the Intelligence Community must be able to dynamically reinvent itself by continuously learning and adapting as the national security environment changes. It is this expertise that engenders the trust required for independent action. The rules themselves are also subject to the wiki process.
Research | Population Research Institute PRI sends research teams around the globe, to gather hard data on abuses committed against women and families. This research has been used before Congress and has been, in many cases, instrumental in the passage of pro-life laws and amendments. How to create magic Oh, Seth. He wrote in “Who has a seat at the table?” this…. “When designing a new product or program, it’s pretty clear that a successful organization will invite:The lawyer, so you don’t break any laws.The CFO, so that you’ll understand how much this thing will cost and how well it will pay off.The CTO/Tech folks, so you’ll spec something that can actually be built and will work.And probably designers, marketers and lobbyists–all the people you need to bring the thing into the world.But where’s the person in charge of magic?In our quest to get it done, to survive the project, to avoid blame, to figure out a solution, it’s magic that gets thrown under the bus every time.Who is obsessed with creating delight, with building in remarkability, with pushing the envelope (every envelope–money, tech, policy) to get to the point where you’ve created something that people will be proud of, that will change things for the better, that will make a dent in the universe? I think Seth is wrong.
Ecological Footprint Quiz The footprint quiz is powered by Adobe Flash. It will only run on devices running Adobe Flash. Sign up for our newsletter What is the Ecological Footprint? What does the Ecological Footprint measure? Global hectares are hectares with world-average productivity for all productive land and water areas in a given year. How accurate are Ecological Footprint measurements? What can Ecological Footprint Analysis tell us about the future of the planet? What is the proper way to use the term Ecological Footprint? How is an Ecological Footprint calculated? The Ecological Footprint of a person is calculated by considering all of the biological materials consumed, and all of the biological wastes generated, by that person in a given year. To accomplish this, an amount of material consumed by that person (tons per year) is divided by the yield of the specific land or sea area (annual tons per hectare) from which it was harvested, or where its waste material was absorbed.
Population 7 Billion - Pictures, More From National Geographic magazine One day in Delft in the fall of 1677, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a cloth merchant who is said to have been the long-haired model for two paintings by Johannes Vermeer—“The Astronomer” and “The Geographer”—abruptly stopped what he was doing with his wife and rushed to his worktable. Cloth was Leeuwenhoek’s business but microscopy his passion. He’d had five children already by his first wife (though four had died in infancy), and fatherhood was not on his mind. “Before six beats of the pulse had intervened,” as he later wrote to the Royal Society of London, Leeuwenhoek was examining his perishable sample through a tiny magnifying glass. Its lens, no bigger than a small raindrop, magnified objects hundreds of times. Leeuwenhoek became a bit obsessed after that. Nobody then really had any idea; there were few censuses. Historians now estimate that in Leeuwenhoek’s day there were only half a billion or so humans on Earth. And the explosion, though it is slowing, is far from over.
Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it | Technology Bitcoin’s electricity usage is enormous. In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It’s now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru, according to estimates from Digiconomist. That fact should be a grave notion to anyone who hopes for the cryptocurrency to grow further in stature and enter widespread usage. Burning huge amounts of electricity isn’t incidental to bitcoin: instead, it’s embedded into the innermost core of the currency, as the operation known as “mining”. The more electricity you burn, and the faster your computer, the higher your chance of winning the competition. This is a winner-takes-all game, where the prize is guaranteed to be paid to one, and only one, miner every 10 minutes. But it gets worse. I’m not convinced we should be so blasé.
18 striking findings from 2018 Pew Research Center takes the pulse of Americans and people around the world on a host of issues every year. We explore public opinion on topics ranging from foreign policy to cyberbullying, as well as demographic trends, such as the emergence of the post-Millennial generation and changes in the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Here are 18 of this year’s standout findings, taken from our analyses over the past year. 1Post-Millennials – today’s 6- to 21-year-olds, also known as Generation Z – are on track to be the most racially and ethnically diverse generation yet. A bare majority of post-Millennials are non-Hispanic white (52%), while a quarter are Hispanic. 2There were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2016, down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. 3Younger Americans are better than their elders at separating factual from opinion statements in the news. 5About six-in-ten women in the U.S. (59%) say they have been sexually harassed.