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Editor's Selections: Spite, Stairs, Smounds...and Zombie Cockroaches!

As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week: Why might spite have evolved? Upon first glance it may not seem a particularly useful survival strategy. But Tom Rees, who writes at Epiphenom, reviews a paper that suggests spite may simply be the inverse of kin-directed altruism, with the same net outcome. Want to trick your co-workers into getting more exercise? Travis Saunders, who writes at Obesity Panacea, says, "Place a sign next to your workplace…

Science Party!

What better way for a bunch of science geeks to celebrate a birthday than by having a science party? We spent a lot of time making delicious science-themed snacks, and I have to say, they came out pretty good! Bacterial jello plates. They looked a bit too relastic, the cell biologists wouldn't touch them. More plates, this time made with rice pudding. Tastier than jello, but less popular due to looks. DIY electrophoresis jello. The red dye didn't migrate, but the yellow colouring of the jello did! Obligatory placebo gag. The text reads sample:alcohol 1:2. It didn't lie. Señor…

Nine days of 9 (part 6): Who is secret stitchpunk #10?

Thanks to everyone who has taken part in the competition so far. We already have five lucky winners, we need four more! Don't forget there's also a separate contest going on at this entry, with five more prize packs to win. Wow, blog whoring is fun! The input so far has been top quality, and I hope you'll keep it up. So, onto the next question. Read on to find out how you can get your hands on a limited edition 9 book. During my interview with Shane Acker, he outlined the different stichpunks, describing how the characters were based on different aspects of the Scientist's psyche (from…

Science loses its seat in the UK Govt

Amid the carnage surrounding Gordon Brown's cabinet reshuffle, science has lost its footing and looks like it may end up as simply another tool for business and enterprise (read: grants redirected to profitable areas of research). Over at the Lay Scientist, Martin Robbins has a fairly thorough round up of the changes, and what they might mean: From the reshuffle that took place yesterday, one piece of news has slipped out under the radar. DIUS, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills currently responsible for the UK science funding councils, is apparently being disbanded just…

Miss the weekly linkfests? Two solutions.

You may have noticed that I've stopped doing linkfests. I decided that the time put in to their curation (i.e. the 'cost') outweighs the value of doing so (i.e. the 'benefit'). It also occurred to me that most of the things I would curate in my weekly linkfests were the same items I tweeted throughout the week, and many of the same items I share in Google Reader. So, for those of you who enjoyed the linkfests or want to keep your eyes on interesting things to read on the web, I encourage you to follow me on twitter, or if you *just* want the links without the rest of the twitter shenanigans,…

Editor's Selections: Enrichment, Ballerinas, Salmon, and Telepathy

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week: Another week of top-notch psychology and neuroscience blogging! Should captive cephalopods be kept in "enriched" environments? Mike Lisieski of the Cephalove blog says yes: "Generally, providing enrichment for captive cephalopods seems worth it." " Psychologists are starting to look at how expert dancers learn and remember dance steps and what gives them the advantage of expertise in their style." How do ballerinas make it look so easy? An interesting offering from the students of the Cognition and the Arts class. "Either we…

Two Theories of Dog Domestication

I showed this video today as an intro to my 8-week "mini-course" on Canine Cognition. In it, narrator John Lithgow presents two slightly different versions of the dog domestication story. The first version is essentially the Belyaev story: young wolves would be adopted into the camps of early humans. Only those who were most tame would breed with eachother, and over many generations, the domestic dog would emerge. The second is the version in which wolves "chose" to be domesticated - they noticed a lot of tasty trash around human encampments, and if they were unafraid enough to hang around,…

Nerds, Geeks, Dorks, and Dweebs

My previous claims of geekiness were in jest. And if that wasn't clear to you, do you understand anything? Anyway, I defined nerds as book smart, dweebs as socially awkward, and dorks as nerdy dweebs (or dweeby nerds). Geeks to me are sideshow acts (freaks) that bite the heads off of live chickens. Some people consider them nerds with a specialized type of knowledge. Which brings us to this quiz that assesses your nerdiness, geekiness, and dorkiness (as defined below). Razib started it, and my results are below. I am pure nerd (book smart), with traces of geekiness and dorkiness. By the way…

