interview – Australian Science

Interview with Joanne Manaster – a multipassionate scientist

Danica Radovanovic — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 16:58:20 +0000

Joanne Manaster is a cell and molecular biology lecturer at the University of Illinois. She currently works as an online course developer and lecturer of science courses for the School of Integrative Biology. Prior to this current position, Joanne has taught histology, cell biology, and tissue engineering laboratories to biology and bioengineering students for nearly 20 years. Beside her academic career, she is a science writer and communicator, science video host, and STEM advocate. Joanne has run a girls’ bioengineering camp, and helped with the iGEM synthetic biology team and other outreach activities. She also makes video reviews of popular science books as well as whimsical science experiments with cats, cookies, gummy bears and make-up.

Joanne writes about science at her website, Joanne Loves Science and also at Scientific American blogs. She has been named by Mashable as having one of the 25 Twitter Accounts That Will Make You Smarter. You can find her on Twitter as ScienceGoddess.

Welcome to Australian Science! Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? What is your scientific background, and your professional scope?

Thank you for asking me to join you!

I am a faculty lecturer at the University of Illinois. I initially started my college studies with plans to head to medical school but through my course of studies I found I really clicked with cell and molecular biology and was very adept at lab work. Through various opportunities, I also discovered I had a knack for explaining scientific concepts so eventually changed my path to teach at the university level. I studied muscle development at the microscopic level in grad school and eventually transitioned to teaching cell biology and histology.

How did you initially get interested in science? When did you start to express your curiosity for science?

I always loved nature and had a fascination with human health. I spent a lot of time in nature and did a lot of reading on science topics. I didn’t know any scientists. I knew they existed from reading textbooks, but the whole field seemed shrouded in mystery. However, I understood what doctors did and thought that becoming a physician would be a valid way to pursue my passion for science. As I mentioned above, it wasn’t until college that I realized how scientists did their work, and could then consider that as a career path.

It is interesting to mention that you are a former international model, back in the days of your adolescence. Did you find something scientific in the world of modeling and fashion?

As far as modeling goes, I was discovered while I was in high school. Initially, I wasn’t enthusiastic about it but realized it would be a great way to earn money for medical school. While I was modeling, I wasn’t thinking about it in any scientific manner as I was learning to interact with a very new and somewhat foreign world. It wasn’t until I completed my science training in college did I really start to see how science explained just about everything. In my course of teaching students, I also began to see the value in piquing their interest by talking about things they could relate to in terms of science, and that extends to my online outreach!

Would you tell us more about your role within executing online courses for current and future science teachers?

After many years of giving lectures and running laboratory classes which overlapped with my online outreach, I realized that I could apply my ability to communicate online to my instructing position so I transitioned to teaching cutting edge biology through my online program for middle school and high school teachers who want to obtain their Master of Science Teaching. I have designed and executed three courses for this program so far: The Human Genome and Bioinformatics, Evolution and Medicine and Emerging Infectious Diseases. I enjoy mixing primary scientific literature with popular science communication to both train the teachers and to give them resources for their classrooms. Teachers make the best students!

You have a very unique approach for science book reviews using video as a format for presentation, encouraging everyone to read. Other videos are an interesting and whimsical introduction to the world of science disguised in everyday items. How did you get inspired to make such videos?

Book reviews are a natural for me. I love to read and I love science! The gummi bear videos began from a question asked by one of my college students. He asked if a gummy bear could be liquefied through the process of sonication (using high frequency sound waves). I then considered how I could subject the gummy bears to other lab techniques!

One of my favorite videos is Cats In Sinks, which was inspired by a fun website that showed numerous cats in sinks and it made me think I could talk about theoretical vs. experimental science by trying to figure out how many cats could fit in my large lab sink.

I also really enjoyed using cookies as my models of blood cells to create a series about those cells called “Blood Cell Bakery

test

The post Interview with Joanne Manaster – a multipassionate scientist appeared first on Australian Science.

Interview: Simon Phipps, a computer scientist and open source advocate

Danica Radovanovic — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 09:35:23 +0000

One could call Simon Phipps a real eclectic geek, having in mind his background and activism globally: from campaigning for digital liberties, open data, open source software and political transparency, through his columns at InfoWorld to presidenting at the Open Source Initiative.

Simon studied electronic engineering at the University of Southampton, after which he worked for IBM, being involved in introducing the Java programming language, then he was leading Sun’s open source projects for Sun Microsystems – where he also worked on open source licenses. When Sun Microsystems and Oracle merged in 2010, Simon joined ForgeRock startup as Chief Strategy Officer. Now, he heads his own consulting company, Meshed Insights Ltd.

He is the president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) since 2012 – the non-profit organisation that advocates for open source software and builds bridges between open source communities and maintains the open source licenses. Also, he is a board director at the Open Rights Group in the UK and on the advisory board of Open Source for America.

Simon has been giving talks at many conferences on open source, free software, digital rights, etc. I had a chance to meet Simon couple of years ago in Oxford (UK), at the Transfer Summit conference on open innovation, development and collaboration, and ever since I’ve been following his work online and offline.

Welcome to Australian Science. Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? Where do you come from, both geographically and philosophically?

