Life and Death of Online Communities
Dr. Quentin Jones of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
The more heterogeneous the community of an online chat channel, the more chances the channel has to survive over time. This has been concluded in a new joint study carried out by researchers of the University of Haifa and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “This study has shown that an essentially social characteristic significantly influences the survival chances of an online community,” says Dr. Daphne Raban of the University of Haifa who took part in the study.
The study, headed by Dr. Quentin Jones of the New Jersey Institute of Technology with Dr. Mihai Moldovan of NJIT and Dr. Raban, aimed to examine what factors could best predict the chances of an online community to survive over time. Researchers have previously claimed that there are too many variables influencing the survival or demise of such channels and that there is therefore no way of testing it, and earlier studies have primarily focused on group size and activity.
The current study included an analysis of social characteristics, such as the group’s homogeneity and heterogeneity. A group is considered homogeneous when its member turnover is small - namely, when the members who established the group are still the main members after some time. A group is considered heterogeneous when it has turnover and new members are continuously joining it. (more…)
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Social Networks: ‘Pay It Forward’ Pays Off
This diagram illustrates how a single act of kindness can spread between individuals and across time. Cooperative behavior spreads three degrees of separation: if Eleni increases her contribution to the public good, it benefits Lucas (one degree of separation), who gives more when paired with Erika (two degrees of separation) in period 2, who gives more when paired with Jay (three degrees of separation) in period 3, who gives more when paired with Brecken in period 4. The effects also persist over time, so that Lucas gives more when paired with Erika (period 2) and also when paired with Lysander (period 3), Bemy (period 4), Sebastian (period 5), and Nicholas (period 6). The effect also persists at two degrees of separation, as Erika not only gives more when paired with Jay (period 3), but also when paired with Harla (period 4) and James (period 5). All the paths in this illustrative cascade are supported by results in the experiments, and it is important to note that if Eleni decreases her initial contribution then her uncooperative behavior can spread and persist as well.
For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts – acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation – spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference.
In a study published in the March 8 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person. When people benefit from kindness they “pay it forward” by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network.
The research was conducted by James Fowler, associate professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Political Science and Calit2’s Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, who is professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School. Fowler and Christakis are coauthors of the recently published book “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our social networks and How They Shape Our Lives.” (more…)
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Violent Video Game Play Makes More Aggressive Kids
Craig Anderson , an Iowa State Distinguished Professor of psychology who co-authored a previous book on violent video games' effects with ISU researchers, is now lead author on a study that provides comprehensive analysis of previous literature about the effects of playing violent video games. Photo by Bob Elbert, News Service
Iowa State University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson has made much of his life’s work studying how violent video game play affects youth behavior. And he says a new study he led, analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids — regardless of their age, sex or culture.
The study was published today in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin, an American Psychological Association journal. It reports that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive thoughts and behavior, and decreased empathy and prosocial behavior in youths.
“We can now say with utmost confidence that regardless of research method — that is experimental, correlational, or longitudinal — and regardless of the cultures tested in this study [East and West], you get the same effects,” said Anderson, who is also director of Iowa State’s Center for the Study of Violence. “And the effects are that exposure to violent video games increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in both short-term and long-term contexts. Such exposure also increases aggressive thinking and aggressive affect, and decreases prosocial behavior.” (more…)
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Terrorism’s New Target: Econo-Jihad
Jihadist terror organizations have set economic terrorism as their new target, intending to harm and paralyze Western economies, the United Sates in particular, claims Prof. Gabriel Weimann, expert researcher of terrorism over the Internet at the University of Haifa. Prof. Weimann monitored websites hosted by terrorist and terrorism-supporting organizations and concludes: “For the Jihadists, the present economic crisis signifies an ideal opportunity and platform to leverage a economic terrorist campaign.”
In the course of a study that was carried out over a number of years, Prof. Weimann surveyed public and encoded websites run by Islamic terrorist organizations, forums, video clips, and practically all the information related to Islamic Jihad terrorism that is flowing through the network.
