'Free' Research
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4 January 2012 David Willetts has set out proposals for major multi-national corporations to join forces with a foreign or British university and establish new graduate-only research institutions in the UK. The idea is part of an eight-step action plan to “high-tech growth” set out in a speech today by Mr Willetts, the universities and science minister, who said the government wanted Britain to become the “best place in the world to do science”.
THE: Aim for the stars in science
David Willetts has set out proposals for major multi-national corporations to join forces with a foreign or British university and establish new graduate-only research institutions in the UK by Jan 4
5 januari 2012 - What to do if your universities do not excel as much as you like but you think you do not have a penny to spend? UK Prime Minister David Cameron found the answer: fostering science campuses to be built by alliances of universities and private enterprises. University budgets in the UK have been stripped of a considerable amount of funds ever since David Cameron's government took charge in 2010. £200m had to be cut in the higher education sector.
scienceguide: Penniless UK wants free research excellence
De opleiding lucht- en ruimte¬vaarttechniek is de eerste die de plannen ten uitvoer brengt. De studielast moet met 15 procent krimpen. Maar de studenten zijn bang dat dit ten koste gaat van de kwaliteit van hun opleiding.
Delft maakt opleidingen makkelijk
Universities desperate in aging Japan
10 januari 2012 - Japan’s young population is massively shrinking. Universities try to keep up enrolment levels by lowering entrance requirements – until the sun starts orbiting Earth according to Astronomy students. What happens to a country if it grows old? This is a major question for policymakers all over Europe. By 2050, it is estimated that the median European citizen will be 52,3 years old by 2050.
The title of this book may scare some readers away. They shouldn't let it. Even as it takes an uncompromising stance on the need for scientific integrity, Science in the Private Interest is carefully researched and presents arguments from all sides of the issues under discussion. Case studies sprinkled throughout the book demonstrate that the main characters -- universities, large companies, and some academicians -- at times cloak monetary and career-advancing priorities in scientific clothing. Yet most of the pages of the book are not exposes of biomedical wrongdoing but explanations of the laws and regulations that govern how academia and industry interrelate.
Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research?
Prof. dr. H. Radder - Medewerkers M-S - Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Principal research topics are: scientific observation and experimentation; scientific realism; historical, epistemological and ontological issues concerning (scientific) concepts; the normative and political significance of (recent) science and technology; the commodification of academic research. (1) Hans Radder, ed., The commodification of academic research: science and the modern university (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). (2) -------, ‘Hoe herwin je “de ziel van de wetenschap”? Academisch onderzoek en universitaire kenniseconomie’, Academische Boeken Gids , nr. 75 (juli 2009), 8-13. (digitally available at: http://www.academischeboekengids.nl/do.php?a=show_visitor_artikel&id=836 ).
This is a welcome and timely collection on a topic of increasing importance for our understanding of contemporary science. Unlike Philip Mirowski and Esther-Mirjam Sent's Science Bought and Sold (2002), which was predominantly a collection of previously published essays, all of the essays are new and written largely with knowledge of each other (having been originally presented at a 2007 conference on the topic). The authors take a range of perspectives, drawing from philosophy of science, research ethics, and political theory, and examine key topics in depth, including patents on academic research, data exchange, and biomedical research. What results is a rich and subtle tapestry on the relationship between the private sector and academic scientific research, a central aspect of modern knowledge generation.
HansRadder(ed.) Commodification of Academic Research: Science and the Modern University - Reviewed Heather Douglas
Academische Boekengids
In de afgelopen jaren is een groeiende stroom kritische publicaties verschenen over de dominantie van markt en management in de universitaire wetenschap. Maar wat veelal ontbreekt, is een concreet perspectief op verandering: hoe kom je van een kritische diagnose tot een effectieve therapie? De universiteit is een bedrijf geworden, de rector magnificus een topmanager (met bijbehorend salaris), de wetenschapper een kennisproducent en de student een rondshoppende consument. En net als in het bedrijfsleven gaat het niet primair om kwaliteit maar om kwantiteit: inverdiend geld, aantal publicaties, marktaandeel studenten, aantal afgestudeerden enzovoort. Wat teloorgegaan is, is kritisch denken, een intrinsiek waarheidsethos en een op persoonlijke inzet en kwaliteit berustende professionaliteit. Zo kan men de kern van het boek van René Boomkens, van de door Chris Lorenz geredigeerde bundel en van de KNAW-rede van Frits van Oostrom kort weergeven.Mogen academische onderzoekers de industrie dienen? Die onverminderd actuele vraag werd aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw relevant. Het beeld van de universiteit als ivoren toren stamt van eind negentiende eeuw. Maar lang bleek het ideaal van ‘zuivere’ wetenschap, los van enig maatschappelijk nut, niet houdbaar.
Het spanningsveld tussen wetenschap en industrie: risico’s van belangenverstrengeling - Nieuws en Agenda - Universiteit van Amsterdam
Biland: Heredity, genetics and eugenics in Germany and the Netherlands, 1863-1945 As of March 2012, Pim Huijnen works as a postdoctoral researcher on the NWO/CLARIN funded Biland project. This project focuses on the identity, intensity and location of discourses about heredity, genetics and eugenics in Dutch and German news media between 1863 and 1940.
UvA: drs. P. (Pim) Huijnen
UvA: prof.dr. A.J. (Anne) Kox
Ik ben als wetenschapshistoricus verbonden aan de faculteiten Geesteswetenschappen en Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica. Een meer uitgebreide persoonlijke pagina vindt u via de verwijzing hieronder.Wheatley Medal for UvA-professor Anne Kox - Faculty of Science - University of Amsterdam
The 2009 Wheatley Medal of the Society of Indexers has been awarded to the members of the Einstein Papers Project, for the indexes in volume 11 of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (edited by A J. Kox et al., Princeton University Press, 2009). Anne Kox, professor of history of science at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, has acted as lead editor for this volume. The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein is one of the most ambitious publishing ventures in the documentation of the history of science.EcoLabs under Threat: Corporate Encroachment of 'eco' and 'labs' - EcoLabs - blog
EcoLabs is a small non-profit environmental education organisation based in London. We are engaged in research, design and visual communication of complex ideas and ecological literacy. We have been doing this work under the name EcoLabs - the ecological literacy initiative since 2006.Jody Boehnert: G20: Nature doesn't do bailouts
There is a broad consensus across the political spectrum that we need to reduce carbon emissions . We finally agreed on this basic first step. Now, if we could only get past the next big hurdle soon enough, we might just have a chance of stopping the current trajectory: business as usual, which is driving full steam ahead into climate disaster.A decade ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke helped start the Bendheim Center for Finance on campus. He will return to Princeton on Friday to commemorate the center’s 10th anniversary. In its first 10 years, it became what The Wall Street Journal calls “Bernanke’s Bubble Laboratory,” producing some of the best research on the formation of economic bubbles. The center, which offers undergraduates, masters students and Ph.D. candidates an interdisciplinary approach to finance, has graduated nearly 1,300 undergraduates and 161 masters of finance students since beginning in 1999 and 2001, respectively.