SCIENCE MAPPING IN EGYPT

SCIENCE MAPPING IN EGYPT

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A science mapping is being undertaken in Egypt today, which aims to know and concur benefits from the thousands of PhD theses done by Egyptians inside and outside the country.

It has been lamented that Egyptians generated around 50,000 PhD theses and spent millions of dollars on the research undertakings, yet only the shelves benefit from the findings. Sad indeed, as researches must go beyond filing them in shelves and finding practical benefits as much as possible.

The lament is legitimate, as I find a parallelism in the Philippines where I taught in the University of the Philippines for almost two (2) decades. I was among those who advocated for a practical side to the sciences, so that research findings won’t just sleep in the library shelves. Same should hold true for Masteral and Doctoral theses.

Below is an update report on the current mapping undertakings in Egypt. Hopefully, other developing countries would follow suit from Egypt’s experience.

[Philippines, 17 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/egypt-completes-stocktake-of-last-20-years-of-phds.html

Egypt completes stocktake of last 20 years of PhDs

16 August 2011

[CAIRO] Egypt has compiled a database of almost 50,000 PhD theses that Egyptians have published in the past 20 years, in an effort to understand how much home-grown science is languishing unused on library shelves.

The Science Age Society (SAS) launched the database earlier this month (4 August) and will soon make it available on its website. It lists all the work done by Egyptians, inside or outside the country, as part of their PhD degrees from 1990 to 2009.

The database is the first stage of a project to map Egyptian research that is seen as essential for reinvigorating the science sector in the country.

"Our target for the Science Map Project is to contribute to building a scientific base in Egypt built on the statistical evidence," Kadria Said, executive manager of the project, told SciDev.Net.

The project is a collective effort started in August 2010 between the SAS and the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.

"We weren't able to find any computerised database archives of academic researchers in Egypt so we began thinking of building a database that could be considered a reference for every researcher to help him both to be aware of the historical effort done in his speciality and not to repeat it again," said Hassan Abol-Enein, SAS head and director of Urology and Nephrology Center in Mansoura.

The project found 49,853 PhD theses written by Egyptians, including 2,898 theses from outside Egypt.

"All this research cost our country millions of dollars and yet Egypt gained no real benefits from them," Abol-Enein told SciDev.Net.

The next phase, which depends on winning government funding, will be to assess any benefits derived from these theses against their cost.

In the third phase, the group hopes to map all of Egypt's science research centres, categorising them and documenting their facilities.

Ali Hebeish, president of the Egyptian Syndicate of Scientific Professions, said the project is "a good start towards developing science research in Egypt, if we hope to regain Egyptian academic prestige".

He said that up to three-quarters of Egyptian researchers do their work in an academic context, for example to obtain a PhD, compared with 15 per cent of US researchers.

Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb, director of the nanotechnology department at Nile University, said: "There is no networking or coordinating between Egyptian researchers. So having such a database, which would coordinate and ease the communication between research teams, is a very helpful effort."

But the database should be only the start, he said: "We don't need abstract statistics; we need to form networking and final recommendations after the end of this project".

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs & website anytime!

Social Blogs:

IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com

UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com

Wisdom/Spiritual Blogs:

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com

Poetry & Art Blogs:

ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com

Mixed Blends Blogs:

@MULTIPLY: http://efdargon.multiply.com

@SOULCAST: http://www.soulcast.com/efdargon

Website:

PROF. ERLE FRAYNE ARGONZA: http://erleargonza.com

REFORMING CHINA’S CHEMISTRY

REFORMING CHINA’S CHEMISTRY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Chemistry reward system as it is done in China is one that has met criticisms from the scientific community itself. The impact of chemistry journal publications has become the greatest factor in rewarding a chemist, a fact that has caused chagrin on many quarters.

As a member of the scientific community in the Philippines, I am truly appalled by such a situation. Pure science must be rewarded on the basis of the merits of the research methodology and findings, a standard that has been in place in all sciences—biological, physical, medical, social. Eyebrows can raise and tempers risen if journal impact would be the basis of rewarding a research, as this reduces scientists to showbiz persons which they are not.

Below is the intriguing report on the chemistry situation in China and the need to reform the sector.

[Philippines, 16 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/china-must-reform-how-it-evaluates-chemistry-research-1.html

China must reform how it evaluates chemistry research

Source: Nature

17 August 2011

China must quickly reform how it evaluates chemistry research, to encourage high-quality work — not heaps of published papers, argues Nai-Xing Wang, professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The country's administrators tend to judge the quality of scientific research solely by journal impact factors, Wang says. Articles published in journals with a high impact factor are considered excellent. Research proposals — and the referees who evaluate them — are judged based on the impact factor of previous publications, and salaries are calculated using information on the impact factor of published work.

This is a "very crude approach" to evaluating scientific research, says Wang. One problem is that impact factors measure how frequently the average paper is cited in a particular period, so the more popular the research area the easier it is to achieve a high impact factor.

"If a high impact factor is the only goal of chemistry research, then chemistry is no longer science. It is changed to a field of fame and game," he writes.

Having this narrow view of chemistry is damaging in other ways too. It encourages chemists to choose easy research topics that can be written up quickly, or to split a project into smaller parts for publications.

These practices are not unique to China, but are particularly serious there, says Wang. And halfway through the International Year of Chemistry, it is time for the country to move forward.

