Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

PICES Press, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 2013

•2012 PICES Science: A Note from the Science Board Chairman (pp. 1-6) ◾2012 PICES Awards (pp. 7-9) ◾GLOBEC/PICES/ICES ECOFOR Workshop (pp. 10-15) ◾ICES/PICES Symposium on “Forage Fish Interactions” (pp. 16-18) ◾The Yeosu Declaration, the Yeosu Declaration Forum and the Yeosu Project (pp. 19-23) ◾2013 PICES Calendar (p. 23) ◾Why Do We Need Human Dimensions for the FUTURE Program? (pp. 24-25) ◾New PICES MAFF-Sponsored Project on “Marine Ecosystem Health and Human Well-Being” (pp. 26-28) ◾The Bering Sea: Current Status and Recent Trends (pp. 29-31) ◾Continuing Cool in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (pp. 32, 35) ◾The State of the Western North Pacific in the First Half of 2012 (pp. 33-35) ◾New Leadership in PICES (pp. 36-39

The Tutor's Role

This chapter addresses three questions about being an effective online tutor: 1. Why do we still think that online tutoring can principally draw its basis from face-to-face group processes and dynamics or traditional pedagogy? 2. Does the literature tell us anything more than we would make as an intelligent guess? 3. Do we really know what an ‘effective’ online tutor would be doing? The OTiS participants have gone some way to answering these questions, through the presentation and discussion of their own online tutoring experiences. Literature in this area is still limited, and suffers from the need for timeliness of publication to be useful. Intelligent guesses are all very well, but much better as a source of information for online tutors are the reflections and documented experiences of practitioners. These experiences reveal that face-to-face pedagogy has some elements to offer the online tutor, but that there are key differences and there is a need to examine the processes and dynamics of online learning to inform online tutoring

Production of Innovations within Farmer–Researcher Associations Applying Transdisciplinary Research Principles

Small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan West Africa depend heavily on local resources and local knowledge. Science-based knowledge is likely to aid decision-making in complex situations. In this presentation, we highlight a FiBL-coordinated research partnership between three national producer organisations and national agriculture research bodies in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Benin. The partnership seeks to compare conventional, GMObased, and organic cotton systems as regards food security and climate change

Understanding evolutionary processes during past Quaternary climatic cycles: Can it be applied to the future?

Climate change affected ecological community make-up during the Quaternary which was probably both the cause of, and was caused by, evolutionary processes such as species evolution, adaptation and extinction of species and populations

Africa 2060: good news from Africa, April 16, 2010

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, As the keystone event of a research program called “Africa 2060,” the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University convened a conference on April 16, 2010 called Africa 2060: Good News from Africa. The program featured more than a dozen expert panelists from Boston University and across the world, and the approximately 100 participants included many African scholars and citizens from the continent who contributed to lively and well-informed discussion. The Pardee Center conference was co-sponsored by Boston University’s Africa Studies Center (ASC), the African Presidential Archives & Research Center (APARC), and the Global Health & Development Center (GHDC).This report provides commentary reflecting upon and information pertaining to the substance of the conference. An introductory overview looks at the major issues discussed at the event, which are placed within the larger literature on Africa’s future. Four short essays prepared by Boston University graduate students provide readers with more specific reflections and highlights of each conference session and the main issues discussed by panelists. The final section presents analyses of key trends and projections related to societal, economic, and governance issues for Africa and a commentary on what this information tells us about the drivers that will determine the continent’s future