Todd Harris, PhD

Facilitating scientific discovery at the intersection of genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, big data, cloud computing, and open science.

The Worm Breeder’s Gazette: now accepting online submissions!

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Last year I wrote about the return of an open access scientific newsletter (see: “An early model for open access returns: say hello to the new Worm Breeder’s Gazette“.)

Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve enhanced the Gazette with online submission of articles!

You must first register as a contributor before submitting an article for inclusion in the next issue of the Gazette.

About the publication schedule

We’ve chosen to mimic the original frequency of the Gazette with bi-yearly releases. These will occur in June and December of each year. A single volume of the Gazette consists of 4 issues over two years, or the span between the International C. elegans meeting.

Behind the scenes

For this interested in the implementation details, the article submission is powered by WordPress with extensive customization of the default Post and Page write panels. The submission form itself is broken out into distinct fields — the article text, references, figures, and so on.

The end result? A robust content management and user registration system for collecting brief scientific missives that require minimal copywriting to publish.

Want to set up your own newsletter?

This software is suitably generic to allow anyone to quickly set up their own newsletter consisting of public submissions, scientific or otherwise. Contact me at wbg@toddharris.net for information.

Meetings: 2010 International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

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ACM International Conference On Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
August 2-4th, 2010
Niagara Falls, New York, USA

ACM is pleased to announce that it has taken over sponsorship of the former International
Joint Conference on Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, and Intelligent Computing (IJCBS),
and will be holding the newly renamed International Conference On Bioinformatics and
Computational Biology (ACM-BCB) in August 2010 in Niagara Falls, NY.

Important Dates

Paper Submission deadline Feb 15, 2010
Author Notification April 15, 2010
Workshop proposal Jan. 1, 2010
Tutorial Proposal Jan. 1, 2010
Conference Date 2-4 August, 2010

2009.10.16: This Week In Genomics and Bioinformatics

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This Week in Genomics and Bioinformatics is a weekly snapshot of select developments, interesting tweets, and influential blog posts and literature.

Dispatches

Sage Bioinformatics receives an infusion of Cash
The not-for-profit Sage Bioinformatics receives a large donation, helping their mission to develop open access systems level tools and databases.

Lee Hood et al. launch Integrated Genomics
Lee Hood’s new venture, Integrated Genomics goes online with $30M in funding with a mission to develop personalized diagnostics for the early intervention of disease.

The Virus Pathogen Database cleans up
NIAID funds (US$15.7M) UT Southwestern & Northrop Grumman for Virus Pathogen Database. Here’s a press release from UT Southwestern. Of that $15.7M, $2.7M goes to UTSW, the rest to, I guess, Northrop Grumman. Who knew they were in the business of building biological databases?

Genome Canada’s founding President and CEO stepping down
Dr. Martin Godbout, Genome Canada’s President, stepping down after 10 years.

Google Wave takes to the high seas
Those few Twitter users who don’t yet have a Google Wave invite go berserk trying to track one down. The Twitterati social media spewers are agog or completely confused of what to do with Wave. After all, it’s obvious how to use social media for inane and ironic self-promotion about one’s expertise with social media. It’s not as easy to understand how to use a collaborative work tool unless one has actual content or data to work with.

Cameron Neylon (twitter) sees the light and writes in Nature about the promise of Google Wave for scientific communication.

Children’s impressions of scientists
Children’s pictures of scientists before and after visiting FermiLab.

Link Love

Better Posters
Just discovered Better Posters, a blog whose aim is to improve the quality of scientific posters. This is a topic near and dear that I’ve written on at The Wild Type.

Work and Travel
And on an entirely unrelated note, if you are an independent worker, check out Location Independent, a site with useful tips for those not tied to a cubicle.

Bioinformatics is dead! Long live bioinformatics!

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A few years ago, my boss Lincoln Stein prognosticated the end of bioinformatics.

According to Google Trends he just might be onto something. Searches for bioinformatics have dropped in half in the past four years. C’est incroyable! Not surprisingly, the top-ten sites for searches for bioinformatics are all in India.

Gory details available by searching Google Trends for bioinformatics.

Interesting parallels in the trends between bioinformatics, molecular biology, proteomics, and C. elegans: