Wednesday, February 13, 2008

St. Valentine link: Tyrannosaurus sex


Olivia Judson speculates on the sex life of dinosaurs.

We now have a robust understanding of how sexual pressures — the pressures to find, impress, and seduce a mate — influence the evolution of males and females. So much so that if you tell me a fact, such as the average size difference between males and females in a species, or the proportion of a male’s body taken up by his testes, I can tell you what the mating system is likely to be. For example, where males are much bigger than females, fighting between males has been important — which often means that the biggest males maintain a harem. If testes are relatively large, females probably have sex with several males in the course of a single breeding episode.

These forces are so reliable that, if only we could determine the sex of dinosaur fossils, we could begin to infer their mating habits. But alas. [...]

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I know this is not really relevant here, but check out this really funny story about a pet lizard ...

An important victory for Open Access


Inside Higher Ed reports:

Harvard University’s arts and sciences faculty approved a plan on Tuesday that will post finished academic papers online free, unless scholars specifically decide to opt out of the open-access program. While other institutions have similar repositories for their faculty’s work, Harvard’s is unique for making online publication the default option.

This is an important victory. As Peter Suber observed, "Harvard will be the first university in the US to adopt an OA mandate. The Harvard policy will also be one of the first anywhere to be adopted by faculty themselves rather than by administrators." He has more here.

Nicole Kidman's swimsuit = Nine cows


A swimsuit left at a Swedish pool by Australian movie star Nicole Kidman has been sold at auction to buy cows for poor families in India.

More here. I wonder why this momentous news has not found its rightful place in this blog.

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In other news, the fifth Asian Esperanto Congress started yesterday in Bangalore. Abdul Salam, president of the Indian Esperanto Federation, spoke these stirring words:

The number of Esperantists is increasing. A day will come when the entire world will speak one language — Esperanto.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

HigherEd links


Gouri Agtey Athale in the Economic Times: M&M to spend Rs 250 cr on 5 tech institutes.

Victor E. Ferrall Jr. in Inside Higher Ed: Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved?

Cal Newport: Notes on a lecture by MIT's Patrick Henry Winston on How To Speak. Link to the video is here.

St. Valentine links ...


Scientific American: Affairs of the Lips: Why We Kiss by Chip Walter. [Link via The Situationist, where you will find more links].

LATimes:: Science of the Orgasm by Regina Nuzzo. "To unlock the secrets of the climax researchers are looking behind the scenes and into the nervous system, where the true magic happens."

LATimes, again: Call Him Doctor 'Orgasmatron' by Regina Nuzzo (again). "Dr. Stuart Meloy stumbled upon an alternative -- and pleasurable -- use for an electrode stimulation device that treats pain."

Dr. Stuart Meloy never set out to study orgasms. It was an accident.

He was in the operating room one day in 1998, implanting electrodes into a patient's spine to treat her chronic leg pain. (The electrodes are connected to a device that fires impulses to the brain to block pain signals.) But when he turned on the power, "the patient suddenly let out something between a shriek and moan," says Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in North Carolina.

Asked what was wrong, she replied, "You'll have to teach my husband how to do that."

[LATimes links via Tara Smith at Aetiology.]

National Post: Love-Cost Analysis by Dave McGinn. "Your long-distance relationship might be more expensive than you think."

Finally, over at Pretty Blue Salwar, Blue is playing Advice Columnist all of this week.

So: if there are any burning questions you want answered (including questions about things that shouldn't be burning), drop 'em in the comments [over at Blue's blog, of course].

Monday, February 11, 2008

The difference between real people and Homo economicus


Many people have likened the response to Mr. Obama’s appeal for civic engagement to the response to similar appeals by President John F. Kennedy during the 1960s. Then, as now, many economists were skeptical. The Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, for example, began the opening chapter of his 1962 book, “Capitalism and Freedom,” by quoting the already-famous passage from Kennedy’s inaugural address in which he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Mr. Friedman seemed to find the statement unintelligible, or at any rate not “worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society.”

