Database of Genomic Structural Variation (dbVar)

Posted on by

 

From NIH News: “The National Institutes of Health today announces the launch of a new resource, called the Database of Genomic Structural Variation, or dbVar, to help scientists understand how differences in DNA contribute to human health and disease.”.

Thanks to Tara Calishain and her newsletter, ResearchBuzz, October 4, 2010

WorldWideScience.org translations available in 9 languages

Posted on by

“The National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) announced the launch of WorldWideScience.org., a multilingual translation tool that provides real-time searching and translation of globally dispersed multilingual scientific literature.  Users can search databases in China, Russia, France and several Latin American countries and receive the search results translated into one of nine languages.”

Source:  Online, Vol.36(5), Sept.-Oct, 2010, p. 12.

All access links for Online (journal) at Princeton.

Thomson Reuters (Web of Science) predicts Nobel Laureates for 2010

Posted on by

Thomson Reuters predicts Nobel Laureates for 2010 – 22 Sep 2010

“Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the 2010 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates researchers likely to be in contention for Nobel honours. Thomson Reuters claims to be the only organisation to use quantitative data to make annual predictions of Nobel Prize winners.

Each year, Thomson Reuters uses data from its research solution, Web of Knowledge, to quantitatively determine the most influential researchers in the Nobel categories of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. Based on citations to their works, the company names these high-impact researchers as Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates and predicts them to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the near future. Since 2002, 19 Citation Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.

The Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates typically rank among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of researchers in their fields, based on citations of their published papers over the last two decades. This year, 15 of the 21 Citation Laureates hail from American universities. Researchers from France, Japan, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom also appear among the 2010 picks.

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter 9-22-10

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

“Change the Equation” new government mandated non-profit led by CEOs to improve STEM education

Posted on by
White House Announces Launch of New Nonprofit to Strengthen STEM Education
The President at MLK Charter School in New Orleans, White House Photo, Pete Souza, 11/15/09.
By Molly Galvin

September 16, 2010 – The Obama administration announced today the launch of “Change the Equation,” a new nonprofit corporation led by CEOs in an effort to improve education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). According to the White House, the initiative is a response to the president’s speech at the National Academy of Sciences in April 2009 in which he urged Americans to elevate STEM education as a national priority. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Research Council have a long history of efforts to improve STEM education, including the influential 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, which urged improvements in K-12 STEM education to keep the U.S. economically competitive.

Assessment Report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Posted on by

Harold Shapiro, Chair of the InterAcademy (IAC) Council Committee to Review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), holds up a copy of the IAC's newly-released independent review of IPCC processes and procedures, during a press conference at UN Headquarters. UN photo by Devra Berkowitz.

August 30, 2010 — A new report from the InterAcademy Council, an organization of the world’s science academies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, says that the process used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to produce its periodic assessment reports has been a success overall, but that IPCC needs to reform its management structure, strengthen its procedures, and become more transparent to handle increasingly complex climate assessments and greater public scrutiny. The report was released today at the United Nations.

Source: WhatsNew@NationalAcademies.org  Sept. 13, 2010

International Year of Biodiversity declared by UN

Posted on by

This year we have a unique opportunity to share our knowledge of Earth’s biological diversity and encourage contributions to its conservation. The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. Scientists and conservation practitioners from around the world have been working with their local and national governments to educate the public on species, ecosystems, and ecological processes. Our goal is to ensure significant advances in conservation policy that protect resources fundamental to human well-being are met in 2010.

To celebrate this year, Conservation Biology has created 3 FREE Virtual Issues. Read them here:

 

Compliments of Wiley – Blackwell publishers

 

 

Connectivity and Corridors
Articles address phenomena and actions that affect movement of genes, organisms (including humans), and ecological processes. Articles also emphasize the influence of social and economic context on maintenance of connectivity.
 

 

Climate Change
Articles highlight research in all conservation sciences – social, biological, and physical – that may reduce uncertainty about the potential effects of alternative management and investment decisions on diverse conservation targets.
 

 

Conservation Social Science
Articles emphasize the necessity to change human behavior in order to achieve the vast majority of conservation objectives. Diverse societal structures and processes are relevant to conservation of Earth’s biological diversity.

 

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey

Posted on by

Astro2010: The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey [pdf]

 

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/BPA/BPA_049810

 

“Every ten years, the National Research Council (NRC) of The National Academy of Sciences produces a series of surveys related to their areas of scientific inquiry. The public release of the Astro2010 survey of astronomy and astrophysics took place on August 13, 2010, and visitors to this site can read the report and also watch the webcast from the release event. The goal of this publication is to “recommend priorities for the most important scientific and technical activities of the decade 2010-2020.” Drawing on the expertise of scholars at Stanford University, Vassar College, the University of Chicago, and other institutions, the report is a crucial piece of work on what should be done across the board in these two branches of the physical sciences.”

 

From the Scout Report, Univ. of Wisconsin, Aug.27, 2010

OSTI, the science & technology portal of the U.S. Government

Posted on by

OSTI, the Office of Science and Technology Information is worth bookmarking.  It serves as a portal for most of the federal goverment’s information, reports and data for 18 agencies:

Agriculture,Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Interior, Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Library of Congress, National Aeronautics & Space Administration, National Archives & Records Adminstration, National Science Foundation, and the US Government Publications Office.

Terminology and thesauri might help in your information searches.

This site is a gateway to DOE collections at ScienceAccelerator.gov, global science via WorldWideScience.org, scientific research data as an open government initiative, and the OSTIblog.

Much of this, they declare, is outside Google’s purview — in the “deep web.”

Cloud data storage for medical records — bad idea

Posted on by

“Top 10 list rejects cloud for clinical data

By George Miller

Comment | Forward | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

The debate continues over whether cloud platforms can secure highly sensitive clinical trial data and health records. But eWeek makes no bones about its position in a top 10 list of why it’s a bad idea to store such records up there.

The 11-slide presentation encapsulates both well-known and less-well-known arguments for data storage via local services rather than an Internet-based, on-demand system. Among them: the highly sensitive nature of the data makes it a hacker target from the get-go.

Trust is a factor that runs throughout the list: trust in the cloud service provider that it can and will restrict access to the barest minimum, that it truly de-personalizes data, and even that it will still be in existence tomorrow.

A disclosure statement concerning source material explains the anti-cloud bias. But the list remains a useful one.

– here’s the slide show

Related Articles:
Experts: Beware of breaches in cloud computing
Cloud experts agree: choose carefully“

Source: FierceBiotech IT [editors@fiercebiotechit.com] 8.23.10