How to network in science without schmoozing – Professional networking is not about schmoozing and "leveraging" the who-you-know in a selfish way, it's about getting to know people and having people get to know you. It's about being curious, asking honest questions and finding out about what you need to know to get ahead…as well as who you need to know.
Month: June 2011
Scerri stuff indeed
Scerri stuff indeed – Non-chemists, and perhaps a few chemists, might have assumed that once all the holes in Mendeleev's Periodic Table were filled with modern discoveries and the lanthanides and actinides added, that the Table was forever immutable, a stone tablet to adorn high school chemistry lab walls, textbooks and websites unchanged forever more…well they'd be wrong, some chemists think it's time for a change.
Listening to digitized vinyl
Listening to digitized vinyl – I'm currently writing a piece for sciencetext about the price of digital goods, including mp3s and CDs etc. While researching the article, I discovered this interesting item on being an audiophile in the modern age and listening to digital recordings of vinyl records. Sounds interesting: "I would like to be an audiophile. I say “I’d like to be”, rather than “I am” because I don’t have audiophile equipment. I have an okay stereo as home bookshelf stereos go, but it’s sort of overdue for an update and (more importantly) an upgrade. But I’d easily be looking at £1500-2000 for a step up of the kind I’d really be interested in. Turntable, amp and speakers alone. And that’s barely scratching the surface – and the bottom surface at that – of audiophile gear."
Gossip, grooming, and your Dunbar number
Gossip, grooming, and your Dunbar number – David Dobbs waxes lyrical in Wired this week on the subject of the Dunbar number, that fairly well-known social science icon that says that our brains are powerful enough to handle only 150 friends (+/-50 or so). It's a bit of a truism, I think.
Some people probably cannot handle any friends at all, others cope with networks much bigger. It's all about separation, connection, gossip and grooming. Anyway, in today's world, there's not need to limit your inner circle to a mere 150 friends. With online tools it's not impossible to go way beyond Dunbar and still call those contacts "friends" (of a sort). Simply use your computer as an extension of your brain and Facebook or other social media apps as tools to help you manage all the people you know. Fit them into specific cliques of 150-250 and you'll be fine. There are enough triggers in each application you might use to allow you to manage and engage and gossip with far more people than you, or Dunbar, might imagine.
Dunbar also talks about this in terms of having more than one circle so that you might sustain 750. I suspect the numbers are all averages, just like the six-degrees thing. As with all (social) science there are outliers on both sides of any distribution curve and error bars to consider. It would seem ludicrous to imagine one could have 150 “close” friends, but what about 15, is that reasonable, how would you keep them close? How does one define close, in the first instance and what if a loose connection is strong some of the time? There are so many factors. I would like to see him lecture though, put some of these Qs forward, I’m sure he’d have answers.
Safety in the nano sphere
Safety in the nano sphere – The safety of nanotechnology is high on the scientific and political agenda. Qualifying and quantifying the issues remains difficult. An Italia team has now devised and tested what they describe as a "systematic and reproducible evaluation of nanoparticle toxicology in living systems". Their approach is based on a physical assessment and quantification of the toxic effects of nanoparticles (NPs). Andrew Maynard, Director, University of Michigan Risk Science Center, in the USA, points out that, "It remains unclear what the results mean for human exposure to engineered nanoparticles, or what the basis might be for deciding relative levels of potential toxicity". He adds that "It is even less clear how their results relate to inhalation exposure to nanoparticles, where a suite of inhalation-specific mechanisms may lead to very different results to those predicted by fruit flies eating the material." An interesting development but perhaps not quite the last word on nano safety.
Updating the Periodic Table
Updating the Periodic Table – IUPAC and IUPAP have officially added elements 114 and 116 to the Periodic Table. The elements with atomic weights of 289 and 292, respectively, were first sighted more than a decade ago. However, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) require strong evidence before elemental discoveries are incorporated into the PT. In recent discussions they also heard arguments for why elements 113, 115, and 118, should be added, but this was not deemed adequate at this time. The more recently created element 117 was not even minuted.
The very structure of the Periodic Table is open to debate.
The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth
The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth – If you’re looking for a gripping summer read, check out my friend Stu Clark’s latest book: The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth. It’s part 1 of an intriguing trilogy concept that tells the tale of how God-driven scientists, such as Kepler and Galileo (yes, they were), unravelled the heavens while the Jesuits tried to retain world order by keeping the Earth biblically still.
German Lutheran Johannes Kepler is convinced that he has been given a vision by God when he becomes the first man to distill into mathematical laws how stars and planets move through the heavens. Galileo Galilei, an Italian Catholic, will try to claim Kepler’s success for his own Church, but he finds himself enmeshed in a web of intrigue originating from within the Vatican itself. Both men become trapped by human ignorance and irrational terror to the peril of their lives and those of their families…
Makes The Da Vinci Code look like a load of boring, old codswallop. This is real-life historical science in fiction.