5 Random Quotes

Janet tagged everyone with the Random Quotes meme. The rules: "Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe." I've added a comment for each of my selections, but that's not required. It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) [Couldn't resist a quote on evolution and a quote by Mencken.] Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it. Dianne Houston, Take The Lead, 2006 [I've got a saying: "90% of life is showing up. The…

Science, Religion, and Ignorance

The NYTimes has published an essay by Lawrence Krauss on the Kansas School Board elections, the anti-science religious right, and religious faith. Krauss argues that scientific ignorance is not the same thing as religious belief. There are some fundamentalists whose faith prevent them from acknowledging strongly supported scientific consensus. But there are also a lot of scientists who attack the religious beliefs of others, and Krauss doesn't like that either. Krauss concludes his essay thusly: But when we win minor skirmishes, as we did in Kansas, we must remember that the issue is far…

Live Blogging from Evolution 2006

Blogging's been light recently. I spent the last week frantically preparing my talk for the Evolution Meeting. I was analyzing data until late Thursday evening. Then, I still needed to finish putting together my talk. We spent Friday driving to the meeting, and I gave my talk yesterday morning (Saturday). It went well -- I got a packed (albeit, small) room and had enough time for two questions (one coming from a guy whose research I deeply admire). You probably won't see any new posts until later next week. I'll be spending my time listening to other people talk about their research and…

Stop Citing Wikipedia

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia. I was happy to report that the dynamic encyclopedia is just as good as Britannica. But there is a limit to what any encyclopedia can tell you. They are excellent places to go for a quick introduction to material that is otherwise unfamiliar to you. For example, if I want a review of cell cycle, I may check out the Wikipedia entry first as a quick refresher. But if I want to really know what's going on, I'll crack a textbook or read a review article from a serious scientific journal. Wikipedia has its uses. One of them is not as a citable reference. I get extremely…

Less Respect than Rodney Dangerfield

Andre at BioCurious has checked out the authorship of the Tiktaalik papers and concluded that the grad students got jobbed, PhD comics style: Another thing I noticed is that only the supervisors are listed as authors on the two papers they published. I know there were many grad students also involved in the project because Daeschler showed a picture of someone fighting off a dust storm trying to get gear from a landing helicopter and he joked that that's what they're for. At least, I thought he was joking... Maybe it's a palaeontology thing, but if this was say, a particle physics paper, all…

Friday Cephalopod: UNFOLLOW

I just learned that the Blogess has "giant squid phobia". Several people are aware of my severe giant squid phobia and lovingly (?) sent me this video of a giant squid attacking a Greenpeace submarine, and that’s unsettling enough, but WHY IS THERE ANOTHER SQUID BEHIND IT SPITTING OUT FIRE?  Is that a real thing?  Because I was scared enough without adding: “Oh, and also they can shoot a blinding inferno out of their butts like a tentacled, aquatic bonfire.”  It’s like half giant squid and half underwater maritime flame-thrower, and that’s not natural and is a sign that all giant squid are…

One More Chance to Increase the NIH's FY2007 Budget

We still have a chance to increase the NIH budget for this year. Go here to contact your US Senators and Representatives to request that they increase the NIH budget -- the last congress failed to vote on a budget for the NIH, resulting in a FY2007 budget identical to that of FY2006. From the website with the petition: The Congress reconvened today in order to finish the FY 2007 appropriations process. The Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill (Labor-HHS) that funds the NIH is one of the nine bills that still need to be considered. Unless funds are added to the NIH…

The European Creationism Problem

Remember Maciej Giertych? He's the Polish representative to the European Parliament who wants creationism taught in schools alongside evolution. And he's got a degree in tree physiology, but he claims to be a population geneticist. Anyway, his letter to Nature made it seem like Poland has this big problem with creationism. Boy was I mislead. It turns out the problem isn't just localized to Poland; it's spread throughout Europe. Nature reports that creationists in Great Britain, using the name Truth in Science, are trying to undermine the teaching of evolution. And Letizia Moratti, the former…

Friday Galaxy : NGC 4526 & SN 1994D

The image below is an image taken in 1994 with the Hubble Space telescope of galaxy NGC 4526: Image: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Key Project Team, and The High-Z Supernova Search Team The bright spot in the lower left is the supernova known as SN1994D. This is a Type~Ia supernova, type type of supernova that has been used by several times (initially two, the one that I was in, and the one that this image is credited to) to measure the expansion history of the Universe, and to discovery that the expansion is accelerating (requiring that there be that which we now call "Dark Energy" filling the…

The world's nerdiest mug

It's all the rage to post pictures of your mug. (A mug mug, as it were.) I have lots of mugs, but I figured that this is the one that best fits the theme. This is one painted by... me. My wife and I, several months ago, went to one of those "paint your own" pottery places, and this was what I produced. On the left, you see the cartoon model of an AGN (active galactic nucleus). There's the black hole and accretion disk at the center, from which are launched relativistic jets. Around the black hole is a dusty, obscuring torus. The same cartoon made by me on a computer can be seen on…

Irritation: opaque press releases

I'd love to write something about the biggest-ass supernova ever observed, confirmed to be "something new" based on Chandra observations. There is a press release about it here. Alas, my web-fu has not been good enough yet to turn up an actual preprint or scientific article. The press release says that the paper will appear in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ, pronounced "ap jay", to those of us in the biz). That generally means the paper is accepted. Alas, I could not find the preprint on the arxiv.org preprint server. I hope that it's just a timing issue, and that the preprint will show…

And So It Begins

Hello everybody! This is the new home of Galactic Interactions. To those of you who have not heard of me before, you can find older posts at my blog's former location. I'm an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt University who is still learning how to keep his mouth shut. Or, rather, not learning, hence the blog (among other things). My favorite things to blog about are astronomy and astronomy education & outreach. Every so often, I will get a bee in my bonnet and attempt to explain some concept or another from astronomy, Physics or cosmology. However, I will…

Mislabeled Fish

In 1992, Consumer Reports published an article titled, "The label said Snapper, the lab said baloney". Fifteen years later, the mislabeling of red snapper is, if anything, more widespread. A 2004 study in Nature showed 75 percent of red snapper sold in the U.S. is some other fish. Menus offer up red snapper despite that it has been overfished for the last half-century. Red snapper mysteriously existing in restaurants but not in the sea is resolved by mislabeling, which prevents us from perceiving red snapper is actually in trouble. It's as if we are eating some ghost of bygone years, when…

Academic Haiku Contest

From Jim Gibbon: "How succinct can you be in describing your research? Most of us have probably tried to whittle our work down to a 2-minute or 30-second "elevator speech" we can use while mingling at conferences. Doing this not only helps us clarify our work to ourselves, but also smooths out a lot of the interactions we're bound to have down the road while chatting about our projects. I'd say it's pretty GTD: you invest time in thinking up front so you don't have to while you're in the middle of networking, interviewing, etc. Well, I wondered how far we could push this, and to that end, I'm…

Procrastination

Ahhh modeling... gotta love it - especially when it models something like procrastination - or "Temporal Motivation Theory" as Dr. Piers Steel from the University of Calgary business school calls it. He find these interesting things in his paper, "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure." published in Psych Bulletin: * Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure * Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination (He spent time reading self help…

On plausible alternative hypotheses

Nic Wade says something very strange in his most recent article on whole genome sequencing in reference to the outcomes of genome-wide association studies: The results of this costly international exercise have been disappointing. About 2,000 sites on the human genome have been statistically linked with various diseases, but in many cases the sites are not inside working genes, suggesting there may be some conceptual flaw in the statistics. Erm... or maybe many common variants affecting the risk of complex diseases simply aren't found in protein-coding regions? That's the (biologically…

2007 Darwin Awards, and other matters

The 2007 Darwin Awards are out, and can be found here. [hat tip Afarensis!] I have no comment, except that I'm glad I'm not on them this year. And believe me, it was a close call.... Especially after what happened last night. Remember the kitchen? Well, this weekend, it was electrical wire rewiring time. I keep asking myself the following questions. 1) How often can you check that a circuit is dead, and have it not be dead? 2) How is it that a human can survive a shock from household current (several times in one afternoon) but the same exact current melts metal tools (in the same exact…

Florida: Evolution could be coming to a classroom near you...

