Index Of Conference Proceedings

As demand for tertiary education continues to rise across Asia, countries are expanding their higher education systems outwards by constructing new universities, hiring more faculty and encouraging private provision. Many of these systems are also moving upwards by introducing new graduate programmes to ensure that there are enough qualified professors and researchers for the future. Based on data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and a diverse range of national and international sources, this report provides a comprehensive view to evaluate different strategies to expand graduate education. Special focus is given to middle-income countries in the region which have recently experienced the most dramatic growth through an innovative mix of policies. For example, interventions aimed at improving university rankings may be controversial but are nonetheless reshaping university reforms. The report highlights the pros and cons by comparing the three most commonly-used university ranking systems. Across the region, countries are not simply seeking to accommodate more students - they are striving to build top-quality universities that can produce the research and workforce needed for national economic development. So this report presents a range of data to better evaluate the economic benefits flowing from university research, as well as the spillover effects to the private sector. The authors also analyse the ways in which international collaboration can boost the productivity and quality of university-based research. Overall, this report provides the data and analysis to help countries weigh the balance of different policies to expand their higher education systems.

Gábor Lövei’s scientific communication course for students and scientists explores the intricacies involved in publishing primary scientific papers, and has been taught in more than twenty countries. Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers is the distillation of Lövei’s lecture notes and experience gathered over two decades; it is the coursebook many have been waiting for. The book’s three main sections correspond with the three main stages of a paper’s journey from idea to print: planning, writing, and publishing. Within the book’s chapters, complex questions such as ‘How to write the introduction?’ or ‘How to submit a manuscript?’ are broken down into smaller, more manageable problems that are then discussed in a straightforward, conversational manner, providing an easy and enjoyable reading experience. Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers stands out from its field by targeting scientists whose first language is not English. While also touching on matters of style and grammar, the book’s main goal is to advise on first principles of communication. This book is an excellent resource for any student or scientist wishing to learn more about the scientific publishing process and scientific communication. It will be especially useful to those coming from outside the English-speaking world and looking for a comprehensive guide for publishing their work in English.

The past decade has seen greatly increased interaction between theoretical work in neuroscience, cognitive science and information processing, and experimental work requiring sophisticated computational modeling. The 152 contributions in NIPS 8 focus on a wide variety of algorithms and architectures for both supervised and unsupervised learning. They are divided into nine parts: Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Theory, Algorithms and Architectures, Implementations, Speech and Signal Processing, Vision, Applications, and Control. Chapters describe how neuroscientists and cognitive scientists use computational models of neural systems to test hypotheses and generate predictions to guide their work. This work includes models of how networks in the owl brainstem could be trained for complex localization function, how cellular activity may underlie rat navigation, how cholinergic modulation may regulate cortical reorganization, and how damage to parietal cortex may result in neglect. Additional work concerns development of theoretical techniques important for understanding the dynamics of neural systems, including formation of cortical maps, analysis of recurrent networks, and analysis of self- supervised learning. Chapters also describe how engineers and computer scientists have approached problems of pattern recognition or speech recognition using computational architectures inspired by the interaction of populations of neurons within the brain. Examples are new neural network models that have been applied to classical problems, including handwritten character recognition and object recognition, and exciting new work that focuses on building electronic hardware modeled after neural systems. A Bradford Book

This book focuses on current practices in scientific and technical communication, historical aspects, and characteristics and biblio-graphic control of various forms of scientific and technical literature. It integrates the inventory approach for scientific and technical communication.