Reducing the peer review burden and raising grant success rates by passing a simple law

Pass a law that limits the total dollars that a research organization can request from the federal government to three times the average dollars they received in previous years. This would immediately change the average success rate of grants to... continue reading

Are we throwing away fresh water? How much fresh water is going to the landfills?

Several authors have worked and came forward with studies and papers on water use, depletion and virtual water. However little to nothing has been done to study how much water is throwed away and wasted on a daily basis in... continue reading

Piracy and (Digital) Economy - Beneficial side-effects of outlawed acts and black market economies for societies.

There are various pointers in recent research that suggest that product piracy as a means of distribution is a mayor factor in not only innovation but also education and economic advancement. Independent studies also show positive effects for the... continue reading

Why Renewable Energy Cannot Replace Fossil Fuels

In 2013, the world used 533 exajoule of commercial primary energy, of which 87% was from fossil fuels. Renewable energy (RE) accounted for just under 9% [BP 2014]... continue reading

Affectivity to liminality a factor in psychogenesis

A liminal phase is one where the subject experiences his existence as being in a non-controlled or controllable environment, one that is insecure, unfamiliar and thus anxiety producing. Everyone routinely slips in and out of liminal phases from... continue reading

Re-scaling of model evaluation measures to allow direct comparison of their values

Species distribution models are increasingly used in ecology, biogeography and climate change research, and are usually complemented with one or more metrics evaluating their performance. Not all metrics vary within the same scale of measurement:... continue reading

Behavioral Economics: The Way Forward in Education

Behavioral Economics focuses on modelling the decision-making process of individuals, by exploring the emotional, psychological, and social factors that lead to those decisions. Although it primarily focuses on economic decisions nonetheless there... continue reading

The Effect of Economists and Other Professions on Economic Growth

There is a literature on the effects of lawyers on economic growth that suggests that much legal activity is either unproductive or rent-seeking. While the empirical results in this literature are mixed, there is a larger question of why does the... continue reading

Why research reputation trumps teaching reputation in universities

In humans we see lekking behaviour in the general rule that people like being around successful people. This is why social A-lists exist. More generally as animal behaviour, a lek is a gathering of individuals for the purposes of competitive... continue reading

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