Securing funding through grant proposals can be a long and difficult process.Experts share their advice on how to help your applications succeed
Read the eligibility rules
Leave plenty of time to prepare
No unexplained jargon
Get other people to read it
Explain why research is needed
Network effectively
Justify extra time or resources
Participate in funding panels
Interpret referees feedback carefully
Plan applications in batches
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Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Friday, 25 November 2016
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Meet the soft, cuddly robots of the future
Rigid robots step aside — a new generation of squishy, stretchy machines is wiggling our way.
n 2007, Cecilia Laschi asked her father to catch a live octopus for her seaside lab in Livorno, Italy. He thought she was crazy: as a recreational fisherman, he considered the octopus so easy to catch that it must be a very stupid animal. And what did a robotics researcher who worked with metal and microprocessors want with a squishy cephalopod anyway?
Nevertheless, the elder Laschi caught an octopus off the Tuscan coast and gave it to his daughter, who works for the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. She and her students placed the creature in a saltwater tank where they could study how it grasped titbits of anchovy and crab. The team then set about building robots that could mimic those motions.
Prototype by prototype, they created an artificial tentacle with internal springs and wires that mirrored an octopus's muscles, until the device could undulate, elongate, shrink, stiffen and curl in a lifelike manner1. “It's a completely different way of building robots,” says Laschi.
This approach has become a major research front for robotics in the past ten years. Scientists and engineers in the field have long worked on hard-bodied robots, often inspired by humans and other animals with hard skeletons. These machines have the virtue of moving in mathematically predictable ways, with rigid limbs that can bend and straighten only around fixed joints. But they also require meticulous programming and extensive feedback to avoid smacking into things; even then, their motions often become erratic or even dangerous when dealing with humans, new objects, bumpy terrain or other unpredictable situations.
Robots inspired by flexible creatures such as octopuses, caterpillars or fish offer a solution. Instead of requiring intensive (and often imperfect) computations, soft robots built of mostly pliable or elastic materials can just mould themselves to their surroundings. Although some of these machines use wires or springs to mimic muscles and tendons, as a group, soft robots have ditched the skeletons that defined previous robot generations. With nothing resembling bones or joints, these machines can stretch, twist, scrunch and squish in completely new ways. They can transform in shape or size, wrap around objects and even touch people more safely than ever before.
Building these machines involves developing new technologies to animate floppy materials with purposeful movement, and methods for monitoring and predicting their actions. But if this succeeds, such robots might be used as rescue workers that can squeeze into tight spaces or slink across shifting debris; as home health aides that can interact closely with humans; and as industrial machines that can grasp new objects without previous programming.
Researchers have already produced a wide variety of such machines, including crawling robotic caterpillars2, swimming fish-bots3 and undulating artificial jellyfish4. On 29–30 April, ten teams will compete in Livorno in an international soft-robotics challenge — the first of its kind. Laschi, who serves as scientific coordinator for the European Commission-backed sponsoring research consortium, RoboSoft, hopes that the event will drive innovation in the field.
“If you look in biology, and you ask what Darwinian evolution has coughed up, there are all kinds of incredible solutions to movement, sensing, gripping, feeding, hunting, swimming, walking and gliding that have not been open to hard robots,” says chemist George Whitesides, a soft-robotics researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The idea of building fundamentally new classes of machines is just very interesting.”
Read the Nature News Feature
n 2007, Cecilia Laschi asked her father to catch a live octopus for her seaside lab in Livorno, Italy. He thought she was crazy: as a recreational fisherman, he considered the octopus so easy to catch that it must be a very stupid animal. And what did a robotics researcher who worked with metal and microprocessors want with a squishy cephalopod anyway?
Nevertheless, the elder Laschi caught an octopus off the Tuscan coast and gave it to his daughter, who works for the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. She and her students placed the creature in a saltwater tank where they could study how it grasped titbits of anchovy and crab. The team then set about building robots that could mimic those motions.
Prototype by prototype, they created an artificial tentacle with internal springs and wires that mirrored an octopus's muscles, until the device could undulate, elongate, shrink, stiffen and curl in a lifelike manner1. “It's a completely different way of building robots,” says Laschi.
This approach has become a major research front for robotics in the past ten years. Scientists and engineers in the field have long worked on hard-bodied robots, often inspired by humans and other animals with hard skeletons. These machines have the virtue of moving in mathematically predictable ways, with rigid limbs that can bend and straighten only around fixed joints. But they also require meticulous programming and extensive feedback to avoid smacking into things; even then, their motions often become erratic or even dangerous when dealing with humans, new objects, bumpy terrain or other unpredictable situations.
Robots inspired by flexible creatures such as octopuses, caterpillars or fish offer a solution. Instead of requiring intensive (and often imperfect) computations, soft robots built of mostly pliable or elastic materials can just mould themselves to their surroundings. Although some of these machines use wires or springs to mimic muscles and tendons, as a group, soft robots have ditched the skeletons that defined previous robot generations. With nothing resembling bones or joints, these machines can stretch, twist, scrunch and squish in completely new ways. They can transform in shape or size, wrap around objects and even touch people more safely than ever before.
