The second episode on metadata and brokering. Topics covered: 1. additional definitions, including ontology, relational databases, and related concepts; 2. the broader picture: what the data fabric is, data-fabric elements from the Research Data Alliance (RDA), and possible concrete implementations of RDA guidelines.
…but so do the men, children, elderly people… in short, everyone, including us: me and Lucignolo, my trusted guide on trips abroad. So the question is: why all this special attention to the calf muscle? Is it a Portuguese trait? Maybe. Is it simply my obsession? Yes, it is, but that is another matter. Is it this year’s fashion? I do not think so. The answer is that this attention to that part of the body is rooted in an initially painful experience: imagine arriving in the morning from the airport by public transport, armed with a trolley suitcase, yes, the good old days of the Interrail backpack are over, and discovering that the road from the tram to the accommodation rises in an almost vertical direction. At first it looks like a sloping street full of cobblestones. Then you realize that the cobblestones, sworn enemies of the trolley suitcase, which must be carried on the shoulder if you do not want to destroy the wheels, gradually give way to an endless series of steps. ...
I recently discovered the #italiasicura portal, which is described as The map of construction sites for hydrogeological risk mitigation, new open data on works against landslides and floods municipality by municipality, and the status of emergencies region by region. It seems to me an interesting tool from several points of view. Of course, it is also a political operation meant to show what the government is doing. Without entering into that debate, however, it still looks like a well-made tool, with interesting statistics. For example, did you know that damage to public and private assets amounts to around 3 billion euros? ...
RDA stands for Research Data Alliance. It is a valuable community of people meeting and working together to do for data something close to what led to the establishment of the TCP/IP stack in the 1970s. In a scenario where no agreed directives exist for managing, using, reusing, producing, storing, and curating data, RDA aims to bring order and structure. It has therefore organized discussions, Requests for Comments (RFCs), best-practice recommendations, guideline documents, and other ongoing initiatives. ...
This presentation introduces: A path towards the implementation of a metadata-driven brokering system for integrating data from geological databases at INGV.
“Equity-based crowdfunding” refers to cases in which an online investment is used to purchase an actual equity stake in a company: in this case, the “reward” for the funding consists of the full set of financial and administrative rights deriving from participation in the business. This is how the CONSOB guide to equity crowdfunding begins. It is intended for anyone interested in the startup world, perhaps even planning to launch one, who wants to understand where to start. ...
From “La Fucina di Idee” - a blog about ideas, crowdfunding, creativity, and more. Good morning everyone! I have to say that this blog has grown much faster than I expected. At first, inspired by Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, I threw myself into the world of ideas, crowdfunding, and startups. I started following some of the main actors in the crowdfunding scene, but above all I tried to understand how it worked, collecting resources and documents along the way. ...
As a major solid Earth science infrastructure, EPOS was recently included in the EGI Competence Centers call, where it will develop a pilot to test selected EGI technologies, including solutions for implementing AAAI. My article in the EGI newsletter briefly explains what EPOS is and outlines possible areas of collaboration with EGI. Link to the online article Link to the full EGI newsletter issue (PDF)
Because of my job at INGV, where I am involved in the major EPOS European Project, I spend a lot of time reading papers, blog posts, and other resources, not to mention discussing with great colleagues, all dealing with the central subject of system interoperability. Actually, the real topic for me is interoperability, whose meanings vary across the fields of knowledge, and life, in which we use the concept. In the social sciences we may call it interculturality or interculturalism. In economics, we might call it price, the mechanism that enables exchange of goods. But that is another story, and I think the idea is clear. ...
This photo deserves to be at the center of the page. It is memorable. Why? I will explain immediately: anyone with a scientific eye will already have understood that I was presenting a poster. I was at EGU in Vienna. The guy next to me, wearing purple trousers, a black shirt, a black silk scarf with white doves, and a biker-style jacket, and I assure you that the hair is not a wig but real 1970s hair, may look like a hippie picked up at the last minute from the city streets. In reality, he is a great mind, and is seriously at risk of becoming my IT guru: his name is Keith J. Jeffery. He is a true heavyweight in European IT architectures, with many titles. An excerpt from one of his bios says: “Keith Jeffery is currently Director of IT and International Strategy of STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council), based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK.” He also holds various other titles, director here, president there, has worked on Grid, now works on Cloud, and many other interesting things that I will skip. ...