I’m originally from south London but have lived in Southampton for 35 years. I’ve been programming computers and making electronics since I was a teenager, with other interests in general science. I’ve always been fascinated by networks and the capacity for action at a distance, so my career has embraced many aspects of both.

Back in the days of Sun Microsystems, you were leading Sun’s open source projects, and later got involved in the Open Source Initiative. How did you initially get interested in open source software?

At one point I ran a company that helped programmers create and distribute software as Shareware. I realised most people who use software could be trusted to support the developers behind it; our business was successful as a result! That opened my eyes to the deeper reality that underlies open source software. If you remove the obstacle of needing permission to contribute, a community will naturally collaborate to create what they need individually and share it with everyone else. So when I arrived at Sun from IBM, I already believed that open source was a crucial part of the new society emerging because of the Internet. At Sun I was privileged to oversee the relicensing of pretty much the whole of Sun’s software portfolio, including Java, identity management, Solaris, and much more. The legacy we created is still important, especially the code that has ended up as LibreOffice and the ongoing releases of Java under the GPL.

Would you explain to our readers what do Open Source Initiative (OSI), beside promoting open-source software, do for the Internet, science, research, and academia?

OSI was formed in 1998 as the steward of the then-newly-coined “Open Source

test

The post Interview: Simon Phipps, a computer scientist and open source advocate appeared first on Australian Science.

Interview: Lana Ostojic, an applied scientist in the field of forensic biology

Editorial Board — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 06:59:51 +0000

Lana Ostojic is a young applied science professional with the real-world experience in criminal forensics. She is a researcher at the Research and Development Department at the Office of Chief of Medical Examiner (OCME), NYC. Lana is also a PhD candidate at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Molecular Biology and Physiology. Her primary field is molecular biology and physiology. Recently, July 2012, she got in house OCME creativity award for developing an interesting new method where organic glue is used to collect cell samples for forensic purposes in a much more efficient way than the traditional methods.

Welcome to Australian Science. Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? Where do you come from, both geographically and philosophically? What is your scientific background, and your professional scope?

I think my early childhood experiences shaped my passion for learning and work ethic at a very early age. My family has lived for 3 generations in Vukovar, Yugoslavia, currently known as Republic of Croatia. Having withstood the bombing of Vukovar in WWII by Allied forces, and rationing that followed, my Grandmother instilled in me at a very early age to make the best of what you have and to be resourceful. This is a lesson I would learn firsthand at age 9 when bombs fell again in Vukovar in 1991 marking the beginning of a bitter and bloody civil war. We left our classroom as tanks rolled in our streets and fled to Belgrade. There I found a supportive academic culture of learning to be fascinating and quickly immersed and excelled in a school specializing in Math and Sciences, achieving the maximum grade point average. The bombing would fall again as I applied to Universities as NATO cruise missiles and fighters took aim on Belgrade leveling bridges and power plants. Despite the difficulties of an economic embargo, I was accepted under a rare full scholarship grant program by Belgrade University specializing in Molecular Biology and Physiology. After graduation I was granted an opportunity to continue my work at the University of Milan to conduct research on a skin cancer, it was fascinating to work in the presence of such talented scientists. I accepted an opportunity to immigrate to the US under resident status to work at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in NYC as a Criminalist. There I specialized in the applied science of DNA testing for a Crime Lab along with testifying in court as an expert witness on behalf of the District Attorney. It is fascinating work with many more advancements in forensic science yet to be applied. So to reflect back on what drives my interest in my field of applied science, I have to say that helping people through Science is rewarding for me, especially if it means someone life will be saved or justice will be served because of my work.

Would you explain to our readers a bit about Department at the Office of Chief of Medical Examiner (OCME), for those in the science and technology who may not be familiar with the Office?

The City of New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner investigates all sudden, violent, or unexpected deaths in New York City, performs pathologic examinations necessary to determine cause and manner of death, identifies decedents, provides for the disposition of unclaimed human remains, and performs forensic anthropology, toxicology and DNA analysis as appropriate. The OCME houses the country’s largest public forensic DNA laboratory, and is a leader in technology and research. The Department of Forensic Biology is staffed by more than 150 forensic scientists, performing DNA testing on biological evidence from all types of crimes committed in New York City. The lab is widely regarded for utilizing progressive methods and generating exceptionally high quality results. The OCME is the only public forensic laboratory in the nation accredited to perform High Sensitivity DNA testing on samples from which very small amounts of DNA are recovered, and is one of the few public forensic laboratories in the nation that performs mitochondrial DNA testing.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City.
Credit: http://www.perkinseastman.com/project_2400273_new_york_city_ocme_dna_forensics_biology_laboratory

What’s your main role at the OCME?

At OCME I have a double role, being a Criminalist and being a research scientist. As a Criminalist I am examining the crime scene evidence for the presence of the biological material. I am involved in entire DNA testing process, analysis and interpretation of the results along with testifying in court as an expert witness on behalf of the District Attorney Office. As a research scientist I am helping developing more sensitive and effective methodologies for DNA testing process.

Do you collaborate with similar organisations/institutions worldwide in the field of the criminal forensics ? Would you tell us more about your involvement within projects in the Office?

