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Unless you’re enrolled at one of the best online colleges or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet and the generosity of many universities and online colleges, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world in this list below. If you’re looking for even more amazing lectures, check out our updated list for 2012 with more talks from great minds.
The American Council on Education (ACE) has announced a wide-ranging research and evaluation effort that will examine the academic potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs). The ACE College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT) will evaluate for potential college credit select courses offered by Coursera, a leading provider of massive open online courses (MOOCs). “MOOCs are an intriguing, innovative new approach that holds much promise for engaging students across the country and around the world, as well as for helping colleges and universities broaden their reach,” said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. Among the questions ACE will address in research undertaken in collaboration with the University of Illinois Springfield’s Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service are to what extent do MOOCs reach low-income young adult and older adult learners, what is the level of satisfaction of students enrolled in MOOCs, and do MOOCs have the potential to help lead to degrees or certificates.
Lecture is given by by Dimitar Sasselov, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 1543 Copernicus showed that our planet isn't the center of the universe. Centuries later, we know that just as Earth is not the center of things, the life on it is probably not unique either. Or is it? Tonight, learn how the search for "super-Earths" - rocky planets larger than our own that orbit other stars - may provide the key to answering essential questions about the origins of life here and elsewhere. You'll also hear how we face a moment of unprecedented potential - a convergence of pioneering efforts in astronomy and biology to peer into the unknown and determine how unique Earth life truly is.
A list of the top 101 websites for science teachers including general science, astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, and more.
Via Cornélia Castro
So many scientific studies are making incorrect claims that a new service has sprung up to fact-check reported findings by repeating the experiments. A year-old Palo Alto, California, company, Science Exchange, announced on Tuesday its "Reproducibility Initiative," aimed at improving the trustworthiness of published papers. Scientists who want to validate their findings will be able to apply to the initiative, which will choose a lab to redo the study and determine whether the results match. The project sprang from the growing realization that the scientific literature - from social psychology to basic cancer biology - is riddled with false findings and erroneous conclusions, raising questions about whether such studies can be trusted. Not only are erroneous studies a waste of money, often taxpayers', but they also can cause companies to misspend time and resources as they try to invent drugs based on false discoveries. Last year, Bayer Healthcare reported that its scientists could not reproduce some 75 percent of published findings in cardiovascular disease, cancer and women's health. In March, Lee Ellis of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and C. Glenn Begley, the former head of global cancer research at Amgen, reported that when the company's scientists tried to replicate 53 prominent studies in basic cancer biology, hoping to build on them for drug discovery, they were able to confirm the results of only six. The new initiative's 10-member board of prominent scientists will match investigators with a lab qualified to test their results, said Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange's co-founder and chief executive officer. The original lab would pay the second for its work. How much depends on the experiment's complexity and the cost of study materials, but should not exceed 20 percent of the original research study's costs. Iorns hopes government and private funding agencies will eventually fund replication to improve the integrity of scientific literature.
The preprint server arXiv.org is perhaps best known as the preserve of theoretical physicists and astrophysicists. But 2008 saw an influx of submissions of unpublished manuscripts, or preprints, by condensed-matter physicists who wanted to stake claims to the fast-moving subject of iron-based superconductors called pnictides. Now the life sciences may be on the cusp of their own ‘pnictide moment’, with population geneticists leading the charge. Recently, leading research groups have posted to arXiv several high-profile papers. Other prominent population geneticists have submitted methods-based papers to the server, which is hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The number of biology papers on the server is still small in comparison with physical-sciences preprints, but Paul Ginsparg, a theoretical physicist at Cornell who founded arXiv in 1991, welcomes what he hopes could be a sea change.
A list of video clips available on the BioInteractive website, organized by lecture topic.
An ongoing series of more than one hundred popular talks. Originally known as Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy, they've since then expanded to feature a wide range of topics and speakers. They are presented here as audio files.
Welcome to SETI Talks - your best way to learn more about your Universe! The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life on other planets. For example, electromagnetic radiation is monitored for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other worlds. The United States government contributed to early SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources. There are great challenges in searching across the cosmos for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, the foremost being that electromagnetic radiation would be a medium of communication for advanced extraterrestrial life.
This summer, Stanford will again offer a free online video course on creating apps for the iPhone and iPad – but with a difference. This time, participants will have their questions answered by course instructors ("course captains") and by their fellow online learners. This peer-to-peer social feature is a first for Stanford online courses. It is also a first for any course hosted on iTunes U, which will once again carry the iPhone/iPad course. The course will run June 25 to Aug. 27. Registration opens June 19 and ends July 6. The new social media aspect of the course builds on a technology many students already use: Piazza, a social learning platform. Stanford students taking the classroom version of Paul Hegarty's programming course, on which the online course is based, have used Piazza. Earlier versions of the 10-week apps course have proved enormously popular, with individual lecture videos downloaded more than 10 million times.
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SCIENCE has few more controversial topics than human intelligence—in particular, whether variations in it are a result of nature or nurture, and especially whether such variations differ between the sexes. The mines in this field can blow up an entire career, as Larry Summers found out in 2005 when he spoke of the hypothesis that the mathematical aptitude needed for physics and engineering, as well as for maths itself, is innately rarer in women than in men. He resigned as president of Harvard University shortly afterwards.
Conventional university teaching is way too costly, inefficient and ineffective to survive for long, says Sebastian Thrun.
