Core Facility Blog

Atlas of Living Australia Gadget and Feed

2010-09-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

The Atlas of Living Australia is a great new resource on biodiversity. We have added a search gadget and feed gadget to the Biodiversity Desktop.

Twitter Search Gadget for Biodiversity

2010-09-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

We have added a Twitter Search Gadget to the Biodiversity Desktop. It's great for catching up on fresh tweets or searching for species and biodiversity tweets.

Desktop Themes

2010-08-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

We have released a feed detailing the different themes provided by the Desktop. The feed is available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/ResearchDesktopThemes. This feed can be added to web page at http://researchdesktop.org/embed-feed.jsp?feedURL=http://feeds.feedburner.com/ResearchDesktopThemes.

Places that works like Foursquare

2010-08-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Facebook has introduced a service called Places that works like Foursquare. To disable follow the instructions from Life Hacker

Gephi

2010-08-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

We are playing with Gephi, an open source network visualisation tool. Try it on your facebook network by following this tutorial. It's still in Alpha but its cool.

Added Top Endangered Species Feed

2010-08-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

We have added an endangered species feed that links to the Biodiversity desktop.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TopEndangeredSpecies

Tableau Desktop

2010-08-17T01:57:00.000-07:00

We are learning how to use Tableau Desktop analytics software at the moment. It is marketed as a data visualization and business intelligence tool. It produces some fantastic visualizations and there is a very good gallery of public images. It is worth visiting their gallery for some fantastic examples of what can be done. This is not exactly a home purchase but it is well priced for the desktop version and well worth the money. The easiest way to describe it is as rocket powered visual pivot tables. The charts and maps can be saved as images or into pdf. There is a free version called Tableau public that people can play with and free reader software. Well worth a try and I could see more researchers in universities using this tool.

Research Desktop Reaches Out

2010-08-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

We have added two new facilities with the Research Desktop that allows branded RSS feeds or search facilities to be placed on other web sites. There is an example on our blogspot page http://sociomics.blogspot.com/.

Updates

2010-08-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

We are updating the blog as our Research Desktop project moves along and we have added twitter and will be looking to create separate theme pages.

Civil Society Closing Statement from Access and Benefit Sharing Working Group 9, Cali Colombia

2010-03-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

Final Statement on behalf of Civil Society Organisations
present at ABSWG-9

Dear Co-Chairs, I would like to link central concerns of civil society with the specific language of this ABS Protocol. I would also like to thank the Co-chairs and all Parties to give us access to information and effective participation at all levels of these negotiations.

1) Citizens around the world have a deep longing for justice, and in a globalised world this includes justice at the international level. “Affordable access to justice” including an “ombudsperson’s office” for us is the core, not the “minimisation of transaction costs”. Do not forsake our longing for justice!

2) Addressing “historical debt” and redressing past injustices is one of the difficult tasks we face. Access to genetic resources has a dark past of colonialism, transgressions, misappropriations and implicit injustices. A general amnesty for past political crimes, sometimes, is useful in re- establishing legal certainty. However, a general amnesty is not acceptable if the criminals and their descendants continue to gain large profits from these past acts. The ABS Protocol has not yet escaped the danger of becoming an instrument legitimising the profiteers of past injustices. Do not force us to fight an instrument under the CBD!

3) When citizens use their face creams and tooth pastes and get their vaccinations they are interested to know whether their consumer products have a history decent with regard to environmental impact and the rights of the original owners of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. A certificate and effective check-points under the ABS Protocol would facilitate progress towards inclusive sustainable consumption patterns, excluding biopiracy.
Do not put us to shame! Give us the instruments for decent behaviour!

4) Confidence and trust in fairness, equity and justice, also in international relationships regarding benefit sharing, are the basis and precondition for the necessary stable political will for the conservation objective of the CBD at the national level. The “temporal scope” for this is “for many generations to come”.
Do not undo the efforts of your citizens engaged in establishing such a stable basis for conservation!

5) Researchers are highly trained and intelligent people used to paperwork in the context of ordering equipment, scientific publications, project and funding proposals, contractual arrangements and patent applications. Dear researcher co-citizens, please apply your intelligence and training to do the small additional paper work for the ABS Protocol!

