sensemaking

Biophysical economics is a basis for economic analysis that acknowledges, analyzes and uses the biological and physical (as opposed to social) properties, structures and processes of real economic systems as its conceptual base and fundamental model. It acknowledges that the basis for nearly all wealth is nature, and views most human economic activity as a means to increase (directly or indirectly) the exploitation of nature to generate more wealth. As such, it focuses on the structure and function of real economies from an energy and material perspective, but often considers the relation of this structure and function to human welfare and to the money (i.e. dollar) flows that tend to go in the opposite direction to energy (Odum 1972).

Biophysical economics is characterized by a wide range of analysts from diverse fields who use basic ecological and thermodynamic principles to analyze the economic process. The history of biophysical thought is traced from the 18th-century Physiocrats to current empirical research, with emphasis on those individuals who contributed to the development of biophysical economic theory. Attention is also given to a critique of the neoclassical theory of natural resources from a biophysical perspective, and how recent empirical biophysical research highlights areas of neoclassical theory which could be improved by a more realistic and systematic treatment of natural resources.

novo|seek is a search engine for biomedical literature in Medline

Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars.

The Protégé Axiom Language (PAL) extends the Protégé-2000 knowledge modeling environment with support for writing and storing logical constraints and queries about frames in a knowledge base. More than just a language, PAL is a plugin toolset that comprises engines for checking constraints and running queries on knowledge bases, as well as a set of useful user interface components.

OntoClean is a methodology for validating the ontological adequacy of taxonomic relationships. It is based on highly general ontological notions drawn from philosophy, like essence, identity, and unity, which are used to characterize relevant aspects of the intended meaning of the properties, classes, and relations that make up an ontology. These aspects are represented by formal metaproperties, which impose several constraints on the taxonomic structure of an ontology.

Current global disease control focuses almost exclusively on responding to epidemics after they have already spread globally. Nevertheless, dramatic failures in such pandemic control, such as the ongoing lack of success in HIV vaccine development twenty-five years into the pandemic, have shown that this wait-and-respond approach is not sufficient, and that the development of systems to prevent novel pandemics before they are established should be considered a human health imperative. Had we had such systems in place thirty years ago we may have averted the HIV pandemic.

We should be and we can be doing a much better job to predict and prevent pandemics. But the really bold idea is that we could reach a point-and this is a distant point in the future-where we become so good at this that we really reach a point where we have the "final plague," and where we are really capable of catching so many of these things that new pandemics become an oddity. I think that is something that we should certainly have as an ideal.

On Hosting Blog Carnivals

The blog carnival must be one of the blogosphere's finest innovations. Akin to an anthology but far more dynamic, a carnival harnesses the self-publishing, self-promoting spirit of blogging. And because the cost of entry is so low (free, actually,) magnificent new carnivals are popping up almost as quickly as new blogs.

(from slashdot) "PGP and GnuPG have been utilizing webs of trust to establish authenticity without a centralized certificate authority for a while. Now, a new tool seeks to extend the concept to include scientific publications. The idea is that researchers can review and sign each others' works with varying levels of endorsement, and display the signed reviews with their vitas. This creates a decentralized social network linking researchers, papers, and reviews that, in theory, represents the scientific community. It meshes seamlessly with traditional publication venues. One can publish a paper with an established journal, and still try to get more out of the paper by asking colleagues to review the work. The hope is that this will eventually provide an alternative method for researchers to establish credibility."

The Wonderland Modules Incubator project is a sandbox where developers can develop extensions to Wonderland in the form of modules. Incubator projects are not part of the core Wonderland code, but are experimental extensions.

OSGi Service Platform Release 4 OSGi Service Platform Release 4 was first released in October 2005. Version 4.1 was released in May 2007.

OPS4J stands for Open Participation Software for Java, and this community is trying to build a new, more open model for Open Source development, where not only the usage is Open and Free, but the Participation is Open as well. Removal of barriers, let more people in, have more fun and less politics. I have also seen Open Development as a term to describe this. Think of it as Wiki brought to Coding. Wikipedia is of course the most outstanding example of open collaboration.

Our view: Globalization, ecological issues, technological impact and other modern challenges are driving the need for streamlined government collaboration. Connect to protect and serve your citizens.

Community and Networks Connection is a content hub started by Nancy White that collects and organizes information around communities and networks. We welcome comments and suggestions.

This project seeks to develop and employ top level Internet/WWW support for academic and other courses. Our publications on one hand describe the experiences made with using Internet/WWW technologies for our courses, further concepts and systems we are developing, and specific issues like adaptive hyperbooks, configuration management etc. needed for these applications. (1999)