Jul 2011
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26/07/11 14:09 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bruce Caron at the New Media Research Institute observed that the number of posters presented at academic professional meetings (perhaps 250,000 per year) is astounding, and he and his colleagues at the institute have announced their intention to build a service, which they dubbed Skolr, that would "ingest meeting posters as PDF files" and make them easily searchable online. S. Pelech comments that while Skolr seems to be a worthwhile endeavor if it is open-access, it would be even better if it was also possible to download video clips of authors presenting their posters. Read More...
Why Compete? Collaborate!
22/07/11 17:38 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Jeffrey Sheehan from the University of Pennsylvania in Business Insider described two talks related to collaboration and research productivity given by Jeremy Siegel and Craig Venter at the Wharton Global Alumni Forum held in San Francisco in June. Sheehan says these talks led him to realize that communication and cooperation are key "to enhance productivity and ... spread prosperity." S. Pelech comments that it seems like a no-brainer that collaboration is likely to be far more effective than competition, especially when there is a common goal where all participants benefit. He notes that the more funding that a research lab receives, the less likely that it will collaborate with other research groups, and that as a research team expands with higher funding, there is even more competition within the same group. Read More...
An App for Papers?
14/07/11 14:31 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Joe Pickrell at Genomes Unzipped questioned why researchers publish their work in peer-reviewed journals, which among other things, is costly, time-consuming, and random. Pickrell proposes a system of immediate publication, connected to a social media network, in which readers could recommend papers and researchers could search for them based on the community's opinions or rankings. S. Pelech agrees with Joe Pickrell that the current journal system is fast becoming obsolete on many fronts, including mounting costs, publication speed, labour, environmental problems and the fact that few scientists actually search online for articles based on the reputations of scientific journals. In the end, it is the number of times that a particular scientific paper is quoted that counts and not the impact factor of the journal that it appears in. Read More...
Saving Lives
05/07/11 15:40 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Matthew Herper in Forbes recounted how genome-wide sequencing has helped Sesha Lundell - whose son and nephews died in infancy of a rare disease that had also affected her brothers. Researchers were able to find the gene for the disease in 16 months, and this could potentially offer Ms. Lundell the opportunity to have children via in vitro fertilization, and select the embryos that don't have the gene. S. Pelech suggests that a better title for this blog should really have been "Eliminating Lives!" as undesirable embryos are killed off earlier. However, selection of embryos for implantation based on genetic information does provide for improved prospects to raise babies that have fewer in-born errors that culminate in malformations and disease. Read More...