Lance Armstrong’s Oprah Interview Angers Fans (VIDEOS)
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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/01/lance-armstrongs-oprah-interview-angers-fans-videos/
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KANO, Nigeria (AP) ? A witness and official say that gunmen attacked the convoy of a religious leader in Nigeria's northwest, killing at least three people.
The witness said gunmen on Saturday shot sporadically at the convoy for the Emir of Kano Ado Bayero, but that he was not injured in the attack. The witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said police repelled the attack in Nigeria's second-largest city. He said that a blast also went off in a jeep parked on the roadside during the attack.
State governor Engineer Rabiu Mus Kwankwaso said three royal guards were killed in the attack. He confirmed that the emir was not hurt.
The radical sect known as Boko Haram attacks civilians and government forces, despite a heavy security presence.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/attack-nigerias-northwest-kills-least-3-173443880.html
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ALGIERS (Reuters) - Twenty-five foreign hostages escaped and six were killed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched an operation to free them at a remote desert gas plant, Algerian sources said, as one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades unfolded.
The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the gas facility on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners and demanded a halt to a French military operation against fellow al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in neighboring Mali.
The raid increased fears that jihadist militants could launch further attacks in Algeria, a vast desert country with large oil and gas reserves that is only just recovering from a protracted conflict with Islamist rebels during the 1990s which cost an estimated 200,000 lives.
Fast-moving details of the military operation to free the hostages from the gas plant were difficult to confirm. Algeria's official APS news agency said about half the foreign hostages had been freed.
A local source told Reuters six foreign hostages were killed along with eight captors when the Algerian military fired on a vehicle being used by the gunmen.
Mauritania's ANI news agency, which has been in constant contact with the kidnappers, said seven hostages were still being held: two Americans, three Belgians, one Japanese and one British citizen.
It quoted one of the kidnappers as saying that Algerian ground forces were trying to fight their way into the complex.
ANI and Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported that 34 of the captives and 15 of their captors had been killed when government forces fired from helicopters at a vehicle. Those death tolls, far higher than confirmed by the local source, would contradict the reports that large numbers of foreigners escaped alive.
Britain and Norway, whose oil firms BP and Statoil run the plant jointly with the Algerian state oil company, said they had been informed by the Algerian authorities that a military operation was under way but did not provide details.
As many as 600 Algerian workers at the site managed to flee, the official Algerian news agency said.
RAISING THE STAKES
The incident dramatically raises the stakes in the French military campaign in neighboring Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against rebels after air strikes began last week.
Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the kidnappers were led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist guerrilla who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and had set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.
A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence and "Mister Marlboro" by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar's links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.
The hostage takers earlier allowed some prisoners to speak to the media, apparently to put pressure on Algerian forces not to storm the compound. An unidentified hostage who spoke to France 24 television said prisoners were forced to wear explosive belts and captors had threatened to blow up the plant.
A local source told Reuters the hostage takers had blown up a petrol filling station at the plant.
Two hostages, identified as British and Irish, spoke to Al Jazeera television and called on the Algerian army to withdraw from the area to avoid casualties.
"We are receiving care and good treatment from the kidnappers. The (Algerian) army did not withdraw and they are firing at the camp," the British man said. "There are around 150 Algerian hostages. We say to everybody that negotiations is a sign of strength and will spare many any loss of life."
Ireland said later that the Irish hostage was among those freed.
NUMBERS UNCONFIRMED
The precise number and nationalities of foreign hostages could not be confirmed, with some countries reluctant to release information that could be useful to the captors.
Britain said one of its citizens was killed in the initial storming on Wednesday and "a number" of others were held.
The militants said seven Americans were among their hostages, a figure U.S. officials said they could not confirm.
Norwegian oil company Statoil said nine of its Norwegian staff and three Algerian employees were captive. Britain's BP, which operates the plant with Statoil and Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, said some of its staff were held but would not say how many or their nationalities.