According to Prof. Weimann, the focus on economic terrorism was set in motion with the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers, when Osama bin Laden stated on the video tapes that he sent out that these attacks mostly damaged the United States’ economic base and that these attacks, which cost $500,000 to carry out, cost the U.S. $500 billion. (more…)
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10,000 Facebook Members or Bust! Analyzing Social Network Trends
Jennifer Golbeck is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies, Maryland's iSchool. (University of Maryland)
A Facebook group with nothing but that name and a picture of a squishy smiley face has collected more than 10,000 members since its formation a week ago, a classroom assignment at the University of Maryland designed to determine how trends go viral on the social networking site.
By midnight deadline on Feb. 25, it was the only one of 45 student sites to reach that threshold, followed by 10,000 HATERS OF DUKE BASKETBALL, with 8,292 members.
Why did some of the sites go viral and others go south? That’s a question the undergraduates are considering in Assistant Professor Jennifer Golbeck’s new course, Social Networks: Technology and Society.
“Figuring that out is a very fascinating research problem — there’s so much more we need to understand,” says Golbeck, a computer scientist who studies how people use online social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Last fall, she, a doctoral candidate and an undergraduate student released the first detailed study on Twitter use by Congress. (more…)
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Study: Revolutionary Ideas Spring Most from Companies Stressing Technology
Marketing professor William Qualls co-wrote a study that found the business culture that companies emphasize has an effect on new product ideas. (Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)
The business culture that companies emphasize has an effect on new product ideas that bubble back up from the workforce, a University of Illinois marketing study found.
Groundbreaking ideas spring most from companies that stress technology, rather than customer needs or staying ahead of competitors, according to research that will appear in the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
Firms that focus on their competitors or customers generate more new product suggestions than technology-based companies, the study found. But the ideas typically net only subtle advances, such as the slow evolution of wireless reading devices, rather than breakthroughs similar to the shift from compact discs to music downloads.
“Customer- and competitor-oriented companies are more likely to come up with variations of existing products because they watch their markets closely and react to demands rather than building on breakthrough technology,” said William Qualls, a U. of I. marketing professor who co-wrote the study. (more…)
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The Mass Media’s Role in Climate Change Skepticism
Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.
Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies, presented his research today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. He spoke during a panel discussion titled “Understanding Climate Change Skepticism: Its Sources and Strategies.”
Boykoff’s segment was titled “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change” and discussed prominent pitfalls.
“One problem occurs when outlier viewpoints are not individually evaluated in context,” said Boykoff. “A variety of influences and perspectives typically have been collapsed by mass media into one general category of skepticism. This has been detrimental both in terms of dismissing legitimate critiques of climate science or policy, as well as amplifying extreme and tenuous claims.”
Such claims are amplified when traditional news media position noncredible contrarian sources against those with scientific data, in a failed effort to represent opposing sides, said Boykoff. (more…)
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Profs Use Animated Short to Highlight the Health Concerns of Homeless Youth
A still from Walking Through Wonderland
The usual way for academics to get their research out is to publish. That’s exactly what Dalhousie University professors Jeff Karabanow and Jean Hughes did with their research exploring the health of homeless youth.
“Can you be healthy on the street? Exploring the health experiences of Halifax street youth” was published in the Canadian Journal of Urban Research in the summer of 2007.
Did you read it? Most of us didn’t.
Youth are the fastest growing sector of the homeless population. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, you see them at busy intersections with their hard-luck signs or sitting on the sidewalk on Spring Garden Road with their change cups and calls of ‘god bless.’ They are also turning up in increasing numbers at shelters, like the Out of the Cold Shelter at St. Matthew’s United Church on Barrington Street. The volunteer-run emergency shelter can accommodate 15 people, although twice as many turn up each night desperate for a clean bed with a roof overhead.
And then there are those whose feet don’t really touch pavement and instead couch surf at friends’ places and move on. “We all know people like this,” says Dr. Hughes, associate professor in the School of Nursing. “It’s not a fun way to grow up.” (more…)
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Non-Profits Seen as Less Competent
Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
Consumers perceive non-profit organizations as being “warm,” but not particularly competent, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Across three experiments, we found that consumers hold stereotypes, or shorthand, blanket impressions about non-profit and for-profit organizations and that these stereotypes predict crucial marketplace behaviors, such as the likelihood of visiting of a website and willingness to buy a product from the organization,” write authors Jennifer Aaker (Stanford University), Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), and Cassie Mogilner (University of Pennsylvania).
