Trait-Based Origins of Creativity

Chapter 2 provides an overview of scientific findings on correlations between each of the Big Five dimensions and creativity. The author notes that we can’t know everything about artist personality or the intricacies of artistic process, but that does not mean we can’t know anything. The research has been done, and the job, now, is to sift through it, identify what’s known, and craft a general portrait. A generic artist personality profile is outlined. The author presents a contrast between the average scientist and the average artist. From there, the author focuses on the trait-based roots of creativity, including detailed discussion of the exact Big Five profiles of two accomplished creatives: Kuwaiti painter Shurooq Amin and American writer Walter Kirn.

Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts

The inauguration of President Trump in the United States led to the active restriction of science communication from federal agencies, resulting in the creation of many unofficial “alt” Twitter accounts to maintain communication. Alt accounts had many followers (e.g., 15 accounts had > 100,000) and received a large amount of media attention, making them ideal for better understanding how differences in messaging can affect public engagement with science on microblogging platforms. We analyzed tweets produced by alt and corresponding official agency accounts to compare the two groups and determine if specific features of a tweet made them more likely to be retweeted or liked to help the average scientist potentially reach a broader audience on Twitter. We found adding links, images, hashtags, and mentions, as well as expressing angry and annoying sentiments all increased retweets and likes. Evidence-based terms such as “peer-review” had high retweet rates but linking directly to peer-reviewed publications decreased attention compared to popular science websites. Word choice and attention did not reflect official or alt account types, indicating topic is more important than source. The number of tweets generated and attention received by alt accounts has decreased since their creation, demonstrating the importance of timeliness in science communication on social media. Together our results show potential pathways for scientists to increase efficacy in Twitter communications.

Legitimizing Boundary Crossing for the Average Scientist: Two Cases Acknowledging How Arts Practice Informs Science

To normalize ArtScience, examples need to be shared of its average practitioners within the sciences, in addition to its historical exemplars. Described here are two cases of arts practice informing scientific research as experienced by early-stage researchers in postdoctoral or PhD work. Each case involves different arts approaches and yields different effects on the science; both inform ideas for how to better support and institutionalize ArtScience work.

MATLAB-Like Scripting of Java Scientific Libraries in ScalaLab

Although there are a lot of robust and effective scientific libraries in Java, the utilization of these libraries in pure Java is difficult and cumbersome, especially for the average scientist that does not expertise in software development. We illustrate that ScalaLab presents an easier and productive MATLAB like front end. Also, the main strengths and weaknesses of the core Java libraries of ScalaLab are elaborated. Since performance is of paramount importance for scientific computation, the article discusses extensively performance aspects of the ScalaLab environment. Also, Java bytecode performance is compared to native code.

Public domain, copyright licenses and the freedom to integrate science

From the life sciences to the physical sciences, chemistry to archaeology, the last 25 years have brought an unprecedented shift in the way research happens day to day, and the average scientist is now simply awash in data. This comment focuses on the integration and federation of an exponentially increasing pool of data on the global digital network. Furthermore, it explores the question of the legal regimes available for use on this pool of data, with particular attention to the application of “Free/Libre/Open” copyright licenses on data and databases. In fact, the application of such licenses has the potential to severely restrict the integration and federation of scientific data. The public domain for science should be the first choice if integration is our goal, and there are other strategies that show potential to achieve the social goals embodied in many common-use licensing systems without the negative consequences of a copyright-based approach.