Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Communities Happenings – 10th January

Communities Happenings is a weekly post with news of interest to NPG’s online communities. The aim is to provide this info in one handy summary. Listings include tweetups and conferences that we’re attending and/or organising as well as new online tools, products or cool videos. We also occasionally flag up NPG special offers and competitions plus updates about NPG social media activities such as new accounts you might want to follow. Do let us know what you find most useful!

SA-AMNH tweet up

Science tweetups offer opportunities to mix and mingle in person with sciencey friends you may have met online and are also a chance to learn something new. Next week Scientific American are partnering with the American Museum of Natural History on a “Beyond Planet Earth” tweetup. The event will take place on Wednesday 19th January at 6pm in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater. Numerous activities will be on offer; you will be able to explore the Digital Universe, the world’s largest scientifically accurate 3D atlas of the universe and will get an exclusive look at the Museum’s new exhibition, The Future of Space Exploration.

Scientific American’s editor in Chief, Mariette DiChristina whets our appetites by explaining more about the event in her blog introduction:

Caleb Scharf, Director of Columbia University’s Astrobiology Center and author ofExtrasolar Planets and the forthcoming Gravity’s Engines from Scientific American and Farrar, Straus Giroux, will reveal the tempestuous relationship between black holes and the building of stars, galaxies and planets, will speak on: “Beyond the Beyond: The Incredible Journey to Planets, Stars and Black Holes.”

You can also find out more about the event in our New York Blog.  The event is free and will certainly be “out of this world.”  If you are in the NYC area, make sure you don’t miss it.  You can also check out our NYC Science Communication events calendar that lists this event and others like it.

SoNYC

This month’s Science Online NYC (SONYC!) event takes place on Wednesday 25th January at RockefellerUniversity from 7pm EST. You can also watch online via our Livestream channel. The theme is Thinking Digital: Giving your research more reach (and making sure others can find it).

Only a fraction of the things that scientists do in the lab ever see the light of day in a formal publication. Negative data, new tools, and public data sources rarely merit an independent paper, making it tough to receive credit for your work. Even when the work leads to a paper, it can be tough to accurately credit everyone’s contributions, or make the underlying data available to the scientific community.

This month’s panel will discuss new tools like Figshare, a repository for negative data, and the ORCID author identifier, which can be used to associate any form of digital publication to your research record. It will also feature two librarians who will discuss how research libraries can help you store and share your information, and find the materials made available by others.

Panelists:

Mark Hahnel is the developer of Figshare.

Carol Feltes is the head librarian at RockefellerUniversity.

Cathy Nortion is the library scholar at the Biodiversity Heritage Library at Woods Hole’s Marine Biological Laboratory.

Howard Ratner is the Chief Technology Officer for Nature Publishing Group and Chair of ORCID.

The event is free to attend and includes the opportunity to meet the panelists and other attendees afterwards. If you’d like to follow the online discussion, keep an eye on the #sonyc hashtag or check back here for our write-up and Storify of the online conversations.  There’s also a SoNYC Twitter account and Facebook page where you can find information and do check out our NYC Science Communication events calendar that lists this event and others.

 

IBMS Bonekey

IBMS BoneKEy launched today on nature.com, which includes the BoneKEy Community. IBMS BoneKEy is published by Nature Publishing Group on behalf of the International Bone and Mineral Society. Its mission:

To provide a breadth and depth of coverage of the bone field, including coverage of clinical topics such as osteoporosis diagnosis and management, genetics, fracture repair and biomechanics, bone and cancer, as well as basic science subjects such as bone cell and molecular biology. IBMS BoneKEy provides the bone field with an online platform for scientific exchange and community growth based on expert scientific content.

Most content is free to access following registration with the site. This content is supplemented with articles from the online journal BoneKEy Reports, which is available through subscription. Find out more about the key features of IBMS Bonekey here, or take a look at the press release.

Antibodypedia, up and running

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced in December a partnership with Antibodypedia, an online searchable database of publicly available antibodies against human proteins. It also links these publicly available antibodies with data demonstrating their efficacy and published studies in which they have been used. A new website for Antibodypedia is live here..

Nature Protocols’ blog, Stepwise, features a guest blog post from Victoria Newman the curator of Antibodypedia.

The problem facing anyone who uses antibodies in their research is that for any given target there are a lot of antibodies available so how can you tell which one will work for you. What is needed is somewhere researchers can go which has a comprehensive list of antibodies available with information about how they perform in the various applications for which antibodies are employed. That is exactly what Antibodypedia is attempting to create.

You can find out more in the press release, or stop by www.antibodypedia.com to browse, search or submit data. And tell us what you think either by commenting here or emailing contact@antibodypedia.com.

 

Calendar

Our scientific events calendars have been freshly updated to include the latest scientific events for the New Year. Make sure you check them out. Please do get in touch if we are missing any events or if you would like to contribute to this calendar or any of the other calendars listed below.

London Science Events

Cambridge Science Events

DC Science Events

NYC Sci Comm events

Boston Science Events

San Francisco Science Events

ParisScience Events

Science Online NC

Science Online 2012 will kick off next week! Held in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, this will be the sixth annual international meeting on Science and the Web. As in all the previous years, the meeting will be held in an ‘unconference’ style – the program is built beforehand with the help of participants on the planning wiki. You can now view the tentative agenda here.

We are attending the conference and are co-hosting two sessions, the first a workshop and the second a discussion group:

The Attention Economy: The currencies for social media influence and exchange rates for attention

Friday January 20, 2012 12:00pm – 1:00pm @ Room 8

Adrian J. Ebsary Lou Woodley

In this session we’ll look at the various tools which claim to measure user influence on across social networks and discuss some of the issues and etiquette around how you can increase your influence.

Next generation scientific society and conference.

Saturday January 21, 2012 10:45am – 11:45am @ Room 6

Scicurious Lou Woodley

This session will explore ways to create hybrid conferences which combine the focus of a small meeting with a broader communication and publication strategy.

We are also organising a Scisweetup!

If you like the sweeter things in life and want to meet some of the other #Scio12 attendees, then come along to the Scisweetup! Following a conversation on Twitter about bacon-flavoured chocolate, we decided to set up a tweet up with a difference – a #scisweetup! Anyone who wants to participate just needs to bring along a sample or two of unusual-flavoured chocolate to share. Keep on eye on the wiki for the exact date and times.

We’ll be covering these events on Of Schemes and Memes and if you are not attending the conference in person, make sure you tune in online by following the #scio12 hash tag.

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