Make it really simple: animated human prehistory for 23andMe users

New 23andMe website animation on human prehistory made by Ariana Killoran. Ariana created all the Genetics 101 films for 23andMe and the narrator was her pa. With these films the company clearly sets a new standard in popular scientific animations and videos.

Homo Erectus:

Neanderthal:

My body is my thesis: The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest

The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest is for hidden artists disguised as scientists, nerds and shameless self promoters who are tempted to dance their PhDs, upload it to YouTube and enjoy microcelebrity. A real thesis live, non-profit but for fun and a one and only chance to make a fool out of you.

This is a perfect match for John Bohannon, The Gonzo Scientist (whom I introduced you back in 2007) who is an organizer, chronicler and participator of the contest and I must say I liked the rather-theatrical-performance-than-simple-dance version of his thesis, entitled The role of the WSS operon in the adaptive evolution of experimental populations of Pseudomonas flurescens SBW25 (here).

But what to think of the performance of a professor with a thesis title: “Analysis of thymic nurse cells in the chicken”? Artist, nerd, self promoter, did I miss something?

Here are the details of how to enter the contest and don’t miss to read about the prizes too (guests at the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago):

The contest is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field,

Superstruct launches with Superthreats, a forecasting game for the masses!

If you are particularly fascinated by the future and enjoy playing games the following is something you should be involved and interested in. Superstruct, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game started today with Superthreat scenarios by 2019. Game founder Jane McGonigal writes in a message sent to the members of Facebook Group the dedicated to the game:

Watch the news from the future, and find out exactly what dangers and challenges we face with Quarantine, Ravenous, Power Struggle, Outlaw Planet and Generation Exile.

Here is the Outlaw Planet video for instance:

The game is part of The Ten-Year Forecast Program of The Institute for the Future. You can find details in the Superstruct FAQ and as Jessica Hemerly summarizes it:

With Superstruct IFTF introduces a revolutionary new forecasting tool: Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Games (MMFGs). MMFGs are collaborative, open source simulations of a possible future. Each MMFG focuses on a unique set of “future parameters,” which we cull from IFTF’s forecast research. These parameters define a future scenario: a specific combination of transformative events, technologies, discoveries and social phenomenon that are likely to develop in the next 10 to 25 years. We then open up the future to the public, so that players can document their personal reactions to the scenario.

Back in February I participated in a workshop held at Palo Alto where we actually played a Superstruct like game from within the IFTF’s X2 site.

Aubrey de Grey on Aging 2008, the disease, the cure and the implications

This is how my Macbook saw Aubrey de Grey’s talk exactly 1 week ago on the AGING preconference at UCLA.

The Sergey, Larry, Eric test by Anne & Linda: 23andMe at home

“We really think that we can change Health Care…I want to change it in 5 years…it has to change and that’s we all are about” – says Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe co-founder, in the Google Tech Talk on Googling the Googlers’ DNA: A Demonstration of the 23andMe Personal Genome Service.

Also a good presentation by Linda Avey, other co-founder, for instance on data privacy and service security: “We take the security of our customers’ data to the highest degree…you guys (Googlers) are very much of the same mind..One of our leading engineers is probably the most paranoid man we’ve ever meet and he is the perfect guy for that.

Here are my screenshots on the genetic puzzle on the Google triumvirate presented by Anne Wojcicki:

Sergey Brin goes mobile in 2000 & a Russian lesson

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder is a very interesting man. His story is the number one immigrant success story in the USA today, I dare say. I have 2 Brin videos to show you today:

In the first one, Sergey demonstrates mobility in 2000 in 3 ways with his ‘faint accent that is no longer identifiably Russian’ (I really like this presentation as you can learn many things on how to give and not to give a talk):

In the second video Sergey speaks in his native language, Russian but with a “huuuge american accent” as a Russian colleague of mine wrote to me in an email.

Biomedical informatics and the NIH, in the Googleplex

“I feel like I am talking to an empty room. Why do I feel like I am talking to an empty room?” starts Michael Marron his Google Tech Talk on NIH and the computational infrastructure for biomedical research rather unfortunately. (I remember that room.)

