My good Estonian friend Birgit Oidram had to do a small study, for the University of Malta, about the different perception of creativity as seen by an educator and a scientist. Interesting topic. I felt very honored when she called me and asked me to be ’the scientist’ in her study. We had our interview via Skype back in May. Today she sent me the end result. This is how she closes the study. I cannot agree more: ...

Today is my last day as a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at The National Academies. The Program, and the extension I got, is now complete after 101 days. I knew about it like one year ago, and I decided to apply for it. Back then, I could not find much info or public feedback from former fellows. There is a great official webpage with lots of info, but I wanted real feedback from people. Here is mine, for the next to come, and everyone else. ...

In 2005, in the context of rapid global changes at the time, Congress asked the National Academies to answer this: What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century? What implementation strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions? The Academies make independent, objective, and nonpartisan advice with high standards of scientific and technical quality. It stands on the credibility of more than 900 reports, many times biting the hand that feeds them. Sure enough they came up with these top action and recommendations , together with an excellent +500 pages report with a very strong rationale and the tough challenges ahead if not followed: “Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position.” [Last phrase of the Executive summary] This was in 2005. So, what happened? This post is about what the NAS did 5 years later in lieu of the recommendations it produced, and what was done with them. ...

This is a screenshot of the NASA press release today about astrobiology. It clearly depicts the direction [Science] outreach should go. There was a time where only journalists would go to press releases, where only they could ask questions. They were the interface between NASA and you. That time is gone. They are still needed and part of the equation, but you can also have access to the whole process, from planning to evaluation, including the ability to participate in the event. ...

-Background and authorship info- Part of the Mirzayan fellowship was to propose topics on which to write a policy paper. This is the topic I submitted and 10 other fellows joined. This is the result of 2 weeks of work. Some of the authors requested their authorship to remain internal to NAS. Therefore, I am not including names besides mine. Also you will note many similarities with my individual brief, in which I concentrated into the subtopic of Crowdsourcing development. ...

Name: That´s not really important, but it can be “predictive behaviour logics” or “Guess Action Algorithm” Concept: A big-ish widget on the screen of your smart phone (or computer, but I´ll think on mobiles for now) that shows what you most likely want to do, based on your patterns of use and other information like location, time, weather, agenda, emails, ... Need: Think about it. Phones today can do millions of things. But when you take your phone, you are only interested in one, and many times is highly predictable, based on time and location. Most of these actions are not addressed by the notifications the phone already has, and we all end up with too many shortcuts in too many home screen. -When you commute everyday on the metro, if you get your phone, you most likely want to open the News, the Kindle app, or the Angry Birds. ...

Ante la cada vez m��s abundante proliferaci��n de conferencias, cursos, seminarios y todo tipo de actividades que diferentes corrientes pseudocient��ficas est��n desarrollando dentro del marco de las universidades espa��olas y latinoamericanas, tendencia que cristaliza en la reciente creaci��n de una C��tedra de Investigaci��n sobre Homeopat��a en la Universidad de Zaragoza, los abajo firmantes (cient��ficos, profesores, alumnos y ciudadanos en general) nos vemos en la necesidad de manifestar lo siguiente: ...

With the burgeoning use of Internet and mobile phone technology, user-generated content (UGC) has emerged as an innovative means of sharing data. In the last decade, subscriptions to mobile phones rose from 18% to 97% in the developed world, and from 1% to 45% in the developing world. Internet subscriptions increased 10-fold in the last 10 years, reaching now 20% of the world population. Facebook—launched in 2004— now has over 500 million users (half of users, ~5% of the world’s population, access Facebook every day). Twitter has grown to 100 million users worldwide since beginning in 2006. In 2010, Twitter hit 50 million tweets per day—an average of 600 tweets per second. UGC has shown promising advances in a broad variety of fields (e.g., epidemiological surveillance, crisis response, and e-governance, among many others). ...

The National Academies Press publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health. I am cursed with endless curiosity, so working there is a love-hate relationship. Love because I love what the NAS does, hate because everyday I find I report “I have” to read. Halfway in my fellowship, I decided to highlight some of the ones I find most interesting. For now, this is the one: ...

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn0Za8J06w] Last Saturday I attended the Global Crisis Camp Day, on its Washington DC chapter. This event is part of the CrisisCommons effort to reach out and establish an enduring network of volunteers and contacts for future crises. "CrisisCamp is a global network of hybrid barcamp/hackathon events which bring together people and communities who innovate crisis response and global development through technology tools, expertise and problem solving. Since 2009, CrisisCamp volunteers have created crisis response and learning events in over 10 countries with volunteers of all backgrounds who collaborate in an open environment to aggregate crisis data, develop prototype tools and train people on how to use technology tools and problem solving to aid in crisis response and global development." I had previously volunteered for the Crisis Camp Haiti and Crisis Camp Chile. I helped them, and I loved it. I learnt from Ushahidi and OSM directly from them as they also attended those camps. I proudly mapped a small region of Haiti after the disaster. (Soon afterwards also La Corrada, my hometown.) My already growing interest in crowd-sourcing and GIS leaped forward a great deal thanks to them. I believe with them I crossed the point of no return. It was the last push that led me to leave research and come here, to The Academies. As a matter of fact, the S&T policy paper I am writing for my Mirzayan Fellowship is about the policy implications and needs to allow these technologies to play an important role in development. ...