OCME is an independent agency. Our collaborations are more involved in sharing scientific knowledge and experiences with other institutions that conduct forensic DNA testing worldwide. Many of our employees are also faculty members at New York City’s colleges, which allow us to extend our facility as a resource to accomplish graduate degree work for students at our research and development labs. The major focus of OCME is casework rotation. Criminalists, such as me, working on casework rotation aim to generate DNA profiles to identify the source of biological material found on crime scene evidence. Storing eligible DNA profiles in CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) which is primarily managed by FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), we are helping solving other crimes in reminder of NY state and other states of USA. As a research scientist I am co-investigator on an NIJ funded project (National Institute of Justice) where we are trying to minimize or eliminate mixtures via micromanipulation techniques as well as optimize testing method for biological materials that contain degraded or minute amounts of DNA.

Finally, what are you currently working on? What’s your current projects and research about? In current project we are evaluating manual and robotic micromanipulation techniques to efficiently lift the cells from a piece of mock evidence and developing DNA testing method that displays higher level of sensitivity than traditionally used method, we are aiming to obtain database eligible DNA profiles.

Thank you Lana for taking your time to talk with us!

test

The post Interview: Lana Ostojic, an applied scientist in the field of forensic biology appeared first on Australian Science.

All You Need is a Minute to Learn Physics

Magdeline.L — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:35:04 +0000

Really.

Well okay, maybe a little more than a minute. Three minutes tops. Well okay, maybe five minutes and throw in an appreciation of watching cartoons and Youtube videos. That’s it.

I was skeptical when I stumbled on Henry Reich’s MinutePhysics Youtube channel one night. How could anyone explain light, The Big Bang or relativity in just minutes and be understood? I decided to watch one in the expectation that I would be sent to sleep. It was well past midnight. In the end, I didn’t go to sleep until after I had watched every MinutePhysics video in existence. I was hooked. It all started with an explanation of what fire is.

I come across people who have not heard of MinutePhysics so here I am telling everyone on the internet. Each of Henry’s videos is well researched and easy to understand. It is firmly on the list of Youtube channels that I have subscribed to.

Henry Reich

Henry creates every MinutePhysics stop motion video himself. He draws, narrates and edits the entire thing. This is because while Henry has a Masters in Physics from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics he had also pursued filmmaking as a hobby. After the masters was finished, Henry pursued filmmaking more seriously and discovered that Youtube isn’t just about cute cat videos.

“After I finished my masters at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, I took some time to work in film/video and ended up working for the youtube channel “Freddiew” where I learned that you could actually make videos intentionally for youtube,” says Henry.

“I’ve also always enjoyed explaining complicated things, so it seemed like it might be fun to try making some videos to explain complicated physics to the public.”

This is what Henry does and he does it well. Nothing seems too small or too big to tackle. He reads every personal message that is sent to him on Youtube and Facebook and does his best to respond. When asked on how he judges a video to be successful, it is not the number of views or whether it has gone viral. The answer Henry gives is humble and reflective.

“I know a video is successful when a middle schooler and the Nobel Laureate who did the research I’m explaining both tell me how much they liked the video.”

Henry doesn’t just make videos on physics found in textbooks and highlights how they do influence our everyday lives whether we think about it or not. He also makes videos on physics discoveries as they happen. One great example of this was when the Higgs Boson discovery was announced. He made a three part video series found its way onto New Scientist, Huffington Post, and NBC.

This is the first video in the Higgs Boson series.

Henry’s enthusiasm for theoretical physics is evident in his videos as he unpacks ideas and concepts for his audience and it is infectious. The videos spawn endless conversation on his Youtube and Facebook pages. After more than a year working on MinutePhysics, Henry has teamed up with other scientists creating MinuteEarth, a Youtube channel bringing together biology, geology, ecology, anthropology, and more.

So if you have a minute, you can learn just about anything.

Cite this article:
Lum M (2013-05-08 06:35:04). All You Need is a Minute to Learn Physics. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/all-you-need-is-a-minute-to-learn-physics/

test

The post All You Need is a Minute to Learn Physics appeared first on Australian Science.

Linux.conf.au 2013: ‘Nerdvana’ in Canberra

itgrrl — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:26:36 +0000

During the last week of January, approximately 700 IT professionals and enthusiastic hobbyists descended on Canberra to jointly create an intensive learning experience. Each year the call goes out across the intertubes to gather together open source geeks for Linux Conference Australia. Linux.conf.au, or simply LCA, is one of the largest open source conferences in the southern hemisphere, and one of the most highly-regarded conferences of its kind in the world. I was excited to attend LCA2013, as it was my first LinuxConf, despite being involved to a modest degree in the Linux and open source community for at least the last 15 years.

Most days, the programme commenced with a keynote address by an IT industry luminary who had made a significant contribution to computer technology and open source. At every keynote address, the lower level of ANU’s Llewellyn Hall was packed with delegates, each toting a selection of wifi- or 3G-enabled devices. While I saw a healthy 55Mbps idle capacity on the Internet link provided by conference organisers (ably assisted by the network engineers at AARNET), once the assembled cohort of digital natives hit the link, all of that that capacity was rapidly utilised.

The conference was opened on the Monday by Bdale Garbee, recently-retired Open Source & Linux Chief Technologiest at Hewlett-Packard, and a long-time contributor to the Debian Linux distribution. (Read Kelly Burnes’ article about Bdale at LCA2013, where you can also watch our video interview.)

