What’s New & Nifty in Science & Technology

Circle of Chain Metal Links in silver against a black background labeled link roundup.
Link Roundup

Here’s a few items I thought were pretty darn neat most of which went public this year, with one very nifty exception.

The Ada Initiative

I think this new non-profit is really neat, and am all for increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.” I am a little curious how things will work out as they go along, traditionally this sphere has been male dominated so it’ll be interesting to see what efforts are most successful in recruiting and retaining women in this field, and if those efforts change the culture of open technology and social media.

“The Ada Initiative is focused on helping women get careers in open technology through recruitment and training programs for women, education for community members who want to help women, and working with corporations and projects to improve their outreach to women.”

Bio Digital Human
*Please note this is still in Beta Testing and they are still double checking images and information. Please note last time I checked it was more IE friendly than Firefox, at least the version of Firefox that I was using, no clue how it works with Chrome.

“The BioDigital Human is comprised of over 1900 scientifically accurate 3D anatomy models. View spatial relationships in unprecedented clarity. Learn medical terms in a visual format.” This one is just fun to play with, especially for people like me who know very little about human anatomy/biology.

JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiment) Basic Protocols
*Okay, so this one isn’t as new, but it’s still very nifty and new to a lot of people. I’d really love to see more publications like this and stop having budget cuts so that I could subscribe to the paid protocols! Basic Protocols are freely available to all, but subject specific protocols require a subscription to view.

JoVE is a “..peer reviewed, PubMed indexed journal devoted to…biological, medical, chemical & physical research in a video format.” As a former working chemist I can’t express how much simpler my life would have been if I could have seen a demonstration of a methodology in addition to reading the instructions. Photos are nice, but actually seeing the motions etc. makes learning a new technique infinitely easier!

“Visualization greatly facilitates the understanding & efficient reproduction of both basic & complex experimental techniques, thereby addressing 2 of the biggest challenges faced by today’s life science research community: i) low transparency & poor reproducibility of biological experiments & ii) time & labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental technique.

Out of Copyright.EU

Copyright Calculators for the European Union, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland.
Determining copyright for non-USA materials has always presented a challenge for American’s, in large part because of the sheer number of countries and regulations that had to be translated and understood to determine what is and is not in the public domain.

Open Data Open Science Link Roundup

A silver circle of chain metal links against a round black background.
Link Roundup

Here is a collection of links from my to be read folder about Open Data and Open Science. Can one really separate the two? (Catching up and deleting bookmarks is a wonderful thing.)

Feel free to share this list or use the comments to add a suggested reading.? (FYI, all comments with links are moderated to prevent spam from showing up but will be approved ASAP, no site registration is required.)

Some content has been removed in 2023 as those resources no longer exist.

Heather Piwowar’s Who Shares? Who Doesn’t? PloS ONE

From Deadly E. Coli to Endangered Polar Bear: GigaScience Provides First Citable Data (Slides)

What Can We Learn From Download Statistics for Institutional Repositories?

World Bank’s Open Data

PLoS ONE: Data Sharing by Scientists: Practices and Perceptions

MacKenzie Smith on Open Licences for Data

Digging into Data in the Humanities, Day 1

Open Access v. Cultural Protocols: Indigenous Knowledge Management Systems

Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue

National Academic Press Free PDFs of all Publication

Data Documentation Initiative (Meta-data specifications for social and behavioral sciences)

BioMed Central Blog: On the unbearable lightness of mandatory data sharing

Data Citation Elephants

Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography