There is an interesting course at ETH Zürich

Should science be free from moral, political or ideological influences? According to the so-called value-free ideal it should. Many scientists think of themselves as committed to truth and objectivity and nothing else. In this seminar, we will track the history of the value-free ideal and engage in a debate about the potential role of so-called non-epistemic values in science.
Course Objective
In the past decades, philosophers of science have begun to challenge the value-free ideal in science. With the help of recent literature from the philosophy of science, students will be introduced to the debate on values in science and the reasons for why the value-free ideal has come under attack. They will be familiarized with the distinction between epistemic (truth-conducive) values and so-called non-epistemic values. The course aims at enabling students to critically reflect the potential role of non-epistemic values in science.

Quelle www.brandeins.de diskutiert eine Arbeit aus Nature 2009:

Das US-amerikanische Wissenschaftsmagazin präsentierte eine Studie von Datenwissenschaftlern in Diensten von Google und Yahoo. Die konnten plausibel nachweisen: Wenn viele Leute Suchwörter wie „Grippesymptome“ oder „Apotheke in der Nähe“ eingeben, lassen sich geografische Ausbreitungen von Seuchen nahezu in Echtzeit berechnen, ohne dass irgendjemand mit einem einzigen Arzt sprechen muss. Die Anwendung dazu nannten sie GFT, Google Flu Trends.
Mit gesundem Menschenverstand leicht nachzuvollziehen war, dass die Methode um ein Vielfaches präziser und schneller sein würde als das gängige Verfahren des amerikanischen Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Die Beamten der Behörde sammeln Fragebögen bei Arztpraxen zu Patientenzahlen ein und rechnen mit ein bis zwei Wochen Zeitverzögerung die gesundheitliche Lage der Nation hoch.

Dann aber kam eine Arbeit in Science 2014

Rückblickend hatte sich die Vorhersagequalität von GFT als lausig erwiesen. Die Beamten mit ihren Fragebögen hatten im Durchschnitt bessere Vorhersagearbeit geleistet. Kurz darauf wurde eine Studie von Datenwissenschaftlern rund um den Harvard-Ökonom Ryan Kennedy publiziert, die den Aufstieg und Fall des Datenmusterknaben Google Flu Trends zur Parabel für Big-Data-Analytik insgesamt erklärte.

siehe auch Wired “What We Can Learn From the Epic Failure of Google Flu Trends?”

This is really cool – I had a long lasting error in my GPX cycle planner  where I could never find the culprit.
Basically, the system was freezing after doing a POI search. With the most recent Safari and Chrome updates everything is working now. Just needed a new API key from Google …

http://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/open_access-wie-der-akademische-kapitalismus-die-wissenschaften-veraendert/

Hagner zeigt einige Aspekte auf, wie Open Access unsere Wissenschaftslandschaft verändert. Es ist ein interessanter Essay, leider redet der Autor viel über die MINT-Fächer (Medizin, Infor­ma­ti­ons­wis­sen­schaften, Natur­wis­sen­schaften, Technik) ohne davon allzu viel zu verstehen. Die Grundaussage stimmt natürlich, dass es eine heterogene Spielwiese ist

Die Praxis von Open Access ist dominiert von einer Vielzahl unter­schied­licher Akteure mit zum Teil gegen­läu­figen Inter­essen. Dazu gehören Politiker, globale Verlags­kon­sortien, Förder­or­ga­ni­sa­tionen, Wissen­schafts­ma­nager, Biblio­thekare, digitale Aktivisten, die Compu­ter­in­dustrie und schließlich auch dieje­nigen, um die es eigentlich geht: Wissen­schaftler – aber auch hier handelt es sich keineswegs um eine homogene Gruppe.

Dabei ist völlig unklar, wohin die Entwicklung geht.  Ob die EU-Rahmenprogramme  im Wesent­lichen “über Bande gespielte Wirtschafts­för­derung” sind, ist relativ egal unwichtig in dem Zusammenhang. Es stimmt auch nur sehr begrenzt, dass man in  digitaler Zeitschriften Artikel publi­zieren kann, die man in “seriö­sen” Journalen nicht unter­bringen kann.

