This first-of-its-kind learning conference will help you identify policies that have been successful in other communities and could work in yours.

National Housing Conference (NHC) and its research affiliate, the Center for Housing Policy is hosting the “Solutions for Working Families” Learning Conference from June 28th to 30th.

Are you a grassroots activist making a difference in your city? Are you a community leader, providing a voice for your neighbors? Are you heading an organization geared toward making change? We want to meet you! Next American City is announcing its first annual conference geared toward bringing together the next generation of urban leaders. From May 20-21, 2009, Next American City will be inviting 30 inspiring individuals from across the country to discuss our role in shaping the future of cities.

More details on Next American City Vanguard Conference. You need to fill out a form to be selected for participation. Be there or be elsewhere.

Their aim is to promote web publication and not rank institutions thus supporting open access initiatives and electronic access to scientific publications for research. Such a ‘web presence’ might have a correlation with academic quality and prestige as is evident through the ranking of top 4000 institutions (I’m glad to see Texas A&M ranked 16).

On a related note, there is a call for JSTOR to release academic research material into public domain as the content was created by academics funded by not-for-profit institutions. JSTOR in fact also is a self-sustaining not-for-profit institution.

Questia Online Library is an example of one such online library that gives you access to a large collection of books and journal articles in the fields of humanities and social sciences. The database also includes magazines and newspaper articles and is searchable by title, author, subject, and keyword.

One of the impressive options in Questia is the availability of online tools that enable users to create footnotes, bibliographical references, and hyperlinking across titles. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such tools that not only recreate the way you would use physical resources but also enhance your experience in using online tools in order to help you maintain a list of resources you accessed. One more additional feature that impressed me was the availability of more than 5000 books in online format. These books are public domain books whose copyright has expired hence are available to read for free in their entirety. No more buying expensive books or looking them up in libraries. You can use all the above mentioned reference tools in these books as well.

However, the flip side of availing of such resources is the paid subscription options. But, Questia makes it easy to subscribe and gives you options depending on your use. If you plan on using it regularly for your term papers and research projects, the best option is the annual subscription for nearly $100. If you want to use it for just 1-2 projects, you can choose the relatively less expensive options for a quarterly ($45) or monthly period ($20). Before you buy a subscription, I would advice you to check with your school or university if it has Questia included in its list of available online databases. If not, you can request your institution to add Questia to its list of databases. Finally, I have found references to online resources within Questia in other databases like ERIC (EBSCO) and Science Direct. I would like Questia to state which journals or books are exclusive to their service which gives me a better idea of deciding if I should subscribe. You can choose to avail of their free trial offer to look around and decide if it is a good match for your research needs.

Personally, I use Google Scholar after logging in through my university’s proxy server. This allows me to search for articles and books aided by Google’s superior search technology and the meta-description below every result shows me if the reference is available in my university library in full-text format or otherwise. It also allows me to import bibliographic information into Endnotes (BibTex or Refworks options are also available).

Note: This is a paid review for Questia Online Library. I request you to check it out and I heartily recommend their service but beware of redundancy if you have access to other similar resources.

There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims. However, this should not be surprising. It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution presents the basic idea in a simple-to-understand diagram. But does this conclusion apply to social research or urban planning research as well? There also has been talk of bringing out the ‘dark research’ out of the closet i.e. research studies that have yielded results contradictory to the researchers’ expectations and hence aren’t published. One of their suggestions regarding journal policy that I agree with is – As an editor or referee, don’t reject papers that fail to reject the null.

Since I am currently neck deep in research design studies and formulating my research proposal, I can completely relate to this. Click image to enlarge.

The methodology explained here is based on social mobility, research, and service i.e. “is the school recruiting and graduating low-income students? Is it producing PhDs and cutting-edge research? And is it encouraging in its students an ethic of service?” The ranking are displayed below and surprisingly puts my current graduate school, Texas A&M right at the top.

While I’m pleased as punch at the top billing given to my university, I must remain skeptical of such rankings. When the magazine lists its criteria as ‘contribution to the country’, are they neglecting the role of universities in the increasingly globalized world? Considering that international students contribute heavily at least to the research conducted in any top university, shouldn’t that factor in the rankings also? Are the universities necessarily established to keep America competitive in this global economy where human capital is increasingly mobile. You may argue that U.S. universities are clearly oriented toward bettering America’s standing since most of the research dollars come from federal agencies. However, is this also indicative of the immigration policies of the same government that doesn’t necessarily encourage immigration? I hope not.

Well, all rankings are subjective to criticism but I will attest to the top quality of research and education at Texas A&M. It is definitely one of the best. Also, I found it strangely funny that a liberal magazine chose a conservative university as its top choice.

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing mentions the effect of No Child Left Behind on neighborhoods and property prices:

No Child Left Behind and standardized testing not only turns your child into a slave to her test-scores, but they can even affect your property values: a school with low test-scores brings down the neighborhood property values. That means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances are that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their asses to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending them to tutors, helping them with assignments that they were meant to complete themselves. If you don’t do the same, your kids will suffer by comparison [emphases mine].

So it isn’t enough just getting in but also more important to keep fighting hard by keeping at it and how? By doing homework that in all probability is not going to make much difference in your education anyway. But it is like the rolling juggernaut that no one wishes to jump off in fear of being crushed under.

[via PhD Comics: click on image to enlarge]

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WorldChanging is one site I have been reading for a long time now and can heartily recommend to anyone interested in sustainability and green technology. They have come out with their own book, complete with a foreword by Al Gore and an introduction by Bruce Sterling.

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If you feel the same, better head over pronto to the PhD Comics Gear store.

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.

2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don’t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.

3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
You hear a lot about details, from “Don’t sweat the details” to “God is in the details.” Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important. A very successful real estate person taught me this. He told me, “Watch King Rat. You’ll get it.”

A great list and sound advice. Continue reading here.