Building these machines involves developing new technologies to animate floppy materials with purposeful movement, and methods for monitoring and predicting their actions. But if this succeeds, such robots might be used as rescue workers that can squeeze into tight spaces or slink across shifting debris; as home health aides that can interact closely with humans; and as industrial machines that can grasp new objects without previous programming.
Researchers have already produced a wide variety of such machines, including crawling robotic caterpillars2, swimming fish-bots3 and undulating artificial jellyfish4. On 29–30 April, ten teams will compete in Livorno in an international soft-robotics challenge — the first of its kind. Laschi, who serves as scientific coordinator for the European Commission-backed sponsoring research consortium, RoboSoft, hopes that the event will drive innovation in the field.
“If you look in biology, and you ask what Darwinian evolution has coughed up, there are all kinds of incredible solutions to movement, sensing, gripping, feeding, hunting, swimming, walking and gliding that have not been open to hard robots,” says chemist George Whitesides, a soft-robotics researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The idea of building fundamentally new classes of machines is just very interesting.”
Read the Nature News Feature
Thursday, 11 February 2016
Does it take too long to publish research?
Scientists are becoming increasingly frustrated by the time it takes to publish a paper. Something has to change, they say.
When Danielle Fraser first submitted her paper for publication, she had little idea of the painful saga that lay ahead.
She had spent some 18 months studying thousands of fossil species spread across North America from the past 36 million years, and now she had an intriguing result: animal populations were spread widest across latitudes in warm, wet climates. Her work, crucial to earning her PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, might be used to make predictions about the response of mammals to climate change — a key question in ecology today. So, with her PhD adviser's encouragement, she sent it to Science in October 2012.
Ten days later, the paper was rejected with a form letter. She sent it to another prestigious journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rejected. Next, she tried Ecology Letters. Bounced. “At this point, I definitely was frustrated. I hadn't even been reviewed and I would've loved to know how to improve the paper,” recalls Fraser. “I thought, 'Let's just get it out and go to a journal that will assess the paper'.”
In May 2013, she submitted the paper to Proceedings of the Royal Society B, considered a high-impact journal in her field. The journal sent it out for review — seven months after her initial submission to Science. “Finally!” Fraser thought. What she didn't know was that she had taken only the first steps down the long, bumpy road to publication: it would take another three submissions, two rejections, two rounds of major revisions and numerous drafts before the paper would finally appear. By that point, she could hardly bear to look at it.Ten days later, the paper was rejected with a form letter. She sent it to another prestigious journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rejected. Next, she tried Ecology Letters. Bounced. “At this point, I definitely was frustrated. I hadn't even been reviewed and I would've loved to know how to improve the paper,” recalls Fraser. “I thought, 'Let's just get it out and go to a journal that will assess the paper'.”
Fraser's frustration is widely shared: researchers are increasingly questioning the time it takes to publish their work. Many say that they feel trapped in a cycle of submission, rejection, review, re-review and re-re-review that seems to eat up months of their lives, interfere with job, grant and tenure applications and slow down the dissemination of results. In 2012, Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, wrote a commentary that lamented the “glacial pace” of scientific publishing1. “In the past three years, if anything, it's gotten substantially worse,” she says now. “It takes forever to get the work out, regardless of the journal. It just takes far too long.”
Read the news feature published in Nature
When Danielle Fraser first submitted her paper for publication, she had little idea of the painful saga that lay ahead.
She had spent some 18 months studying thousands of fossil species spread across North America from the past 36 million years, and now she had an intriguing result: animal populations were spread widest across latitudes in warm, wet climates. Her work, crucial to earning her PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, might be used to make predictions about the response of mammals to climate change — a key question in ecology today. So, with her PhD adviser's encouragement, she sent it to Science in October 2012.
Ten days later, the paper was rejected with a form letter. She sent it to another prestigious journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rejected. Next, she tried Ecology Letters. Bounced. “At this point, I definitely was frustrated. I hadn't even been reviewed and I would've loved to know how to improve the paper,” recalls Fraser. “I thought, 'Let's just get it out and go to a journal that will assess the paper'.”
In May 2013, she submitted the paper to Proceedings of the Royal Society B, considered a high-impact journal in her field. The journal sent it out for review — seven months after her initial submission to Science. “Finally!” Fraser thought. What she didn't know was that she had taken only the first steps down the long, bumpy road to publication: it would take another three submissions, two rejections, two rounds of major revisions and numerous drafts before the paper would finally appear. By that point, she could hardly bear to look at it.Ten days later, the paper was rejected with a form letter. She sent it to another prestigious journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rejected. Next, she tried Ecology Letters. Bounced. “At this point, I definitely was frustrated. I hadn't even been reviewed and I would've loved to know how to improve the paper,” recalls Fraser. “I thought, 'Let's just get it out and go to a journal that will assess the paper'.”
