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Informatics
Duncan Hull
67 posts
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- May 18, 2012
- 04:54 AM
- 56 views
Web analytics: Numbers speak louder than words
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
According to the software which runs this site, this is the 200th post here at O’Really? To mark the occasion, here are some stats via WordPress with thoughts and general navel-gazing analysis paralysis [1] on web analytics. It all started just over six years ago at nodalpoint with help from Greg Tyrelle, the last four years have been WordPressed with help from Matt Mullenwegg. WordPress stats are unfortunately very primitive compared to the likes of Google Analytics and don’t give ........ Read more »
Shema, H., Bar-Ilan, J., & Thelwall, M. (2012) Research Blogs and the Discussion of Scholarly Information. PLoS ONE, 7(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035869
- May 11, 2012
- 09:58 AM
- 111 views
Journal Fire: Bonfire of the Vanity Journals?
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
When I first heard about Journal Fire, I thought, Great! someone is going to take all the closed-access scientific journals and make a big bonfire of them! At the top of this bonfire is the burning effigy of a wicker man, representing the very worst of the vanity journals.... Read more »
Deans Andrew R., Yoder Matthew J., & Balhoff James P. (2012) Time to change how we describe biodiversity. Trends in Ecology , 27(2), 84. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2011.11.007
- May 10, 2012
- 05:10 PM
- 92 views
The Lovelock Laboratory: A fantasy workplace in the West Country
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Former Mancunian James Lovelock runs the kind of a laboratory most scientists can only fantasise about working in as they grind through the humdrum bureaucracy of peer-review and never-ending grant applications. Lovelock is fortunate enough to run a completely independent, self-funded lab located in the beautiful West Country. There’s a fascinating interview with him on The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Khalili where he says lots of interesting things about elocution lessons, nuclear power, cli........ Read more »
Watson, A. (2009) Final warning from a sceptical prophet. Nature, 458(7241), 970-971. DOI: 10.1038/458970a
- May 3, 2012
- 10:00 AM
- 34 views
Need to re-invent the Web (badly)? There’s an App for that!
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
I love the convenience of mobile applications but hate the way they re-invent the wheel and are killing the Web. What can be done about it?... Read more »
Zittrain J. (2007) Saving the internet. Harvard business review, 85(6), 49. PMID: 17580647
- April 2, 2012
- 08:04 AM
- 237 views
Open Data Manchester: Twenty Four Hour Data People
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
According to Francis Maude, Open Data is the “next industrial revolution”. Now you should obviously take everything politicians say with a large pinch of salt (especially Maude) but despite the political hyperbole, when it comes to data he is onto something.... Read more »
Molloy, J. (2011) The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science. PLoS Biology, 9(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001195
Lincoln Stein. (2002) Creating a bioinformatics nation: Fragmented and technologically weak societies are vulnerable. Nature, 417(6885), 119-120. DOI: 10.1038/417119a
- February 15, 2012
- 08:58 AM
- 192 views
The Open Access Irony Awards: Naming and shaming
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Open Access (OA) publishing aims to make the results of scientific research available to the widest possible audience. Scientific papers that are published in Open Access journals are freely available for crucial data mining and for anyone to read, wherever they may be...... Read more »
Sommer, J. (2010) The delay in sharing research data is costing lives. Nature Medicine, 16(7), 744-744. DOI: 10.1038/nm0710-744
Boulton, G., Rawlins, M., Vallance, P., & Walport, M. (2011) Science as a public enterprise: the case for open data. The Lancet, 377(9778), 1633-1635. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60647-8
Zerhouni, E. (2004) INFORMATION ACCESS: NIH Public Access Policy. Science, 306(5703), 1895-1895. DOI: 10.1126/science.1106929
Hanson, B., Sugden, A., & Alberts, B. (2011) Making Data Maximally Available. Science, 331(6018), 649-649. DOI: 10.1126/science.1203354
Kaiser, Jocelyn. (2012) Profile of Stephen Friend: The Visionary. Science, 335(6069), 651-653. DOI: 10.1126/science.335.6069.651
Cooper, S., Khatib, F., Treuille, A., Barbero, J., Lee, J., Beenen, M., Leaver-Fay, A., Baker, D., Popović, Z., & players, F. (2010) Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game. Nature, 466(7307), 756-760. DOI: 10.1038/nature09304
Epstein, K. (2012) Scientists are urged to oppose new US legislation that will put studies behind a pay wall. BMJ, 344(jan17 3). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.e452
Kim, J. (2010) Faculty self-archiving: Motivations and barriers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. DOI: 10.1002/asi.21336
Smit, E., & Van Der Graaf, M. (2012) Journal article mining: the scholarly publishers' perspective. Learned Publishing, 25(1), 35-46. DOI: 10.1087/20120106
- Biology
- Research / Scholarship
- Open Access Irony Award
- Computational Biology
- Open Access
- research works act
- Open Data
- archiving
- elias zerhouni
- text mining
- Bruce Alberts
- Sage Bionetworks
- Stephen Friend
- open access
- Open Science
- open access irony award
- foldit
- josh sommer
- Structural Biology
- Publishing
- Bioinformatics
- November 30, 2011
- 08:45 AM
- 339 views
Fifteen years of extensive scientific research reveals the best* curry house in Manchester!
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Curryology, the branch of science that deals with curry, is an established discipline with a long and distinguished history. The myriad ingredients of curry, such as curcumin (in turmeric), capsaicin (in chilli pepper), cumin, coriander and many others have been a topic of extensive scientific research [1,2,3,4,5].
Like many large British cities, Manchester is blessed with a large population of people from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. All this means there is a bewildering array ........ Read more »
Bettaieb, I., Bourgou, S., Wannes, W., Hamrouni, I., Limam, F., & Marzouk, B. (2010) Essential Oils, Phenolics, and Antioxidant Activities of Different Parts of Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.). Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(19), 10410-10418. DOI: 10.1021/jf102248j
Silva, F., Ferreira, S., Queiroz, J., & Domingues, F. (2011) Coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) essential oil: its antibacterial activity and mode of action evaluated by flow cytometry. Journal of Medical Microbiology, 60(10), 1479-1486. DOI: 10.1099/jmm.0.034157-0
Ringman JM, Frautschy SA, Cole GM, Masterman DL, & Cummings JL. (2005) A potential role of the curry spice curcumin in Alzheimer's disease. Current Alzheimer research, 2(2), 131-6. PMID: 15974909
Bode, A., & Dong, Z. (2011) The Two Faces of Capsaicin. Cancer Research, 71(8), 2809-2814. DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-3756
- September 22, 2011
- 11:59 AM
- 254 views
I Can't Get No Job Satisfaction
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Job satisfaction is like a complex mathematical equation that needs to be balanced. There are many factors that contribute to the mix, both good and bad. Hopefully the good things about a job will outweigh the bad. But what are the good things that contribute to the elusive but crucial job satisfaction?... Read more »
Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N. (2009) Large Stakes and Big Mistakes. Review of Economic Studies, 76(2), 451-469. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-937X.2009.00534.x
- August 15, 2011
- 04:42 AM
- 676 views
Wikipedia: I Fought the Lore and the Lore Won
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Fighting the lore of wikipedia is an increasingly futile battle but there are people who resist using and improving the online encyclopedia. The remarkable thing is that some of this resistance comes from the scientific and academic communities, two groups of people who are supposedly concerned with the dissemination of knowledge. Wikipedia is the lore With [...]... Read more »
Neil L. Waters. (2007) Why you can't cite Wikipedia in my class. Communications of the ACM, 15-17. DOI: 10.1145/1284621.1284635
Patricia L. Dooley. (2010) Wikipedia and the two-faced professoriate. WikiSym '10 Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. DOI: 10.1145/1832772.1832803
Alexander L. Bond. (2011) Why ornithologists should embrace and contribute to Wikipedia. Ibis, 153(3), 640-641. DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-919X.2011.01135.x
Logan DW, Sandal M, Gardner PP, Manske M, & Bateman A. (2010) Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia. PLoS computational biology, 6(9). PMID: 20941386
- June 28, 2011
- 03:31 PM
- 695 views
Impact Factor Boxing 2011
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
[This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors] Well it’s that time again. The annual sweaty fist-fight for supremacy between the scientific journals, as measured by impact factors, is upon us. Much ink (virtual and actual) has been spilt on the subject of impact factors, which we won’t add to here, other [...]... Read more »
Karageorgopoulos, D., Lamnatou, V., Sardi, T., Gkegkes, I., & Falagas, M. (2011) Temporal Trends in the Impact Factor of European versus USA Biomedical Journals. PLoS ONE, 6(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016300
- June 19, 2011
- 08:08 AM
- 791 views
Sunday at the Lab with Uri Alon
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Ah Sunday, a day of rest, recuperation and roasted food… Unless you’re a scientist, that is. This one goes out to all the committed high-calibre, driven individual scientists [1] who are spending this Sunday working at the bench. This amusing little ditty is written by systems biologists Michael Elowitz and Uri Alon (lyrics below), and performed here by Uri [...]... Read more »
Elowe J. (2010) [Workaholism: between illusion and addiction]. L'Encephale, 36(4), 285-93. PMID: 20850599
- May 1, 2011
- 04:02 AM
- 841 views
Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia: Three Reactions to Innovation
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
According to Arthur C. Clarke [1]: New ideas pass through three periods: It can’t be done; It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; I knew it was a good idea all along These three stages can be summed up as Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia. Which sounds a bit like the famous misquote [...]... Read more »
Benford, G. (2008) Obituary: Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008). Nature, 452(7187), 546-546. DOI: 10.1038/452546a
- April 28, 2011
- 04:36 PM
- 1,041 views
Are machines taking over the planet?