A science comedian & the conservation of family mass

Brian Malow defines himself as a science comedian. Here are some videos to put the idea of ‘science comedy’ to the test. Have fun if you can!

Top geek movie figures, part 2: George McFly

In part 1 we had Skull from the game zone. Now comes the loser geek archetype George McFly - played by Crispin Glover – from Back to the Future or at least his laugh. The relation between Skull & George is more than obvious: chocolate milk. (Yes, it’s weekend.)

From the script:

Marty: George, buddy. remember that girl I introduced you to, Loraine. What are you writing?

George: Uh, stories, science fiction stories, about visitors coming down to Earth from another planet.

Top geek movie figures, part 1: Skull in Monster house

Chowder:

“Skull is in the game zone, right now. And you don’t want to mess with him when he is in the game zone. He once played for 4 days straight on 1 quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk and an adult diaper.”

 

 

Video interpretation of the Yahoo bid drama: who is who?

New JoVE helps old Wiley to publish video articles on Current Protocols

A partnership between the Journal of Visualized Experiments and big science publisher Wiley-Blackwell: the JoVE guys will give the technology, the art of making video experiments and Wiley provides the established network, audience on its Current Protocols site.

I wonder what will be the access status of those videos: current JoVE videos are freely available, while Current Protocols has pricey subscription rates (see screenshot).

Links: Alla Katsnelson, The Scientist: Online methods videos go mainstream:

“Rumors of JoVE’s deal with Wiley-Blackwell and other mainstream science publishers have been circulating in the blogosphere since late January. Moshe Pritsker, CEO of JoVE, told The Scientist this week that he had also signed similar deals with Annual Reviews and Springer Protocols.“

Visual journal partners with Wiley

Update from Moshe Pritsker, JoVE chief: The protocols will be co-published, that is freely available on JoVE.

Thanks, Moshe, that’s good news.

Aubrey de Grey on Colbert Report (video) and the housing market in heaven

Thanks to Kevin, you can now watch the video too:

Colbert: “But if people lived to be a 1000 years old won’t that kill any ability for humans to take risks cause if I’ve known I lived to be a 1000 I am not going to cross the street because you can’t cure being hit by a bus.”

Aubrey: “Well, you’ll be able to get your grandmother to help you to cross the street.”

That is a witty (and the same time, deep) answer indeed: People usually help their grandmother to cross the street but in a many generational “rejuvenated” world people will be able to take care of their descendants to the same extent as they are able to take care of their ascendants today. Moreover, it has something to do with the philosophical question of intergenerational justice:

Aubrey de Grey on the Colbert report tonight?

I just got the alert from Kevin Dewalt: “Aubrey is scheduled to be on Colbert tonight in case anyone is watching.” Remember the recent case when Good Morning America cancelled the scheduled airtime for Aubrey de Grey saying the whole life extension subject was “too sciencey“.

Update: Aubrey de Grey on Colbert Report (video) and the housing market in heaven

Mick Jagger in the movie Enigma

Yesterday we watched the movie Enigma, and it is first-class as entertainment although not well-known. I became interested in it as Tom Stoppard wrote the script and my favorite movie ever is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dead. Mick Jagger was the producer of the movie and he also appears for a sec as a background English soldier (captain?) with 2 ladies and a cigarette.

Will JoVE’s new science blog service reinvent the genre?

The pioneer biological video publishing site JoVE (covered here many times) will soon launch a blogging platform and a community site. Nikita Bernstein, the main nerd behind JoVE is building the code and the platform – as Anne Kushnir informed me – should hopefully go live in the next couple of weeks. At least that is what can be known publicly.
The expectations are high and the JoVE guys (co-founders Moshe Pritsker and Nikita) themselves raised the bar with the quality and concept of video-protocols. As JoVE is a startup, not an established company with big inertia, they could be experimental but within the limits of their investors’ patience and money.

