16,611 research outputs found
Delegating and Distributing Morality: Can We Inscribe Privacy Protection in a Machine?
This paper addresses the question of delegation of morality to a machine, through a consideration of whether or not non-humans can be considered to be moral. The aspect of morality under consideration here is protection of privacy. The topic is introduced through two cases where there was a failure in sharing and retaining personal data protected by UK data protection law, with tragic consequences. In some sense this can be regarded as a failure in the process of delegating morality to a computer database. In the UK, the issues that these cases raise have resulted in legislation designed to protect children which allows for the creation of a huge database for children. Paradoxically, we have the situation where we failed to use digital data in enforcing the law to protect children, yet we may now rely heavily on digital technologies to care for children. I draw on the work of Floridi, Sanders, Collins, Kusch, Latour and Akrich, a spectrum of work stretching from philosophy to sociology of technology and the âseamless webâ or âactorânetworkâ approach to studies of technology. Intentionality is considered, but not deemed necessary for meaningful moral behaviour. Floridiâs and Sandersâ concept of âdistributed moralityâ accords with the network of agency characterized by actorânetwork approaches. The paper concludes that enfranchizing non-humans, in the shape of computer databases of personal data, as moral agents is not necessarily problematic but a balance of delegation of morality must be made between human and non-human actors
Geoscience after IT: Part L. Adjusting the emerging information system to new technology
Coherent development depends on following widely used standards that respect our vast legacy of existing entries in the geoscience record. Middleware ensures that we see a coherent view from our desktops of diverse sources of information. Developments specific to managing the written word, map content, and structured data come together in shared metadata linking topics and information types
Data access and integration in the ISPIDER proteomics grid
Grid computing has great potential for supporting the integration of complex, fast changing biological data repositories to enable distributed data analysis. One scenario where Grid computing has such potential is provided by proteomics resources which are rapidly being developed with the emergence of affordable, reliable methods to study the proteome. The protein identifications arising from these methods derive from multiple repositories which need to be integrated to enable uniform access to them. A number of technologies exist which enable these resources to be accessed in a Grid environment, but the independent development of these resources means that significant data integration challenges, such as heterogeneity and schema evolution, have to be met. This paper presents an architecture which supports the combined use of Grid data access (OGSA-DAI), Grid distributed querying (OGSA-DQP) and data integration (AutoMed) software tools to support distributed data analysis. We discuss the application of this architecture for the integration of several autonomous proteomics data resources
Astrophysics datamining in the classroom: Exploring real data with new software tools and robotic telescopes
Within the efforts to bring frontline interactive astrophysics and astronomy
to the classroom, the Hands on Universe (HOU) developed a set of exercises and
platform using real data obtained by some of the most advanced ground and space
observatories. The backbone of this endeavour is a new free software Web tool -
Such a Lovely Software for Astronomy based on Image J (Salsa J). It is
student-friendly and developed specifically for the HOU project and targets
middle and high schools. It allows students to display, analyze, and explore
professionally obtained astronomical images, while learning concepts on
gravitational dynamics, kinematics, nuclear fusion, electromagnetism. The
continuous evolving set of exercises and tutorials is being completed with real
(professionally obtained) data to download and detailed tutorials. The
flexibility of the Salsa J platform tool enables students and teachers to
extend the exercises with their own observations. The software developed for
the HOU program has been designed to be a multi-platform, multi-lingual
experience for image manipulation and analysis in the classroom. Its design
enables easy implementation of new facilities (extensions and plugins), minimal
in-situ maintenance and flexibility for exercise plugin. Here, we describe some
of the most advanced exercises about astrophysics in the classroom, addressing
particular examples on gravitational dynamics, concepts currently introduced in
most sciences curricula in middle and high schools.Comment: 10 pages, 12 images, submitted to the special theme issue Using
Astronomy and Space Science Research in Physics Courses of the American
Journal of Physic
ExPASy: the proteomics server for in-depth protein knowledge and analysis
The ExPASy (the Expert Protein Analysis System) World Wide Web server (http://www.expasy.org), is provided as a service to the life science community by a multidisciplinary team at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB). It provides access to a variety of databases and analytical tools dedicated to proteins and proteomics. ExPASy databases include SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, SWISS-2DPAGE, PROSITE, ENZYME and the SWISS-MODEL repository. Analysis tools are available for specific tasks relevant to proteomics, similarity searches, pattern and profile searches, post-translational modification prediction, topology prediction, primary, secondary and tertiary structure analysis and sequence alignment. These databases and tools are tightly interlinked: a special emphasis is placed on integration of database entries with related resources developed at the SIB and elsewhere, and the proteomics tools have been designed to read the annotations in SWISS-PROT in order to enhance their predictions. ExPASy started to operate in 1993, as the first WWW server in the field of life sciences. In addition to the main site in Switzerland, seven mirror sites in different continents currently serve the user communit
On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues
The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues
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