ABSTRACT

While they might share common conservation goals, motivating advocates, scientists and policy makers to share public data is no easy task. Issues of trust, data provenance, statistical accuracy, and usability are all challenges that cause collaborative public GIS platforms to fail. Rhiza Labs CEO Josh Knauer will give an overview of databasin.org, a free online website for the conservation community using Google Maps/Earth, that is winning accolades from both scientists and advocates for its scientific integrity, robust mapping and analytical tools and ease of use. Prior to writing a single line of code, the DataBasin design team conducted in-depth interviews with both data producers and consumers to understand how best to motivate users to share public data. The result is a system that delivers valuable tools that meet the needs of a diverse user-base and offers a unique publication model that rewards everyone for collaborative behavior.

This is part of a larger project to build a peer-to-peer Information Commons of public data: several papers describing our technological and collaborative innovations are available at http://www.maya.com/infocommons/magic.html#papers.

Speaker: Josh Knauer – Chief Executive Officer, Rhiza Labs
Josh has been a social entrepreneur for the past 20 years, creating and leading successful organizations in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. His ability to spot emerging trends in technology and how they can be used for the betterment of society and the environment have caused him to be considered a leading expert in the field. He’s been featured in Time, Fortune, Newsweek and Wired magazines, and was even named a New Media Hero by the Utne Reader.

Prior to heading up MAYA Design’s Information Commons research effort, Josh founded and was the Executive Director of the EnviroLink Network, the Internet’s largest and most complete environmental information resource, in 1991. He went on to become the Founder and CEO of GreenMarketplace.com, an e-commerce site for socially and environmentally responsible products, services, and information. In 2002, Knauer sold GreenMarketplace.com to Gaiam.

Josh lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife, children and dog. When not starting up a new business, he can be found in his garden tending organic and heirloom vegetables or out hiking in the woods.

Duration : 1:7:59

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ABSTRACT

In 18 months full human genome sequences will be available under $100 – and in minutes. The $5,000 full human genome was announced to come in 9 months. Is “Big IT” ready for the avalanche of data, to be obtained and processed e.g. while the patient is still on the operating table, to be diagnosed, and how the genomics glitch, that caused a benign or malign tumor, could be compensated for?

Algorithmic approaches are needed to better understand genome regulation, even for the simple reason to deploy most effective data retrieval, data storage and computational means, via both parallel hardware and software, but more importantly for opening entirely new perspectives.

In the 100+ year old Genomics, for over half a Century had us to resign to the fatalistic gloom that we are stuck with any glitches in our inherited genome. Is it true that genomic glitches doom one to “incurable” hereditary diseases?

No longer. Genomics now considers the DNA-RNA-Protein chain not as a thermodynamically closed system, where entropy increases, but as an open system that can be interfered with. There is theoretically sound hope that you are not stuck with your genomic glitches.

After half a Century of sticking to two mistaken axioms of Genomics, the paradigm of recursive genome function must quickly make up for lost time for those (potentially) inflicted with formerly “incurable” diseases. “The Genome baby is left on the doorsteps of Information Technology”.

Doctors sent those inflicted with fleece for “debugging”. Debugging genome information (by Genome Computers) would be much harder without understanding the algorithms that our natural genome computing operates with.

Speaker: Dr. Andras Pellionisz
Ph.D. in Biology
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering
Director of Genome Informatics, Mitrionics, Inc., Los Gatos, California
European Union visiting Professor for Hungary (for “European Inaugural of IPGS”)
Founder of International PostGenetics Society (IPGS,PostModern era of Genetics “beyond Genes”)
Founder of FractoSoft (Software for PostGenetics, Silicon Valley, with Central European outsourcing)
Founder of Helixometry (IP portfolio holding, Silicon Valley)
Inventor and Founder of FractoGene (Fractal approach to DNA)
Chief Software Architect and Chief Intelligence Officer of several Silicon Valley Internet Companies in the dot.com boom
Founder of International Neural Networks Society (INNS)
Founding Editor of Neural Networks (publication organ of INNS)
Section Editor for Neural Networks of The Cerebellum (Springer, New York & Heidelberg)
Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, New York University Medical Center
Visiting Professor of Marburg University, Germany (Humboldt Prize for Senior Distinguished Amercian Scientists)
Visiting Professor of UMR/CNRS, College de France, Paris
Senior Research Council Associate of the National Academy of Science, USA, to NASA
PostDoctoral Fellow, University of Iowa
PostDoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Tenured Senior Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Duration : 0:58:0

