C. Titus Brown, a bioinformatician at the University of California, Davis, participated in a January workshop at Caltech on “The Paper of the Future,” and wrote about the experience on his blog. Here, he expands on how academic publishing may change in the years to come.
MIT App Designer 2
In the 4 May Nature technology feature, I explore the growing use of smartphones to drive scientific research. Today’s phones are so full-featured, they’re often ready for use out-of-the-box. Sometimes, though, a custom app is required, and that can be a sticking point, as programming a mobile app isn’t easy.
Lorena Barba; © Eleanor Kaufman 2013.
Lorena Barba, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at George Washington University in Washington, DC, has long championed research reproducibility. In January, she traveled to Chile to run a weeklong course on reproducible research computing; the month before, she was awarded a 2016 Leamer-Rosenthal Prize, which celebrates those “working to forward the values of openness and transparency in research.” Here, she talks about flying snakes, “repro-packs,” and copyright.
Guest contributor Daniel Harris of SoftwareAdvice.com
The explosive economic impact of big data has blurred the line between the business world and the scientific world like never before. A new type of business leader, the data scientist, has evolved as an amphibian, capable of thriving in both worlds, swimming in data lakes to bring useful insights back to the solid ground of business concerns.
Of course, companies have been using business intelligence (BI) tools to analyse their operational and financial performance metrics for decades.
But datasets generated by the web are so large that they must be stored on clusters of servers with thousands of nodes. Traditional methods for analysing these datasets have faltered, necessitating a more scientific approach.
Hadoop cluster by fogcat5 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Maths and IT play an essential role in most public health campaigns, and offer the chance for mathematicians to use their skills for social good.
{credit}Credit: iStock/Thinkstock{/credit}
Crispin Sapele is Director of Systems and Operations at CHAMP, a not for profit organisation which was set up to respond to the growing need for corporate HIV/AIDS programmes within Zambia. In December 2003 CHAMP set up a dedicated HIV hotline that offers a 24/7, 365 day counseling and information service. At CHAMP, Sapele’s role has been in planning, analyzing and evaluating the impact of such programmes, using his statistical background. Naturejobs spoke to Sapele about why maths is such a vital part of global health campaigns.
How did you get into global health?
I started off studying mathematics at the University of Zambia almost 20 years ago. I actually originally wanted to do engineering but after the first year I met one of the first mathematics professors here in Zambia and got inspired by him to do maths, so I made the switch. After my degree, which lasted four years, I immediately got a job at the national statistics office (CSO). And with that I got my first taste of managing and running statistical health programmes, such as surveys and censuses.
How did you end up at CHAMP working on HIV prevention programmes? Continue reading