The latest on the Florida fight over the use of the actual word "evolution" in the classroom. (Or, more specifically, in the science standards) A panel of education experts just wrapped up three days of meetings at the state Department of Education to hammer out new standards. The state Board of Education will have the final say next month. The way science is taught in Florida public school classrooms could soon change. Right now, the state science curriculum uses the words "biological changes over time" instead of "evolution". Biology teacher Nicholas Daigle believes the current standards…

Unexpected Black Holes

This just in from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected plump black holes where least expected -- skinny galaxies. ... Scientists have long held that all galaxies except the slender, bulgeless spirals harbor supermassive black holes at their cores. Furthermore, bulges were thought to be required for black holes to grow. The new Spitzer observations throw this theory into question. The infrared telescope surveyed 32 flat and bulgeless galaxies and detected monstrous black holes lurking in the bellies of seven of them. The results imply that galaxy bulges…

Microsoft Blocks Older File Formats

A good way to make Microsoft Office software not interact with other software, thus forcing users to either shun the alternatives or to use only the alternatives would be to start blocking the use of all older file formats. Let's hope Microsoft does not think of this nasty little trick. "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some…

Sinners: You Caused the Drought

Never mind the debate on science. We've got a new approach cooking up here. It's all about sin. A RADICAL Christian group with the ear of prominent politicians has blamed "sinful" Australians for the nation's record drought. Catch the Fires Ministries, which has links to several prominent politicians including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has hired Festival Hall so 5000 of its followers can pray for rain on Australia Day. Leader Danny Nalliah said moral decline, not climate change, was responsible for the drought. "Australia has turned away from Almighty God ... the sinful condition of…

Intelligent Design

Here is a preliminary list of resources for people to find out more about Intelligent Design. Please feel free to put this on your own site. If you want, email me and I'll send you the HTML code to make this one step easier. But you can also, if you are using Firefox, use "ctrl-u" to display the code and cut and paste it from there. Please feel free to add to this resource for people who want to learn more about Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design Intelligent Design…

Linux Stuff

A little news, a couple of tips. First, this news: Ubuntu is extremely popular on the desktop, but it's made comparatively little progress on servers. That's about to change. Dell is expected to announce in the first quarter of 2008 that it has certified Ubuntu Linux for its server lines. In an interview with Rick Becker, Dell Product Group's vice president of solutions, Becker said that Dell is currently in the process of certifying Ubuntu for all its server lines. "But we are still several months away from announcing a certification. I'd say it'll be announced in Q1 next year." [source]…

What do the godless do on Easter?

Well, Skatje's going to Minicon next weekend—sending her off to hang out with intelligent nerds and geeks and people like Charles deLint and Lois McMaster Bujold and the Nielsen Haydens and Jane Yolen is probably the most responsible thing a parent can do. If any of my readers are also going, make sure she doesn't just go hide in her room and knit or chat on the computer. She needs to get out and socialize! Make friends! Watch Dr Who! Something! Unfortunately, although I'll be providing the shuttle service to get her to and from the con, I'm going to be swamped with work for the next few…

Darwin Day is Coming Up

From the NCSE: It's time to dust off your Darwin costume again: less than a month remains before Darwin Day 2011! Colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country -- and the world -- are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or around February 12, in honor of the life and work of Charles Darwin. These events provide a marvelous opportunity not only to celebrate Darwin's birthday but also to engage in public outreach about science, evolution, and the importance of evolution education -- which is especially needed with…

Will we have a hurricane named Moe, Larry and Curly?

Observe the current Atlantic Wide satellite image from the National Weather Service:* Look in the lower third, left side of this image, north of the South American continent, south of Haiti. You can see a blob of clouds that, especially when you look at this animation, is building in strength and organizing, and has a reasonable chance of some day becoming a tropical cyclone (this is discussed briefly here) . But while everybody is looking at that, what about this? Specifically, that giant rotating low pressure system off the Carolinas. Isn't that impressive? It is, of course, acting…

If you are a resident of Minnesota you can vote NO MATTER WHAT!!!!!!

