Round up

From various sources:

• Computer Science Today -- good CS news site (EEVL)
  
• Chronicle feature on academic libraries -- bound to be controversial (Kept Up)
  
• Lack of interest in Computer Science (Kept Up)
  
• Information Wants to be Free - Bullcookies
  
• Rice Pudding
  
• What are Open Source and Flickr
  
• OECD on Scientific Pubishing -- great report, well worth a careful read (Lessig)
  
• 100 Interesting Mathematical Problems, Exercises, Puzzles, and Diversions (Neat New Stuff)
  
• Is It Time to Shut Down Engineering Colleges? -- massively controversial, lively commentary at the end for what I think is a rather overly provocative article. The idea is that engineers need more soft skills and interdisciplinary knowledge to be effective problem solvers in the more internationally competitive environment we live in today. A better balance is needed between traditional engineering subjects matter and greater humanities and social sciences content -- economics, history, philosophy, the arts. A good idea, one that is widely recognized in engineering circles but the author more or less paints it like he's the only one to ever think about these problems, as if he's never been to an ASEE or IEEE conference on education or read Prism or any other engineering education journal. I think it's a bit sloppy both on the author's part and especially on InsideHigherEd's part for presenting this issue as "wow, look at this new idea" rather than a long standing conversation within engineering education. Slapdash, like the article on academic librarian blogs.
  

Horse chess-piece

Weird little bit of news today. Springer has adopted the horse chess-piece as its new umbrella branding logo. It's reported both on KnowledgeSpeak and on the Springer site. In itself that's not weird, as chess has long been associated with intelligence and the German name for the horse chess-piece is springer. The weird thing is, of course, if they're so intelligent, why couldn't they figure out that the English name for the horse chess-piece is the knight. It's not like it's hard to find sites where they list the names of the pieces in different languages.

Recently in IEEE journals

IT Professional v7i4 (on outsourcing)

• Making IT Outsourcing Work for Smaller Enterprises by Pistole, L.L.; Bragg, A.W.
  
• Offshoring: Individual Short-Term Gain versus Collective Long-Term Loss? by Roberts, R.
  
• Developing Superior Outsourcing Programs by Power, M.J.; Desouza, K.C.; Bonifazi, C.
  
• Offshoring: What Can Go Wrong? by Matloff, N.
  
• Ron Hira: Managing the Impacts of Offshoring by Ferrante, F.; Hira, R.
  

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications v48i3 (on research in professional communications)

• Research Reality Check: Introduction to the Special Issue by Grove, L.K.
  
• Approaches to Audience: An Overview of the Major Perspectives by Tusin, J.

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing v27i3 (on historical reconstructions)

• The IBM 1620 restoration project by Spicer, D
  
• The Rebuilding of Colossus at Bletchley Park by Sale, A.E.
  
• The Construction of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 by Swade, D.D.
  

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

The latest issue of this IEEE magazine is a special issue on Globalizing Technological Education (v24i3).

Highlights from this important and topical issue:

• Computer science education and the global outsourcing of software production by Kjell, B.
  
• Engineering globalization: oxymoron or opportunity? by Newberry, B. (free version as ppt)
  
• Globalizing manufacturing engineering education by Stephan, K.D.; Sriraman, V. (pdf of ppt)
  
• IT education and training for disadvantaged students: lessons from Europe by O'Donnell, S.
  
• Threat to democratic ideals in cyberspace lessons learned from the Verizon V. RIAA case by Tavani, H.T.; Grodzinsky, F.S.
  
• Collateral damage: american science and the war on terrorism by Foster, K.R.; Lerch, I.A.

Latest from IEEE Students Newsletter.

From the September 2005 issue:

1. STUDY SHOWS MORE OPTIONS DON'T MEAN MORE WOMEN IN MATH, SCIENCE
A twenty-one-nation study of the percentage of women in mathematics and science careers found that women did not enter those careers despite more opportunities to study those subjects, even if they came from societies that supported women's entry into male-dominated fields. However, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Western Washington University say that countries with the highest number of women in computer science all have governments that control which fields students must study, and require substantial math and science coursework. The researchers concluded that educational systems should insist on more math and science for all students to increase the number of women in traditionally male-dominated fields. Read more:
<http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2141200/why-girls-geeks>


2. EARLY EDUCATION AND MENTORS KEYS TO INCREASING WOMEN IN SCIENCE
According to a professor of physics and education at Augsburg College, girls appear to lose interest in science and mathematics by the time they reach their early teens, making it harder for them to prepare for careers in those fields. Speaking with the Minnesota Women's Press, Professor Jeanine Gregoire says those early years are critical, because if students do not prepare to take advanced math and science in high school, they are at a disadvantage in college. Likewise, girls need mentors who have succeeded in math and science careers, according to a University of
Minnesota researcher, not merely to know what careers exist, but to understand that there are a number of different paths into a given field. Read more:
<http://www.womenspress.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=2012&TM=32010.58>


3. IEEE MEMBERS STEERING STUDENTS TOWARD SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
When it comes to reaching out to teenage students and talking up careers in engineering and science, IEEE members around the world are deeply involved. Just ask Costas Stasopoulos, past chair of the IEEE Cyprus Section. Many members of his section participate in pre-university educational activities, because, he says, they realize the importance of these activities to the engineering profession. Their efforts are directed mainly toward high school students, especially those who have not decided what to study in university. In particular, Cyprus Section members attend career fairs, where they can reach students and their parents. Read more:
<http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/pages/tionline/legacy/inst2005/sep05/9w.steering.html>

Survey of the Biblioblogosphere: Results

Meredith over at Information Wants To Be Free has published the results of her survey in four parts, with a TOC-like entry here. Interesting results, nothing really surprising, although at 9.8% us Canuck bloggers seem to be punching above our weight somewhat. Academic librarians also made up close to half at 43.8%, which I admit did surprise me a bit. Take that, doubters. I have to admit I wasn't at all surprised by the strong showing of 27.9% among the over-40 set. We're not all tired, bored, indifferent, burnt-out old losers. Really.

CiteSeer out of date?

Computing Chris over at Elsevier points out that CiteSeer isn't crawling the web the way it used to. I think it's just taking author-submitted papers now. In any case, I recall a year or two ago hearing at SLA that the CiteSeer folks were working on something with ISI...

In any case, CC does mention Scirus and I'm sure he was also thinking Scopus.

findability.org

Via LISNews, Infomation Architecture guru Peter Morville has a new blog and a new book. This could be a blog to watch, although I guess we now all have a new term to juggle in our brains: human factors, user experience (UX), usability, findability, ergonomics, information architecture, HCI.

Disciplinary differences report

Via OAN, JISC in the UK has done quite an extensive survey of scholarly communications patterns amongst various disciplines. The report is a rather large 92 page word file. I haven't read the report in detail yet, but a quick glance tells me it is very useful, covering at a very broad level issues like discovery tools, journals types preferred and OA-related practices.

A quick hit from the press release:

Among the many findings of the report was the discovery of the importance of e-prints (pre- and post-) in the physical sciences and engineering, the broader mix in the social sciences and the particular importance of books in languages and area studies.

The Ex

Went to The Canadian National Exhibition with the family over the extra-long Labour Day weekend. We had a blast. Fine, but what relevance here? While at the food building, I picked up a brochure for the upcoming Einstein Fest in Waterloo, Ontario. Sponsored by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, it runs from September 30th to October 23rd and looks well worth checking out for anyone in the neighbourhood.

Good ways to handle scientific disagreements.

Via InsideHigherEd, a posting on how scientists resolve disagreements.