Scientificals Design Inc. "Bringing Biology To Life" "The Art of Science"

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About Scientificals

Scientificals is the Alter-Ego of Mishtu Banerjee. While Harmeny is tightly focussed on software development, Scientificals is the place where I hone my skills, develop professionally and take on those projects that personally fascinate me, but lie outside the main-line of Harmeny's concerns. As a company, Scientificals reflects Mishtu's consultancy and research interests in several areas, which tend to refract into each other: (my current interests are ordered by inverse geekiness)

• Computationally Augmented Exploratory Data Analysis (CAEDA). Exploratory Data Analysis focusses on dealing with robust and resistant methods of analyzing information. With the advent of computer intensive techniques, we can begin to combine the unique machine advantages of computationally intensive techniques with the unique human advantages of intuition and insight. In particular I am fascinated with ways of merging the computationally intensive techniques from what is currently called "data-mining" with the graphic design and visual elements emphasized in Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. That is, the use of information from data analysis, visually presented to make a case. Whether the case be scientific, business, or law.

• Developmental Systems. Put recursively, Developmental Systems are systems who's change with time, changes with time. We encounter such systems in ecological succession, finance, epidemiology. My interests, with shadings of CAEDA is on the general features of such systems; how they may be represented in models, and procedures for analysis. Much of the my interest in developmental systems finds its way back into the design principles used in the software I develop for Harmeny. See DevelopmentalSystems for articles by various collaborators working in this area.

• Scientificals -- The Art of Science. Specifically, to bring the beauty and fascination of biology to the general public. This is the merging of my love of writing and my love of biology. This has been done via projects on nature photography, various forms of science writing. One of my favourite Scientificals projects, "The Native Woody Plant Seed Collection Guide" produced several years ago with Kim Creasey and Diane Douglas is available through Queen's Printers of BC. Throughout the Harmeny TWiki, you'll find a mix of my art and my technical writing (I'll put up more native plant art soon). You'll also find poetry, opinions, dirges. The occassional rant.

• HackLaw. The world of Hackers and the world of Law keeps intersecting, in various curious and socially important ways. Law is normative by it's very nature, seeking to the past for case history, and precedent. Much of what is being created by Hackers has little history and precedent -- and thus the law surrounding it is unclear. My interest in the interface between Hackers and Law came initially through my interest in copy-right and patent law is it related to software I had developed. The Open Source movement, and the writings of Richard Stallman, forced me to think about the social implications. How do you balance "Freedom to Create" against, SPAM, Internet Pornography, Viruses and Spyware? How do you balance the anonymous nature of many internet oriented activities against the need for responsibility -- particularly in the case of harm. In a world of internet-enhanced-anonymity who is harmed, and by whom? Law surrounding the internet is fascinating because a legal question instantly refracts into a series of social, moral and technical concerns -- bringing together the lawyer, the hacker, and the philosopher (hmm, that sounds like an idea for a new t.v. series).

If you would like to discuss research, technical writing, or analysis in any of the above areas, drop me a line at mishtu@harmeny.com

Scientificals Topics

Click the EDIT TABLE button (below), click on ADD ROW, and start a new "topic" by filling in the table. A topic name is made up of at least two capitalized words, joined into one word. i.e. ILovePizza. After you have entered a name and description, press save table. Your topic name will appear with a question mark after it. Like this: MyTopicName^?. Click on the question mark to start entering information into your new topic. Enjoy!

-- Original: MishtuBanerjee - 30 Jul 2004

-- Updated: MishtuBanerjee - 29 Oct 2004