Via António Antunes
How do we get people to understand programming? Khan Academy recently launched an online environment for learning to program. It offers a set of tutorials based on the JavaScript and Processing languages, and features a "live coding" environment, where the program's output updates as the programmer types. Because my work was cited as an inspiration for the Khan system, I felt I should respond with two thoughts about learning: Programming is a way of thinking, not a rote skill. Learning about "for" loops is not learning to program, any more than learning about pencils is learning to draw. People understand what they can see. If a programmer cannot see what a program is doing, she can't understand it. Thus, the goals of a programming system should be: • to support and encourage powerful ways of thinking
• to enable programmers to see and understand the execution of their programs A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. JavaScript and Processing are poorly-designed languages that support weak ways of thinking, and ignore decades of learning about learning. And live coding, as a standalone feature, is worthless. Alan Perlis wrote, "To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program." This view is a mistake, and it is this widespread and virulent mistake that keeps programming a difficult and obscure art. A person is not a machine, and should not be forced to think like one. How do we get people to understand programming? We change programming. We turn it into something that's understandable by people.
Free biology talks by the world's leading scientists. Our mission is to produce a library of outstanding science lectures. We will add 15-20 seminars per year in a wide-range of biology topics. Access, through web streaming or download, is completely free-of-charge. Also check out our iBioMagazine channel, where you can watch ~10 minute talks about the human-side of science.
his collection aims to highlight PLOS ONE's role in the emerging interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology. The collection has its roots in PLOS ONE's very first issue, which included two publications from the field and since then, the number of synthetic biology articles published by the journal has grown steadily. As the field continues to develop, this collection will be updated to include new publications, thereby tracking the evolution of this dynamic research area. Synthetic biology occurs at the intersection of a number of traditional disciplines, including biology, chemistry, and engineering. It aims to create biological systems that can be programmed to do useful things such as producing drugs and biofuel. The interdisciplinary nature of synthetic biology can make it difficult to publish in traditional journals. PLOS ONE's broad scope, however, allows for the publication of work crossing many traditional research boundaries, making it an ideal venue for many different types of synthetic biology publications. In addition, the journal's focus on rigorous peer review without considering impact has made it possible to publish a body of articles that truly reflects the multifaceted nature of this research area. One overarching theme of synthetic biology is standardization, which can only be achieved through concerted community effort. To this end, each article published in PLOS ONE can be the start of a lively conversation. The ability to comment on articles provides the community with a means to engage in a dialogue focused on specific articles, and the "Share this Article" feature allows readers to quickly send an article they find interesting to their entire networks, because all the content is openly accessible.
The following topics are covered: Aerospace, Anthropology, Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Cognitive Science, Computers, Cosmology, Dentistry, Electrical Engineering, Engineering, Environment, Future, General Science, Geoscience, Machine Learning, Material Science, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Medicine, Metallurgy, Mining, Nanotechnology, Oceanography, Philosophy, Physics, Physiology, Robotics, and Sociology. Lectures are in Playlists and are alphabetically sorted with thumbnail pictures. No fee, no registration required - learn at your own pace. Certificates can be arranged with presenting universities. NOTE: To subscribe to the RSS feed of Amazing Science, copy http://www.scoop.it/t/amazing-science/rss.xml into the URL field of your browser and click "subscribe". This newsletter is aggregated from over 1450 news sources: http://www.genautica.com/links/1450_news_sources.html
Stanford Mini Med School begins with a journey inside human biology. Starting with a close look at DNA, stem cells and microbes, this quarter moves out from the building blocks of the human body to take a more global view of human health, pandemics and the delivery of health care.
Taught by faculty members from many famous universities. Ideal for online learning of the 21st century. Certificates at the end of the course.
Radical shakeup of academic publishing will allow papers to be put online and be accessed by universities, firms and individuals. Professor Dame Janet Finch's recommendations on open access publishing prompted the government's decision. The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet. Under the scheme, research papers that describe work paid for by the British taxpayer will be free online for universities, companies and individuals to use for any purpose, wherever they are in the world.
The teleXLR8 project is one of the best system for e-learning and collaboration in an online 3D environment
The teleXLR8 project has been running as a free, invitation-only beta from March to November 2010, using Teleplace. It has been relaunched in 2011 using OpenQwaq. Visit our main site and blog for more information. teleXLR8 is a telepresence community for cultural acceleration. We produce online events, featuring first class content and speakers, with the best system for e-learning and collaboration in an online 3D environment. Videos are here: http://www.youtube.com/user/telexlr8/feed
Tammet has been "studied repeatedly" by researchers in Britain and the United States, and has been the subject of several peer-reviewed scientific papers.Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University has said of Tammet: "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can describe what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the 'Rosetta Stone' to science." In his mind, he says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. The number 6 apparently has no distinct image yet what he describes as an almost small nothingness, opposite to the number 9 which he calls large and towering. Tammet has described 25 as energetic and the "kind of number you would invite to a party". In his memoir, Tammet states experiencing a synaesthetic and emotional response for words and numbers, but not letters in algebraic contexts. Tammet holds the European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes on 14 March 2004. Tammet has reportedly learned 10 languages, including Romanian, Gaelic, Welsh, and Icelandic which he learned in a week for a TV documentary.
In the fall of 2011 Peter Norvig taught a class with Sebastian Thrun on artificial intelligence at Stanford attended by 175 students in situ -- and over 100,000 via an interactive webcast. He shares what he learned about teaching to a global classroom.
Via Complexity Digest
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