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Showing posts with label Academic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academic. Show all posts
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PolyU moves up to Top 200 in the world

Posted by Anonymous on 6:18 PM in , , , ,
PolyU has moved up from the 224th place in 2008 to the 195th place in the "Times Higher Education-QS World University Ranking 2009" of the Times Higher Education Supplement.


 – Oct 08, 2009
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has made a great leap forward in the "Times Higher Education-QS World University Ranking 2009" of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). It has moved up from the 224th place in 2008 to the 195th place in 2009 in the league table, and is now listed among the top 200 universities in the world.

In the sub-category of Subject Ranking by Engineering and Information Technology, PolyU is doing even better. It has leapfrogged from the 121st place to 91st place over the year, making it on the list of top 100 universities in the disciplines of engineering and information technology.

PolyU President Prof. Timothy W. Tong said this is another concrete proof that the University is committed to achieving academic excellence in a professional context. He also called on staff and students to keep up with their commendable efforts and scale new heights in the future. "The improved ranking also ties in well with our determination to increase our presence and impact on the world higher education stage," said Prof. Tong.

The THES rankings are based on six criteria, including: peer review carried out among academics, review of graduate recruiters, staff-to-student ratio, citations of academic papers, percentage of overseas staff and percentage of overseas students. With internationalization being a key strategic direction for coming years, PolyU is confident that it will achieve higher ranking in the near future.

"It is worth noting that PolyU is also offering some subjects such as design, textile and hotel management which are beyond the scope of assessment by the THES league table," Prof. Tong said.

PolyU School of Design was twice rated as one of the top 10 design schools in Asia by BusinessWeek in 2006 and 2007. More recently, its Master of Design (Design Strategies) programme has been rated among the world's top 30 best "design thinking programmes", according to a survey published in the BusinessWeek (2 October 2009).

The University's School of Hotel and Tourism Management is also a leading provider of hospitality education in the Asia-Pacific Region. It was ranked Number Four among the world's top hotel and tourism schools based on research and scholarship, according to a study published in the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research in 2005.

Other independent surveys have also re-affirmed the strength of its faculty members. PolyU is the only university in Asia and Australia to cut a mark in the ranking of the top 50 business schools - its Faculty of Business was ranked 42nd for its finance and economics research by a study published in the Journal of Financial Economics (2009 September Issue). The rankings are based on the average research rankings provided by 11 previous studies over the period 1970-2001. The research productivity is based on 36 economics journals and the top five of the finance journals used by the earlier ranking studies.

In another league table, the Faculty of Business was ranked 66th in the world and Number Three in Asia, according to an independent ranking exercise by the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) based on research contribution in the 2004-2008 period.

In terms of engineering publication performance, PolyU is ranked 63rd in the world, according to the 2009 by fields Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities conducted by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. The ranking employs objective indicators that evaluate both quantity and quality of a university's scientific papers, and incorporates the assessment of long-term and short-term achievements in the composite measures. PolyU was ranked 72nd in the same league table last year.

PolyU also excels in civil engineering research output. In reviewing the number of papers published in leading journals from 2003 to 2005 in the field of civil engineering, PolyU was ranked number one in the world, according to an independent survey conducted by the Thomson Scientific, an established authority in compiling Science Citation Index.
Source: PRLog (Press Release)

I felt very excited and inspired when I first saw this news. Recently, I even found a PolyUtube Channel
 and a YouTube Channel for our faculty.

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用Google做学问

Posted by Anonymous on 5:59 PM in , , ,
Google是我们这个时代最伟大的产品之一。有了Google,本质上谁都有能力做“research”(研究)——“research”在今天已经不再像许多年前那样是少数“精英”的专利了。所谓的“research”其实只不过是“search, search, and... REsearch!

