“Science proves ideas,” and other misinterpretations of the scientific process

The scientific process is the most effective method humans have for learning about the natural world, yet there remain numerous misconceptions about its application, even among scientists.
Over at Understanding Science, a team of UC Berkeley researchers, teachers, designers and web experts has assembled a fantastic list of some common misconceptions about science and how it works. It's a great overview of what science is and what science isn't, and definitely warrants a look (along with the rest of the Understanding Science website — a truly fantastic resource). We've included a few misinterpretations, along with their explanations, below. But you'll want to click through to the full guide.
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Proposal Presentations

Here are a few important points about the proposal presentations. These are to ensure the smooth running of the presentation schedule.

• Each student has been allocated a maximum of 20 minutes.
• The 20 minutes will cover the presentation and the discussion/questions time.
• You will have a maximum of 12 minutes for your presentation. So practice to make sure you can say all that you want to say in the 12 minutes.
• You will be given feedback at the end. The feedback will fall into one of three outcomes. 1. Yes you can proceed to start your dissertation. 2. make the following changes by next week and you can proceed. 3. Your proposal & project idea is not ready yet. Keep developing it and you might be able to start in Sept.
• Please turn up 10 minutes early and wait outside the room. We will come out and let you know when you can come into the room
• Email me (brendan.tierney at dit dot ie) your presentation 2 hours before your presentation time. This will allow me to have your presentation open when you come into the room and we dont have to waste time on plugging in USB keys etc

Research Methods and Proposal Writing Demos

LOCATION FOR ALL DEMOS IS A324

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30th May 2012 12:00 Vincent McKenna, DT217A
30th May 2012 12:20 Andrej Bartko, DT230
30th May 2012 12:40 Robert Huczek, DT217A
30th May 2012 13:00 John Brogan, DT217
30th May 2012 13:20 Christina Shannon, DT217

30th May 2012 14:00 Chenje Cao, DT285
30th May 2012 14:20 Raj Kumar, DT286
30th May 2012 14:40 Brendan Cregan, DT230

30th May 2012 16:00 Jelena Haiduroua, DT230
30th May 2012 16:20 Garrett Duffy, DT286
30th May 2012 16:40 Liam Carey, DT217
30th May 2012 17:00 Tair Kuanyshev, DT285
30th May 2012 17:20 Lira Maricar Mariano, DT285

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31st May 2012 10:20 Frank Kendlin, DT285
31st May 2012 10:40 Fatima Emmanuel, DT286
31st May 2012 11:00 Niall Dowdall, DT210
31st May 2012 11:20 David Marvroudis, DT285

31st May 2012 12:00 Victor Aduba, DT286
31st May 2012 12:20 Eloho Egivuferai, DT217A
31st May 2012 12:40 Olu Folarin, DT286

31st May 2012 14:00 Edward Robert Freyne, DT286
31st May 2012 14:20 Eamonn O'Brien, DT230
31st May 2012 14:40 Prasanth Joseph, DT286
31st May 2012 15:00 Thomas Bryne, DT285

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6th June 2012 15:20 Gabriel Lawless, DT202A

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11th June 2012 11:00 Leah Moriarty, DT217A
11th June 2012 11:20 Keith Ellman, DT285
11th June 2012 11:40 Liyi Wei, DT217A
11th June 2012 12:10 Marcus McQuiston, DT217

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Possible Dissertation Idea

Check out the article in the May 2012 New Scientist called, 'Making Numbers Punch their Weight'.

There might be some Data Analytics type dissertation projects using the methods covered in this article.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428635.500-font-for-digits-lets-numbers-punch-their-weight.html

Twitter Mood: The Effects of the Recession on Public Mood in the UK

Intelligent Systems Laboratory - University of Bristol Large scale analysis of social media content allows for real time discovery of macro-scale patterns in public opinion and sentiment. In this paper we analyse a collection of 484 million tweets generated by more than 9.8 million users from the United Kingdom over the past 31 months, a period marked by economic downturn and some social tensions. Our findings, besides corroborating our choice of method for the detection of public mood, also present intriguing patterns that can be explained in terms of events and social changes.

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How SEO software is changing the way we read and write

by Annalee Newitz

Flustered pundits claim that blogging has changed writing forever, but they're wrong. You know what has really changed writing? Google search. Thousands of internet puppies are writing "content" that is perfectly optimized to rise to the top of search rankings. Search engine optimization (SEO) has become its own art, a genre designed to make writing algorithm-friendly and human-clickable. What has SEO done to our writing? Now Sean Gallagher over at Ars Technica has a smart, funny article about a new piece of consumer software, InboundWriter, which helps you turn any piece of writing into something that's optimized for search. The best part is that Gallagher actually ran his own article through InboundWriter, so his analysis of SEO is actually designed to be 99% optimized for SEO.

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Colour grabber

For Universal Design

website color scraping made easy ;)

http://colrgrabr.swissamigos.com/