The authors found that people generally view for-profit companies are being competent, but also as being devoid of warmth, which does not lead people to admire them.
In contrast, they found that consumers perceive non-profits as being warmer than for-profits, but they also believe they are less competent than for-profits. Therefore, if consumer stereotypes are not interrupted, people are more likely to buy products from for-profits than non-profits.
Non-profits can boost public perception by understanding and using tools that most effectively convey competence, the authors write. For example, non-profits can utilize sub-branding, endorsements, and sponsored events to avoid the general perception that they are in some way incompetent. (more…)
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Geopolitical Shifts in Science and Knowledge Creation
A Discussion Paper released today by Science-Metrix Inc. examines geopolitical shifts in knowledge creation over the past three decades in the ex-USSR, the Middle East and Asia.
Using information extracted from the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) database of scientific publications spanning the last 30 years (1980 to 2009), the paper examines the effects of geopolitical change on scientific production.
“When we started this research, we expected to find Asian countries growing rapidly,” says Eric Archambault, author of the Discussion Paper and president of Science-Metrix. “But we were both awed and pleasantly surprised. Asia is catching up even more rapidly than previously thought, Europe is holding its position more than most would expect, and the Middle East is a region to watch.”
As one example of geopolitical change and its effects, the study cites the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. While the levels of scientific output of most of the ex-Soviet republics (with the exception of Lithuania and Estonia) have yet to recover, those of other ex-members of the Warsaw Pact surged very shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The paper also discusses the Middle East, where constant political tensions and armed conflict have led to substantially different responses in the development of national scientific systems. Iraq’s system is still shattered, and Kuwait’s still hasn’t fully recovered. Importantly, Iran has exhibited one of the fastest growth rates in scientific production the world over. The growth and specific efforts in strategic subfields indicate that this may be the result of Iran’s highly controversial nuclear technology development program. (more…)
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New Online Strategy at Super Bowl Might be the New Goal
Wake Forest University communication professor Ananda Mitra. (Ken Bennett, Wake Forest University photographer)
PepsiCo’s decision to launch an online campaign rather than advertise during the Super Bowl has generated tremendous interest. The campaign, which includes a pledge to donate millions to social causes chosen and voted on by Pepsi “fans,” cost significantly less than a 30-second Super Bowl spot. According to a recent Center for Marketing Research study, 91percent of the fastest-growing American companies surveyed reported using at least one social media tool.
“The television as a commercial medium for advertising is a dinosaur,” says Wake Forest University communication professor Ananda Mitra, an expert in social media. “Individuals can be easily mapped using information through social media sites, such as Facebook. It no longer makes sense to develop homogenous messages for a broad audience when the person most likely to purchase your product can be pinpointed with accuracy.”
The viral nature of social media unlocks the potential for advertisers to reach hundreds of thousands of individuals and keep them connected and interested in a product. Individuals, on Facebook for example, connect to the company or product by becoming a “fan.” Fan members receive messages and updates from the company, just as they receive updates from a friend or family member. A campaign that includes interactive elements such as submitting an idea or casting a vote is an ideal way for the company to dialogue with the customer and build relationships between consumers based on common interests. (more…)
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Sociologists Find Reasons Older Adults Turned to Online Options to Find Love, Marriage
Iowa State University Associate Professor of Sociology Alicia Cast has collaborated on new research studying newlywed couples who first met online. (Bob Elbert, Iowa State University News Service)
According to a new national survey of 3,009 adults with romantic partners — reported in the Feb. 11 issue of USA Today — the Internet has now overtaken all the ways people meet, with the exception of through their friends.
Alicia Cast is not surprised. The Iowa State University associate professor of sociology and her graduate research assistant, Jamie McCartney, have been collecting data from approximately 175 central Iowa newlywed couples over a three-year period and learned that spouses from 25 of those couples first met online.
