Archive by category | Science

WikiProteins – are a million minds listening?

A couple of days ago Barend Mons and colleagues published an article in Genome Biology about WikiProteins – a new way of asking a “million minds to annotate a million [biomedical] concepts”. On the face of it, it seems like an fine idea: combine text mining and other database trawling (Medline, GO, UniProt and others), distill some concept maps from that (Knowlets, they call them) and invite scientists to chip in via a wiki.  Read more

Nature.com nominated for a Webby

Title says it all really. This is a great boon for us, sort of the equivalent of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, so kudos to anyone and everyone at Nature.com who has helped us to achieve this recognition. It’s a popular vote, so VOTE NOW! You have to register first though.  Read more

Brain-enhancing drugs

There’s a great discussion going on at Nature Network about the opportunities and risks of brain-enhancing drugs. And Nick Bostrom from the University of Oxford has a great “PODium” opinion piece in the latest Nature Podcast (audio|transcript). Do listen to the whole show, but if you’re in a hurry to hear Nick’s bit then skip to 19’30”.  Read more

DataNet, a call for proposals.

Peter Brantley wrote to us to let us know that the National Sciecne Foundation office of Cyberinfrastructure has just released a call for proposals for the creation of A Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network (DataNet). This is a 100 million dollar round of funding to be distributed to five groups over five years, with a possible extension to the funding following on from that. You can view the proposal here. Peter has created a DataNet group on Nature Network to “to share interests, proffered expertise, desires to collaborate, and solicit Q&A regarding the recent NSF solicitation.”  … Read more