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Midlothian Council fined for data breach
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has imposed a monetary penalty of £140,000 on Midlothian Council for disclosing sensitive personal data relating to children and their carers to the wrong recipients on five separate occasions. The penalty is the first that the ICO has served against an organisation in Scotland.
Dundee is Tissue Bank founder
The University of Dundee/NHS Tayside is one of four collaborating centre sites where breast cancer tissue samples can be donated, along with blood samples and information about the donor’s breast cancer in a revolutionary new central bank.
LiDAR geodata comes online
A highly accurate 3D map of Britain made available online by aerial mapping company Bluesky is created using data from aircraft mounted lasers that transmit light pulses that bounce off the earth’s surface the 3D map covers most of England and Wales, including all major towns and floodplains. Nothing there for Scotland? Not so!
Scotland needs its own Geospace
GeoPlace is one of two winners of the Best Project Delivery category at the 2011 UK Public Sector Digital Awards for the development and delivery of the National Address Gazetteer Database, alongside Surrey County Council for their separate e-safeguarding project. It follows on their European Award. But interestingly Scotland is not in the database. Great opening for a smart Scottish SME operation.
NISIC wipes out NBII
The USA National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is being terminated A new database, the National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC), has been added. If you wish to receive NISIC Alerts access your Alerts account and add it to your selected Alerts source
Data Analysis: Google lure for data journalism
Last November, Google announced its support for a new Data Journalism competition, organised by the Global Editors Network. The competition is now open to submissions and a London event detailed on how to compete and win a total of six prizes worth €45,000. Hopefully even if the UK makes a poor fist at it this time, it will encourage higher teaching associations specialising in journalism to push at data analysis and social network analysis tools and skills.
Ocean dataset available
FIND Maps UK's advanced online mapping website for professionals, is now authorised to deliver OceanWise marine datasets. These comprise an international range of Geo referenced Raster GeoTiffs as well as OceanWise Marine Themes (GIS compatible vector data).
Genetics: 24% intelligence impact
Scientists have estimated for the first time the extent to which genes determine changes in intelligence across the human life course and find that genetic factors may account for about 24% of changes in intelligence between childhood and old age.
Scottish Waterways goes with Amor Group
British Waterways Scotland is to develop a new ICT system over the next three years choosing Amor Group in a deal worth £2.3m. This comes in light of the organisation’s imminent separation from waterways organisation in the rest of the UK.
Can 2012 undersea Scotland beat 2011 rarities?
A rare species of fish described as “faceless and brainless” was among the unusual finds made by marine scientists off Britain’s coast during 2011, according to a recent Scottish government report. Amphioxuus is a prehistoric species, reaching two inches length and with no fins, recorded off Orkney.
EMEC trials vital energy storage
The 100ft underwater turbine, the world’s first tidal power array has been successfully installed in the seas off Orkney, signalling just one more in an enormous portfolio of activities of in which the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney is involved, and also involves energy storage trials.
IBM's global beaver into analytics
To address growing market demand for analytics savvy graduates, IBM is working with world universities to bring advanced analytics training directly to the classroom. It is expanding its academic initiatives for business analytics with new programs in China, India, Ireland and Scotland, to helping students keep pace with today's competitive job market by gaining skills in this fast-growing field of technology.
Glasgow portal for business bids
The Glasgow Business Portal is a new website set up to help Scottish businesses compete for at least £1bn worth of public and private sector contracts in Glasgow over the next few years. Launched at Celtic Park by city council leader Gordon Matheson it is based on Commonwealth Games Business Portal platform, which has drawn more than 17,000 registrations over the past two years.
SEPA CEO James Curran
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has appointed Professor James Curran MBE, currently Director of Science and Strategy to take over the Chief Executive from its current incumbent Dr Campbell Gemmel, who takes up a new CEO role at the Environment Protection Authority in South Australia
Highways Agency maps with Mayrise
The Mayrise Systems software being used by Balfour Beatty Mott Macdonald for managing their Highways Agency street lighting contract in south east England helps identify and record faults, delivering a timely and efficient maintenance and repair programme and provide accurate management reporting.
Biometric information interchange: data format
A revised biometric standard published in November, "Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information" vastly expands types and amount of information that forensic scientists can share across their international networks to identify victims or solve crimes.
Innovation: lightweight oxygen generator
A lightweight oxygen generator, developed to save lives on the frontline has won the award for Best Collaboration in the category of Defence and Security at The Engineer Technology and Innovation Awards 2011 for Cambridge Design Partnership, in conjunction with the Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE).
European values mapped
The second edition of Atlas of European Values, (€139) is available from 6 December 2011 has been published by Brill and in more than 200 maps, diagrams and charts, shows how the people in 45 European countries think about religion, immigration, sexuality, democracy, work, family, gender relations and morality. Contrasted with the first edition (below) gives insight into what values are changing.
Landscape database pilot
In a pilot phase, a 13-month project will focus on two areas of Britain including part of the High Speed 2 (HS2) rail link between London and the West Midlands for a new online map that aims to reveal the geographical blueprint of Britain, courtesy of collaborative geographers who will work to demonstrate not only the breadth of research available, but also begin to help identify where there are knowledge gaps.
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