[u.k.: new institute for web science]

 "Department for Business, Innovation and Skills   (National)

The Government today announced the creation of the new Institute for Web Science.

It is designed to make the UK the hub of international research into the next generation of web and internet technologies and their commercialisation, and was announced by the Prime Minister alongside plans for a radical opening up of information and data to put more power in people’s hands. The Institute will conduct research, collaborate with businesses, identify opportunities for social and economic benefit, assist in commercialising research and help Government stimulate demand through procurement.

The web was originally a place where people published documents that users could search and pick up. Web 2.0 has enabled users to contribute and create web content more easily. Web 3.0 will take the web to a whole new level by publishing data in a linkable format so that users and developers can see and exploit the relationships between different sets of information.

The development of these technologies will create significant new opportunities for business and the public sector. The impact of these technologies is likely to be as important as the creation of the original web, and could generate large-scale economic benefits for the UK in the global market for web and internet technologies. The role of the Institute will be to undertake research and development, and act as a bridge between research and business, helping commercialise these new technologies. It will also advise Government on how semantic technologies can be used in the public sector, and how public procurement can be used to speed their adoption.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that £30 million would be set aside to create the Institute for Web Science. It will be headed by Sir Tim Berners Lee, the British inventor of the World Wide Web, and leading Web Science expert Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Read more here. 

[journals: ranking and inventory]

~~ via scholarship 2.o


JournalBase *- *A Comparative International Study of Scientific Journal Databases in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH)

Michèle Dassa et Christine Kosmopoulos / Cybergeo, The Electronic European Journal of Geography / Dossier publié le 25 juin 2009 / Document published on 25 June 2009 / Last updated : 17 July 2009.

Presented here for the first time in a comparative table are the contents of the databases that inventory the journals in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH), of the Web of Science (published by Thomson Reuters) and of Scopus (published by Elsevier), as well as of the lists European Reference Index for Humanities (ERIH) (published by the European Science Foundation and of the French Agence pour l'Evaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur (AERES).

With some 20,000 entries, this is an almost exhaustive overview of the wealth of publications in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, at last made available in this table, adopting the same nomenclature for classing the journals according to their disciplines as the one used in 27 workstations of the European Science Foundation.

The multiple assignments reveal the multidisciplinarity of the journals, which is quite frequent in SSH, but also sometimes the incoherence of databases that have not been corrected.The research was carried out in 2008 with the financial support of the TGE Adonis of the CNRS.

An updated version will soon be presented online.The final objective of this project, which concerns the entire international community of the Social Sciences and the Humanities, is to put online, in a bilingual English/French version, the database of JournalBase in interactive mode on a collaborative platform, as well as the final report of the study, so that the decision-makers, the scientists, the experts in scientific information have access to up-to-date information, and so that they may contribute to forward movement in the reflection on these questions, through the exchange of experiences and of good working practices.

JournalBase has been updated on the 17 July 2009. It includes the information on open access journals indexed in the DOAJ.

Source

[http://www.cybergeo.eu/index22492.html]

Full Text

[http://www.cybergeo.eu/pdf/22492]

[bacteria rule: organic computing]

Some interesting developments in organic computing noted in a recent article from the Journal of Biological Engineering:

Background

The Hamiltonian Path Problem asks whether there is a route in a directed graph from a beginning node to an ending node, visiting each node exactly once. The Hamiltonian Path Problem is NP complete, achieving surprising computational complexity with modest increases in size. This challenge has inspired researchers to broaden the definition of a computer. DNA computers have been developed that solve NP complete problems. Bacterial computers can be programmed by constructing genetic circuits to execute an algorithm that is responsive to the environment and whose result can be observed. Each bacterium can examine a solution to a mathematical problem and billions of them can explore billions of possible solutions. Bacterial computers can be automated, made responsive to selection, and reproduce themselves so that more processing capacity is applied to problems over time.