The real question for me whether JoVE’s blogging service can renew the genre of science blogging or at least bring a previously non-existing color into it? Points:

- Who will become JoVE’s first generation bloggers? Fresh blood? If yes what will be the source? Senior scientists, high school students, postdocs in the U.S.A., discovering the web?

- Existing bloggers who’d like to syndicate their content? Bloggers from Scienceblogs, Nature Network or from the DNA Network? Independent bloggers from outside theses established circles? Journalists? What will be the bait? For existing bloggers, who are tempted to commercialize their activity somehow the crucial question is whether they can generate any revenue out of this new platform? Will they be paid by traffic, and if yes how competitive are the tariffs? Is it possible to install paid ads, banners on the blogs and the bloggers could be paid based on pay per click methods just like Google AdSense?

– What about content rights? Exclusive, non-exclusive, et cetera? Would there be any topic restrictions? How can quality science blogging and credit is maintained in the long term?

Science.tv launched a blog

I haven’t done any strict fact checking but as far as I know science.tv‘s new blog, called simply Science.tv Blog is the first web log launched by a science video sharing site in order to communicate and explore. (Usually I am accustomed to the other way in the world of online video: blog first, vlog or tv second, think about BoingBoing or Make.)

Matt Thurling, science.tv founder has some valuable considerations on how to catch (video) school kids conducting genuine experiments attempting to answer their very own hypotheses be it on Nintendo or ants.

Matt Thurling on the concept of science.TV

Another comment turns to blog post to make it more visible: Following my post on science.TV, Matt Thurling, founder explained the concept of it in a lengthy comment, that sheds light on the ins and outs of science.TV (emphasis added by me):

Although science.tv has been some three years in the making, we’re still in the very early stages. The site is live, but it should probably be labelled ‘alpha version’ because, in terms of functionality, it’s only about 10% of what’s to come. And in terms of content, it’s even less developed.

The content that’s on the site at the moment is admittedly something of a mixed bag. It actually represents one small part of science.tv – fun resources for teachers to use in classes to demonstrate phenomena. The few films that have been uploaded or linked have come from the focus group of teachers involved in the project.

We did some interesting research a while back on what ‘science’ means to different kinds of people. For scientists and academics, it’s about pursuit of the truth via the scientific method; for pretty much everyone else, it’s actually more about the products of science. What’s also interesting is the meaning of ‘experiment’, and what seems to be taught to school students is not experimentation at all, but the ‘correct’ performance of rituals with set outcomes.

science.TV joins the club but exactly which?

science.TV is one amongst the newest actors of the online video sharing marketplace, based in Bristol, UK.

As Matt Thurling, founder says:

“My vision for science.tv is simply to provide the best possible set of tools to enable interaction via video between the science community. My definition of the science community is probably broader than the other sites in that it includes hobbyists and school students as well as research scientists. The idea is that, given the right tools, everybody will find their level and their role in science.tv, be it creator, distributor, educator or consumer of niche content.”

With a domain name like this, I expected a lot more science content, but the emphasis at this early point is on entertaining Make-like tech and DIY videos (think of Instructables), many of them coming from YouTube. While I am in favor of merging science with tech and had a little role in popularizing tech sites like Make and O’Reilly Radar in the science blogosphere I do not think that science.TV is a good name choice for such type of combined content. However, in the long run, not the name that matters but the content. If science.TV can aggregate, share or produce quality content at the science-tech interface than it will be a colorful and appreciated member of the family of science video sites ranging from the research focused JoVE and SciVee to the less academic DNATube or Lab Action.

To achieve this aim science.TV is looking for contributors

Everything you want to know about Make:TV on Videovoo

I am not watching to many videocasts, but the last 5 epizodes of the Make Weekend Projects with Bre Pettis are always on my iPhone and viewed every time. Now Anna over at Videovoo reports on the coming Make:TV featuring half-hour episodes that will be presented in High-Def TV and streamed on the web in as early as 2008. Anna made a detailed email Q&A with Philip Torrone, senior editor and alpha nerd on the emerging video and TV side of Make:

The first Make video was uploaded on YouTube in March 22, 2006 (if I’m not mistaken), while Make TV show started to run on Blip.TV in July 2006. As for Blip.TV, Phillip Torrone senior Make editor says “we like the player, the high quality playback and the team at blip”. However, YouTube still brings more eyeballs than Blip.TV – maybe more revenue too? Since December 2007 Make magazine has been in the YouTube Partner program, so they will get some revenue from the most popular video social networking site too. In 2008 they are also getting on air more ‘officially,’ harvesting more exposure on more screens, which is a nice example of an online success story spreading out on a national TV channel well-known for educational science programs. What can we expect in 2008?

CNN, USA Today and the terraniche media on niche science video sites

What do you think about the distinction of mainstream – niche on the web? Isn’t it the case that ‘mainstream media’ is just a niche after all, and not necessarily the most important?

We have a very nice case study now on how ideas, memes, actions, movements in the science/tech arena are spreading throughout the web: science video sites like JoVE, Labaction, SciVee were first embraced by the more and more muscular science blogosphere followed by a broader science/tech media coverage like Wired, The Scientist and finally reached CNN, USA Today today via the same Associated Press story by Alicia Chang (I am looking forward to a presidential debate on how to make and publish good science videos online):

CNN: Scientists make videos for the Web

USA Today: Niche sites spread science on the Web

Seattle Times: Video-sharing Web sites let scientists show off experiments, make science more accessible

From the story:

Researchers who are uploading their experiments and lectures online are discovering filmmaking is more art than science. If the narrators are boring or the image is shaky, viewers will quickly learn to click elsewhere…

“We need to show our experiments, and ‘show’ in our age means video,” Pritsker said.

Some experts say the biggest advantage to science videos is making research more accessible to nonscientists. There’s no guarantee that video can’t be manipulated, but the medium also may force scientists to think twice before committing fraud.

“It’s one thing to put your name on a fake paper and it’s another to make a fake video that your friends and family could watch,” said John B. Horrigan, associate director for research at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Last year, Horrigan authored a study that found more than half the people who seek science information online want to hear it from the original source.

Translating the experiments to video won’t be without challenges. Chief among them is attracting enough Web traffic to make the sites profitable.

Thanks for the tip, Moshe.

Science videos on Pimm:

Wired on the emerging science video websites: see one, do one, teach one

LabAction.com: new player on the science video niche market

Biological Video Protocols on JoVE: Online Journal of Visualized Experiments

Science: video protocols can help to share the tacit dimension

Tit in the webcam and lifecasting for animals

A lifecasting and human free video streaming channel for animals could easily be a lot more interesting than Justin.tv. An early video tracking system based on miniaturized, animal-borne video cameras was developed for studying the undisturbed behavior (capturing lizards, using tools, flying) of new Caledonian crows and published in Science. Of course the online supporting material in this case is obviously the main stage so enjoy the online birdwatching. Some technical details on the setup: We designed tail-mounted camera units that do not interfere with movement and ensure safe shedding of the tag with regular molt. Units transmit a color video signal with sound to custom-built receivers and incorporate very high frequency (VHF) radio tags for simultaneous positional tracking. We deployed cameras on 18 different crows (12 males) in our dry forest study site (21°33’50”S, 165°19’27”E), capturing 451 min of analyzable video footage from 12 subjects (38 ± 5 min per bird, mean ± SE; maximum of 60 min). Hey, Makers, it’s time to set up your homemade animal videocams and install them on the Rats in the front room, roaches in the back and the racoons at the backyard. The tit picture was made with a webcam in Szentgotthárd, Hungary.

Craig Venter and Tim O’Reilly chat: when 2 worlds meet

Biotech is the next infotech (or at least the 2 worlds need to be merged) and it is good to detect the signs of the growing biotech interest on part of the general tech crowd. At the Web 2.0 summit (organised by and for the Silicon Valley tech-media establishment) Tim O’ Reilly asked Craig Just Sequenced Venter. I suggest everyone watching the video below. It was not a terrific dialogue though as we’ve seen 2 people with a very different background talking about Venter’s discipline. I loved to hear the words ‘SNPs’ or ‘mitochondria ‘coming from Venter’s mouth in front of the biotechnologically still illiterate IT and web technology elite (my assumption, not tested statistically).

