Technology & daily life in Japan II

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Tecnología y vida diaria en Japón, Parte 2

Following a previous post on technology in daily life in Japan, I found another Japanese technological advance in robotics in a the video showed on a post of Paul Heney at the Engineering Exchange site. The researchers Takahashi N. and others at the University of Electro Communications have named it "Sense-Roid: Emotional Haptic Communication with Yourself". As seen in the video, the gadget can basically make you feel a hug given by yourself.

I know the idea is creepy, but let´s see how our opinion changes when those kind of devices will be integrated into your Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc, as a form to fill the breach between families physically away due to job reasons, etc. For kids specially, this would mean something, given the importance of the family in the development of their psychics at early stages. Much to be discussed yet.

Education: "Adjusting" the results of your work: ???

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Educación: ¿"Ajustando" los resultados de tu trabajo?

Following my previous post, early this morning I found this news on Fox:

Changing tides: Research center under fire for "adjusted" sea-level data

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/#ixzz1PpK8VuTVChanging tides

Sometimes, researchers may "adjust" their results in order to better explain the potential consequences of their outcomes, but it is difficult to believe that they would adjust their results pursuing some dark objective.

Education: Publish your computer code!!! A matter of productivity and ethics.

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Educación: Publica el código de tu programa!! Cuestión de productividad y ética

Pirating: An accepted "profession"?

I have recently read two short entries on Nature.com published in 2010 that discuss on the relevance of publishing computer codes for the development of life sciences. The former is a comment written by Anthony Fejes (link on blogs.nature.com) on the post of Nick Barnes entitled "Publish your computer code: it is good enough", and I agree with both and with most of the comments posted by several readers on reference to the main article.

The question is: should your computer code be published? Next are summarized some reasons that are commonly given for not publishing a code. Those reasons were cited by Barnes, Fejes, and the comments that followed Barne´s article. Please analyze them, since they may be useful when discussing with your students on matters of research productivity, and even in matters of ethics.

Technology & daily life in Japan, Part I

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Tecnología y vida diaria en Japón, Parte I

Once in Japan, when walking through the streets, watching their TV shows, or when visiting their stores of electronic gadgets, you will sure ask yourself "where do they get the ideas from!!!!"

I do not know how to classify this entry (it may belong to the "On the WEB" part of my blog), but I could not resist commenting on the following video posted on the BBC. It brought to me some nice memories.

Nekomimi (cat´s ears): Technology for daily life


( I assume that posting this link is legal, because the code for embedding it was available at the source)

Education: Technology and modern education theories to the rescue of calculus

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Educación: Tecnología y teorías educativas modernas al rescate del cálculo

With particular reference to calculus, we are all aware of its importance for engineering sciences; however, sometimes the outcomes and the benefits are not well "advertised", resulting in a number of hours that may get reduced on behalf of contents that is more "profitable". As a result, lecturers in charge of transmitting such a relevant knowledge may be forced to simultaneously compress the contents and make it more appealing to the the new generations, i.e., the potential customers. Unfortunately, to turn the contents into some kind of "for dummies" version may not be an appropriate solution.

The China Papers

Researchers who have eventually faced such a problem have proposed potential solutions within their particular institutions. In some countries in Asia, however, the proposals can have broader, country-level, relevance. We visited China during the APD-IAHR meeting in 2008, when we were gladly surprised by the open personality, the talent (the snapshot shows a moment of the cultural night brilliantly performed by the students of Nanjing University), and the hunger for knowledge of both students, lecturers and researchers. Thus, it was no surprise to hear a comment of one of the attendants on the concern of the country in improving educational schemes. One of the outcomes of such concern is the series of papers (The China Papers) published by the programme "Teaching Sciences in English", which is an exchange programme for university science and mathematics teachers between China and the University of Sydney in Australia. My entry below shows a short comment on two papers that make reference to such topic.