“The free man,” he wrote, “will ask neither what his country can do for him, nor what he can do for his country.”

From Robert Frank's latest Economic View column titled, "When Self-Interest Isn’t Everything". Here are the opening lines:

Traditional economic models assume that people are self-interested in the narrow sense. If “homo economicus” — the stereotypical rational actor in these models — finds a wallet on the sidewalk, he keeps the cash inside. He doesn’t leave tips after dining in restaurants that he will never visit again. And he would never vote in a presidential election, much less make an anonymous donation of money or time to a presidential campaign.

While on this topic, take a look at Dan Ariely's "Mac vs. PC" style comparison of standard and behavioral varieties of economics.

The fate of humanities and social sciences at IISc


Caution: This longish post on IISc's prehistory is just a (quirky) summary of the first two chapters in B.V. Subbarayappa's In Pursuit of Excellence: A History of the Indian Institute of Science (Tata McGraw-Hill, 1992).

* * *

The Indian Institute of Science owes its existence to that great 19th century industrialist and visionary, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata. This great man's other dream projects included the Taj Mahal Hotel, which he lived to see the birth of, and the Tata Steel, which he didn't.

Jamsetji's vision for an institution of higher learning was articulated sometime in 1896. However, the Institute became a reality only in 1909. What happened between 1896 and 1909?

Let's take a look at some of the key events of this era, as recounted in BVS's book. All the quoted sections below are from there.

There are multiple threads in this story, but I want to concentrate on how the academic goals of IISc got the shape they did. In particular, humanities and social sciences figured quite prominently during the early stages of shaping the institution's academic mandate, but were dumped rather unceremoniously when the Institute became a reality. This fact was highlighted in a recent lecture by Prof. P. Balaram, IISc Director, and it piqued my curiosity. I went to back to BVS to delve a little deeper into IISc's prehistory.

* * *

According to BVS, Jamsetji had been thinking about creating a "real" university at least since the 1890s (and probably even earlier). He was also sure that such a university should be not just for the Parsis, but for all of India. While these thoughts were on his mind, he set up, in 1892, a committee to "select some brilliant students to be sent annually for higher studies in England" (p.20). In 1893, he met Swami Vivekananda on a ship from Japan to the US. He recalls this meeting in his 1898 letter to Vivekananda.

1896: Articulation of a Vision

However, it is in an 1896 letter to Lord Reay, the Governor of Bombay and Chancellor of the Bombay University, that Jamsetji presents his ideas for a university:

Being blessed by the mercy of Providence with more than a fair share of the worlds' goods and persuaded that I owe much of my success in life to an unusual combination of favourable circumstances, I have felt it incumbent on myself to help to provide a continuous atmosphere of such circumstances for my less fortunate countryment. [...]

I propose to ... [make] a Trust Settlement of property annually yielding between Rupees Eighty Thousand and a lac for this purpose. [...]

[Aside 1: The way Jamsetji proposed his "trust settlement" contained within it the seeds of an enormous delay. The assets of the university, he said, will coexist with those of his sons (and their descendents). Why? His sons would then be responsible for managing the combined assets, which Jamsetji appears to prefer over the alternative of the university's assets being managed by a bunch of a faceless trust. He said, "... I believe that property Trusts are very difficult to manage and liable to abuse when managed by bailiffs under large body of Trustees..." He offered a modified proposal in 1898, but the essence was the same. The properties would be managed together by one Trust, with the annual income being shared by the University and his family.]

1896 also saw the entry of Burjorji Padshah into the IISc story. Jamsetji invited Padshah to help him in his "national mission." He also bankrolled Padshah's travel through Europe for nearly eighteen months, during which he visited universities and interacted with scholars and educationists. The idea was to figure out what kind of a university Jamsetji's dream project should turn into.

