Saturday, January 26, 2008

From the interweb tubes ...


Here's a ranking of countries based on their h-index (based on publications during 1996-2006). As expected, the US leads with 793, and the UK (465), Germany (408), France (375) and Japan (372) fill the remaining slots in the Top Five. India is ranked at 25 with an h-index of 146. Yes, China is ahead at Rank 21 with a score of 161. [Thanks to Exon and John Hunter for the pointer].

Should a man convicted of murder be allowed to become a doctor? That's the question that a Swedish institution faced. How did it resolve it? NYTimes reports.

Natasha on the time-saving strategies of aphids:

The truly large time saving comes from a crazy trick called the telescoping of generations. Female aphids give birth to parthenogenetically produced female aphids who are already pregnant with the next generation. That amounts to a larger reduction of reproduction time. And it's what allows them to infest a plant in your garden in the short span of a few days. It's also what might allow them to develop quick resistance to the pesticides gardeners and farmers use. A granddaughter and daughter is exposed to everything a female aphid is exposed to and selective pressures needn't work independently on each generation, which I think should speed up the process of developing resistance.

Aurelie Thiele on the use of technology in education:

Some teachers have begun to use blogs as course webpages and link to course wikis so that the students can contribute too, i.e., take exams, post assignments. Of course that one course - if you follow the links above - is on web design to begin with, but borrows topics from history and literature, and TeacherTube and VoiceThread provide many tech-driven resources on non-tech courses. [...] One Dan Meyer even records his lectures when he has to be replaced by a temp, in quite an amazing way.

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