Community Biotech

I read an interesting book review today about technology and social structure, and of particular interest to me was the write up about community biotech labs and crowed sourced research. The book tells the story of a number of small tech start ups seeking to involve or enable the populace or local communities to participate or undertake their own biological research involving genetics. Biocurious is the featured community biotech lab which teaches people the basics of genetic research as well as providing a community of both enthusiasts and specialists and cheap accessible labs for people to experiment in, poke around their website and you can get a pretty good idea of their program. While Genomera is the featured crowd sourced research group, their web page is pretty uninformative, but what the hell, this shit is totally exciting. I look forward to participating in such research and seeing what interesting studies come from places such as these.

End of the world.

*South korea and Japan are waiting for whatever moment a nuclear war is unleashed by kim jong un. *"were waiting for the worst" confirm the authorities. *They might attack before or after the 10th of April. Also down the bottom: crazy woman eats the face of a girl.

microbiomes

I've been excited and hence fascinated by the rapid developments in microbiology over the past few years. Utilizing advanced genetic sequencing technology it is now possible to see and understand microbes and their ecology like never before, and this development has unimaginable potential to transform not just our understanding but also our approach to the world. I found this video today of Jessica Green, which reveals very nicely just some of the potentials of the field, and which also features an elegantly designed experiment. If your interested in reading more, check out the microbiome wikipedia page for more information.

Well, I was kinda of hoping for a front page with something different to coverage of the Korean tensions, you know a bit of diversity, but now i'm all for it, I think the Peruvian tabloids provide the best coverage. Today's headline "180, 000 deaths: attack with North Korean nuclear missiles on the island of Guam could provoke a tragedy without precedent".

Robots Al Ataque

continuing the Korean war thread....

Guerra Nuclear!

Peru has a wonderful assortment of sensational press, that almost daily manage to deliver a range of front covers ranging from the extreme to out of this world, over the coming weeks i'm going to share this daily extravaganza with you. But to start, a rather slow news day, Guerra Nuclear! stay tuned, there's more to come.

To hell with the publishers, bring on open access

So I don’t know if you’ve heard of open access or if you know much about the science publishing industry, but basically at present scientists are beholden to a vampiric bunch of arseholes which are the science publishing industry who care for naught but their bank balances and a whole bunch of people want to break this cartel with a thing called open access. Whoever wins this fight will have huge ramifications for the world so it’s kind of a big deal and you should probably know a bit about it.

First let me introduce the establishment, that is the publishing industry or vampires as I here refer to them. These are a bunch of “esteemed” journals which publish scientists work (which is most frequently publicly funded) at a hefty price to the scientists and then charge extremely exorbitant amounts of money to view the contents of the journals (see the price quoted to me in the picture above), which is other scientists work also funded by the public. So they charge money at both ends and give nothing to scientists other than a shared forum. Scientists are dependant upon sharing each other’s work, which means they have no option other than to deal with these nefarious fuckwits if they wish to achieve anything.

It gets richer though, scientists gain prestige depending on which journals accept their paper, the more expensive a journal to publish in and the more expensive to read, the more kudos you have for appearing in their catalogue. This prestige association is a neat trick, and in my view the one thing that stops a run on the entire publishing industry. Generally my senior colleagues I’ve talked to believe the publishing industry sucks, presents serious ethical dilemmas and contributes little financial benefit or otherwise to science(they merely publish, all the other work is undertaken by scientists at their own or institutions cost) but are worried how other scientists will know how cool they are without it.

If you’d like to hear the industries mealy mouthed explanation of why they are so valuable, go here, and if you’re interested in good explanation of why the publishing industry is a rort, follow this link.

Anyhow, a bunch of intelligent and talented individuals have created a concept known as open access, where published work is free to read, which means everyone has access to it, whether your rich or poor or have only a passing interest in science. This is nothing short of pure genius, because should they succeed, the world will be wiser for it. Scientists in the developing world will have access to research equal to their peers in the developed world, and anyone seeking to learn about a topic will have the opportunity to educate themselves, regardless of their educational background. This last point has the possibility of changing the public perception of and engagement with science and liberating many great minds to participate in the world of science.

 

The idea has substantial merit and therefore has had some significant wins of late. In Australia, the UK and the U.S., the governments have started to demand that people have access to the research they have funded, and therefore in various forms and guises demanded with legislation that new publically funded research should be published open access. NEW RESEARCH, not the significantly vaster troves that exist under lock and key, suggesting that governments don’t have the courage to truly stand up to this mafia and demand the return of our publically funded research.

