March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because the date, when written as 3/14, matches the start of the decimal expansion 3.14159… of the most famous mathematical constant. By itself, pi is simply a number, one among countless others between 3 and 4. What makes it famous is that it’s built into every circle you […] … learn more→

Recently, Zhejiang Gonggong University announced that articles published with MDPI, Frontiers Media & Hindawi, the three largest open access publishers, would not be included in research performance statistics. Universities have discouraged or banned staff from publishing in individual journals in the past, but this is the first report of whole publisher catalogues being excluded. I’ve seen discussions about whether these […] … learn more→

In the first part of the movie Avatar we met Jake Sully who, immersed in the world of Pandora, had the opportunity to walk again. Outside of cinema, the current use of the word “avatar” is related to the representations of themselves that users use on the Internet or that they build to form part of the virtual […] … learn more→

This post is the result of an email, which later inspired a blog post, and ultimately improved the lives of a small band of Early Career Researchers (ECR). It is a story of how reaching out can make a difference in our professional and personal lives – and just how far a little care from more […] … learn more→

Librarians are the curators of creativity. They collect success stories and share it with the world. Traditionally, the success was from published authors, which libraries shared with the local community. More recently, the model has been flipped: libraries have started to collect from the local community to share with everyone. In academic libraries, this is […] … learn more→

For most of human history if you wanted to know what was going on behind someone’s eyes you had to make your best guess. But since the 1960s scientists have been studying the way eye movements may help decode people’s thoughts. The ability to eavesdrop on the details of people’s daydreams and internal monologues is […] … learn more→

By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science. My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country. I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a […] … learn more→

When will be the year of epidemiology? There will be those who think that it has already been. But those of us who dedicate ourselves to this branch of science know that there will never be a dedicated year because everyone has their own desire and challenges. The year 2022, like the two previous years, has been […] … learn more→

August 22, 2022. Kongsvegen Glacier, 20 km east of Ny Ålesund, in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, as close to the North Pole as Marseille from Paris. That’s it, we have reached the bottom of the glacier, which is 327 meters below our feet. After drilling in the ice for 6 hours, our hot water jet […] … learn more→

American scientists have announced what they have called a major breakthrough in a long-elusive goal of creating energy from nuclear fusion. The U.S. Department of Energy said on Dec. 13, 2022, that for the first time – and after several decades of trying – scientists have managed to get more energy out of the process […] … learn more→