The Fascinator - Desktop eResearch and Flexible Portals

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PostersThe Fascinator is an Apache Solr front end to the Fedora commons repository. This project was originally funded by ARROW, as part of the mini project scheme. The Fascinator is written in Java. It drops into the Tomcat server that comes with Fedora. There are two ways this software can be used. It can be used as a server to deliver one or more portals with faceted searching and browsing or as an (experimental) desktop tool for managing eResearch assets and synchronising them with other repositories.ARROW project; Monash Universit

ICE-TheOREM - End to End Semantically Aware eResearch Infrastructure for Theses

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-05-19 10:00 AM – 11:30 AMICE-TheOREM was a project which made several important contributions to the repository domain, promoting deposit by integrating the repository with authoring workflows and enhancing open access, by adding new infrastructure to allow fine-grained embargo management within an institution without impacting on existing open access repository infrastructure. In the area of scholarly communications workflows, the project produced a complete end-to-end demonstration of eScholarship for word processor users, with tools for authoring, managing and disseminating semantically-rich thesis documents fully integrated with supporting data. This work is focused on theses, as it is well understood that early career researchers are the most likely to lead the charge in new innovations in scholarly publishing and dissemination models. The authoring tools are built on the ICE content management system, which allows authors to work within a word processing system (as most authors do) with easy-to-use toolbars to structure and format their documents. The ICE system manages both small data files and links to larger data sets. The result is research publication which are available not just as paper-ready PDF files but as fully interactive semantically aware web documents which can be disseminated via repository software such as ePrints, DSpace and Fedora as complete supported web-native One the technological side, ICE-TheOREM implemented the Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) protocol to integrate between a content management system, a thesis management system and multiple repository software packages and looked at ways to describe aggregate objects which include both data and documents, which can be generalized to domains other than chemistry. ICE-TheOREM has demonstrated how focusing on the use of the web architecture (including ORE) enables repository functions to be distributed between systems for complex, data-rich compound objects.UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC

The Fascinator: A lightweight, modular contribution to the Fedora-commons world

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Fedora User Group PresentationsDate: 2009-05-20 01:30 PM – 03:00 PMThe Australian government has supported the development of repository infrastructure for several years now. One product of this support was the ARROW project (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World). The ARROW project sponsored a hybrid commercial/open-source approach to building vendor-supported repository infrastructure with open-source underpinnings. One of the open-source contributions, which complements the vendor-sourced product adopted by many of the ARROW partners is a simple to install and configure front-end web service for Fedora repositories known as "The Fascinator". The Fascinator was conceived initially as a way to prove a point in an ongoing dialogue within the ARROW project about repository architecture. The goal was to test the hypothesis that it would be possible to build a useful, fast, flexible web front end for a repository using a single fast indexing system to handle browsing via facets, full-text search, multiple 'portal' views of subsets of a large corpus, and most importantly, easy-to administer security that could handle the most common uses cases seen in the ARROW community. This contrasted with the approach taken by ARROW's commercial partner, which used several different indices to achieve only some of the same functionality in an environment which was much more complex to manage and configure. We will give an overview of the product in both functional and technical terms. Functionally, The Fascinator offers: Click-to-create portals. Easy to configure security based on a query-based filter system, the repository owner can express security in terms of saved-searches that define what a user or group is allowed to see. Highly flexible indexing of a Fedora repository for administrators (and by extension anything the harvesting module can scrape-up). Technically, The Fascinator is a modular system, written in Java so it is easy to deploy with Fedora and Solr, consisting of: An indexing system for Fedora which builds on the standard G-Search supplied with the software, and some work done by the Muradora team. A configurable harvesting application which can ingest data from OAI-PMH, ORE, and local file systems. A web portal application which can be used to build flexible front end websites or act as a service to other sites via an HTTP API. An OAI-PMH (and ATOM archive) system which can create sub-feeds from a repository very easily without complexities like OAI-PMH sets. An easy to use installer for Unix based platforms allowing a systems administrator to install the application along with Fedora and Solr with a few keystrokes. While The Fascinator's goals were modest it has been met with some enthusiasm by repository managers in Australia and beyond, and is being trialled and/or piloted in a small number of sites across the world.ARROW project, Monash Universit

The Hypanis Valles delta: The last highstand of a sea on early Mars?

One of the most contentious hypotheses in the geological history of Mars is whether the northern lowlands ever contained an oceanic water body. Arguably, the best evidence for an ocean comes from the presence of sedimentary fans around Mars' dichotomy boundary, which separates the northern lowlands from the southern highlands. Here we describe the palaeogeomorphology of the Hypanis Valles sediment fan, the largest sediment fan complex reported on Mars (area >970 km2). This has an extensive catchment (4.6 x 105 km2) incorporating Hypanis and Nanedi Valles, that we show was active during the late-Noachian/early-Hesperian period (∼3.7 Ga). The fan comprises a series of lobe-shaped sediment bodies, connected by multiple bifurcating flat-topped ridges. We interpret the latter as former fluvial channel belts now preserved in inverted relief. Meter-scale-thick, sub-horizontal layers that are continuous over tens of kilometres are visible in scarps and the inverted channel margins. The inverted channel branches and lobes are observed to occur up to at least 140 km from the outlet of Hypanis Valles and descend ∼500 m in elevation. The progressive basinward advance of the channellobe transition records deposition and avulsion at the margin of a retreating standing body of water, assuming the elevation of the northern plains basin floor is stable. We interpret the Hypanis sediment fan to represent an ancient delta as opposed to a fluvial fan system. At its location at the dichotomy boundary, the Hypanis Valles fan system is topographically open to Chryse Planitia – an extensive plain that opens in turn into the larger northern lowlands basin. We conclude that the observed progradation of fan bodies was due to basinward shoreline retreat of an ancient body of water which extended across at least Chryse Planitia. Given the open topography, it is plausible that the Hypanis fan system records the existence, last highstand, and retreat of a large sea in Chryse Planitia and perhaps even an ocean that filled the northern plains of Mars

Aram Dorsum: an extensive mid-Noachian age fluvial depositional system in Arabia Terra, Mars

A major debate in Mars science is the nature of the early Mars climate, and the availability of precipitation and runoff. Observations of relict erosional valley networks have been proposed as evidence for extensive surface run‐off around the Noachian‐Hesperian boundary. However, these valley networks only provide a time‐integrated record of landscape evolution and thus the timing, relative timescales and intensity of aqueous activity required to erode the valleys remain unknown. Here, we investigate an ancient fluvial sedimentary system in western Arabia Terra, now preserved in positive relief. This ridge, ‘Aram Dorsum’, is flat‐topped, branching, ~ 85 km long, and particularly well‐preserved. We show that Aram Dorsum was an aggradational alluvial system and that the existing ridge was once a large river channel‐belt set in extensive flood plains, many of which are still preserved. Smaller, palaeochannel‐belts feed the main system; their setting and network pattern suggest a distributed source of water. The alluvial succession is up to 60 m thick, suggesting a formation time of 105 to 107 years by analogy to Earth. Our observations are consistent with Aram Dorsum having formed by long‐lived flows of water, sourced both locally, and regionally as part of a wider alluvial system in Arabia Terra. This suggests frequent or seasonal precipitation as the source of water. Correlating our observations with previous regional‐scale mapping shows that Aram Dorsum formed in the mid‐Noachian, making it one of the oldest fluvial systems described on Mars and indicating climatic conditions that sustained surface river flows on early Mars

Technical boys and creative girls: the career aspirations of digitally-skilled youths

Digital technology is increasingly central to our lives, particularly among young people. However, there remains a concern from government and businesses of a digital skills gap because many youths, especially girls, tend to be consumers rather than creators of technology. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with digitally-skilled teenagers (aged 13-19), we investigate their digital career aspirations and examine how identities and discourses of gender can interact with the type of digital careers that are of interest to these youths. While we found digitally-skilled young people still articulate traditional gendered discourses of digital competence, especially around technical abilities, we highlight the growing importance of creativity as a career pathway into digital technology. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the new computing curriculum in England, which prioritises technical computing skills, and the discontinuation of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), which facilitates a broader usage of software and digital productivity

An extended genotyping framework for Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the cause of human typhoid.

The population of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi), the causative agent of typhoid fever, exhibits limited DNA sequence variation, which complicates efforts to rationally discriminate individual isolates. Here we utilize data from whole-genome sequences (WGS) of nearly 2,000 isolates sourced from over 60 countries to generate a robust genotyping scheme that is phylogenetically informative and compatible with a range of assays. These data show that, with the exception of the rapidly disseminating H58 subclade (now designated genotype 4.3.1), the global S. Typhi population is highly structured and includes dozens of subclades that display geographical restriction. The genotyping approach presented here can be used to interrogate local S. Typhi populations and help identify recent introductions of S. Typhi into new or previously endemic locations, providing information on their likely geographical source. This approach can be used to classify clinical isolates and provides a universal framework for further experimental investigations