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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. ...

Harvey A. Averch, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. 216 p. I found this lost treasure buried at a second hand bookstore. It dates back some few decades, and the USA was certainly different in 1985, when this book was published. Back then, the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam war, the energy crisis, high unemployment, and very high inflation and escalating interest rates, made any political planning difficult. There was even a raised fundamental concern over the future of American prosperity. ...

Excerpt in English: Last outreach talk in Gijón was a special success. Being a talk at the community center at the city where I was raised, it was particularly an honor. I got much interest and advertisement from the local and regional radio, tv and newspaper. The room was full and people made questions for more than an hour after the end of the talk. Thank you. You make it worth. Un par de reflexiones a propósito de esta última charla: ...

Excerpt in English: I will be giving an outreach talk at the community center in La Arena, in Gijón (Spain) on Friday 6th of August, at 7:30 pm. The topic of the talk will be an overview of the current understanding of Solar physics, the Sun-Earth relation and the place of the Sun in our Universe. Attendance is free. El próximo Viernes 6 de Agosto, a las 7:30pm, doy una charla sobre el Sol en el "Centro cívico de La Arena". La charla está abierta a todo el público y no tiene coste. Durante una hora intentaré dar una idea del conocimiento actual del Sol, de su relación con la Tierra, y de su posición con el resto del Universo. La charla cuenta con la colaboración de la Asociación Asturiana de Astronomía Omega (organización), NASA Goddard (material divulgativo) y el centro cívico de La Arena (local y medios informáticos). "el Sol, y su relación con el resto del Universo" El Sol. Esa bola brillante que vemos casi todos los días en el cielo. Nos levantamos por la mañana con su luz y nos acompaña durante todo el día. Los afortunados la observan estos días acostados en la Playa de San Lorenzo. Estamos tan acostumbrados a verlo nos parece algo cotidiano, común. Pero piensen, ¿Qué saben de esa bola brillante? ¿Qué es? ¿Por qué brilla? ¿Cómo de lejos está? ¿Es grande? ¿Cuánto durará? Es entonces cuando nos damos cuenta que en realidad es un gran desconocido. De hecho, el Sol es, en muchos sentidos, la puerta al Universo que, inapreciablemente para mucha gente, está ahí fuera. En esta charla divulgativa hablaremos sobre cuál es el conocimiento moderno del Sol, y cual su relación con el Universo. ...

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in cooperation with Hofstra University, organized yesterday an open and free star party, on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. This event is actually part of a bigger initiative to bring people to the telescopes while listening to music, called "Music and Astronomy Under the Stars". On Flickr you can see some of the pictures I made. ...

With such an appealing title, this book (2002, 120 pages, simple formatting, easy read) went straight to the top of my pile of books to read. You can get the pdf for free at the NAS press or the physical version for around 25$. I paid $10 on eBay, but I wish I had my Kindle back then! It is truly an interesting topic. The approach aims to respond on the tricky business of advising science from inside international organizations. The UN, for example, has made several clear calls to qualitatively and quantitatively strengthen science advice across and throughout its structure (e.g. Agenda 21 Chapter 31). The main goal of such an advisory body would be then to increase awareness, rule making, oversight but also local implementation, address emerging issues and coordinate global cooperation and response. ...

It is a great honor and pleasure to announce that I have been granted a Fellowship in Science Policy at the National Academies, in Washington DC. As anyone could tell by the topics of this blog, I am quite interested in Science and Technology, and its relation with Society. I regard Science Policy as the ultimate tool to articulate this relation at large. I am, thus, really looking forward to this professional opportunity. Just a few more weeks, on the 30th of August. ...

In 1990 the Voyager 1 had passed Saturn completing its primary mission. It was then when Carl Sagan requested to flip the spacecraft to make a picture of the Earth. Of course it was too far to see anything but a dot. And that was precisely the reason the proposal had such an important symbolic value. No human device was ever that far and able to make a picture. There were many practical complaints, as the Sun, from that distance, is quite close. It could damage the camera. Indeed, the reflections of the Sun light on the spacecraft can be seen as straight lines, one of them crossing the Earth position. ...