pro-am revolution

Wealthy dinosaur collectors pushing prices up, specimens out of museum hands?

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:36:49 -0700

Description

Another data-point in the growing importance of wealthy amateurs (or just wealthy people) in science. According to the Independent, prize dinosaur fossils

are proving a hit with the rich and famous, always searching for something new to jazz up the country pile or Beverly Hills mansion.

Moneyed collectors are flocking to fossil auctions like never before. Just look at the catalogues of major auction houses over the past six months. In April, a 65-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton went under the hammer in Paris, and sold for a cool �400,000. In March, a prehistoric Siberian mammoth fetched an equally jaw-dropping �200,000 in New York.

With Christie's holding regular dinosaur auctions in the French capital, and similar events being held at Bonhams and fellow auctioneer Chait in Manhattan, there are more opportunities then ever to pick up a bony memento.

Some of these collectors are just interested in the novelty and decorative value of fossils:

"We are increasingly seeing clients coming to our contemporary art or furniture auctions and discovering natural history," says Fleur de Nicolay, fossil auction specialist at the Paris office of Christie's. "Our furniture collectors might be searching for a more decorative piece that would look good next to a master painting. That is why we mix our sales of fossils with our furniture sales. People realise that they are mostly decorative objects, especially ammonites or a fish fossil."

The problem here is that the market for dinosaur fossils is pretty small, and the growth of a high-end market is putting the squeeze on museums and scientists who don't have deep pockets.

[T]hose who can't afford to keep up with escalating prices are losing out. This includes Britain's museums, whose budgets are pitiful compared to your average Hollywood hotshot or shipping magnate in pursuit of his next palaeontology fix....

So how can museums compete? The Natural History Museum in London says its fixed annual budget for buying all its science specimens is £30,000. "Private collectors have always been a part of the landscape we work in; indeed the Museum's collection was founded from a private collection," says Angela Milner, the associate keeper of palaeontology at the museum. "But, as a publicly funded institution, we only have limited funds with which to buy specimens and in some cases we may well be priced out of the market."

Richard Edmonds, earth science manager at the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Centre in Dorset, agrees that there is a problem here. "I think it's worth drawing an analogy between funding of the arts and funding for science. If you compare the millions of pounds spent on acquiring the work of modern artists... well, in Dorset, that money would buy us all of the specimens ever found down here, as well as build us a museum in which to show them off."

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bones-under-the-hammer-fossil-fetish-spurs-collectors-market-839427.html

Cybertracker

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:07:29 -0700

Description

One of my favorite examples suggesting the possible revival of amateur science is CyberTracker, "a software program that allows conservationists to record their observations in the field on handheld computers linked to global positioning system, or GPS, units." Scientists and trackers recently used the system to research the impact on an Ebola outbreak on the gorilla population in the Congo, and have also used it to study other animals. As Wired News reported in 2004,

To [Louis] Liebenberg -- the South African founder of CyberTracker Conservation -- these findings not only illustrate the device's ability to enhance scientists' monitoring and interpretation of changes in ecosystems, but they also support the idea that illiterate trackers are just as capable of doing science as researchers with Ph.D.s.

The CyberTracker is just one of many high-tech gadgets available to conservationists, who increasingly turn to tools such as DNA analysis and satellite imagery to gain a more detailed understanding of nature.

Liebenberg came up with the idea of the CyberTracker while hunting with the indigenous Bushmen trackers of the Kalahari Desert. Fascinated with tracking since childhood, Liebenberg, an author and scientist, developed the theory that the ancient hunter-gatherer practice represents nothing less than the origins of science.

Tracking an animal requires a process of making observations and testing hypotheses that is akin to scientific reasoning, he explained.

Once necessary for survival, however, it is now a dying art. Today, Liebenberg said, he knows of only about six older Bushmen who remain subsistence hunters. Most youngsters now attend school, unlike their illiterate elders, but seldom learn the skills and encyclopedic knowledge necessary for tracking.

If a way could be found to put the Bushmen's ancient knowledge to use for conservation purposes, he realized, both nature and the struggling Bushman communities would benefit. In 1996, Liebenberg and computer scientist Lindsay Steventon released the first CyberTracker model, with the aim of turning tracking into a modern profession.

