Science and Engineering Labor Force

[Excerpt] Like most developed economies, the United States increasingly depends on a technically skilled workforce, including scientists and engineers. Workers for whom knowledge and skill in S&E are central to their jobs have an effect on the economy and the wider society that is disproportionate to their numbers: they contribute to research and development, increased knowledge, technological innovation, and economic growth. Moreover, the knowledge and skills associated with science and engineering have diffused across occupations and become more important in jobs that are not traditionally associated with S&E

The Australian Research Quality Framework: A live experiment in capturing the social, economic, environmental, and cultural returns of publicly funded research

Copyright @ 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc. This is the accepted version of the following article: Donovan, C. (2008), The Australian Research Quality Framework: A live experiment in capturing the social, economic, environmental, and cultural returns of publicly funded research. New Directions for Evaluation, 2008: 47–60, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ev.260/abstract.The author regards development of Australia's ill-fated Research Quality Framework (RQF) as a “live experiment” in determining the most appropriate approach to evaluating the extra-academic returns, or “impact,” of a nation's publicly funded research. The RQF was at the forefront of an international movement toward richer qualitative, contextual approaches that aimed to gauge the wider economic, social, environmental, and cultural benefits of research. Its construction and implementation sent mixed messages and created confusion about what impact is, and how it is best measured, to the extent that this bold live experiment did not come to fruition

2017 Texas Bays and Estuaries Meeting

Program for the 2017 Texas Bays and Estuaries Meeting held in Port Aransas, Texas, April 12-13, 2017.Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, Coastal Bend Bays Foundation, The University of Texas Marine Science Institute, Sea Grant Texas at Texas A&M University, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, and Mission Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve.Marine Scienc

Does science need computer science?

IBM Hursley Talks Series 3An afternoon of talks, to be held on Wednesday March 10 from 2:30pm in Bldg 35 Lecture Room A, arranged by the School of Chemistry in conjunction with IBM Hursley and the Combechem e-Science Project.The talks are aimed at science students (undergraduate and post-graduate) from across the faculty. This is the third series of talks we have organized, but the first time we have put them together in an afternoon. The talks are general in nature and knowledge of computer science is certainly not necessary. After the talks there will be an opportunity for a discussion with the lecturers from IBM.Does Science Need Computer Science?Chair and Moderator - Jeremy Frey, School of Chemistry.- 14:00 "Computer games for fun and profit" (*) - Andrew Reynolds - 14:45 "Anyone for tennis? The science behind WIBMledon" (*) - Matt Roberts - 15:30 Tea (Chemistry Foyer, Bldg 29 opposite bldg 35) - 15:45 "Disk Drive physics from grandmothers to gigabytes" (*) - Steve Legg - 16:35 "What could happen to your data?" (*) - Nick Jones - 17:20 Panel Session, comprising the four IBM speakers and May Glover-Gunn (IBM) - 18:00 Receptio

Vernal Pool Conservation: Enhancing Existing Regulation Through the Creation of the Maine Vernal Pool Special Area Management Plan

Conservation of natural resources is challenging given the competing economic and ecological goals humans have for landscapes. Vernal pools in the northeastern US are seasonal, small wetlands that provide critical breeding habitat for amphibians and invertebrates adapted to temporary waters, and are exceptionally hard to conserve as their function is dependent on connections to other wetlands and upland forests. A team of researchers in Maine joined forces with a diverse array of governmental and private stakeholders to develop an alternative to existing top-down vernal pool regulation. Through creative adoption and revision of various resource management tools, they produced a vernal pool conservation mechanism, the Maine Vernal Pool Special Management Area Plan that meets the needs of diverse stakeholders from developers to ecologists. This voluntary mitigation tool uses fees from impacts to vernal pools in locally identified growth areas to fund conservation of “poolscapes” (pools plus appropriate adjacent habitat) in areas locally designated for rural use. In this case study, we identify six key features of this mechanism that illustrate the use of existing tools to balance growth and pool conservation. This case study will provide readers with key concepts that can be applied to any conservation problem: namely, how to work with diverse interests toward a common goal, how to evaluate and use existing policy tools in new ways, and how to approach solutions to sticky problems through a willingness to accept uncertainty and risk

Peak minerals: mapping sustainability issues at local and national scales

Peak minerals adopts the Hubbert metaphor for peak oil to highlight issues associated with initial mining of `cheaper, more accessible and higher quality ores pre-peak, to `lower grade, more remote, complex and expensive ores post-peak. In doing so, it prompts focus on the `services provided by the resource in-use as well as the transition strategy to supply those services following the decline of production post-peak. This paper applies the peak minerals metaphor as a basis for examining the social and environmental implications pre- and post-peak production across spatial scales. Using document review and stakeholder analysis from a National Peak Minerals Forum held in Australia, social and environmental impacts are mapped at local and national scales. This innovative mapping found that currently, consideration is given to local social and environmental issues and global economic issues, however, triple bottom line issues at the national scale are currently overlooked. As minerals resources belong to the people of a nation, this finding will inform future approaches to transition strategies seeking to maximise long term value for the use of the resources