6) If progress in negotiations is getting difficult or stalls, the easy way out is to blame the process. Reflections on the lack of political will and the lack of inter-ministerial consensus may be more helpful to promote creative and productive engagement for the process ahead. Dear delegates, be mutually supportive with your citizens striving to create the necessary consolidated political will!

7 International negotiations are always addressing the task to get countries “into the boat”, even if they have very diverging minority views. But what to do if someone withholds all the elements with which could enable us to build a boat with decent seats for all of us? What to do if the whole boat is put into brackets or sunk?

Dear delegates, do continue your untiring efforts to bring the necessary elements for the boat back from your capitals! Civil society representatives, present here, will also resist post-negotiations depression and continue our best efforts towards establishing justice in the context of access and benefit-sharing.

presented by Ecoropa, Germany, Plenary Session, March 28, 2010

Creative Commons Peru Demonstration

2010-03-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

An Access and Benefit-Sharing Commons by Paul Oldham is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-No comercial-Compartir bajo la misma licencia 2.5 Perú License.
Based on a work at papers.ssrn.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sociomics.blogspot.com/.

Experimental Subjects Workshop 14th - 15th January, Lancaster IAS

2010-01-11T08:01:00.000-08:00

Workshop 3: Experimental Subjects

Date

14 January, 2010 - 15 January, 2010
Location

Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University
Description

Participants in this workshop will explore the different kinds of subjectivity and relations of power produced by different forms of experimentality. Themes will include:

‘experimental subjects’, such as subjects of clinical trials or of behaviourist-inspired public policy interventions;
the self as the site of self-experimentation in popular culture, alternative spirituality, performance art, and human resource discourses
the experimenter as a form of subjectivity in science, technology, and finance capital.

For more info visit the experimentalities site: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/experimentality/event/workshop3

Public Beta of Research Desktop 2.0

2010-01-08T06:51:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce that our intermediate analytics web software Desktop 2.0 is now publicly available for public testing. Desktop 2.0 is a gadget based research tool that runs inside your browser. To test it out visit http://www.researchdesktop.org.

Science Commons MTA Generator Testing

2009-06-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

To the left of this message you will see a linkage to a Science Commons Material Transfer Agreement Link. This is a dummy demonstration of the use of a Science Commons MTA for possible application in Access and Benefit-Sharing debates under the CBD. The example here restricts the MTA to non-commercial uses of the offered material for research on Dengue as a WHO listed Neglected Tropical Disease. To test this tool for yourself go to http://mta.sciencecommons.org/chooser

Cesagen Workshop: Promises, Promises! The Promissory Cultures and Political Economies of the Biosciences.

2009-04-22T03:32:00.001-07:00

Event Dates: 6-7 May 2009, at IAS, Lancaster University

ESRC Genomics Network Conference 2009: Call for Abstracts

2009-04-21T03:36:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the ESRC Genomics Network (EGN) Conference 2009.

The EGN's 3rd International Conference entitled 'Mapping the Genomic Era: Measurements and Meanings' will be held in Cardiff City Hall on the 7th - 9th October 2009.

We also welcome the opportunity to announce that we will soon be opening registration for this event which will provide an opportunity to develop further the debate and dialogue around current and future developments in the life sciences, between academics working in a broad range of social science disciplines and associated stakeholders, including natural and biomedical scientists, healthcare professionals, those working in industry and the media and policymakers.

The Programme Committee invites proposals for individual papers and session proposals (to include three papers) engaging with the overarching theme and relating to the conference sub-themes below:
● Science, Technology and Innovation
● Governance, Regulation and Public Interest
● Biomedicine, Health and Identity
● Transforming Nature

Please submit a short (max 250 word) abstract of your proposed paper, and/or proposal to organise a session (to include 3 papers with abstracts) in Word format by email to cesagenevents@cardiff.ac.uk by 30th April. You will be informed about acceptance by 5th June.

For further details please see our website:
www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/cesagen

best wishes,
EGN Conference Programme Committee

2009-04-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, just adding the links to the Sociomics Core Facility video tutorials.

The tutorials cover two main topics:

1. Introductions to using our very own iGoogle like Research Desktop

2. Digital analytics tutorials using different software tools with a focus on synthetic biology.

You can find the videos on blip.tv here or the rss feed for updates. Or visit us at our home page. Don't say we didn't warn you! Paul