That year, trackers Karel Benadie and James Minye used the CyberTracker to study the endangered black rhino in the Karoo National Park in South Africa, gathering data on the animals' eating patterns and vulnerability to poaching. In 1999, Liebenberg, Steventon and the two illiterate trackers published the findings in the academic journal Pachyderm.

Part of what's interesting here is that CyberTracker shows how handheld computing, GPS, and wireless can be used to improve scientific fieldwork. But the other thing that's intriguing about the project is that it explicitly recognizes the skills and knowledge that native peoples have about local flora and fauna. Native guides and assistants have long been critical to the success of scientific fieldwork, but often have been written out of the official histories.

Africa: Science & Technology

Source

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/01/61919
http://www.cybertracker.co.za/
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2745545

The revival of self-experimentation [draft]

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:54:05 -0700

Description

Gary Wolf talking about the quantified self; William Bains on self-experimentation; Seth Rogan's stuff on self experimentation. Stir. Think out some implications for DIY, etc.

Signals

South Korean citizen scientists emerging in the midst of controversy

Hyungsub Choi — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:44:26 -0700

Description

In the midst of the recent "mad cow disease" controversy in South Korea -- which was piqued by President Lee Myung-bak conceding to importing previously banned beef from the US -- counter-experts are sprouting up in several key Internet sites with opinions that counter official government announcements.

This phenomenon is similar to what happened during the Hwang scandal -- a controversy over the alleged stem-cell research breakthrough. These (typically young) scientists are highly capable of writing scientifically-accurate explanations for the lay public, which proves to be a highly effective way of undermining the conventional accounts. This has had spectacular effects, especially since the formal scientific societies have been quiet about the controversies at hand.

The prevalent use of Internet in South Korea during the last decade was one of the key context in which these "citizen scientists" could emerge.

This leads to the rapid deconstruction of the authority of scientific "experts," as the public is able to see the debate between scientists before it reaches a closure.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

Microfluidics using a cheap 1980s-era desktop plotter

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:38:58 -0700

Description

Via Attila Csordas, a Nature report on a project in which Harvard chemist Derek Bruzewicz and colleagued converted an old desktop plotter into "an impressively simple microfluidics device that can be produced without a clean room or photolithographic equipment."

The system works like this. By replica moulding, the pens of the plotter are replaced with PDMS [organic polymer poly(dimethylsiloxane)] versions that can deliver various types of 'ink'. The purpose of the ink, when cured, is to create channels in a filter-paper substrate, and after experimenting with the possibilities Bruzewicz et al. found that a syrupy mixture of 3:1 PDMS:hexane did just fine. Having chosen the appropriate paper, the trick then is to use the plotter to draw channel shapes, with the PDMS syrup penetrating the full depth of the paper to create water-tight chambers in various patterns....

The authors have tested different types of the device with well-tried colorimetric assays for identifying excess protein and glucose in urine, and found they performed well, with no cross-contamination between channels.

According to the HP Computer Museum (not actually part of HP), the particular plotter used in this project, a 7550

was the most advanced small plotter ever built. It had an incredible acceleration of 6g, making it one of the fastest plotters ever (and the most fun to watch). The 7550 had 8 pens and could plot on many types of media including paper, transparency film, vellum and polyester film.

It was introduced in 1984, and cost $3900 at the time; you can get them on eBay for $50.

Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology

Source

http://pimm.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/low-budget-high-tech-microfluidics-device-out-of-a-50-plotter/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7186/full/452421a.html

Private funding for high-energy physics

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:27:19 -0700

Description

In 2006, Renaissance Technologies Corporation, a New York hedge fund, raised $13 million to keep the Relativisitic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory operating.

Why was a hedge fund supporting a particle physics facility? Partly it was an philanthropic opportunity-- gift was organized by Jim Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies and a member of the Brookhaven board-- but it also nicely symbolizes the deepening connections between the worlds of physics and finance. The only thing that may prove unusual about the gift is that it went to an experimental facility: other efforts by scientists-turned-entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists have tended to focus on theoretical research.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/01/13/private-donation-saves-rhic/
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=328

The rise of personal satellites

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:52:38 -0800

Description

Tiny satellites are enabling space research by small groups of scientists, and are moving out of academic circles into industry-- and eventually may reach hobbyists.

