ICPSR Research Paper Competition: For Undergraduates and Graduates
You can win $1000 for papers you already wrote for class! If you wrote a research paper this year and used data found at ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research,), submit your paper by January 31 to the ICPSR Research Paper Competition.
Black History Month: Notable African Americans in the History of Data Science
In February 1926, Carter G. Woodson, a historian who cofounded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), started a week-long celebration of African American achievements known as “Negro History Week”. By the late 1960s, this week of recognition evolved into the month-long celebration that we know today. Since 1976, February has officially been designated as Black History Month (BHM), each year with a different focus or theme. This year, the BHM 2021 theme is “Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity”1.
LARIAC Data
The Los Angeles Region Imagery Acquisition Consortium (LARIAC) Program is a collaborative acquisition program for digital aerial imagery data which has included the participation of 30+ Los Angeles County departments, 40+ municipal governments, and many other public agencies1.
Digitalizing Ant Nests to Study Tunneling Trends
Eva Horna Lowell and Sean O’Fallon, graduate students in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, are researching ant nest behavior in the Pinter-Wollman Lab at UCLA. Initially, their goal was to study the differences in ant nests exposed to various environmental conditions using wax casts of the tunnels. However, because the tunnels were so intricate and delicate in nature, the casts kept breaking, making it necessary to approach the problem in a different way.
Squirrels in Motion
Amanda Robin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, researching behavior and locomotion of wild squirrels. In 2019, Amanda and her team equipped wild California ground squirrels (Otospermophilus Beecheyi) with motion-sensitive collars. These collars allowed them to record accelerometer data at 100 values per second as the squirrels moved through their environment.
Data visualization and raster analysis with QGIS and R
Our center provides a series of GIS support to faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as staff who need help. In most GIS related consultations, we use tools/software, such as QGIS and R studio, to do the mapping and data analysis. QGIS stands for Quantum Geographic Information Systems. It is a free and open-source desktop GIS application. R studio is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language. Both QGIS, R studio and R are free to the public.
Analyzing Ancient Chinese Buddhist Text with Python
A graduate student from Asian Languages and Cultures sought help to analyze ancient Buddhist texts semantically, including extracting the meaning of the texts, and comparing the similarity between different texts quantitatively. The goal of this consultation was to document experience using Python and to work with an ancient Chinese Buddhist dialect. This required some basic analysis on several dozen text documents with a twist.
Let's Give a Warm Welcome to Julia Wood, Data Infrastructure Assistant
Please join us in congratulating Julia Wood, a Statistics & Digital Humanities undergraduate student who recently transitioned into her new role as the Data Infrastructure Assistant within UCLA Library's Data Science Center.
