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