Seed Media Group: Blog
Friday, March 05, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Mapping of Science and Semantic Web
Seed’s Joy Moore attended the NSF/JSMF Workshop on Mapping of Science and Semantic Web at Indiana University on March 4 and 5.
Organized by Katy Börner (Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science, SLIS, Indiana University and Director, Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center & Curator of Mapping Science exhibit), Ying Ding (Assistant Professor, Information Science, SLIS, Indiana University), and Peter Fox (Tetherless World Constellation Chair, Professor, Earth and Environmental Science and Computer Science,Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), the workshop brought together 35 leading experts in the semantic web and science mapping from around the world.
Some of the participants had collaborated with each other before, some were meeting for the first time, and all came with a wide variety of personal research successes, obstacles, and views on how emerging technologies hold the potential to dramatically improve the accessiblity to and analysis of scientific information.
Day 1: Understanding the landscape, exploring the issues
The first day started with each of the participants giving a brief overview of their own work, providing context for the discussions to follow. Shortly thereafter, Peter Fox chaired a session with more in depth presentations by three of the attendees.
Jim Hendler gave a comprehensive overview of the emergence of the semantic web and raised some provocative points about where web 3.0 might take us. Whereas web 1.0 gave rise to Amazon.com, web 2.0 brought Facebook, web 3.0 is here and its killer apps, using semantic technology to add value to traditional web apps, are still to be developed – huge opportunities lie ahead.
Next, Frank van Harmelen predicted the end of the scientific paper as we know it, what it means for mapping science, and how semantic web makes it possible. His talk focused on data extraction from scientific papers (only necessary because the data had first been buried in the document format! “A journal paper is a state-funeral for your results”). Should we do away with the paper altogether and just publish “facts” in the form of triples, i.e., nanopublications that collectively form a vast web of knowledge? While this would improve access to targeted, structured bits of information, would the context of the findings (and importantly, the experimental conditions) be obscured? What are the practical, useful tools? His talk clearly outlined the challenge of balancing the need to structure, automate, and scale information with the needs of researchers (both as authors and readers).
Katy Börner ended the session with her presentation on interactive maps of science and technology. Maps can help us navigate different areas of science, find collaborators, identify trends, and serve as useful tools for funding agencies, researchers, industry, publishers, and for society. Not only can these maps help people access what we collectively know, forming bridges, they are also quite beautiful and inspiring – see examples here.
The final session was a group Challenges & Opportunities exercise. What can we do next, and what are the obstacles holding us back?
The day concluded with a group dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. It was noisy, fun, and a great way for everyone to relax and talk in smaller groups. With good food and wine and a roomful of brilliant, enthusiastic people, it’s no surprise that for the next couple of hours ideas were flying and debates ensued, and it’s safe to say that everyone got the most out of the day.
Coming up next, Day 2: Figuring out what can be implemented in the next five years
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 • Announcements • by Eva Wisten • #
Upcoming Seed talks
This spring, Adam Bly is giving two big talks on open science and Joy Moore is an invited expert on Social Media at the SSP’s 32nd Annual Meeting. Read more here.
Friday, February 26, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Science news in review
Every Thursday, Seedmagazine.com’s home page editor Evan Lerner comments on the course of science reporting and publishing. Week in Review is an ongoing analyses of how changes in media, publishing, technology, and science policy affect the scientific conversation; why science news are being reported the way they are, who is talking under which agenda, and whose point of view seems to be the most accurate.
In this week’s column, Lerner looks at the entertainment industry to ponder the role of movies as vehicles for scientific ideas.
Illustration: Mike Pick
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 • New • by Eva Wisten • #
USA Science & Engineering Festival launches blog on ScienceBlogs.com
The USA Science & Engineering Festival, America’s first national science festival, continues to sign up participating scientists. The festival, which consists of a two day expo in the nation’s capital, preludes with a two week long series of events spread out over the country - all with the purpose of fulfilling President’s Obama’s imperative to inspire young people to go into science. Among the most recent additions to the pre-expo programming, we find the following speakers:
Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, Brain Surgeon and Researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, will talk about how he went from being an impoverished illegal immigrant to becoming one of the nation’s top brain surgeons.
Mario Livio, Director of Public Outreach at The Space Telescope Institute, will lecture to students about black holes, dark energy and supernovas.
Bonnie Bassler, Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University will give students insight into the mysterious world of bacteria and how these microbes communicate with each other.
and
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, will take students on a journey through the cosmos to answer the question: Is there life on other planets?
ScienceBlogs.com recently joined USA Science & Engineering Festival as the Official Blogging Partner. We will have our bloggers on site, and ScienceBlogs.com is hosting the official festival blog with updates from the festival planning and greetings from the participating scientists.