Dafür fehlt der wichtigste Punkt, dass Open Access lediglich die Kosten vom Leser auf die Autoren abwälzt. Die Verlag verdienen ungehindert weiter, statt an Elsevier gehen Steuergelder nun an PLoS, 36 Millionen in 2014. Und wenn Elsevier seine Strategie nur etwas modifiziert im Sinn von „we continued to make good progress on our strategy to syste­ma­ti­cally transform our business into a profes­sional infor­mation solutions“ dann haben wir ziemlich bald das Facebook Phänomen auch in der Forschung: Keiner ist wirklich überzeugt, aber de facto frisst es unsere Zeit.

Der Titel des Essays ist jedenfalls gut. Da könnte man viel  interessantes herausholen, zum Beispiel, dass Zeitschriften  keine “periodicals” mehr sind und Wissenschaft zur Dauerberieselung wird. Wenn der Zeitschriftenname nun keine Werbung für meinen Artikel mehr ist, muss ich nun selbst für jedes Paper eine Kampagne starten?

Although I didn’t expect that ever in allergy research there is an editorial with the title “Research Waste in Atopic Eczema Trials – Just the Tip of the Iceberg” refering to a meta-analysis by Wilkes et al.

Clinical trials often continue to be undertaken even though the effectiveness of the intervention under consideration has already been demonstrated. In addition, vehicle- or placebo-controlled studies predominate over head-to-head comparisons, although the latter would be more informative for clinicians in guiding patient management. This creates research waste, and both investigators and funders are to blame.

I need to downscale images on mobile phones to save bandwidth. Here is my code based on http://www.codeforest.net/html5-image-upload-resize-and-crop. No need for any complicated plugins. Take care of some security holes…

<html>
<head>
<script src="jquery-1.11.1.min.js"></script>
<?php if ($_POST) {
  $img = $_POST['image'];
  $img = str_replace('data:image/jpeg;base64,', '', $img);
  $img = str_replace(' ', '+', $img);
  $data = base64_decode($img);
  $file = 'cache/' . uniqid() . '.jpg';
  file_put_contents($file, $data);
}
?>
</head>

<body>
<form>
<input type="text" value="" name="text" id="text"/>
<input type="file" name="filesToUpload[]" id="filesToUpload" multiple="multiple" />
<input type="button" id="button" value="submit">
</form>

<script>
$('#button').click(function(){

 if (window.File && window.FileReader && window.FileList && window.Blob) {
   var files = document.getElementById('filesToUpload').files;
   for(var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
     resizeAndUpload(files[i]);
   }
 }
 else {
   alert('not supported');
 }
});

function resizeAndUpload(file) {
  var reader = new FileReader();
  reader.onloadend = function() {
    var tempImg = new Image();
    tempImg.src = reader.result;
    tempImg.onload = function() {
      var max_width = 500;
      var max_height = 500;
      var tempW = tempImg.width;
      var tempH = tempImg.height;
      if (tempW > tempH) {
        if (tempW > max_width) {
          tempH *= max_width / tempW;
          tempW = max_width;
        }
      }
      else {
      if (tempH > max_height) {
        tempW *= max_height / tempH;
        tempH = max_height;
      }
   }
   var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
   canvas.width = tempW;
   canvas.height = tempH;
   var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
   ctx.drawImage(this, 0, 0, tempW, tempH);
   var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg");
   var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
   xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
     if (xhr.readyState == 4 && xhr.status == 200) {
       location.reload();
     }
   };
   xhr.open('POST', 'index.php', true);
   xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
   var input = document.getElementById("text");
   var inputData = encodeURIComponent(input.value);
   var data = 'text=' + inputData + '&image=' + dataURL;
   xhr.send(data);
   }
 }
}
</script>

</body>
</html>

The big issue when running that with multiple phones is image orientation.
To save computing power many mobiles are just save their sensor data without caring about too much about orientation as long as orientation is written in the exif tag.
Here are the 8 possible orientations

ORIENTATION
	TOP	LEFT    
1	top	left
2	top	right
3	bottom	right
4	bottom	left
5	left	top
6	right	top
7	right	bottom
8	left	bottom

