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Hello Nature Index readers, Mentoring, whether it's part of a PhD candidate-supervisor relationship or something more informal, can give young researchers a tremendous advantage in their career. This week, we feature stories that explore the qualities that render mentorship so valuable, plus some red flags to watch out for. Also this week, a sobering look at the gender imbalance in senior career stages. | ||||||||||||||||||
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The under-representation of women at senior levels in science is stark in this visualization, which appeared in a 2020 paper led by Leslie Rissler, a biologist at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). | ||||||||||||||||||
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The analysis is based on 15 years of data from the NSF's Survey of Doctorate Recipients, which tracks individuals with a US research doctoral degree in a science, engineering, or health field. The fields seen here are social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE); biological sciences (BIO); geosciences (GEO); computer and information science and engineering (CISE); engineering (ENG); and mathematical and physical sciences (MPS). | ||||||||||||||||||
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Ah, conference buffets. Remember them? As we reported in October, conference organizers have been struggling to adapt to the pandemic-precipitated demise of these professional in-person gatherings. This week, our colleagues at The Scholarly Kitchen have been thinking about what has been lost and how virtual scientific conferences might be re-imagined to deliver the best value. Networking and deal-making are among the casualties in the shift to on-screen get-togethers (strangely, the buffet isn't mentioned); on the upside, not needing to travel means barriers to participation (expense, time) are reduced, so a wider spectrum of researchers can potentially attend. But the Indian government was having none of it. The Hindu reports that under orders issued in January, researchers were required to get prior clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs to participate in any online international seminar or conference that might touch on "India's internal matters". This included "political, scientific, technical, commercial, personal [subjects] with provisions for sharing data in any form". Happily, the order has been withdrawn after protests from peak scientific bodies to the effect that such bureaucratic overreach would hold back the country's scientific progress and capacity-building. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Mentors: The good, the bad, and what to consider when choosing one
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Why young researchers are key to global COVID-19 exit strategy
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Hello Nature Index readers, The pandemic has tested the limits of research and innovation systems worldwide, and young researchers are feeling the pressure. This vulnerable group is also highly valuable, according to a new OECD report on trends that have emerged from the crisis. Also this week, why some peer-reviewers are softening their approach, and a breakdown by country of blood types. | ||||||||||||||||||
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This heat map, created by Reddit user takeasecondy, reveals the most common blood types in 50 countries. Peru and the Democratic Republic of the Congo stand out, reporting 70% and 60% of the population, respectively, as having O+ blood type. Universal donors are those with an O- blood type, as their donation can be used in transfusions for any blood type. View the underlying data. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Two appraisals of the impact of the pandemic caught our eye this week. One, a study in The BMJ, looks at why an index of countries' pandemic preparedness, which put the United States and the UK at the top before COVID-19 hit, turned out to be so wrong. They found the index was biased towards high-income countries, paid insufficient attention to the role of political leadership and geographic factors, and failed to assess the capacity of national health systems, among other reasons. Meanwhile, The Chronicle of Higher Education Trends Report 2021 considers how the higher-education landscape will be reshaped by the pandemic. It predicts wealthy institutions will emerge relatively unscathed, but cash-strapped public universities will have reduced offerings, more tightly focused on job outcomes and taught by faculty whose jobs are less secure. Ways of monitoring student health and performance added in the pandemic are here to stay, while the pipeline of academic researchers may suffer lasting damage. On the bright side, we may be going through a "watershed moment in the history of higher education and race." | ||||||||||||||||||
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You have been sent this email because you have signed up to receive the Nature Index newsletter. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. Nature | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Nature | Shiroyama Trust Tower 5F, 4-3-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan Nature Research, part of Springer Nature. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved. |
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
25 of the most talked-about recent papers in the natural sciences
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Hello Nature Index readers, Amid the challenges of the pandemic, researchers have published important advances in areas such as quantum computing, superconductivity, and ageing. We look back at some of these stand-out studies, ranked by Altmetric attention score, which measures coverage from media outlets and social media channels. Of course, attention isn't always a positive thing - these lists include two controversial studies that drew public criticism, one related to autism and the other to AI. Also this week, a video that explores the various mutations of COVID-19. | ||||||||||||||||||
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The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus seems to be acquiring mutations at a rapid rate. Sara Reardon and Dominic Smith from Scientific American explain what the new variants are, how they arise and are transmitted, and what they could mean for the new vaccines. The clip below features the N501Y mutation, estimated to have first emerged in the UK in September 2020, and the E484K mutation, first identified in South Africa. Watch the full video. | ||||||||||||||||||
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You can lead a reader to an article, but how do you make them click? This study, written up by Science, confirms that your paper getting some attention on Twitter doesn't mean that anyone is actually reading it. A review of 1.1 million Twitter links to published research articles found that half drew no clicks and only about 10% received more than 10. So even if your Altmetric score says your article has reached an audience of millions, the vast majority of this audience will probably do no more than scan a tweet about it, if that. In the case of preprints, even those who go so far as to read a journalistic write-up of your research are unlikely to appreciate that it's not been verified, because only three in five media outlets bother to mention that fact, according to this study in Health Communication, written up by Times Higher Education. The general lack of understanding of the scientific process has been a constant lament among scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the hope that the crisis will lead to better understanding seems a forlorn one. This working paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research looks at 2018 survey data from individuals who were exposed to epidemics in their country of residence between the "impressionable" ages of 18-25 in 138 countries. An epidemic's effect "significantly reduces trust in scientists and in the benefits of their work," the authors conclude. This distrust translates into lower compliance with health-related policies, such as lower rates of vaccination in children. The authors say a key reason for the reduced trust is that people with little knowledge of the scientific process see scientists disagreeing with each other, or disputing the findings of studies, and interpret these exchanges as indicators of widespread bias or dishonesty in the scientific community. It appears science has more work to do to explain itself. | ||||||||||||||||||
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You have been sent this email because you have signed up to receive the Nature Index newsletter. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. Nature | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Nature | Shiroyama Trust Tower 5F, 4-3-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan Nature Research, part of Springer Nature. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved. |