Most recently, a famous programmer and online activist by the name of Aaron Swartz, attempted to liberate a swath of this literature into the public domain, the result of which was such a terrible prosecution by the U.S. government, that the anxiety associated with the court case led him to take his own life.

Though some good has come from the tormenting of Aaron Swartz to the point of suicide, and that is that many more people now know about the publishing rort and the enormous potential and therefore the importance of open access. If you truly hope for equality in the world then you should incorporate open access into your actions, hopes and dreams.

Alpaca Evolution

So a japanese friend showed me this last night, an app called Alpaca Evolution, a game in which you are an alpaca who "consumes" other alpacas and develops over time a freaky mutant body. Its nothing short of brilliant, download it and discover it for yourself or read a more detailed description here:

http://chicpixel.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-horrifying-world-of-alpaca-niisan.html

The result of a little bit of qualitative analysis from the other day, i'm pretty attached to this code, there's a fair bit of information concerning vegetation and slope embedded there.

Esto tambien es Lima

The perennial classic. Its not the destination that matters, but what happens along the way.

Or in other words, i dident manage to do everything I needed to do, but I had a great time nonetheless.

Sunset over Arequipa and El Misti

A brief introduction to Bofedales

Its time for some introductions, so the primary question begs, what exactly is a Bofedale? Beyond being a cool sounding name, Bofedales are in actual fact rapid peat forming plant communities of the Andes, which grow in inundated terrain forming dense mound like structures to survive the extreme conditions of high ultraviolet radiation, daily frosts, strong winds and regular fluctuations of the water table that is the environment of the high Andes. Basically they live where other plants don’t dare to tread.

Being plants and living where life is scarce, means they are an oasis of food in the Andean wilds and therefore an important habitat for many other species.  Humans included. According to archeological estimates, humans settled in the Andes roughly 6-7000 yrs ago, having encountered the high productivity pasture of the Bofedales and deciding it was to their liking, they set about domesticating the wild camelids and in effect produced the llamas and alpacas with which we are familiar today.

The people of the Andes also did a lot more than that. Not content with the natural extent of the Bofedales, they set about hand digging trenches, diverting mountain streams and aquifers, inundating valley bottoms and mountain slopes with the cascading streams of the Andes. What was the end result of this grand anthropogenic experiment? A greening of the Andean deserts, the spread of crucial life supporting systems and the development of an extensive pastoral system capable of supporting the people of the high Andes.

The practice of diverting streams to develop or enhance Bofedale pasture is still utilized today, as these images from google earth illustrate:

This last image reveals the complex morphology of a Bofedale and what is likely a herd of grazing llama or alpaca, represented by white specks on the Bofedale surface:

My research is focused on understanding the complex Bofedale morphology and the environmental factors driving its development.

Procrastination becomes Productivity

            

Dia de los Muertos (04-11-2011) - Promo Selection from gonzo440 on 8tracks Radio.

I recommend listening to this music loud while eating hotdog and drinking soft drink or yerba mate, and if you cant get soft drink or yerba mate, simply have a cup of black tea with 5 teaspoons of sugar. Should do the trick. Enjoy.

Temporary solutions and temporary dilemmas

An interior view of my temporary office in Valparaiso where I worked for a few days on the way to Peru. The room was so full of bed bugs that they would bite me as I worked at the desk. I left, having successfully re-analysed the satellite imagery but my face and neck were covered in itchy swollen red lumps.

Welcome aboard

www.damki.com

 Welcome to Data Salvaje. Over the coming months I intend to share in this space the various happenings that occur while I undertake research concerning the ecology of the Bofedales, that is the alpine peatlands of the Andes. I have little idea what these happenings may be. This blog is my first and therefore an experimental space. All I can say is that I hope to populate it with the dreams and realities, loves and hates, people that I meet, stories I learn, various pictures, spelling mistakes, poor grammer and whatever else takes my fancy. I hope you enjoy it, or that you dont. Id like to thank my supervisors Jamie and Damien, the people from the faculty of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania, my family and friends, and the indigenous people who have cared for and sculpted the alpine environment of the Andes for which im headed. Without your contributions, this moment would not be possible. Stay tuned, it has begun.