Chalk one up to the Republicans: A liberal leaning African American acquaintance was talked out of voting today because "they changed the rules and you need two forms of ID and a Minnesota Drivers License this year" etc. etc. Yes, folks, he was lied to, he gave up, and that's one point for the Teabaggers and one point against democracy. Do not be a moron. You can vote if you live here. That's true pretty much everywhere. Just do it. If you get to the polls and things don't seem to be right for you to vote, talk to the people sitting at the folding table. It can always be done, even if it…

Block the bill until it's fixed?

In case you are interested .... The latest Senate health care bill has no public option. No expansion of Medicare. And it does too little to guarantee that uninsured Americans will actually be able afford the coverage they'll be required to purchase. But it's not too late to fix the bill. And as Joe Lieberman has shown, just one senator willing to stand in the way can force legislation to be changed dramatically. Senator Bernie Sanders, a strong proponent of the public option, has already made clear that he's opposed to the legislation in its current form--and he could decide to block it…

Michigan: Officials fear extension funding soon will be cut

After the state failed to issue MSU Extension and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, or MAES, their monthly payment, officials fear funding for these programs could be eliminated altogether. The programs primarily are supported by state funding and were appropriated $64 million in the 2009-10 state higher education budget, which is awaiting Gov. Jennifer Granholm's approval. If the funding is eliminated, it could mean drastic cuts and possible extinction for the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Extension Director Tom Coon said. The College of Agriculture and…

Rapid Resurgence of Marine Productivity After the Cretaceous-Paleogene Mass Extinction

The course of the biotic recovery after the impact-related disruption of photosynthesis and mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary has been intensely debated. The resurgence of marine primary production in the aftermath remains poorly constrained because of the paucity of fossil records tracing primary producers that lack skeletons. Here we present a high-resolution record of geochemical variation in the remarkably thick Fiskeler (also known as the Fish Clay) boundary layer at Kulstirenden, Denmark. Converging evidence from the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen and…

1st Successful Amateur Hi-Def Video from The Edge of Space

The balloon and camera were launched at 7:44 AM, the balloon burst at 10:51 AM at 107,145 ft. and the camera landed via parachute at 11:40 AM, 89 miles from the launch site after a 3 hr. & 56 min. flight. The camera recorded a total of 4 hrs. & 22 min. of Hi-Def Video before it stopped recording 53 secs after landing, when its 32GB of memory was full. The only thing better would have been if the camera had recorded for several minutes more to captured the sound of us approaching and video of us opening its container. If you get motion sickness or are annoyed at unedited video, either…

Too damn religious

This letter to the New Zealand Herald was written to protest a claim that NZ was a "Christian nation". It's got a nice twist to it. If my resistance to deem New Zealand to be a Christian nation makes me a traitor, as Brian Tamaki suggests, take me to the Tower, or the New Zealand equivalent, for it would be greatly preferable to living in such a country. You might think, then, that I am one of the 48.8 per cent of non-Christian New Zealanders. I am not. I am an Anglican priest serving an Auckland church. And no, I'm not Bishop Richard Randerson under a nom de plume. As an immigrant from…

Wikileaks is a major security threat

The following is from a classified US intelligence document regarding Wikileaks: (S//NF) Wikileaks.org, a publicly accessible Internet Web site, represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army. The intentional or unintentional leaking and posting of US Army sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org could result in increased threats to DoD personnel, equipment, facilities, or installations. The leakage of sensitive and classified DoD information also calls attention to the insider…

We are totally doomed

It was already known that we were totally doomed, but now there is a new and exciting scenario. In this one, comets rain down on us from the Ooort Cloud, said comets loosened by contact and interaction with a star called Gliese 710. Gliese 710 is one of a handful of stars that have had recent interactions with our solar system, or plan to in the future. there is 86 percent chance that Gliese 710 will plough through the Oort Cloud of frozen stuff that extends some 0.5 parsecs into space. That may sound like a graze but it is likely to have serious consequences. Such an approach would send…

It's like learning that the underpants gnomes are actually making money

There's money to be made in crap. Who would have thought MySpace was so profitable? Rupert Murdoch has told an industry conference that MySpace make $25 million per month on advertising."It's extraordinary, the advertising has gone from basically nothing to, on a net basis, $25 million a month and growing every month — almost 30 per cent every quarter," he told the Digital Hollywood conference, in New York. There's an evolutionary lesson in there, I think. The part of MySpace that represents what people want and value — the social networking, the easy customization — is a tiny fraction of…

Jobs available! Honest scientists need not apply.

