Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: a Century of Dedication

Dr. Fecher presents findings, covering 70 years, of health studies of members of United States religious communities with a view to providing suggestions for possible solutions to the problem of providing adequate continuing health care for American women religious

The half-metallic ferromagnet Co2Mn0.5Fe0.5Si

Electronic structure calculation were used to predict a new material for spintronic applications. Co2Mn0.5Fe0.5Si is one example which is stable against on-site correlation and disorder effects due to the position of the Fermi energy in the middle of the minority band gap. Experimentally the sample were made exhibiting L21 structure and a high magnetic order.Comment: 5 pages, 2 Figures, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. accepte

A Reputation Economy: Results from an Empirical Survey on Academic Data Sharing

Academic data sharing is a way for researchers to collaborate and thereby meet the needs of an increasingly complex research landscape. It enables researchers to verify results and to pursuit new research questions with "old" data. It is therefore not surprising that data sharing is advocated by funding agencies, journals, and researchers alike. We surveyed 2661 individual academic researchers across all disciplines on their dealings with data, their publication practices, and motives for sharing or withholding research data. The results for 1564 valid responses show that researchers across disciplines recognise the benefit of secondary research data for their own work and for scientific progress as a whole-still they only practice it in moderation. An explanation for this evidence could be an academic system that is not driven by monetary incentives, nor the desire for scientific progress, but by individual reputation-expressed in (high ranked journal) publications. We label this system a Reputation Economy. This special economy explains our findings that show that researchers have a nuanced idea how to provide adequate formal recognition for making data available to others-namely data citations. We conclude that data sharing will only be widely adopted among research professionals if sharing pays in form of reputation. Thus, policy measures that intend to foster research collaboration need to understand academia as a reputation economy. Successful measures must value intermediate products, such as research data, more highly than it is the case now

Looking past the action : a study of the effects of structure on video game communities

This thesis explores the effects of ludic structure—defined as the elements of game play not considered content—on video game communities. Counter to the focus on video game content and its effects by other scholars, this study argues the importance of the study of game structure and its influences on player interactions. Two games, League of Legends and Puzzle Pirates were examined. I played both games for 20 hours, as well as interviewing four players from each game. Using Laura Ellingson’s (2009) crystallization as a guiding approach, I analyzed the games using both a traditional thematic analysis and personal narratives in an attempt to create a richer dataset from which to draw conclusions. I discovered that one game was more competitively structured (League of Legends), which resulted in more aggressive and negative interactions among players in the community. Puzzle Pirates, on the other hand was more cooperatively structured, which resulted in an open and friendly community of people who were wanting to help each other. I argue that ludic structure does have a significant impact on player interactions, and that game companies should strive for more cooperatively structured games to encourage a positive community of gamers.Department of Communication StudiesLiterature review -- Methodology -- Close analysis of League of legends -- Close analysis of Puzzle pirates -- Conclusions, flaws and future research.Thesis (M.A.

Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought

Open Science is an umbrella term that encompasses a multitude of assumptions about the future of knowledge creation and dissemination. Based on a literature review, this paper aims at structuring the overall discourse by proposing five Open Science schools of thought: The infrastructure school (which is concerned with the technological architecture), the public school (which is concerned with the accessibility of knowledge creation), the measurement school (which is concerned with alternative impact measurement), the democratic school (which is concerned with access to knowledge) and the pragmatic school (which is concerned with collaborative research)