Fraser's frustration is widely shared: researchers are increasingly questioning the time it takes to publish their work. Many say that they feel trapped in a cycle of submission, rejection, review, re-review and re-re-review that seems to eat up months of their lives, interfere with job, grant and tenure applications and slow down the dissemination of results. In 2012, Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, wrote a commentary that lamented the “glacial pace” of scientific publishing1. “In the past three years, if anything, it's gotten substantially worse,” she says now. “It takes forever to get the work out, regardless of the journal. It just takes far too long.”
Read the news feature published in Nature
Wednesday, 10 February 2016
An open mind on open data
The move to make scientific findings transparent can be a major boon to research, but it can be tricky to embrace the change.
It is a movement building steady momentum: a call to make research data, software code and experimental methods publicly available and transparent. A spirit of openness is gaining traction in the science community, and is the only way, say advocates, to address a 'crisis' in science whereby too few findings are successfully reproduced. Furthermore, they say, it is the best way for researchers to gather the range of observations that are necessary to speed up discoveries or to identify large-scale trends.
The open-data shift poses a conundrum for junior researchers, who are carving out their niche. On the one hand, the drive to share is gathering official steam. Since 2013, global scientific bodies — including the European Commission, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Global Research Council — have begun to back policies that support increased public access to research.
Read the feature published in Nature
It is a movement building steady momentum: a call to make research data, software code and experimental methods publicly available and transparent. A spirit of openness is gaining traction in the science community, and is the only way, say advocates, to address a 'crisis' in science whereby too few findings are successfully reproduced. Furthermore, they say, it is the best way for researchers to gather the range of observations that are necessary to speed up discoveries or to identify large-scale trends.
The open-data shift poses a conundrum for junior researchers, who are carving out their niche. On the one hand, the drive to share is gathering official steam. Since 2013, global scientific bodies — including the European Commission, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Global Research Council — have begun to back policies that support increased public access to research.
Read the feature published in Nature
Scientists Investigate How Viruses Like Zika Cause Birth Defects
The Zika virus has quickly gained Ebola-level notoriety as it has spread through the Western Hemisphere in recent months. Researchers in Brazil, where it was first detected in May, have linked infections in pregnant women to a condition known as microcephaly: infants born with undersize heads.
Where birth defects are concerned, however, the Zika virus is far from unique. A number of other viruses, such as rubella and cytomegalovirus, pose a serious risk during pregnancy. Researchers have uncovered some important clues about how those pathogens injure fetuses — findings that are now helping to guide research into the potential link between Zika and microcephaly.
“I think we’ll discover a lot of parallels,” said Dr. Mark R. Schleiss, the director of pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Where birth defects are concerned, however, the Zika virus is far from unique. A number of other viruses, such as rubella and cytomegalovirus, pose a serious risk during pregnancy. Researchers have uncovered some important clues about how those pathogens injure fetuses — findings that are now helping to guide research into the potential link between Zika and microcephaly.
“I think we’ll discover a lot of parallels,” said Dr. Mark R. Schleiss, the director of pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Tuesday, 9 February 2016
Boosting Innovation: Murthy’s Idea Of Funding Indian PhDs In US Is A Non-Starter
Murthy’s idea will cost Indian Government in the tune of $25 bn over five years, an investment that can be better used to set up several top-notch universities and research institutions where Indians currently working abroad can be lured back.
NR Narayana Murthy suggested that India should spend an annual $5 billion to create 10,000 PhDs in American universities with the explicit proviso that none of them will be employed in the US. They have to return home to work on innovative projects and products right here.
While prima facie this seems like a bold idea to unleash thousands of innovators in India, giving a quantum jump the creation of intellectual property, a closer examination shows that this is actually a defeatist solution. Among other things, it concludes that India cannot produce world class PhDs, that the ones produced in the US will become innovative in India merely because they did their stuff under western masters, and that all this expense is worth it for ensuring high quality PhDs.
This is a typical Indian non-solution that essentially says India can’t be reformed, and that we need ideas that bypass our institutional limitations rather than improve them. This is the kind of thinking that got us a Right to Education Act, which essentially forces the 10 percent of reasonably competent privately-run schools to provide education to the underprivileged, instead of focusing on the real issue: how to make state schools deliver by making them accountable.
Full post
NR Narayana Murthy suggested that India should spend an annual $5 billion to create 10,000 PhDs in American universities with the explicit proviso that none of them will be employed in the US. They have to return home to work on innovative projects and products right here.
While prima facie this seems like a bold idea to unleash thousands of innovators in India, giving a quantum jump the creation of intellectual property, a closer examination shows that this is actually a defeatist solution. Among other things, it concludes that India cannot produce world class PhDs, that the ones produced in the US will become innovative in India merely because they did their stuff under western masters, and that all this expense is worth it for ensuring high quality PhDs.
This is a typical Indian non-solution that essentially says India can’t be reformed, and that we need ideas that bypass our institutional limitations rather than improve them. This is the kind of thinking that got us a Right to Education Act, which essentially forces the 10 percent of reasonably competent privately-run schools to provide education to the underprivileged, instead of focusing on the real issue: how to make state schools deliver by making them accountable.