CubeSat is a small, Kleenex-boxed sized satellite platform. Developed for use by university researchers, CubeSat allows groups to build satellites for under $50,000. While the devices have long been regarded as curiosities, improvements in sensors, photovoltaics, batteries, and operating systems have increased the utility of "nanosats". Scientists are working on CubeSats that can swarm and collaborate, together giving them capabilities that might eventually match those of more conventional satellites.

Nanosats are becoming cheaper and more accessible. The KatySat project is developing nanosats for high school students, and established aerospace companies and the miliary-- and a small number of enthusiasts-- are beginning to experiment with CubeSat. As one developer puts it, "We think of the CubeSat as the personal computer of space."

Combined with the growth of private spaceports and lower-cost launch vehicles, nanosats could reach a wider audience within a few years.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat
http://del.icio.us/iftf/space

Amateur satellite spotters

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:31:34 -0800

Description

The New York Times reports on amateur "satellite spotters who, needing little more than a pair of binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, uncover some of the deepest of the government’s expensive secrets and share them on the Internet."

Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Others watch for phenomena like the distinctive flare of sunlight glinting off bright solar panels of some telephone satellites. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists who do most of the observing....

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private group in Alexandria, Va., that tracks military and space activities, said the hobbyists exemplified fundamental principles of openness and of the power of technology to change the game.

“It has been an important demystification of these things,” Mr. Pike said, “because I think there is a tendency on the part of these agencies just to try to pretend that they don’t exist, and that nothing can be known about them."...

The Visual Satellite Observers Web site (http://www.satobs.org/satintro.html) describes the appeal of satellite spotting this way:

Amateur astronomers seeking new challenges, find that spotting faint, rapidly moving satellites, such as the tiny Vanguard 1 (America's second satellite), are comparable to spotting a distant galaxy. Tracking down a newly launched spy satellite in a secret orbit, tests analytical as well as observational skill. Observing the International Space Station transit the sun, moon or one of the planets, requires planning, perseverance, and often a bit of luck.

However, according to the Times, "The government’s relationship with the hobbyists is not a comfortable one. "

Spokesmen for the National Reconnaissance Office have stated that they would prefer the hobbyists not publish their information, and suggest that foreign countries try to hide their activities when they know an eye in the sky will be passing overhead.

The satellite spotters acknowledge that this may be so, though they doubt that such tactics are effective.... Mr. Pike said the officials who complained about the hobbyists “don’t like it, but they’ve got to lump it.” Despite the many clever ways that the spy agencies try to minimize the likelihood that their satellites will be spotted, he said, they will be. And that, he said, is a valuable warning: a world with so many eyes on the skies renders deep secrets shallow.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/science/space/05spotters.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.satobs.org/satintro.html

herbaria@home

Jess Hemerly — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:38:47 -0800

Description

From the website:

Herbaria@home is a volunteer-based project that aims to catalogue and make available the wealth of data represented by the historical herbarium collections held by universities and museums.

The idea of running a distributed project to document was first conceived in late 2005 while I was working as part of a team of volunteers working on documenting the rare plant collection of a regional museum. That project, involving the efforts of nearly 100 volunteers working on site at the musueum for over a year, to document around 10,000 specimens clearly illustrated the enormity of the task of digitising the UK's collections. It showed that the limitation on documentation was not a lack of enthusiastic documenters, but rather the problem of giving large numbers of volunteers physical access to a museum's collection, limited numbers of computers and limited space.

A radically different approach was needed...

In August 2006 the first version of the herbaria@home website was launched, as a small-scale pilot project. We photographed a set of around 2000 specimens (hybrid plants were chosen), and put them on-line. Even with minimal publicity, and with significant problems with the software, over the course over the next two months the specimens where documented. The pilot project showed that it was technically possible to photograph sheets rapidly, that online documentation worked and most importantly that there were able and enthusiastic volunteers who would be prepared to take part.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

herbaria@home

Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography

Jess Hemerly — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:48:32 -0800

Description

Abstract:

In recent months there has been an explosion of interest in using the Web to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic information provided voluntarily by individuals. Sites such as Wikimapia and OpenStreetMap are empowering citizens to create a global patchwork of geographic information, while Google Earth and other virtual globes are encouraging volunteers to develop interesting applications using their own data. I review this phenomenon, and examine associated issues: what drives people to do this, how accurate are the results, will they threaten individual privacy, and how can they augment more conventional sources? I compare this new phenomenon to science and the role of the amateur in geographic observation.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

