Funny and Useful Videos about Science
I just came across the AsapSCIENCE Youtube channel that provides funny and useful videos about everyday health and scientific problems, questions and challenges.
One example, the science of appetite:
Posts from the ‘science’ Category
Aug 28
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Jul 12
Social Media Scientific Session of Mayo Clinic
As a member of the External Advisory Board of Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, I’m gadly sharing their recent announcement:
The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media is convening our first Social Media Scientific Session on Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012 as part of our social media week at Mayo Clinic, and we’re inviting abstract submissions demonstrating the value of social media in health care.
We’re looking for case studies documenting the impact of social media, as well as results from quality improvement projects and IRB-approved research protocols studying the use of social media in health care. Abstracts may relate to data gathered through social media or to the effectiveness of social media interventions.
Revolution of the Dissemination of Medical Research?
Steven Palter, MD send me an e-mail a few days ago letting me know about a huge project he had been working on for some time. It is truly an amazing project and hopefully it will help us disseminate medical research more easily.
“For the last 200 years, medical publishing remained unchanged. Our solution accommodates non-print work through fully integrated multimedia, opens up a whole new form of learning, and allows readers to become part of an ongoing interactive discussion,” says Dr. Steven Palter, the Video and New Media Editor of Fertility and Sterility. Dr. Palter, who developed the concept and spearheaded the project, says, “With this effort, we have bridged the gap separating the digital and traditional medical literature. This integration will lead to exciting new directions in research.”
And here are the details:
Online video and traditional print were previously two separate and unrelated worlds in scientific research. The new mechanism allows videos to be cited the same way as a written article in a traditional print medical journal and seamlessly unifies online multimedia content and print journals. Researchers can watch footage of innovations and techniques and learn previously inaccessible information in new non-written formats while still being able to find this information through traditional medical print sources.
Jun 24
New Sci-Fi novel Skewers the Singularity: Give-Away Contest
Joe Tripician, an Emmy Award winner producer/writer/director has recently contacted me about his new book, Immortality Wars which focuses on the hypothetical future where artificial intelligence meets human immortality. I love such thoughtful sci-fis and I’m happy to announce a give-away contest of his e-book for the first 5 people leaving a comment on this post.
“Immortality Wars” paints a wicked portrait of the near-future, one where technology’s goals require wars to bring them to creation. In this world human ingenuity is a saving grace, and immortality is not necessarily forever.
Access2Research: Global Petition!
I’ve been a supporter of open access research for a long time (Just 2 examples why: My Open Access Success Story and Open access social media guide for pharma) and it was a pleasure to see the announcement coming from the OA community about signing a global petition today.
Sign the petition to require free access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. This will require you to create an account at the White House petition website, confirm the account by clicking on a link in your email, and then sign the petition itself.
Please sign the petition and follow the movement on Facebook.
The 100 Most Influential People in the World: 1 Scientist
TIME magazine published again its list of most influental people globally and running through the list I only found one scientist, Hans Rosling, the statistics guru and public health expert. He has a perfect place in the list but where are the other amazing and innovative physicians and scientists?
Google Scholar: See your citations
Have you realized that now scientisits can create Google Scholar profiles and receive citation reports automatically? It saves plenty of time and efforts. Great service!
Apr 10
New Paper in my PhD Coming Out
A new paper from our research group just came out in the Journal of Rheumatology. We tried to predict reponsiveness to a certain biologic therapy in rheumatoid arthritis by analyzing the gene expression profiles from the genomic aspects by using peripheral blood samples obtained before the therapy. Prediction is key in the future of medicine! Let me know if you need the paper.
OBJECTIVE:
Tocilizumab, a humanized anti-interleukin-6 receptor monoclonal antibody, has recently been approved as a biological therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other diseases. It is not known if there are characteristic changes in gene expression and immunoglobulin G glycosylation during therapy or in response to treatment.METHODS:
Global gene expression profiles from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 13 patients with RA and active disease at Week 0 (baseline) and Week 4 following treatment were obtained together with clinical measures, serum cytokine levels using ELISA, and the degree of galactosylation of the IgG Nglycan chains. Gene sets separating responders and nonresponders were tested using canonical variates analysis. This approach also revealed important gene groups and pathways that differentiate responders from nonresponders.RESULTS:
Fifty-nine genes showed significant differences between baseline and Week 4 and thus correlated with treatment. Significantly, 4 genes determined responders after correction for multiple testing. Ten of the 12 genes with the most significant changes were validated using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. An increase in the terminal galactose content of N-linked glycans of IgG was observed in responders versus nonresponders, as well as in treated samples versus samples obtained at baseline.CONCLUSION:
As a preliminary report, gene expression changes as a result of tocilizumab therapy in RA were examined, and gene sets discriminating between responders and nonresponders were found and validated. A significant increase in the degree of galactosylation of IgG N-glycans in patients with RA treated with tocilizumab was documented.
Apr 10
Questions about Social Media: Papers Gave Answers
Recently published papers have answered some of the questions I had about how certain channels of social media work. I decided to collect these here:
- Do so-called barnstars in Wikipedia encourage volunteers to work more?
Yes! I myself got some of these while working on medical projects in Wikipedia and I really liked them. A new paper had this conclusion: “Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.”
- How do internet memes evolve and rise?
Answer: “Surprisingly, we can explain the massive heterogeneity in the popularity and persistence of memes as deriving from a combination of the competition for our limited attention and the structure of the social network, without the need to assume different intrinsic values among ideas.”
- How does Facebook ‘Contagion’ Spread?
Answer: “If four people who were all connected via Facebook friendships were listed on the invitation, for example, the recipient was as likely to join the site as if one friend was listed. But if the message contained the names of four people who had no direct Facebook friendships between them, the odds of the recipient joining the site more than doubled.”
- Why aren’t more and more tweets and blogs cited in medical papers?
Answer: “However, the conventional medical publication model is less than eager to regard them as equivalent to traditional modes of information dissemination.”
- Are Patients Interested in the Use of Social Media for Health Care?
Answer: “This study indicates growing patient acceptance of SoMe in health care. Understanding user profiles, preferences, and barriers can help providers in prioritizing where to direct efforts when using evidence-based SoMe in their practice.”
Mar 30
The triad of success in personalised medicine: Our new paper
Our new paper was just published in the special edition of New Biotechnology. This is a review with the title: “The triad of success in personalised medicine: pharmacogenomics, biotechnology and regulatory issues from a Central European perspective“. An excerpt from the abstract:
We also present the state of the biotechnology market from a European perspective, discuss how spin-offs leverage the power of genomic technologies and describe how they might contribute to personalised medicine.
As ethical, legal and social issues are essential in the area of genomics, we analysed these aspects and present here the European situation with a special focus on Hungary.
We propose that the synergy of these three issues: pharmacogenomics, biotechnology and regulatory issues should be considered a triad necessary to succeed in personalised medicine.