On the Tuesday, Radia Perlman enchanted the audience with her talk on the folklore of networking. Radia has been instrumental in developing several key networking protocols that underpin the interconnectedness of computers that we now take for granted. She gave a highly-technical yet accessible talk laced with humour and even nerdy poetry. (You can read my thoughts on Radia at LCA2013, and watch our video interview.)

Andrew “bunnie

Cite this article:
Smith J (2013-02-11 00:26:36). Linux.conf.au 2013: 'Nerdvana' in Canberra. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/internet-2/linux-conf-au-2013-canberra/

test

The post Linux.conf.au 2013: ‘Nerdvana’ in Canberra appeared first on Australian Science.

Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member

Alan Kerlin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:24:25 +0000

Keri Bean in the NASA JPL Mars Yard, with the Curiosity test-bed twin ‘Maggie’

Keri Bean is a meteorologist specialising in the atmospherics of other planets. She is on the team operating the Curiosity Rover for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Prior to MSL, Keri has had roles in the missions for other Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a prototype Moon rover, the Phoenix Mars Lander, and the Hubble Space telescope. And she’s just 25 years old! That’s a pretty incredible CV to rack up already.

In this interview, Keri talks with me about her work on MSL and the other missions, plus how and why she got into space science. It all started when a tornado hit her pre-school.

Australian Science on SoundCloud.

Keri (centre) with many of the MSL team and ‘Scarecrow’, the other Curiosity test rover (Scarecrow is lighter than Curiosity so that it mirrors the lower Mars gravity).

A GIF of the partial solar eclipse by Mars moon Phobos, as captured by the Curiosity rover—an image capture task coordinated by Keri.

A photo of Phobos (highly zoomed it, and hence quite grainy) taken by Curiosity just after dusk on 21 September using one of its Mastcams, showing its ‘potato’ shape.

The ‘Chariot’ Lunar rover prototype for which Keri worked on camera design (and which James May managed to have a minor accident with when filming an episode of Top Gear!).

The Mars Phoenix Lander.

Cite this article:
Kerlin A (2012-11-12 00:24:25). Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/space/interview-keri-bean-mars-meteorologist-curiosity-rover-team-member/

test

The post Interview: Keri Bean—Mars meteorologist, Curiosity Rover team member appeared first on Australian Science.

Urban informatics and new opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange – Interview with Marcus Foth

Danica Radovanovic — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:11:49 +0000

As an internet researcher and social media consultant, I ask some of the guests of the Australian Science magazine and knowledge network to tell me and my readers more about themselves, their current projects, and their views on topics including internet technology, the use of the Web in science and education, and certain aspects of the digital technologies that influence our everyday lives and work. You can see the published interviews so far – here.

Photo credit: Erika Fish, QUT

Marcus Foth is an Associate Professor and Director of the Urban Informatics Research Lab, as well as the Principal Research Fellow at the School of Design, Queensland University of Technology. He has authored and co-authored over 90 articles published in journals, edited books, and conference proceedings, as well as the Urban Informatics web site. You can follow him on Twitter.

Certainly. I was born and grew up in the Northern part of Germany, in a town called Lübeck, at the coast of the Baltic Sea, about an hour from Hamburg. After high school I moved what appears to be as far away diagonally as possible within Germany in order to commence a computer science degree at the University of Furtwangen in the Black Forest that offered a – at the time – unique specialisation: Medieninformatik which combined technology applications and media studies. This was in 1997. The internet was just starting to become commercially successful, and many current students were still working on kiosk installations and multimedia CD-ROMs which were the latest fad at the time.

This degree program included two industry internships as well as an opportunity to study abroad. Together with friends of mine we looked at a number of options and eventually applied for advanced standing into the Bachelor of Multimedia program at Griffith University in Brisbane where we continued our studies in 2000. Due to the credit transfer, we were able to graduate at the end of 2000. This was my first year in Australia, and I had an amazing time. So much so that I decided to take advantage of a Government initiative that made it easier for recent IT graduates to apply for permanent residency. I was also lucky that my application was processed very rapidly: I applied in March 2001 and returned to Brisbane in July 2001 on my PR visa.

I had finished all my coursework for the German CompSc degree, and all that was left to do was the graduation thesis. In the meantime, I enrolled into a Master of Arts in Digital Media program at Queensland University of Technology which was flexible enough to comprise project units that allowed me to write my thesis “Backing up the Smart State: E-Security in Queensland’s Small and Medium Enterprises.

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-09-11 01:11:49). Urban informatics and new opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange - Interview with Marcus Foth. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/urban-informatics-interview-with-marcus-foth/

test

The post Urban informatics and new opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange – Interview with Marcus Foth appeared first on Australian Science.

Open Linked Data, DBpedia, Serendipity, and the Future of Web – Interview with Kingsley Idehen

Danica Radovanovic — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:26:39 +0000

Being a Semantic Web, Open Linked Data, Open Source enthusiast, and at some point the contributor to the AP for the FOAF and other metadata standards, recently I had an opportunity to talk with Kingsley Idehen on his current projects, views on the use of the Web technologies, Open Linked Data, WebID, serendipity, and certain aspects of the Internet that influence our everyday lives.

