This comparison matrix of collaborative software was created in March 2008 and includes Alfresco, Plone, Sharepoint, Google Docs and various groupware platforms. “The purpose of this study is to analyze current technologies for Collaborative Working Environments (CWEs) and their trend in the future. The study is particularly focused on CWEs suitable for large-scale, multi-national organizations, such as the European Space Agency (ESA). In this study we select a list of state-of-the-art CWEs and review them based on a list of evaluation parameters characterizing the collaborative work in large-scale, multi-national, geographical distribution organizations.” Current and Future Technologies for Collaborative Working Environments study – Autocompwiki.
General
Research on psychokinesis
The following excerpt is from Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku, 2008. Kaku is a theoretical physicist long inspired by Star Trek, and has written an entire book on the plausibility of science fiction concepts like force fields, invisibility, teleportation, time travel and so on. For each concept, he divides them into three classes of impossibility: Class I impossibility: consistent with the known laws of physics and might be realized within the next century or so. Class II impossibility: lies at the edge of known physics and, if possible, might be invented for at least millenia. Class III impossibility: defies known laws of physics and would require a fundamental revision of our scientific knowledge in order to function. “One of the most rigorous, but also controversial, studies on psychokinesis was done at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Program at Princeton University, founded by Robert G. Jahn in...
Evidence-based recommendations on ‘Aging in the Community’
The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care funds a Medical Advisory Secretariat (MAS) that publishes systematic literature reviews on health issues with the potential for significantly improving health and/or reducing health care costs. In October 2008, MAS published their report: “A mega analysis of approaches to lengthening and maintaining people’s ability to Age in the Community. An evidence-based review of the literature identified the following four drivers of long-term care admission : Falls and fall-related injuries Urinary incontinence Dementia (patient and caregiver-focused interventions) Social isolation” MOHLTC – MAS – Aging in the Community. This is a beautiful example of a evidence-based literature review that could have a significant impact on community services. See the 5 page summary of conclusions and recommendations or the entire 373 page report.
Finding out what people really want
Here’s an entertaining talk by Malcolm Gladwell on market research and the limitations of approaches that ask people what they want (e.g., focus groups and interviews). Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce | Video on TED.com. The TED site has many fascinating talks, including one by Jonathan Haidt on the biological roots of morality and how liberals and conservatives differ in their moral principles; Philip Zimbardo on how ordinary people become monsters; Steven Pinker on violence; Hans Rosling on global indicators of health and poverty.
Lone Inventors as Sources of Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality? SSRN
This article was cited in the online MIT Sloan Management Review and is interesting because it addresses the benefits of collaboration in creative work. Collaboration is costly and there are lots of questions about whether the time it takes is worth its contribution. In the human services, large groups of collaborators may appear to be spinning their wheels. From the following article, it looks as though collaboration involving large and diverse teams may be effective in reducing the risks of doing something stupid, as well as increasing the chances of doing something smart – this could be relevant to other arenas besides technological breakthroughs: “How does collaboration influence creativity and, in particular, the invention of breakthroughs? Recent research has attempted to resolve this question by considering the variance of creative outcomes, implicitly assuming that greater probability of breakthroughs comes at the cost of greater probability of particularly poor outcomes. However, through an...
Slashdot | Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Now Final
“It has been going on nine years now, but finally there are formal standards for Web accessibility for technologies other than HTML. They ask that you start with the press release (lots of links), but regulars might be more entertained by the last time WCAG made the front page here. Many folks here will point out that web accessibility is old hat, and by implication this is hardly news, but if you do Web development for any government organization, you should expect that accessibility is a base requirement. The Section 508 standards are to be updated (relatively) soon too.” Slashdot | Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Now Final. It’s about time. These guidelines should apply to Canadian government organizations also. The Internet Look and Feel Guidelines published by the Government of Canada’s Treasury Board Secretariat refer to the old web accessibility guidelines, but I’m sure that developers could make...
Slashdot | Amazon Launches Public Data Sets To Spur Research
“Amazon just launched its Public Data Sets service (home). The project encourages developers, researchers, universities, and businesses to upload large (non-confidential) data sets to Amazon — things like census data, genomes, etc. — and then let others integrate that data into their own AWS applications. AWS is hosting the public data sets at no charge for the community, and like all of AWS services, users pay only for the compute and storage they consume with their own applications. Data sets already available include various US Census databases, 3-D chemical structures provided by Indiana University, and an annotated form of the Human Genome from Ensembl.” Slashdot | Amazon Launches Public Data Sets To Spur Research.
Using checklists to radically improve health outcomes
“The New Yorker is running a piece by Atul Gawande that starts by describing the everyday miracles that can be achieved in a modern medical intensive care unit, and ends by making a case for a simple and inexpensive way to save 28,000 lives per year in US ICUs, at a one-time cost of a few million dollars. This medical miracle is the checklist. Gawande details how modern medicine has spiraled into complexity beyond any person’s ability to track — and nowhere more so than in the ICU.” Slashdot | Saving 28,000 Lives a Year. More from the article: “A decade ago, Israeli scientists published a study in which engineers observed patient care in ICUs for twenty-four-hour stretches. They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks....
