In these interviews, scientists talk to ScienceWatch.com and
offer behind-the-scenes insights into their research: reflections on
what led them to their chosen field, the motivation driving their work
in a given direction, and the challenges encountered along on the way.
These authors also offer their views on why their work has wielded
particular influence in the scientific community, as indicated by
Clarivate
citation data, and on how research in their respective fields has
progressed over time and will likely unfold in the future.
Featured interviews for September 2009 are listed
below. To view featured interviews from past months/years, visit the
Featured Interviews Main Menu.
Excerpt from the
interview: "Anxiety,
Stress, & Coping
(ASC) focuses on
publishing new empirical research
findings that make a significant
contribution to the psychology of
anxiety, stress, coping, and
associated characteristics,
outcomes, and processes.
Consequently, research published in
ASC is highly relevant for
many..."
View Article
A survey of research from Austria
since 1985 indicates that the
nation’s overall scientific
impact has been rising steadily,
from a point well below the world
average to a current standing that
exceeds the world average and also
outstrips the impact score for the
combined European Union nations. In
particular, the impact of Austrian
physics papers has been impressive
in surpassing the world average,
while, since the 1980s, clinical
medicine has improved the most
markedly in impact.
View Article
Richard H. Cyburt is currently a
Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Joint Institute for Nuclear
Astrophysics of the National
Superconducting Cyclotron
Laboratory at Michigan State
University in East Lansing,
Michigan. Dr. Cyburt is the lead
author of the second-most-cited
paper listed in the Research Front
Map titled,
"The Big Bang," from
Top Topics for
April 2009 from the field of
Space Science. Podcast.
Listen:
MP3 ¦
WMA
This Global Map of Science is based
on research-front data for the
six-year period ending in April
2009. The maps shows the major
component areas of the field linked
together in a network based on the
same principles as our
research-front maps showing highly
cited papers. Each circle on the
map represents a group, or cluster,
of research fronts on a broad topic
within the main field.
View Article
Janet G. Hering is Director of the
Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic
Science & Technology (Eawag) in
Dübendorf, Switzerland and is
the coauthor of the most cited
paper listed in the Research Front
Map titled,
"Arsenic Water Pollution," from
Top Topics for
April 2009 from the field of
Geosciences. Podcast.
Listen:
MP3 ¦
WMA
Excerpt from the
interview: "In August 1995, I
started my Ph.D. at the Helsinki
University of Technology, Finland,
in a research group focusing on the
method called independent component
analysis (ICA). ICA is a
statistical method for analyzing
multidimensional data, which can
find underlying components in the
data based on
independence..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview:
""
Autophagy" literally means
"self-eating," which seems like a
particularly gruesome brand of
cannibalism. As it turns out,
however, we all do it. Just wait
long enough between meals and we
start to consume our own fat
tissue, and if we wait even longer,
we start to live off our muscle as
well. Researchers have known for
half a century..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "I first started
working on gamma-ray bursts in 1978
when I was doing my Ph.D. work in
Germany, and I used to joke that
there were two and a half or three
and a half Gamma Ray Burst
astronomers at the time, and I was
the half. I was just very intrigued
by these bursts. They were a
brand-new phenomenon and we didn't
know anything..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Salinity is a
topic that attracts significant
attention in plant science, as it
is of both intellectual and applied
interest. This review synthesizes
thinking based on a sum of 50
years’ experience from the
two authors, both of whom have
separately published well regarded
reviews in the past. The paper
describes a new synthesis..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "This paper came at
a pivotal time for the field of
multiferroics. Science
magazine had put the field of
multiferroics on the Breatkthrough
of the Year: Areas to Watch list
(Science, 318, 1848-1849
(2007)) for 2008. This designation
came at a time when multiferroics
had been experiencing more and more
attention in solid state
physics..."
View Article
According to
Essential Science
IndicatorsSM from
Clarivate, among the 150
top-performing countries in all
fields, the Netherlands ranked #13
for citations (3,161,426), #8 for
papers (228,983), and #7 (13.81)
for citations per paper. Time
period: 1999-April 30, 2009.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "I started graduate
school at Tokyo University under
the guidance of Professor Kazutomo
Imahori. Since the first subject I
started to work with was in
vitro protein biosynthesis of
E. coli, intracellular
dynamics of proteins has always
been in my mind. From the third
grade I changed my research subject
to the mode of action of Colicin
E3..."
View Article
According to the Special Topics
Research Front Map on Insulin
Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes, the
paper "Initiating insulin therapy
in type 2 diabetes—a
comparison of biphasic and basal
insulin analogs" (Raskin P, et
al., Diabetes Care 28[2]:
260-5, February 2005) is a key
paper, with 178 cites to its
credit. This paper is also a Highly
Cited Paper in the field...
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "I was finishing a
postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford
with Stanley Falkow and my plan was
to pursue a career in the research
basis for microbial pathogenesis
and combine that with some clinical
care. The only catch was that I had
gotten interested in what had
started out to be a side project.
It had less to do with..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The use of stable
isotopes, or naturally occurring
biogeochemical markers,
revolutionized studies of animal
movement because it allowed
researchers to track movement
patterns without having to
recapture animals. Our paper
reviewed the state of the field and
discussed a series of keys issues
and assumptions..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "...our paper is
highly cited because it provides a
useful and relatively simple and
useful framework to organize a
complex mass of biochemical and
clinical data. Von Willebrand
disease (VWD) is a bleeding
disorder caused by inherited
defects in von Willebrand factor
(VWF), which is an enormous
multimeric blood protein..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "We developed an
assay called E-SCREEN, which we
described in Environmental
Health Perspectives in 1991,
together with the discovery of
nonylphenol in plastic. The 1999
paper by Anderson is a comparison
of all the tests that existed then
for estrogenicity. E-SCREEN was the
oldest of all these in
vitro assays..."
View Article