science

Chemistry is not the most open field of scientific endeavor; in fact, as I began working more in the area (coming from a background in physics), I was surprised with the norms in the field. As a PhD student way back in 2003, I simply wanted to draw a 3D molecular structure on my operating system of choice (Linux), and be able to save an image for a paper/poster discussing my research.

This proved to be nearly impossible, and in 2005 a group of like-minded researchers got together at a meeting of the American Chemical Society and formed an unorganization: The Blue Obelisk (named after their meeting place in San Diego).

There is now no question that genomics, the study of the genomes of organisms and a field that includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms, has joined the big data club. The development of prolific new DNA sequencing technologies is forcing biologists to embrace the dizzying terms of terabytes, petabytes and, looming on the horizon, exabytes.

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Sunglass, a platform for collaborating on 3D projects in real time, and DIYRockets, a global space company helping humanity establish a civilazation in space by building an open space frontier, are partnering in an effort to build rocket engines. » Read more

Pete Herzog began an article he wrote for opensource.com last year about Hacker Highschool by saying:

It might sound strange, but every industry and profession could benefit from an employee as creative, resourceful, and motivated as a hacker. 

You see, Pete is not only motivated by what open source and open thinking can do to change our world, he is moved by it. He tell us that his passions change every few years, but always revolve around open source. 

Right now, he's working on an open source project called: Smarter Safer Better, a study and research (what he calls, neuro-hacking) on trust. Read more about his work on the subject: What They Don't Teach You in "Thinking Like the Enemy" Classes and Mind Control.

The Obama administration recently responded to a petition asking the government to "require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research."

I first heard about the petition on Google+, and am very proud to be signature #52. Back then 25,000 signatures seemed like a tall order for what is a somewhat niche area. In the end, the petition gained over 65,000 signatures and an official response from the White House. The Open Science Federation posted a screen capture of the 25,000th signature landmark on June 3, 2012. John Wilibanks started the petition with signature #1.

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FOSDEM, held annually in Brussels, Belgium, is a free event for open source communities to meet, share ideas, and collaborate. It offers a mix of focused devrooms and themed main track talks, with no requirement for registration. It has a reputation of being highly developer-focused, this year brought together over 5,000 geeks from around the world.

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Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.—Aaron Swartz

I have been a PhD student for less than two years. On the other hand, for six years, I have been a member of the free culture movement, which emphasizes the importance of access to and openness of technology and information. » Read more

Scientific software tools have long lived in the conflict zone between open source ideals and proprietary exploitation. The values of science (openness, transparency, and free exchange) are at odds with the desires of individuals and organizations to transition scientific tools to a commercial product. This has been a problem in neuropsychology and neuroscience for decades, and extends outside the bounds of software.

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Over the last months, I became more and more aware of the "open" movement. "Open" as in open access, open source, open data, open science. » Read more