Robert Hoffman’s article, “A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters“, published online in Nature Genetics, 40, 1047 – 1051 (2008), describes a new type of wiki where every word is explicity linked to its author. WikiGenes is the first effort using this system. It will be interesting to see if other scientific disciplines [...]
The Science Dissemination Unit (SDU) of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, has published for electronic download as a PDF file or viewing online using the Issuu Inc. social publishing service and viewer Science Dissemination using Open Access: A Compendium of Selected Literature on Open Access, edited by E. [...]
From the announcement on DIGLIB (02008 06 14): Adding value to data – Digital Repositories in the e-Science world Special Session at the 4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science (http://escience2008.iu.edu/) December 7-12, 2008, Indianapolis, USA An Initiative of DReSNet: Digital Repositories in e-Science Network (http://www.dresnet.net) There is a great, untapped potential for synergies between grid/e-science [...]
Another social and research networking opportunity for scientists and researchers highlighted by Gerry McKiernan on his blog. According to ResearchGATE‘s front page, “ResearchGATE is a new free of charge web 2.0 platform designed for the need of researchers. With this new platform we want to change the world of science by providing a global and [...]
From the About page of the Data-PASS site: The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) is a broad-based partnership devoted to identifying, acquiring and preserving data at-risk of being lost to the social science research community. Examples of at-risk data include opinion polls, voting records, large-scale surveys on family growth and income, and [...]
I haven’t checked, but I wonder if any of the Creationst and Intelligent Design (ID) sites have taken notice of the latest nail in their anti-evolution coffin. I call this story “God and the Lizard.” I heard about it on CBC Radio on April 23, 02008. Ten, yes 10 Italian wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were [...]
Edited by Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007) is the slightly retitled paperback edition of the hardcover edition that seeks to combat the goofy arguments and religious dogma of the anti-evolutionary, creationist/intelligent design crowd.
Jan TenBruggencate, a science reporter and author who lives in Hawaii, has a blog I came across called Raising Islands in which he talks about science and environmental issues in Hawai’i.
Happened to be out the early evening, around 7 pm Pacific Time, in Victoria, BC, on February 21, 02008 and spotted a fireball hurtling out of the sky from a southerly to a northerly direction until it flamed or disappeared from view. It was a fairly hefty size but I couldn’t tell how high it [...]
Nothing like stepping out your front door and having a perfect view of the lunar eclipse on February 20, 02008.
The alpha version of the DRIVER project’s repositories portal is up and running. DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) is a European Union-funded infrastructure to support the preservation of and access to scientific data. DRIVER also supports the principles around Open Access. User support for the DRIVER repositories portal is through the Driver [...]
The British Columbia Breeding Bird Atlas should excite a lot of birders who are looking for a way to share what they observe and know about the indigenous and migratory population of bird species throughout the province. This is great project. Some of the site functionality, however, hasn’t taken flight as of 02008 01 17.
My daily newspaper ran a story about the 375 million year old Tiktaalik roseae fossil, a “fishapod”, discovered on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic in 2004. According to the article, it’s “been hailed as an ‘evolutionary icon’ because it represents the crucial transition from sea to land for some of the Earth’s most primitive [...]
From the announcement on DIGLIB and other mailing lists (02007 12 14) and the Image Permanence Institute‘s site: The Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a major research and development project dealing with the preservation of digitally printed materials. Inkjet, [...]
From an announcement posted to DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02007 11 15): Major European stakeholders in science and scientific information have joined to establish the Alliance for Permanent Access to the Records of Science to develop a coordinated European solution for the problems of permanent access to the digital records of science. For more information on the Alliance [...]
From the announcement on various mailing lists (02007 10 11): “The Digital Curation Centre (DCC), Digital Preservation Europe (DPE), Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (DRIVER), and Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources (nestor) are delighted to announce that they will be delivering a joint workshop on the long-term curation of [...]
Find out the answer to the Next Big Question at the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research. You rock the quanta CIFAR!
According to a media release dated 02007 08 13 on various mailing lists and elsewhere on the Internet, “Fedora Commons today announced the award of a four year, $4.9M grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop the organizational and technical frameworks necessary to effect revolutionary change in how scientists, scholars, museums, libraries, [...]
Since I was new to blogging in June 02002, I missed the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and National Archives of Canada Final Report: National Data Archive Consultation: Building Infrastructure for Access to and Preservation of Research Data. The report’s data June 02002, but I don’t think any of its recommendations have [...]
Here are two more books critical of Intelligent Design, the attempt by Creationists to portray and peddle their supernaturalism belief system behind the universe and how it got to where it is today. It’s the Theory That God Did It, though the IDers call this force the Intelligent Designer, an oxymoron of course as many [...]
From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02007 08 01): “DPE [DigitalPreservationEurope], PLANETS [Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services], and CASPAR [Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval] are delighted to announce their second annual joint conference to introduce participants to a range of tools and resources and to explain how these fit [...]
According to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, the Y2Y project “The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is a joint Canadian-U.S. network of over 800 organizations, institutions, foundations, and conservation-minded individuals who have recognized the value of working together to restore and maintain the unique natural heritage of the Yellowstone to Yukon region and the [...]
If you wish to comment on the European Union’s eScience digital repositories study, the deadline is July 30, 02007. Source: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, 2007 07 18
Got some spare computing time? If you leave your computer turned on more than it’s off, consider joining the World Community Grid and participating in one of their scientific research projects. In the past I’ve donated computing time to the first phase of the Human Proteome Folding Project and to the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial [...]
The Encyclopedia of Life is an ambitious, decade-long project to make information publicly and freely available on all 1.8 million species on Earth. The first “actual, authenticated species pages,” quoting the FAQ, are expected to be ready by mid-2008. The project, according to the FAQ, is “currently being headed by a steering committee of senior [...]
France’s space agency, known as CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), which retains investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs or in Franch Objet volant non identifie), digitized and published these documents for full public access through a research unit known as GEIPAN, established in 1977. The research unit suggests that the term UAP for Unidentified Aerospace [...]
The Library and Archives Canada’s educational site shouldn’t just be viewed by young people. Anyone wanting to know more about how fakes, forgeries and other kinds of recorded trickery are uncovered should visit and study Detecting the Truth (En quête de la vérité).
Someone at work pointed out the Vancouver Public Library’s collection of links to “Maps, Directions and Geographical Information“. One of these links points to the Geological Survey of Canada’s MIRAGE (Map Image Rendering DAtabase for GEoscience) digital geological map collection and database, with more than 10,000 scanned maps published since the 1850s. I didn’t even [...]
This is an amazing digital library collection by the University of Cambridge, England, called Charles Darwin: The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, “the largest collection of Darwin’s writings ever assembled. … This site contains Darwin’s complete publications and many of his handwritten manuscripts. There are over 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. There [...]
The British evolutionary biologist’s foundation describes itself as “an oasis of clear thinking.” Well known as likely the world’s most outspoken and articulate atheist, his Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is partly about his work and partly about the need for a new worldview that casts aside the superstition of religion and the [...]
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Aug | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