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Talk of machines taking over the planet is the stuff of science fiction but if world domination was just a simple numbers game, some machines have already “taken over” from their human masters. One machine, the particular brand of computer processor found inside all iPhones and lots of other electronic devices, has been quietly spreading [...]... Read more »
Fitzpatrick, J. (2011) An interview with Steve Furber. Communications of the ACM, 54(5), 34. DOI: 10.1145/1941487.1941501
Steve Furber. (2011) Biologically-Inspired Massively-Parallel Architectures: A Reconfigurable Neural Modelling Platform. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6578(2). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-19475-7_2
Steve Furber, & Steve Temple. (2008) Studies in Computational Intelligence. Computational Intelligence: A Compendium, 763-796. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-78293-3_18
- April 1, 2011
- 01:53 AM
- 641 views
Circular logic is the best type of logic because it’s circular
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
One of the great things about logic is there are so many different flavours to choose from. If you thought that logic came in just one flavour (vanilla), then think again. Now, I Am Not A Logician but I can’t help but marvel at the bewildering array of logical flavours on offer including, but not limited [...]... Read more »
Laursen, L. (2009) Computational biology: Biological logic. Nature, 462(7272), 408-410. DOI: 10.1038/462408a
- March 11, 2011
- 01:51 PM
- 817 views
Drop the Digital Dummy!
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Here is an experiment to investigate dependence on your “digital dummy”. A digital dummy is any computer, smart phone or other digital device on which you suckle data like a baby. Delete all your so-called “social networks” on LinkedIn, Facebook etc. Being sat in front of a computer is distinctly unsociable. Give your twitter account [...]... Read more »
Flisher, C. (2010) Getting plugged in: An overview of Internet addiction. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 46(10), 557-559. DOI: 10.1111/j.1440-1754.2010.01879.x
- December 22, 2010
- 11:21 AM
- 558 views
Happy Christmas Lectures 2010
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
As Tom Lehrer once sang on his winterval carol: “Christmas time is here, by golly, Disapproval would be folly, Deck the halls with hunks of holly, Fill the cup and don’t say ‘when.’ Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens, Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go [...]... Read more »
Mark Miodownik. (2005) Facts not opinions? Devoloping both the physical and aesthetic properties of materials. Nature Materials, 4(7), 506-508. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1416
- December 8, 2010
- 12:03 PM
- 557 views
Science Careers: The Good, The Bad and The Starry
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Of all the things you can do with a Science degree, being paid money to stargaze from the top of a volcano in Hawaiʻi has to be one of the more interesting. Tom Kerr is one such lucky astronomer who has been managing operations at UKIRT (UK infrared telescope) – currently the world’s largest telescope dedicated [...]... Read more »
Song, I., McCombie, J., Kerr, T., & Sarre, P. (2007) The 3.3-μm PAH emission band of the Red Rectangle. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 380(3), 979-985. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12197.x
- November 2, 2010
- 05:04 PM
- 779 views
Standing on the shoulders of tyrants
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
There are at least two ways of looking at the history of Science: If we have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If we have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of tyrants. Take Isaac Newton for example, a giant whose shoulders we all stand on today. [...]... Read more »
Isaac Newton. (1671) A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; In Order to be Communicated to the R. Socie. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 6(69-80), 3075-3087. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1671.0072
- September 3, 2010
- 06:25 AM
- 815 views
What happens when you teach monkeys to use money?
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Freakonomics and its successor Superfreakonomics are two books by the economist Steven Levitt and his partner in crime Stephen Dubner that have a common theme running through them (quote): “People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable and manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the [...]... Read more »
Lakshminaryanan, V., Chen, M., & Santos, L. (2008) Endowment effect in capuchin monkeys. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1511), 3837-3844. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0149
- September 1, 2010
- 05:17 AM
- 871 views
How Many Unique Papers Are There In Mendeley?
by Duncan Hull in O'Really?
Mendeley is a handy piece of desktop and web software for managing and sharing research papers [1]. This popular tool has been getting a lot of attention lately, and with some impressive statistics it’s not difficult why. At the time of writing Mendeley claims to have over 36 million papers, added by just under half a [...]... Read more »
Victor Henning, & Jan Reichelt. (2008) Mendeley - A Last.fm For Research?. IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience, 327-328. DOI: 10.1109/eScience.2008.128
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