Category — other research

Patent reform hearing:
The Senate’s i.p. subcommittee (of the Judiciary Committee) held a hearing today on patent litigation reform. The hearing focused on the contours of a new post-grant opposition system. c|net has a recap.
If you want to get up to speed on recent patent reform efforts, the Patent Reform Library at J. Matthew Buchanan’s Promote the Progress is a great place to start.

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this patent reform library looks to be an excellent resource.

FOCUS ON SPY-CAM LANDLORDS By LEONARD GREENE – New York Post Online Edition: news:
y 1, 2006 –
Landlords are resorting to a new weapon in their war with tenants over rent stabilization – hidden cameras trained on an occupant’s door “The whole building is paranoid now,” said Bryan Lurie, who last week found a camera hidden inside an electrical box outside his $360-a-month West Village studio apartment. “My friends told me I should have my apartment swept for bugs.”
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the growth of surveillance culture is amazing. sure the landlord owns the building, but… does he have a right to look into your abode with a spycam?

UNESCO’s Basic Texts on the Information Society:

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some interesting key unesco texts.

nightmare science:

In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation, is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite. But the authority in this new model is not derived from sacred texts; rather it is derived from legitimate practice of scientific method in the scientific domain, extended into non-scientific domains. Note that this does not imply that scientists cannot, or should not, as individuals participate in public debate; only that if they do so cloaked in the privilege that the scientific discourse gives them they raise from the dead the specter of authority as truth.

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there is a difference between authority, truth and power. my famous example is the use of the idea of hell in the bible…. what purpose does it serve, who does it empower, and why are there so many bibles produced that never mention hell? where did it come from and where is it going, for whose benefit?

The ARTICLE 19 Freedom of Expression Virtual Handbook:

The ARTICLE 19 Freedom of Expression Virtual Handbook
The ARTICLE 19 Freedom of Expression Virtual Handbook is a resource providing access to international and best comparative standards on the right to freedom of expression. It is designed to be accessible to journalists, NGOs and others, while also providing high-quality legal information.

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Freedom of expression is necessary for scientific progress.

Researchers get neurons and silicon talking:

Researchers get neurons and silicon talking
European researchers have created an interface between mammalian neurons and silicon chips. The development is a crucial first step in the development of advanced technologies that combine silicon circuits with a mammal’s nervous system.

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I suppose this has all kinds of good uses and all kinds of non normative uses, then many problematic and/or bad uses.

Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society :

On Monday, April 24, 2006, the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society is sponsoring “Representations of Race and the African American Community.” This interactive event is designed to connect members of the Virginia Tech campus and surrounding communities through a day-long series of conversations including a lunchtime poster session and opportunities for small group dialogue.

The initial goal is to examine the way that race is represented in our personal, academic, and civic lives. By the end of the day, participants will be invited to explore possibilities for campus-community projects and partnerships aimed at improving the climate for racial relations and understanding.

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this should be a very interesting event, but they are limiting it to on campus.

Le Blog-a-dam:

As you may not see, this blog is powered by Typo, a cool Ruby on Rails driven blog application. However I missed the functionnality of being able to easily host multiple blog on my server. I could not find much info beside a howto which required virtual hosts and implied editing Typo’s internal.

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typo is the ruby-on-rails blog system that my other blog runs….. no not the educause blog, the other blog.

Disappearing Government Information – New paper by Susan Nevelow Mart:

You can download it for free from SSRN.   Susan Nevelow Mart, Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed

Abstract:     
This article examines the legal bases of the public’s right to access government information, and examines and analyzes the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet and the rationales given for the removals. The concerted use of FOIA by public interest groups and their constituents is suggested as a possible method of returning the information to the Internet. There article concludes with a brief review of recent FOIA cases that might provide some guidance on the litigation sure to follow such concerted requests.

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this is important

Outstanding Article on Politicization of Science:

Philipp Steger, editor of bridges — a publication of Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, D.C. that I have only just recently learned of – has published by far the best analysis I’ve seen…

yes pandora’s box is pretty good, but for those who watch eu policy there is a nice set of articles below it that is just as good http://www.ostina.org/html/bridges/