Medicine 2.0 Conference

May 21, 2009 by

September 16/17th, 2009 in Toronto …

…also known as the World Congress on Social Networking and Web 2.0 Applications in Medicine, Health, Health Care, and Biomedical Research.

The conference program includes aspects of “Web 2.0 Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies as well as semantic web and virtual reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups”.

Filed under Upcoming Conference

Largest US biomedical research coalition on Facebook and Twitter

May 21, 2009 by

One more: The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) reaches out for researchers that are more “dependent on electronic media”. According to Nature FASEB  already has 44 Twitter followers and 45 ‘fans’ on its Facebook site .

Filed under Communications, Research Networking, Social Networking, Twitter

New Clinical and Translational Science Network

May 18, 2009 by 1 Comment

In the spirit of people being the prerequisite for success a new Clinical and Translational Science Network (CTSciNet) was recently launched by Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It is described as a “career-development Web portal for clinical and translational investigators with an experimental, evolving communications infrastructure”. The portal provides articles and perspectives about training and career-related issues, resources, and partners in clinical and translational science. As it develops, CTSciNet’s online professional network intends to connect clinical and translational science communities worldwide. I like the Forum Primer that provides answers to the Forum’s most frequently asked questions and links back to the original Forum discussions.

Filed under Collaboration Tools, Communications, Research Networking, Social Networking

Powering Science Today: A video that explains how researchers can explore information and connect with others through technology

May 13, 2009 by

How can technology help researchers? Here is an interesting video that shows how HUBzero, which Indiana CTSI HUB is based on, explains that.

Filed under Collaboration Tools, Communications, Research Networking

The Password Dilemma: Federated Identity Management launched at Indiana University

May 13, 2009 by

No more lists with numerous usernames and passwords that get lost in the end anyway. There is a solution and the University of Indiana is among the masterminds to make it work. Indiana’s federated identity management system allows researchers from across the country to access resources using the user ID and password of their home institution. If you like, take a closer look at Indiana’s CTSI website.

Mini, here is a statement by Bill Barnett: “By deploying federated identity support, the Indiana CTSI HUB can create a trusted online environment in which people can come together, easily access state-of-the-art technologies and services, and use them to work collaboratively to improve health care practice and outcomes while protecting patient privacy.”

Kristine, I remember you mentioned InCommon. The “Indiana CTSI HUB is a participant in the InCommon identity federation which currently claims 95 participating institutions; federal organizations such as the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and The Energy Sciences Network; and industry partners including Microsoft and Apple”.

Filed under Identity Management

Thoughts on Groups and Interaction Tools

May 12, 2009 by

CTSI at the University of Indiana is thinking about groups as well. Maybe this is of some help to you, Kristine.

They also offer a way to interact with colleagues. Check out the Questions and Answers feature.

Filed under Communications, Research Networking

Group blogging via email

May 8, 2009 by 2 Comments

From Mashable:

posterous logoPosterous is the super simple blogging platform that doesn’t require an account, and makes sharing anything on the Web or via email impossibly easy.

Now, the company is releasing a feature that turns group blogging into something you can manage right from your inbox. Whether you have an email list or group blog that is for private, public, or for the family, you can now not only post to Posterous via email, but also get instant notifications and add comments without ever leaving your inbox.

See full story at:

Posterous Turns Email Lists Into Group Blogs.

Filed under Collaboration Tools, Communications

WordCamp San Francisco

May 7, 2009 by

Day long  WordPress conference, incidentally at Missiion Bay .  May 30. $25 a head.

WordCamp San Francisco.

Filed under Collaboration Tools, Communications, Upcoming Conference

Solve puzzles for science

May 6, 2009 by

Here’s an example of researchers asking community for help solving problems: http://fold.it/portal/

I wish we could also harness some “cognitive  surplus” !

Filed under Collaboration Tools

Emailing Comments

May 5, 2009 by 2 Comments

WordPress is apparently now allowing people to interact directly with comments through email.  This is the sort of thing that we need on our portal for the Ideas Forum-types of apps, and for any discussion component of our groupware approach.

Filed under Collaboration Tools Tagged with

Text Miners: The “Power of Semantic Enhancement”

May 5, 2009 by

I find this an excellent example how a basic review article originally published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases can be enriched in its content. Even though this might be more relevant to general knowledge management, I would be interested in exploring whether we could apply some of these tools to the Virtual Home portal.

Computational biologists used tagged terms such as disease names, institutions, places, people, organisms, which can be turned off and on. If you click on document summary you will find not only a study summary, but also a tag cloud of highlighted terms, tag trees of individual semantic classes of highlighted terms, ontology terms, document statistics, and a citation analysis.

As Evie Browne, Publication Manager, PLoS Computational Biology writes: “With a single click you can re-arrange the reference list by number of times each paper is cited, or add in the authors’ analysis of how the reference is used in the paper (obtains background from, confirms, extends, shares authors with, uses method in). The group has also provided interactive versions of some of the figures: compare the original, static Figure 3 to the moveable, overlaying, enhanced version.”

More information about semantic publishing is available in the original article.

Filed under Visualizations

Twitter – a powerful platform?

May 5, 2009 by 2 Comments

The debate on the usefulness of Twitter is ongoing and whether it could serve communication and promotion efforts at big research institutions in one way or another. I am still befuddled what Twitter could offer that email and text messaging are not doing already.

I came across the post “Nine Ways to Use Twitter” by John C. Dvorak who explains why he thinks Twitter is a valuable service. Some of his arguments may be interesting to some of you. Surprisingly, he concludes that there may be nothing to get from Twitter, unless one invents a use, which – I guess – leaves all options open for further discussions.

Some of Dvorak’s use cases:

  • Tweeting about an event: something solitary is turned into an interactive, shared experience.
  • Spread of breaking news updates/announcements/ public address system: “when a major event happens, often a Twitterer will be there tweeting about it on the spot”.
  • Contact multiple people who work within an organization using the mobile service feature to easily broadcast a quick message to all of them.
  • Easy feedback mechanism for writings etc.
  • Asking and answering questions is easier than with e-mail, almost instantaneous
  • Poll people/crowd-sourcing information/audience voting

Filed under Communications, Social Networking, Twitter

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