Equity and Excellence in Research Funding

The tension between equity and excellence is fundamental in science policy. This tension might appear to be resolved through the use of merit-based evaluation as a criterion for research funding. This is not the case. Merit-based decision making alone is insufficient because of inequality aversion, a fundamental tendency of people to avoid extremely unequal distributions. The distribution of performance in science is extremely unequal, and no decision maker with the power to establish a distribution of public money would dare to match the level of inequality in research performance. We argue that decision makers who increase concentration of resources because they accept that research resources should be distributed according to merit probably implement less inequality than would be justified by differences in research performance. Here we show that the consequences are likely to be suppression of incentives for the very best scientists. The consequences for the performance of a national research system may be substantial. Decision makers are unaware of the issue, as they operate with distributional assumptions of normality that guide our everyday intuitions

Where Is Science Going?

Do researchers produce scientific and technical knowledge differently than they did ten years ago? What will scientific research look like ten years from now? Addressing such questions means looking at science from a dynamic systems perspective. Two recent books about the social system of science, by Ziman and by Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott, and Trow, accept this challenge and argue that the research enterprise is changing. This article uses bibliometric data to examine the extent and nature of changes identified by these authors, taking as an example British research. We use their theoretical frameworks to investigate five characteristics of research said to be increasingly pervasive-namely, application, interdisciplinarity, networking, internationalization, and concentration of resources. Results indicate that research may be becoming more interdisciplinary and that research is increasingly conducted more in networks, both domestic and international; but the data are more ambiguous regarding application and concentration. CR - Copyright © 1996 Sage Publications, Inc

Hospitals: The hidden research system

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Codevelopment Between Key Personality Traits and Alcohol Use Disorder From Adolescence Through Young Adulthood

ObjectivePersonality traits related to negative emotionality and low constraint are strong correlates of alcohol use disorder (AUD), but few studies have evaluated the prospective interplay between these traits and AUD symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood.MethodThe Minnesota Twin Family Study (N = 2,769) was used to examine the developmental interplay between AUD symptoms and three personality measures of constraint, negative emotionality, and aggressive undercontrol from ages 17 to 29.ResultsResults from random‐intercept, cross‐lagged panel models showed that low constraint and aggressive undercontrol predicted subsequent rank‐order increases in AUD symptoms from ages 17 to 24. AUD symptoms did not predict rank‐order change in these traits from ages 17 to 24. There was support for both cross‐effects from ages 24 to 29. Biometric analysis of the twin data showed genetic influences accounted for most of the phenotypic correlations over time.ConclusionResults are consistent with the notion that personality traits related to low constraint and aggressive undercontrol are important vulnerability/predisposition factors for the development of early adult AUD. In later young adulthood, there is more evidence for the simultaneous codevelopment of personality and AUD. Implications are addressed with attention to personality‐based risk assessments and targeted AUD prevention approaches.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142935/1/jopy12311.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142935/2/jopy12311_am.pd

Chiral Soliton Model vs Pentaquark Structure for \Theta (1540)

The exotic baryon $\Theta^+$ (1540 MeV)$is visualised as an expected (iso) rotational excitation in the Chiral Soliton Model. It is also argued as a Pentaquark baryon state in a constituent quark model with strong diquark correlations. I contrast the two points of view; the similarities and differences between the two pictures. Collective excitation, characteristic of Chiral Soliton Model points toward small mixing of representations in the wake of SU(3) breaking. In contrast, Constituent quark Models prefer near ``ideal'' mixing, similar to$\omega - \phi$ mixing.Comment: 11 pages, references added, final published versio

Clinical impairment in premanifest and early Huntington's disease is associated with regionally specific atrophy.

