Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Philip Mirowski - a name to watch, does interesting stuff on automato, Mandelbrot and evolutionary economics - paper on history of science-socety perespectives:
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Wikipedia - a poeople's encyclopedia : "Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia. We started in January 2001 and are currently working on 193422 articles in the English version. Visit the help page and experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can edit any article right now." OPne of the featured articles is on the TYPEWRITER, and this is great with extensive illustrations, links, etc.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
"Benchmarking" reports from the EC on R&D policy: A set of 5 reports - large, variable quality, but al containing much usefuk and sometimes hard-to-get material. Topics of each report are:
Human resources in RTD, including attractiveness of science and technology professions,
Public and private investment in RTD,
Scientific and technological productivity,
Impact of RTD on economic competitiveness and employment,
and Promotion of RTD culture and public understanding of science . This latter contains several interesting discussions of the notion and nature of public understanding, data and case studies from various sources.
The EC has also published all these on a CDROM associated with the document:
Benchmarking National Research Policies; executive summaries of the 5 benchamrking reports compiled by independent expert groups Bruseels, 2002 KI-NA-20-494-£
EN-C
Human resources in RTD, including attractiveness of science and technology professions,
Public and private investment in RTD,
Scientific and technological productivity,
Impact of RTD on economic competitiveness and employment,
and Promotion of RTD culture and public understanding of science . This latter contains several interesting discussions of the notion and nature of public understanding, data and case studies from various sources.
The EC has also published all these on a CDROM associated with the document:
Benchmarking National Research Policies; executive summaries of the 5 benchamrking reports compiled by independent expert groups Bruseels, 2002 KI-NA-20-494-£
EN-C
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Conference on engineering responses to climate change
I heard a radio discussion of this conference yeaterday, it sounds to be very illuminating and not at all uncritical...
"Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by the amount (say 50%) which may be
necessary to avoid excessive climate change, will be very difficult. If combined with
significant convergence internationally, it will moreover require the developed countries
to reduce their emissions by much larger proportions, such as 90% (for the USA) and 80%
(for Europe). Many people feel that it is very unlikely that such reductions can be
achieved just by improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon intensity by using
renewable sources of energy. Specifically, conventional approaches may not be sufficient
regarding either their magnitude and their time-scale. Because of the urgency of
implementing climate-change management, more innovative approaches to the mitigation
of climate change are likely to be needed. Indeed, new options may already be needed
during the Second Commitment Period for the Kyoto Protocol. Any alternatives such as
possible macro-engineering options for climate change management and mitigation
therefore need to be widely discussed and properly evaluated, as soon as possible, before
they can be seriously considered for implementation. The Tyndall Centre for Climate
Change Research and the Cambridge-MIT Institute are therefore jointly convening a
Symposium in Cambridge, England, on 7-9 January 2004, whose purpose is
To identify, debate, and evaluate possible macro-engineering approaches
to the management and mitigation of climate change."
I heard a radio discussion of this conference yeaterday, it sounds to be very illuminating and not at all uncritical...
"Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by the amount (say 50%) which may be
necessary to avoid excessive climate change, will be very difficult. If combined with
significant convergence internationally, it will moreover require the developed countries
to reduce their emissions by much larger proportions, such as 90% (for the USA) and 80%
(for Europe). Many people feel that it is very unlikely that such reductions can be
achieved just by improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon intensity by using
renewable sources of energy. Specifically, conventional approaches may not be sufficient
regarding either their magnitude and their time-scale. Because of the urgency of
implementing climate-change management, more innovative approaches to the mitigation
of climate change are likely to be needed. Indeed, new options may already be needed
during the Second Commitment Period for the Kyoto Protocol. Any alternatives such as
possible macro-engineering options for climate change management and mitigation
therefore need to be widely discussed and properly evaluated, as soon as possible, before
they can be seriously considered for implementation. The Tyndall Centre for Climate
Change Research and the Cambridge-MIT Institute are therefore jointly convening a
Symposium in Cambridge, England, on 7-9 January 2004, whose purpose is
To identify, debate, and evaluate possible macro-engineering approaches
to the management and mitigation of climate change."
Monday, January 05, 2004
TECHSPLOITATIONAnnalee Newitz' site, contains a great deal of journalism on tech and more recherche issues - including a great recent article on the black market in copyright infringement technology fro SF Bay Guardian. Other poieces froim Wired etc.
This is an innovative and on first searches, useful engine. grouping different types of hit together with a fair degree of consistency: try it!Vivisimo Clustering - automatic categorization and meta-search software -