Sources of international policy research
Some new-ish data mining or search services for international indicators: “The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has launched a new internet-based data service for the global user community. It brings UN statistical databases within easy reach of users through a single entry point (http://data.un.org/) from which users can now search and download a variety of statistical resources of the UN System.” UNdata | about us. See http://data.un.org/ for the search page. Also see Gapminder which offers visualizations of complex information, including, in the following bubble chart, the relationship between national income and health:
Canadian Directors’ Duties are to Corporation as a Whole, not just Shareholders
Canadian boards of directors are accountable to more interests than just shareholders’, unlike US boards according to a recent decision from the Supreme Court. “Dec. 19, 2008 (Bloomberg) — Canadian directors’ primary duty is to do what’s best for their corporation, not stakeholders such as shareholders and bondholders, Canada’s highest court said in an explanation of its approval of BCE Inc.’s buyout. No principle of Canadian law says one set of interests, for example those of shareholders, should prevail over another, the Supreme Court of Canada said in a decision released today in Ottawa. … “The reasonable expectation of stakeholders is simply that the directors act in the best interests of the corporation,” six members of the court said in a 75-page ruling issued in all their names. … The decision contrasts with a U.S. standard set out in a 1985 case involving Revlon Corp. The Delaware Supreme Court found...
Effectiveness of research training using video-teleconference
From a recent article in Global Public Health that compared face to face training with videoconference-based training in Pakistan: “The developing countries are currently facing a double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Physician-scientists, trained in patient care and research skills are crucial in performing cutting-edge clinical research in the developing countries. A major unmet challenge has been the lack of local expertise and the increasing problem of ‘brain drain’. The current study was an effort to present and assess a model of research training to health-care professionals in Pakistan in order to increase the research skills. The objective of the current study was to assess the effectiveness of two different methods of research training. An epidemiologic research training workshop was offered to health-care professionals in Pakistan by face-to-face (F2F) and video-teleconferencing (VTC) methods. A total of 38 F2F and 18 VTC participants were included in the workshop which was...
Slashdot | Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers
Reported on Slashdot today: Exciting news for open access research! “Congress is expected to vote this week on a bill requiring investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to publish research papers only in journals that are made freely available within one year of publication. Until now, repeated efforts to legislate such a mandate have failed under pressure from the well-heeled journal publishing industry and some nonprofit scientific societies whose educational activities are supported by the profits from journals that they publish. Scientists assert that open access will speed innovation by making it easier for them to share and build on each other’s findings.” Slashdot | Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers.
Most published research findings are wrong
According to medical scholar John Ioannidis, most published research findings are wrong. “These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. “There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims,” Dr. Ioannidis said. “A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true”.” From Science Journal – WSJ.com. Dr. Ioannidis’s 2005 essay ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’ “remains the most downloaded technical paper that the journal PLoS Medicine has ever published”. The lesson from his research is that findings must be replicated in several different studies before the results are believed.
Scheduling meetings more quickly
Scheduling meetings take huge amounts of time for most organizations, especially when external people are involved (like Board members, volunteers and colleagues). it can take days of back-and-forth emails narrowing down on possible times and dates. There are a few services available now that attempt to simplify and automate scheduling processes by offering attendees choices of different times, automatically selecting the best times for everyone, and synchronizing with Outlook and/or Google calendars. I haven’t tested any of these yet, but I’ve read favourable mentions in a couple of discussion groups. Most of them are free, or offer free versions. They may charge more for features like synchronization and corporate branding. I’ve excerpted from their web sites below. Timebridge (www.timebridge.com) “With TimeBridge’s one-step scheduling you select attendees, propose meeting times and send a meeting invitation. TimeBridge does the rest— collects everyone’s availability and selects the best time. Everyone gets a confirmation...
Online counselling to youth
Good news – online counseling is getting some serious attention. “A new training program at the University of Toronto will teach counselors how to reach out over the Internet to support children and youth in crisis.” From University of Toronto — News@UofT — U of T to train cyber counsellors (Jul 4/07). The program will be carried out in a collaboration between the Faculty of Social Work and the Kids Help Phone service, focusing on children and youth, and addressing issues that youth may prefer to raise anonymously. The program takes a cautious approach to the counseling relationship, though: “Student counselors, with supervisory support, review the questions that children and teens post to a public web forum, then create and post their responses. Youth browsing the site are able to read the questions that other kids are asking and they can see the counselors’ answers.” Good start – hopefully they...
- Extremely effective method of health care - weekly home visiting?http://t.co/AR4FUPx9oM
- The tiresome fantasy of good old fashioned food http://t.co/QfHsgSPdXo
- Experiment in Oregon Gives Medicaid Very Local Roots http://t.co/JmT1QT5sD5
- Does Money Really Affect Motivation? A Review of the Research http://t.co/RuwzFbpqL1)
- Get Rid of the Performance Review - bogus and counterproductive?http://t.co/GuZT8a4HzO
- Modern Female Eunuch - the historical roles and advantages of eunuchs (and testosterone) http://t.co/j48n75QUeI
- Open access: The true cost of science publishing in open access journals http://t.co/qOfeW7YqpM
- How companies and countries lose their data http://t.co/jP1ZiUMCPT @skgreen
- How Nonprofits Prove Their Worth - could evaluation show program is ineffective? If not, it's not credible http://t.co/p2FQsE0Qk2
- Dirty Little Secret of Project Management - Harvard Business. Most projects have no idea when they will finish. http://t.co/8iioJre77m