Monday, November 28, 2011

Fwd: Presentations of the Evaluative Bibliometrics workshop

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Workshop on Evaluative Bibliometrics, held at the Hotel Jaypee Siddharth on November 09, 2011 organized in partnership with CSIR-NISCAIR.

The presentations are now available for you to download. Please click on the name of the speaker whose presentation you wish to download.
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Friday, November 4, 2011

JNU Lecture on Climate Change by Prof. Arun K. Attri, SES at Committee Room, SSS-1, on 16 November, 3.00 pm

JNU Seminar Series

 

Towards lnterdisciplinarity

 

Lecture on

Climate Change

By

Prof. Arun K. Attri

School of Environmental Sciences

 

Chair:                  Prof. V.V. Krishna, CSSP, SSS

Discussant:          Dr. Rohan D'Souza, CSSP, SSS

Venue:                 Committee Room, School of Social Sciences

Date:                    16th November, 2011

Time:                   3.00 pm

 

The JNU Seminar Series addresses the challenge of interdisciplinarity. Specifically, it seeks to enable, sustain and nurture dialogues across disciplines. This initiative intends to close the gap between the 'two cultures' within JNU and aims to generate and energize research ideas and ways of thinking about knowledge and scholarship.

 

The seminar series will invite faculty members from various Schools to present key ideas on cutting edge concerns in their respective fields. These interactions by speaking to general audiences will strive to evolve common languages for research and contemplation, while crafting academic possibilities for interdisciplinary efforts. In thus forging fresh and creative academic bonds between the 'two cultures', research and teaching in JNU will produce an innovative learning frontier.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

UNESCO launched Global Open Access Portal

UNESCO launched Global Open Access Portal

The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) [http://www.unesco.org/ci/goap], aiming at presenting a top level view of Open Access to scientific information, was launched at a special side event organized during the36th session of the UNESCO General Conference, on Tuesday 1 November 2011, at Paris Headquarters.

The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world.

For countries that have been more successful in implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of Open Access development, the portal identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

The portal has country reports from over 148 countries with weblinks to over 2000 initiatives/projects in Member States. The portal is supported by an existing Community of Practice (CoP) on Open Access on the WSIS Knowledge Communities Platform that has over 1400 members.

The GOAP is a knowledge portal that has the following features:
  • Country-wise distilled knowledge on the status of Open Access
  • Key organizations engaged in OA in Member States
  • Thematic focus areas of OA
  • Important publications on OA coming from different regions of the world
  • Critical assessment of major barriers to OA in each country
  • Potential of OA in UNESCO Member States
  • Funding and deposit mandates
  • Links to OA initiatives in the world
The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP), launched together with the revamped Open Training Platform (OTP) and the first UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform, provides the information for policy-makers to learn about the global OA environment and to view their country's status, and understand where and why Open Access has been most successful.

Development of the Global Open Access Portal has been made possible with support received from the Governments of Columbia, Denmark, Norway, and the United States. This GOAP will be a work in progress, and shall be further improved with the support received from the community of OA practitioners.

Open Access is at the heart of UNESCO's mandate to provide universal access to information and knowledge, and the UNESCO Open Access programme shall continue to facilitate policy dialogue in Member States, share knowledge and best practices in the field of Open Access, and build and share local capacities through North-South and South-South co-operation to build knowledge societies for sustainable development.

Source: UNESCO

Just Published "Unsung Innovators of Kashmir" by Sheikh Fayaz Ahmad

"Unsung Innovators of Kashmir" by Sheikh Fayaz Ahmad (M.Phil Student, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, School of Social Sciences). Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2011. ISBN: 978-81-8339-120-7. Price: Rs. 495/-

 

Abstract

Political turmoil of past couple of decades in Kashmir has affected more or less every sphere of life in the valley. Besides the physical and material costs, the psychological impact of the conflict too has been very profound. However, even in the face of psychologically stressful situations, over the years, there have been other changes as well in Kashmir that have influenced the innovation ecosystem somehow .As of now, the situation is not so pleasing although it is not hopeless. My effort in compiling all my stories on unsung innovators of Kashmir in a book form is a small endeavor to prove all those people wrong who think that the people of Kashmir can't be innovative either.

