Bioinformatics@Becker — Updates and Musings from the Bioinformatics team at Becker Medical Library

Presentation on PLoS ONE & Article-Level Metrics

March 4th, 2010 by Kristi

Last month, Peter Binfield (PLoS) and others participated in a “Science Commons Symposium” hosted by Microsoft. Check out Peter’s blog post to read more about the event and to access the presentations.

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Do you REALLY need a PhD to be a scientist?

March 3rd, 2010 by Kristi

Read about this topic in an article published in Nature today:

Do scientists really need a PhD? p7
Young scientists at a Chinese genomics institute are foregoing conventional postgraduate training for the chance to be part of major scientific initiatives. Is this the way of the future?
doi:10.1038/464007a
FULL TEXT | PDF

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PHD Comics: How Grad School Is Just Like Kindergarten

March 1st, 2010 by Kristi

Should we laugh or should we cry? This is one of the best ones yet!

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SAS JMP/Genomics Workshop at WUSM

February 22nd, 2010 by Kristi

The following workshop is organized by Division of Statistical Genomics in collaboration with the SAS Institute.

SAS JMP/Genomics Workshop at Washington University School of Medicine
Date of the workshop: April 6, 2010.
Location: 5th floor classroom, Genome Center Building: 4444 Forest Park Ave
Cost: Free

Click HERE to register

For more information or directions or if you need a vegetarian or special lunch, please communicate with Kristy Smith (ksmith@dsgmail.wustl.edu).

Schedule:

9:30-10:00am Introduction to JMP Genomics and quick discussion of some major new features in 4.1, and what’s coming in 5.0, tailored towards genetics/CNV/annotation users (Shannon Conners, SAS Institute)
10:00-11:30am Q-K Association example (mixed with kinship matrix model), Annotation example, CNV example (Kelci Miclaus and Doug Robinson, SAS Institute)
11:30-12:30pm Lunch, user feedback, discussion of user ideas for new features for future versions (SAS Institute members and workshop participants)
12:30pm Demonstration of a gene expression analysis using JMP/Genomics (Aldi Kraja, DSG at WU)
2:30pm Open time for meetings one on one with JMP/Genomics users (SAS Institute members and workshop participants)

Lunch will be provided by SAS Institute as well as some book(s)/documentation in relation with SAS JMP/Genomics.

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PLoS: the Public Library of Science

February 17th, 2010 by Kristi

I just wanted to take a few minutes to remind everybody about the Public Library of Science (PLoS). [link]

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. All [their] activities are guided by core principles.

PLoS publishes 7 online peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals. [PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens, PLoS ONE, and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases]

eWhy submit your research to PLoS?

PLoS journals are Open Access!

Everything [they] publish is freely available online for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish. Watch 1-minute videos from a teacher, funder, patient advocate, physician scientist, librarian, and a student about why Open Access matters to them.

…and be sure to check out their advanced article metrics!

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is this related to science?

February 10th, 2010 by Kristi

Um, no. But it is intriguing.

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”

…The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

Courtesy of Boing Boing.

→ No CommentsCategories:NYTimes, interesting

Assessing the impact of research

February 9th, 2010 by Kristi

It is essential to go beyond mere citation counts when thinking about the impact of your research…

The Becker Medical Library Model for Assessment of Research Impact represents a practical, do-it-yourself tool for tracking the impact of biomedical research. The Model includes guidance for quantifying and documenting research impact as well as resources for locating evidence of research impact. The five stages of the research process represented by the model include:

Research Output: What was CREATED by a research study? How was the research output DISSEMINATED?
Knowledge Transfer: How was the research output USED? How was AWARENESS of research output demonstrated?
Clinical Implementation: How was TRANSLATION of research output into clinical applications demonstrated?
Community Benefit: How was community health ENHANCED as a result of research output?
Legislation and Policy Enactment: How did research output INFLUENCE or RESULT in enactment of public law, guidelines, standards or policy?