Using Formal Concept Analysis and Information Flow for Modelling and Sharing Common Semantics: Lessons Learnt and Emergent Issues

We have been witnessing an explosion of user involvement in knowledge creation, publication and access both from within and between organisations. This is partly due to the widespread adoption of Web technology. But, it also introduces new challenges for knowledge engineers, who have to find suitable ways for sharing and integrating all this knowledge in meaningful chunks. In this paper we are exposing our experiences in using two technologies for capturing, representing and modelling semantic integration that are relatively unknown to the integration practitioners: Information Flow and Formal Concept Analysis

From biopiracy to bioprospecting: an historical sociology of the search for biological resources

With the 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity humanity's ongoing search for biological resources became subject to global regulation. The collection of biological materials for use in agriculture and medicine by one nation from another became conditional on criteria of informed consent, benefit-sharing, and the preservation of environments. This practice has become known as bioprospecting. Collections of biological materials and/or of 'traditional' knowledge of how to utilize them which did not meet the Convention's requirements henceforth became known as biopiracy. The thesis takes its structure from the Convention, which is treated as marking a shift from historical biopiracy to contemporary bioprospecting.. The thesis is that critics of the Convention who oppose it and the forms of bioprospecting which it mandates in terms of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism have misunderstood the character of contemporary economic and political power. The thesis argues that although contemporary bioprospecting is not practiced, as the Convention requires it to be, in ways that are 'fair and equitable', it cannot be understood as a neo-imperialist practice. Instead, the thesis concludes that the Convention should be understood in the context of new forms of governance and sovereignty. The Convention facilitates planet management and supports the exercise of biopower. Several cases studies of imperialist biopiracy are presented and their social impacts are discussed in contrast to contemporary bioprospecting. A broad range of historical and sociological literature is brought together for the first time. The history of the transition from biopiracy to bioprospecting is described and discussed in terms of several social, epistemological/technological, scientific, political and economic changes, respectively: the transition from imperialism to globalization, a shift away from exploitation of 'nature' toward management of 'biodiversity', the transition from natural history to ecological science, the appearance of environmentalist concerns in national and global politics, the completion of the globalization of capitalist property relations and the demise of the notion of biological resources as the 'common heritage of humankind'

The Word of Science: Popularising Darwinism in Romania, 1859-1918

This dissertation explores the popularisation of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in Romania from 1859 to 1918. Placing Darwinism in the Romanian context is important in several ways, as not only gives a picture of the interconnectedness between the political and the scientific construction of knowledge, but also reveals how cultural hegemony was formed in the European periphery. The research traces the multidirectionality of scientific ideas, highlighting its top-down and bottom up character. It focuses on the social staging of Darwinism, materially and culturally (in printed texts and institutions), politically (in ideological contests and outcomes), and scientifically (in epistemological negotiations). Finally, it explores the relationship between these historical agents. Special attention is given to science popularisation journals, pamphlets, manuals of natural history and museum artefacts in Romania, which addressed the evolutionary theory and its role for the adoption of the biological perspective in studies of ecology. To this end, the dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the social context in which scientific institutions and associations operated, exploring how Romanian naturalists acquired scientific authority, while deciding which scientific theories circulated in the public sphere. At the same time, the dissertation highlights how Darwinism was intertwined with ideas of racial, social and gender inequalities. Drawing on relevant comparisons with other countries, it reveals the development of a scientific public in Romania at the end of the nineteenth century, and the role played by popular knowledge and counterpublics in scientific debates