Science Library Pad

a thousand words?

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=a+thousand+words&hl=en&lr=

Note: AFAIK you must use either scholar.google.ca or be in Canada to see all aspects of this result.

UPDATE: If you want a search that will take you more directly to the PDF option http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Simulations+of+the+2.5D+inviscid+primitive+equations+in+a+limited+domain&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search

UPDATE 2009-02-27: If you want to see a third type of result, try http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Biochemistry+and+molecular+cell+biology+of+diabetic+complications&hl=en&lr=

CIHR Café scientifique - Ottawa - March 24, 2009

Date:	24 March 2009
Time:	18:00 - 20:00
Location: La Nouvelle Scène
Street: 333 King Edward Avenue
Town/City:	Ottawa

Email: [email protected]

Topic is

Whose Life is it Anyway? Assisted Suicide in Canada

Most of us see death as the final act of life’s drama and many people want that last act to end on their own terms. But what happens if we are too sick? Should a doctor be allowed to prescribe lethal pills for us? Or would a government that allowed this be failing to protect us at our most vulnerable time? Canadian law currently forbids physicians from helping patients kill themselves, but legal changes may be on their way. Let us know what you think: Would legalizing physician-assisted suicide be progress, or a turn down the wrong road?

The main CIHR Café Scientifique page doesn't seem to have been updated, but the event is available on Facebook.

UPDATE 2009-02-28: There will be a second café in Ottawa on March 31, 2009.

Date:	31 March 2009
Time:	17:30 - 19:30
Location:	Don Cherry’s Sports Grill
Street:	290 Rideau Street

"The Strong, Silent Type: Men’s Mental Health and Illness"

It is also not on the main CIHR page yet, but is available on Facebook.

Tafelmusik Galileo Project + Royal Astronomical Society in Ottawa

Did you know that Galileo's father composed music?  Hear it on March 6, 2009 as part of Tafelmusik's Galileo Project, then afterwards have a look at the night sky with the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres is an orchestral concert programme [featuring] Tafelmusik’s multidisciplinary celebration of the International Year of Astronomy and the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the astronomical telescope. The glorious music of Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer) will be interwoven with Inuit drawings of the northern lights, astronomical photographs and a narrated script taken from the writings of Galileo, Isaac Newton and other great astronomers.

Ottawa Chamber Music Society Concert 6: Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra

Tafelmusik's Galileo Project page has additional information, including detailed programme notes.  Tafelmusik is Toronto-based, they have tour dates coming in Canada and the USA.

Friday, March 6 2009
7:30 pm
Dominion Chalmers United Church
(355 Cooper Street)
Ottawa, Ontario

After the concert: star-gazing with the Royal Astronomical Society.

There are a variety of price bands, going as low as $15.  See Ottawa Chamber Music Society - Ticketing.

UPDATE 2009-03-08: The concert was extraordinary.  I was sceptical of the multimedia part, but I was looking forward to the music.  My scepticism was totally unfounded - the concert is a seamless integration of spoken word, music, and images projected on an unusual circular screen.  More than that: Eppur si muove - the musicians have memorised their parts entirely, which enables them to move around on the stage, like a sort of human orrery.  As well they used the space of the church extremely well - including in one case Venus as the morning and evening star - two musicians up in the balconies on each side of the church.  To be able to see some of the best Baroque musicians in the world perform in this amazing piece in a church just a few blocks from my house was a great privilege.  I highly recommend this performance if you have a chance to see it.  If not, the entire concert (including the narration) is available from the CBC as an audio stream (in Windows Media format, which may be problematic on the Mac).

Tafelmusik's The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres · CBC Radio 2 - Concerts On Demand

I agree for the most part with Richard Todd's review in the Citizen, except his comment "Only a few of the pieces on offer had any obvious astronomical associations" is bizarre as the entire programme reveals how much of a role the planets and planetary mythology played in the music and writing of the 17th and 18th centuries.  It was fascinating to hear the words of Galileo from Starry Messenger in which in very clear language he talked in one breath of art and in the next of science.  The end of the concert, connecting the prediction of the return of Halley's Comet based on Newton's insights into gravity and mathematics to the ordered music of Bach, showed how truly connected the worlds of art and science can be.

connecting to Ottawa social media community through Twitter

Whether you have an existing Twitter network, or don't even use Twitter, you can still use hashtags and Twitter Search to uncover a lot of interesting discussions.

Here are a few tags I've seen in the past few days, as I begin to connect into the government social media community:

#ali - for discussions about the recent social media conference (as well as the ongoing Canada & US confs)
#tto - for discussions about Third Tuesday Ottawa
#changecampottawa - for discussions about, well, ChangeCamp Ottawa
#smbottawa for discussions about Social Media Breakfast

There are probably others I don't know yet - any suggestions?

Also note - if an RSS reader is more your thing, there's a big "Feed for this query" link at the top right of all Twitter Search results.

government and social media - CBC Ottawa Morning reports

Audio from CBC Ottawa Morning (radio) today:

Government encourages employees to experiment with social media (RealAudio .ram file) - February 13, 2009

Covers Government of Canada, City of Ottawa, and Province of Ontario (which is apparently using Second Life a lot).  It's a good report, over 9 minutes long.

A lot of people don't seem to quite get the idea of Enterprise 2.0 - using Web 2.0 on a closed intranet, just to make the operation of your own organisation more efficient.  I guess this is understandable, since most people use these tools to interact in their private lives with their friends.

Got this link via "social media", on Twitter from Nick Charney.

On the side of using Web 2.0 tools, open data, APIs etc. to interact with the public, we're trying to further the planning for ChangeCamp Ottawa - there may be a meeting next week.  See the ChangeCamp Ottawa wiki for more information.

Making government data visible - and is Change coming to Ottawa?

I went to the event about open government, it was good.  (It was a "meetup" I guess, in the popular terminology, or a new term I learned, 5à7).

Jennifer Bell of VisibleGovernment.ca did a presentation that I liked a lot, about mobilising government data by opening it up for public engagement through APIs.

Her presentation should show up at

http://www.slideshare.net/jenniferbell

In the meantime the presentations currently there give an idea of the concepts and objectives.

UPDATE 2009-02-12: Her presentation Benefits of Open Government Data is now available, and I also found an article by her that covers some of the same ground

Bell, J. 2009 Feb 1. Government Transparency via Open Data and Open Source. Open Source Business Resource [Online] 0:0. Available: http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/829/802

ENDUPDATE

Given my experience trying to sell the idea of APIs and open data to a community that mostly understands plain web pages, this is a challenging concept to promote, but I think there are some good US and UK examples that we can point to (about which more later).

Having learned from the experience of twitter-spamming people by live-tweeting an event, I made a FriendFeed room for my live notes instead.  I don't know how well it turned out - because of screensize limitations on my 7" netbook, it was much easier if I kept creating new top-level items, rather than just making a long section of comments - I'm not sure if this mix is right - maybe they all should have been toplevel items, or all comments.  Anyway the room is at

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/open-government-canada

in the spirit of the event, it's currently completely open.  You're welcome to add any relevant items, they don't have to be specific to this event.

Change Coming to Ottawa - Part 0

Jennifer also mentioned the possibility of a ChangeCamp Ottawa (for background, see my previous posting about ChangeCamp Toronto).  It looks like a good way to connect is through the ChangeCamp Twitter account,

http://twitter.com/changecamp

and the rather long hashtag #changecampottawa

Change Coming to Ottawa - Part 1

New web technologies face many adoption challenges for Canadian Federal Government - official languages rules, Common Look and Feel rules, slow tech adoption and a risk-averse culture.  That being said, there is a lot of excitement about the potential of these tools both internally, in an Enterprise 2.0 sense, and externally, in a Government 2.0 sense.  As I said in my Web 2.0 presentation at CISTI, in some ways I find it hard to get particularly excited when this is stretched to include blogs and wikis, which are actually both pre-Web 2.0 technologies (as you can see from the timeline I posted on FriendFeed) that are now quite mature.

That being said, the "Standard Set" of modern web tools (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook) is getting deployed (perhaps somewhat quietly) on Canadian Government websites, the example I have been using is the Prime Minister's Official site, under Family Centre - Social Networks.

Part of what prompts this section of my posting is that there was a recent "Social Media for Government" event in Ottawa (unfortunately rather expensive).  Via the Twitter tag #ali I see that the Canadian Afghanistan mission is also using the social media tools: Flickr, YouTube, Facebook (and RSS feeds)

http://www.afghanistan.gc.ca/canada-afghanistan/multimedia/index.aspx?lang=en

Change Coming to Ottawa - Part 2

In addition to the internal drivers of change, the entire government information environment is changing worldwide.  Whether it's phenomenal reports like the Power of Information Taskforce in the UK, or President Obama releasing principles of openness on WhiteHouse.gov in his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government

• Government should be transparent
• Government should be participatory
• Government should be collaborative

or declaring in his Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act that

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

Of course, words alone won't achieve these goals, and people like Don Tapscott have been talking about transparency for years (see e.g. "turn your organization inside-out" and Tapscott keynoting about transparency at SLA 2005).  What is changing is that more people with IT expertise and a passion for engaging the public are gaining prominence.  One great example is Vivek Kundra, who is rumoured (but AFAIK not yet currently announced) to be the Obama administration's choice for Office of Management and Budget administrator for e-government and information technology (an obscure title but one that is as powerful if not more than the government CTO).  Even if Kundra just stays working for the DC city government, he's already done some great things:

47 Applications in 30 Days for $50K

Like many cities, Washington, D.C., collects a vast amount of data and metrics about its people and operations including both realtime (or near realtime) data as well as relatively static information such as neighborhood demographics. Much of that information is now available to the public through more than 200 data feeds accessed through the Office of the Chief Technology Officer's Web site.

Kundra's idea was to use a competition to encourage developers to use those feeds to create applications for the public good.

You can see the competition site at

http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/

I think these kinds of open government initiatives are pathfinders that show us ways in which governments at all levels - federal, provincial, municipal - can open up and engage citizens.

Kindle 2 burns on the horizon

Front page news on Amazon.com and being promoted to Amazon Associates, the Kindle 2 has arrived.
Personally, I don't see why you would buy books you can only license, never own.  Books on a device that's available only in the United States.  Isn't technology amazing?  It can create arbitrary barriers that never existed before in the physical world.

But if you want one, here you go.  It's US$359 and will be released February 24, 2009.

pre-order Kindle 2 from Amazon.com

 

I do have to admire Amazon for understanding a deep truth of the digital world - in the end, you can only monetize physical things.  Apple understood this by making their money on the iPod, not the music.

UPDATE: Also the note at Amazon that "original Kindle owners are first in line to receive Kindle 2 [if they order one]" reminds me that this is new technology.  That means unlike paper, which is rather well-established, the Kindle will become obsolete.  Rapidly.  Those books that have been sitting on your bookshelf for 20 years - no problem, reach over and open them up.  In 20 years, how many generations of book-reading technology do you think you will have to go through, between upgrades and failures?  At hundreds of dollars for every replacement.  For content that you don't even own in any meaningful way.  I don't think that's progress.  ENDUPDATE

Personally I think a more interesting development is Google Book Search Mobile.  As well, the New York Times reports that Amazon is also working on delivering "Kindle books" to cellphones, presumably with the same DRM.  There is no sign of that being available from Amazon today (and I don't see what their incentive would be, since it breaks the "you only make money from physical things" model).

Full disclosure: The above are Amazon Affiliate links (price and everything are identical, I just get a percentage of your purchase).

Discovering Chimpanzees at the Canadian Museum of Nature

January 30 to May 3, 2009

Through four distinct sections of the exhibition, discover how Dr. Goodall's relationship with the chimps evolves from one of strictly scientific interest to one of devotion and a firm commitment to chimpanzee survival.

Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall - nature.ca

The exhibit, which opened at the end of January, is inspired by the work of legendary observational biologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall, who has spent more than 40 years observing chimpanzees and spearheading conservation efforts worldwide.

Visitors to the exhibit can learn what it’s like to be a chimpanzee by digging for imaginary termites, climbing into a chimpanzee nest and taking pictures with life-sized cut-outs of various primates.

They can also visit a replica of Goodall’s tent in Gombe National Park and read about what they can do to stop chimpanzees and other primates from going extinct.

Centretown News - February 5, 2009

UK Power of Information Taskforce Report (beta)

This week, the [UK] government's Power of Information taskforce set out a list of 25 urgent actions for the public sector machine - from Downing Street to local councils and NHS organisations - to take to embrace social networking, blogging and other such phenomena.

Top of the list is a relaxation about civil servants accessing - gasp - social media at work. ... "Public sector workers cannot be expected to be up to date with the power of information to transform public services if they cannot access the internet at work," the report says.

Equipped with this access, public servants should as a matter of course engage with online peer support forums concerned with their areas of work. (It notes that some sites "clearly would not welcome such intervention".) Civil servants should also "innovate and co-create with citizens online".

Are government ministers allowed to use social media? - The Guardian - February 5, 2009

via LibraryStuff

The report itself (in beta, open for comments for two weeks starting February 1, 2009) is available at http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit/

There are also some short videos on YouTube, as well as a blog that gives some information about the process of putting together the report, as well as links to their delicious bookmarks and other information.

The recommendations of the report in my reading overall are about using a combination of technology, open data (that is opening up government data to its owners, the public), and direct engagement with the public in order to more rapidly and more deeply engage citizens.

It would seem to me that libraries and librarians, as traditional points of interaction between the public and information, could play a useful role.  I think advocating and supporting "opener access" is an important library role (one sometimes compromised by library acceptance of DRM or restrictive licensing terms).

open government in Ottawa - Feb 11, 2009

Open source, open data, open government. Everyone is talking about it, and now you can hear how Governments around the world are gaining citizens' trust through transparency, and just plain making citizens' lives better by putting information online.

Presentation Summary & Bio

... We'll discuss the benefits of publishing government information in open, structured formats, and look at examples from around the world of these concepts in action.

Jennifer Bell is Executive Director of VisibleGovernment.ca, a non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency.

Date: 11 February 2009
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Location: Fresco Bistro Italiano
Street: 354 Elgin
City: Ottawa, ON

from barcampottawagov group

A signup page is available on Facebook - VisibleGovernment.ca @ Fresco's on Elgin

NRC in AuthorMapper

Just testing the new AuthorMapper embed widget, with a search on my organisation.  (Search set to Institutions: National Research Council of Canada,National Research Council Canada)  In case it's not obvious, it's a clickable map - click and drag to move around (e.g. to the left, where you'll see the red node of NRC activity in Ottawa, as well as click to zoom in (there's a lot more detail than you can see in the high-level map).

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