And they’ve found that it’s the older adults who are actually turning to their computers to find love — largely because of the time constraints in their busy lives.
In preliminary analysis presented at the Midwest Sociological Society’s annual meeting, the researchers reported that online subjects didn’t differ significantly from offline couples in terms of self-esteem levels, attractiveness, intelligence and other personal characteristics. But they had structural constraints that set them apart.
“In many cases, there are some real structural forces that encourage the support and use of these technologies,” said Cast. “And one of them is just structural constraints on people’s time — such as people who have kids, or have full-time jobs, or work long or extensive hours. They might also be older and the majority of people who are in their pool of eligibles are already in relationships.” (more…)
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TV Drama Can Be More Persuasive Than News Program
A fictional television drama may be more effective in persuading young women to use birth control than a news-format program on the same issue, according to a new study.
Researchers found that college-age women who viewed a televised drama about a teen pregnancy felt more vulnerable two weeks after watching the show, and this led to more support for using birth control.
However, those who watched a news program detailing the difficulties caused by teen pregnancies were unmoved, and had no change in their intentions to use birth control.
The results show the power that narratives like TV shows can have in influencing people, said Emily Moyer-Gusé, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.
“A message that is hidden inside of a story may overcome some of the resistance people have to being told how to behave,” Moyer-Gusé said.
“The impact that dramatized stories have on people’s beliefs and intentions depends a lot on the individual viewers, and not just the message – but our results suggest the effect can be there.” (more…)
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Majority of Americans Still Support Passage of Federal Climate and Energy Policies
Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change.
Despite a sharp drop in public concern over global warming, Americans—regardless of political affiliation—support the passage of federal climate and energy policies, according to the results of a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities.
The survey found support for:
* Funding more research on renewable energy, such as solar and wind power (85 percent)
* Tax rebates for people buying fuel-efficient vehicles or solar panels (82 percent)
* Establishing programs to teach Americans how to save energy (72 percent)
* Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (71 percent)
* School curricula to teach children about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming (70 percent)
* Signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050 (61 percent)
* Establishing programs to teach Americans about global warming (60 percent).
“Surprisingly, majorities of both Republicans and Democrats support many of these policies, including renewable energy research, tax rebates, regulating carbon dioxide, and expanding offshore drilling for oil and natural gas,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. “Further, majorities in both parties support returning revenues from a cap-and-trade system to American households to offset higher energy costs, perhaps opening a pathway for Congressional action.”
Sixty percent of Americans, however, said they have heard “nothing at all” about the cap-and-trade legislation currently being considered by Congress. Only 12 percent had heard “a lot.” (more…)
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Emo-Journalism: Should Reporters be the News?
Mike Lyons, assistant professor of English, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pa. (Courtesy Saint Joseph's University)
Though professional journalists are taught to remain removed from and objective about the subject of their story, sometimes the events are so tragic it is impossible to maintain that distance. When legendary CBS television news anchor Walter Cronkite reported the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to a shocked nation, he lost his journalistic reserve and quietly choked-up, fighting his emotional response to the confirmation he had received from correspondent Dan Rather.
For just a moment, Cronkite was speechless before he resumed his report. “His reaction conveyed the gravity of what had happened, but it also placed him into the story of Kennedy’s assassination,” says Mike Lyons, Ph.D., assistant professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pa.
But a recent trend in news reporting, known as “emo-journalism,” has taken Cronkite’s understandably human response to the next level.
“Emo-journalism is a trend that is probably being talked about in classes around the country,” says Lyons. “Recent examples like the CNN video of Anderson Cooper rescuing a child in the chaos of post-quake Haiti, and Sanjay Gupta performing brain surgery on television, indicate that journalistic ethics are changing.”
Lyons says this shift, where reporters are becoming part of, and sometimes the whole story, may be a result of the ubiquity of emergent technology. (more…)
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Unique Study Delves Into Toronto’s Entertainment District’s Hot Spot Violence
Each day people living in large urban centres are injured as the result of violent acts such as physical assault. While existing research tells us where such events are most likely to happen, a new study by Canadian scientists has gone one step further.
