Bench Press

Previously, Ben wrote a post about innovative use of the virtual world Second Life for simulating N-body problems. One of the groups behind the impressive OpenSim mod, the Meta Institute of Computational Astrophysics (MICA), is incredibly unique in that the organization itself is an exploration into the utility of emerging virtual world (VW) technologies (e.g. SecondLife) for scientific and academic work.

A group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology, Princeton, Drexel University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded MICA in the spring of 2008 in order to explore and take advantage of what they saw as a new frontier in collaboration and information dissemination. MICA’s goals are¹:

• Exploration, development and promotion of VWs and VR technologies for professional research in astronomy and related fields.
• To provide and develop novel social networking venues and mechanisms for scientific collaboration and communications, including professional meetings, effective telepresence, etc.
• Use of VWs and VR technologies for education and public outreach.
• To act as a forum for exchange of ideas and joint efforts with other scientific disciplines in promoting these goals for science and scholarship in general.

In addition to the collaborative research we’ve written about before MICA also “conducts weekly professional seminars, bi-weekly popular lectures, and many other regularly scheduled and occasional professional discussions and public outreach events, all of them in [SecondLife].” A screenshot of one of their astrophysics seminars can been seen below. MICA has also begun experimenting with various teaching formats for undergraduate and graduate level courses.

MICA members attending a weekly astrophysics seminar by Dr. M. Trenti, given in the StellaNova sim in SecondLife.

What really impresses me about MICA however is their belief in the platform.

[W]e wish to lead by example, and demonstrate the utility of VWs and immersive VR environments generally for scientific research in fields other than humanities and social sciences (where we believe the case is already strong). In that process, we hope to define the “best practices” and optimal use of VR tools in research and education, including scholarly communications. This is the kind of activity that we expect will engage a much broader segment of the academic community in exploration and use of VR technologies. Second, we hope to develop new research tools and techniques, and help lay the foundations of the informational environments for the next generation of VR-enabled Web.

Hopefully MICA’s innovative use of SecondLife will prompt other scientists to follow. I definitely want to check out one of the lectures one of these days.

(Exploring Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics)

During the past month’s global swine flu emergency providing health care professionals around the world with accurate information was critical to understanding and potentially containing the outbreak. The time sensitive nature of dealing with an emerging disease highlighted the importance of developing an effective communication channel that is quick, accurate, and accessible by numerous individuals. Traditional paper distribution channels, mailing notifications to primary care physicians, can delay the receipt of time sensitive materials by 72-96 hours. Thus, the question becomes how do you design a system that can be accessed quickly and easily by a maximum number of health care professionals, while still providing quality information.

A new web application developed by the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) interfacing with a service called Docs4Docs®, provided by the Regenstrief Institute, appears to have answered that question. The IHIE’s web portal allows electronic communication of public health messages to any registered health care provider. Registered users can also send messages back through the portal to be disseminated across the network. The web portal’s simplicity allows it to bridge the gap between paper-based and electronic-based medical offices thereby ensuring that even doctors in rural areas without advanced IT infrastructure can receive and contribute critical information.

Docs4Docs® also leverages the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC) which is a secure community health records system, providing patient data whenever needed. Dr. Shaun Grannis, a Regenstrief researcher, explains “[b]y working with our public health partners to seamlessly deliver public health alerts in precisely the same manner that physicians receive time-sensitive clinical information for patient care, we ensure that physicians have the right information at the time they need to see it”. This was exemplified by the first electronic health alert sent out across the Docs4Docs® network with regards to the emerging H1N1 crisis on April 29, 2009.

Last year Regenstrief scientists received a $10 million, 5 year contract from the Centers for Disease Control in order to continue working on developing electronic records and notification systems like those that make up the backbone of the Docs4Docs® service in Indiana. I for one believe that money is going to good use and look forward to seeing other states follow Indiana’s lead with regards to developing new electronic records and notification systems.

