Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals May 16, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Ted Talks, Video.15 comments
A few days ago, I presented a video of Hans Rosling who talked about H1N1 and tuberculosis. Now here is Rosling’s recent TED talk:
Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world’s deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions — not drug treatments — is the key to ending the epidemic.
Thought-controlled wheelchair: Video May 16, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Innovation, Medicine, Technology, Video.2 comments
The New Scientist presented a video describing a thought-controlled wheelchair designed for paralysed people that can be navigated using thoughts alone.
You may also remember the Wired article, Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets:
What’s next? I should really go and watch that Star Trek movie now.
Second Life News: Pedagogy and Virtual Worlds May 15, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Second Life, Web 2.0.5 comments
- How A UC Davis Professor Leverages Second Life For Research (It’s All Virtual)
- Students get a Second Life in medicine (Metro.co.uk)
- Interview – DeeAnna Nagel and Kate Anthony, Psychotherapists (Metaverse Health)
DeeAnna Nagel and Kate Anthony are psychotherapists and founders of the Online Therapy Institute. The pair have only recently expanded their work to Second Life, but they have extensive experience in working with people therapeutically online. The pair now have a presence on Jokaydia in Second Life. I caught up with them to talk online counselling / therapy.
You can find many interesting and valuable articles focusing on how the virtual world could be used in education at Pedagogy and Virtual Worlds: Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.
Navigenics: Customers speak May 15, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, genetics, Genome, Navigenics, Video, Web 2.0.2 comments
I’ve found two videos about Navigenics in which their customers share their experiences with personal genetic testing. Navigenics is a company focusing on direct-to-consumer genetic testing. I analyzed their service in details a few weeks ago.
Social Media Optimization Explained May 15, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Slideshow, Visualization, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
You may remember my post in which I mentioned the VizEdu team’s excellent slideshow about medicine and twitter.
Now they explained Social Media Optimization using a fictitious Medical Device company case study.
Rheumatology 2.0: A free guide to web 2.0 for medical professionals May 15, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Webicina.11 comments
Webicina, the first medical web 2.0 guidance service, just launched Rheumatology 2.0, a free comprehensive resource containing all the web 2.0 tools that provide reliable health information about rheumatology.
We have already published several packages for patients such as Diabetes 2.0, Depression 2.0 or Cancer 2.0, but Rheumatology 2.0 is the first one designed for medical professionals.
The table of contents:
- News and Information on Rheumatology
- Rheumatology in the Medical Blogosphere
- Rheumatology Podcasts and Interviews
- Rheumatology Community Sites and FaceBook Groups
- Microblogging: Twitter and Friendfeed
- Rheumatology Wikis
- Rheumatology Videos, Animations and Videocasts
- Rheumatology Mobile Applications
- Social Bookmarking
- Medical Search Engines
- Trend trackers
- Clinical Cases and Images in Rheumatology
- Slideshows about Rheumatology
Next week, we will release the second Web 2.0 Guidance Package designed for medical professionals. The topic will be neurology.
Our mission is to help patients and medical professionals how to use the web as efficiently as possible.
Please let us know which medical condition or medical specialty we should focus on next time.
Is semantic search here? May 14, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in genetics, Medical Search, Medicine 2.0, Semantic Web, Web 3.0.1 comment so far
Attila Csordás, author of PIMM, published a screenshot on TwitPic about the new search engine, WolframAlpha:
It means the search engine understands what you want to find and gives you one specific answer, and not a list of possible answers. Huge difference, but that is what semantic search should be about.
New Part of DNA and DIY Genetics May 12, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in DNA, genetics, Personalized medicine.add a comment
It seems today I serve as an aggregator but I also found 3 genetics-related articles that you might find interesting.
- Do-it-yourself genetic sleuthing (boston.com)
Aull is scouring her own genes in pursuit of a potentially lethal mutation that she may have inherited from her parents – and she has transformed her bedroom closet into a makeshift scientific laboratory to conduct the hunt.
The 23-year-old MIT graduate uses tools that fit neatly next to her shoe rack. There is a vintage thermal cycler she uses to alternately heat and cool snippets of DNA, a high-voltage power supply scored on eBay, and chemicals stored in the freezer in a box that had once held vegan “bacon” strips.
Once upon a time, researchers knew that DNA contained four nucleotides: A, T, C and G. Then they found a fifth. And now they’ve found a sixth.
The discovery helps to explain why species with very similar genetics can be so different. Humans and chimpanzees famously share 96 per cent of their DNA.
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Studying Extreme Genomes (Technology Review)
In 2002, Richard Lifton, a geneticist at Yale who specializes in genetic analysis of human outliers–people with extreme phenotypes–discovered that a mutation in a gene called LDL-related receptor protein 5 was responsible for the man’s high bone density, a condition shared by about half of his family.
Twitter News: It is not evil May 12, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I would like to share 4 interesting posts with you. All of them focus on Twitter and how it can be used in medicine:
- Twitter goes Viral: Swine Flu Outbreak – Twitter a Dangerous Hype? (Laika’s MedLibLog)
- How is Twitter influencing public health (Ivor Kovic)
Using Twitter while sitting will burn around 100 calories per hour. That means you will need about 5 hours to burn one McDonald’s Big Mac (570 calories). And if you are an average American, 37 hours to burn what you ate in one day.
- Medical students on twitter (Osler’s Node): A huge list of medical students who use Twitter.
- Twitter is evil. Elsevier is evil. Wikipedia is evil. (Librarians Matter)
1. Twitter, Elsevier and Wikipedia should be legally stopped before they can do any more damage?
2. There is no context in which Twitter, Elsevier and Wikipedia will be a reliable or useful information source?
3. Librarians don’t need understand the many different ways Twitter can be used, the funding patterns of academic journals nor how references are quality controlled in Wikipedia?
Nope. Librarians need to understand how information on Twitter, in academic journals and Wikipedia is created, distributed, re-used, re-purposed and the criteria for sensible evaluation.
