Engaging in the international academic environment is now facilitated by a range of Academic Social Networks (ASNs) that are being used by an increasing number of early career and established ...researchers, in order to build their international profile and to connect with researchers across the globe. A range of studies have noted the benefits of ASNs for individual researchers and institutions, particularly those in emerging academic systems looking to build their international reputation. Missing from the research body are studies of ASN use in Japan, which although has an established higher education system, is experiencing considerable decline in international standing, in part due to a lack of engagement with international researchers. Thus, ASNs provide a potential tool to build international visibility and connections. This case study investigates the adoption and usage of Academia.edu and ResearchGate, the two most popular ASNs in the world today, by 1771 researchers from eight universities in Japan. The findings show that Academia.edu adoption and activity is very low, with ResearchGate adoption at thirty per cent of the sample, indicating moderate knowledge and adoption of the platform. Altmetric analysis shows that use of ResearchGate is largely passive, and the interactive features that might facilitate engagement with international researchers are not being exploited. Language and cultural barriers provide one potential explanation for trends in usage, and there is also a need for further training in the various features available to researchers in Japan.
Encouraging doctoral students to publish during their candidature is becoming more widely accepted and practised, both in Australia and internationally, although it is still less common in some ...fields. Almost all universities in Australia now offer candidates an option to include publications in their doctoral thesis. This paradigm shift has occurred over several decades as the role of doctoral education has been debated, but guidelines for students, supervisors and examiners have yet to catch up. While various benefits, challenges and criticisms have been discussed by established academics, the voices of the candidates themselves are limited. Using a narrative inquiry approach, this study helps to fill that void by reporting the personal experiences of the author, who recently completed a thesis with publications (TWP) in education. As such, this paper not only illuminates the potential challenges for doctoral candidates but it also offers possible ways in which universities, supervisors, examiners and candidates themselves can make the path to completing a doctoral TWP easier to navigate.
The well-being of foreign early career academics (FECAs) has been the subject of research attention in relation to present demanding academic milieux in general and to those unfamiliar workplace ...settings in particular. A traditional variable-oriented approach that focuses on mean scores can easily gloss over the diverse nature of the group under study. Our study, conducted in Japan, took a person-oriented approach and identified FECAs’ distinct well-being profiles and the associations of their personal attributes with the profiles. Most (64%) were classified as having the highest stress scores and moderate scores for sense of belonging, control of workload and career development engagement. The second-largest profile (29%) included FECAs characterised by the lowest stress score and a strong sense of belonging, control of workload and career development engagement. Those in the smallest profile (8%), who had moderate levels of workload control and stress, lacked a sufficient sense of belonging and career development engagement. Among FECAs’ personal attributes, contract type was significantly associated with their distribution across the three well-being profiles, whereas no attributes of FECAs’ unique nature significantly pertained to their distribution. Our results suggested that support for well-being may be important regardless of background. Our investigation, using multifaceted well-being subscales over a composite scale, offers analytical, strategic support for academics in globalised higher education.
Academic Social Networks (ASNs) are becoming an important tool in the professional lives of researchers, providing an online space for international academic discourse. At the micro-level, ASNs serve ...to facilitate, (a) knowledge sharing, (b) networking, and (c) identity-building. ASNs such as ResearchGate (RG) may support entry into scholarly communities by researchers who are otherwise marginalized in a modern academic environment that privileges research conducted by established researchers in well-resourced institutions in mostly western countries. This national study follows a recently published case study of Japan, and surveys the use of RG by more than 500 researchers across the country. The authors investigate participants’ awareness and regularity of use of the 3 micro-level components of RG, and the benefits and challenges of their adoption. The study finds that while RG is largely perceived as valuable for participants, use is unbalanced toward knowledge sharing, which is further limited to posting English-language outputs and accessing literature for personal consumption. Thus, RG may be positioned as a tool rather than a community, the latter requiring a more balanced engagement with the platform, particularly in the networking area. Some practical ideas for achieving this are offered in the discussion.
While early career researchers (ECRs) often read and produce articles for peer reviewed journals, they are of ten less familiar with peer review reports (PRRs). Most ECRs learn about the genre of ...PRRs by reading reports written about their authored manuscripts, and through hands-on experience crafting their own PRRs, albeit often with little guidance or exposure to exemplars. To demystify this 'hidden' academic genre, this article reports on a genre analysis of 62 'quality' PRRs, focusing on their communicative purposes, and the structural, content, and linguistic elements that serve to support those purposes. Findings show that the central role of the PRR is to elicit various actions on the part of manuscript authors. Other functions serve to circumvent manuscript authors' potential negative emotional response to PRRs, and this is also seen in limited use of high modality verbs and emotional language. PRRs follow a fairly uniform structure, and focus on all elements of the manuscript, with most attention given to the methods section. The article provides numerous examples that provide a practical guide to support writing pedagogies related to this important academic practice.