Japanese media said five workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp. were held, a number the company did not confirm. Paris has not said whether any hostages were French. Vienna said one hostage was Austrian, Dublin said one was Irish and Bucharest said an unspecified number were Romanian.
Spanish oil company Cepsa said it had begun to evacuate personnel from elsewhere in Algeria, an OPEC member.
Paris said the Algeria attack demonstrated it was right to intervene in Mali: "We have the flagrant proof that this problem goes beyond just the north of Mali," French ambassador to Mali Christian Rouyer told France Inter radio.
President Francois Hollande has received public backing from Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, is building a desert haven in Mali, a poor country helpless to combat fighters who seized its north last year.
However, there is also some concern in Washington and other capitals that the French action in Mali could provoke a backlash worse than the initial threat by militants in the remote Sahara.
The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives.
"We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met, and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement carried by Mauritanian media.
They condemned Algeria's secularist government for letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali and shutting its border to Malian refugees.
PRESSING ON
The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground in Mali, and combat was underway against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.
"There was combat yesterday, on the ground and in the air. It happened overnight and is under way now," said Le Drian. Residents said a column of about 30 French Sagaie armored vehicles set off on Wednesday toward rebel positions from the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital, Bamako.
The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread international support in public. Neighboring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.
Nigeria, the strongest regional power, sent 162 soldiers on Thursday, the first of an anticipated 906.
"The whole world clearly needs to unite and do much more than is presently being done to contain terrorism, with its very negative impact on global peace and security," President Goodluck Jonathan said.
Germany, Britain and the Netherlands have offered transport aircraft to help ferry in African troops. Washington has said it is considering what support it can offer.
Many inhabitants of northern Mali have welcomed the French action, though some also fear being caught in the cross-fire. The Mali rebels who seized Timbuktu and other oasis towns in northern Mali last year imposed Islamic law, including public amputations and beheadings that angered many locals.
A day after launching the campaign in Mali, Hollande also ordered a failed rescue in Somalia on Saturday to free a French hostage held by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants since 2009. Al Shabaab said on Thursday it had executed hostage Denis Allex. France said it believed he died in the rescue.
(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sahara-hostage-siege-turns-mali-war-global-010547607.html
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This Jan. 9, 2013 photo shows homes built on the 11.5 mile levee designed to protect Augusta, Ga. from the Savannah River. Inspectors with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
This Jan. 9, 2013 photo shows homes built on the 11.5 mile levee designed to protect Augusta, Ga. from the Savannah River. Inspectors with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
This Jan. 9, 2013 photo shows a subdivision of homes built on the 11.5 mile levee designed to protect Augusta, Ga. from the Savannah River. Inspectors with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
In this Jan. 9, 2013 photo, a woman walks by a brick wall with markers indicating the levels of past floods from the Savannah River in Augusta, Ga. Inspectors with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
FILE - This May 4, 2006 aerial file photo shows construction along the 17th Street drainage levee in Metarie, La. Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 35 states. Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region, in cities and towns big and small. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - This Sept. 11, 2005 file photo shows a neighborhood destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 35 states. Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region, in cities and towns big and small. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Inspectors taking the first-ever inventory of flood control systems overseen by the federal government have found hundreds of structures at risk of failing and endangering people and property in 37 states.
Levees deemed in unacceptable condition span the breadth of America. They are in every region, in cities and towns big and small: Washington, D.C., and Sacramento Calif., Cleveland and Dallas, Augusta, Ga., and Brookport, Ill.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has yet to issue ratings for a little more than 40 percent of the 2,487 structures, which protect about 10 million people. Of those it has rated, however, 326 levees covering more than 2,000 miles were found in urgent need of repair.
The problems are myriad: earthen walls weakened by trees, shrubs and burrowing animal holes; houses built dangerously close to or even on top of levees; decayed pipes and pumping stations.
The Associated Press requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, details on why certain levees were judged unacceptable and how many people would be affected in a flood. The Corps declined on grounds that such information could heighten risks of terrorism and sabotage.
The AP found specifics about the condition of some levees from federal and state records and in interviews with more than a dozen officials in cities and towns. The number of people who might be affected by a breach could not be determined because there are many different factors in a flood, such as terrain and obstacles.
Local governments are responsible for upgrading unacceptable levees. Some local officials say that the Corps is exaggerating the dangers, that some deficiencies were approved or not objected to by the federal government and that any repairs could cost them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
"It's just not right to tell a little town like this to spend millions of dollars that we can't raise," said Judy Askew, mayor of Brookport, a hardscrabble town of about 1,000 on the banks of the Ohio River.
Compared with other types of infrastructure, the nation's levees, within and outside federal jurisdiction, don't fare well. They earned a D-minus for overall condition from the American Society of Civil Engineers in its latest report card in 2009, ranking behind dams, bridges, rails and eight other categories.
The condition of flood control systems came into dramatic focus in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina's rain and storm surge toppled levees in New Orleans and tore up the Gulf Coast. It left 1,800 people dead and was the costliest storm in U.S. history with damage estimated at $108 billion.
Afterward, Congress told the Corps to catalog federally overseen levees, many of which it built and handed over to municipalities to run and maintain. The Corps has spent more than $140 million on inspections and developing the inventory.
As of Jan. 10, the agency had rated 1,451 or 58 percent, of them. Of those, 326 were unacceptable, 1,004 were minimally acceptable with deficiencies that need correcting, and 121 were acceptable.
In the AP's examination, among the most widespread issues were:
? Design or construction flaws.
Some levees had inadequate "freeboard" ? extra height to prevent overflow, which can weaken the landward slope of the levee. For example, the Corps found there was not enough height in a levee along a 20-mile stretch of Mississippi's Yazoo River system, which came close to being overtopped in 2011 during historic flooding of the Mississippi River valley.
? Inadequate or crumbling infrastructure.
Many pipes built into levees to drain storm water were made of metal that has rusted. And pumping systems are giving out. In Brookport, inspectors found inoperable pumps and deteriorating pipes in its 6-mile-long earthen levee. Their report said a gaping hole just outside town has put the structure in "critical condition."
? Failure to control vegetation and invasive animals.
Corps specifications require that levee slopes be kept clear of plants and burrowing critters such as ground squirrels and gophers. The tunnels could weaken the walls by providing pathways for water. Thick vegetation also can conceal cracks, holes and unstable slopes. A 2010 Corps report found parts of a 2.2-mile-long Mississippi River levee in South St. Paul, Minn., dotted with trees, brush, weeds and tree stumps.
? Building encroachment.
The Corps requires a 15-foot buffer between levees and man-made structures such as houses, fences and parking lots. But some structures abut levees or rest on top of them.
Part of an 11.5-mile levee built to protect downtown Augusta, Ga., from the Savannah River was incorporated into a park featuring a brick walkway, lighting and landscaping. A townhouse subdivision and access road were built atop the levee, as were sections of a hotel, a church hall and a science museum.
In Toledo, Ohio, some 1,500 homes, patios, stairs and other structures have been placed on the levee that runs along Lake Erie's Maumee Bay. "You name it, it's out there," said Robert Remmers, a Corps levee safety program manager who oversees Toledo's system.
Local officials say that in many cases the Corps allowed such incursions ? or didn't object to them.
Tom Robertson, a consulting engineer for Augusta, said the Corps signed off on the commercial buildings encroaching on its levee in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Corps knew about the townhouse development and did not formally approve it.
Eric Halpin, Corps special assistant for dam and levee safety, said the agency had sometimes allowed builders to take liberties that wouldn't be permitted now. The Corps doesn't expect local officials to tear down neighborhoods or hotels, but has orders from Congress to tell them about levee problems and risks, he said. In many cases, additional walls or other steps can improve safety.
In interviews, some local managers disputed their "unacceptable" ratings, saying their levees were sound, if not perfect.
Bill Sheppard, assistant chief engineer for the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board, noted that none of its levees failed during severe flooding in spring of 2011. "Our system works," he said. "Does it have components that need to be fixed after this flood? Absolutely. But if you look at the levee evaluation reports, you'd think, 'Oh Lord, run for the hills.'"
A number of local managers blame their "unacceptable" ratings on the Corps taking a harder line on compliance with levee construction, operation and maintenance standards.
"Since Katrina, they're almost hyper-vigilant," said John Sachi, city engineer for South St. Paul. "It's almost like they're remedying their mistakes from the past by putting the onus on us to make sure things get better."
Sachi said South St. Paul is spending $2.5 million to replace an outdated pumping station and correct other deficiencies.
The Corps' Halpin agreed that levees covered by the agency's safety program mostly held their own during some of the heaviest flooding on record in 2011, which caused an estimated $9 billion in damage. But that doesn't mean inspectors are overstating the system's flaws, Halpin said, noting that some communities escaped catastrophe only after heroic efforts to shore up levees more than half a century old.
"That is not acceptable performance," he said.
A number of local officials said they would happily upgrade their levees ? if they could afford it. "There is no money available. There's no way we could raise even a 25 percent match if they covered the rest of it," said Askew, Brookport's mayor.
A concrete floodwall about 10 feet high tops the section nearest the Brookport business district. Askew said the levee proved itself during the 2011 flood, when the town was mostly spared as the river swirled within a couple of feet of the top. The mayor figures the government should pay for about $2 million in upgrades.
After Katrina, California voters approved nearly $5 billion in bonds to shore up the state's aging flood protection system. With more than half the money spent, officials say they need up to $12 billion more to finish.
In Sacramento, a 42-mile-long levee along the Sacramento and American rivers protects the Natomas area, a flood-prone basin transformed from cropland into a community of 100,000 with an airport, nearly three dozen schools and two interstates. If the levee were to fail, "it would be beyond catastrophic," said Angelique Ashby, the city's vice mayor.
The levee's unacceptable rating led federal emergency officials to impose strict building limits that have prevented homeowners from making repairs and delayed construction of schools and a police station, she said.
About half the $810 million needed for upgrades has been raised from state and local sources, and much work has been done. The city is seeking federal financing of the rest.
In 2009, a congressional advisory panel recommended that Congress invest in levees, create national levee programs and enact policies to increase awareness about the risks of flooding. But Congress has yet to adopt the group's report. In the meantime, experts are warning that aging and weak flood-control systems will likely face stiffer tests as climate change makes severe storms more common in the coming years.
"This is going to be a national problem and it just hasn't dawned on people how big it's going to be," said Jeffrey Mount, a levee management specialist and founder of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. "We're in a never-ending cycle of flood and rebuild."
___
John Flesher reported from Brookport, Ill., and Traverse City, Mich., and Cain Burdeau reported from New Orleans. AP reporter Troy Thibodeaux contributed from New Orleans and AP video journalist Haven Daley contributed from Sacramento.
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NEWARK, N.J. -- A Florida man has admitted he took part in an operation that stole nearly $600,000 in prescription medicine and hair care products.
Reynaldo Tapanes (tah-PAHN-es) pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of conspiracy.
He was among 12 people charged last spring.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says the thefts occurred in Florida in 2008 and 2009. The prescription respiratory medicine was in a tractor-trailer that was stolen in Tampa, and Tapanes admitted delivering the drugs to a contact in Elizabeth.
The 46-year-old Miami resident also admitted delivering the hair care products to a warehouse in Newark. Those were part of a shipment from Ohio to Florida. He admitted receiving $180,000 for both deliveries.
Tapanes faces a maximum prison term of five years on each conspiracy count.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/17/3188057/florida-man-admits-role-in-prescription.html
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Every year I ask some of the attendees of the ScienceOnline conferences to tell me (and my readers) more about themselves, their careers, current projects and their views on the use of the Web in science, science education or science communication. So now we continue with the participants of ScienceOnline2012. See all the interviews in this series here.
Today my guest is Sean Ekins. Sean Ekins is a scientist who works from Collaborations in Chemistry as well as blogs and tweets? as CollabChem. He works collaboratively with other scientists all over the world on drug discovery, computational approaches for toxicology, tools for collaboration, mobile apps for science (Green Solvents, Open Drug Discovery Teams, TB Mobile). He is adjunct faculty at 3 US universities (UNC Chapel Hill, University of Maryland and UMDNJ) and on the board of several companies and organizations such as the Pistoia Alliance. He is currently focused on neglected disease research as well as how we can do drug discovery for rare diseases openly. He is technology focused and spends most of his time writing and occasionally winning SBIR and STTR grants so that groups he works with can develop their ideas further. He appreciates a good beer with his friends and reading to his two young children.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your background? Any scientific education?
I then did a HND in Applied Biology and had a year in industry working at Servier (a French Pharmaceutical Company with an R&D site near Windsor) that really put me back on track. After this I went to the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) to do a masters in Clinical Pharmacology then stayed there to do a PhD. So I became a different kind of doctor. By this point I was interested in Drug Metabolism and different models for understanding how drugs behaved or interacted with each other and I was aiming for a career in the Pharmaceutical industry. In the early 90s the industry started to decline and constricted dramatically in the UK so I thought I better go to the US and do a postdoc. I landed in Indianapolis in 1996 to work at Eli Lilly and that really started me off again, kind of rebirth.
Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?
So once in the USA I started doing similar work at Lilly as I had in Aberdeen, but focused on one enzyme (CYP2B6) involved in drug metabolism. This was the runt of the litter basically that no one was interested in much. Well that gave me a bit of flexibility and I started to dabble in computational software for understanding which molecules might bind to my enzyme. I basically started a new career doing computational drug metabolism or chemistry. I was having fun and realized I could do the same work with every enzyme my colleagues were working on. It was a kind of crazy time, by day I was at the bench and by night working on the computer. So in the days before a centralized database, I pulled the data they produced off the pinboard (it was all on a single sheet of paper), and used it to model every enzyme the group worked on.
I then left to work at Pfizer with my own group working on drug-drug interaction prediction while also keeping up on the computational side. Lilly then quickly hired me back to head a new group on computational ADME/Tox. Basically doing what I did as a postdoc but now the datasets were getting bigger as they started high throughput screening for lots of toxicology and metabolism related properties. I was now 100% an in silico scientist (using a computer for doing all my science) by 1999. I also started some collaborations with academics at this time which enabled me to publish research outside of the proprietary work at Lilly, this has been a continual thread to the present, each year adding more collaborators.
My next step was to join a start up in late 2001 that was using primarily computational tools to do drug discovery. I stayed with them until 2004 then joined a software company (eventually sold to Thomson Reuters in 2010) developing tools for systems biology (essentially connecting the dots between all the biology data being collected and superimposing all the genomics and proteomics data). I now focused more on integrating my models for drug-drug interactions into these tools and working on grants.
This was when I started to work from a home office which I have been doing ever since. By 2004 I had built up a nice range of publications on predicting drug interactions so I was able to obtain my DSc (science) from the University of Aberdeen in 2005. My next change of focus was getting the chance to edit a book for Wiley on Computational Applications for Pharmaceutical research and development at around the same time. This opened the door to edit a series (10 books to date) for them and coauthor 3 more books on computational aspects of toxicology, emerging technologies and collaborations.
From 2006-2008 I worked for small companies and startups getting grants and contracts working on drug discovery and pharmacoeconomics. Then my old computational chemistry mentor from Lilly recommended me to a software company in San Francisco developing a collaborative database for scientists. I have worked for them on neglected disease (Tuberculosis and malaria) work since then 3 days a week, leaving some time to carry on my academic collaborations and other consulting.
I am fortunate in that my work week rarely gets stale. I get to work on an amazing range of projects like understanding the evolution of nuclear receptors across different species from looking at the profile of bile salts that bind to them and modeling it in silico. Another day I might be building a model for a human drug transporter and predicting which other drugs may be substrates or inhibitors. I might be predicting which molecules from a drug company might interact with an ion channel called hERG, to help predict likely cardiotoxicity (something that goes back to my work at Lilly).? I might also be searching through FDA approved drugs to see if I can find new uses for them against a rare disease, or thinking of a dataset we could use as the basis of a new scientific mobile app. And that is just the 2 days of the week I set aside!
