Who are you - Deep Blue Orchestra

Monday night Deep Blue Orchestra played their "Who are you" show at the Barossa Arts and Convention Centre in Tanunda. Deep Blue Orchestra play a fusion of rock, electronic and orchestral music - and they don't play it sitting down. The energetic orchestra members could best be described as stunt musicians with some of their daring feats of musical madness. Deep Blue makes orchestra fun and demonstrates to young, aspiring, musicians that it can be cool to play one of the classical instruments. I get the feeling that these performers were once the kids who's parents made them take classical music at school; the emotions and experiences of growing up with music was threaded throughout the show - ultimately culminating in finding out "who are you" - this also provided a great excuse to play the song of the same title by The Who, which sounds great played by the orchestra.

The Deep Blue Orchestra have a lot going on (and must have a lot of energy!) - they are an innovative act in the first place, but, with a real community focus too - for example, the Young Blue program which encourages young musicians to experience the Deep Blue orchestra approach to music. Not only that but they are fund raising to provide education in music to children in third world countries - this is the only show I have ever seen where the performers busk at the intermission to raise money for the underprivileged.

The concept of Deep Blue got me thinking about whether the concept could be applied to other areas of art or science. I could imagine presenting science to students in a "rock and roll" fashion - perhaps this could even be combined with the orchestral experience! I must admit that I don't know many scientists that can ride a unicycle though. Deep Blue certainly make it look cool to be a  classical musician.

I really enjoyed the show and admire the enthusiasm, energy, daring and skill of the Deep Blue Orchestra.

Fundamentals in World Class Research Administration

Just this week I have completed a certificate titled Fundamentals in World Class Research Administration. The certificate ran for 6 months and was an intensive course in all aspects of research administration from pre-award to post-award and beyond. I have been working in the field of research administration for the past 6 years, mainly in the field of research performance monitoring, and this course was essentially a complete series of master classes in all aspects of research administration. Topics covered included the national framework for research in higher education, the management and administration of research, the role of research administration in the university context, generating research business, increasing quality and reputation at local and state levels, contracts and intellectual property, research students and research marketing, financial management internal controls and risk mitigation, research ethics and integrity, benchmarking in research, and researching into industry and innovation.

I believe that research administration is emerging as a fascinating and lucrativecareer path which has been largely overlooked in the past. I don't believe there is another course out there at the moment quite like this one - and it is not only a unique course but it is aimed at a unique profession. There are not many other offices out there that have such a huge diversity of talent and tasks as a research administration office. In the same physical space you have solicitors, contracts specialists, systems specialists, business analysts, database professionals, data analysts, policy specialists, customer service officers, ISO quality specialists, IP experts, project managers and commercialization specialists - sometimes these are the same people doing different specialized roles - and, these aren't even the people doing the research, they are the ones helping the research happen.

I very much enjoyed completing the Fundamentals in World Class Research Administration certificate not just because it reinforced a lot of research administration knowledge and deepened my understanding of the field it also tied the disparate sections of the research office together revealing it as a formidable ally to any research organisation seeking to be competitive in the current research and innovation environment.

I think that anyone who is in the field of research administration and completes this course has added a really valuable tool to their resume and would become a valuable asset to any research office in Australia - or indeed the world.

ATN/Go8 Excellence in Innovation for Australia Trial - Excellence in Innovation For Australia (EIA)

The Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN) and the Group of Eight (Go8) are currently undertaking a trial exercise to assess the impact of research produced by Australian universities. The Excellence in Innovation for Australia (EIA) aims to be the impact partner to the quality evaluation administered by the Australian Research Council; the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).


Participating institutions are required to submit case studies under the  four socio-economic objectives (SEO): Defence, Economic Development, Society and Environment. Case studies will form the unit of evaluation for the assessment and will demonstrate uptake of the university's research by end users as well as the breadth and depth of the benefits the research produced. It is comforting to note that the guidelines specify the research has to result in a benefit to the community - there have been examples of high impact research resulting in negative impact to the community (e.g. thalidomide or the atomic bomb).