 

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Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Launch of the UNESCO Report "Engineering: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities for Development"

Launch of the UNESCO Report "Engineering: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities for Development"

Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-92-3-104156-3

Engineers create knowledge, technology and infrastructure. Our knowledge societies and economies were built by engineers and much of the history of civilisation is the history of engineering.
Engineering is so omnipresent and pervasive in our lives that it is often overlooked by policy makers and the public. In many countries fewer and fewer young people are going into engineering, and there are worldwide concerns about declining human capacity and the consequences for poverty reduction and sustainable development. Reports of shortages of engineers in key sectors are common.
This is compounded by the brain-drain of engineers from developing countries and from the profession.
These issues are linked and provide an opportunity for change: the public perception of engineering reflects the changing needs of engineering, and need for engineering to change, and young people are concerned about global issues and attracted to engineering as a means to address them. The report will share information, experience, practical ideas and examples for policy-makers, decision-takers, planners and governments to promote the application of engineering to important global agendas. It will examine: the context of engineering; areas of engineering; the engineering profession; a review of engineering around the world; the future of engineering; capacity needs; engineering and technical education and training systems; and applications of engineering.

Fellowships in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, 2012-2013

Fellowships in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, 2012-2013

What is the Sustainability Science Fellowship?
The Sustainability Science Program at Harvard University offers doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career fellowships in Sustainability Science. The fellowships are tenable during Harvard's academic year beginning in September 2012. Fellowships are available for 10 months (September 2012-May 2013), 12 months (September 2012-August 2013), the fall 2012 semester or spring 2013 semester (mid-career fellows only), or for two academic years (post-doctoral fellows only) (September 2012-August 2014).

What is the focus of this year's competition?
Earlier work supported by the Sustainability Science Program focused on how science and technology could help promote sustainability in the individual sectors of energy, food, water, and health. That work showed that some of the most serious constraints to sustainable development lie in the interconnections among these individual sectors: energy's growing need for water; the impacts of water use on human health; the competition for land among food, energy and conservation initiatives; and the cumulative impact of all sectoral initiatives on climate and other key environmental services. A central challenge moving forward is to develop an integrated understanding of how sectoral initiatives for sustainability can compete with and complement one another in particular regional contexts. The 2012-13 fellowship competition will therefore focus on regional initiatives pursing an integrated perspective on sustainable development in India, China and Brazil. It will also include a cross-cutting research initiative to integrate work focused on the theme of Innovation for Sustainable Development. Preference in this year's competition will be given to applicants whose proposals complement one or more of these four initiatives. The Program is also open, however, to strong proposals in any area of sustainability science.

India: Building public-private partnerships to promote sustainable development in India

Faculty leader: Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy
Sustainable development, by its nature, requires government and private actors to work together. Externalities from rapid growth, such as the depletion of subsidized resources, widespread air and water pollution or unsustainable energy use, arise from a joint failure of government and industry to create an economy where the most profitable action is also best socially. The India Initiative will address sustainability problems in India of both national and global import. The motivation for this research program is to work with governments to channel the enterprising potential of the private sector to correct such externalities. The research will address questions in sustainable environmental regulation and provide evidence on how public-private partnerships can contribute to solving existing challenges. We focus on three research areas. First, existing environmental regulations are weakly enforced by possibly under-resourced regulators, leading to poor environmental quality. Second, traditional regulations, even if strengthened, are not the right tools to address many of India's pollution problems. Third, from the perspective of sustainability of resource use, India's inefficient and rapidly growing energy consumption threatens to undermine its own development by contributing to global climate change. The research team will partner with government and private institutions in order to conduct field trials of innovative environmental policies to provide rigorous evidence on the impact of these policies for sustainable development. Doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career candidates are encouraged to apply.

China: Energy in China: Environmental implications and management for sustainable development
Faculty leader: Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
The China Initiative will address the environmental implications of electrification and other energy policies in China and explore how China can manage these implications.  Fellows will work to identify and promote policies that will contribute to thoughtful use of China's natural resources (e.g., water, land) and/or the adoption of cleaner and less carbon-intensive industrial and energy technologies. Research areas include, but are not limited to: analyzing the impact of energy and industrial policies on water scarcity; assessing barriers to the development or deployment of cleaner energy technologies; and studying the impact of industrialization on health and fragile ecosystems. Post-doctoral and mid-career candidates, especially those who speak Chinese, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Applications for the fellowship are due January 15, 2012.