Kingsley Idehen is the Founder & CEO of OpenLink Software. He is a recognized technology enthusiast and expert in areas such as: Data Connectivity middleware, Linked Data, Data Integration, and Data Management. He is also a founding member of DBpedia project via OpenLink Software. Kingsley’s background is quite varied: he had planned to become a scientist in the genetic engineering realm but ended up being more fascinated by the power Information Technology and its potential to reshape mankind. From science, accounting, and programming, he followed his scientific instincts to architect OpenLinkVirtuoso, a powerful and innovative open source virtual database for SQL, XML, and Web services. The Virtuoso History page tells the whole story about Kingsley’s vision and accomplishments. You can follow him on Twitter and read his Google+ posts.

Would you explain to our readers a bit about the OpenLink Software, for those in the Web technology who may not be familiar with it? Can you give us a story about the inception, history, work and achievements of the OpenLink Software?

OpenLink Software develops, deploys, and supports bleeding edge technology covering the following realms:
1. Relational Database Connectivity Middleware — ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLE-DB, and XMLA Drivers/Providers
2. Disparate Data Virtualization
3. Personal & Enterprise Collaboration
4. Relational Tables (RDBMS) and Relational Property Graph (Graph DB) based Database Management Systems
5. Federated Identity Management.

I founded OpenLink in 1992 with open database connectivity middleware supporting all major RDBMS products as our focus. By 1998 we evolved our vision to include RDBMS virtualization, and by 2000 we decided that the Semantic Web technology stack provided all the critical standards that would enable us extend data virtualization to include other data sources and formats beyond the RDBMS.

OpenLink was initially associated with dispelling the performance myth that undermined the early promotion of the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) standard from Microsoft. In the Semantic Web and Linked Data realms our Virtuoso hybrid data server underlies critical parts of the Linked Open Data cloud (starting with DBpedia which lies at the core) as well as offering the largest publicly accessible Linked Data space on the planet, against which anything (human or machine) can perform ad-hoc queries that drive lookups while also aiding the emergence of other Linked Data Spaces on the LOD cloud.
Naturally, our technologies are used extensively across enterprises worldwide due to performance, scalability, and security that underlies every item in our product portfolio.

Is there any existing tools and methodologies developed by either you or your team in the OpenLink Software or others that you would like to mention?

* High-Performance ODBC Drivers for all the major RDBMS databases
* ODBC Drivers for the World Wide Web — yes, the World Wide Web of Linked Data (or LOD cloud) is exploitable and accessible to any ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, or OLE-DB compliant application
* Virtuoso — high-performance and massively scalable hybrid DBMS (relational tables and property graphs).
* Linked Data Middleware — that transform output from a plethora of Web 2.0 and SOA services into structured Linked Data
* URIBurner — a public instance of the middleware mentioned above that enables anyone transform existing data into Linked Data
* OpenLink Data Spaces — platform for enterprise and personal data spaces that includes in-built Federated Identity and sophisticated Linked Data functionality
* DBpedia — Linked Open Data Cloud nexus that runs on Virtuoso (re. Linked Data Deployment and Data Management).

Some useful links and downloads: ODBC Drivers for the World Wide Web, Virtuoso Commercial Edition, Virtuoso Open Source Edition, Linked Data Middleware, URIBurner, OpenLink Data Spaces, and DBpedia.

Do you collaborate with similar organisations/institutions worldwide in the field of the Open Linked Data? Would you tell us more about your involvement within the DBpedia project?

Yes, as demonstrated by DBpedia (Frei University and University of Leipzig), Sindice (DERI), and Bio2RDF(Carleton University and others).

Virtuoso is the Linked Data Publishing and Database Management system behind DBpedia. Net effect of Virtuoso is you have a massive collection of Linked Data derived from Wikipedia that’s available to the entire public. This instance enables you browser through pages that describe entities while also delivering ad-hoc query functionality via a Web Service that supports the SPARQL query language, results serialization formats, and HTTP based wire protocol.

In addition to providing the live instance, we also provide quality assurance, support and maintenance. Publishing and maintaining DBpedia is a challenge, and we even offer packages that enable others instantiate personal or service specific instances via Amazon EC2 AMIs (virtual machines).

DBpedia is basically germination of the seed planted by the Linked Data meme published by TimBL circa. 2005. In turn, DBpedia enabled the emergence of the massive Linked Data Cloud that exists today.

In his recent keynote, at the WWW2012, Tim Berners-Lee talked about the importance of the openness and urged for governments to embrace the movement of open data. Following that, you showed me how one can successfully kill spam using the WebID protocol as a Web-scale verifiable identity mechanism. Thus, for those who are not familiar with WebID – beside allowing to identify self online and exchange the WebID with other people and social web services – are there some other uses aimed at solving real problems?

Here are the fundamental problems solved by unadulterated open data connectivity:
1. generating capital from high quality government data via open data initiatives the leverage Linked Data principles — this is better than dysfunctional financial engineering that’s plunged the world into an economic fragility
2. big data and small data virtualization that simplifies the process of discovering and sharing insights for individuals and enterprises alike
3. achieving the goals above without compromising privacy and security.