Goodchild, Michael F. (2007). “Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography”, GeoJournal 69: 211-221

Xooglers becoming today's independent scientists

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:12:53 -0800

Description

CNet profiles a few early Google employees (or Xooglers, as ex-Google employees are caled) who are now doing other interesting things, including starting their own labs:

[Georges] Harik is investing in small companies like Wi-Fi company Meraki, and he's helping to develop a Web-based video conferencing company called Imo.im with his brother. Harkening back to his college studies of mathematical models of genetic algorithms, he's also opening a yet-to-be-named research lab in Palo Alto to develop artificial-intelligence software for the fields of biotech and medicine. He plans to invest about $100,000 in the lab this year.

[Scott Hassan's] Willow Garage, based in Menlo Park, Calif., stands out in Silicon Valley because it has no immediate ambition to make money. Rather, the mission is to make Willow Garage a hub for robotics development in the areas of personal assistants, autonomous boats, and driverless cars--with the hopes of attracting talent and partnerships across the country. The company is collaborating with Stanford in the robotics field, having donated $850,000 to its computer science lab. With Hassan's fortune, Willow Garage has plenty of time to develop new markets for robots.

This is another data-point in the emergence of the wealthy amateur as a force in science-- or at least in sciences closely allied to industries that are doing well.

Amateur, DIY, and citizen science

Source

http://www.news.com/Life-after-Google%2C-with-millions---page-2/2100-1030_3-6226900-2.html?tag=st.next
http://pimm.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/xoogler-goes-biotech/

Growing infrastructures for "citizen science" will help shape 21st century science

Hyungsub Choi — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:32:34 -0800

Description

We have thought a bit about the trend leading from the 20th century "science cities" to the 21st century "city science." This is the turn from the "Big" science and technology toward more distributed research activities. What would be the necessary infrastructure for this transition?

Jeff Johannes, medicinal chemist at a large pharmaceutical company, wrote an interesting posting on the blog Sceptical Chymist (http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/features/10_miles_from_academia/):

Independence is a really good thing. Some amazing discoveries have come from qualified people or groups that were allowed to truly explore their own ideas, free of external bias or constraints. One clear example of the power of this concept exists in the context of popular music. During the 20th century there was an explosion of diverse musical genres that continues today. Many factors contributed to this process, but one of the most important was the fact that musical instruments and recording equipment gradually became cheaper while at the same time becoming more widely available. This made music accessible to anyone who had a desire to pick up an instrument and create music. Moreover, they could use their own recording equipment to communicate their ideas to interested parties. Today, with the advent of computers and digital recording, musicians can make home recordings of a rather high quality and easily share their songs on the internet. It is truly an exciting time to be a musician.

In terms of accessibility and expense, chemistry, and most modern sciences in general, are way behind music. A budding rock star can buy a $200 guitar at a local retailer and record songs at home, but when I think of chemistry, I think of $600,000 NMRs and $100,000 LCMS stacks installed in the hallowed halls of the worlds great schools. I consider myself extremely lucky to have access to such amazing equipment. But many scientists don’t.

While modern science is more technologically complex than music, I see no fundamental limitation to increasing the accessibility and reducing the cost of doing research. I think this is one of the great challenges facing science. Inexpensive scientific instruments would empower new scientists, give more independence to existing researchers, and lead to an increase in creativity in scientific research.

The indicator to watch to see whether scientific research is indeed following the trajectory of popular music is the availability of the scientific analogue of the "$200 guitar at a local retailer." Are there efforts to lower the cost of spectrometers, DNA analyzers, and NMR machines? Why don't scientific instruments follow the path of PCs, in a way that exponentially improves size and performance?

This has implications for the Brazilian case as well, about which Alex Pang has posted a few signals. In order to have a more diffuse model of scientific activity, one would need more readily available instruments. Perhaps science version of "One Laptop Per Child"?

Signals

The Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee - Collaborative Adventure Science

Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography

Amateur cancer researcher (and patient) partners with academia and VC to prototype a cure

Public cyberinfrastructure enabling scientific hobbyists

Jerry Sheehan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:21:09 -0800

Description

Humanity has a history of using "distributed labor" to solve problems too large for any one individual. However, in the past these efforts have been limited by the "efficiency" of the best available technology accessible to the public. For example, the contextual definitions found in the Oxford English Dictionary were first assembled in the late 1800s by mailing out "word" postcards to users who would search for contextual use, document their source, and then send the postcard back to the editor. This snail-mail based infrastructure, and the breadth of the enterprise, is one of the reasons it took 49 years for the first copy of OED (initially called the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles) to be published. [1][2]

Our advanced cyberinfrastructure has gone from being in only a few leading academic research labs to being generally accessible to the public. Children now have "game machines" that surpass the computational processing power of supercomputers from the 1980s connected at broadband speeds that are an order of magnitude beyond the initial data network (NSFnet) used for scientific collaboration.

Interestingly as the technology foundation has increased so have our efforts to enlist volunteers in the scientific enterprise. These efforts have moved beyond the realm of simply using their idle computing problems (SETI@Home) to actively involving them in the scientific enterprise. Perhaps one of the more interesting projects in this regards in the Herbaria@home project. Volunteers have used a web based form to transcribe shorthand notation on 12,000 samples in the Manchester Museum into an electronic database. (see attached image for form).[3] Scientific software developers at Berekely have taken the challenge of amateur involvement seriously enough to create the Berekely Open System for Skill Aggregation (Bossa) to provide an infrastructure for distributed cyberinfrastructure based problem solving. [4][5]Hebraria@home: Screen Shot of Web Form for Herbraria

What will the growth of this public infrastructure mean for science?

First, and foremost, the spread of our advanced cyberinfrastructure to the public will increase the number of amateur scientific volunteers who will help gather, analyze, and discuss scientific data. Efforts will range from the continued donation of "spare" computational cycles from personal computing/gaming devices to active involvement in annotating specimens, uploading data from personal sensing devices, and running of experiments. The net positive impact of these efforts will be an increased scientific literacy among what could be called the scientific hobbyist.

Second, the scientific and software development community, will need to develop a variety of tools for validating amateur based observation and analysis. Apart from efforts such as BOSSA we will likely begin to see known scientific rules inoculated into expert algorithms which will identify observations that are aberrant.

Third, it is likely that a subset of scientific hobbyist will find themselves at odds with scientific professionals. This tension between public perception and expert knowledge can already be found online in an examination of anti-immunization web sites which cull selective snippets of data to prove their point. This tension will make it increasingly important for us to have open discourse on scientific topics which are accessible to the lay audience.

[1] The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester, 1998.
[2] Oxford English Dictionary Timeline, Everything2.com, Oxford English Dictionary@Everything2.com
[3]Herbaria@home stats, news and progress
[4] "Spreading the Load", The Economist, December 6, 2007.
[5] Berkeley Open System for Skills Aggregation, see BossaIntro - BOINC - Trac

Signals

herbaria@home

Berkeley Open System for Skill Aggregation

The conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement

Attila Csordas — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:51:31 -0800

Description

The idea of doing biological experiments with current biotechnological methods and conducting research projects at home is very new. There are already many names in use referring to the same concept: bioDIY, home biology, biotech DIY, garage biology.

All you people need is a short course in biotech basics, a few thousands of dollars, some tinkering capability, and enough spare time and space. The beautiful retro idea of tinkering with digital devices in a garage, conveyed by the Make magazine, can be extended to biotech too, and some projects were already published in Make backyard biology issue like the Home Molecular Genetics including DNA isolation. Recently Hugh Rienhoff amplified his daughter's DNA at home to help doctors figure out her genetic disorder.

From the Nature cover article: "So he bought a used PCR machine, a microcentrifuge, some small-volume pipettes and a brand new gel box. All told, the equipment cost him about $2,000. With these simple tools and some sequence-specific DNA primers of his own design, he could pick the relevant genes out of his daughter’s genome and amplify them enough for sequencing. Freezing the samples and packing the tiny tubes on ice, Rienhoff sent them off for sequencing at about $3.50 a pop. He prepared upwards of 200." Another proposed project is "How to isolate amniotic stem cells from the placenta, at home!" Today, stem cell therapy is just a promising possibility, but in the not so distant future, self-aware citizens may manage their own stem cells, grow them in the garage, and store them in the fridge. If so, it could be a form of autonomous medical self-insurance. The basics of in vitro cell culture, i.e. the method how to isolate and maintain cells through passages, is a simple kitchen recipe, like the algorithms of making a steak. If interested, people can do home biotech and have the right and power to work with the basic macromolecules (DNA, RNA, protein) of life and with cells too.

So what are the conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement?

Really useful projects at home not just for entertainment;
Kits available cheaply Based on the Rienhoff example, a very basic home lab can be set up out of 2-3000 dollars, the price of a good laptop;
Used network equipment-- biotech startups and academic labs with a small budget are already buying equipments and lab tools through informal networks;
Good education tools are on the web, just like 23andMe webpage in genetics and some webinars, but the detailed step-by-step and carefully checked algorithms are still missing;
Short intensive academic or industrial lab courses available for every citizen.

What are the disadvantages? John Golob asks:

Why hasn’t there been a Homebrew Molecular Biology Club? The technology behind molecular biology has arrived—equivalent to where computer components were in the mid-1970’s. Well designed commercial kits are available for just about any task.

I’ve considered posting directions on Slog, using these kits, for a variety of projects one could do at home or in a garage: make glow-in-the-dark sourdough bread, detect rodent DNA in food, check your DNA to see if you’re related to Ghengis Khan.

I’ve held off because molecular biology is inherently dangerous, much more so than building a computer or programming an Apple IIe. The same tools used to label, cut or modify experimental DNA would be glad to chew up yours—many are potent cancer-causing agents. Your glow-in-the-dark yeast could easily spread to your neighbor’s kitchen. Do you really want to know if there is rat shit in your dinner?

What are the implications of a mass biotech DIY movement?

Successful research projects at home, the rise of a massive home biotech movement, just like the hacker movement;
Outsourcing some research or routine tasks to private home labs;
Growing practical scientific knowledge in the public;
Demystifying scientific research

Personal genomics: His daughter's DNA Nature 449, 773-776 (2007) | doi:10.1038/449773a http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071017/full/449773a.html
Blogosphere: Pimm: What is bioDIY? http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/what-is-biodiy/
Pimm: How to isolate amniotic stem cells from the placenta, at home! http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/how-to-isolate-amniotic-stem-cells-from-the-placenta-at-home/
Pimm: The busy life of a stem cell (biotech) startup founder http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/the-busy-life-of-a-stem-cell-biotech-startup-founder/
From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road: The Ultimate Empowerment of The Consumer http://baris.typepad.com/venture_capitalist/2007/01/the_ultimate_em.html
Jonathan Golob: Homebrew Molecular Biology Club http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/homebrew_molecular_biology_club

Signals

The return of the wealthy amateur in science

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:06:27 -0800

Description

Two hundred years ago, the cutting edge of science in much of the Western world was dominated by wealthy amateurs-- people with strong interests and science and technology, who possessed the means to finance their own research, undertake expeditions, or conduct fieldwork and experiments as part of their business. They may be coming back.

Wealthy Victorian amateurs were able to build institutions that rivaled national laboratories or observatories. According to one book on 19th-century British science, during the Victorian era

The wealthy amateur... had "the power of taking up any subject he pleases, pursuing it so long as he believes in the possibility of success." Free from the burdens of routine and possessed of "sufficient instrumental means," they could be innovators and risk-takers, moving into promising areas with new tools and abandoning worked-out fields before the professionals moved in.

These "experimental gentleman" (as they were sometimes called in British circles) or "gentlemanly specialists" (as Martin Rudwick termed them in his classic The Great Devonian Controversy) were pushed to the margins of science in the late nineteenth century, thanks largely to two factors: the professionalization of science, which made it more difficult for amateurs of all stripes to make serious contributions to science; and the growth of government support for science.

The phenomenon of "venture philanthopy," and the broader movement of new money into foundations and charitable giving, is well-documented. Often this money is targeted at specific research areas-- brain science, aging, space flight-- and is notable for being able to work without the constraints of government agencies or traditional foundations. To this we can add developments suggesting that the wealthy amateur may be making a comeback. Some data-points:

Wayne Rosing, the former chief engineer for Google (and a former Apple and Sun executive) is backing the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, a global network of robotic telescopes that will allow for unbroken observation of astronomical phenomena.
Craig Venter sailed his Sorcerer II around the world, following the route of the HMS Challenger, performing genomic analyses of microorganisms.
Jeff Hawkins founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute.
Steve Jurvetson has become interested in rocketry.
David Shaw is building a supercomputer to molecular simulation.
Elon Musk (Paypal alum) is one of the prime movers behind the Space X initiative.