“While studies have been done on the geography of violent crime, few researchers have looked at what we call the spatio-temporal patterns of violent injury—not just where these are most likely to occur, but also when,” says lead author Dr.Michael Cusimano, a scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Toronto has a single ambulance service serving the emergency needs of its 2.4 million residents, he adds. Each ambulance dispatch is precisely geocoded by longitude and latitude and also time-stamped, providing unique information about the ”where” and ”when” of injury. (more…)
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Business School Students Craving More Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility
Craig Watters, an entrepreneurship professor at the Whitman School.
In an effort to create socially responsible business models, students in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University are developing innovative business solutions for prevalent social issues in an increasingly competitive environment. Programs that address societal concerns allow students to focus on business models that not only create business value, but also great social value, developing a new kind of social entrepreneurship. Two examples from the Whitman School include:
• Craig Watters, an entrepreneurship professor at Whitman, is expanding the definition of “minority business.” The classroom learning in his Women & Minority Entrepreneurship course looks at AIDS as both an entrepreneurial attribute and an exploited opportunity around which new businesses are created. Students enrolled in the course study and experience the social and economic impacts of AIDS on entrepreneurial decision making, opportunities discovered, business concepts developed, resources identified and gathered, and target markets created. Working in Syracuse with the CNY Health Systems Agency and AIDS Community Resources, the students have developed business concepts around AIDS that will become five new businesses. These businesses fit into the agencies’ initiatives for AIDS prevention, awareness, and healthy living with concepts, meeting the needs of the new profile of HIV/AIDS environments and those people infected /affected by the disease. Among these businesses being created is a social networking portal for HIV/AIDS clients; a new fashion business creating T-shirts printed with messages on prevention, advertisements for supporting events, etc.; Living Now, a magazine that promotes healthy living among youth; and a host of sustainable businesses concepts for LGBT youth in today’s world. (more…)
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lobal Tobacco Report Outlines 21 Challenges for 21st Century
Street vendors selling tobacco in Gambia, Africa. (Red Hand Records. CC Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic)
A new American Cancer Society report outlines 21 challenges and needs for global tobacco control, covering the wide range of issues to be addressed and expertise needed to reduce the rising tide of tobacco use worldwide, particularly in the low- and middle-income nations that are the target of the multinational tobacco industry. The report is published early online and will appear in the January/February issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
The report’s authors, led by Thomas Glynn, PhD, American Cancer Society director of Cancer Science and Trends, point out that the globalization of tobacco began with the European exploration of the New World more than 500 years ago. But it is only in the past 50 years that public health has responded to the death, disease, and economic disruption caused by tobacco use. Tobacco now has at least 1.3 billion users and kills more than 14,500 people every day, while debilitating and sickening many times that number. The report lists activities, policies, and interventions that must be increased or in some cases decreased in order to be successful in reducing the rising tide of tobacco use.
Increase Challenges
* Increase support for and adherence to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC): The report calls this the single most important action in the effort to eliminate tobacco-related death and disease, saying all governments should be encouraged to join the more than 165 nations who already have ratified the treaty, and that those who have joined the Framework should faithfully implement it. (more…)
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Mind Reading, Brain Fingerprinting and the Law
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor of Philosophy and Hardy Professor of Legal Studies
What if a jury could decide a man’s guilt through mind reading? What if reading a defendant’s memory could betray their guilt? And what constitutes ‘intent’ to commit murder? These are just some of the issues debated and reviewed in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, the latest interdisciplinary project from Wiley-Blackwell, which for registered institutions will be free for the first two years.
In the article “Neurolaw,” in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, co-authors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Annabelle Belcher assess the potential for the latest cognitive science research to revolutionize the legal system.