Full post
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Autism Spotlight
Unlike tuberculosis and polio, two infectious diseases that were nearly eradicated in the twentieth century as a result of scientific advances, many neurological disorders are actually on the rise. One prominent example is autism, a disorder that results in difficulty with communication and social interaction. According to a study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2009, the rate of autism among children is now 1 in 100, more than double the rate assessed in the mid-1990s. This striking growth has renewed public dialogue about the causes of autism and the subjectivity of its diagnosis.
For many decades, autism was considered to have purely psychological origins. Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, believed that circumstances of severe deprivation are the basis of severe emotional disturbance. Consequently, through his work with children, he concluded that the emotional disorder now known as autism is a psychotic disturbance caused by maternal neglect. Due in part to Bettelheim's influence, the notion that autism is caused by environmental factors rather than biological factors became widespread during the 1950s and 1960s. However, in 1964 Dr. Bernard Rimland, a psychologist and the father of an autistic child, showed through analysis of data gathered from twins that the occurrence of autism has a strong genetic basis, and is not linked to maternal behavior. His work shifted the focus of blame from so-called "refrigerator" mothers, and launched a vigorous new era of research into the biological basis of autism.
Research has now associated as many as fifteen genes with autism, most of which support the strength of connections between different areas of the brain. According to this research, none of the relevant genes are absent or mutated in an autistic person, but their expression levels vary from expected norms. This results in an abnormally functioning nervous system characterized by poor brain connectivity that causes impaired social behavior and communication.
Recently, the scientific community has developed a more nuanced understanding of autism's origins that takes both biological and environmental causes into account. Advances in the field of epigenetics, in particular, show that environmental interaction with genes can modulate neurological functioning. Intense research is underway today in genetics, neuroscience, psychology, and even nutrition studies to refine our understanding of autism's origins and settle the question of why the rate of autism has grown so much during the past twenty years.
There is another intriguing possibility to consider that involves the work of social scientists: what if it is not the rate of occurrence but the rate of diagnosis of autism that has increased? Physicians and parents are now more aware of the disorder and its symptoms than they were before, and the standards for diagnosis have changed over time. In the mass media, for instance, classical autism proper is often conflated with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), a broad grouping of disorders characterized by milder forms of impaired language development, social interaction, and motor skills than classical autism. Two of the more familiar ASDs are Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) and Asperger's syndrome. Would these shadow syndromes have been considered autism in the mid-nineties? The American Psychological Association recently announced, for instance, that it is again reviewing the terminology that distinguishes Asperger's syndrome and other ASDs from autism, illustrating how changing standards of diagnosis over time might factor into the growth of autism rates.
Opinions about the best treatments for autism have been as varied as about its origins. Some treatments — Applied Behavioral Therapy, Pivotal Response Therapy, and Verbal Therapy, for instance — are purely behavioral, in that they reinforce desired behaviors with consistent rewards, to develop a patient's social abilities. Other treatments involve pharmaceuticals or special nutritional approaches. Opinions about the best treatment for autism are as complex and changing as the research about its causes.
Popular impressions of autism have been largely shaped by mass media. Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance as an autistic savant (someone whose social impairment is combined with exceptionally high computational or other intellectual abilities) brought autism into public discussion in 1988. Claire Danes's current performance in an HBO movie as Temple Grandin, an animal scientist who used her autistic sensitivity to develop improved techniques of animal handling in the agricultural industry, presents an even more nuanced and accurate depiction of the experience of an autistic person.
We hope that many people will use Temple Grandin and other mass-media discussions of autism as starting points for learning about the neurological basis of the disorder and its treatment. In this Spotlight, we guide you through the basics of autism, the context for understanding diagnosis rates, and the culture surrounding autistic people and their caretakers.
Read the feature and set of articles
For many decades, autism was considered to have purely psychological origins. Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, believed that circumstances of severe deprivation are the basis of severe emotional disturbance. Consequently, through his work with children, he concluded that the emotional disorder now known as autism is a psychotic disturbance caused by maternal neglect. Due in part to Bettelheim's influence, the notion that autism is caused by environmental factors rather than biological factors became widespread during the 1950s and 1960s. However, in 1964 Dr. Bernard Rimland, a psychologist and the father of an autistic child, showed through analysis of data gathered from twins that the occurrence of autism has a strong genetic basis, and is not linked to maternal behavior. His work shifted the focus of blame from so-called "refrigerator" mothers, and launched a vigorous new era of research into the biological basis of autism.
Research has now associated as many as fifteen genes with autism, most of which support the strength of connections between different areas of the brain. According to this research, none of the relevant genes are absent or mutated in an autistic person, but their expression levels vary from expected norms. This results in an abnormally functioning nervous system characterized by poor brain connectivity that causes impaired social behavior and communication.
Recently, the scientific community has developed a more nuanced understanding of autism's origins that takes both biological and environmental causes into account. Advances in the field of epigenetics, in particular, show that environmental interaction with genes can modulate neurological functioning. Intense research is underway today in genetics, neuroscience, psychology, and even nutrition studies to refine our understanding of autism's origins and settle the question of why the rate of autism has grown so much during the past twenty years.