1898: Teaching University of India

Armed with a lot of (conflicting) inputs , Padshah returned to India (probably in 1898). A Provisional Committee for Post-Graduate Education was set up in late 1898 to give a concrete shape to Jamsetji's dream. This Committee had 23 members; Padshah was its secretary, and Jamsetji himself was just an ordinary member! It started its work with a tentative scheme for a "Teaching University of India," prepared by Padshah himself.

According to this tentative scheme, the institution was meant for post-graduate teaching in the following schools:

  • School of Sanitary Service and Practice
  • School of Pedagogies
  • School for Higher Technical Studies.

1898: Imperial University of India

Well, the Provisional Committee went into Padshah's ideas, and converted them into a fairly detailed plan that included academic departments, administrative structure and financial requirements. Its final scheme suggested setting up three "departments" (which are more like schools or faculties in the present day university system) in what it called the Imperial University of India:

  1. A scientific and technical department
    • Physics and Chemistry, including its applications to Agriculture, Arts and Industry
  2. A medical department
    • Physiological and Bactereological Chemistry
  3. A philosophical and educational department
    • Methods of Education
    • Ethics and Psychology
    • Indian History and Archaeology
    • Statistics and Economics
    • Comparative Philology

1899: Curzon's concerns

Lord Curzon, the Viceroy-designate, met with the representatives of the Provisional Committee on 31 December 1898 -- just a day after his arrival in India! Even though he had no time to study the details of the scheme, Lord Curzon raised some questions. They ranged from whether India had enough students to study in this institution, to employment opportunities for its graduates. More importantly,

Curzon also had his doubts about the value of the Department of Philosophy and Education, including archaeology, ethics, psychology and methods of education, which would involve substantial expenditure.

This appears to be a key turning point. For the first time, questions are raised about the utility of humanities and social sciences, and they acquire a certain legitimacy and persistence because a powerful person raised them.

Padshah and other Committee members offered a valiant rebuttal:

... Justice Candy [Chairman of the Committee] explained that ... although they scarcely hoped to provide for all of the subjects at once, they thought it best to include such subjects as philosophy and education. ... Two other members of the delegation ... pointed out the importance of training in philosophy and education for strengthening the teaching faculties in secondary and higher education. [...] Padshah stated that he had found during the course of his enquiries in Europe that Ethics and Philosophy were invariably associated with instruction in the methods of teaching.

This, then, marks the beginning of the end of H&SS in the institution that would later become the Indian Institute of Science. This is also the beginning of series of attempts by Padshah to get H&SS included in the institution's mandate, only to see them scuttled.

1899: Indian University of Research

After a bit of back and forth, a conference was held in Simla, with Thomas Raleigh (who was later to lead the University Commission set up by Curzon) as its chairman. This conference too favoured "a gradual development" of the institution, with priority being given to scientific, technological and medical branches. The preferred name became "Indian University of Research."

1900 - 01: Ramsay's suggestions

The government suggested -- and the Provisional Committee agreed with it -- that the scheme for the institution be examined by an outside expert. Prof. William Ramsay, who was to win the 1904 Chemistry Nobel, was their man; he toured India for over two and a half months, visited over a dozen educational centres, and submitted a fairly detailed report on the academic, administrative and financial structure of the institution. On the academic side, he was clearly in favour of science and technology. His preferred structure consisted of Departments of General Chemistry, Engineering Technology and Industrial Bactereology. In addition, he also suggested hiring a junior faculty Electrical Technology.

The dream of a university was effectively dead at this point. What remained was just a "scientific research institute."

The IISc story goes through some weird contortions at this point, involving Curzon, Raleigh and George Hamilton (Secretary of State for India). At one point, Raleigh suggests that the institute be "merely a kind of college with Fellowships", where the Fellows would go through research or special study, and be examined by the Principal and the institute's Council. Jamsetji's response to this was a clear and unambiguous 'no'. At the end of these messy negotiations, the government decided that a fresh evaluation of the scheme was necessary! Professor Orme Masson (Melbourne University) and Col. Clibborn (Roorkee College) were chosen for this purpose.