There’s nothing more useful than 1-3 and there’s no technology to date that’s achieved that without some kind of platform specificity that ultimately becomes a dysfunctional silo. This is where the Web is unique, as its impact on mankind has already demonstrated with aplomb.

I always ask people who are in the ICTs (Information-Communication Technologies): do you think that Web is one big serendipity machine from the computing and the scientific point of view?

It is. See: SDQ (Serendipitous Discovery Quotient) and The Future of SEO? Or an Abstract Concept? – another SDQ article.

As the links to structured data increase on the Web, its density increases, which ultimately means that you require fewer and fewer link hops to find whatever you seek, with precision.
For instance, you can Find all Blog Posts about a Subject Matter Topic based on the attributes of the topic since the Post, Topic, and their Connection are all denoted (named) using hyperlinks (de-referencable) URIs. These URIs resolve to content in the form of fine-grained links taking the form: entity-attribute-value or subject-predicate-object. See my presentation that covers the basics of structured of data.

Do you think that Web apps and software architects are killing the serendipity moment with their search algorithms, mechanical turks and other mechanisms?

No, the worst that can happen is artificial protraction of a journey to an inevitable destination i.e., the Web as mankind’s distributed database and serendipity machine.

What are you currently working on? What’s your current projects and research about? What can we expect from the OpenLink Software in the upcoming period?

Addressing the Read-Write dimension of the Web, hence the recent emphasis on WebID and the WebID authentication protocol. Verifiable Identity is a critical piece of the Web that hasn’t manifested coherently until the emergence of the WebID and Read-Write Web community groups from the W3C.

All our products are WebID enabled, so our current focus is getting the world to understand why federated identity matters by product offerings that address:

1. Personal Data Spaces or Data Lockers — how users take full control of their identity, profiles, data, and privacy
2. Data Wikis – basically reapplying the Wiki Content pattern to Linked Data such that crowdsourcing and social networking add new virtuous dimensions to Linked Data product and quality.

What is taking up the most my time these days is finalizing a boat load of new product releases that increasingly simplify the power inherent in our products and the infrastructure provided by the World Wide Web. Also, OpenLink Software is finalizing new editions of Virtuoso, OpenLink Data Spaces, and its suite of ODBC and JDBC compliant data access drivers which support all major DBMS engines.

Thank you Kingsley for taking your time to talk with me!

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-07-30 01:26:39). Open Linked Data, DBpedia, Serendipity, and the Future of Web – Interview with Kingsley Idehen. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/open-linked-data-dbpedia-serendipity-and-the-future-of-web-interview-with-kingsley-idehen/

test

The post Open Linked Data, DBpedia, Serendipity, and the Future of Web – Interview with Kingsley Idehen appeared first on Australian Science.

Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando

Danica Radovanovic — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:19:02 +0000

Keita Bando is a Digital Repository Librarian and Coordinator for Scholarly Communication database called MyOpenArchive we have presented MyOpenArchive earlier this year. Founded in September 2007, MyOpenArchive is an international Non-Profit Organization that advocates Open Access for never-before-published research papers on the web and provides Self-Archiving platform to enable better knowledge sharing in a way that’s easy to publish. We talked with Keita about Open Access (OA), scientific and scholarly publishing, and the current situation of the OA in the world.

Welcome! Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? What is your scientific background, and your professional scope?

Hello, Australian Science and its readers! Nice to meet you. I have been devoted my time on Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and recently Altmetrics. That’s why we (two colleagues and me) founded MyOpenArchive five years ago. An engineer and an designer helped me to develop my initial effort.

Also much of my time have been devoted on OA advocacy relations. For example, an presentation at 2008 Open Access Day, hosting Japanese website during Open Access Week 2009, and we hosted an event at that week. Furthermore, in 2011 we attended two conferences in Europe and the US, to make great acquaintances with those who deeply committed into Open Repository relations.

Besides, I have been devoted my time on Mendeley Advisor relations. Mendeley is a great service for me, and that’s why I advocate Mendeley in Japan. On one hand, Mendeley is famous as Reference manager. On the other hand, Mendeley is a Self-Archiving, Institutional Repository friendly service. Personally I am an OA Advocate who is interested in Mendeley Advisor relations.

As a volunteer I have been devoted my time on those relations, for I have a full-time job at an University (as a staff, but not a librarian).

How many individual and organizational ‘self-archiving’ units or members do you have within MyOpenArchive? What science disciplines the archive covers?

MyOpenArchive is not a sectional repository (arXiv, PMC etc). You can publish and share any type of research paper, of any section (Journal Article, Thesis or Dissertation, others) using Creative Commons License (or Public Domain). Users can upload material from any field, all science disciplines are present in the articles.

The first 3 years (2007-2010) we attracted 393 users and 210 posts. After 2010 renewal, 292 users and 166 posts. On the new site, we introduced Twitter/Facebook Sign in/up system to find that Twitter users overwhelmed Facebook users (214 vs. 78).

What do you think about “self archiving” today in the hyper connected networked surrounding and advancement of digital technologies? Do people deposit more or less?

Self archiving, so far, meant that librarians conduct the posting author’s final draft and/or others to Institutional Repository. These years, however, increasing number of users found their way to publish research papers to Mendeley, ResearchGATE, academia.edu and so on because those social networking services for researchers taps self archiving features into their site.

