Research Blogs
All Graduate Junction researchers get a mini blog to share their day to day experiences. Log in to see who is posting and make contact.
I started as the new Acradia Fellow at the Cambridge University Library. My aim for the next ten-weeks is to use the Graduate Junction 'esther@arcadia' blog as a personal space to keep interested researchers updated with my progress and findings. I would love it to become a space to obtain comments and feedback to my ideas as they develop over the next week and I would really like to involve the experiences and thoughts of other early-career researchers into this unique project. The official Arcadia Progamme website details further information about the aims of the larger Arcadia project and also of the work of previous Arcadia Fellows, who's work I hope to be commenting on in future posts. The official Arcadia blog can be found here
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Chatterbox Challenge (CBC) is an annual contest held over the Internet that compares artificial conversational entities - ACE, across categories including 'best system'. The contest is loosely based on Alan Turing's notion to gauge whether a machine can think, conveyed through its answers to questions from a judge. The judge is not allowed to hear, see or touch the ACE, and must use their own interrogation technique via text-based questioning to assess. The 2010 CBC contest is looking for a small number of judges for this year's contest beginning March 15th. Judging requires access to an Internet-enabled computer. Judging is fun and also allows an insight into a broad area including the fields of natural language study, psychology, philosophy, software engineering and computer science. Having participated in the 2005 CBC contest, I can say it was a lot of fun, and allowed for a poster presentation at the Natural Language Understanding and Cognitive Science workshop, part of ICEIS 2006 (http://www.iceis.org/iceis2006/) If anyone is interested to act as a judge in the 2010 Chatterbox Challenge, please contact the Sponsor on support@chatterboxchallenge.com For more information on the contest, please see CBC's site here: http://www.chatterboxchallenge.com/index.php Huma
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Through my academic and research work, I have found research topics of interest to me, but have had difficulty finding a central venue through which to search for grants. The fact that I do not have a Ph.D. and have no desire to get one makes the task of finding an appropriate research grant that much more challenging. Another daunting element is the lack of applied research grants out there. If my main interest it to conduct applied research as the first step in identifying needs and improvements to under-served and disenfranchised communities, is the only option really to do a doctorate at the risk of getting stuck in the Ivory Tower, and becoming disconnected from community work?
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A graduate student approached me about my published articles and asked how I was able to refine my articles to the professional publishable level. Her seemingly general query about publishing seemed to ask a more poignant question about identifying a central thesis in the article that adds to existing research on the topic. After completing my master's at the University of Wollongong, I found that I was better able to identify interesting analytical pieces of a broader subject because of one research methods class. The research lessons in this class were pretty basic, but one that I acquired from the class, which proved to be invaluable to my writing, was the section that focused on the literature review. My understanding of research methods classes in American universities is that the literature review is not taught until the doctorate level. I think the timing is belated. Students can certainly start learning how to write the literature review at the master's level, and can be incorporated in a research design course. For myself, the literature review suddenly made my course papers more interesting and gave me a rather broad perspective on the body of research out there. The literature review process, as I later discovered, also gave me the thinking tools to see assessable criteria of needed projects in the real world. Apparently, the learning from the literature review also proved to be invaluable in the professional planning sense.
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Graduate Junction is putting out a CALL FOR ARTICLES AND HANDY HINTS for its forthcoming Toolbox publications. This newsletter is a really great opportunity to really get involved in the community and help your peers and share experiences. We welcome all your comments and contributions however big or small. So get scribbling! See the Blog for more details
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How best could one answer these question in pursuit of a postgraduate study in the field of Public health? 1. Describe the most significant professional achievements and your reasons for viewing at as such: 2. Why, at this particular juncture in your career, do you feel it is important to pursue additional study? 3. How will you use the knowledge and skills acquired through your course of study to address the development needs of your country? What are your future career plans? Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years?
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An article in today's Independent highlights new proposals to cut government funding for PhDs in 'lower performing' UK universities. Read the full story at the Independent website: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/postgraduate-study/battle-for-doctoral-funds-should-government-cash-for-phds-be-restricted-to-the-best-universities-1895232.html
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Official website for Turing100 is now live here: http://www.kevinwarwick.com/turing100.htm The Turing100 team will stage a special Turing test contest in Alan Turing's centenary year - 2012. Creator of the eponymous 'can a machine think?' experiment, the Turing test contest will be hosted at the place where the 20th century mathematician broke codes during WWII: Bletchley Park: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ Become a fan of Alan Turing Year here: www.facebook.com/pages/The-Alan-Turing-Year/199853901070
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Details for the 2010 Writing Across Boundaries Workshop are now available on the Graduate Junction Blog or online @ www.dur.ac.uk/writingacrossboundaries
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A new Writing on Writing article has been added to the Graduate Junction's Writing Across Boundaries section. Read ten great tips to get you writing. by Harvey Molotch, Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University.