Sorry for the late post everyone between lab and March Madness (UCLA ftw!) it’s been a hectic couple days. Despite all that I wanted to write a quick post about a news feature on science journalism over at Nature by Geoff Brumfiel. Brumfiel’s article discusses the rapid decline of science journalism and questions whether science blogging can step in to fill the role.

It’s very well written and brings up several interesting points which are already being discussed all over the blogosphere. One idea in Brumfiel’s article really caught my attention and that is that since science journalism is atrocious to begin with, we’re better off without it. Larry Moran’s comment that “[m]ost of what passes for science journalism is so bad we will be better off without it” is sentiment that’s apparently shared by many bloggers and while I don’t disagree that a lot of what passes as science journalism is poor (thanks to a variety of issues e.g. dwindling budgets, lack of writers with legitimate science backgrounds) I can’t agree with the sentiment that society would be better off without some form of mainstream science journalism. Regardless of their failures, mainstream science journalism at it’s worst raises awareness of scientific endeavors within the general public and at it’s best ought to serve as a legitimate watchdog for scientific misconduct.

Even if hype and marketability play a major role in the presentation of science news stories, the exposure, discussion, and potential inspiration from scientific breakthroughs presented in the mainstream media outweigh much of the typical issues (e.g. inaccuracies, oversimplification, and generalizations) that scientists have with scientific journalism. I became curious about science by getting a taste from mainstream scientific journalism as a young student and I’d hate to see that possibility disappear.

The mainstream media’s science coverage is definitely flawed but that does not provide a necessary and sufficient justification for getting rid of mainstream science journalism in it’s entirety. Improvements can and should be made, however as discussed by Brumfiel’s article this will ultimately require a give and take between journalists and scientists. The editorial introduction to Brumfiel’s article puts it best:

[I]n today’s overstressed media market, scientists must change these attitudes if they want to stay in the public eye. They must recognize the contributions of bloggers and others, and they should encourage any and all experiments that could help science better penetrate the news cycle. Even if they are reluctant to talk to the press themselves, they should encourage colleagues who do so responsibly. Scientists are poised to reach more people than ever, but only if they can embrace the very technology that they have developed.

In the end as Bora Zivkovic astutely states “[s]omebody has to actually be paid to write about things as they come out”. There will always be a need for a “professional” science journalist of some sort and I think scientists can play a large role in helping these journalists be science journalists. The decline of mainstream journalism in it’s current incarnation provides a grand opportunity for scientists to help fix the problems that we currently see. The movement of bloggers into print media and John Timmer’s work at Ars Technica are just two examples of how scientists can begin making an impact on the scientific journalism establishment. Participation in the discussion and providing new ideas will ultimately help more than happily dancing on the grave of that drivvle most scientists view scientific journalism as.

Cameron Neylon wrote a great post about the difference between recording and presenting data in an online lab notebook. The whole post provides a great analysis of the differences he sees between LaBLog, the UsefulChem wiki and the basic philosophies behind their use.

The end of Cameron’s post really got me thinking about the possibilities that a “presentation layer” could have in an online lab notebook. I envision a presentation layer that leverages recent innovations in webapp technology to automatically generate a flowchart-like view of all posts/data/experiments contained within one’s notebook. This graphic would be interactive, customizable, and could be coupled with methodology excerpts in order to provide a complete view of experiments over time.

Much like the grouping of messages by conversation in Gmail provides an innovative and more intuitive organization of e-mail, I feel that a graphic of this sort would be an intuitive manner to deal with the somewhat fragmented nature of online lab notebooks without too much editing after the fact. It would make it easy to visualize branches in experimental thought or dead ends. While also consolidating experiments for viewing by people with access to your online notebook. Ideally providing an accurate representation of work flow and thought process.

I suspect coding something like this wouldn’t be the simplest task and there’s definitely a fair amount of kinks that I’m sure would have to be worked out. Regardless I’m excited to be able to think about the possibilities that online lab notebooks will bring to science over the coming years.