Monthly Archives: March 2014

How The Rise Of The "R" Computer Language Is Bringing Open Source To Science

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Thanks to dwindling research budgets and the rising cost of science software, "open science" advocates may be succeeding at getting science to go open source. And it's thanks in part to a little-known language called R.

R is free, open source statistical analysis software. Privately owned tools like MATLAB, the mathematical computing software, and SAS, the statistical tool, have historically been necessary tools in labs, much the way Microsoft Office was in offices. But the ballooning cost of the software and dwindling research budgets have prompted scientists to turn to R instead.

Now a growing number of researchers have joined the R development community to create new libraries that branch away from statistical analysis and into parsing the growing quantity of scientific articles and data that find their way online. And it could change the way we do science in a major way.

Today, researchers use open source software to analyze data. And the R language is the de facto enabler for this trend, thanks to its early mainstay as a statistical analysis tool within scientific circles.

I first started using R back in 2005 when I was doing my PhD, and it was a very obscure language that very few people knew and that we used for statistics, says Dr. Ted Hart, a member of the core development team of the rOpenSci project, which develops R packages for scientists.

Most people I knew back then used SAS. It was just a giant, old, programming language, kind of like Fortran. Its analyzed line by line and whatnot, he says.

But when Hart started his post-doc in 2011, the lab where he did research only used R. It was taught by this evolutionary biologist, Dolph Schluter. Every grad student I knew used it, as opposed to when I was a grad student. And I think I was the only one [who didnt use R] in my department. So Ive seen that growth take off, says Hart.

Martin Fenner, the technical lead of the article-level metrics project at the scientific publisher PLoS, agrees. Theres just a lot of R, and everybody is just learning this as a student and is doing some sort of statistics, Fenner says.

Another benefit of R is that it costs no money and requires less administrative hurdles than would be needed to obtain licenses for large software packages, like SAS or MATLAB.

I work at a government agency, and I dont think I can get access to MATLAB. I would have to write a long text justifying the expense for MATLAB. And somebody says, Well you can just use this tool for free. Why are you arguing for MATLAB? says Hart.

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How The Rise Of The "R" Computer Language Is Bringing Open Source To Science

Cryptocurrency News: Recent price fluctuation of BitCoin funding most major BitCoin Startups – Video

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Cryptocurrency News: Recent price fluctuation of BitCoin funding most major BitCoin Startups
Put You BitCoin to work, Cloud mine now: https://cex.io/r/0/cryptomarket/0/ This video will discuss the recent price fluctuations of BitCoin in relation to b...

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Cryptocurrency News: Recent price fluctuation of BitCoin funding most major BitCoin Startups - Video

Edward Snowden’s Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues News Conference March 25, 2014 – Video

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Edward Snowden #39;s Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues News Conference March 25, 2014
Video of News Conference: March 25, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley and Norman Solomon spoke at this news con...

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Edward Snowden's Passport, Political Asylum and Related Issues News Conference March 25, 2014 - Video

White House cyber chief: Snowden damage will be felt for decades

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Damage to U.S. national security caused by NSA contractor Edward Snowden will take decades to repair, the White House official in charge of cyber security said Friday.

Make no mistake: We are going to be dealing with the fallout from that for all of your careers, and the impact that that has had on our national security will reverberate for decades, Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president for cyber security, told Naval Academy midshipmen.

Daniel, in a speech to the academys Center for Cyber Security Studies, also said the Obama administration has adopted a passive approach to offensive and retaliatory cyber attacks against nation states and criminal hackers caught attacking U.S. networks. Cyber attacks are a tool of last resort after diplomacy and law enforcement means are tried, he said.

We are going to prioritize network defense and law enforcement before conducting offensive cyber attacks, Daniel said in a wide-ranging speech.

The presidential cyber security official also said the administration opposes placing control of the Internet under foreign governments, despite a recent announcement that the federal government will give up authority over the Internet name server group.

Instead, the administration favors what Daniel called a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance involving both governments and the private sector that would protect free speech and dissidents.

Snowden, currently under the protection of the Russian government, stole an estimated 1.7 million classified NSA documents using his access as a computer administrator and by fooling several NSA employees into providing their passwords.

Snowden compromised sensitive accesses used by the National Security Agency to conduct electronic spying, along with techniques and tools that are no longer available to us, Daniel said, without elaborating.

Daniel said he has spent a huge amount of time over the past year trying to figure out how to plug the holes that Mr. Snowden revealed that we have in the security of our classified networks.

Other classified NSA systems are being rebuilt and the Snowden affair also has undermined efforts to focus on other pressing cyber security and national security issues, he said.

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White House cyber chief: Snowden damage will be felt for decades