Grant Jacobs • Jan 24, 2016 •
Apparently researchers who use other’s data without collaborating with them are ‘research parasites’, according to an editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine. This has caused quite a fuss, with some expressing their opinion on the twitter streams #dataparasites and #researchparasites. I think the editorial conflates data sharing with other issues. Data sharing is an important part of science, but … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Nov 14, 2013 •
Aside from the fun of peering at the stuff that codes for the parts that make up us, knowing how a chromosome is arranged inside a cell nucleus might tell us a lot about how our genes work. Understanding the structures of genomes might well be what is needed to make sense of the genetics of complex diseases. Read More
Grant Jacobs • Oct 10, 2013 •
As a computational biologist I rather like the look of this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry - it’s been awarded for contributions to computational modelling, to Martin Karplus (University de Strasbourg/Harvard), Michael Levitt (Standford) and Arieh Warshel (University of Southern California). Molecular modelling takes several forms. The twist in the work the prize … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Sep 10, 2013 •
This competition might be a way to put your course assignment or thesis introduction to good use and be in with a chance to win, 1st prize - $500 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB. 2nd prize - $250 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB. 3rd prize - $150 (USD) and 1 year … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Apr 27, 2013 •
Scientific magazine Nature has announced an initiative to aimed at aiding the reproducibility of biological research papers. They’re planning to expand the methods section to cater for this, introducing a checklist and offering a Protocol Exchange site. I’d like to draw attention to one point ArsTechnica’s coverage of this development noted that has wider … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Mar 12, 2011 •
This short ’for the masses’ video from the scientific journal Nature gives a ‘lite’ introduction to work aimed at mapping small portions of the human brain from the visual cortex, summarising two papers recently published in the journal. You can view this as a small-scale pilot program to look at the issues involved in a larger-scale … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Mar 21, 2010 •
I have been belatedly alerted to the first edition of the bioinformatics blog carnival. [caption id="attachment_1045" align="alignleft" width="350" caption=""Code Monkey" by Jawbone Len (Source: wikipedia)"][/caption] For the uninitiated, blog carnivals are efforts to promote interest in a particular area through publishing a monthly (fortnightly, weekly) ’carnival’ collecting the better works from a call for submissions … Read More
Peter Griffin • Jan 30, 2010 •
Today’s Taranaki Daily News carries a piece by Helen Harvey in its feature section looking at Sciblogs and some of its contributors. The feature isn’t online, but you can read it in full below… view full screen for larger text size. [slideshare id=3027093&doc=tdnpiece-100129210305-phpapp01&type=d] … Read More