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ABSTRACT

The essence of system-level design is the need to concurrently consider information from multiple engineering domains across multiple subsystems to assess holistic system properties. The systems engineer is responsible for bringing together all facets of a system for evaluation of system-level requirements and to aid in understanding system impacts of local design decisions. System-level security, encompassing issues such as confidentiality of information, integrity and authenticity of information sources, and availability of critical
services, is one of many interacting system-level issues that must be addressed. To evaluate system-level security, we must treat security requirements as system-level properties, addressing their satisfaction
in the same manner as traditional system-level issues such as power consumption or safety. Specifically, we must provide support for representing system-level security requirements; composing and integrating information from heterogeneous models; and establishing dependencies between models to assess the security health of a complete system. This talk overviews work surrounding the the Rosetta system-level design language with emphasis on efforts to specify, synthesize and verify software defined radios.

Speaker: Perry Alexander
Dr. Perry Alexander is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and Director of the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center’s Computer Systems Design Laboratory at The University of Kansas. His research interests include system-level modeling, security and assurance, design
languages, heterogeneous specification, language semantics, and embedded systems. He received the BSEE and BSCS in 1986, the MSEE in 1988, and the PhD in 1992 all from The University of Kansas. From September 1992 through July 1999 he was a faculty member and director of The Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Laboratory in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science department at The University of Cincinnati. He is the chief architect of the Rosetta system specification language and author of System-Level Design using Rosetta published by Morgan Kaufmann in 2006. Dr. Alexander has published over 90 refereed research papers and has presented numerous invited presentations. He has won 15 teaching awards, was named a Kemper Teaching Fellow and won the ASEE Midwest Region Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003. He is a Senior Member of ACM, Sigma Xi, and a Senior Member of IEEE where he served as Chair of the
Engineering of Computer-Based Systems Engineering Technical Committee and currently serves as Chair of the DASC P1699 Rosetta Working Group.

Duration : 0:39:14

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Duration : 0:1:37

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Duration : 0:2:19

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This talk addresses three major challenges of value network-driven enterprise analysis:

(1) unifying the business knowledge of multiple enterprises and their diverse and conflicting objectives in the value network,

(2) sensing the value network and processes through systems design, and

3) analyzing the value offered by multiple service entities in the network based on common goals and metrics.

Biography:
Dr. J. Sairamesh (Ramesh) is currently a Managing Partner at 360Fresh Inc. Previously he was a Manager and Program Leader for Business Solutions and Manufacturing Quality Research at IBM Watson Research, New York. He was one of the functional architects for IBM’s e-business and e-Marketplace products. At IBM, from 2001 to 2007, he helped drive the vision and strategy for business solutions on value-chain management, warranty and enterprise quality in manufacturing (automotive) for IBM. He led a team on early warning solutions, services middleware and end-to-end quality technologies. He has helped incubate and drive three commercial business solutions for IBM’s customers in the areas of Dealer-CRM, Early Warning for Warranty and Supply-Chain Quality. He has numerous US Patents and over 50 research publications. He has won three outstanding innovation awards and a research division award for his eCommerce and Business Solutions work at IBM. He received his M.S., M. Phil.(1992), and Ph.D (1996) from EE and CS at Columbia University.

Duration : 0:54:55

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ABSTRACT

Internet searching and advertising increasingly plays a role in consumer decisions and purchases, yet pertinent information for making value-judgments is currently awkward to ferret out and certainly not universally accessible or useful. There is rarely a feedback loop aligning vendor or manufacturer’s environmental, social or governance policies with a shopper’s values, so shoppers, over time, rarely cause industries to change their behavior.

There needs to be a way for shoppers to aim their purchasing power at achieving social values of highest regional priority. There needs to be a way to accumulate and redeem "social values rewards". What’s missing is timely and impactful analysis of a candidate purchases’ impact on the Shopper’s family, region and planet (expressed according to their values), so that the purchaser can more easily make informed purchasing decisions.

