Last summer, Jessica VanderGiessen did something unusual. The bioengineering student from Santa Clara University in California, United States, spent two days travelling the rough dirt roads of West Bengal state in India, testing the drinking water in rural villages for arsenic contamination. But instead of taking water samples back to a distant lab for analysis, VanderGiessen simply put […]
SciDev.Net
AuthorAID to add online courses for social scientists
AuthorAID, a network that helps scientists in developing countries publish and communicate their work, is seeking partners to help develop courses specific to social sciences. These would be online courses, following the success of the recent move to do more courses online instead of face-to-face — expanding the initiative’s reach while reducing costs. “We want to […]
Low-tech data access is still needed
Here at the World Social Science Forum 2013 in Montreal, Canada, scientists are still calling for innovative, low-tech methods that will enable people in developing nations to capitalise on data. In recent years there has been a surge in the amount of linked data: networks of connected data sets that can be combined to create powerful repositories of knowledge. […]
Researchers get down with the kids
Kids in Sub-Saharan Africa are getting involved in social sciences — and not just as the subjects of research. A project led by Gina Porter, an anthropologist from Durham University in the United Kingdom, is using ‘child researchers’ to help academics study how mobile phone technologies are changing the way young people travel and interact. Read more in SciDev.Net.
Canada’s CIDA reform could aid innovation work
Innovation and technology development could be boosted by the controversial merger of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) with the country’s foreign affairs department, according to the head of a group that represents Canadian NGOs. But CIDA should be careful not to neglect development at the expense of foreign affairs and trade interests through the new arrangement, says Julia Sánchez, […]