Exploring manuscripts: sharing ancient wisdoms across the semantic web

Recent work in digital humanities has seen researchers in-creasingly producing online editions of texts and manuscripts, particularly in adoption of the TEI XML format for online publishing. The benefits of semantic web techniques are un-derexplored in such research, however, with a lack of sharing and communication of research information. The Sharing Ancient Wisdoms (SAWS) project applies linked data prac-tices to enhance and expand on what is possible with these digital text editions. Focussing on Greek and Arabic col-lections of ancient wise sayings, which are often related to each other, we use RDF to annotate and extract seman-tic information from the TEI documents as RDF triples. This allows researchers to explore the conceptual networks that arise from these interconnected sayings. The SAWS project advocates a semantic-web-based methodology, en-hancing rather than replacing current workflow processes, for digital humanities researchers to share their findings and collectively benefit from each other’s work

BRIL - Capturing Experiments in the Wild

This presentation describes a project to embed a repository system (based on Fedora) within the complex, experimental processes of a number of researchers in biophysics and structural biology. The project is capturing not just individual datasets but entire experimental workflows as complex objects, incorporating provenance information based on the Open Provenance Model, to support reproduction and validation of published results. The repository is integrated within these experimental processes, so that data capture is as far as possible automatic and invisible to the researcher. A particular challenge is that the researchers’ work takes place in local environments within the department, entirely decoupled from the repository. In meeting this challenge, the project is bridging the gap between the “wild”, ad hoc and independent environment of the researchers desktop, and the curated, sustainable, institutional environment of the repository, and in the process project crosses the boundary between several of the pairs of polar opposites identified in the call

Training Post-Millennial IP Lawyers: A Field Guide

We’re intellectual property (IP) law professors. Postmillennials are our current and future customers. So we’re figuring out a few things about who post-millennials are and how we can mentor them effectively to start them on the path to becoming the next generation of outstanding IP lawyers. Here are a few things we’re learning, and a few teaching strategies that we’ve developed. We hope that by sharing them, we can give IP lawyers some insights about what to expect from their new hires and how to help them advance professionally

From the margins of the genome: Mobile elements shape primate evolution

As is the case with mammals in general, primate genomes are inundated with repetitive sequence. Although much of this repetitive content consists of molecular fossils inherited from early mammalian ancestors, a significant portion of this material comprises active mobile element lineages. Despite indications that these elements played a major role in shaping the architecture of the genome, there remain many unanswered questions surrounding the nature of the host-element relationship. Here we review advances in our understanding of the host-mobile element dynamic and its overall impact on primate evolution. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

BRIL - Capturing Experiments in the Wild

This presentation describes a project to embed a repository system (based on Fedora) within the complex, experimental processes of a number of researchers in biophysics and structural biology. The project is capturing not just individual datasets but entire experimental workflows as complex objects, incorporating provenance information based on the Open Provenance Model, to support reproduction and validation of published results. The repository is integrated within these experimental processes, so that data capture is as far as possible automatic and invisible to the researcher. A particular challenge is that the researchers’ work takes place in local environments within the department, entirely decoupled from the repository. In meeting this challenge, the project is bridging the gap between the “wild”, ad hoc and independent environment of the researchers desktop, and the curated, sustainable, institutional environment of the repository, and in the process project crosses the boundary between several of the pairs of polar opposites identified in the call

Retrotransposition of Alu elements: How many sources?

It is generally thought that only a few Alu elements are capable of retrotransposition and that these \u27master\u27 sources produce inactive copies. Here, we use a network phylogenetic approach to demonstrate that recently integrated human-specific Alu subfamilies typically contain 10-20% of secondary source elements that contributed 20-40% of all subfamily members. This multiplicity of source elements provides new insight into the remarkably successful amplification strategy of the Alu family

From research data repositories to virtual research environments: a case study from the Humanities

The difference in scholarly practices between the sciences and the mainstream humanities is highlighted in a study (Palmer et al., 2009), which investigated the types of information source materials used in different humanities disciplines, based on results contained in the US Research Libraries Group (RLG) reports. Structured data is relatively little used, except in some areas of historical research, and data as it is traditionally understood in the sciences, i.e. the results of measurements and the lowest level of abstraction for the generation of scientific knowledge, even less so. It is true that the study is partly outdated, containing results from the early 1990s, and that data in the traditional sense is becoming increasingly important in the humanities, particularly for disciplines such as linguistics and archaeology in which scientific techniques have been widely adopted. Nevertheless, it is clear that in general humanities research relies not on measurements as a source of authority, but rather on the provenance of sources and assessment by peers, and that what data repositories are for the sciences, archives are for the humanities. [...