With some modifications to Google ads and Google product search, Google could solidify the feedback loop and help consumers, by their actions, build a greener and better world.

Speaker: Bruce Cahan
Bruce B. Cahan, President Urban Logic, Inc. (a nonprofit organization)
Email: bcahan@urbanlogic.org

Bruce Cahan is an Ashoka Fellow, a social entrepreneur, a non-residential fellow of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, a lawyer, and a banker.

In 1989, a steam pipe exploded outside his apartment building, spraying the neighborhood with 220 pounds of asbestos wrapping in an 18-story geyser of steam for several hours. After that, Bruce foresaw New York City’s need for geospatial preparedness, and founded Urban Logic, a New York nonprofit, to make America’s cities safer and sustainable. Bruce convinced New York to fund and build a multi-agency GIS basemap.
As a bond lawyer, he found $20+ million in the City’s capital budget to pay for its GIS utility.
NYC’s basemap was completed just 6 months before the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, and aided in coordinated response and recovery. In the months after September 11th, Bruce joined others at the City’s Command Center to organize and staff its Emergency Mapping and Data Center. His team supplied the Mayor’s Office, Fire, Police, EMS, military, public health, environment, news and other groups with up-to-date maps of rapidly changing conditions at Ground Zero and throughout Manhattan. Bruce was the catalyst for deploying OpenGIS’
SensorWeb project to monitor environmental conditions citywide, and other innovations.

Taking 9/11’s lessons, Bruce designed the federal OMB’s I-Team Initiative to strategically plan and implement spatial readiness across 49 states. Bruce’s knowledge of finance, law and organizational barriers to spatial awareness and urban innovation comes from researching and writing major studies for the federal government, including . Financing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (FGDC 2000) . Aligning Investments in Environmental Monitoring and Management Information Systems (EPA 2002) . The Value Proposition for GeoSpatial One Stop (OMB 2004) . A Regional Portfolio Investor’s Toolkit (USGS 2006)

In 2005, Bruce moved to Silicon Valley to organize two market-driven mechanisms that support urban sustainability. The first he calls the Means MeterTM, a tool for socially-purposeful consumers to buy products that reflect their values. The second is a bank that amplifies the sustainable impacts of Means MeterTM consumers and their vendors. The bank will reward choices that grow Sustainable ResiliencyTM. Bruce’s bank would serve consumers, businesses, NGOs and governments. The bank would offer credit, insurance, investment and merchant banking services, and scale pricing and interest rates based on each customer’s impact on Sustainable ResiliencyTM.

Bruce graduated from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Temple Law School. Bruce practiced law for 10 years with Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York, where he specialized in structuring and negotiating complex corporate, bond, creditor’s rights and real estate finance and ot…

Duration : 0:50:6

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If a key indicator of the health of a democracy is the state of its journalism, the United States is in deep trouble. In Rich Media, Poor Democracy, Robert McChesney lays the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the doors of the corporate boardrooms of big media, which far from delivering on their promises of more choice and more diversity, have organized a system characterized by a lack of competition, homogenization of opinion and formulaic programming.

Through numerous examples, McChesney, and media scholar, Mark Crispin Miller, demonstrate how journalism has been compromised by the corporate bosses of conglomerates such as Disney, Sony, Viacom, News Corp, and AOL Time Warner to produce a system of news that is high on sensationalism and low on information. They suggest that unless citizen activism can reclaim the commons, this new corporate system will be characterized by a rich media and an ever impoverished, poor democracy.

Duration : 0:5:27

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Major activitis include data collection through applying Participatory Appraisal (PRA) method, capacity-building initiatives involving all stakeholders, organising child-centred activities, developing local level school development plan and organising advocacy campaign.

The total beneficiaries of the project is 5707 children and about 32,000 people of 78 villages under20 school catchments area of Khadimpara union in Sylhet Upazila under Sylhet District. Besides, local government bodies, CBOs, youth clubs, SMC, PTO, teachers, education officials are also active stakeholders of the project.

Duration : 0:1:27

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Duration : 0:4:11

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