Other successful entrepreneurs have started foundations that support innovative and interdisciplinary research:

Fred Kavli, the Norwegian-born entrepreneur, has (through the Kavli Foundation) endowed fifteen research institutes around the world, in nanoscience, neuroscience, and theoretical physics.
Research In Motion founder Mike Lazaridis endowed the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is now a major center for research on cosmology, quantum gravity, and particle physics.

Some are choosing not to compete directly with government or university labs, but instead are focusing on under-exploited or risky fields where they can make a faster, bigger impact.

In this respect, wealthy amateurs resemble contemporary art collectors: as art advisor Philippe Segalot recently explained, the market-shaping collectors are "highly competitive. They want to surpass the best museums, and by collecting contemporary art you can do that, because you are quicker, richer, and more reactive-- you don't need a board of trustees to approve what you buy."

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18383/

Kavli Foundation: http://www.kavlifoundation.org/
Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network: http://lcogt.net/information
Perimeter Institute: http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/
Alex Pang, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) [Google Books].

Signals

Should the government start handing out prizes for science breakthroughs?

Xooglers becoming today's independent scientists

New Privately-Financed Supercomputer for Molecular Simulation

Hedge fund-university partnerships

Hedge funds: new cool places for basic science?

Google Earth: Geodata everywhere, for everyone

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:31:16 -0700

Description

Google Earth may do for geographical information, and users' ability to understand the spatial dimensions of information, what the early Web browser did for the World Wide Web. Google Earth allows users to view geographically-coded information atop satellite photos of the Earth, and create new place-specific information that can be shared with other users. The rapid growth in Google Earth's popularity suggests comparison with the early 1990s, and the Mosaic and Netscape browsers.

In both cases, growth was driven largely by word-of-mouth and enthusiastic early adopters. Likewise, popular uptake was supported by the conversion of large quantities of extant information (digital texts and pictures in the 1990s, geocoded data in the 2000s). Finally, in both cases, user-driven innovation was seen as a significant driver of growth, or even a potentially revolutionary disruptor.

In the near future, Google Earth may move from the early adopter phase, and will attract both conventional content providers (e.g., publishers, governments), and communities of ordinary users. (Unlike the Web, however, Google Earth seems unlikely to promote visions of "virtual worlds" or electronic communities that replace real-world ones.) As with the Internet, it is also likely to give rise to experiments in malicious activity, as well as new forms of activism and political protest.

http://www.ogleearth.com/

Signals

Welcome to DIY (do it on yourself) biological research

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:43:20 -0700

Description

Last year Attila Csordas told bio-DIYers, "do not hesitate:"

[I]n the not so distant future, self-aware citizens may manage their own stem cells, grow them in the garage, and store them in the fridge. It could be a form of autonomous medical self-insurance.

Incredible as it may sound, the basics of molecular biology - what is DNA, how genetic information is coded, how it turns to RNA, which base triplets fits to which amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, that make up your body - can be learnt within 2 hours. Another intensive two weeks in an official lab with an instructor and you can work with them.

Csordas argues that if you can learn the basics of PCR and in vitro cell culture, you can do it.

Baris Karadogan (at From Istanbul to Sand Hill Road) draws out some implications:

Welcome to open source science, welcome to do it yourself biology.... With so much information on the Internet and such ready access to scientific data, what Attila wrote about could very well be commonplace in 5-10 years. This is a world where people could be "playing around" with their own biology. I see two big impacts right away.

First, tinkering is the best way to invent things, and this would really push the envelope in scientific and practical discovery. Second, if you think governments are having a hard time figuring out the laws to govern file sharing, let's see how they'll deal with "amateur genetic engineering". This will be a huge issue. Imagine people coming up with "user generated biotechnology".

Attila Csordas, http://attilachordash.newsvine.com/_news/2006/04/23/155889-biotech-diyers-do-not-hesitate
Baris Karadogan, http://baris.typepad.com/venture_capitalist/2007/01/the_ultimate_em.html