Thus, Self archiving can be achieved without IR. FigShare, PeerEvaluation, MyOpenArchive and numerous Social iR(s) represent Self archiving without help of librarians or IR. Researchers can do the self archiving, literally, on their own.

On the other, experimental efforts are increasing in order to match SNS for researchers and IR. For example, I am interested in DURA project, on which Mendeley and Cambridge University Library join forces upon JISC subsidy. Technology evolution let those services interact each other, and SWORD, Symplectic is critical on the Self archiving movement to advocate OA.

How do you see OA development in the next five years? How do you see the impact of open access on the science, education, and communication online?

In my opinion, altmetrics is the key to innovate OA relations. PLoS is the most important contribute to altmetrics innovation. It focuses on article level metrics, on which they can enhance the real time impact of individual papers. PLoS hires some of altmetrics guru, such as Cameron Neylon and Martin Fenner to the effort. Besides, PLoS talents like Mark Patterson and Peter Binfield (they are keen on altmetrics) are going to launch new OA journal (eLife Science, PeerJ) with some of Mendeley staff (Ian Mulvany, Jason Hoyt). Also, BMC show their understandings on OA journal. Hopefully Publication companies will increasingly submit altmetrics.com plans on and on.

I feel the importance of “being the part” of Open Access movement to know the global trend. Thus I am taking part in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google plus groups, while I follow them on Twitter to know the status of “person” as much as “information”. Most importantly, I can say that being the part of real friendship is critical. Last year I attended several international conferences as real friendship needed. “Why don’t we contribute” happens on these efforts, personally.

I know that you are very active online, collaborating with other Open Access chapters and nonprofit organisations. What are your current plans in the organisation and Open Access movement globally?

For example, Sridhar Gutam of Open Access India became allies with us, to share the Asia relations. On the partnership we hope to enhance the collaborations among those parties around the world.

We are going to attend Edinburgh Open Repositories 2012, on 9-13 July.

Berlin 10 Open Access Conference and Open Access Week also mean a lot for us, so this is going to be a “being the part” of discussion and real networking.

Thank you Keita for taking your time to talk with me!

Image source: flickr.com/photos/keitabando/3180077809/in/set-72157612285351143

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-06-20 00:19:02). Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/open-access-for-open-knowledge-an-interview-with-keita-bando/

test

The post Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando appeared first on Australian Science.

Communicating Science and Connecting people: An interview with Bora Zivkovic, the Scientific American editor

Danica Radovanovic — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:56:59 +0000

Photo credits: Travis Dove, The New York Times

Jean Cocteau once said that the art is science made clear, but what he didn’t indicate is that the science is creating different forms of art including the art of connecting people and communicating science. Bora Zivkovic is a unique, energetic, technologically-savvy, and multidisciplinary scientist, connector, and blogger. I met Bora twice: during the Science Online 2009 and Science Online 2010 conference in Raleigh NC, USA, and on many other occasions online, and he would always motivate me with incredible energy and passion for science and people. I would say that Bora is the real science connector, not only communicating and articulating science in its many forms but also connecting people, networks, and the scientific communities world wide.

Born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Bora’s studies of veterinary medicine were interrupted by the 1990s war in the Balkans, when he arrived in the USA. He went to graduate school at North Carolina State University where he studied how bird brains measure time of day (circadian rhythms) and time of year (photoperiodism). He started A Blog Around the Clock in 2004 as a prolific science blogger. He was the online Community Manager for the open access journal PLoS ONE. He is now the editor of Scientific American’s blog network, organizes the annual ScienceOnline conference, and is the editor of The Open Laboratory, an annual collection of the best writing from science blogs.

He even interviewed me once, as a host of a series of interviews with various scientists, bloggers, educators, and journalists; and now is my turn to ask Bora questions I always wanted to ask him. I had an opportunity to interview him and here are the questions and perceptive, knowledgeable, and fun responses.

Welcome to Australian Science! Recently the Science Online 2012, #scio12 has finished, and impressions are still spreading online among scientists, bloggers, journalists by sharing blog posts, videos, tweets. How do you feel after this year’s conference? Do you think that some things and social dynamics during this conference have changed comparing to previous conferences? I’ve seen familiar names tweeting online, people I met in person in 2009 and 2010. What has changed in the conference dynamics since then?

We were very aware that growing a meeting by 50% can change the dynamics. We spent the entire year discussing strategies for ensuring that the intimate atmosphere of the meeting does not vanish. I wrote quite a lot about this in my long blog post after the event, especially about the need to make sure that so many new people feel welcome and instantly included into the community – including all the fun parts of the event. We completely changed the daily schedule in order to foster more informal interractions, we (really, Karyn Traphagen) designed the Cafe Room with this in mind, and we put quite a lot of effort in our communications on the blogs (including my post which was recommended to all to read beforehand), emails and social media, to prepare everybody for the unconference format and for the unique blend of serious discussions and crazy fun of ScienceOnline. For the most part, judging from what people are saying on their blogs and in our feedback forms, we were successful.