Australia has produced a large number of high impact research outcomes over the years; many of these coming from universities, research hospitals and the CSIRO. Recent high impact examples include: Fiona Woods' 'spray on skin' for burn victims, Mark von Itzstein's flu medication; Relenza, and the CSIRO's wi-fi.


The results of the EIA will be released in November and once they are made public it will be interesting to compare them to the results of the ERA to see if there is any obvious relationship between research impact and research quality.


http://www.go8.edu.au/university-staff/programs-_and_-fellowships-1/atngo8-excellence-in-innovation-for-australia-trial-excellence-in-innovation-for-australia-eia

A disconnect between staff and student perceptions of learning: an ACELL educational analysis of the first year undergraduate chemistry experiment ‘investigating sugar using a home made polarimeter’

This paper describes an educational analysis of a first year university chemistry practical called ‘Investigating sugar using a home made polarimeter’. The analysis follows the formalism of the Advancing Chemistry by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory (ACELL) project, which includes a statement of education objectives, and an analysis of the student learning experience. The practical requires students to accurately prepare solutions of known concentrations of a common consumer chemical (sucrose), and then investigate the interaction between these solutions and plane-polarised light. The instrument used is a “home built” polarimeter which students assemble, allowing them to recognise that scientific apparatus need not be mysterious in its operation or construction. Student feedback data were conducted using the ACELL Student Learning Experience (ASLE) instrument. Analysis of the data shows that overwhelmingly students rate the experiment as “worthwhile” or better. However, many also rate the experiment as “boring” or “uninteresting”. By contrast, staff and student feedback at an ACELL experiential workshop rated the experiment very highly in terms of the “interest” criterion. In this contribution we discuss this alignment of staff and student perceptions of various elements, including “interest” and explore the correlation with the overall laboratory experience.

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2011/RP/C0RP90015J

Sock it too, them

Richard Branson's blog recently described a story about an entrepreneur who said he wanted to be so successful that he would never have to wear socks ever again. I thought this was a rather intriguing goal and it raises some interesting questions. First, is there a scale of success measurable by the items you no longer have to wear? Would one be deemed even more successful than the sock-less if they didn't have to wear a watch, for example? I am already successful enough that I hardly ever have to wear gloves, certainly not in a professional context anyway. What about shoes? Hats? and is it limited to clothing? What about deodorant? Am I more, or less, successful if not wearing deodorant? It also makes me wonder about those who cannot wear socks; I mean, if one had no feet - one would not wear socks - and therefore be deemed a success. If you set the benchmark for success at being sock-less are you at liberty to wear a single sock when you are half-way to your goal? I can only imagine that it won't be long until we are surrounded by successful people - all  wearing short pants, putting their feet up on the table, casually picking at their toenails - just to ensure that we are all aware of their newly acquired sans-socks-status.

Sock it to them

Encounter Bay Village Shopping Centre - Makris Corporation

The Makris Corporation has sought an extension to the Major Development Assessment status on its proposed shopping centre at Encounter Bay. The $250million Encounter Bay Village is still expected to include a shopping centre with a discount department store, supermarket, specialty shops and food court (17,000 square metres). In late 2009 it was estimated the project would create 650 new jobs.

Here is an article from the Times on the coast (BY ANTHONY CAGGIANO)

http://www.victorharbortimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/makris-seeks-extension/2248185.aspx

ERA 2012 Journal List

With the Australian Research Council (ARC) removing the journal rankings (A*-C) from their ERA journal list there will be an increased focus on citation metrics and specifically the relative citation impact (RCI). In fields of research that did not undergo peer review - ERA ratings were no doubt driven by the RCI values available to the national Research Evaluation Committees (RECs). The RCI is a ratio of the number of citations per paper a particular unit of evaluation has to the expected world citation rate. RCI is most useful because it is discipline and time specific meaning that it takes into account both the fact that different disciplines have different citation trends and that older articles generally have more citations than younger articles. RCIs can be calculated using data available from citation data suppliers such as Elsevier (Scopus) and Thomson Reuters (Web of Science).