There is another intriguing possibility to consider that involves the work of social scientists: what if it is not the rate of occurrence but the rate of diagnosis of autism that has increased? Physicians and parents are now more aware of the disorder and its symptoms than they were before, and the standards for diagnosis have changed over time. In the mass media, for instance, classical autism proper is often conflated with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), a broad grouping of disorders characterized by milder forms of impaired language development, social interaction, and motor skills than classical autism. Two of the more familiar ASDs are Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) and Asperger's syndrome. Would these shadow syndromes have been considered autism in the mid-nineties? The American Psychological Association recently announced, for instance, that it is again reviewing the terminology that distinguishes Asperger's syndrome and other ASDs from autism, illustrating how changing standards of diagnosis over time might factor into the growth of autism rates.
Opinions about the best treatments for autism have been as varied as about its origins. Some treatments — Applied Behavioral Therapy, Pivotal Response Therapy, and Verbal Therapy, for instance — are purely behavioral, in that they reinforce desired behaviors with consistent rewards, to develop a patient's social abilities. Other treatments involve pharmaceuticals or special nutritional approaches. Opinions about the best treatment for autism are as complex and changing as the research about its causes.
Popular impressions of autism have been largely shaped by mass media. Dustin Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance as an autistic savant (someone whose social impairment is combined with exceptionally high computational or other intellectual abilities) brought autism into public discussion in 1988. Claire Danes's current performance in an HBO movie as Temple Grandin, an animal scientist who used her autistic sensitivity to develop improved techniques of animal handling in the agricultural industry, presents an even more nuanced and accurate depiction of the experience of an autistic person.
We hope that many people will use Temple Grandin and other mass-media discussions of autism as starting points for learning about the neurological basis of the disorder and its treatment. In this Spotlight, we guide you through the basics of autism, the context for understanding diagnosis rates, and the culture surrounding autistic people and their caretakers.
Read the feature and set of articles
Nature picks
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in journals and portals across the Nature Publishing Group.
Note - free access is only available through the Nature India
"Our picks" page.
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India by the numbers -- Highs and lows in the country’s research landscape.
Indian science is a study in contrasts. With its vast population and rapidly expanding economy, the country has ramped up scientific production at an impressive rate. India started the twenty-first century well behind Russia, France, Italy and Canada in terms of yearly publications and it now leads them all by healthy margins. It is quickly closing in on Japan.
Despite those gains, India is not yet a major player in world science. Its publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China. Relative to its size, India has very few scientists; many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad and very few foreign scientists settle in India. The country invests a scant portion of its economy in research and development (R&D), and it produces relatively few patents per capita compared with other nations.
But there are bright spots. India boasts several world-class centres for science education, particularly the highly regarded Indian Institutes of Technology. Businesses in the country are investing more in R&D, which bodes well for future innovation. And more women are participating in science, although their numbers still fall far below those of men.
Read the feature published in Nature
Despite those gains, India is not yet a major player in world science. Its publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China. Relative to its size, India has very few scientists; many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad and very few foreign scientists settle in India. The country invests a scant portion of its economy in research and development (R&D), and it produces relatively few patents per capita compared with other nations.
But there are bright spots. India boasts several world-class centres for science education, particularly the highly regarded Indian Institutes of Technology. Businesses in the country are investing more in R&D, which bodes well for future innovation. And more women are participating in science, although their numbers still fall far below those of men.
Read the feature published in Nature
Research management: Priorities for science in India
Ten Indian research leaders give their prescriptions, from better funding, facilities, mentoring and education to greater respect, fairness, autonomy and confidence.
Sunita Narain: Manage waste frugally
Hiriyakkanavar Ila: Support the bulk of students
Yamuna Krishnan: Crack the cliques, enable visionaries
Joyashree Roy: Train more energy economists
Raghavendra Gadagkar: Solve local problems
Vinod Singh: Improve tertiary education
Umesh Varshney: Make science an attractive career
Krishna N. Ganesh: Connect research with education
Pradeep P. Mujumdar: Share data on water resources
Naba K. Mondal: Build big physics facilities
Read the full feature published in Nature
Sunita Narain: Manage waste frugally
Hiriyakkanavar Ila: Support the bulk of students
Yamuna Krishnan: Crack the cliques, enable visionaries
Joyashree Roy: Train more energy economists
Raghavendra Gadagkar: Solve local problems
Vinod Singh: Improve tertiary education
Umesh Varshney: Make science an attractive career
Krishna N. Ganesh: Connect research with education
Pradeep P. Mujumdar: Share data on water resources
Naba K. Mondal: Build big physics facilities
Read the full feature published in Nature
Monday, 25 January 2016
How to win a fellowship
The table in this post describes the skills and experience (relevant to career
stage) applicants should be able to demonstrate when applying for an MRC
fellowship. Career breaks, part-time working and changes in discipline
will be taken into account when assessing research experience to date
and track record.