You are an influential leader of the scientific blogging network community – I may say – worldwide. You have a lot of experience in the curating, managing, coordinating scientific events, scientific blogs, and online communities. You’ve been organizing the ScienceOnline conference for the past 6 years and also serve as series editor for The Open Laboratory anthology. You’ve worked as PLoS online community manager and now work in the role of Editor at the Scientific American blogs. What are the best strategies for building and maintaining blog network (out of scratch)?

Building a blog network from scratch is actually a wonderful experience – one gets to turn one’s vision into reality. Of course, building a network hosted on the Scientific American website is not exactly “from scratch”, as the power of the brand (as well as the resources of the organization) almost guarantee visibility and traffic from the start. I spent several years as a blogger at Scienceblogs.com so I could experience (and later analyze) many aspects of the community building at that site – definitely insights I used in building the SA network later on. Also, just before Scientific American hired me, I was briefly involved in the planning and early organization of the PLoS Blogs and Scientopia blogs. In both of these, my voice was one of several. At Scientific American I was hired specifically to do this, so I had more freedom to build exactly the kind of network I wanted to.

The key to the success of a network are its people. I had the luxury of having nine long months to think about it. I dug through the archives and started following literally thousands of science blogs. I used Twitter to ask for suggestions for even more blogs, especially blogs that do a particular ‘thing’, e.g,. writing about a particular topic in a particular style. What I was looking for was to assemble a team, rather than produce a “best of” list. I wanted a group of people who will be joy to work with, who will have fun communicating with each other in the backforums and in their blogs’ comment sections, and who will be naturally inclined to feel as members of a community, not just writers for hire.

Of course, there are many people like that, so I also made sure that, within the limits of size and budget, I include quite a lot of diversity. When I say ‘diversity’ I am not talking just about coverage of as many topics and scientific disciplines as we can accommodate, but also diversity in voices. I wanted to have people on the network who can speak to different audiences, so I wanted to find people of varied backgrounds (geography, career path, age, gender, race/ethnicity, etc.), with different writing styles, writing at different “reading levels”, etc, in order to capture as broad and varied audience for the network as a whole. Inclusion of several bloggers who communicate well using media other than text was also very important to me, as art, illustration, video, music, photography, cartoons, animations, infographics and other ways of communicating science are just as important as good text writing for extending our reach and capture new audiences.

It is also important to understand that a blog network is not static. Bloggers come and go. It is OK – life and career sometimes force people to take different directions, which may entail stopping blogging temporarily or permanently, or taking one’s blog in a completely different direction. It is important to make these transitions smoothly without disrupting the community and the overall tone of the network.

As a science blogger and network community manager, what’s the one piece of advice you would give to people who want to curate and manage their local and national blogging communities? And what is your advice to bloggers, scholars, scientists, educators, and journalists who want to write for those scientific online networks? I have noticed that relationships, people and linking matter the most, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Analyze the audience. Make a vision that fits it (and expands to other audiences you want to attract). Then – ignore personal friendships! Both you and I have thousands of friends in the science blogging circles. Many of them are fantastic bloggers whose blogs I read religiously. Yet I did not invite them to the network because their blogging topics and styles do not fit the vision I have for the network. Some of the bloggers who ended up on the network happen to be my friends, but they are here because of what they do and how they do it. Other bloggers on the network I only first encountered when I started looking around really hard – I liked their writing, I started communicating with them online, perhaps “tested” them on the Guest Blog, and decided they were a good fit. I also deliberately chose a few bloggers who are veterans, people who have experience, reputation and authority, people who can help on a bad day when trolls are all over a bloggers’ comment section, or if there are uncertainties in the troops (and of course, they already have many regular readers who will follow their blogs onto the new hosting network). But most are relatively new or young bloggers who I thought had great talent and potential. Most have more than repaid my trust in them and grew into tremendous forces of high-quality blogging.

You are an avid twitterer and I remember you used FriendFeed a lot. What social web tools are you using these days the most besides Twitter? What social media tools help you now for promoting the work and networking and which one do you use for professional development?

Twitter is still my main social network where I spend the most time and do most of the interraction – this is where I discover stuff, promote stuff, and talk with people. I also post links to most of my bloggers’ posts on my Facebook and Google Plus pages. If interraction there happens, and it often does, I am happy to go there as well to reply, but these are definitely not taking up much of my time. I am only very superficially exploring the worlds of Tumblr, Posterous, Quora and Pinterest, am studiously avoiding LinkedIn (though I have a profile there – and probably everywhere), have pretty much abandoned FriendFeed since it was bought by Facebook, and use other sites (e.g., YouTube and Flickr) mainly as repositories rather than places where I expect to get much interraction. I see quite a lot of potential in Google Plus which, I sometimes joke, is how FriendFeed would look like if it continued developing.

I have a feeling that the new social web paradigm in science, technology and education cannot sustain without building relationships and links. Do you find the human factor and the power of community prevailing over machines and tools we are using? Are we finally getting to the point that despite McLuhan’s “that tools will be using us

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-02-28 09:56:59). Communicating Science and Connecting people: An interview with Bora Zivkovic, the Scientific American editor. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/communicating-science-and-connecting-people-an-interview-with-bora/
test
The post Communicating Science and Connecting people: An interview with Bora Zivkovic, the Scientific American editor appeared first on Australian Science.