Cut-price vax for developing world
Drug firms cut vaccine prices in developing world – This is good news: Several major drugs companies have announced big cuts to the amounts they charge for their vaccines in the developing world. GSK, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi-Aventis have agreed to cut prices through the international vaccine alliance Gavi. I can think of one problem, however, aside from the antivax conspiracy theory nonsens that will arise, and that's the potential for blackmarket profiteering…
Seven steps to cure healthcare privacy problems
If we have learned anything from the recent hackings – Sony, Google Mail, PBS – in which vast amounts of data for millions of users have been compromised, it is that precious data is rarely entirely secure and certainly barely private. It is time to tighten up. Nowhere is this more important than in healthcare data. Imagine if, rather than your Playstation login being compromised it was your entire family medical history that were posted on the net for all (including your health insurer, employer and others) to read at their leisure. Moreover, the digital nature of medical data and the possibility that it is not even encrypted means that it can be shared with others accidentally or deliberately without patient consent.
Researchers in the US and Israel have reviewed common practice surrounding medical data, the various security issues, privacy concerns which have been discussed for years and the legislation around the globe and have put forward eight possibly remedies to improve patient privacy and rights. Taken together they do not represent a cure-all, but could alleviate some of the more problematic symptoms and perhaps avoid a terminal condition for healthcare data:
- Make the senior-level role of “Chief Patient Officer” (CPtO) a legal obligation for healthcare providers. The CPtO would manage the legal, risks and business impacts of privacy and patient’s rights and guide caregivers and medical administrators.
- Create a “Medical Encounter Officer” position to for patients and manage their privacy, information and medical rights.
- Establish, legally or through an agreed standard, a “privacy threat scale” to adjust the protection level depending on how sensitive is particular patient information.
- Store the signed consent form in the patient’s medical record together with signature and expiration dates. This would be most useful in emergencies and when a patient is unable physically, mentally or emotionally to sign a consent form, with the caveat that a patient can veto the stored consent.
- Extend the concept of stored consent form so that different consents can be applied to different situations and treatments, procedures or involvement in research.
- Campaign to raise privacy and patients’ rights awareness through public forums, education and the media.
- Adopt and implement a standalone personal smart card for healthcare provision. Such a card would combine the benefits of a national health records system, personal health record system, and the privacy threat scale advantages.
Yair Babad, & Avishai Lubitch (2011). Ethical and legal issues of privacy and patient rights in the application of information healthcare delivery systems Int. J. Healthcare Technology and Management, 12 (3/4), 230-249
Why the E. coli outbreak has people scared
UPDATE: 2011-06-10:AM New data released in Germany strongly suggest that locally produced bean sprouts were, as suspected, the source of the deadly E. coli outbreak. “It’s the bean sprouts,” said Reinhard Burger, head of Germany’s centre for disease control. “People who ate sprouts were nine times more likely to have bloody diarrhoea than those who did not,” he added. BBC
UPDATE: 2011-06-06:PM The first tests on bean sprouts from a northern German farm suspected of being the source of an E. coli outbreak are negative, officials say. Of 40 samples from the farm being examined, officials said 23 tested negative. Further tests are pending. BBC
UPDATE: 2011-06-06:AM Beansprouts grown in northern Germany are suspected to be the source of an E. coli outbreak that has left 22 people dead, local officials say – BBC.
Why the E. coli outbreak has people scared – The E. coli EHEC 0101:H4 outbreak that originated in Germany is spreading and Christine Gorman, writing in Scientific American, says she’s scared. At the time of writing, 10 countries had reported more than 1600 severe cases to World Health Organization in Europe and it’s likely that thousands more people have minor infection. The Centers for Disease Control has reported two cases (both travellers) in the US of infection with the EHEC 0101:H4 strain and state health departments are being urged to be vigilant. It is scary and people are dying. But, novel emerging diseases are nothing new and are inevitable in an evolving world. Open up a new niche and a pathogen will evolve to fill it. What is more scary is waiting to learn whether the authorities learned the lessons of SARS, H5N1 and H1N1 influenza and previous epidemics and whether we can thus prevent this emerging pathogen from spreading much further yet.
By the way, E coli infection is not treated with antibiotics. The bacteria do not necessarily infect specific organs, such as kidneys, they release a toxin into your system that attacks these organs. Scaremongering in the media does not help, it has not yet “spread” to anywhere beyond Northern Germany other than via travellers to that part of the world who have returned home. Simple things like practicing good hygiene could prevent a major epidemic.
Related articles
- E. coli O104:H4 in Europe–is it new? (scienceblogs.com)
- Indonesia goes on alert against E. coli strain from Europe – Xinhua (news.google.com)
- German-grown sprouts named likely culprit in deadly outbreak (mysatelite.wordpress.com)
- There Are Probably A Lot of Angry Spanish Farmers Right About Now… [Mike the Mad Biologist] (scienceblogs.com)
- Germany’s E. coli cases ‘slowing’ (bbc.co.uk)