Saturday, February 20, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Transdisciplinary design & and its friends
Parsons The New School for Design is launching a Masters of Fine Arts program in Transdisciplinary Design in the fall. Jamer Hunt, chair of Urban and Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons who is directing the program, recently took to the streets of New York to ask people if they could explain what transdisciplinary design actually means. In the end, he happens upon a certain someone at the Museum of Modern Art who can tell us exactly…
Leading up to the launch of the new program, Parson’s is arranging a lecture series that’s exploring the increasingly expanded role of the designer:
From Hunt’s Transdisciplinary blog:
“Designers are rethinking their practices as they increasingly confront a world in which the complexity and interconnectedness of its people, infrastructures, networks, and economies challenges traditional, disciplinary responses. Designers are increasingly designing businesses, services, experiences, policies, and even emergent social forms; and along the way they are inventing new methods, new tools, and new ways of conceiving design.”
This is the line-up of speakers:
Tuesday, February 23, 6-8 pm
Yochai Benkler, professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard and Anna Valtonen, rector of the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden on:
How are networks—global, immediate, and decentralized—changing the way we live, work and design? What are the possibilities and challenges of working and living in an always on, always connected global marketplace? And how can we leverage the power of these networks to transform lives for the better?
Thursday, March 25, 6-8 pm
March 25, Andrew Blauvelt, design director and curator at the Walker Art Center in conversation with eating designer Marije Vogelzang, Principal, Proef and Studio Marije Vogelzang in Amsterdam on:
What are the pressures on design consultancies and businesses as the rules of the game are shifting in unpredictable ways? How are design-led businesses succeeding at defining new territories to work in and new ways of operating?
April 6, Natalie Jeremijenko, Professor of Visual Arts at New York University and Nigel Snoad, Lead Researcher, Microsoft Humanitarian Systems on
Can design play a role in governmental and non-governmental delivery of things like infrastructure, education, and health care? What kinds of alliances and collaborations are forming to bring design-led practices into large scale social and technological services?
Venue: Theresa Lang Student & Community Center, Arnhold Hall, The New School 55 West 13th Street, New York
The event is free and open to the public
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Mood architecture
We wish we were in Paris for this… Earlier today, architect François Roche and Le Laboratoire held their SYNAPSES SPEECHES, a symposium on science and architecture. They discussed ideas like how the insights from contemporary science and philosophy is inspiring architecture that could react to the mood of its future inhabitants - structures that responds to the dopamine, hydrocortisone, melatonin, adrenaline and other molecules secreted by human bodies…
The speakers included: Mark Burry, François Jouve, Rupert Soar, Antonio Negri, Judith Revel, Behrokh Khoshnevis, Jean-Didier Vincent, Jeanette Zwingenberger, Chris Younes, Stephan Henrich, Winston Hampel, Natanel Elfassy and François Roche. Moderated by Giovanni Corbellini.
Read an interview with Roche here.
Friday, February 12, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Shadow play from Olafur Eliasson
For his new show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, NY, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson set up rooms of screens and lit them with different-colored spotlights to create shadows of all visitors. Sometimes it was one, sometimes many, sometimes it was you, sometimes someone else…
Upstairs, he played again with the phenomenon of the afterimage: what we see after staring at a shape for long enough.
From February 11 - March 20.
Read more about Olafur Eliasson on ScienceBlogs.
Thursday, February 11, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
30 Seconds of Aluminum Cans
Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan continues his reflections on American consumption. Jordan is trying to make us actually understand and feel the numbing numbers that are constantly tossed around: The pounds of plastic dumped in the ocean each day (2.4 million); the number of cell phones discarded in the US every 24 hours (426.000).
Watch the Seedmagazine.com Slideshow “The Age of Impossible Numbers” here:
Below: The number of aluminum cans consumed in the US every 30 seconds.
Jordan used the colored dot that is each can to digitally reinterpret Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with the same technique, pointillism (the creation of an image by using small dots of pure color) that Seurat used for the original painting.
Copyright Chris Jordan
Courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles
Tuesday, February 09, 2010 • by Eva Wisten • #
Laurie Rosenwald makes mistakes
Laurie Rosenwald, an illustrator whose client list spans from the New Yorker to Target, gave a talk during our Beer Friday. The talk included glimpses from Laurie’s workshop: “Making mistakes on purpose”.
Laurie showed how she defeats two sources of anxiety in her work: the blank paper and conformity.
The blank paper and the sense of I’m-worthless-and-will-never-fill-this-with-anything that a piece of empty space can easily bring on, she fights by always starting with something: A piece of scrap paper, a scanned cutting board, or an old typeface, only to be found in vintage gossip magazines.
“Anything can become anything,” she says.
Conformity, the tendency for a lot of illustration to look very similar, she battles by creating as much as she can outside her computer.
“Computers don’t make mistakes,” she says. “The most unexpected thing they can do is crash. And that’s not very fun.”
One of Seed’s designers asked Laurie if she ever compromised her work for a client.
“I’m the queen of the kill fees,” she says. “But I’ve never released anything I’m not happy about.”
And this is what happens when Laurie Rosenwald animates a diary entry by David Sedaris:
Friday, February 05, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Joy Moore speaking at PSP conference
Joy Moore, VP Global Partnerships at Seed, spoke at the PSP 2010 Annual Conference today.
The conference, arranged by the American Association of Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, addressed the new reality of scholarly publishing. It raised issues and opportunities brought on by the open access movement, the culture of free, social media and new forms of collaborations.
Seed’s Joy Moore talked about the evolution of social media in the context of our products ScienceBlogs, ResearchBlogging, and ScienceWide. The panel, Scientific Research and Social Media, explored the benefits of social media for researchers, how to engage communities, and the consequences for publishers that arise from this change.
Rachel Burley, Vice President and Publisher with John Wiley & Sons, moderated the panel, which also included Alpheus Bingham, Founder of InnoCentive, Inc and Darrell W. Gunter, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Collexis Holdings, Inc.
The conference took place at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
The value of waste
Andrew Dent from Material ConneXion, recently alerted us to an important perspective for understanding sustainability.
Andrew Dent, who holds a PhD in materials science, came by the Seed office and gave a lecture on design through the lens of materials and their availability. He showed how much longer common materials will last at our current consumption speed, before they will become so scarce, that the price will skyrocket.
To really determine an object’s sustainability and design responsibly, the material factors to consider are these:
- How plentiful is the material that the object is made of?
- What’s the impact of mining, processing, and transporting the material?
- Is the material recyclable and do we have a use for it in its recycled state?
- Does the design allow for the materials to be recycled (Can the object be taken apart? Are the materials possible to separate from each other, or covered with paint etc)?
According to these principles, looks not considered, Dent points to Crocs, the plastic clogs, as an example of excellent design. They are produced through injection molding, which generates no waste from cut away material. They are made from one material, which is recyclable. The material is died, not painted. And, best of all, they are durable, and will most likely last as long as the wearer wants to use them.
As we are depleting our natural resources, materials are becoming more and more valuable commodities.
“Like gold. No one throws gold away,” Dent says as he foresees a future where more companies adapt to the strategy that Coca-Cola and others already operate by: they see their waste - their plastic bottles - as part of their assets, and makes sure to get them back. The customer buys the content, not its delivery vehicle.
“Companies will want their own waste.”
Material ConneXion’s library on 60 Madison Avenue in New York.
Thursday, January 21, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Into the unknown
In the Space Project, French photographer Vincent Fournier, has visited The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre of the Russian Federation, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, the Guiana Space Centre, the Atacama Desert Observatories in Chile… all the remote, austere places where dreams of space feel a little closer.
Read the story on the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah on Seedmagazine.com:
Monday, January 18, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Anthill realism
In Trailhead, which is an excerpt from biologist and - we are thrilled to see - debut novelist E.O. Wilson’s novel Anthill, Wilson offers us a perspective that few, if any, people in the world could provide in such detail.
Wilson evokes the entirely connected, scent-driven, and beautiful but brutal world of an ant colony. The more you read, the more insights unfold that may very well apply for a species even more familiar to us than ants…
“She had become an extreme specialist: she laid eggs, while the workers performed all the labor necessary to raise her offspring, their sisters. They were the Queen’s hands and feet and jaws, and increasingly they replaced her brain. They functioned together as a well-organized whole, dividing up the tasks without regard to their own welfare. The Trailhead Colony began to resemble a large, diffuse organism. In a word, it became a superorganism…..
“Even as her body began to decay, the pheromones she had manufactured in life persisted in the minds and bodies of her colony. Her visual appearance, her stillness, meant nothing. The Queen could have lain on her back with her legs held rigidly up in the air. She could have turned red, black, metallic gold, or any other hue or shade—it would not have mattered. The Queen had to smell dead in order to be classified as dead.”
Read Trailhead here:
Friday, January 15, 2010 • New • by Eva Wisten • #
ResearchBlogging Awards seeks to honor its best bloggers
Seed’s ResearchBlogging Awards honor the outstanding bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research. With nearly 1,000 blogs registered at ResearchBlogging.org and 8,500 posts about peer-reviewed journal articles collected, it is time to recognize the best of the best.
Any blog that discusses peer-reviewed research is eligible for nomination, and the winners will be determined by votes from their peers in the Research Blogging community. All finalists will be highlighted on ResearchBlogging.org, and winners will receive cash prizes totaling $2000.
See guidelines and complete list of categories here.
Monday, January 11, 2010 • Noted • by Eva Wisten • #
Carol Browner on Whitehouse.gov
At 3.30PM (EST) Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate, will discuss the President’s plan for a clean energy economy.
This is part of the Obama Administration’s initiative to allow Americans to communicate directly with some of the President’s senior advisors. Every morning this week, a senior advisor will give an update on the Administration’s work in their field; every afternoon the advisor will answer questions from the public via video chat on Whitehouse.gov.
Watch the chat here: