Citizen Irony

I’m working on a manuscript describing the different and particular challenges scientists in various disciplines face when incorporating citizen science into their research. So, I thought I would go looking for other articles about it, and found one with the promising title A new dawn for citizen science by Jonathan Silvertown. I’m holed up in …

Follow new pubs/citations on Google Scholar Citations pages to stay up to date on a field

At a recent meeting of the Sloan Foundation program on Microbiomes of the Built Environment I gave a talk about microBEnet and kind of begged people in the program to send me emails when they had new papers out so we could include them in our reference collection and could blog about them.  And one …

Hashtags for microbiology of the built environment

I asked the Twittersphere last week for suggestions for hashtags to use for Tweets about microbiology of the built environment Here are some of the answers [View the story “Hashtags for microbiology of the built environment” on Storify] UPDATE: March 25, 2018 Since Storify is disappearing soon we converted the Storify into a “Wakelet” and …

Open Science Training Initiative: Graduate Training in Open Science

At microBEnet we aim to promote both the microbiology of the built environment as well as openness in all forms of research. Quick post here to highlight the Open Science Trailing Initiative (OSTI) which aims to actually instruct graduate students and postdocs in conducting and disseminating open science. …an educational scheme which aims to drive …

Sloan-funded research: environmental scientists as communicators

Lee Ann Kahlor and her team at the University of Texas Interviewed nearly fourscore U.S. researchers in academia, government, defense and private industry to try to understand researchers’ perceptions of the challenges and opportunities for science communication to a wider audience (lay and decision makers). Here is what Dr. Kahlor said about the work: “Two …

Adapting Standards: Ethical Oversight of Participant-Led Health Research

Just out in today’s edition of PLoS Medicine: Adapting Standards: Ethical Oversight of Participant-Led Health Research. The article raises questions (in my mind) about the ethics related to human genome sequencing projects. We ask, what is “informed consent” when you have your genome sequence published? What about your children’s interests, your siblings’, your descendants’ and …

Content is King (Part 1): Social Media strategies according to Evan Bailyn

Part of what we’re trying to do on this site is to put the net in microBEnet. As in, building an online network for an emerging research discipline (Microbiology of the Built Environment) that connects building scientists and engineers with biologists, ecologists and computer scientists. The internet is a big place. Publicizing a new cause or web …

Genomics Standards Consortium meeting – GSC15, Bethesda, April 22-24, 2013

The 15th Workshop of the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC15) April 22-24, 2013, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Registration and EasyChair abstract submission website now open. Theme: Standards-enabled Research in Genomics URL: http://gensc.org/gc_wiki/index.php/GSC_15 The 15th Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC15) meeting will be held at NIH (Bethesda, Maryland) from April 22-24th. This meeting will highlight the utilization of genome …

Navel gazing – microbial style

Rob Dunn of North Carolina State University has written a charming and fascinating piece on the microbes that inhabit our belly buttons. You can find it here on the Scientific American blog site (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/11/07/after-two-years-scientists-still-cant-solve-belly-button-mystery-continue-navel-gazing/). I strongly recommend it for the skill of his writing as well as the extremely interesting insights into the microbes in …