Results

We programmed bacteria with a genetic circuit that enables them to evaluate all possible paths in a directed graph in order to find a Hamiltonian path. We encoded a three node directed graph as DNA segments that were autonomously shuffled randomly inside bacteria by a Hin/hixC recombination system we previously adapted from Salmonella typhimurium for use in Escherichia coli. We represented nodes in the graph as linked halves of two different genes encoding red or green fluorescent proteins. Bacterial populations displayed phenotypes that reflected random ordering of edges in the graph. Individual bacterial clones that found a Hamiltonian path reported their success by fluorescing both red and green, resulting in yellow colonies. We used DNA sequencing to verify that the yellow phenotype resulted from genotypes that represented Hamiltonian path solutions, demonstrating that our bacterial computer functioned as expected.

Conclusions

We successfully designed, constructed, and tested a bacterial computer capable of finding a Hamiltonian path in a three node directed graph. This proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates that bacterial computing is a new way to address NP-complete problems using the inherent advantages of genetic systems. The results of our experiments also validate synthetic biology as a valuable approach to biological engineering. We designed and constructed basic parts, devices, and systems using synthetic biology principles of standardization and abstraction.

Another article of interest published in January in New Scientist on organic computing is here.

[interdisciplinary papers]

The online conference on the Future of Scientific Publications resumes with an new paper by Roberto Casati "On Publishing", now available on http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. In his paper Roberto Casati discusses the social significance of publication in the life of a scientific knowledge object (SKO). The importance of publication is made evident by the complex issue of unpublication (the strong version of retraction whereby a SKO is completely destroyed). Unpublication is a tempting option in the electronic world. He argues against the viability of unpublication, both on practical and on principled grounds related to the cascading entitlements of published paper.

There is also a paper by Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute on "Sifting through the online web of knowledge" at: http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. Their essay examines how researchers gain access to knowledge at a time when scholarly communication and materials are increasingly moving online. This topic has so far mainly been discussed in terms of journal publication and readership. Here a broader view is taken, including a variety of areas where knowledge production and dissemination is broader than journal publications and includes data and tools. A second reason to take a broader view extends the horizon still further, since scientific communication and collaboration are not just undergoing change within the research community, but also depend on wider changes such as the use of search engines and how they affect what can be found online generally. New search behaviours are particularly evident among a new generation of scholars and potential scholars. Hence we will look at changes in research as well as in the realm of online knowledge more broadly.

Have a look at the papers: www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub.




Via an e-mail from the interdisciplines.org list.

[Médias et transdisciplinarité- Michel Cazenave]

As all of you know, my current post as research fellow is dedicated to studying transdisciplinarity which will culminate in the creation of a new academic journal dedicated to transdisciplinary studies in creative technologies. I have been blogging about my journey so far and serendipitously Basarab Nicolescu (can we say "father" of transdisciplinarity...at least in it's contemporary sense?) read a blog post, commented, and since them we have maintained a dialogue. It is this online dialogue which has brought me from the virtual world into the physical (which is Paris) to join the EHESS's annual sessions of seminars in transdisciplinarity (co-organised with Alfredo Pena-Vega).

Michel Cazenave's seminar gave me lots to think about; as I said lastnight when we went to coffee to dissect the talk: "je dois penser encore!" The talk was very philosophical but I suppose that is to be expected from someone who is ecrivain, poète and philosophe. Something that kept coming up was the idea that science (with a capital S) has specific demands and methods which means it operates on a different level of being than transdisciplinary enquiries (one might say this holds also for spiritual, moral, or more "humanities" driven questions).


After the talk there was some time for questions and one came from a woman at the back who asked something that has been posed to me: "give a concrete example of a transdisciplinary..." and in this case it was of a film. Cazenave had a good answer: how to give a concise example for something that is so complex and complicated?




NB: that catchy title of "studies in..." is thanks to Basarab Nicolesu who, while chatting about transdisciplinarity (but of course), noted that aptness of the word "studies."

NB: The top photo is Salle 1 in the EHESS before we began. At the front of the room on the left is Basarab, in the middle with the book is Michel and on the right by the green door is Alfredo.




