SPARC is a proud co-organizer of Open Access Week 2009 and is pleased to offer this welcome to the global celebrations, to be held October 19 - 23, 2009. See openaccessweek.org for details. In addition to a welcome and thanks to organizers, partners, and participants, SPARC principals cast the Week in the context of the international movement toward free, open, online, and immediate access to the results of scholarly research. Ideal way to open your week or your session, or to spread the word by email.
(c) Subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Just there on BBC2, was a fascinating 10 min "time-filler" as the previous programme (snooker) finished earlier than scheduled. They chose a segment from the 2007 series of Coast on the Outer Hebrides.
"This rugged remote coast is a wonderland of stacks, secret inlets and wind swept secluded beaches. The dramatic coastline is rich with culture and traditions which are deeply rooted across the 120 islands that make up the Outer Hebrides".
The main focus of this segment was specifically in terms of the Isle of Lewis.
Plain sailing so far, but what's the historical connection between the Isle of Lewis and oil??? Follows a semantically enhanced version of a link above.
Isle of Lewis - Birth of an Oil Industry
Stornoway is the largest town on Lewis and the commercial hub for the islands. Over 150 years ago it saw the surprising birth of an oil industry.
In 1844 the island was bought (£190,000) by James Matheson who helped build the area for the community.
Ed- He also had a wee Castle built for him. Lews Castle to be precise.
"Lews Castle is a Victorian era castle located west of the town of Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. It was built in the years 1847-57 as a country house for Sir James Matheson who had bought the whole island a few years previously with his fortune from the Chinese Opium trade". Hhmm.
Although Matheson had retired he was forever the entrepreneur, and it was more than the natural beauty of the island that caught his eye - it was the islands vast resource of peat.
For years peat had been used as a domestic fuel. Matheson wanted to take it one step further and use the peat to make hydrocarbon oil. At the time paraffin oil was used for lighting and it came from fish and whales. But how did Matheson make oil from peat?
Armed with a bag of peat and a metal drum, Mike Bullivant from the Open University illustrates the magical properties of peat. By burning the peat, tar is extracted and distilled further, extracting paraffin oil.
Originally, Matheson set up his works at his castle, but the process poisoned the fish in his pond so he moved the process outside. But when all the fish were poisoned in the nearby river, Matheson called in chemist Dr Benjamin Paul (Ed - can't find anything abot him on teh webz) to take charge of the distillation.
The process also gave of a flammable gas - which the night watchman discovered when doing his rounds with a candle, resulting in the chimney catching fire. Forever efficient, Dr Paul used the excess gas to burn the peat, which was used to make paraffin lamp oil, candles, and the excess tar was sold as lubricant and sheep dip.
Alice Roberts joins Ali Whiteford and discovers how this area of peat land was transformed into a full blown chemical works.
The Lewis Chemical Works was the first company to be a commercial success of converting peat into oil. But Dr Paul left and his successor cooked the books, lining his own pockets.
Twenty two years later the site closed and all that's visible today is the track of the Works.
Being a public domain blog, McDawg has placed what appears to look like a plaster (strategically angled) over part of the following image (nipples not shown). Other than that, you'll get the picture/story.
Inspired in part by @cromercrox who recently livetweeted a cookery sketch about chutney making, I post herewith the following.
When McDawg gets home from a hard days work, the last thing they want to do is to slave over a hot stove preparing dinner for the night. As such, usually once a month now, I spend a Saturday afternoon/evening preparing and cooking a large batch of meals for future enjoyment. Here's what happened last night.
Ingredients 8 chicken breasts 3 beef fillets
4 large onions 1 bunch of spring onions one bunch of fresh coriander 2 bulbs of garlic 2 medium sized stems of fresh ginger 3/4 carton of passata vegetable ghee vegetable oil sesame oil 12-14 chillis 2 limes 5 - 6 mixed peppers roasted cashew nuts 1.5 packets of chinese curry sauce mix 3 pints of water balti curry paste yogurt balti cooking sauce 2 other chinese cooking sauces light & dark soya sauce 2 egg whites cornflour salt and freshly ground pepper
In rough order.
Dice and slice the meat. Marinate and chill according to dishes being prepared.
Whisk together the water and chinese curry mix, bring to boil and set aside for later.
Slice and dice all vegetables other than garlic and ginger.
During the above process, take some of these:
and roast them in sesame oil and a pinch of salt for about 20 mins, turning from time to time.
Finally, finely chop the garlic and ginger. Personally, I tend to go for a 40% ginger/60% garlic mix:
Right. That's all the prep done so time for a break and a beer.
For Indian dishes, a Karahi works miles better than a wok.
For the Balti dishes, after you've sealed the marinated chicken and added all of the (required) ingredients, you want to seal and simmer for about 30 mins. At the very end, add the juice of 1 - 2 limes and garnish with freshly chopped coriander:
That's 4 dishes prepared, 10 still to go !!
Time for another beer break.
With the chinese curry sauce already prepared, it doesn't take long to make half a dozen or so chicken and beef dishes. The methodology in the following video is slightly different from what I do but produces the same end result:
You've guessed it, another beer break.
Almost all done. There should be sufficient ingredients left to make a further 3 - 4 dishes. With variety being the spice of life, time to whip up a few different dishes using the yet to be used sauces.
Since I cook at a leisurely pace, after about 5 hours, one reaches the finishing line:
Allow to cool completely (I usually leave overnight) before freezing:
A few months ago, either through reading the Research Information Network’s (RIN) website here or this post on Nature Network I was alerted to a free Workshop here in Glasgow which seemed of interest, and it was. I signed up right away as an attendee.
Two weekends ago however, I was alerted to this post on the BBC in that the venue in question for the event had been placed into administration. Utter bummer. I set about contacting the event organisers by email for clarification on the event and hat’s off to Event Logistics Ltd for their prompt responses. This resulted in this tweet I posted on Sept 1st. Yay, the gig was still going ahead as planned. Additional tweet the next day.
McDawg only became aware of the RIN about 4-5 months ago but very much likes what they do/are involved in. About RIN Since I also have an interest in the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) and the fact that this workshop was right on my doorstep (well, six minutes by train), McDawg simply had to attend.
The night before, I pulled together some of my Open Access (OA) swag which I have been known before to stick in my rucky when attending events of interest. The RIN are certainly fully supportive of OA Indeed, one of the sessions (Session 3: Open access, empty archives? A word of warning) of this event mentioned OA although alas, it was not directly related to OA (as I know OA) in the end, per se.
That said, as I was about to find out when I rummaged through my Delegates Pack, it did indeed contain several OA related RIN Brochures:-
THE WORKSHOP
Yesterday morning, I arrived at The LightHouse at around 10:00 as planned. The programme for the Workshop can be found here.
First to speak was Stéphane Goldstein, Head of Programmes, RIN. Stéphane provided some background about the RIN during his opening remarks. From my notes, the RIN “chanced upon” FoI about two years ago. Mention was made of the prelude to this workshop which was the first one in London, Sept 2008. Full details here. ++UPDATE++ As pointed out in the comment thread, there's also a podcast with highlights of the Sept 08 workshop here. I've just created a streaming version of the podcast to save folks having to download the MP3.
Observation. From the Summary Report, "One interesting issue raised at the meeting was the potential impact of blogging on the scale of FoI requests. At the moment in the UK, there are 1000,000 FoI requests a year. Might this not increase hugely if bloggers start to become aware of the potential represented by FoI". Food for thought !!
Next to speak was David Goldberg, former Co-Convener Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland who Chaired the Workshop. David discussed the “complex mosaic of FOI Law” in the UK and the differences between the Scottish and UK FOI Acts. He also touched upon one of the main reasons that I attended. See the blog post entitled “Open Access redacted” by Heather Etchevers on Nature Network. As I explained to David during the morning coffee break, there is concern amongst the scientific community about usage of the FoI. He mentioned during his talk that under Section 27/2 of the FoI (Scotland) Act (FOISA), that researchers can refuse access for information (under an FoI request) for example if their work is “part of an ongoing piece of research”. The actual wording is:-
S.27(2)Where the information is “obtained in the course of, or derived from, a programme of research”.
Next to take the podium was Sarah Hutchison, Head of Policy and Information, Scottish Information Commissioner. Sarah mentioned that over 80 countries now have FoI in place and the UK is still catching up on the likes of the USA, Canada and Australia that have had FoI in place since around 1980. Scotland however was the first country in the world to release data (under FoI) on surgical mortality rates in hospitals for example. Mention was made of website whatdotheyknow.com Her “slides will be online” so will post a link when I find it. The link is here.
COFFEE BREAK
A fine duo of speakers next in terms of Bruno Longmore and Hugh Hagan from the National Archives of Scotland (NAS). Their positions, respectively, Head of Government Records and Senior Inspecting Officer Government Records Branch, NAS. Hugh informed those present that the Thirty Year Rule did not and does not apply in Scotland. The FOISA was started in 2002 and came into force on 01/01/2005. One of the key concepts of the FoI is to balance “individual privacy and public need”. Hugh then took to the floor to talk about records management at the NAS. Bruno and Hugh's presentation can be found here.
A most excellent spread I have to say – 10/10 !!!! Nom nom nom
Time to set up a wee Open Access stall and quite a few folks took away some of the swag. NICE.
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Very brief Dr Who Segment appears if you are still reading, a hint follows, in a bit.
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Freelance Historian, Harriet Jones (not be confused with this Harriet Jones) was the next speaker. Limited notes but she mentioned that Sweden adopted FOI as early as 1766 but that these days, the Swedish Government no longer record notes of their meetings !!
Parallel workshops time next before we reconvened for a Plenary Session led by David Goldberg. Nice wrap up and planning ahead for future RIN workshops. David thanked the three RIN staff for having this one “outwith London” and suggested the likes of Newcastle or Liverpool for the next one.
Final words by Stéphane who mentioned that all the PPT’s will be posted up on the RIN website shortly. During end of day refreshments, I mentioned to Stéphane that I was the only person who had taken photographs of the event and that I would get them uploaded to Flickr and provide a link. Thanks to Twitter though, RIN’s Branwen Hide despite the fact that she’s currently in Sweden at the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing has already placed a link to the photos here.
Apparently, you're not allowed to add MP3 music files to SlideShare, related audio speaking files only. That's not strictly true, though. Coughs
So, here is the same Slideshow with an embedded MP3 file I created 2 weekends ago. I have no idea yet as to how this will work as I've only just created this, with robot assistance.
As the show went out at 11:00PM UK time on August 27, 2009, Sadly, I missed it in real time, but thanks to the benefits of self archiving, they made the entire show, warts and all, freely available.
This is an excellent free flowing discussion about Open Access, the future of academic publishing, science on the Web, the list goes on. The actual show starts at 05:30 so skip to there if you want to jump straight in....
Last Friday, McDawg purchased two packets of sandwiches, a Grande tea, a copy of New Scientist and FHM before alighting the Virgin Express train from Glasgow to Euston, London ahead of Science Online London 2009 and also indeed, the World Gala Premiere of Darwin's Lost Weekend, the latter marking my entry after 20 years of wanting to do so into the land of film-scoring.
Having only bought one previous copy of the "lad's mag" FHM before, I thought I had correctly picked up and purchased the latest edition of the mag. Terrific
Oops. Wrong mag, but a darn fine one actually which was quite appropriate under the circumstances and came into discussion several times during my travels.
McDawg had three scheduled meetings yesterday whilst still in London after attending Science Online London 2009.
For my final meeting, as planned, I took the express train from King's Cross Station to Cambridge and then took a cab to the offices of the Public Library of Science (PLoS).
In the centre of the above street view photo, you will see two blue doors. The one on the left is number 7. PLoS are based at number 7 Portugal Place. According to the Google map of that area that I printed off a week ago, I was indeed standing in Portugal Place:-
So, I was left thinking that PLoS HQ (UK) is not an office, but instead, a small terraced residential house ???? Confused? I sure as hell was. For a nano-second, I was tempted to ring the bell of number 7 but my brain told me, "there's something not right here".
Placed a short call to PLoS. Essentially, I was extremely close to where I was meant to be, "stay where you are and I'll come out and get you". "I'm wearing a PLoS ONE t-shirt", I said. The above map is slightly misleading in that I was standing in Portugal STREET not Portugal Place.
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Whilst sitting in a meeting room (within PLoS), I couldn't help but notice a stack of colourful, in-print copies of PLoS Journals. I had no idea that PLoS used to publish in paper format several years ago. Interesting.
'Making the Web Work for Science July 28th 2009. A panel discussion on bringing digital tools to the world of science with panelists Stephen Friend, Jimmy Wales and John Wilbanks moderated by Tim O'Reilly'.
Click here to the original source to view individual Chapters.
Major H/T to Lisa Green for putting this one together.
Summary
Digital technologies have greatly enhanced our ability to communicate and share information, but the scientific community remains largely untouched by these advances.
Why doesn't the web work for science the way it works for culture and for commerce? What will it take to make science digital?
Join the Commonwealth Club of California for a fascinating discussion on the movement to bring digital methods to the world of science.
BIO
Stephen Friend - Dr. Friend is currently a Senior Vice President at Merck & Co., Inc. where he has had scientific leadership of Merck's Basic Cancer Research efforts since September 2002. In 2005, he led the Advanced Technologies and Oncology groups to firmly establish molecular profiling activities throughout Merck's laboratories around the world, as well as to coordinate oncology programs from Basic Research through phase IIA clinical trials. Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Friend was recruited by Dr. Leland Hartwell to join the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Seattle Project, an advanced institute for drug discovery. While there Drs. Friend and Hartwell developed a method for examining large patterns of genes that led them to co-found Rosetta Inpharmatics in 2001. Dr. Friend has also held faculty positions at Harvard Medical School from 1987 to 1995 and at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1990 to 1995. He received his B.A. in philosophy, his Ph.D. in biochemistry and his M.D. from Indiana University.
Tim O'Reilly - Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. O'Reilly's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. O'Reilly is on the boards of MySQL, CollabNet, Safari Books Online, Wesabe, and ValuesOfN, and is a partner in O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
Jimmy Wales - Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama) is the founder, board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation that operates the Wikipedia project, and several other wiki projects, including Wiktionary and Wikinews. He is also the co-founder, along with Angela Beesley, of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.
John Wilbanks - As VP of Science, John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark. John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation. John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica's Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.
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