What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?
Most of my time has been focused on demonstrating we can use the masses of data accumulated on compounds screened against Mycobacterium tuberculosis to build models that in turn can be used to suggest molecules to test. In this way we can dramatically focus on testing fewer compounds. All of this data is publically accessible. I would also argue that this approach can be extrapolated to other research areas. We are accumulating data but not learning from it fast enough to design the next experiment. When I am not doing this I am increasingly concerned about data quality and some of the things we take for granted like ? why would the NIH release a database with significant errors, or a list of potential drugs without structures ? I spend about 50% or more of my time either writing papers to get my observations out there or writing grants for companies or with academics. I rarely write anything on my own so it is all collaborative.
It is difficult to predict exactly what I will work on from one year to the next ??I try to move out of areas and jump into new ones because I find a project or collaborator doing something interesting which I think I can contribute too. What I find is this comes at the cost of starting from scratch, establishing your credibility with a whole new set of reviewers etc. It does not matter how many papers you have, how many citations or whatever your h-index is, because as soon as you work on something you have never published on before (e.g. green chemistry or whatever) or try to submit to a new journal I have found I spend a lot of time on these kind of transitional papers. Once you get accepted it?s a lot easier.
I like getting into new areas because you see things that are not obvious to those that focus on it for years. E.g. the green solvents app came out of me going by chance to a green chemistry conference and randomly picking a talk to listen to on green solvents. A group had worked on collating data for 2 years across pharma and then just hid it in a PDF. Being totally na?ve to the topic I asked if there was an app with all the data and tweeted the idea. Alex Clark in Montreal responded and then had the app built in a few days and on the app store. It took nearly? a year though, to get a paper written and accepted on the topic because we faced an uphill battle with established scientists not understanding the value.
So I would say that is my passion going into new areas, establishing myself and publishing and learning a lot in a short time. I am in a race against time and I feel that even more acutely in the work on rare diseases because there are ~7000 of them and few have treatments, let alone cures. I know about so few and 7000 represents a Mount Everest of sorts. I met a parent of a child with a rapidly progressive neurological disease and that really gave me pause to think how we could help using all the tools I had worked on over the years, how could we speed up and disrupt pharmaceutical R&D ? really that means just accelerate it beyond the way it has progressed for the past 50 years. Again it?s another case of adapting to change and some squeaky upstart saying lets try it this way. The great thing about each rare disease is the parents of children or the patients likely vastly outnumber the researchers so the balance of power is in their hands, they raise money and fund researchers to do what they need etc.
So my goal is to do science to help these people as much as I can while at the same time putting as much of what I do back into circulation through free apps or open papers etc..my goal for 2013 is put every paper I author primarily into open journals.
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
I like the speed of putting ideas out there immediately on the web compared with the process of write a paper, get it reviewed and maybe many months later see it in print. I also like the ability to give a talk or poster and put my slides on slideshare, figshare etc so anyone can find them.
I am fascinated by the creative part of science. I have rarely had the vision (or aha moment) of the final paper idea before doing the research that led to it. But I can see how using the web and other tools may speed up the science to the point where the write up has to be automated or sped up too.? What tools could help with ideation? I do all my science on a computer,? all my papers are written on a computer..why not have all my ideas provided by it too.? Writing on a beermat or back of a napkin is one thing but is the iPad a good substitute? I have blogged by phone (painful), by iPad in a moving car (very slow) so I cannot see it as actually being ?science communication anytime by any device?. A stationary position helps and some paper to draft ideas is handy. I say that as I stand typing this on a laptop surrounded by piles of papers and notes.
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?
I blog frequently about anything I see scientifically, perhaps the science I or others publish. I have an interest in collaborative elements and that may be what sets my topics apart, the collaborative angle.
I have found that I do get a sense of instant gratification from blogging by putting what I am thinking (for good or bad) out there on the web. My blogs have started collaborations, they have led to numerous papers. I even had a person quite high up at the NIH, send a rant by email to me and about 70 other scientists after one of my blogs caught their attention. It would have been better if they had posted it on my blog because the whole world could see what they were thinking too rather than just a select audience.? I have also had other experienced scientists support my views on my blog.
I tweet (I was slow to come to it) more at conferences which I in turn use for ideation and as a persistent memory device. For me it is just an extension of technology development and the marketing ideas as I tweet a link to blogs, slides, posters, papers etc? I have websites, linkedin etc which help bring in business but my science collaborations happen primarily through who I know, their connections and personal interactions. I have found that email blasts and blogs and tweets occasionally bring in collaborations too. The web represents another tool for reaching people as far as I see it. I do not live in it. I live with it.
When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?
I had been reading my friend Antony Williams blog as ?ChemConnector? for a long time.? A few years ago my wife pointed me to ?In the Pipeline? and I like that a lot because of the topics relevant to pharma, the comments are usually funny too. Since ScienceOnline I have been following lots of attendees and they point to good blogs so my eyes have been opened. I have to ration my time using Twitter and Flipboard, but I would point to David Kroll who writes very clearly.
What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2012 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference ? a session, something someone said or did or wrote ? that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
The sessions on ?information overload? and ?open science? were highlights for me. The former made me think up an app that would bring all the information from the web and Twitter together. I got chance to work with Alex Clark again on this and we launched it early in 2012 called Open Drug Discovery Teams (a flipboard for science). We focused it on rare disease topics so we could help people share ideas, molecules and data and it inspired an IndieGoGo fundraising effort, numerous posters, a paper, a Youtube video etc..I think it?s still taking off and has potential to be developed for other uses. Over the year I have tweeted molecules and data into it so I can see the potential. If I had not attended the conference I doubt the app would have been developed. I would be keen to see what ideas people come up with that relate directly to the conference ? perhaps it could expand my theory that conferences now are useful idea generators as much as for social networking.
The standard of the other blogs from the community have made me step up the quality of what I put out, I still have a way to go but if what I write gets someone in the mood to try some computational tools or connect to collaborate, I will have achieved something. So if there are folks at the next meeting who need a guest blogger or someone to throw their data at to model, then please get in touch. If you have ideas to improve what I put out I want to hear that too.
Antony Williams made me realize that blogging and everything we put on the web is as important as all the papers and patents because this can be used for altmetrics too. Being at ScienceOnline2012 made me realize that there were hundreds of other scientists on the same wavelength. Science communication is important and there are many ways to do it, even Twitter is useful as a tool for science.
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Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=cbc6741013eac1032b0d191aecd9786c
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There’s rightfully some excitement online today about a newly leaked render claiming to show what’s next from HTC -- a high-end Android smartphone known by the codename “M7.” The image comes from UnwiredView via @evleaks, which has a good track record of bringing leaked images like this into public view.
The shot seems to show the front face of a phone with rounded corners, the standard assortment of ports and sensors, and an unusual front-facing speaker setup -- or an even weirder earpiece and microphone arrangement. It looks more than a little odd. Yes, it looks a lot like an iPhone.
But to understand what’s going on with this render, it’s worth underscoring where it actually came from, and looking briefly at the history surrounding these kinds of leaks. Unlike many leaked renders, it wasn’t created to show of the device to the public and press. Consider these sentences from the original post:
"The render is apparently part of a short animation clip instructing new owners on first-time SIM card installation. However, the lack of branding and other details (distinct screen borders, for instance) suggest that this is not the exact design HTC is expected to debut at next month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.”
As an early leak, this is great stuff. But it's worth remembering that while this render might well come from an early version of the M7 ROM, it's not necessarily a lock for what the phone will look like. And there's precedent for this sort of thing, where early renders end up looking nothing like what's announced.
Let's have a look back.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/1TVXHWlXn9Y/story01.htm
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