Addition 23 Jan. 2009: I found this report on an interdisciplinary conference:

[infusing semantic web into operational data systems]

Patrick West, Peter Fox, Deborah McGuiness and Stephan Zednik from the High Altitude Observatory present their project on integrating data and the semantic web.

From their
"As part of our semantic data framework activities across disciplines from solid-earth, lower, middle and upper terrestrial atmosphere and solar atmosphere to integrative subjects such as climate response and space weather, we have collected a set of experiences: technical, collaboration and social that relate to how easy or hard the infusion process has been. We cover both the semantic web and knowledge infusion as well as underlying service infusion such as catalogs and OPeNDAP data servers."



Interesting points:

• It's easy to identify experts in each field and goo idea to get groups together to provide community support and external buy-in

• Tricky to conduct face-to-face meetings which are imperative to share expert knowledge between disciplines/fields
• Require a general ontology too cross data from one "data catalogue" to another
• tricky to gain access to data holdings etc...which are external to group
  

[mirror neurons and literacy]

Proof that humans are "wired" to connect with others:

"Scientists have recently been decoding how "mirror neurons" in our brains work. They've realized humans are wired to connect with others, to live vicariously through others' experiences, in much stronger ways than we once thought. The brain doesn't differentiate much between watching someone do something, and doing it yourself - which is why there are so many obsessed sports fans in the world. Most important for teachers, these mirror neurons are also a key to how we learn. Just watching someone read a book teaches us more than we ever realized about the reading process. And we use our emotions to readily connect those experiences to other related tasks (either physically or emotionally). I will never be a gymnast (beyond the contortions I go through to get through airport security screening). But I can connect to the feelings of almost, not quite reaching a goal again and again, and finally succeeding. What teacher hasn't experienced weeks or months of helping a struggling student almost, but not quite, grasp a concept? It makes those breakthrough moments all the more sweet.

Mirror neurons are also the reason modeling in classrooms is so essential. When students see the strategies teachers use to tackle difficult texts, no matter the genre, their brains don't differentiate between their experiences and ours. The teacher's strategies become part of the mix that fires up whenever a student approaches a new text. Likewise, all those whole-class activities to build community around reading and writing early in the year become ingredients in the chemical soup in our students' brains as they read and write on their own. The consequences of broken mirror neurons can also be dire, as any teacher who has worked with an autistic child knows.

What about mirror neurons in staff settings? Simply put, our moms were right - we shouldn't hang out with the wrong crowd, and we need to choose our role models carefully. Mirror neurons imitate and absorb what they see around us whether we like what we're seeing or not. If you're surrounded by negative, unhappy people, it's human nature that you're going to absorb that outlook over time. Sometimes toxic environments or people can't be avoided, but it's important to note when it comes to "emotional contagions," negative environments have more powerful effects than positive ones. If you have a colleague or two who are always resentful or angry, you owe it to yourself and your students to limit your time with them. If you have to spend time with them, even decreasing eye contact or verbal interactions can help limit what your brain's mirror neurons pick up."

Read more here.

[employment - research positions]

Localisation is the adaptation of digital content to culture, locale and linguistic environment. The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is a large Academia-Industry partnership, funded by Science Foundation Ireland and Industry Partners, with over 100 researchers developing novel technologies addressing the key localisation challenges of volume, access and personalisation. The major research strands within the CNGL are Integrated Language Technologies (ILT), Digital Content Management (DCM), Localisation Technologies and Processes (LOC) and Systems Framework (SF).
We are currently recruiting: Post-Doctoral Research Positions:
3 Post-Doctoral Positions in ILT (MT, NLP)
1 Post-Doctoral Position in DCM (Ontology Induction)
3 Post-Doctoral Positions in LOC (Workflow, Translation, Multilingual Content)
Post-Doctoral positions are fixed term contracts.

Salary: €38,623-45,401 per annum (depending on experience).

Starting dates: now – November 2008.

PhD Studentship Research Positions:
5 PhD Studentships in ILT (MT, NLP) 5 PhD Studentships in DCM (IR/IE, QA, Ontology Induction)
8 PhD Studentships in LOC (Workflow, Translation, Multilingual Content)
PhD positions are typically for 4 years.
Stipend: €16,000 (tax free) plus payment of registration fees.
Starting dates: now – November 2008. CNGL provides state-of-the-art research facilities and supports travel to present at conferences.

Please visit http://www.cngl.ie/vacancies.html for more detailed information on each position. The successful candidates will join well established research groups at Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and University of Limerick, Ireland.

Deadline for applications: 31st August 2008 To apply send CV and contact details of 2 referees to info@cngl.ie quoting the appropriate reference (see http://www.cngl.ie/vacancies.html). Please also use for informal inquiries.

[conference: science in the 21st century]

Sounds like a conference that anyone interested in transdisciplinarity and web 2.0 (for lack of a better term) should go to. Just take a look at some of the talks like Katy Börner's talk on "domain maps of abstract semantic spaces" ( scimaps.org) or Jacques Distler on how blogs, wikis etc... are reshaping communication in the sciences or Barry Wellman and Rainie Lee on "Networked Individualism and the Triple Revolution: Networks, Internet and Mobility."

"Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these technological developments influence the way science is done, and they also redefine our relation to the society we live in. Information exchange and management, the scientific community, and the society as a whole can be thought of as a triangle of relationships, the mutual interactions in which are becoming increasingly important."

Sep. 8th-12th 2008, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario

[unscientific teaching in louisiana *science* classes]

In May last year I blogged about the Creation musueum that had just opened in Kentucky devoted to telling the history of the world...according to the bible. Well, know there's the Louisian State Education Act "is designed to slip ID in "through the back door", says Forrest, who is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and an expert in the history of creationism. She adds that the bill's language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of "open and objective discussion", is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial.

Forrest's testimony notwithstanding, the bill was passed by the state's legislature - by a majority of 94 to 3 in the House and by unanimous vote in the Senate. On 28 June, Louisiana's Republican governor, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, signed the bill into law. The development has national implications, not least because Jindal is rumoured to be on Senator John McCain's shortlist as a potential running mate in his bid for the presidency.

***

Supporters of the new law clearly hope that teachers and administrators who wish to raise alternatives to evolution in science classes will feel protected if they do so. The law expressly permits the use of "supplemental" classroom materials in addition to state-approved textbooks. The LFF is now promoting the use of online "add-ons" that put a creationist spin on the contents of various science texts in use across the state, and the Discovery Institute has recently produced Explore Evolution, a glossy text that offers the standard ID critiques of evolution (see "The evolution of creationist literature"). Unlike its predecessor Of Pandas and People, which fared badly during the Dover trial, it does not use the term "intelligent design".

Because the law allows individual boards and teachers to make additions to the science curriculum without clearance from a state authority, the responsibility will lie with parents to mount a legal challenge to anything that appears to be an infringement of the separation of church and state. "In Dover, there were parents and teachers willing to step forward and say, this is not OK," says Rosenau. "But here we're seeing that people are either fine with it or they don't want to say anything because they don't want to be ostracised in their community."

Read the full article at New Scientist.

NB some of the comments in relation to this article in NS are hilarious while others are deeply saddening.

[synesthesia]

I've been reading Cretien Van Campen's The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. In it Van Campen wonders how it might feel like to "hear music in colour, or to see someone's name in colour." Me too though sometimes when speaking to listening to people speak (not singing though) I imagine words or letters...not sure if that counts. According to Van Campen, synesthetes "perceive the colours of words and letters only when they read themin written or printed form." Brain scans of synesthetes show that even when blindfolded and listening to spoken words, the areas of the brain responsible for hearing AND colour vision light up simultaneously. This is unlike nonsynesthetes where brain activity is generated "only in the areas known to be responsible for hearing."



