Development of a pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester – approach, findings, challenges and outlook of the MaDAM Project

Management and curation of digital data has been becoming ever more important in a higher education and research environment characterised by large and complex data, demand for more interdisciplinary and collaborative work, extended funder requirements and use of e-infrastructures to facilitate new research methods and paradigms. This paper presents the approach, technical infrastructure, findings, challenges and outlook (including future development within the successor project, MiSS) of the ‘MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester’ project funded under the infrastructure strand of the JISC Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) programme. MaDAM developed a pilot research data management solution at the University of Manchester based on biomedical researchers’ requirements, which includes technical and governance components with the flexibility to meet future needs across multiple research groups and disciplines

Thermodynamic Theory of Weakly Excited Granular Materials

We present a thermodynamic theory of weakly excited two-dimensional granular systems from the view point of elementary excitations of spinless Fermion systems. We introduce a global temperature T that is associated with the acceleration amplitude \Gamma in a vibrating bed. We show that the configurational statistics of weakly excited granular materials in a vibrating bed obey the Fermi statistics.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, To Appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. April, 199

The Role of Demography in the Transition to Sustainable Societies

Currently, although the global population has surpassed 7.5 billion and continues to increase in about 80 million each year, attention to demography is almost absent in most of the studies and publications related to the current situation of planetary emergency and the necessary transition to sustainable societies. For this reason, our first aim in this paper has been to discuss if this current lack of attention to demography is justified or not. With this purpose, we begin considering the scientific meaning of Sustainability, in order to overlay distorted and impoverish views of this concept that may hinder our study. Then, we analyse the reasons given by experts for and against the incidence of demographic growth in the current unsustainable situation of planetary emergency. Finally, we present proposals to face the ensemble of interconnected socio-environmental problems (including demographic evolution), to make possible an appropriate transition to sustainable societies. Aunque la población mundial ha sobrepasado los 7500 millones y continúa aumentando anualmente en alrededor de 80 millones, la atención a la demografía está hoy prácticamente ausente en la mayoría de los estudios y publicaciones acerca de la actual situación de emergencia planetaria y la necesidad de una transición a sociedades sostenibles. Con el propósito de analizar si esta falta de atención a la demografía está o no justificada, en esta contribución comenzamos discutiendo el significado científico de Sostenibilidad socioambiental, para evitar concepciones distorsionadas y empobrecidas de este concepto que pueden dificultar dicho análisis. A continuación estudiaremos las razones dadas por distintos expertos a favor y en contra de la incidencia del crecimiento demográfico en la insostenible situación actual de emergencia planetaria. Finalmente presentamos propuestas para hacer frente al conjunto de problemas estrechamente interconectados - incluido el problema demográfico - que caracterizan dicha situación, para hacer así posible una adecuada transición a sociedades sostenibles