1901: Indian Institute of Science

Masson and Clibborn [1] were the first ones to call the institution by its present name. They didn't like the "Institute of Research", suggesting that it was "somewhat pretentious." "By all means," they added, "let it earn the reputation for research, but let it not claim it merely on the strength of good intentions."

On the academic side, they too stuck to the science and technology areas. They recommended three schools to start with:

  • School of Chemistry

  • School of Experimental Physics

  • School of Experimental Biology

[Aside 2: From this point on, the scheme went through several years of tortuous negotiations, mainly because of the financing plan proposed by Jamsetji. As we saw earlier, Jamsetji's contribution to the institution was tangled up with the finances of his family, and the government had serious objections to this messy arrangement. In the event, the scheme finally saw the light of day only after the Institute's finances were separated from those of Jamseji's family. That happened in 1904, and the government gave its approval in February of 1905. Sadly, Jamsetji didn't live to enjoy this moment; he had passed away in May 1904.]

* * *

Effectively, our story -- with its emphasis on IISc's academic mandate -- ends here. The years from 1905 to 1909 were devoted to getting the financial and administrative structure in place, hiring IISc's first Director, and wrangling over the relative powers of the Director's office, the government of India and the House of Tatas.

There's just one more episode that deserves mention. As I pointed out earlier, the original inclusion of H&SS was essentially due to Padshah, and he kept trying to revive that idea even after it was killed unofficially by Curzon and semi-officially by Ramsay [2]. Interestingly, he made one final attempt. Along with Dorab Tata (Jamsetji's son), he urged Morris Travers (IISc's first Director) to open a School of Social Studies at IISc. BVS says:

Padshah also pleaded with Travers that efforts should be made to investigate such areas as dietetics, archaeology, anthropology, women's education and, specially, tropical medicine. [p.80]

This happened in 1910, in the first year of IISc's operation. Students started arriving in 1911, the same year Padshah resigned from the IISc Council to take charge of Jamsetji's other dream project: Tata Steel.

* * *

Footnotes:

[1] Here's yet another interesting aside: Masson and Clibborn suggested an annual intake of just 15. They thoughtfully considered the possibility of drop outs to conclude that IISc was likely to have a steady student population of about 45!

[2] To be fair, the IISc scheme that was finally approved did say that the institution's object was to promote "original investigations in all branches of knowledge." I think it is equally fair to conclude that the word "Science" in the institute's name has had an enormous influence on whether it developed a strong program in H&SS.

Globalizing Higher Ed: The American Story So Far


Two fabulous blogs with a focus on global higher ed scene -- Beerken's Blog and Global Higher Ed -- recommend this NYTimes story by Tamar Lewin on American universities' rush to set up their own campuses in other countries. UAE and China, for example. While much of the rhetoric is about exporting American university education, the ground reality can be quite different. Here's an excerpt about George Mason University's campus in Abu Dhabi:

George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, Va., arrived in the gulf in 2005 with a tiny language program intended to help students achieve college-level English skills and meet the university’s admission standards for the degree programs that were beginning the next year.

George Mason expected to have 200 undergraduates in 2006, and grow from there. But it enrolled nowhere near that many, then or now. It had just 57 degree students — 3 in biology, 27 in business and 27 in engineering — at the start of this academic year, joined by a few more students and programs this semester.

The project, an hour north of Dubai’s skyscrapers and 7,000 miles from Virginia, is still finding its way. “I will freely confess that it’s all been more complicated than I expected,” said Peter Stearns, George Mason’s provost.

The Ras al Khaymah campus has had a succession of deans. Simple tasks like ordering books take months, in part because of government censors. Local licensing, still not complete, has been far more rigorous than expected. And it has not been easy to find interested students with the SAT scores and English skills that George Mason requires for admissions.

“I’m optimistic, but if you look at it as a business, you can only take losses for so long,” said Dr. Abul R. Hasan, the academic dean, who is from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. “Our goal is to have 2,000 students five years from now. What makes it difficult is that if you’re giving the George Mason degree, you cannot lower your standards.”

