Data Science and Ebola

Data Science---Today, everybody and everything produces data. People produce large amounts of data in social networks and in commercial transactions. Medical, corporate, and government databases continue to grow. Sensors continue to get cheaper and are increasingly connected, creating an Internet of Things, and generating even more data. In every discipline, large, diverse, and rich data sets are emerging, from astrophysics, to the life sciences, to the behavioral sciences, to finance and commerce, to the humanities and to the arts. In every discipline people want to organize, analyze, optimize and understand their data to answer questions and to deepen insights. The science that is transforming this ocean of data into a sea of knowledge is called data science. This lecture will discuss how data science has changed the way in which one of the most visible challenges to public health is handled, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.Comment: Inaugural lecture Leiden Universit

Trends in Higher Education Affecting the College and University Library

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On social function: new language for discussing technology for social action

Designers of technology for social action can often become embroiled in issues of platform and technical functionality at a very early stage in the development process, before the precise social value of an approach has been explored. The loyalty of designers to particular technologies and to ways of working can divide activist communities and, arguably, has weakened the social action world’s performance in exploiting technology with maximum usefulness and usability. In this paper, we present a lexicon for discussing technology and social action by reference to the intention and relationship to use, rather than to detailed functionality. In short, we offer a language to support discussions of social function, and thus to avoid premature commitment or argument about architecture or implementation details.</p

Career, family, and workforce mobility: an interdisciplinary conversation

The purpose of this article is to synthesize conceptual and empirical work from the fields of both sociology and career development to explore how issues of career, family, and workforce mobility are necessarily interrelated. The use of work from sociology and career development demonstrates that the complexities of family solutions to career mobility undo the apparent simplicity of delivering a worker to a new worksite. Although organizations and governments work to develop policies that incentivize mobility, including transport infrastructure, housing, employment conditions, and tax incentives, these will not necessarily address the private concerns and priorities of families. This article argues for an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the intersubjective complexities implicated in the growing phenomenon and expectation of worker mobility and suggests both areas and design strategies for further research

The Effects of Momentariness on Karma and Rebirth in Theravāda Buddhism

In the development of Indian Buddhism we begin to see a shift away from the early Buddhist epistemology based in phenomenology and process metaphysics toward a type of event-based metaphysics. This shift began in the reductionist methodology of the Abhidhamma and culminated in a theory of momentariness based in rationalism and abstraction, rather than early Buddhist empiricism. While early Buddhism followed an extensional model of temporal consciousness, when methodological reductionism was applied to the concept of time, it necessarily resulted in a cinematic model of temporal consciousness like that of the Sautrāntikas or in an idea of the tri-temporal existence of dhammas, like that of the Sarvāstivādins. It is in the accounting of the process of karmic rebirth that we can most clearly see the effects of this shift. The development of a theory of momentariness was incorporated into the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa. In Buddhaghosa’s treatment of karmic rebirth, karma, particularly death-threshold karma, receives more emphasis in the process of rebirth than was previously found in the Suttas. The incorporation of “duration-less duration” via tritemporal existence by Buddhaghosa became necessary in order to explain karmic continuity in the rebirth process while retaining the concept of momentariness

Psy-expertise, therapeutic culture and the politics of the personal in development

Expertise stemming from the psy disciplines is increasingly and explicitly shaping international development policy and practice. Whilst some policy makers see the use of psy expertise as a new way to reduce poverty, increase economic efficiency, and promote wellbeing, others raise concerns that psychocentric development promotes individual over structural change, pathologises poverty, and depoliticises development. This paper specifically analyses four aspects of psy knowledge used in contemporary development policy: child development/developmental psychology, behavioural economics, positive psychology, and global mental health. This analysis illuminates the co-constitutive intellectual and colonial histories of development and psy-expertise: a connection that complicates claims that development has been psychologized; the uses and coloniality of both within a neoliberal project; and the potential for psychopolitics to inform development

Research-teaching linkages: enhancing graduate attributes. Arts, humanities and social sciences

This publication represents one output of the Quality Enhancement Theme of Research-Teaching Linkages: enhancing graduate attributes. Sections 2-5 relate primarily to the project outcomes of use to educational developers and arts, humanities and social sciences academics looking for approaches to enhance their practice. Section 5 comprises in-depth case studies. Section 6 is an introductory discussion of the evidence from the interviews undertaken by the team. Section 7 explores project conclusions and recommendations for the future