The Franklin award for open access - 2007 nominees
January 31, 2007
Bio-IT World is reporting that the Bioinformatics Organization has nominated Sean Eddy, Robert Gentleman, Don Gilbert and Steven Salzberg for the 2007 Benjamin Franklin award. The award is a “humanitarian/bioethics award presented annually by this organization to an individual who has, in his or her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used in the life sciences.”
All four individuals are well known in their own right. While I am more familiar with Eddy and Gentleman, based on what I have read (by no means comprehensive), my vote would go to Steven Salzberg, since a lot of his efforts have been on the issue of data access and data sharing.
Whom would you vote for and why?
Technorati Tags: Bioinformatics, Franklin Award, Open Access, Open Science
Jim Gray is missing
January 30, 2007
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post inspired by a bunch of Jim Gray presentations. At the time, I had contacted Jim and requested permission to use one or more figures from his slides. He was prompt and friendly, and I had been hoping to run into him in person some day. So it was with some dismay when I read on Scoble’s blog that Jim Gray was missing.
As of now, Jim and his boat are still unaccounted for. Fingers are all crossed.
Technorati Tags: Jim Gray
Things I Noticed #21
January 29, 2007
The latest version of the Weekly Roundup starts with news about an assault against open science
Are battle lines being drawn?
The science blogosphere is all abuzz about a report at News@Nature (sub required) that some traditional scientific publishers have hired a well known PR firm in what appears to be a media blitz against open access. Scientific American also reports on this story. My views on open access are quite clear, so I won’t add anything to the debate. Not yet anyway.
Pre-empting a problem
Via Bio-IT World (and other resources as well) comes this story about the government considering a genetic non-discrimination bill. The legislation would “bar employers from using individuals’ genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions.” Hopefully, this will never become a problem, but some form of legislation is required to make sure this never becomes an issue.
The Google Gapminder tool is cool
I found something rather cool via one of the Seed Daily Zeitgeist’s just shortly after the post on data visualization went up. Gapminder is an organization that develops free software to visualize human development. Just recently we talked about visualizations, and in a similar vein comes this really cool visualization of international statistical data. The organization has worked with Google to set up a custom subscribed search which allows you to add information from gapminder to specific searches. You can subscribe as well.
The Creative Commons on video
I’ve become a regular reader of the Element List. From there comes a video explaining the Creative Commons license. Given the increasing importance the CC license is going to have in science, it is a must see.
A new protein interactions database
As found on Genomeweb (free sub reqd)
CrossEngine
Via Performancing comes CrossEngine, which is not a half bad way to search across different sources. I can’t figure out if I prefer that or the Diigo toolbar
Google Co-op for science
Don’t forget to check out Jean-Claude Bradley’s workshop on using Google Co-op for science
Too much information?
Technorati Tags: Gapminder, Google, Creative Commons, Genetics, Open Access
Bio::Blogs #7 is due in a few days
January 27, 2007
Read the original post at Public Rambling
Feeds
January 26, 2007
Someone (I believe it was Rick) just used the MeeboMe widget to inform me that there was a problem with my feed. Apparently the title had disappeared of the feed. That made me check a couple of things and I found out that the feedburner plugin was disabled (must have happened when I was changing hosts). I am not sure if the feed gets redirected automatically, so if you could update to the feedburner version, it would be much appreciated (and it should fix any trouble with titles).
