Cross‐campus Collaboration: A Scientometric and Network Case Study of Publication Activity Across Two Campuses of a Single Institution

Team science and collaboration have become crucial to addressing key research questions confronting society. Institutions that are spread across multiple geographic locations face additional challenges. To better understand the nature of cross‐campus collaboration within a single institution and the effects of institutional efforts to spark collaboration, we conducted a case study of collaboration at Cornell University using scientometric and network analyses. Results suggest that cross‐campus collaboration is increasingly common, but is accounted for primarily by a relatively small number of departments and individual researchers. Specific researchers involved in many collaborative projects are identified, and their unique characteristics are described. Institutional efforts, such as seed grants and topical retreats, have some effect for researchers who are central in the collaboration network, but were less clearly effective for others

When do Researchers Collaborate? Toward a Model of Collaboration Propensity in Science and Engineering Research

Geographically distributed and multidisciplinary collaborations have proven invaluable in answering a range of important scientific questions, such as understanding and controlling disease threats like SARS and AIDS or exploring the nature of matter in particle physics. Despite this, however, collaboration can often be problematic. There are institutional obstacles, collaboration tools may be poorly designed, and group coordination is difficult. To better design technologies to support research activities, we need an improved understanding of why scientists collaborate and how their collaborations work. To achieve this improved understanding, this study compares two theoretical approaches to collaboration propensity—that is, the extent to which collaboration is perceived as useful by individual researchers. On one hand, cultural comparisons of disciplines suggest that collaboration propensity will be higher in disciplinary cultures that have a more collectivist orientation, as indicated by low levels of competition for individual recognition and few concerns about secrecy related to commercialization and intellectual property. In contrast, an approach based on social and organizational psychology suggests that collaboration propensity will vary as a function of resource concentration, fieldwide focus on a well-defined set of problems, and the need for and availability of help when difficult problems are encountered in day-to-day work. To explore this question, a mail survey of 900 academic researchers in three fields was conducted, along with 100 interviews with practicing researchers at 17 sites in the field. Results support a focus on work attributes in interpreting collaboration propensity. That is, cultural factors such as competition for individual recognition and concerns about intellectual property were not perceived as significant impediments to collaboration. Instead, characteristics like resource concentration and the need for coordination were more important in determining collaboration propensity. Implications of these findings include a call for more careful examination of the day-to-day work of scientists and engineers, and a suggestion that concerns about scientific competition impeding collaboration may be unwarranted.Ph.D.InformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39375/2/Birnholtz.dissertation_final.pd

SuperVision:Playing with Gaze Aversion and Peripheral Vision

In this work, we challenge the Gaze interaction paradigm" What you see is what you get" to introduce" playing with peripheral vision". We developed the conceptual framework to introduce this novel gaze-aware game dynamic. We illustrated the concept with SuperVision, a collection of three games that play with peripheral vision. We propose perceptual and interaction challenges that require players not to look and rely on their periphery. To validate the game dynamic and experience, we conducted a user study with twenty-four participants. Results show how the game concept created an engaging and playful experience playing with peripheral vision. Participants showed proficiency in overcoming the game challenges, developing clear strategies to succeed. Moreover, we found evidence that playing the game can affect our visual skills, with greater peripheral awareness

Performing the Digital Self: Understanding Location-Based Social Networking, Territory, Space, and Identity in the City

Expressions of territoriality have been positioned as one of the main reasons users alter their behaviors and perceptions of spatiality and sociality while engaging with location-based social networks (LBSN). Despite the potential for this interplay to further our understanding of LBSN usage in the context of identity, very little work has actually been done towards this. Addressing this gap in the literature is one the chief aims of the article. Drawing on an original six-week study with 42 participants utilizing a bespoke LBSN entitled ‘GeoMoments’, our research explores: (1) the way that territoriality is linked to self-identity; and (2) how this interplay affects the interactions between users as well as the environments they inhabit. Our findings suggest that participants affirmed their self-identity by selectively posting and claiming ownership of their neighborhood through the LBSN. Here, the locative decisions made related to risk, hierarchies, and the users’ relationship to the area. This practice then led participants to discover and interact with the digital information overlaying their physical environments in a playful manner. These interactions demonstrate the perceived power structures that are facilitated by identity claims over a virtual area. In the main, our results reaffirm that territoriality is a central concept in understanding LBSN use, while also drawing attention to the temporality involved in user-to-user and user-to-place interactions pertaining to physical place mediated by LBSN

Hidden in the Middle : Culture, Value and Reward in Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics - the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science - is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised 'outputs' in academia are often defined and rewarded by discipline. Bioinformatics, as an interdisciplinary bricolage, incorporates experts from various disciplinary cultures with their own distinct ways of working. Perceived problems of interdisciplinarity include difficulties of making explicit knowledge that is practical, theoretical, or cognitive. But successful interdisciplinary research also depends on an understanding of disciplinary cultures and value systems, often only tacitly understood by members of the communities in question. In bioinformatics, the 'parent' disciplines have different value systems; for example, what is considered worthwhile research by computer scientists can be thought of as trivial by biologists, and vice versa. This paper concentrates on the problems of reward and recognition described by scientists working in academic bioinformatics in the United Kingdom. We highlight problems that are a consequence of its cross-cultural make-up, recognising that the mismatches in knowledge in this borderland take place not just at the level of the practical, theoretical, or epistemological, but also at the cultural level too. The trend in big, interdisciplinary science is towards multiple authors on a single paper; in bioinformatics this has created hybrid or fractional scientists who find they are being positioned not just in-between established disciplines but also in-between as middle authors or, worse still, left off papers altogether

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM