Agri-activism volunteer (Wales)

mregadio

One position for Agri-Activism activities in Wales between 17th July and 9th October 2017.

Agri-Activism placement is a great opportunity to learn all about sustainable and community agriculture, meet other activists and visit beautiful coastline of Wales.

Travel, accommodation and food costs costs will be covered by Friends of the Earth Europe throughout the placement.

Video with a great insight into Gerald’s farm day to day life, and what the project is about here:

More information and how to apply here: http://www.foeeurope.org/yfoee /agri-activism-opportunity-201 7

Science4Refugees Workshop: European Research with a view to integrating refugees

mregadio

Next 15-16 March 2017, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation will organise the Science4Refugees (S4R) workshop “European Research with a view to integrating refugees” in Brussels (AREA 42. 46A, rue des Palais, 1030). The workshop will bring together researchers and refugees with an academic research profile and representatives of institutions to discuss ways of successfully integrating refugees into the culture of the host institutions. The objective of the S4R workshop is to facilitate this integration by learning from and informing about existing matchmaking mechanisms at national level; good practices to optimise the communication process between refugees and potential employers; and to stimulate an open dialogue between all stakeholders involved, thereby boosting refugee researcher careers.

Seats are limited. Registration HERE. Travel arrangements can only be accommodated if you are travelling from an European country.

Career Workshop 2017

mregadio

“With the right ingredients, life seems to form very quickly” Mark Harrison

mregadio

The origin of life started much earlier than scientists thought. The 19th of October 2015,  a research supporting that our planet’s first form of life was originated at least 4.1 billion years ago was published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That means 300 million years earlier than previous research suggested, shortly after, almost instantaneously, the planet formed (4.54 billion years ago) and prior to the massive bombardment of the inner solar system that formed the moon’s large craters (3.9 billion years ago).

Scientists had long believed the Earth was dry and desolate during that time period. However, the new research, carried out in UCLA, showed that the planet was probably much more like it is today than previously thought. Simple life appears to have formed quickly and it would evolve to photosynthesize after many millions of years.

The scientists identified and revealed primary inclusions in a mineral, namely dark specks contained in zircons, that were analyzed with Raman spectroscopy. The zircons had a specific ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 that indicates the presence of photosynthetic life. The graphite is older than the zircon containing it, being the latter 4.1 billion-years old.

Video: Dark specks contained in zircons.

Read more here

15 PhD positions on the Resource Recovery

mregadio

The EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie MSCA-ETN Project NEW-MINE (Resource Recovery Through Enhanced Landfill Mining) is looking for candidates to conduct funded PhDs on the Resource Recovery Through Enhanced Landfill Mining. The project lies on a consortium of high profile universities, research institutions and companies located in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and UK.

Information and applications can be found in the website of new-mine.

How to build the visibility of your work and manage your reputation

mregadio

Nowadays, it is important to create awareness of or share materials relating to your work. The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers, so-called ‘Open access’, has been a core strategy in the European Commission to improve knowledge circulation and thus innovation. It is illustrated in particular by the general principle for open access to scientific publications in Horizon 2020 and the pilot for research data.

Ways to aware and share your work vary from conversations with colleagues to multimedia sharing sites (e.g., Slideshare or YouTube). Other strategies include:

  • Social networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
  • Discussion lists
  • Academic networking and profile sites (Table 1).
  • Subject-based websites and repositories (e.g., arXiv, SSRN)
  • Your own blog and website
  • Posts on other blogs and websites
  • Conferences and meetings
  • Institutional websites and repositories

Figure from http://redrisestudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10

Table 1. Academic networking and profile sites.
ResearchGate, EPrints Services, Eartharxiv
ResearcherID
Mendeley
Academia.edu
Google Scholar
ImpactStory
Elsevier’s “My Research Dashboard”
Loop
Kudos
ORCID

The benefits of using academic network and creating profiles in such webpages (Table 1) are numerous. You can discover relevant publications, share links to your/other publications, discuss and comment on relevant research, find jobs, find collaborators, find applicants for a project proposal, track metrics relating to research performance, help people find and contact you, find and contact other people, post files such as your publications or other research outputs… In general, these web-design platforms allow you to assemble and create information help search filtering, share information to drive discovery, and measure and monitor the effect of these activities.

Tools for improving both the visibility of your work and your reputation are listed below:

  • Presenting at conferences
  • Blogging
  • Communicating via social media
  • Consultancy
  • Industry engagement
  • Teaching
  • Winning funding / grants
  • Winning awards / prizes
  • Community contribution (e.g. activities for a professional body)
  • Editorship
  • Publication
  • Peer-reviewing
  • Commercializing your research / registering your designs / patents
  • Collaboration
  • Mentoring
  • Engaging with the media
  • Community contribution (e.g. activities for a professional body)

In addition, Kudos (a web-based service for researchers that aims to help them and their institutions to maximize the visibility and impact of their published articles) is undertaking a survey to learn about researchers’ behaviour, experiences and expectations in relation to building the visibility of their work, and managing their reputation. Results from this survey will be presented at forthcoming conferences (including UKSG and FORCE 16) and on Kudos’ blog in due course. Any researcher can complete the survey here and will enter a prize draw for an online shopping voucher of £100.