Zzzoot

Today in Washington. D.C, the CODATA organized Symposium on the Data Sharing Plans and on the Scientific Benefits of Data Sharing in GEOSS was held. Among other things, it looked at the draft GEOSS data sharing plan: The Plan, now endorsed by 80 government Members and 56 Participating Organizations, highlights the following GEOSS Data Sharing Principles: There will be full and open exchange of data, metadata, and products shared within GEOSS, recognizing relevant international instruments and national policies and legislation. All shared data, metadata, and products will be made available with minimum time delay and at minimum cost. All shared data, metadata, and products being free of charge or no more than cost of reproduction will be encouraged for research and education. Programme: Part One: Implementing the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles How We Got There and Where We're Going . Beth Greenaway. UK Environmental Observation Network An Overview of the Key Substantive Provisions ...

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/mapsdata/

Rod Page 's demo for his Elsevier Grand Challenge submission (" Towards realising Darwin’s dream: setting the trees free ") shows the type of enrichment of biological - if not all research - articles that is quickly becoming possible. Taking a published article (" Mitochondrial paraphyly in a polymorphic poison frog species (Dendrobatidae; D. pumilio "), various additional biological, geographical and other metadata are extracted and added to a web page for the article. These include: Map showing all localities mentioned in the paper, with their enclosing polygon List of other studies which have samples in area enclosed by the study polygon Each of the following are linked through to their underlying databases (such as NIH accession number and NCBI nucleotide viewer or linked to ubio taxonomic name viewer record: List of sequence features (such as genes) in the article List of taxa sequenced in the article List of gene sequences cited by the article An image c...

Both as a Canadian who has enjoyed the rants of Rick Mercer and as someone who spent a lot of time working with geographers at the Atlas of Canada (and even enjoying some of it!), I am appreciating the convergence of these two things as embodied in the self-described rant by Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins ( Reclaiming the map: British Geography and ambivalent cartographic practice ) In their rant, the Royal Geographical Society (" the heart of geography ") is roasted for using a (" Mc-Map ") Google Maps location map on the back of the RGS-IBG 2007 Annual International Conference programme. While concerned with this and the apparent decline of mapping in geography ( Geographers Don’t Map Anymore Do They? ) and the sub-discipline of cartography ( Cartographers: Who Needs Them Anymore? ) I think their conclusion that mapping is actually easier and possibly better and making a popular and significant resurgence ( Mapping Reinvigorated? ) through mashups (including ...