Digital Frontiers’ Doug Bernard is out of the office at the moment, but DF would like to draw your attention to a few stories elsewhere on voanews.com. The first is from Dorian Jones in Istanbul, and this story describes a web trend in Turkey:
Turkey already bans more websites than any other European country. Now the government is set to introduce new controls that officials say are needed to protect children. Critics fear they represent an effort control the web.
The Turkish government calls its new Internet controls Safe Use of the Internet. They are scheduled to take effect in August and will require all Internet users to choose from one of four filter profiles operated by their server provider. Law Professor Yamman Akdeniz at Bilgi University in Istanbul says the measures open the door to government censorship of the Internet.
“We are concerned that the government [will] enforce and develop a censorship infrastructure,” said Akdeniz. “Even the standard profile is a filter system and the problem is government mandated, government controlled and there are no other countries within the EU or Council of Europe that has a similar system. And the decision also states if anyone who tries to circumvent the system, further action may be taken.”
In another story on voanews.com, Curt Nickisch looks at how a social network for scientists aims to use the technology to speed up scientific progress:
Social networks like Facebook allow users to keep in up with their friends. Now, a social network for scientists hopes to use the technology to speed up scientific progress.
As he worked on a medical imaging experiment a few years ago, Harvard researcher Ijad Madisch kept running into problems. It could have been the algorithms he was using or the way he set up the experiment but, whatever it was, something wasn’t quite right.
“These are the small things, which in science, you know, cost you a lot of time,” says Madisch.
His advisor didn’t know why the experiment wasn’t working. Nobody in his lab worked on the same stuff and none of his researcher friends could help.
“I was so frustrated. I said there has to be something online where I go, where people can present themselves as a scientist, and where they put their information about their research and their publications and you can search for it.”
That’s when Madisch got the idea for a social network for scientists.
And VOA is also reporting on the use of satellite technology in human rights cases:
In May of 2009, when the Sri Lankan army had insurgent Tamil Tiger forces flanked in the country’s Northeast, analyst Lars Bromley pored over two sets of satellite imagery for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had turned to AAAS because they were concerned about the safety of civilians. Two sets of images were captured – one at the start of a heavy battle on May 6, and one when fighting abated on May 10. Bromley says visible shell craters offered possible evidence Sri Lanka was firing into an area it had designated as a civilian safety zone.
“We were basically able to basically locate multiple mortar locations that corresponded with the locations of the craters and the pattern of the ejecta [material ejected] from the craters. They were Sri Lankan Army positions,” he said.
Some stories we’re following for you around voanews.com.