Actuality sociology
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Women in Science: Why the persistent imbalance?
International Women’s Day is the perfect occasion to observe that, over time, women have made great strides in their involvement and success in science and technology fields. Unfortunately, many of these improvements seem to have stagnated in recent years. Some of the old culprits, like cultural bias, may still be at work, but they are not alone. It would pay for institutions to invest in researching the reasons underlying today’s gender imbalance in the sciences, and to implement more relevant, innovative solutions.
Open Access : Towards a New Practice of Scientific Communication
Defended by movements for open access and the self-archiving of scientific publications, the development of free access archives are significant of the needs of scientific research in terms of communication and dissemination. Allowing everyone access to scientific seams to promote the visibility of research work – and much more quickly than via the classical publication process. Open access in particular is the object of many debates common to all scientific disciplines and must be considered in the framework of the historical context of scientific publication. This new practice of scientific publishing is symptomatic of societal changes caused by free access to content shared intentionally on the Internet and thus generates debates similar to that surround free downloading, the distribution of works and copyright protection.
Artificial Intelligence and home automation: Putting the human (back) at the centre of technological development
How do you make a group of intelligent agents communicate in a way that artificially copies human reasoning? How do you create artificial intelligence (AI) to substitute a virtual entity for a real entity? Informatics is a universe in perpetual evolution on a number of levels, including aspects such as material, software and design. Today, informatics is opening up to a new era: an era of ambient intelligence – the human assistance – that, through home automation is slowly changing our habits and improving our daily lives, but also disrupting our societies. This certainly is a progress, but behind this lie questions on the relationship between humans and machines.
The evolution of social network practices in science
Paris metro on a weeknight and numerous heads are tilted towards a book or a Smartphone that holds their attention. Of those engaged with the latter, many are using a social network, or are busy tweeting. The emergence of social networks dates back to approximately 2004, but only since 2008 has their rapid growth reached the general public. Professional social networks have also developed in parallel, but their use remains marginal. The fairly conservative nature of the professional milieu should be kept in mind when considering this, particularly concerning the field of research, where the coffee machine remains the place of social exchange par excellence.
