Automatically assembling a full census of an academic field

The composition of the scientific workforce shapes the direction of scientific research, directly through the selection of questions to investigate, and indirectly through its influence on the training of future scientists. In most fields, however, complete census information is difficult to obtain, complicating efforts to study workforce dynamics and the effects of policy. This is particularly true in computer science, which lacks a single, all-encompassing directory or professional organization. A full census of computer science would serve many purposes, not the least of which is a better understanding of the trends and causes of unequal representation in computing. Previous academic census efforts have relied on narrow or biased samples, or on professional society membership rolls. A full census can be constructed directly from online departmental faculty directories, but doing so by hand is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Here, we introduce a topical web crawler for automating the collection of faculty information from web-based department rosters, and demonstrate the resulting system on the 205 PhD-granting computer science departments in the U.S. and Canada. This method constructs a complete census of the field within a few minutes, and achieves over 99% precision and recall. We conclude by comparing the resulting 2017 census to a hand-curated 2011 census to quantify turnover and retention in computer science, in general and for female faculty in particular, demonstrating the types of analysis made possible by automated census construction.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Researchers’ opinions about ethically sound dissemination of BCI research to the public media

BCI research and (future) applications raise ethical questions. A websurvey among 144 BCI researchers identified disseminating BCI research to the public media as a central topic. Most researchers felt that BCI scientists must responsibly communicate with the media and that general ethical guidelines on BCI research and application are needed within the next 5 years. We recommend further debate on ethical aspects related to BCI and the development of guidelines

NRQCD results on the MILC extra coarse ensemble

We present preliminary results using NRQCD to describe heavy quarks on the MILC 2+1 flavour dynamical extra coarse ensemble. We calculate the spectra of low lying states in bottomonium to complement earlier results on the finer MILC ensembles. We then exploit the coarseness of the lattices to calculate charm propagators using NRQCD. These are used to examine the charmonium spectrum and to calclate the mass of the $B_c$ using NRQCD. Finally we look breifly at the $B_d$ and $B_s$ systems using the imporoved staggered formalism to describe the light valence quarks.Comment: 6 pages, Talk presented at Lattice 2005 (Heavy Quarks), Dublin, 25-30 July 200

Effects of the California High School Exit Exam on Student Persistence, Achievement, and Graduation

Analyzes the impact of the exit exam requirement on student persistence, achievement, and graduation by race/ethnicity and gender and the factors behind the differential effects. Considers implications for the fairness and effectiveness of the exams

The Determinants of On-Farm Renewable Energy Adoption

Agribusiness, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas

The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205 Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism, we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea originates on its longterm diffusion across the network. We find that research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in science.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Thin n-i-p radiation-resistant solar cell feasibility study

Silicon solar cells were fabricated to verify the predictions that: (1) thin n(+)pp(+) cells can provide high values of open circuit voltage even when high resistivity base material ( 1000 omega-cm) is used; (2) cells with good p(+) back contacts will display an increase in open circuit voltage with decreasing cell thickness; and (3) high quality, thin, high resistivity, solar cells can be made using processing compatible with conventional practice. Analysis of I-V and spectral response measurements of these cells confirmed theoretical predictions and thereby pointed to voltages beyond the near 600 mV obtained in this study

Mutual information for examining correlations in DNA

This paper examines two methods for finding whether long-range correlations exist in DNA: a fractal measure and a mutual information technique. We evaluate the performance and implications of these methods in detail. In particular we explore their use comparing DNA sequences from a variety of sources. Using software for performing in silico mutations, we also consider evolutionary events leading to long range correlations and analyse these correlations using the techniques presented. Comparisons are made between these virtual sequences, randomly generated sequences, and real sequences. We also explore correlations in chromosomes from different species.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure