The Berkeley biochemist helped discover a world-changing biotechnology.
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Category: science – Page 97
Medical advances and living standards have extended the average human longevity from 48 years in 1955 to 71 years today, and the elderly are now the fastest growing segment of society. But while our life spans are improving, our health spans are not, writes science journalist Sue Armstrong in “Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age” (Bloomsbury), out now.
“Over the past 50 years, health care hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process,” she writes, quoting gerontologist Eileen Crimmins.
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Still, Estonia’s research prowess is an example of how quickly a small country can turn its scientific fortunes around with international support and well-designed domestic policies — and its success has drawn attention from other nations looking to build their scientific capacity. Latvia, for instance, borders Estonia and joined the EU at the same time. “We started from a very similar position,” says Dmitrijs Stepanovs, Latvia’s deputy state secretary and director of the higher-education and science ministry, but “now we are far behind and must try to catch up.”
A small nation found strength in research after joining the European Union.
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The Crisis Of Science
Posted in science
Looks like an interesting new book.
01:34 Group selection: what it is and why it’s controversial
16:58 David defends group selection against its strongest critics.
28:09 Does group selection have a socialist dark side?
38:21 Razib on how a scientist went in a “dark direction”
47:19 Using evolutionary science to solve real-world problems.
56:23 How understanding evolution can make you a better teacher.
Razib Khan (Unz Foundation, Gene Expression) and David Sloan Wilson (Binghamton University)
The current infatuation with large-scale scientific collaborations and the energy they can bring to a scientific domain owes much to the robust correlation that exists between citation impact and team size. This relationship has been well documented in the emerging ‘science of science’ field. Writing in Nature, Wu et al. use a new citation-based index to nuance this conventional wisdom. They find that small and large teams differ in a measurable and systematic way in the extent of the ‘disruption’ they cause to the scientific area to which they contribute.
The application of a new citation metric prompts a reassessment of the relationship between the size of scientific teams and research impact, and calls into question the trend to emphasize ‘big team’ science. The disruptive contributions of small teams to science.
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