But is it really the George Mason education?

Whether that degree really reflects George Mason is open to question. None of the faculty members came from George Mason, although that is likely to change next year. ....

Why slander that vital organ?


Sure, Sutton will sell a laxative of books with his sleazy title, but why slander that vital organ of our body? This will come to no good end.

That's from reader's letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. He/she is referring to Bob Sutton's No Asshole Rule. Sutton has two posts on the many different kinds of reactions he has had to the 'dirty word' in the title of his book.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

More links from the interweb tubes


The Ministry of Human Resources Development has (finally) decided to respond to the Singapore Government's request (which I presume was made several years ago) to set up an IIT in that city state. The answer, not surprisingly, is a firm no.

* * *

I don't know how many foreign universities have a campus in Singapore, and how well these operations are going (if you have some information to share, please do so!), but there has been at least one disastrous failure: The University of New South Wales, Australia, which ended its operations within three months after starting them! This case has been dealt with at length over at Beerken's blog: here and here.

* * *

Are Men Really More Competitive Than Women? Over at the Freakonomics Blog, Melissa Lafsky discusses some recent research.

* * *

You have heard about the "Impostor Phenomenon", right? Learn more about the psychological motivations behind this phenomenon here. The stuff about "phony phonies" is especially interesting!

* * *

Almost all the California bloggers I read (at least those who have said whom they voted for) have voted for Barack Obama: Aaron Swartz, Sean Carroll, Brad DeLong and Larry Lessig. The state, however, voted for Hillary Clinton by a 52-42 margin [NYTimes link via Blue].

* * *

Talking about Obama, check out this wonderful video. Also check out Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? [Link via Patrix].

Monday, February 04, 2008

From the interweb tubes ...


A great piece of street theater (video, 5 minutes): Frozen Grand Central. Check out the blog of the cool folks behind this 'mission': Improv Everywhere.

Check out their previous mission too: No Pants 2008.

* * *

Kevin Kelly sez: "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

* * *

Yet another video that has been doing the rounds: Bad day at the office.

* * *

If you have ever used the emacs editor, you'll enjoy this one from xkcd.

* * *

Carmine Gallo, Business Week's communications coach: Deliver a presentation like Steve Jobs. Is it surprising that one of the guidelines says, "Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse"?

Saturday, February 02, 2008

The physics and epidemiology of bank runs


Philip Ball's Nature News column -- now available on his blog -- has an overview of the efforts towards understanding catastrophic economic events, such as the Societe Generale fiasco, using ideas from physics, epidemiology and much else.

... State support of failing banks is just one example of the way that finance is geared to risky strategies: hedge fund managers, for example, get a hefty cut of their profits on top of a basic salary, but others pay for the losses [3]. The FRBNY’s vice president John Kambhu and his colleagues have pointed out that hedge funds (themselves a means of passing on risk) operate in a way that makes risk particularly severe and hard to manage [5].

That’s why, if understanding the financial market demands a better grasp of decision-making, with all its attendant irrationalities, it may be that managing the market to reduce risk and offer more secure public benefit requires more constraint, more checks and balances, to be put on that decision-making. We’re talking about regulation.

Free-market advocates firmly reject such ‘meddling’ on the basis that it cripples Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ that guides the economy. But that hand is shaky, prone to wild gestures and sudden seizures, because it is no longer the collective hand of Smith’s sober bakers and pin-makers but that of rapacious profiteers creaming absurd wealth from deals in imaginary and incredible goods.

* * *

On the Societe Generale fiasco, check out some of the posts on Marc Andreessen's blog -- here, here, here, here, here, and here. Pure snark!

Friday, February 01, 2008

Jerks in Academia


Dr. F is a full professor in an elite engineering institution in the South. He offers a course that B.Tech. students take in their final year. Their complaints about this course point to a huge range of badness: just plain bad teaching, not disclosing books he teaches from, poorly worded exams, lack of any discernible relationship between the course content and some exam questions, ... I can go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

I guess it is possible to dispute the content in some of these complaints -- after all, students are not exactly unbiased observers here. But what is not at all in dispute is the phenomenal number of 'F' grades dished out by Dr. F in recent years. If it was over 25 percent in one year, it was well over 60 percent in another! Needless to say, the ones who escaped getting an 'F' grade didn't do all that well; quite a few of them got just a 'pass' grade.

