Links for 2012-05-08

Consider a square with an area of 24. The side has length â24. This square can be divided into 4 smaller squares, each with an area of 6. The sides of these smaller squares have length â6. Two of these lengths make up the side length of the large square, so â24 = 2â6. 24 can also be divided into 3 rectangles, each with an area of 8. Again, correct, but not helpful. How to simplify â45 as 3â5 and â72 as 6â2 are also shown above. Again, factors that are perfect squares are key.

The number of scientific publications per year is steadily increasing. This makes it difficult to keep up with the latest developments in larger areas of science. Papercore[1] is a public read-write database, which aims at helping scientists to cope with this development. Papercore collects summaries of scientific papers, in particular in physics, where this database is optimized to. Note that a summary is not just an abstract: A summary should contain the core information of a paper, including a little introduction, basic definitions, outline of methods and key results of a paper, such that a specialist in the field does not have to look into the paper anymore, basically. The rule of thumb is that a summary should be 1/10 of the length of the corresponding paper, the compression factor is automatically computed by Papercore for each summary.

In the last month, I have talked with students at six institutions that represent nearly every corner of our diverse higher-ed system: Arizona State, the University of Central Florida, Valencia College, Franklin & Marshall College, Southern New Hampshire University, and just this week, Georgetown University. My conversations with the students weren't meant to be scientific survey, but rather a collection of anecdotes and ideas for this blog and my book on the future of higher ed. The students were randomly chosen by me in some cases, and by faculty members or administrators in others. I picked these colleges because they were on my travel itinerary for other purposes or were nearby. My goal was to engage the students in the debates that seem to be swirling around them but so often don't include them in meaningful ways.