TRACK-HD is a multicentre longitudinal observational study investigating the use of clinical assessments and 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging as potential biomarkers for future therapeutic trials in Huntington's disease (HD). The cross-sectional data from this large well-characterized dataset provide the opportunity to improve our knowledge of how the underlying neuropathology of HD may contribute to the clinical manifestations of the disease across the spectrum of premanifest (PreHD) and early HD. Two hundred and thirty nine gene-positive subjects (120 PreHD and 119 early HD) from the TRACK-HD study were included. Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), grey and white matter volumes were correlated with performance in four domains: quantitative motor (tongue force, metronome tapping, and gait); oculomotor [anti-saccade error rate (ASE)]; cognition (negative emotion recognition, spot the change and the University of Pennsylvania smell identification test) and neuropsychiatric measures (apathy, affect and irritability). After adjusting for estimated disease severity, regionally specific associations between structural loss and task performance were found (familywise error corrected, P < 0.05); impairment in tongue force, metronome tapping and ASE were all associated with striatal loss. Additionally, tongue force deficits and ASE were associated with volume reduction in the occipital lobe. Impaired recognition of negative emotions was associated with volumetric reductions in the precuneus and cuneus. Our study reveals specific associations between atrophy and decline in a range of clinical modalities, demonstrating the utility of VBM correlation analysis for investigating these relationships in HD

A Search for ϕ\phi Meson Nucleus Bound State Using Antiproton Annihilation on Nucleus

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The dynamics of university units as a multi-level process. Credibility cycles and resource dependencies

This paper presents an analysis of resource acquisition and profile development of institutional units within universities. We conceptualize resource acquisition as a two level nested process, where units compete for external resources based on their credibility, but at the same time are granted faculty positions from the larger units (department) to which they belong. Our model implies that the growth of university units is constrained by the decisions of their parent department on the allocation of professorial positions, which represent the critical resource for most units’ activities. In our field of study this allocation is largely based on educational activities, and therefore, units with high scientific credibility are not necessarily able to grow, despite an increasing reliance on external funds. Our paper therefore sheds light on the implications that the dual funding system of European universities has for the development of units, while taking into account the interaction between institutional funding and third-party funding

Antikaon angular distributions in the reaction γd→K−Θ+p→K−K+np{\gamma}d \to K^-{\Theta}^+p \to K^-K^+np near the threshold and the parity of the Θ+{\Theta}^+ pentaquark

Within spectator model we study the reaction ${\gamma}d \to K^-{\Theta}^+p \to K^-K^+np$ in the threshold energy region. We present the predictions for the exclusive and inclusive antikaon angular distributions in the laboratory system for this reaction calculated for two possible parity states of the ${\Theta}^+$ resonance at 1.5 and 1.75 GeV beam energies with and without imposing the relevant kinematical cuts on those parts of the sampled phase space where contribution from the main background sources associated with the ${\phi}(1020)$, ${\Lambda}(1520)$ production as well as with the $K^-p$--rescattering in the final state, is expected to be dominant. We show that under chosen kinematics these distributions are sensitive to the ${\Theta}^+$ parity and, therefore, can be used as a filter for the determination of its parity.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; will be published in Phys.Atom.Nucl_4_200

Defining the industrial and engineering management professional profile: a longitudinal study based on job advertisements

The engineering professional profiles have been discussed by several branches of the engineering field. On the one hand, this discussion helps to understand the professional practice and contributes to the specification of the competences that are suitable for each function and company culture. On the other hand, it is an essential starting point for the definition of curricula in engineering schools. Thus, this study aims to characterize, in an innovative way based on job advertisements, the demand for competences and areas of practice for Industrial Engineering and Management contributing for the definition of a professional profile. This characterization is based on the analysis of 1391 job advertisements, collected during seven years from a Portuguese newspaper. The data analysis takes into account the job description in which two categories were considered: areas of professional practice (e.g. project management) and transversal competences (e.g. teamwork). Considering the total number of job advertisements, it was possible to identify 1,962 cumulative references for 11 professional practice areas and 5,261 cumulative references for transversal competences. The contribution of this study lies on the identification of the main areas of practice and the main transversal competences demanded by employers.This work was partially funded by COMPETE-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT-UID-CEC-00319-2013