Understandably, students dread having to take Dr. F's course. Imagine top students -- even those with a grade point average of 9 points out of 10 -- quaking at the thought of having to sign up for this man's course!

Naturally, this raises some questions. Here's the first: is Dr. F just a jerk, or is he a certified asshole (to use Bob Sutton's colourful terminology)?

Second, why does the institution tolerate this sort of behavior from one of its senior professors? Why does it allow this academic terrorist to get away with mass murder -- again and again?

That's for the institution to ponder. But, it's worth thinking about how to tame this monster. I can understand if current students may not want to take any action when Dr. F still has some power over them. But surely the graduates can do something? Like creating a site like Rate My Professors to expose Dr. F's shady practices? Like posting his inane, hare-brained questions he likes to give in his exams? Like filing a Right to Information request to access their answer scripts, and using them to confront their institution? Like, simply, complaining to the powers that be?

* * *

One final note: On Dr. F's web page, he proudly states that he has been "recognized ... for excellence in teaching"! Either Dr. F was once a decent teacher before turning into a monster, or there's something truly warped in that institution's award mechanism.

Reviewing AICTE


This, from the Economic Times, is interesting:

As the watchdog for technical education, AICTE has been deeply criticised for its ‘unfair’ practices in the past. While AICTE is known to have approved institutions with dubious antecedents, it has not recognised some of India’s premier institutes like Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, and SP Jain, Mumbai.

Taking charge of the situation, the standing committee on the ministry has invited suggestions from organisations and individuals alike on the functioning of AICTE.

In a newspaper advertisement dated January 24, the committee has invited suggestions, views and comments from interested organisations, institutions and individuals on “different aspects relating to the working of AICTE, particularly the positive impact and problem areas”. The applicants have been asked to suggest procedures for recognition of new technical institutions and improvement processes.

Not surprisingly, the Economic Times has highlighted AICTE's failures in regulating management institutions. But it's clear that the organization has botched its other major responsibility even more: regulating engineering colleges. The result has been equally horrendous: a lot of people getting poor education, and being blamed for their unemployable status.

Just one more general observation: It's not clear why such a review has to happen only when there's a hue and cry over some specific failure or the other. A periodic review should be built into the very statute which created AICTE (and other such regulatory bodies).

Seema Singh profiles Prof. C.N.R. Rao


In Mint:

With 10 hours devoted to research every day, and 18 “major” papers being accepted for publication in 2008 in leading international journals, he thinks he’ll break his own record this year. “I really want to create something in my field beyond my capability,” he says. “Unless we have a finite set of people who stretch their limits, we can’t achieve anything.”

That’s what China is doing, and he doesn’t know why we don’t do it in India. “We are a bunch of lazy people; we don’t want to work,” he says. Of course Rao doesn’t suffer from the same malaise. When I ask how long he intends to continue research, he says: “till my last day”.

One of his friends and long-term research collaborators in Cambridge was physicist Sir Nevill Francis Mott, a student of Nobel laureate Lord Ernest Rutherford. Mott died in 1996 at the age of 90, publishing a paper in that year. Not only that, says Rao, after retiring at 65, Mott entered a completely new area of research and eventually won a Nobel for that in 1977.

I ask him when India can expect one, given that his name has been in circulation recently. “I don’t know, I am not waiting for it, but if I get, I won’t be shocked,” he says, as a matter of fact. There has not been a Nobel Prize in his area of work and the person driving it is George Whitesides of Harvard University. But Rao also is a front-runner for a new prize instituted this year for nanoscience by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and California-based Kavli Foundation—the $1 million (about Rs3.9 crore) Kavli Prize.