Benito Legarda, Jr.: in his own words and an appreciation

This remembrance is written in two parts. In the first part, Dr. Benito Legarda Jr. writes mostly in his own words. We engaged in numerous exchanges by correspondence that he initiated as reactions to my weekly column on economic and social issues and other topics in the Philippine Star. In these exchanges, he parlayed his knowledge and perspectives as an economist, economic historian, and Filipino. Included in this section is the text of a short talk he delivered on the occasion of the launch of a book I wrote about another man of stature, former Prime Minister and Finance Minister Cesar E. A. Virata. Despite some references to me and my own work (for which I apologize to the reader), it is reproduced in full because in this talk, he reveals so much little-known biographical information about himself in his own words. The second part of this essay is my own appreciation of him. We were long-time professional contemporaries in our service in the government and post-retirement. We worked almost in the same milieu and contemporary environment, although in different capacities and institutions.

Destination: Space! A Virtual Flash Talk Series

<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>During the series of national lockdowns, interacting onsite with local schools became difficult and increased the demand for virtual content. To meet this challenge, we created an online programme entitled <em>“Destination: Space”</em>, aimed at showcasing the current planetary research conducted within the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics (AOPP) department at the University of Oxford. Over six weeks, school students from the UK and around the globe joined us on an out-of-this-world journey exploring space and planetary physics. <em>Destination: Space</em> has introduced students to fascinating areas of science, including the search for water on the Moon, meteorites and sample return missions, and whether there really could be other life out there in the universe. </p><p>Talks were hosted online in a live webinar-style, where the audience could interact with and ask questions of the scientists involved in each event. The series consisted of four short seminars, one game show style event, and one purely question and answer panel session. The seminar sessions consisted of a short talk delivered by AOPP scientists focused on their research with time for audience questions. The game show event was loosely based on the “Would I lie to you?” BBC hit television show and had the scientists presenting short statements and inviting the audience to determine whether it was fact or fiction. This format encouraged audience participation and debate through the webinar chat feature. Due to the large number of questions we were unable to get to during the seminar sessions, a Q&A panel was added to the series. </p><p><strong>Reception: </strong>The <em>Destination: Space</em> programme was advertised well in advance of its commencement through the Oxford Physics Outreach department mailing lists connected to local schools, and through social media accounts. Over 750 local and international audience members attended the series with an additional 1000+ viewers watching the recorded versions on YouTube as of this time. </p><p><strong>Project Assessment: </strong>For the seminar sessions, polls were used to assess the audience’s knowledge before and after the talk, with the majority self-reporting an increase in understanding of the topic and overall positive comments from the audience, including several emails from teachers supporting the project. The game show session incorporated polls throughout to encourage an interactive event, and showed the audience actively debating in the chat and reaching the right answer 85% of the time. Responses to this event were overwhelmingly positive and many cited the interactivity as enhancing their experience. Overall polling showed support for the programme and calls for similar series covering other space topics. We will look to create another series for the upcoming school year, and to create more activities for teachers to use in conjunction with the programme. </p><p> </p><p>The recorded programme can be found here:</p><p>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUX8glPeEnsK2Qu97enFmpXuIoMrw7Pdm</p>

THE CIVIC IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES

The article is based on a short talk given at the parliamentary reception to celebrate 150 years of the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 2019. It draws on some work I did when I was at the British Library and subsequently at Yale University, some of it presented to a conference of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), whose section on rare books and archives I chaired for a few years.