Wow—Liberty University is hiring. They've got 27 openings for new faculty right now, so if you're in the market, they might be tempting. The first three on the list are… Biology: Two positions. Rank open. Ph.D. and compatibility with a young-earth creationist philosophy required. 1) Human anatomy and physiology, 2) undergraduate genetics. Supervision of undergraduate research expected. Contact Dr. Paul Sattler. Center for Creation Studies: Rank open. Ph.D. and experience in the origins controversy from a young earth creation perspective required. Faculty will teach the required course in…

Still more evidence that it's all about the vaccines: Behold the power of the mercury militia, part 2

In case you had any doubt that it's about vaccines and the concept of vaccination itself, here's video of the protest held outside of the American Academy of Pediatrics a couple of weeks ago: I'm not sure it was such a great idea to release video of this protest, given how tiny the demonstration looks and how obviously antivaccine their signs and rhetoric are. Either way, Dr. Eisenstein (whose "research" skills are legendary) makes me wonder how he earned his M.D. if he doesn't understand that the whole "toxins in vaccines" is a canard, and Dr. Ayoub is a conspiracy-monger. However, it's…

Now why can't all religious instructions be like this?

I've always been a bit skeptical of most recommendations by religious figures, but for once I've come across one that I can whole-heartedly support: Florida pastor Paul Wirth wants his parishioners to make love -- a whole lot of love. The pastor for Relevant Church in Ybor City is challenging the couples in his congregation to get busy in bed every night for a month. Wirth said the supposed 50 percent divorce rate is the reason behind the 30-Day Sex Challenge. He said too many couples let the stress of jobs and daily life get in the way of intimacy. So far, so good. But wait! There's a catch…

Clean water

Science is at its best when it can be translated into useful technologies to improve human wellbeing. On the dawn of World Water Day (March 22) comes news from Auburn University where chemistry professor Dave Worley has used his research to develop an easily renewable water filtration system ideal for use in developing countries. According to the Auburn University press release the filtration system, which uses the patented N-halamine technology, contains polystyrene beads that hold oxidative chlorine or bromine atoms for long periods of time. To activate the filters, chlorinated or…

... and then what?

It can be difficult to convince present-focused researchers to give a long-term perspective, such as that of a librarian or archivist, the time of day. (So to speak.) Here's my favorite way to do it: the "… and then what?" game. You have digital data. You think it's important. We'll start from there. Your grant runs out… and then what? The graduate student who's been doing all the data-management chores leaves with Ph.D in hand… and then what? Your favorite grant agency institutes a data-sustainability requirement for all grants… and then what? Your lab's PI retires… and then what? Your…

Tracking my eyes

I got a very nice email the other day thanking me for being a clearinghouse for e-research information. I'm not quite sure I am that, but just in case I've become it without noticing… What I read in the area and think is worthwhile enough to keep around ends up in a few places, all of which have RSS feeds: the Data Curation folder in my Zotero (you may also be interested in the Digital Humanities or Digital Preservation folders) the toblog and datacuration tags in my del.icio.us (items in the "toblog" tag end up in tidbits posts here—usually) Happy to share these, and also happy to start up…

Webcast in a week

I wanted to call attention to this event at Harvard, which will be webcast live next Friday at 12:15 Central. The difficulties in combining data and information from distributed sources, the multi-disciplinary nature of research and collaboration, and the need to move to present researchers with tooling that enable them to express what they want to do rather than how to do it highlight the need for an ecosystem of Semantic Computing technologies. Such technologies will further facilitate information sharing and discovery, will enable reasoning over information, and will allow us to start…