This can be used as guidelines by every researcher.
view the guidelines
This can be used as guidelines by every researcher.
view the guidelines
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
IBM, U. of Michigan Creating Chatty Computer
How would you like to have a conversation with your computer to plan your vacation or to do your taxes, or literally hold a discussion with your car about the best way to get home through traffic? Well, if a new project from IBM and the University of Michigan goes as planned, that may not be so far off.
Sure, it is possible to "talk" to PCs, cars, smartphones and other devices today, but the interaction is limited to rote question and answering. What the University of Michigan and IBM have in mind is the ability to hold real conversations with these systems "on human terms," the university said.
The University of Michigan and IBM have launched a $4.5 million collaboration to develop a new class of conversational technologies that will enable people to interact more naturally and effectively with computers. The multiyear partnership is expected to usher in the next frontier of artificial intelligence (AI)-based dialog management that will transform human-machine communication.
Indeed, in an effort known as Project Sapphire, IBM and the University of Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab will develop a cognitive system that functions as an academic advisor for undergraduate computer science and engineering majors at the university. The system will enable researchers to explore how smart machines interact with people in goal-driven dialogues.
Read the post
Sure, it is possible to "talk" to PCs, cars, smartphones and other devices today, but the interaction is limited to rote question and answering. What the University of Michigan and IBM have in mind is the ability to hold real conversations with these systems "on human terms," the university said.
The University of Michigan and IBM have launched a $4.5 million collaboration to develop a new class of conversational technologies that will enable people to interact more naturally and effectively with computers. The multiyear partnership is expected to usher in the next frontier of artificial intelligence (AI)-based dialog management that will transform human-machine communication.
Indeed, in an effort known as Project Sapphire, IBM and the University of Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab will develop a cognitive system that functions as an academic advisor for undergraduate computer science and engineering majors at the university. The system will enable researchers to explore how smart machines interact with people in goal-driven dialogues.
Read the post
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Connecting Companies: Strategic Partnerships for the Digital Age
Connecting companies: Strategic partnerships for the digital age is a report from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sponsored by Telstra. It is designed to guide senior executives through the global trend for digital partnerships between organisations, which are connecting regions, crossing industries and linking generations. Specific industry analysis can be found in separate briefings that accompany this report.
This report draws on two main sources for its research and findings:
In June 2015 The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 1,044 senior business leaders, half (51%) of whom are C-level executives or board members.
Digital technology is blurring the distinctions between companies and industries as we know them. “Offline” companies in older industries – those that came to the Internet later in life – are looking to develop digital capabilities by partnering with those that have perfected them. Native online companies, for their part, are learning to value the product and service expertise of offline firms as they attempt to turn rapid growth into mature, profitable and sustainable business models – or simply to survive. The result is the rise of digital partnerships.
The form of these digital partnerships ranges from contract-based alliances between two or three players to cross-industry networks and large, loosely organised, ecosystems based on a dominant technology platform. The early adopters already have multiple digital partners and some belong to more than one form of partnership. Many others, meanwhile, are intent on catching up. Private-sector organisations tend to dominate these partnerships, although the prominence of state-owned enterprises in Asia points to closer government involvement over time.
This report finds that the growing trend for digital partnerships is already having a measurable impact for the organisations involved in them. One-half of the 1,044 executives surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit for this study believe that their digital partnerships have proven their value “beyond doubt”. Expectations for the future are even grander. Key findings from the research include the following:
This report draws on two main sources for its research and findings:
In June 2015 The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 1,044 senior business leaders, half (51%) of whom are C-level executives or board members.
Geography: Survey respondents come from across the world, with 48% based in the Asia-Pacific region; 33% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and 19% in the Americas. There is a minimum of 75 respondents from each of the following countries: China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the UK and the US.
Industry: A total of 20 industries are represented in the survey with at least 80 respondents coming from each of the following six industries: entertainment, media and publishing; financial services; healthcare; IT & technology; manufacturing; and professional services.
Company size: The sample is evenly split between firms with annual revenue over US$500m and below US$500m.
Alongside the survey, The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the senior executives and experts
Executive Summary:
Industry: A total of 20 industries are represented in the survey with at least 80 respondents coming from each of the following six industries: entertainment, media and publishing; financial services; healthcare; IT & technology; manufacturing; and professional services.
Company size: The sample is evenly split between firms with annual revenue over US$500m and below US$500m.
Alongside the survey, The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the senior executives and experts
Executive Summary:
Digital technology is blurring the distinctions between companies and industries as we know them. “Offline” companies in older industries – those that came to the Internet later in life – are looking to develop digital capabilities by partnering with those that have perfected them. Native online companies, for their part, are learning to value the product and service expertise of offline firms as they attempt to turn rapid growth into mature, profitable and sustainable business models – or simply to survive. The result is the rise of digital partnerships.
The form of these digital partnerships ranges from contract-based alliances between two or three players to cross-industry networks and large, loosely organised, ecosystems based on a dominant technology platform. The early adopters already have multiple digital partners and some belong to more than one form of partnership. Many others, meanwhile, are intent on catching up. Private-sector organisations tend to dominate these partnerships, although the prominence of state-owned enterprises in Asia points to closer government involvement over time.
This report finds that the growing trend for digital partnerships is already having a measurable impact for the organisations involved in them. One-half of the 1,044 executives surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit for this study believe that their digital partnerships have proven their value “beyond doubt”. Expectations for the future are even grander. Key findings from the research include the following:
- Accessing the connected customer is core to the digital-partnership strategy
- Executives embrace “strength-in-numbers” to manage change
- Companies have high expectations of digital partnerships, but patience is required
- Speed and specialisation are set to promote growth of cross-industry ecosystems
- Traditional companies are learning how to share information, but some walls remain
- Digital natives are joining partnerships for profit, not philanthropy
- People and geography matter, as long-distance relationships prove difficult
- The popularity of APIs foretells the rise of collaborative innovation
- Today’s digital partnerships point to bigger changes to come
Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The research findings provides insight into a generation that is positive about technology, keen on success-oriented learning, and not entirely satisfied about their formal education.
The study, commissioned by Infosys and conducted by independent research agency Future Foundation, polled 1,000* young people per country, aged between 16 and 25, in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Contributing toward important debates with political, business and civil society leaders around preparing those who will truly master the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Amplifying the voice of young people can only help amplify their potential.
Full Report
Full Research Report & Analysis
The study, commissioned by Infosys and conducted by independent research agency Future Foundation, polled 1,000* young people per country, aged between 16 and 25, in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Contributing toward important debates with political, business and civil society leaders around preparing those who will truly master the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Amplifying the voice of young people can only help amplify their potential.
Full Report
Full Research Report & Analysis
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
The 10 stuff-ups we all make when interpreting research
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Understanding what’s being said in any new research can be challenging and there are some common mistakes that people make.
Have you ever tried to interpret some new research to work out what the study means in the grand scheme of things?
Well maybe you’re smart and didn’t make any mistakes – but more likely you’re like most humans and accidentally made one of these 10 stuff ups.
Full Post
Have you ever tried to interpret some new research to work out what the study means in the grand scheme of things?
Well maybe you’re smart and didn’t make any mistakes – but more likely you’re like most humans and accidentally made one of these 10 stuff ups.
Full Post
UNESCO’s Open Access (OA) Curriculum is now online
“Building inclusive Knowledge Societies through information and communication” is one of the key objectives for UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy. By adopting this objective, UNESCO Member States have recognized that knowledge plays a key role in economic growth, social development, cultural enrichment and democratic empowerment. This decision of the Members States has influenced UNESCO‘s Open Access program, through which the organization received a unique mandate to work on OA policy issues; bridge knowledge pools on OA across the world and build capacities to better understand Open Access.
Full post
Friday, 27 February 2015
2015 Telecoms.com Global Industry Survey Report
The 2015 Telecoms.com Intelligence Annual Industry Survey has garnered responses from 2,066 professionals from all parts of the telecoms sector. This is a substantial representation of today’s industry, with more than half of all responses coming directly from service providers, and represents one of the industry’s broadest and most comprehensive analysis pieces available today.
Surprises and contradictions are what one tends to look for when examining the results of surveys such as this and there were several that stood out. Take multiplay, for example, where the trend’s early movements came from fixed-line and internet service providers adding TV offerings to its portfolio. Surprisingly, the majority of respondents (60%) believe it will indeed by mobile operators who are in the strongest competitive position to move towards multiplay.
But clearly identified by operator respondents as the biggest challenge facing operators over the next five years was competitive pressure between operators (64%), swiftly followed up by competitive pressure faced by OTT content providers. Compared to last year, when the majority of respondents saw regulatory pressure on pricing as the biggest challenge facing the industry, this marks a substantial shift in mind-set sweeping across the industry.
The survey was wide-ranging in scope. Telecom.com had asked the industry about operators' BSS strategies, the ongoing mission of deploying and expanding LTE networks, the move towards NFV and SDN-based network management, and telco network security among other issues. The benefits and challenges associated with each of these areas of operator focus emerged clearly, with network performance and quality of service for customers among the dominant concerns throughout.
Access this free report of the findings
Surprises and contradictions are what one tends to look for when examining the results of surveys such as this and there were several that stood out. Take multiplay, for example, where the trend’s early movements came from fixed-line and internet service providers adding TV offerings to its portfolio. Surprisingly, the majority of respondents (60%) believe it will indeed by mobile operators who are in the strongest competitive position to move towards multiplay.
But clearly identified by operator respondents as the biggest challenge facing operators over the next five years was competitive pressure between operators (64%), swiftly followed up by competitive pressure faced by OTT content providers. Compared to last year, when the majority of respondents saw regulatory pressure on pricing as the biggest challenge facing the industry, this marks a substantial shift in mind-set sweeping across the industry.
The survey was wide-ranging in scope. Telecom.com had asked the industry about operators' BSS strategies, the ongoing mission of deploying and expanding LTE networks, the move towards NFV and SDN-based network management, and telco network security among other issues. The benefits and challenges associated with each of these areas of operator focus emerged clearly, with network performance and quality of service for customers among the dominant concerns throughout.
Access this free report of the findings
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
The Global Innovation 1000: Proven Paths to Innovation Success
The Global Innovation 1000: Proven Paths to Innovation Success
Ten years of research reveal the best R&D strategies for the decade ahead.
Post by Barry Jaruzelski, Volker Staack and Brad Goehle
The success of corporate R&D is on every C-suite agenda. Yet wide disparities persist in how well innovation investments actually pay off. As a consequence, R&D is often seen as a black box, where large sums of money go in and innovative products and services only sometimes come out. One of the aims of the Global Innovation 1000 study, our annual analysis of R&D spending, has been to demystify the process—and to find universal principles that can be applied by any company, in any industry.
This year, the 10th anniversary of the study, we looked back at a decade’s worth of research on R&D spending patterns and surveys of innovation executives, plus anecdotal insights about how companies have been improving their innovation performance. We also surveyed more than 500 innovation leaders in companies large and small, across every major region and industry sector, to ask what they have learned in the last 10 years about why some investments work and others do not. We found that it’s really not that mysterious: Over the years, we’ve identified the core strategies that can improve a company’s return on its R&D investment, and we’ve witnessed some consensus around the key success factors that drive results. For example, one of the main messages we heard is that innovation leaders feel they have made real progress in better leveraging their R&D investments, particularly by more tightly aligning their innovation and business strategies, and by gaining better insights into customers’ stated and unstated needs. And in fact, 44 percent of our 2014 survey respondents say that their companies are better innovators today than they were a decade ago, while another 32 percent say they are much better. Only 6 percent say they are doing worse.
Full Post
Ten years of research reveal the best R&D strategies for the decade ahead.
Post by Barry Jaruzelski, Volker Staack and Brad Goehle
The success of corporate R&D is on every C-suite agenda. Yet wide disparities persist in how well innovation investments actually pay off. As a consequence, R&D is often seen as a black box, where large sums of money go in and innovative products and services only sometimes come out. One of the aims of the Global Innovation 1000 study, our annual analysis of R&D spending, has been to demystify the process—and to find universal principles that can be applied by any company, in any industry.
This year, the 10th anniversary of the study, we looked back at a decade’s worth of research on R&D spending patterns and surveys of innovation executives, plus anecdotal insights about how companies have been improving their innovation performance. We also surveyed more than 500 innovation leaders in companies large and small, across every major region and industry sector, to ask what they have learned in the last 10 years about why some investments work and others do not. We found that it’s really not that mysterious: Over the years, we’ve identified the core strategies that can improve a company’s return on its R&D investment, and we’ve witnessed some consensus around the key success factors that drive results. For example, one of the main messages we heard is that innovation leaders feel they have made real progress in better leveraging their R&D investments, particularly by more tightly aligning their innovation and business strategies, and by gaining better insights into customers’ stated and unstated needs. And in fact, 44 percent of our 2014 survey respondents say that their companies are better innovators today than they were a decade ago, while another 32 percent say they are much better. Only 6 percent say they are doing worse.
Full Post
Saturday, 4 January 2014
7 innovative Indian tech startups to watch out for
From addressing data center energy issues, empowering kirana stores to transforming Indian agriculture using the cloud, Indian tech startups are amongst a lot of action.
Can an Indian startup provide answers to global data center energy woes?
How an Indian startup is empowering kirana stores by leveraging cloud, analytics and mobile apps
Can a startup transform Indian agriculture by using the cloud?
Cloud helps Classle deliver education to the rest of the pyramid
NanoBi Analytics: A startup building the first analytics app store in India
How a startup is seeking to disrupt the recruitment industry by using the cloud
How an Indian startup is leveraging Big Data analytics to drive genetics research
Read the full post
Can an Indian startup provide answers to global data center energy woes?
How an Indian startup is empowering kirana stores by leveraging cloud, analytics and mobile apps
Can a startup transform Indian agriculture by using the cloud?
Cloud helps Classle deliver education to the rest of the pyramid
NanoBi Analytics: A startup building the first analytics app store in India
How a startup is seeking to disrupt the recruitment industry by using the cloud
How an Indian startup is leveraging Big Data analytics to drive genetics research
Read the full post
Monday, 28 October 2013
Free articles by 2013 Nobel Prize Winners
Wiley is proud to have published the works of more than 450 Nobel
laureates in all categories (Literature, Economics, Physiology or
Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Peace). To celebrate the
achievements of this year's winners and past winners, Wiley is making
a selection of content from Nobel winners free to access until the end
of the year.
The 2013 award winners will be announced from Monday, October 7th and
this site will be updated with free content throughout the
announcements. Visit our press room for regular updates of winners and
other news.
More to access these articles
laureates in all categories (Literature, Economics, Physiology or
Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Peace). To celebrate the
achievements of this year's winners and past winners, Wiley is making
a selection of content from Nobel winners free to access until the end
of the year.
The 2013 award winners will be announced from Monday, October 7th and
this site will be updated with free content throughout the
announcements. Visit our press room for regular updates of winners and
other news.
More to access these articles
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