Is there a place for citizen scientists in the world of digital biology? Many of the citizen science projects that I've been reading about have a common structure. There's a University lab at the top, outreach educators in the middle, and a group of citizens out in the field collecting ...
A common theme I hear in talks on personalized medicine, is that increased access to genomic data and medical literature are changing the relationship between doctors and patients. Patients are through being passive recipients of paternalistic health care. They are demanding to participate and be treated as partners with health ...
When I was a post-doc, I spent a few months seriously thinking about changing careers and teaching high school. I might have followed through on that plan, too, but I didn't know how to pay for it. Today, if you have a background in science, technology, math, or engineering, you ...
Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals? In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all ...
These days, DNA sequencing happens in one of three ways. In the early days of DNA sequencing (like the 80's), labs prepared their own samples, sequenced those samples, and analyzed their results. Some labs still do this. Then, in the 90's, genome centers came along. Genome centers are like giant ...
Next Saturday afternoon, at ScienceOnline2010, the science goddess, the chemspider, and I will be presenting a workshop on getting students involved in citizen science. In preparation, I'm compiling a set of links to projects that involve students in citizen science. If you know of any good citizen science efforts, please ...
Blaine Bettinger has an absolutely wonderful post where he compares his results for type 2 diabetes from 23andMe and DeCODEme. I really liked his post and I appreciated the way he showed the data from the two companies and elaborated on their interpretation of his genotype and his risk. Interestingly ...
"What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet" - Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I realized from the comments on my previous post and from Mike's post that more explanations were in order. It seems we have ...
If you're in Seattle, Dr. Bruce Alberts will be talking tomorrow night (Jan 5th) at the Seattle Aquarium on science education and the role that scientists play. There are also some really interesting talks at a day-long workshop, Wednesday (Jan 6th) at the UW South Campus Center. The details and ...
An NSF post on Twitter this morning described an interesting study from the University of Pennsylanvia and Cornell University, that found that some people who call themselves "African Americans" may only be 1% West African, according to their DNA. The University of Pennsylvania press release contains other interesting findings as ...
What do you call a biologist who uses bioinformatics tools to do research, but doesn't program? You don't know? Neither does anyone else. The names we use People who practice biology are known by many names, so many, that the number of names almost reflects the diversity of biology itself ...
I often get questions about bioinformatics, bioinformatics jobs and career paths. Most of the questions reflect a general sense of confusion between creating bioinformatics resources and using them. Bioinformatics is unique in this sense. No one confuses writing a software package like Photoshop with being a photographer, yet for some ...
For many years, I've been perfectly content to work with small numbers of things. Working with one gene or one protein is great. Even small groups of genes are okay. I'm fine with alternatively spliced genes with multiple transcripts, or multiple polymorphisms, or genes in multi-gene families, or groups of ...
If you have a little time, the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor will be presenting some really interesting workshops on neuroscience and genetics. The dates are: Nov. 5, 2009: Inside Cancer - workshop on teaching cancer; Raritan Valley Community College, Somerville, NJ Nov. 6, 2009: Genes To ...
We always see interesting creatures whenever we walk on the beach. Now, a new program from the University of Washington and the state department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking to enlist beach walkers in a community science project where they can help monitor biodiversity. The program is called NatureMapping ...
This morning I attended the Fifth Annual WBBA Governor's Life Sciences Summit. The breakfast was great; the talks were okay. I do enjoy the stories about people who's lives were saved because of biotechnology and I agree that the focus of the summit, research and discovery are important, but I ...
This summer, I had the good fortune to attend three (or was it four?) conferences on science education. One of the most inspirational conferences was one on Vision and Change in Biology Education. This conference was co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the AAAS. It was a call to ...
You might think the coolest thing about the Next Generation DNA Sequencing technologies is that we can use them to sequence long-dead mammoths, entire populations of microbes, or bits of bone from Neanderthals. But you would be wrong. Sure, those are all cool things to do, but Next Generation DNA ...
