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Via twitter, I saw a very cynical remark about asking questions after a scientific lecture with a flow diagram discouraging most people to ask anything at all. This does not at all correspond to my experience organizing symposia and conferences. Most of the time, questions are very welcome, and people are way too shy to share their visions. I therefore made a rebuttal in the form of the following flow diagram which I think is a better representation of the line of thought to follow.
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Some of the computing services at universities become paid services. And the primary reaction in the science groups often is a fight because the realistic costs of operating the existing infrastructure are high. And if the fight does not work, there is a flight towards running decentralized infrastructure. This can look cheaper but maintenance and incident control are rarely accounted for.
We will need good documentation to convince people of the true costs of the alternatives. It is such a waste if the rare time of good bioinformatics experts is spent on inefficient server management.
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Computer infrastructure used in universities is not part of a market, let alone of a "transparent market" in which everyone has a clear view on what alternatives exist and what their relative merits and costs are.
Nobody in a university research group finds it strange to pay for pens and paper.
Nobody in a research group finds it strange to pay for state-of-the art lab equipment.
But very often computer services have been offered for free. Like water, and electricity, they have been discounted into general costs of running the university.
This situation is unsustainable in a world in which life-science research becomes driven by big data. And it also becomes unsustainable in a world where large storage and computer infrastructure suitable for routine jobs can be rented commercially.
The sustainable way to the future is to properly budget for data handling and storage. Budgeting for computing needs means people are required to balance cost and value, like with every other aspect of a research project.
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Chemistry as a noun has two completely distinct meanings in every day life:
- A good social relationship:
"It was visible that there was chemistry between those two people"
- Something related to a compound that is supposedly bad for people or the environment. "Chemical" is often used as synomymous with poisonous:
"A chemical leaked from the container into the sea, endangering the fish"
How come these two meanings of the same word have such extremely different connotations? After all, the scientific word chemistry represents any kind of reaction between two compounds and does not have any positive nor negative meaning in itself. Water is a chemical. Life is chemistry.
As a chemist, I wish I could change the negative connotation of molecular chemistry in the news. But if I really do not succeed, maybe I can influence the social meaning of chemistry to make things consistent:
"There was chemistry between those two! When they first met, she tried to poison him. As soon as he recovered he exploded in anger."
Somehow I feel this would not be as satisfying.
[image credit: Nic McPhee on flickr]
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The #conference hall for the Galaxy community Conference in Lunteren is #packed! #usegalaxy
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Many people went outside for lunch at the #nbic #conference…. But it is still quiet. Have they disappeared in the woods? #summer
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I've never seen as many post-its as on the brainstorm day for Open PHACTS in Manchester. #work #openphacts #conference #postit