BU Research Blog

Interesting research related webpages that were bookmarked on the BU Research Delicious pages this week:

 Facebook launches research grant funding

Facebook’s Digital Citizenship Research Grants is a new effort to support world-class research that improves understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with how kids are growing up in a world of media and technology. As part of this initiative, Facebook will invest $200,000 to support research that highlights trends associated with Digital Citizenship, broadly, with an initial focus on bullying prevention. This research grant is open to academic and nonprofit institutions worldwide.

(tags: funding, funding opportunities, digital citizenship)

 Data mining given the go ahead in UK

Data mining, the process of analysing data for trends and patterns, will be made exempt from UK copyright laws. The change is part of the government’s plans to modernize the UK’s intellectual property laws. Currently 87% of the material housed on the UK PubMed Central requires the copyright owner’s permission for text and data mining, which researchers say takes too much time and is in many cases impractical.

(tags: research, data mining, intellectual property, IP)

 Debating the nature of ‘natural’

The Bioscience for Society Strategy Panel (BSS) is an independent panel of researchers, social scientists, ethicists and others that provides BBSRC with critical and objective advice on societal issues and concerns, and public engagement strategy. BSS formed a Working Group which took a look at this one issue, nature and naturalness, and how people think about it, in order that BBSRC can take steps to facilitate effective and influential public engagement.

(tags: public engagement, science, BBSRC)