I therefore added canvas rotation / flipping after getting image orientation from https://github.com/blueimp/JavaScript-Load-Image. The revised function now looks like

function resizeAndUpload(file) {
  var reader = new FileReader();
  reader.onloadend = function() {
    var can = document.createElement('canvas'); 
    var ctx = can.getContext("2d");
    var thisImage = new Image();
    thisImage.src = reader.result;
    thisImage.onload = function() {    
      var max_width = 1500;
      var max_height = 1500;
      var tempW = thisImage.width;
      var tempH = thisImage.height;
      if (tempW > tempH) {
        if (tempW > max_width) {
          tempH *= max_width / tempW;
          tempW = max_width;
        }
      }
      else {
        if (tempH > max_height) {
          tempW *= max_height / tempH;
          tempH = max_height;
        }
      }
      can.width  = tempW;
      can.height = tempH;
      ctx.save();
      var width  = can.width;  var styleWidth  = can.style.width;
      var height = can.height; var styleHeight = can.style.height;
      if (orientation>1) {
        if (orientation > 4) {
          can.width  = height; can.style.width  = styleHeight;
          can.height = width;  can.style.height = styleWidth;
        }
        switch (orientation) {
          case 2: ctx.translate(width, 0);     ctx.scale(-1,1); break;
          case 3: ctx.translate(width,height); ctx.rotate(Math.PI); break;
          case 4: ctx.translate(0,height);     ctx.scale(1,-1); break;
          case 5: ctx.rotate(0.5 * Math.PI);   ctx.scale(1,-1); break;
          case 6: ctx.rotate(0.5 * Math.PI);   ctx.translate(0,-height); break;
          case 7: ctx.rotate(0.5 * Math.PI);   ctx.translate(width,-height); ctx.scale(-1,1); break;
          case 8: ctx.rotate(-0.5 * Math.PI);  ctx.translate(-width,0); break;
        }
      }
      ctx.drawImage(thisImage,0,0,tempW,tempH);
      ctx.restore();
    }
    var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg");
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
      if (xhr.readyState == 4 && xhr.status == 200) {
        location.reload();
      }
    };
    xhr.open('POST', 'index.php', true);
    xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    var input = document.getElementById("text");
    var inputData = encodeURIComponent(input.value);
    var data = 'text=' + inputData + '&image=' + dataURL;
    xhr.send(data);
  }
}

Seems there is a real problem ;-) even with valuable SO comments at hand. In the first instance I tried to float all divs. But even when clearing floats this always left a vertical gap. In a second attempt, I used a table but this wasn’t really responsive design. Next, I tried CSS3 multi-column layout

#container {
    margin: 0 auto; 
    column-count: 3;
    column-gap: 2px;
    width: 320px;
    background-color: white;
}

This works as expected (jsfiddle).

and could be even responsive when adding some code for smaller screens

@media screen and (max-width: 1450px) {
  #inner {
    max-width:950px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    -moz-column-count: 2;
    -webkit-column-count: 2;
    column-count: 2;
  }
}
@media screen and (max-width: 950px) {
  #inner {
    max-width:480px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    -moz-column-count: 1;
    -webkit-column-count: 1;
    column-count: 1;
  }
}

jsfiddle looks great but we are soon running into another problem. Whenever adding more divs as the database is updated, the whole layout gets re-arranged column-wise which is very confusing to the viewer. The same happens with flexbox (attempt #4), currently there is no CSS solution at all. You need some JS layout cheating (codepen).

aeon.co/essays has a a long and convincing plea

Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer … we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images …
computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms…
The idea that memories are stored in individual neurons is preposterous: how and where is the memory stored in the cell?

Indeed, all NMR studies tell us, that many brain areas are being involved in simple tasks. I just wonder why all the current research money goes into human brain mapping projects? We know, it doesn’t work and it is not just a matter of poor organization.

I particular liked the objection of aeon.co that human consciousness acts like computer software. Just bits and bytes get immoral as shown in the movie Transcendence (2014) with disastrous results for humanity. Or like with the Twitter bot Tay that had to be shut down due to its inability to recognize when it was making offensive or racist statements.