在中文里,“research”除了“研究”之外还可以用另外一个说法来翻译——“做学问”。中文的“学问”这个词拆开来是两个字“学”和“问”。做学问的人一样要学,一样要问,只不过他们比别人把“学”和“问”重复更多遍而已

Google是个可以用来research(做学问)的工具,而国内的百度相对来讲,在这方面差了不是一点半点。相对来看Google还是更讲原则 的一个产品。Google的搜索结果就是搜索结果,赞助商链接摆在旁边;而百度却为了赚钱把赞助商链接与搜索结果混在一起,并且更进一步,百度把赞助商链 接放在搜索结果之前。前阵子媒体就有过报道,有一位中年人为了治疗癌症上百度搜索,找了家医院,最后病情并未得到控制,钱倒是多花了许多。百度的这种做 法,直接导致人们无法分辨搜索结果与广告之间的区别,最终导致错误的判断。“如果提供假药信息,搜索引擎就是助纣为虐,谋财害命!”——国家食品药品监督 管理局新闻发言人颜江瑛说(网易新闻2008年9月18日)。

Google的界面非常简洁,很多人对此相当地推崇。但过分简洁副作用就是很多人也因此“过分简单化地使用Google”。然而,想做学问的人,花几分钟学学Google的语法是相当值得的;这几分钟里学到的东西用“终生受用”修饰都不过份。

在Google的输入框里,所有的空格都被Google理解为加号(+)如果你输入的是【purpose of education】(本文中,【……】中的文字与符号就是指你在Google的输入框里输入的文字与符号), 那么Google返回的文章里既有“purpose”存在,也有“education”存在,但不一定有“purpose of education”存在。另外,过分常用的、单独存在没有意义的词汇往往被忽略掉,比如冠词“a”、“the”;介词“of”、“in”、“on”、 “at”、“to”;连词“and”、“or”、“but”;从属连词“that”、“which”、“when”;代词“my”、“his”、 “them”……等等。

如果你想要找含有“purpose of education”这个词组的文章,那么你必须输入【“purpose of education”】。现在的Google已经可以处理utf-8大字符集了,所以,即便你在输入的时候即便使用的是全角字符(不是半角字符的【"】而是【“】或者【”】)Google也照样能够正确处理。比较一下两种输入返回的结果:【purpose of education】vs.【“purpose of education”】。再试试【the most important benefit of education】和【“the most important benefit of education”】。这就是引号(“……”)的作用——返回“完整匹配”的结果。

为了进一步筛选搜索结果,还需要学会另外一个符号——减号(-)。比如,【"the most imporant benefit of education" - "united states"】要求Google返回含有“the most important benefit of education”但不存在“united states”的文章。

另外一个威力无穷的符号是星号(*)。Google支持通配符搜索,即搜索字符串中可以包含星号(*),用来替代任意字符串。比如,【“the most * examples of censorship”】将会返回含有类似“the most outrageous examples of censorship”、“the most brazen examples of censorship”、“the most heinous examples of censorship”、“the most stupidest examples of censorship”、“the most dangerous examples of censorship”、“the most egregious examples of censorship”、“the most prolific examples of censorship”、“the most absurd examples of censorship”……
在网上找例子的时候星号非常有用。比如,想找历史上“最怎么样的”老师的话可以搜索【“most * teachers in history such as”】,或者,想知道国外常见的软饮料品牌的话就搜索【“* soft drinks such as”】。星号还可以把Google当作搭配辞典使用,比如,想知道proof这个单词之前可以使用的量词都有哪些的话,可以搜索【“a * of proofs”】,返回的结果会让你知道,起码有这么几个:“a set of proofs”,“a variety of proofs”,“a number of proofs”,“a series of proofs”……

还有一个运用相当灵活、经常带来意外收获的符号是波浪号(~)。把波浪号(~)加在某个单词前面,是在告诉Google:除了给出的关键字之外,还要搜索与波浪号(~)后面的那个单词相关的词汇。比如,搜索【the importance of ~censorship】的结果中包含着“the importance of censorship”,也包含着与censorship相关的另外一个词汇“propaganda”——“the importance of propaganda”。

再学一个在指定网站中搜索的语法“site:”比如,【“the purpose of education” site:http://www.time.com/】就是要求Google只返回http://www.time.com这个网站里的含有“the purpose of education”的文章。

2006年,Google推出了“co-op”服务(自定义搜索引擎)。其中最常用的功能之一就是可以指定Google搜索一个或者若干个指定的网站——相当于前面提到的Google语法“site:”的扩展。


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Source: http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/992.html

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