Neurolaw, also known as legal neuroscience, builds upon the research of cognitive, psychological, and social neuroscience by considering the implications for these disciplines within a legal framework. Each of these disciplinary collaborations has been ground-breaking in increasing our knowledge of the way the human brain operates, and now neurolaw continues this trend. (more…)
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Counterfeit Internet Drugs Pose Significant Risks
Men who buy fake Internet drugs for erection problems can face significant risks from potentially hazardous contents and bypassing healthcare systems could leave associated problems like diabetes and high blood pressure undiagnosed. That’s the warning just published online by IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
Medical and pharmaceutical experts from the UK, Sweden and USA carried out a detailed review of the growing problem of counterfeit drugs. Estimates suggest that up to 90 per cent of these illegal preparations are now sold on the Internet.
The review, which covers more than fifty studies published between 1995 and 2009, provides a valuable overview of the scale of counterfeit internet drugs, with a specific focus on erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs.
These have played a key role in driving the growth of counterfeit drugs, with studies suggesting that as many as 2.3 million ED drugs are sold a month, mostly without prescription, and that 44 per cent of the Viagra offered on the Internet is counterfeit. (more…)
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Choice May Not Be the Key to Happiness
Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College.
American culture venerates choice, but choice may not be the key to happiness and health, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Americans live in a political, social, and historical context that advances personal freedom, choice, and self-determination above all else,” write authors Hazel Rose Markus (Stanford University) and Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore College). “Contemporary psychology has proliferated this emphasis on choice and self-determination as the key to healthy psychological functioning.”
The authors point out that this emphasis on choice and freedom is not universal. “The picture presented by a half-century of research may present an accurate picture of the psychological importance of choice, freedom, and autonomy among middle-class, college-educated Americans, but this is a picture that leaves about 95 percent of the world’s population outside its frame,” the authors write.
The authors reviewed a body of research surrounding the cultural ideas surrounding choice. They found that among non-Western cultures and among working-class Westerners, freedom and choice are less important or mean something different than they do for the university-educated people who have participated in psychological research on choice. (more…)
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Providing Free Public Access to Federally Sponsored Research Results
An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund “as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles.
The various communities represented in the Roundtable have been working to develop recommendations that would improve public access without curtailing the ability of the scientific publishing industry to publish peer-reviewed scientific articles.
The Roundtable’s recommendations, endorsed in full by the overwhelming majority of the panel (12 out of 14 members), “seek to balance the need for and potential of increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise,” according to the report. (more…)
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Online Poker Study: the More Hands You Win, the More Money You Lose
Online poker has become a multibillion dollar industry.
A new Cornell study of online poker seems counterintuitive: The more hands players win, the less money they’re likely to collect – especially when it comes to novice players.
The likely reason, said Cornell sociology doctoral student Kyle Siler, whose study analyzed 27 million online poker hands, is that the multiple wins are likely for small stakes, and the more you play, the more likely you will eventually be walloped by occasional – but significant – losses.
This finding, Siler said, “coincides with observations in behavioral economics that people overweigh their frequent small gains vis-à-vis occasional large losses, and vice versa.” In other words, players feel positively reinforced by their streak of wins but have difficulty fully understanding how their occasional large losses offset their gains.
The study, which was published online in December in the Journal of Gambling Studies and will be published in a forthcoming print edition later this year, also found that for small-stakes players, small pairs (from twos to sevens) were actually more valuable than medium pairs (eights through jacks). (more…)
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Technology Winners & Losers
Google's Chrome operating system will capitalize on the promise of the netbook.
The editors of IEEE Spectrum expect five of the projects to succeed and five to miss their targets. Other projects are presented online so that readers can vote on them. For experts’ comments on the current winners and losers, there are sidebars by technology watchers Robert W. Lucky, T.J. Rodgers, and Nick Tredennick.
Winners
“Chrome the Conqueror”
Google’s Chrome operating system will capitalize on the promise of the netbook.
“Russia Reinvents Its Railroad”
IBM helps Russian Railways reinvent the railroad’s data infrastructure.
“The Take-Anywhere, Do-Anything Display”
Pixel Qi’s dual-mode screen provides both e-paper readability and full-color video.
“Crystal Method”
NanoGaN’s gallium nitride substrates will help manufacturers make better lasers.
“A More Cerebral Cortex”
Intrinsity’s hot-rodded processor gives cellphones PC smarts. (more…)
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