For those of you who are not synesthetic you might be interested to try the "synesthesia on demand" application at hypertextopia. My attempt as a synesthete resulted in this:



(text from Van Campen p. 58)

[the naked scientist]

Driving back home from a family gathering in the sticks we could only pick up local radio stations...but The Naked Scientist came on. What an excellent show. We heard about how glue works and breakthroughs in stem cell research. Interestingly there was a segment on technology and Amazon's Kindle and Sony's e-book reader came up but instead of dismissing them because "one cannot read them in the bath"...it was the $400 price tag and the idea that users would have to pay extra to read content that appears free on the internet (blogs and newspapers). [see the techcrunch interview with Bezos about kindle]

[nano technology]

I was reading an article on the super conductor/layered oxide NaxCoO2 that, through various "conducting probe-mediated reversible electrochemical sodium intercalation/deintercalation reactions" information can be written and then erased (I'm sure I'm over-simplifying). In awe of the words used (oxidated, intercalated, superconductivity, nitrogen flux, nanolithographic) and wondering what this might mean for us, the end users of technology led me - via a google search - to a whole new world. A world of a thinking so different from my current, humanities-based research. (it's invigorating to be reminded how we can (or is it just me) get very focused one something which is just a tiny part of a bigger everything) In this world where one can measure conductivity (among a myrid of other things so different from my current examination of multi-mimesis and transliteracy in women-authored web fictions), language and story and critique have the privilege of ephemerality, rather this seems to be a world where experiments are necessary and quantifiable results are produced. One such product is the 3D Atomic Holographic Optical Data Storage Nanotechnology. It is a rewritable holographic removable disk.

"An Atomic / Photonic / Molecular / Quantum / Spintronic / Holographic Switch is the method of using a UV laser atom nanoparticle optical switch defined by a non-contact terahertz nano/microwave electric field modulator using attosecond, femtosecond, terahertz UV photons (electromagnetic radiation) simultaneously to alter properties of ferroelectric molecules for data and light expression. Through the use of UV photon induced electric field poling and dynamically changing the internal geometry of individual ferroelectric atoms in a 3 dimensional optical crystal coated on a high / low velocity substrate.
The UV laser diodes and electric field transducers of the Integrated Read/Write Head can be used in any combination or sequence to control the molecules which include UV/blue photon frequencies and quantum energy level as well as Nano/Micro electro static field strength (voltage) and switching field densities (frequency).The only rub is the cost per bit will be cheaper, faster to access, and faster to store for a much longer time uneffected by many environmental conditons." (see here for more)

[renewals: other than academic]

Interspersed with the thought-provoking panels, papers, presentations, escapes to the library, and myriad conversations, I had the pleasure of roaming Royal Holloway's beautiful campus, poking my head in the extravagant chapel, and dining in the Picture Gallery.

One night Sue and I embarked on a game of pool prompted much thinking (on my part) as to why I enjoy a game at which I'm so embarrassingly poor. I enjoyed the concentration required to hold the cue and the drive to sink my yellow ball. I found myself mentally tracing the patterns that we created with the balls crashing and then diverging. Then I did some reading and it seems, according to some scientists that we don't actually see the touching/colliding/smashing of balls but rather only the after-effect. It sounds like we only see that which causes collision rather than collision itself.

Kind of like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: you might know the speed of a quantum particle, but you won't know its exact location.

On Friday evening we enjoyed live Jazz while we sipped Pimms within Founder's North Quad. It was (finally) lovely weather and the notes seemed to float along with the breeze and murmuring of voices. Once I figure out how to transfer sound files from my blackberry I'll add some music here.

Update: Catherine, the blogger in residence for the Renewals conference, has added a slew of posts on panels and presentations. Check it out.

[plastic blood]

Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act as a substitute in emergencies.

Researchers at Sheffield University said their creation could be a huge advantage in war zones.

They say that the artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to be kept cool and can be kept for longer.

The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body.

The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing.



'Very excited'

Dr Lance Twyman, of the university's Department of Chemistry, said: "We are very excited about the potential for this product and about the fact that this could save lives.

"Many people die from superficial wounds when they are trapped in an accident or are injured on the battlefield and can't get blood before they get to hospital.

"This product can be stored a lot more easily than blood, meaning large quantities could be carried easily by ambulances and the armed forces."

A sample of the artificial blood prototype will be on display at the Science Museum in London from 22 May as part of an exhibition about the history of plastics.


Story from BBC NEWS