Stop getting older

Theoretical Frameworks

Conceptual (Theoretical) Frameworks :

􀁺  Organizers
􀁺  The key ideas that organize and shape your thinking.

􀁺  Should grow logically out of your literature review.
􀁺  Should lead to your methodology and provide a rationale for why you are proceeding in a
     particular way.

􀁺 Conceptual frameworks attempt to connect to all aspects of inquiry (e.g. problem definition,      

    analysis).
􀁺 Conceptual frameworks should act like maps that give coherence to your inquiry.

􀁺 Explains key constructs and terms, introduces or clarifies any theoretical models
􀁺 Situates your work within prior theory and research on the question.
􀁺 Identifies the phenomena you proposeto analyze and the justification for studying them.

Hubble Looks Into the Depths of Space and Time

The Hubble Space Telescope has given us  the deepest view of space ever.

Called the extreme Deep Field, or XDF, it’s a composite of more than 2,000 photos taken by Hubble over 10 years.

“The XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen. XDF allows us to explore further back in time than ever before,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz, principal investigator of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2009 (HUDF09) program

Stages in the Research Process

Stages in the Research Process
Research is multi-stage iterative process involving a series of tasks. These typically take place in sequence but may occur out of order. We think of research as taking place in two realms, that of the information provider (where the researcher is 'getting' information) and that of the User (where the researcher is "using" information). "Getting" information can be divided into two phases: Discovery, and Retrieval. "Using" information can be subdivided into collation, analysis and re-presentation. In each stage, metadata about an information resource provides critical support for the research process.²⁶

Modification to scientific research

research and kids

Interesting research of ageing

Can we stop getting old - reverse ageing New research ...

Research measurement and evaluation

To date, much thinking about research measurement and evaluation has been
concentrated in the biomedical and health sciences. However, there is increasing
recognition that funders of public research in areas ranging from music to microbiology
or from economics to engineering—need to justify their expenditure and demonstrate
added value to the community. Furthermore, they need to be able to engage with
stakeholder communities in illustrating the research process as well as the outcomes of
research. The challenge facing funders to measure benefits from research is considerable.
This Policy Resource provides some insight into the issues involved and offers ways to
approach the objective

All funders of research—ranging from music to microbiology or from economics to engineering—need to be in a position to:
  
   • Justify public expenditure on research.
   • Demonstrate that their own research policies
     are effective, or at least informed by effective
     practice.
   • Be able to engage with stakeholder communities
     in illustrating the research process
     as well as the outcomes of research.

What is Wikipedia ?

So what is Wikipedia, and what’s the “story” behind it? If you’re not aware, Wikipedia is a new beast in the world, born in 2001. To a searcher, it acts exactly like an online “encyclopedia.” You type www.wikipedia.org into your browser. enter a topic, and get back an “article” about that topic (if one exists), precisely as in a “traditional” encyclopedia like the Britannica online. What differentiates Wikipedia from the traditional encyclopedia it is that its articles are not written by hired “experts” (the Britannica uses over 4,000 of them), but by anyone who chooses to write or contribute. Here’s the Wikipedia’s entry on “Wikipedia

Wikipedia (pronounced as either "week-ee-peedia or wick-ee-peedia") is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers with wiki software, meaning articles can be added or changed by nearly anyone. The project began on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It has steadily risen in popularity,[1] and spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews

But the power of the “wiki” technology that lies behind the Wikipedia, is that literally anybody who wants to can change or add to that original article, merely by hitting the “edit” button. In other words, on a wiki, everyone’s an editor. And this is what makes it, in its own words, “controversial”

It is fascinating to see how quickly a Wikipedia article emerges on a contemporary topic, such as Hurricane Katrina, often while the event is still happening. Someone writes a few lines, others add, and suddenly there are pages, pictures, etc. So, one beginning lesson for students using Wikipedia is to look at the number of changes and additions to a particular article and the number of authors. More may mean more reliable information  

Measurement Validity and Reliability

- Measurement validity isn’t only about whether respondents lie on the survey; responses may be inaccurate for lots of unintentional reasons.
 
- Measurement reliability is about the consistency of responses for specific individuals on
specific questions; re-tests are usually for a subset of the original sample and must be within a short time frame (e.g. 2 weeks) so that nothing changes in reality.
 
o Do not confuse test-retest reliability with a longitudinal study, in which surveys are
repeated after a long period of time and the expectation is that there will be changes
during this period.
 
o Do not confuse test-retest reliability with convergent validity, in which a survey
includes two or more different questions that measure the same variable and the
responses are compared for consistency

The Biological Framework

 Translational Research from Bench to Clinic

Research approaches to diagrams

ABOUT DIAGRAMS....... 

• Diagrams are human artifacts, constantly evolving to support human activity.
• They are “qualitative” in the sense that they have (to date) escaped mathematical formalization.