One solution could be to judge researchers on the number of citations a paper receives two years after publication, "to see whether their work stands the test of time". Pushing chemists to publish in international journals is another option, but the work must be substantial, not just well presented. And pure chemistry should not be overlooked in light of applied research.

Link to full article in Nature

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs & website anytime!

Social Blogs:

IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com

UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com

Wisdom/Spiritual Blogs:

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com

Poetry & Art Blogs:

ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com

Mixed Blends Blogs:

@MULTIPLY: http://efdargon.multiply.com

@SOULCAST: http://www.soulcast.com/efdargon

Website:

PROF. ERLE FRAYNE ARGONZA: http://erleargonza.com

FORESTRY EDUCATION & TRAINING UPDATE

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Forestry education is among those human development engagements that are urgently being delivered today.

A study done in Kenya, by Temu A & Kiwia A, examined how future forestry education can respond to expanding societal needs. The study is summarized below.

[04 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Eldis database reports.]

==========================================
Future forestry education. Responding to expanding societal needs
Authors: Temu,A.; Kiwia,A.Produced by: World Agroforestry Centre (2008)

Forestry education in recent years has largely failed to adequately respond to the dynamics in forestry practice, the demands of the job market and the challenges of new global forestry paradigms.

This policy brief consolidates recommendations of the first global workshop on forestry education held in September 2007, at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya. Attended by 85 participants from 29 countries representing Africa, Asia, North and South America and Europe, the workshop deliberated on vital issues for guiding, coordinating and linking relevant institutions and stakeholders in the process of transforming forestry education.

They agreed that:

• increased investment in forestry capacity is imperative
  improved coordination mechanisms are key at national, regional and global scales to reinforce the quality and content of forestry education and training
  
• enhanced harmonisation of forestry with other related sectors is needed in order to achieve synergy of strategies and actions
  regional and global mechanisms for collaboration in forestry education be established and sustained
  

The brief asserts that major changes in forestry education, research and practice are urgently needed to improve relevance and popularise forest science, technologies and practices. Obvious implications for neglecting forestry education are noted as:

• schools of forestry will continue to produce inadequate graduates, lacking the required expertise to handle the emerging complex societal and environmental challenges
  
• forestry professional ethics could deteriorate further, leading to indiscriminate destruction of natural resources - the backbone of human livelihood
  
• due to the link between agriculture and forestry, the destruction of forests may lead to water flow challenges impacting on food security
  our knowledge and capacity to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change will remain weak, further accelerating global warming, flash floods and droughts
  
• further losses of biodiversity will deny the world of important plants and animals with the potential to solve health and other problems
  

Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=39445&em=240908&sub=enviro

WHY FILIPINO FOOD IS SALTY: JOLLIBEE, ANCIENT SCIENCE, LEMURIANS

Erle Frayne Argonza

Filipino taste is peculiar in that it loves salty food. One who is accustomed to less salty food, such as those cooked in the USA and Japan, will easily recognize the peculiarity of Filipino food.
One is free to think of the cultural behavior as either good or bad, depending on where you are in the health & wellness scale. If you are in a hot region where water is relatively scarce, salty food may serve you well as the salt can help in retaining the body’s water and prevent dehydration. On the other hand, if one suffers from perennial hypertension, salty food could be bad.
Take a look at the Jollibee hamburger. Why do you think is this burger, which doesn’t taste like the originals (European/American), did good in the Philippine market? So good did this burger start off in its early origins that the love for it spread like wildfire, and had already crossed the borders to as far as the USA. Jollibee Corp itself is now a global corporation, thanks to people’s love for its burger.
Packaging has got nothing to do with it. Branding could possibly explain it, most specially the mascot of a (a) ‘jolly bee’ that signifies the happy side of Filipinos (jolly) and (b) the capacity to do things impossible even under the most rigorous circumstances (bumble bee’s wings are too small to carry it theoretically, yet it can fly! Impossible!).
But no, those marketing strategy things of packaging and branding are merely secondary. The real reason is that the originator of the burger, Mr. Tony Tan himself, was able to capture the Filipino taste in the burger, resulting to a Filipinized or salty burger. This successful consumer story is a case of indigenizing foreign food so as to suit the local taste and, ergo, create a big market for the product.
Now, the deeper question is, what explanation can be advanced to explain the salty taste of Filipinos? This is the tougher question which is a good problem for students of social and cultural theories.
One explanation could be that ancient science—of the Lemurians, the forefather of Malayo-Polynesians including Filipinos—could have resulted to prescribing food that are salty. The Philippines, located near the equator, always exudes humid and hot climate throughout the year, save for the few months of rainy monsoon season.
Salt, mixed with the proper diet of fish, vegetables, and fruits, may have served well the need of the islanders to preserve water in the body. No matter how abundant the archipelago may be in waters, surrounded as it is by oceans and seas, it is hot and sultry almost the year round. And so the ancient islanders, who were the survivors of past cataclysms (including the ones that destroyed the Lemurian continent), easily recalled from their collective memory those bits of science that could make them survive in a drastically changed terrain and climatic condition.
Nice thought for the day. Meantime, for those who haven’t tasted the Jollibee burger, please try to savor one yourself. Enjoy your meal!

[Writ 03 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]