Inside Higher Education recently published a survey about faculty views on online education. I was curious about its findings. My interest surged after reading the related article by Steve Kolowich — who noted that for professors “the rise of online education excites them more than it frightens them.” According to the survey’s composite data, I […] … learn more→

I have just attended the 15th World Congress of Pain Clinicians, and while there, I went to a session chaired by one of the unsung heroes of evidence-based medicine, Prof Andrew Moore from Oxford University. As somebody who has to work continuously to avoid forgetting everything I know about statistics, I love hearing talks by […] … learn more→

The tantalizing vision of universal access to the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity seemed close to fulfillment in 2008, when Google announced the settlement of a class-action lawsuit charging that its Google Book Search project infringed copyright by scanning in-copyright books from major research-library collections. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, later asserted that the […] … learn more→

A report shows that Germans still prefer a newspaper, while online news has overtaken print and TV news as the most frequently used medium in the UK and US for those using computers, mobile phones and tablets for news. One in five people in the UK now shares news stories every week through social networks […] … learn more→

In general, I’m not a fan of fantasy, but I have a weak spot for Aaron Sorkin’s work. I understand that Sorkin is generally not viewed as a writer of fantasy, but he populates his stories with characters as mythical as unicorns and dragons, like politicians who at least sometimes put principle over power (The […] … learn more→

Forget the pretense of religious harmony. Since we all have to live together, tolerating one another is the best we\’ve got. Professor of Religion Adam Seligman thinks pluralism has had its day, so he\’s aiming for something more realistic. He\’s trying to see if we all can just get along, despite our religious differences. Seligman […] … learn more→

Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions. The independent estimates, rooted in part in measurements of pollutants both […] … learn more→

When I first got professionally involved with campus sustainability, there was really only one first principle: greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming, and the higher education sector needed to show America how to correct that. Call it First Principles v1.0. But then came \”sustainability is a three-legged stool\”. Call it v1.3. Environmental sustainability (mostly […] … learn more→

Cambridge has established the Forum of Mathematics to offer OA journals to the mathematics community with the same high levels of peer review process as traditional subscription journals, with peer-review standards set by an international editorial board of the highest calibre. For the first three years Cambridge University Press will waive publication costs, though authors […] … learn more→

What does one billion Pounds Sterling of Olympics security get you? Rapier surface-to-air missiles in Blackheath common, the Royal Navy’s largest battleship moored in the Thames (complete with eight Lynx helicopters), at least 23,500 security personnel (with some estimates doubling this figure) including 13,500 British troops (4,000 more than Britain sent to fight in Afghanistan), […] … learn more→