...if excellent papers are defined as the top-10% most-highly cited papers in a field, on the basis of the null hypothesis a value of 10% of all papers published from a city would be expected as belonging to this category.The authors then calculate the standardized residual for every city in the world in 2008 that published a top-10% paper, using Z=(observed-expected)/√expected (Z=1 indicates the city is publishing the expected number of top-10 papers). They note—and I'm sure we all heartily agree!—that:
From a policy perspective, it may pay off for the sciences within a country to identify (by these visualization methods) and expand regional centers of excellence (for example, with specific financial support). In our opinion, one should not subsidize size, but those centers should be fostered where the observed number of excellent papers exceeds the expected numbers.And the results for Australia in Physics? <drum-roll> Brisbane, Z=4.1; Adelaide, Z=3.1; Melbourne, Z=2.7; Sydney, Z=2.5, and Canberra, Z=1.4.
If you are a technology enthusiast you might find yourself interested enough to want to read it. You won’t be able to though because you have to have a subscription to read the journal. That may be a bummer but the future of academic journals is creative commons licenses. Scientific information like this will become more widely available to the public sooner rather than later.
The Australians! Wasn't that island an almost depopulated prison colony of England, when Mexico, still called New Spain, was proud of its Royal University, of scientists and researchers informed in physics and chemistry of the state of the art of the XVIII-th century?A big cheery g'day from all us convicts to our Mexican readers! (Seriously though, our teams were funded by both the Australian and US governments, and are made up of folk from 8 nations across 4 continents: Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Iran, Italy, Mexico, the UK and the USA. Science is truly international.)
The old wood-working shop:
Yep, that's a floor:
Lab this side, work shop that side:
The start of the reincarnation of the red hardwood floor from unappreciated workshop surface to polished display floor in a refurbished house. Reduce, reuse, recycle!
Some hours later, almost done...
... except, oh look, several tonnes of rough concrete that needs to be removed by hand ... that's a surprise!
Some days later, several tonnes of rough concrete ready to be trucked away.