Why important role in research ?         
• They are a rich domain for research: 
    – Drawing lessons from human perception and reasoning 
    – As a well-understood class of representational model
    – As a source of novel computation techniques• Diagrams as external representations
• Diagrams as internal representations
    – mental representations (humans)
    –computational representations (machines)
• Range of schematically / representation taxonomy
• Diagrams as language
    – elements & configuration versus lexicon & syntax
• Diagrams as qualitative models of the world

Historical Cases of Unethical Research

The history of research ethics begins with the tragic history of research abuse by Nazi doctors during World War II. A total of sixteen German physicians practiced unethical medical experiments on Jews, gypsies, and political prisoners. In 1947, out of this horror, came the Nuremberg Code and other international codes of ethics written to protect research participants. Under this code, the physicians were convicted for crimes against humanity. This also led to standards in research requiring that subjects participate voluntarily and are informed of the risks of the research.

Next is the Stanley Milgram's experiment. Stanley Milgram was a psychologist from Yale University. He conducted a study on the conflict between obedience toward authority and ones personal conscious. He examined justification for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense was based on "obedience" and that they were just following their supervisor's orders.

This experiment demonstrated how people reacted toward an authority figure while giving an apparent electrical shock. In the experiment, so called "teachers" (who were unknown subjects of the experiment) were recruited by Milgram. They were asked

to administer an electrical shock of increased intensity to a "learner" for each mistake he

made during the experiment. The fictitious story given to these "teachers" was that the

experiment was exploring effects of punishment (for incorrect responses) on learning

behavior. The "teacher" was not aware that the "learner" in the study was an actor merely

faking discomfort as the "teacher" increased the intensity of the electric shocks. The

shocks were administered by the "teacher" starting at 15 volts. When the "learner" gave

an incorrect response, the volt would increase by 15 volts intervals. Some teachers went

to the maximum of 450 volts. At times the "teacher" questioned the experiment but

continued even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so. This

study raised many questions about how the subjects could bring themselves to administer

such high shocks. More important to our interests are the ethical issues it raised itself.

Some of the questions raised were:

1. What right does a researcher have to expose subjects to such stress?

2. What activities should be or not be allowed in marketing research?

3. Does the search for knowledge always justify such "costs" to subjects?

4. Who should decide such issues?

Besides this study, there were other experiments that also brought about awareness to the

issue of ethics.

In 1932, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a 40-year project administered by the US Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama. The American Government promised 400 men free treatment for bad blood which had become an epidemic in the county. The treatment was never given to the men and was in fact withheld. The study

sample was made up of poor African American men who were told that they had "bad

blood". These men did not receive standard treatment for syphilis even when penicillin

was available later during the study. The men in the study were not informed of the

research design and it's risks to them.

The Tuskegee Study symbolized the medical misconduct and blatant disregard for human rights that takes place in the name of science. The investigators were not mad scientists; rather they were government physicians, respected men of science, who published their reports of the study in medical journals. The subjects of the study bear witness to the premise that the burden of medical experimentation has historically been borne by those least able to protect themselves. The government doctors who participated in this study failed to obtain informed consent from the subjects. The study's unethical features did not come to light until 1972 when Jean Heller who broke the story. By this time, over one hundred of the infected men died and others suffered from serious syphilis related conditions. When a class action civil suit of $1.8 billion was filed against those who were involved in the study. The case never came to trial. Each participant only received $37,500 in damages, and the* heirs of the deceased received $15,000.

 

Brain based learning for kids for research approach

Kids doing a bit but still a lot I think...................

Post Dedicated To My Viewers

Lets discuss purpose of this blog.................... 

Putting newly acquired knowledge to use in refining your research question and the conceptualization of your variables and in developing an initial research design.

The work one use to do on research proposal provides the basis for developing a research design, that is, a plan for addressing the question you have posed. Your question points to a particular type of study, whether exploratory or explanatory. Your question points to a target population, the group of people you would study to address your question.Your question also points to the kinds of questions you would ask these people and the way you
might go about asking them. The research design is critical to your final proposal: not only must you convince the potential funder that the question is important, you must convince the funder that you’ve got a sound approach to answering the question.

For My viewers............

Thanks everyone for your support till now,hope your support will continue.

Please give your suggestion for improvement .

................................1000 clicks for my blog.................thanks ...... everyone.

Historical aspects of research ethics

Research vs Search

                                
The “tradition” of search is a relatively new one—certainly less than a decade old. Hard as it is to believe, it is only in the last couple of years that you can type whatever you are looking for into a little box and, wherever you happen to be, get all the information the world offers for free on that subject. The quantity of information is unbelievable. However the quality of that information is, in most cases, not particularly well-indicated.
Which is why we have “research”—a whole different animal from “search.”
important one, and was established precisely for the purpose of determining the “quality” of information. The research tradition encompasses why and how we cite our sources, what sources are considered “primary” versus “secondary,” what types and sources of information are considered more reliable, trustworthy or accurate, and many other things.
If our students don’t know or understand these differences it’s our job as educators to make sure they do. Kids need to know that while search involves just looking, research involves a whole discipline of behaviors. (What those behaviors are, if you don’t already know, can be found easily via search ☺ )
So far so good. However…
Assuming we ever did, we no longer live in clear-cut times. We live, rather, in blurry, super-fast-changing times. One of the most important things for all of us, young and old, to learn and do in these times and circumstances is to figure out how to continually adapt our ideas (and get used to the idea of adapting them)—even those that have long traditions behind them—to new conditions and technologies that emerge. The Wikipedia is only the first of a great many changes to come. But it’s a good place to begin to start thinking differently.