CATALOGUING CULTURAL OBJECTS – AN INITIATIVE FOR COMMON CATALOGUING SPECIFICATIONS FOR CULTURAL OBJECTS

The Getty’s CDWA “Categories for the description of works of art” has been in existence for quite a while, as have been the VRA (Visual Resources Association) Core Categories. Though wide-spread and used by many Anglo-American museums in one way or another (as reference in full or in part) a need has been felt for an integra-tion of the rule sets and for their application in the broader community, as a cooperative product and on a network basis. Therefore, Cataloguing Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and their Images (CCO) has been in development since 2001: Part 1 (General Guidelines); Part II (Elements); and Part III (Authorities) (http://vraweb.org/CCOweb/index.html). It is a manual for describing, documenting, and cataloguing cultural works and images of them, their visual surrogates, and consists of 9 chapters. The CCO project team consisted, i.e. of members of the Visual Resources Association (VRA) and the Getty Research Institute, with an Advisory board of experts from the museum, library, and archives communities. The CCO comprises a subset of elements from the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA). CCO will be published as a print publication by the American Library Association end of 2005. As a subset and a guideline to satisfy minimum requirements, “CCO Lite” has been developed, with 19 elements (8 of them mandatory) for minimum cataloguing of cultural objects. An XML schema to describe core records for works of art and material culture based on CCO is under development. Such records are intended for contribution to union catalogues and other repositories using the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting protocol. Mapping to some other electronic cataloguing formats has also been undertaken, others are in progress

THE STATE MUSEUMS OF BERLIN (SMB) AND THEIR NEW DOCUMENTATION SYSTEM

The 16 State Museums of Berlin - Foundation Prussian Heritage – do host a great variety of collections from art to ethnology and from Egyptology to Pre-history. In the past those museums had implemented their own databases – in some cases even several in one museum – and a lot of material is still documented in paper form. In 1999 the decision was taken to introduce one common museum documentation system for all of them. Among other things this was done because one uniÞ ed public access interface should in future allow easy and comprehensive searching of the museum holdings. This decision puts up the challenge to bring together parts of the vocabulary in order to allow meaningful retrieval covering all collections. In order to provide for a common retrieval vocabulary the decision had been taken to make use of the Subject Headings Authority File (SWD) of the German National Library (DDB). Thus, after overcoming the problems of migrating some 65 databases into the new system, the problem remains - to link this new overall vocabulary with the very different pre-existing vocabularies of the museums, - to Þ nd common rules for data Þ elds relevant for all museums - to develop the workß ow for the implementation of those rules - to discuss and agree on the use of other already existing thesauri and classiÞ cations like TGN, AAT or ICONCLASS. The presentation will summarise major results reached so far, problems encountered and outline the next steps

Le programme MORECOWBELL de la NSA sonne le glas du DNS

Traduit de l'anglais. Titre original : « NSA's MORECOWBELL: Knell for DNS ».Cet article décrit le programme « MORECOWBELL » de l'agence d'espionnage étasunienne NSA et montre les défauts du protocole DNS qu'il exploite. Un état de l'art des alternatives à DNS est ensuite donné, en évaluant l'efficiacité contre les attaques telles que celles perpétrées par la NSASur le net, presque tout commence par une requête au Domain Name System (DNS, pour « système de noms de domaine »), un protocole au cœur d'Internet qui permet aux usagers d'accéder à des services par un nom tel que www.example.com, plutôt que par une adresse IP numérique comme 2001:DB8:4145::4242. Développé au « bon vieux temps », le DNS contemporain ressemble à un tableau de bord de l'activité du réseau pour malvoyants. Par conséquent, il attire non seulement toutes sortes de surveillances à des fins commerciales, mais aussi la National Security Agency (NSA), comme le montrent de nouveaux documents sur son programme MORECOWBELL. Étant données les faiblesses de conception du DNS, on peut se demander si le DNS peut être sécurisé et sauvé ou bien si il doit être remplacé---tout du moins pour certains cas d'utilisation

Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Contain Calprotectin, a Cytosolic Protein Complex Involved in Host Defense against Candida albicans

Neutrophils are the first line of defense at the site of an infection. They encounter and kill microbes intracellularly upon phagocytosis or extracellularly by degranulation of antimicrobial proteins and the release of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs). NETs were shown to ensnare and kill microbes. However, their complete protein composition and the antimicrobial mechanism are not well understood. Using a proteomic approach, we identified 24 NET-associated proteins. Quantitative analysis of these proteins and high resolution electron microscopy showed that NETs consist of modified nucleosomes and a stringent selection of other proteins. In contrast to previous results, we found several NET proteins that are cytoplasmic in unstimulated neutrophils. We demonstrated that of those proteins, the antimicrobial heterodimer calprotectin is released in NETs as the major antifungal component. Absence of calprotectin in NETs resulted in complete loss of antifungal activity in vitro. Analysis of three different Candida albicans in vivo infection models indicated that NET formation is a hitherto unrecognized route of calprotectin release. By comparing wild-type and calprotectin-deficient animals we found that calprotectin is crucial for the clearance of infection. Taken together, the present investigations confirmed the antifungal activity of calprotectin in vitro and, moreover, demonstrated that it contributes to effective host defense against C. albicans in vivo. We showed for the first time that a proportion of calprotectin is bound to NETs in vitro and in vivo

What's in a name?: China and the domain name system

Avoiding technical jargon, the book is accessible to anyone interested in the social impact of the Internet and information and communication technologies, from those in academia to business and public policy makers

Data Mining für den Drohnenkrieg

National audienceDie Überwachungsprogramme der NSA sammeln unzählige Daten. Diese werden automatisiert ausgewertet, offenbar auch zur Suche nach Zielen für den Drohnenkrieg

Über Umwege ans Ziel: Lexikon des NSA-Skandals: Fashioncleft

c't 19/2015„No Such Agency“ war früher ein beliebter Spitzname der NSA – Tarnung ist aber auch heute ein zentrales Ziel. Heute nutzt sie das Protokoll Fashioncleft, um ihre Präsenz in fremden Netzen zu verstecken und gezielt Daten von nichtsahnenden Providern zu kopieren

What's in a name?: China and the domain name system.

Avoiding technical jargon, the book is accessible to anyone interested in the social impact of the Internet and information and communication technologies, from those in academia to business and public policy makers.