Putting Crossref Metadata into Context

At Crossref, we see a future where society benefits from an open scholarly infrastructure in which all research is connected and preserved. This will enable researchers to build upon knowledge, ensure greater discoverability and dissemination of research, and aid decision-making for funders, with better evaluation and tracking of research impact. This short talk aims to deepen the understanding of the power of good metadata, by explaining how it can be harnessed to improve discoverability of content, and how it is used in the creation of collaborative tools and initiatives for the research community. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) enable clear disambiguation and persistent links to be made between researchers, their affiliations, funding and contributions. However, membership at Crossref is not just about creating identifiers for content. It is about placing that content into context and a DOI is simply one small, but important, piece of the puzzle. Crossref works in collaboration with individuals and organizations to collect extensive metadata, both bibliographic and non-bibliographic. The breadth of the metadata Crossref supports is capable of expanding over time to respond to community needs e.g. incorporating CRediT for contributor roles. It’s also key that the metadata is made openly available; comprehensive, open metadata guarantees interoperability across borders, disciplines, research outputs and organizations. It is also essential for building scalability and improving efficiency via collaborative initiatives such as the Research Organizations Registry (ROR), ORCID auto-update, and the new DataCite Commons. Crossref has minimal requirements in order to support a variety of publication practises and the schema can support a diverse range of content types and associated metadata. All of the metadata received is standardized and machine readable; the more complete this metadata is, the more likely content can be discovered and disseminated. Whenever you submit metadata to Crossref, DataCite, DOAJ or other organizations, the metadata you deposit should be accurate, complete and up to date. Accuracy is important as misspelled author names, incorrect dates, missing license information or bad URLs, undermine the usefulness of shared services, as well as being a pain for readers and authors. There remains a lack of knowledge about the value and importance of quality metadata. Machine-readable metadata and identifiers underpin both Crossref tools and services, and those developed by the wider community. I’ll detail examples of the applications of scholarly metadata to make this case, show how publishers can see the metadata they’re registering and suggest some quick fixes to getting more from your Crossref metadata.

EL1 BUILDING A CAREER IN NEURO-ONCOLOGY RESEARCH

A young neurosurgeon has several interesting and important possible career paths: clinical care, clinical/translational research and more fundamental research. Each of these has its own requirements for training, talent and commitment. A closer inspection of each of these, however, reveals that they are basically quite similar. From this, several general conclusions can be gleaned and recommendations for optimizing the chances of long-term career success. In this short talk, I will review the aspects of our training program that has allowed each of our Japanese trainees to have remarkable success both while with us in the US and upon their return to Japan. My goal is to explicitly describe and state these as a roadmap for success, particularly in the rapidly developing field involving the application of molecular and genetic technologies to translational and basic neuro-oncology research—but also as more generally applicable principles.

Koru

This chapter reviews the new developments in the Koru Mindfulness curriculum since the first edition of Mindfulness for the Next Generation was published in 2011. These developments include the creation of The Center for Koru Mindfulness to train and certify teachers to deliver the Koru Mindfulness curriculum, the expansion of the curriculum to include Koru 2.0 and Koru Retreat (a 4-hour experience that is conducted in silence and includes various meditations, such as sitting, walking, and eating, as well as a short talk on mindfulness by the teacher and a yoga experience), and the development of a Koru mobile app that communicates with the new Koru Teacher Dashboard.

Advances in Drug Delivery and Biomaterials: Facts and Vision

Drug delivery and biomaterials are different fields of science but, at the same time, are tightly related and intertwined. The 2018 CRS Italy Chapter Annual Workshop aims to explore recent advances in design and development in these areas. Many colleagues from Europe participated to the Workshop, stimulating the discussion. To foster the discussion on recent research and networking opportunities, especially among younger attendees, all poster-presenting authors were asked to provide a short talk. The very friendly and stimulating atmosphere allowed the attendees to explore new frontiers and tackle new horizons.

Complimenting as a Conversation Opener: a Strategy in Teaching English Speaking Proficiency

The speech act of paying compliment (“you are looking good”) to someone is the attempt to establish the social relationship and ties solidarity between the communicators. In addition, it attributes credit to someone other than the speaker; usually the person addressed, for some “good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer. Furthermore, the act of responding it is an interlocutor’s acceptance (“Thanks, Thank you”) and non-acceptance (“it is really quite old”) of the compliments. In conjunction with English teaching and learning process, the attempt to compliment and respond it can be used as a strategy to help the EFL learners able to open a conversation or a short talk with their classmates. The EFL lecturers/teachers will bridge the learners to strike up their conversations/short talks by providing some conversations/short talks’ situations. The situations, which relate to their friends’ possessions, characteristics, or skills, are used to attribute their credits as conversation opener.