There is an increasing expectation that early career researchers (ECRs) be active in communicating their research to diverse audiences both within and beyond academia. However, with limited time and ...an academic environment that disproportionately values certain research outputs over others, ECRs may struggle to build their expertise and confidence in communicating research to a diverse array of audiences. Applying self-efficacy theory as a framework, this study investigates the first-hand experiences of ECRs in research communication, with a specific interest in their perceptions of their own communication skills, how these skills are developed, and how their self-beliefs impact their practices. Through semi-structured interviews with 30 ECRs in Australia and Japan, we found that hands-on engagement is vital for building self-efficacy, but that much more engagement and confidence was reported in communicating to academic audiences, such as through journal articles. While most ECRs expressed a desire to engage more with audiences outside of academia, not all were active, and many reported a lack of self-belief. Barriers identified include a lack of training, experience, opportunity to observe peers, encouragement, and feedback. Further, the potential for negative backlash from online and unknown public audiences is also a concern. We also note that for researchers who may not possess strong English language skills, interactive styles of communication may prove more challenging than more 'passive' forms. Our findings suggest that the focus of ECR communication skill development could be broadened, with less emphasis on specific types of outputs, and more emphasis on how to tailor communication to suit different audiences and channels. Providing an encouraging environment, opportunities to observe others, and opportunities to engage directly with support and feedback, may also be effective in building ECRs' self-efficacy.
Contemporary early career researchers (ECRs) must share their research findings with both academic and non-academic audiences in order to advance their careers. With university organisational factors ...potentially both demanding and inhibiting ECR research dissemination, more needs to be known about ECRs' perceptions and experiences of the benefits and challenges of sharing research for diverse audiences. This article investigates ECRs' perceptions of sharing research with academic and non-academic end-users, drawing on perspectives from 30 ECRs in Australia and Japan. Findings hold cross-contextual and disciplinary salience. Benefits of sharing research with the academic community included collaboration and networking, exposure and career development, contribution to knowledge, and learning and feedback. We found that sharing research with non-academic end users offered benefits in relation to end user utility, social change, securing future funding, and knowledge mobilisation. However, respondents also identified a range of notable barriers that constrained their capacity to share their research within academia and beyond. Findings can be used to support ECRs' skills and knowledge development in sharing research with diverse audiences.
Amid increasing globalization, higher education institutions are expected to support staff members who relocate from their home countries. However, few studies have focused on factors exclusively ...contributing to the engagement of foreign early-career researchers, who are often in challenging and precarious situations. Guided by the job demands - resources model, this study examined how the significant factors of the work environment (workload control, academic support structure, and collegiality) are associated with their intention to stay, sense of belonging, and stress conditions at their institutions. Using a sample of 305 foreign early-career researchers in Japan, structural equation modelling analysis demonstrated that those with greater collegiality had a higher sense of belonging, intention to stay, and less stress. The results also suggest that they feel less job stress when they can take control of their workload. However, their intention to stay and sense of belonging were not significantly explained by the workload and academic support conditions. This study offers valuable insights into supporting global human capital in modern higher education institutions and their work engagement. For example, as Japanese universities have increasingly established English medium programs and appointed foreign researchers, proper institutional initiatives should be taken to foster collegiality among institutional members.
The accurate representation of ice particles is essential for both remotely sensed estimates of clouds and precipitation and numerical models of the atmosphere. As it is typical in radar retrievals ...to assume that all snow is composed of aggregate snowflakes, both denser rimed snow and the mixed-phase cloud in which riming occurs may be under-diagnosed in retrievals and therefore difficult to evaluate in weather and climate models. Recent experimental and numerical studies have yielded methods for using triple-frequency radar measurements to interrogate the internal structure of aggregate snowflakes and to distinguish more dense and homogeneous rimed particles from aggregates.
Machine Learning Emulation of 3D Cloud Radiative Effects Meyer, David; Hogan, Robin J.; Dueben, Peter D. ...
Journal of advances in modeling earth systems,
March 2022, 2022-03-00, 20220301, 2022-03-01, Letnik:
14, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The treatment of cloud structure in numerical weather and climate models is often greatly simplified to make them computationally affordable. Here we propose to correct the European Centre for ...Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts 1D radiation scheme ecRad for 3D cloud effects using computationally cheap neural networks. 3D cloud effects are learned as the difference between ecRad's fast 1D Tripleclouds solver that neglects them and its 3D SPARTACUS (SPeedy Algorithm for Radiative TrAnsfer through CloUd Sides) solver that includes them but is about five times more computationally expensive. With typical errors between 20% and 30% of the 3D signal, neural networks improve Tripleclouds' accuracy for about 1% increase in runtime. Thus, rather than emulating the whole of SPARTACUS, we keep Tripleclouds unchanged for cloud‐free parts of the atmosphere and 3D‐correct it elsewhere. The focus on the comparably small 3D correction instead of the entire signal allows us to improve predictions significantly if we assume a similar signal‐to‐noise ratio for both.
Plain Language Summary
Solar and terrestrial radiation is the primary driver of the Earth's weather and their detailed representation is essential for improving weather predictions and climate projections. Several aspects, however, such as the flow of radiation through the side of clouds and other three‐dimensional effects are often too costly to compute routinely. In this paper we describe how machine learning can help account for these effects cheaply.
Key Points
Emulators are used to add 3D cloud effects to the fast 1D radiation solver Tripleclouds cheaply
Emulators are trained on 3D cloud effects from SPARTACUS, which is five times slower than Tripleclouds
For a 1% slowdown in Tripleclouds' runtime, 3D fluxes are emulated with an average error of about 20%–30%
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