'From Tree to Sea [5] - The Bare Necessities' c/o BBC R4

My name is not Robinson Crusoe, but I feel privileged to live on an island. The sea has always been close. Liverpool (Scouser) has a history, to celebrate and seek forgiveness for. It was a surprise and yet wasn't from the map in the Bluecoat of the slave ships that plied the route to West Africa, to the West Indies and USA to see the same reflections in the dock area of Nantes in May 2025.

These reflections followed a BBC Radio 4 programme this afternoon (one of a series):

5. From Tree to Sea - The Bare Necessities

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002ztzy

'We are living in turbulent times and it is easy to feel anxious about the state of the world. The pace of change is fast, and the future often seems uncertain and out of our control. Given our reliance on technology, any sort of outage could be catastrophic. Could you survive - and thrive - in a world without global supply chains, the internet and 24-hour energy?

In this series the writer Dan Richards seeks out the tradition bearers and carriers of ancient knowledge who actively choose to live in close connection with the natural world around them. A return to first principles of what it means to be human and the kind of people you would like to be around if things fell apart.

Dan heads to Whithorn in Dumfries and Galloway where he meets Traditional Boat Builder Gail McGarva who is putting the finishing touches to a skiff before its launch. Gail has gathered knowledge of the ancient craft of wooden boat building through her relationship with tradition bearers and mentors, without whom the knowledge would disappear completely. What Dan finds is that this small wooden boat represents not only an evolution of form and process, but soul. The souls of all who have gone before and how they might influence a sustainable future with community at the heart of it.'

In making the skiff there is a marvellous observation about:

 "when the boat hits the water it knows what to do ..".

For students entering a profession or trade (any) that strikes a chord.

ERCIM News No. 144 Special theme: "Advancing Open Science"

 

Dear ERCIM News reader,

ERCIM News 144 is now online [in PDF also]! This issue is dedicated to Advancing Open Science. Open Science is becoming an essential part of the European research landscape, shaping how knowledge, data, software, infrastructures and results are shared, reused and sustained.

The contributions collected in this special theme offer a cross-section insight into the current European effort to make research more open, transparent, collaborative and reusable.

This special theme was coordinated by our guest editors Leonardo Candela (CNR-ISTI) and Roberto Di Cosmo (Inria and University Paris Cité).

Includes: [PJ]

Rethinking Researcher Profiles in the Research Assessment Transition Era: The OpenAIRE Approach. pp.9-10.

P. Manghi, et al., “OpenAIRE Graph Dataset (10.6.0) [Data set]”, OpenAIRE.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17725827

BibTexViz: Visualizing Research Productivity with Open Science Data. pp.10-12.

D. Hicks, et al., “The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics”, Nature 520, 429-431, 2015.
https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a
T. Munzner, “Visualization Analysis and Design”, CRC Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1201/b17511
M. Zaumanis, “Research Data Visualization and Scientific Graphics: For Papers, Presentations and Proposals”, Peer Recognized, 2021.

MOEBA-BIO: An Open and Extensible Framework for Evolutionary Biclustering in Biomedicine. pp.17-19.

Co-Creation as Infrastructure for Open Science Data Spaces. pp.24-25.

A Osterheider, et al., “Conceptualization of the Understanding of Participation and Co-Creation in Interdisciplinary Research Groups developing Digital Health Technology: An Exploratory Study: Conceptualization of the Understanding of Participation and Co-Creation”, Mensch und Computer 2023, 534–538, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603555.3608572

LICORICE: Deploying Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Europe’s Digital Sovereignty. pp.30-31.

D4Science: An Enabling Infrastructure for Open Science. pp.38-39.

D. Schaap, M. Assante, et al., “Blue-Cloud: Exploring and demonstrating the potential of Open Science for ocean sustainability,” in Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Metrology for the Sea; Learning to Measure Sea Health Parameters (MetroSea), IEEE, 2022, pp. 198–202, doi:10.1109/MetroSea55331.2022.9950819.

Next Issue - No. 145

Special Theme: E-values: Statistical Testing for the 21st Century

Call for Contributions

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[ Posted from Marrakech 17th-27th April ]