Abductive Reasoning

The speed at which any given scientific discipline advances will depend on how well its researchers collaborate with one another, and with technologists, in areas of eScience such as databases, workflow management, visualization, and cloud computing technologies. In The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, the collection of essays expands on the vision of pioneering computer scientist Jim Gray for a new, fourth paradigm of discovery based on data-intensive science and offers insights into how it can be fully realized. "The impact of Jim Gray's thinking is continuing to get people to think in a new way about how data and software are redefining what it means to do science." "I often tell people working in eScience that they aren't in this field because they are visionaries or super-intelligent--it's because they care about science and they are alive now.

Several institutions are embroiled in a legal dispute over the foundational patent rights to CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, and it may take years for their competing claims to be resolved (1–4). But even before ownership of the patents is finalized, the institutions behind CRISPR have wasted no time capitalizing on the huge market for this groundbreaking technology by entering into a series of license agreements with commercial enterprises (see the figure). With respect to the potentially lucrative market for human therapeutics and treatments, each of the key CRISPR patent holders has granted exclusive rights to a spinoff or "surrogate" company formed by the institution and one of its principal researchers (5, 6). Although this model, in which a university effectively outsources the licensing and commercialization of a valuable patent portfolio to a private company, is not uncommon in the world of university technology transfer, we suggest it could rapidly bottleneck the use of CRISPR technology to discover and develop useful human therapeutics.

Bacteria have developed a defense system based on DNA sequences known as CRISPR (Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats – thank God for acronyms). The Cas protein envelopes the bacteriophage and unzips its DNA, the CRISPR RNA attaches to its matching DNA segment in the phage and the Cas protein cuts the DNA at that location. It can remove precisely defined gene segments or replace genes that cause problems with genes that don't. The most important consequence of the discovery of these anti-CRISPR proteins is that they provide a security system that allows research into genetic engineering using CRISPR-Cas9 to proceed with less chance of a mistake causing harm.

This photo provided by Ashland County Sheriff Office shows Shawn M. Grate. Grate, was arrested Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, in Ashland, Ohio in connection to the investigation of a rescued abductee and the discovery of the remains of two people in the home where he was arrested.

For example, geospatial abduction can pinpoint the location of a bear's cave using the coordinates of animal's droppings, or a serial killer's address using the coordinates of known killings. An AI system that Shakarian co-designed with scientists from the University of Maryland (called called SCARE-S2, for Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine System 2), was able to locate insurgent leaders and their major supply depots. Towards the end of July 2016, they passed MIST's coordinate guesses on to the police in Santa Fe. According to the research published by Shakarian and Snyder, a team using MIST can find a missing person average two days faster than a team without it.

The Wageningen University & Research Library Catalogue contains a.o. the titles of the books and journals held by the participating libraries. Journal articles are not included in this database. Subjects covered include Agrotechnology, Food and Food Production, Plant and Animal Sciences, Soil Science, Geo-information, Landscape and Spatial Planning, Water and Climate, Ecosystem Studies, Economics and Society.