crowdsourcing

The X2 Project!

Jean-Claude Bradley — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:00:35 -0700

Description

The X2 Project description (1):

Today, science is entering another period of accelerated change, thanks to the growth of the Internet and dawn of pervasive computing; the explosive growth of new sciences like genetic engineering, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and simulation; the rise of new scientific powers in the developing world, the revival of amateur scientists, and the growth of citizen science movements in the United States and Europe; the growth of new institutions supporting scientific research and innovation, and changes in the structure and funding of universities, government, and corporate R&D labs. Science in 2025 and 2050 is going to look very different than it does today.

To map and make sense of all these changes, the Institute for the Future (IFTF) launched the X2 Project in late 2007. The purpose of X2 is to identify future disruptions, opportunities, and competitive landscapes related to the content and dynamics of global science and technology innovation; to develop a new platform for understanding global innovation trends; and to present this information to policy- and decision-makers, as well as the general public, in a useful form. The project conducts its research online, through an innovative experiment in open forecasting; in workshops with young scientists and engineers around the world; and in online games.

In this period of accelerating change in science it is critical to find innovative ways to track progress. The fact that the Institute for the Future is committing significant resources to this end is a signal that people are paying attention to this phenomenon and will continue to do so in the future.

Going forward, I see that the crowdsourcing (3) of generating Signals of change and related Hypotheses will lead to not only a faster assessment of change but will also catalyze change by forging relationships and collaborations between contributors.

Future of chemistry

Source

1) http://sciencex2.org/en/about
2) http://www.iftf.org/
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Automation of Crystallization by an Academic Group

Jean-Claude Bradley — Sun, 04 May 2008 08:57:54 -0700

Description

Alastair Florence and colleagues report on the use of an automatic reactor platform from ChemSpeed (1) to accelerate the crystallization of organic molecules (2):

The principal gain over manual crystallization stems from the fact that automation enhances productivity, allowing the search for physical forms to be conducted systematically and reproducibly over a finer grid (e.g. larger solvent library) than might be accessible manually, increasing the probability of observing new forms. In practise, making due time allowance for set-up, sample retrieval and cleaning between experiments, experience has shown that 32 crystallizations per working day is sustainable. Further opportunity for productivity enhancement comes from integration of the platform control PC with an electronic laboratory information management system (LIMS) to provide effective archival, search and retrieval facilities for the recorded control parameters associated with large numbers of crystallizations.

Although High Throughput Synthesis (HTS) has become an integral part of the drug discovery process in companies, larger libraries generally come at a cost to purity and full product characterization.(3) There is still much room available to adopt more automation to the practice of organic chemistry, especially in academic labs. Koppitz and Eis predict (3):

Aside from the technology, we are now entering an era in which chemists working in AMC (Automated Medicinal Chemistry) will probably become more chemistry-oriented than they have been in the past decade, when the focus was on developing and implementing a robust and reliable technology platform. In this context, more chemistry related challenges, such as the discovery and exploitation of new structural motifs in chemical space, development of new chemistries and their application in library synthesis, will hopefully be addressed and solved.

This signal points to more involvement by academia into automating chemistry processes typically done manually. This is significant because there is a greater probability that results will be shared with the scientific community, compared to similar work done in industry.

Eventually it is possible that automation will enable even the open execution of chemistry experiments by leveraging crowdsourcing. (4)

Future of chemistry

Source

1) http://www.chemspeed.com
2) http://www.chemspeed.com/files/publications/sa/pa/2006_crystallization_o...
3) http://www.chemspeed.com/files/publications/sa/pa/2006_Automated%20medic...
4) http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1505/version/1

Open Collaborative Research Proposals

Jean-Claude Bradley — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:26:28 -0700

Description

As an indicator of the trends of Open Science and crowdsourcing, initiatives are arising to facilitate collaboration for the purpose of seeking research funding. For example, the SCIEnCE project (1) serves as a repository for such open proposals:

SCIEnCE – Share Collaborative Ideas, Enact Cooperative Efforts – is part of the growing movement dedicated to encouraging public sharing of testable ideas. Not just ideas, but plans of action – ideas will be developed into specific, step-by-step proposals via Wiki-inspired community editing. A new system for attributing credit will be used to distribute funding for SCIEnCE projects. The projects outlined by these collaboratively written proposals will be tackled with a cooperative experimental approach.

In order to fully capitalize on the benefits of such a strategy, the involvement of funding agencies will be necessary. This may only happen when a critical mass of proposals and people is reached.

Discussions about how new funding mechanisms could be established to take advantage of such a system are currently taking place (2). Cameron Neylon writes:

What is being generated here is new science, and science isn’t paid for per se. The resources that generate science are supported by governments, charities, and industry but the actual production of science is not supported. The truly radical approach to this would be to turn the system on its head. Don’t fund the universities to do science, fund the journals to buy science; then the system would reward increased efficiency. As it exists at the moment the funding system does nothing to support increased efficiency.

In stock exchanges and money markets, people are paid an awfully large amount of money to make what are fundamentally rather simple connections between buyers and sellers. This is still, for the most part, ultimately handled by humans, although there is a move towards fully automatic position taking. The connections we are talking about are much more complex to understand. To make this work we need to figure out how to reward the people who can make those connections. We also need to find a way to put money into the system to actually help provide the additional resources required to actually make things happen.

Future of chemistry

Source

1) http://sharescienceideas.wikispaces.com/
2) http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/04/16/the-science-exchange/

Putting Innovation in the Hands of a Crowd - New York Times

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:52:24 -0800

Description

The New York Times reports on a new business that hopes to crowdsource innovation:

IF executives are going to rely on the wisdom of the masses for business help, it's probably time the masses get a little compensation for it.

That's the theory behind Kluster, the newest in a lineup of companies using the Web to channel the collective wisdom of strangers into meaningful business strategies. With a cash reward system for contributors and a big beginning at the TED conference last week in Monterey, Calif., Kluster hopes to attract just enough visitors with just enough business smarts to gain early momentum.

The company's founder, serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman, "held a product design contest at the [2007] Macworld conference, with attendees submitting ideas and using a company Web site to refine designs and vote on the winner.... [He] then set out to build a business out of the process he used at Macworld.

Kluster includes a number of refinements to that process. Those who join are given 1,000 units of Kluster scrip, called “watts,” and they may earn more by telling the site more about themselves, like their area of expertise, age and income. Meanwhile, businesses are invited to post specific tasks to be addressed, like creating a new product, logo or corporate event.

Participants browsing the ideas offered by Kluster members can bet some or all of their watts on the ideas they most believe in, or post ideas of their own. Those who had winning ideas earn at least 20 percent of the bounty offered by the company that sought the idea, as well as more watts, while those who bet on the winning idea earn watts. Those who bet wrong lose what they wagered.

Source

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/technology/03ecom.html?_r=1&oref=slogin