You are here: Home / Archives for open science

Solo10: Online vs. Offline

September 12, 2010 By

#solo10 Word Cloud

Last week I attended the 2010 instalment of Science Online London, which was held over 2 days at the British Library. Both days were packed with interesting discussions covering lots of topics, loosely bound by the general ideas of science and the internet. One topic that caught my attention in a number of sessions, and that I’d been giving some thought before the conference, was the different pros and cons of online versus offline activities.

I enjoy having an active online persona immensely, and since I started blogging and tweeting I’ve gained a lot of experience, knowledge and perspective. But recently I’ve found myself wondering: what are the limitations of being active online? What can a blog, however fantastic or prolific the writing, not achieve?  And I tried to have some discussion about this at the conference.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Sci & Soc, Sci 2.0 Tagged With: , , , ,

AstroInformatics II: From public outreach to public engagement

June 28, 2010 By

ResearchBlogging.org
Outreach and education are two areas that stand to gain from developments in semantic astronomy and an increased scientific presence on the web. Big changes have already taken place, driven by a community eager to connect and communicate about the research we do every day. As part of a panel at the AstroInformatics 2010 conference last week, I gave a talk on aspects of science communication and education that are benefiting from the semantic web.

The internet these days is a cacophony of conversations, opinions, visual information (and porn). Many scientists and science enthusiasts write about the stuff that inspires or excites them in blogs, like I do here, which allow them to connect to people they would never have encountered, let alone talked with, in real life. This has led to some great scientific content generated entirely by the science community itself, without intermediate brokerage by communication or media professionals. But in this symphony of chaos, how do we increase the signal to noise? How do we ensure that the best content is heard?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Research, Sci 2.0 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Summer conferencing

May 20, 2010 By

Summer is a busy season for conferencing, and some really interesting and fun meetings in the area of Open Science/Science Online/Science and Society are coming up in the next few months.

From 16 to 19 June, the California Institute of Technology will be hosting the 2010 edition of AstroInformatics, which looks excellent. The meeting has three days of “proper” conferencing, covering many topics – conceptual (changing paradigms in astronomy research, developments in other sciences) , technical (what are the newest tools for exploring, visualising and sharing data?) , people-based (astronomy education, citizen science). The 4th day is a workshop on astro-semantics. I’m really excited about the conference itself and about the trip as a whole – I’m well overdue a trip to the astronomy beehive/wasp’s nest (?) that is Pasadena, home to friends, colleagues and fellow bloggers. A tweetup may be in order – be warned.

Inconveniently clashing with AstroInformatics is the very cool-looking Science Hack Day in London on 19-20 June, hosted at the offices of the Guardian newspaper and sponsored by a bunch of great organisations. It’s a typical weekend of geekery with no real programme, just a bunch of coding-aficionados – and more than a few DotAstronomers, I couldn’t help but notice – getting together to Do Cool Stuff With Computers. I’m sorry to miss it, although I’m a little too technically incompetent to really contribute much. I always had the impression that biomedical scientists were much more active in participating in such events and it’s great to see that astronomers are getting seriously involved too – I spotted that LCOGT are even sponsoring the Hack Day.


I was also very happy to see the announcement of the 2010 instalment of Science Online London on 3-4 September. After last year’s fun and stimulating event at the Royal Institution in London, this year’s SOLo will take place in the British Library, who are cohosting the conference with Mendeley and Nature Publishing Group.There’s not much info yet on programme or fringe events, but if last year was anything to go by, it should be well worth attending.

Filed Under: Me, Sci & Soc, Sci 2.0 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Lay Science: Setting free the Data

April 22, 2010 By

The Guardian published a story earlier this week about a Belfast climate scientist Prof Mike Baillie, who is disgruntled at having to make his department’s decades’ worth of tree ring data available to a known climate sceptic as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. This story prompted the editor of this blog to post the above tweet. Also: “I don’t see the point of curating data for the public”, and “any nutter can attempt to disrupt my research”.

I wrote a post on Lay Science today about data sharing in science. Go read it here.

Filed Under: Sci & Soc Tagged With: , , , ,

With a little help from our friends: Finding a home for E-ELT

March 4, 2010 By

Cerro Paranal (middle right) and Cerro Armazones (middle left)

ResearchBlogging.orgESO announced today that their Council have recommended Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Andes as the preferred site for their next generation optical/IR observatory, the 42-m European Extremely Large Telescope. The decision came in response to the delivery of a technical report by the organisation’s E-ELT Site Selection Advisory Committee, from which Armazones emerged as the frontrunner, “because it has the best balance of sky quality across all aspects and it can be operated in an integrated fashion with the existing ESO Paranal Observatory”.

So does this means the deal is done? Apparently not. The text also tells us that ESO have received proposals to host the telescope from both Spain, who would like to see the telescope site on La Palma, and Chile, so a final run-off between these two countries now seems likely.

What has struck me about this whole site selection exercise is the different approaches taken by ESO for the E-ELT and their North American counterparts, the Thirty Meter Telescope project.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Research, Sci & Soc Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »