Friday, August 29, 2003
Educational Game Roundup on Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.html
Lots of places mentioned. Here's a list:
Games-to-Teach Project: http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/
Digital Media Collaboratory: http://www.ic2.org/main.php?a=2&s=3
Lots of places mentioned. Here's a list:
Games-to-Teach Project: http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/
Digital Media Collaboratory: http://www.ic2.org/main.php?a=2&s=3
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Wind power
The latest round of windmills can power about 25 houses each, on average. That's a leap from about 1.5 houses in 1984.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/technology/circuits/28wind.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/technology/circuits/28wind.html
Progress Today
Got the DiGIR registry ALMOST editing entries. Right now it just adds a new entry instead of updating the one I want to edit. I THINK I just have to include the key in with the entry. That'll be tomorrow.
I tried getting the data off my crapped out laptop drive, but it looks like I need to put the drive into slave mode. Do I have a tiny little laptop hard drive jumper? Of course not! Hopefully one will come with the replacement drive which SHOULD be coming in the mail tomorrow.
I tried getting the data off my crapped out laptop drive, but it looks like I need to put the drive into slave mode. Do I have a tiny little laptop hard drive jumper? Of course not! Hopefully one will come with the replacement drive which SHOULD be coming in the mail tomorrow.
Cloudy When Mars is Closest
Last night around 11pm we went to the Chabot Space Center to check out Mars, just slightly on the recess. It was socked in, but there were people up at the parking lot telling everyone to come back on the weekend. One woman was wearing an El-Wire getup. The sky glowed red.
On the way back we took a back route to 580, winding through sleeping neighborhoods along an unkempt road.
Today, I will finish the "edit your registrations" function of the DiGIR registry and maybe start cleaning up the return messages.
On the way back we took a back route to 580, winding through sleeping neighborhoods along an unkempt road.
Today, I will finish the "edit your registrations" function of the DiGIR registry and maybe start cleaning up the return messages.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Antweb in Nature the First Time
Ants join online colony to boost conservation efforts
REX DALTON
Small wonder: Microdaceton tibialis is one of hundreds of species
in the AntWeb catalogue. An Internet-based system of ant images is expected to help ecologists
study and preserve global biodiversity.
The website, http://www.antweb.org, provides researchers with
three-dimensional images of thousands of ant species, along with
all of the information held in traditional catalogues of species.
"This sets new standards for doing taxonomy online," says Brian
Fisher, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences
in San Francisco, who led the $30,000 project to set up the system.
AntWeb already holds images of many of the world's 10,000 species,
including those from California (270 species) and Madagascar
(210 species), where more than 1,000 species are under threat
from deforestation. Six hundred species, mainly from Florida,
will be added to the website by the end of the year. The eventual
goal is to include all of the world's ants.
Ants are important in many ecosystems, and AntWeb is intended
to help conservation biologists by providing quick access to
information on every ant they come across.
The Nature Conservancy, for example, plans to use AntWeb to help
its ecologists manage the Lassen Foothills, an ecologically sensitive
region of about 900,000 hectares in California. "The evaluation
of our conservation efforts is a great challenge," says Mark
Reynolds, a Nature Conservancy ecologist based in San Francisco.
"AntWeb gives us the ability to know what is happening at the
invertebrate level."
REX DALTON
Small wonder: Microdaceton tibialis is one of hundreds of species
in the AntWeb catalogue. An Internet-based system of ant images is expected to help ecologists
study and preserve global biodiversity.
The website, http://www.antweb.org, provides researchers with
three-dimensional images of thousands of ant species, along with
all of the information held in traditional catalogues of species.
"This sets new standards for doing taxonomy online," says Brian
Fisher, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences
in San Francisco, who led the $30,000 project to set up the system.
AntWeb already holds images of many of the world's 10,000 species,
including those from California (270 species) and Madagascar
(210 species), where more than 1,000 species are under threat
from deforestation. Six hundred species, mainly from Florida,
will be added to the website by the end of the year. The eventual
goal is to include all of the world's ants.
Ants are important in many ecosystems, and AntWeb is intended
to help conservation biologists by providing quick access to
information on every ant they come across.
The Nature Conservancy, for example, plans to use AntWeb to help
its ecologists manage the Lassen Foothills, an ecologically sensitive
region of about 900,000 hectares in California. "The evaluation
of our conservation efforts is a great challenge," says Mark
Reynolds, a Nature Conservancy ecologist based in San Francisco.
"AntWeb gives us the ability to know what is happening at the
invertebrate level."
Another Antweb mentioned in Nature!
Nature, Vol. 424 28 August 2003, news, p.985
Ant book deepens divide over web publishing
doi:10.1038/424985a
Full Text
Rex Dalton, San Diego
A disagreement about ants has highlighted increasing conflict between
biologists and book publishers over the release of scientific monographs
in print and online. Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the California
Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, is pressing for permission to
publish data about ant species on the Internet. Under the terms of a book deal he
signed last August with Harvard University Press,he cannot put material
from his forthcoming monograph online for at least four years after it is
printed.
The argument is just one example of the tension that is pervading several
fields of systematic biology, researchers say. Many systematists want to
publish their data and images on the web at the same time as they publish
their monographs ^? hefty books that can document years of research. its
studies boosts its print sales. But publishers fear that simultaneous
web publishing will reduce sales of the high-cost monographs.
^?We are on the cusp of a renaissance in systematics,^? says biologist
Edward Wilson of Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts. "But we
are in a transition period of one form of publishing to another.^?
Fisher^?s deal with the Harvard press involves a monograph on the ants of
Madagascar, where the isolated and diverse ecosystem is of special
interest to systematic biologists. Fisher hopes that the book will be
published next year.
But Fisher also recently helped to launch AntWeb (www.antweb.org), a
website that includes photographs of ants from Madagascar and California
(see Nature 424, 242; 2003). Harvard press officials are resisting his
attempts to publish much of his data online before the monograph is
published, worried that it will dent the book^?s future sales.
^?I don^?t think the web release of material will hurt book sales; it
will actually increase them,^? Fisher says. Other researchers cite the
US National Academies Press as an example of a publisher whose free
online publication of its studies boosts its print sales. Correspondence
shows that Harvard press disagrees and is concerned about its ability to
recover its costs in producing the monograph if AntWeb publishes much of
its contents. Harvard press officials declined to comment on the
dispute.
^?These are difficult questions,^? says Lynne Withey, director of the
University of California Press. ^?People disagree about whether the web
hurts or helps.^?Officials at the California publisher are studying 30 of
their social-science and humanities books to determine the impact of
online publishing on a traditional monograph.
The recent publication by Harvard University Press of Wilson^?s book
Pheidole in the New World: A Dominant, Hyperdiverse
Ant Genus also brought criticism from some quarters about the lack of
immediate free web access to its contents (see Nature 424,
727; 2003). He says that the publisher is now putting the book online.
Wilson thinks that the best solution is for book publishers to put
monographs online 6^?12 months after print publication.He says that his
latest book might be one of the last of its kind ^? ^?one of the last of
the great sailing ships^?, as he puts it, adding:^?We need to work out
some arrangement with publishers.^?
Ant book deepens divide over web publishing
doi:10.1038/424985a
Full Text
Rex Dalton, San Diego
A disagreement about ants has highlighted increasing conflict between
biologists and book publishers over the release of scientific monographs
in print and online. Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the California
Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, is pressing for permission to
publish data about ant species on the Internet. Under the terms of a book deal he
signed last August with Harvard University Press,he cannot put material
from his forthcoming monograph online for at least four years after it is
printed.
The argument is just one example of the tension that is pervading several
fields of systematic biology, researchers say. Many systematists want to
publish their data and images on the web at the same time as they publish
their monographs ^? hefty books that can document years of research. its
studies boosts its print sales. But publishers fear that simultaneous
web publishing will reduce sales of the high-cost monographs.
^?We are on the cusp of a renaissance in systematics,^? says biologist
Edward Wilson of Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts. "But we
are in a transition period of one form of publishing to another.^?
Fisher^?s deal with the Harvard press involves a monograph on the ants of
Madagascar, where the isolated and diverse ecosystem is of special
interest to systematic biologists. Fisher hopes that the book will be
published next year.
But Fisher also recently helped to launch AntWeb (www.antweb.org), a
website that includes photographs of ants from Madagascar and California
(see Nature 424, 242; 2003). Harvard press officials are resisting his
attempts to publish much of his data online before the monograph is
published, worried that it will dent the book^?s future sales.
^?I don^?t think the web release of material will hurt book sales; it
will actually increase them,^? Fisher says. Other researchers cite the
US National Academies Press as an example of a publisher whose free
online publication of its studies boosts its print sales. Correspondence
shows that Harvard press disagrees and is concerned about its ability to
recover its costs in producing the monograph if AntWeb publishes much of
its contents. Harvard press officials declined to comment on the
dispute.
^?These are difficult questions,^? says Lynne Withey, director of the
University of California Press. ^?People disagree about whether the web
hurts or helps.^?Officials at the California publisher are studying 30 of
their social-science and humanities books to determine the impact of
online publishing on a traditional monograph.
The recent publication by Harvard University Press of Wilson^?s book
Pheidole in the New World: A Dominant, Hyperdiverse
Ant Genus also brought criticism from some quarters about the lack of
immediate free web access to its contents (see Nature 424,
727; 2003). He says that the publisher is now putting the book online.
Wilson thinks that the best solution is for book publishers to put
monographs online 6^?12 months after print publication.He says that his
latest book might be one of the last of its kind ^? ^?one of the last of
the great sailing ships^?, as he puts it, adding:^?We need to work out
some arrangement with publishers.^?
Technology, Ecology, Psychology...