The other remarkable thing was Venter’s doubts regarding the current commercialized genetics service that personalized medicine and bioweb startups like 23andMe

Thoughts on Open Source Hardware at the Austin Maker Faire

For open source hardware you need open source software and a modular hardware design that makes building customized hardware just as easy as writing software or web apps. In order to make the idea mainstream you need to commercialize it and that’s what exactly Bug Labs is planning to do. (Again, my bioDIY brain says, that we should apply this concept to biological components too on different levels, just like nucleotide (DNA, RNA), protein, organellar, cellular, tissue level, and make them available to home tinkerers).

One interesting session at the Austin Maker Faire was the chat on Open Source Hardware with Limor Fried and Phil Torrone and Anna recorded it with her new camcorder, so please check Anna’s comments to learn more and see the talk:

Wired on the emerging science video websites: see one, do one, teach one

Wired has a nice piece on Video Sites Help Scientists Show Instead of Tell by Alexis Madrigal focusing on the high-end, non-youtubish, let’s-build-the-pro-network-of-video-geeks-in-the-labs-out-there approach of JoVE. Video players mentioned on the pop side: LabAction and PloS backed SciVee. The real question of this niche market is: In order to penetrate the mainstream science audience what is the proper mix of anti-Web 2.0 professional science rules and Web 2.0 techniques science video site builders should apply. Profit is not on the agenda yet.

“Highlighting little tricks in a video that might not be apparent in a paper can save an enormous amount of time,” said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, whose University of California-San Francisco lab has posted a video about “cortical neurogenesis,” or the growth of neurons in the cerebral cortex. “There’s an old adage in medicine about learning: See one, do one, teach one. It carries over to the research lab, too.”

Sharing those little tricks with scientists everywhere is the idea behind the Journal of Visualized Experiments, an all-video scientific journal that launched its microfluidics-focused eighth issue in early October.

Dry, jargon-laden scientific papers can leave out what scientist and blogger Attila Csordas calls “the tacit dimension” on his blog.”

Mr. Madrigal has chosen a good post of mine to refer as that early post, Science: video protocols can help to share the tacit dimension was the starting point in 2 respects: a., in the comment section Moshe Pritsker introduced JoVE one month later to the blogosphere, so I could spend the same day to cover it instead of hanging around in Cambridge with my girlfriend b., at the same time the idea of LabAction was born.

I finish the post later, just let me get the breakfast and go to the lab first…. ok, I am here again.

SENS3 conference talks are now available in MP4

All the SENS3 talks are now downloadable from the SENS3 website.

SENS3 conference videos online on a personal website

Similarly to the Edmonton Aging Symposium which reportedly “was a WORLD FIRST! in being streamed live onto the internet” (Kevin Perrott) amongst conferences, a selection of the presentations of the SENS3 conference are now available at the personal website of Richard Schueler. Richard is a big mouthed, cowboy hat geek with a serious life extension commitment who orchestrated the Kurzweil distance video talk on his sony tx and logitech webcam at the conference.

(I’ll definitely watch the presentations of Arne Akbar, Edward Mocarski and Jason Emsley again because of the science content and see Chris Phoenix’s talk too as it was so entertaining.)

Link source: Do What You’ve Always Been Talking About

Dean Kamen’s 5 min TED talk on the robotic arm project

When Anna and me are looking for something interesting, but not too lengthy and detailed quality video content on the web our frequent destination is TED Talks. These videos are ideal during a lunch, or just before bedtime. In the newest TED sequence inventor Dean Kamen previews the extraordinary prosthetic arm his team is developing.

It is a tech-savvy project: besides reaching the degrees of freedom of the human arm, they’re using PET scan, MRI in order to make a realistic rubber/silicon coat for the prostethic arm.

Nanodrop video ad from the Brown iGEM team

Imagine a world where grad students and postdocs are well paid by manufacturers and companies by doing ads like the following one. The Brown iGEM Team shows off the Nanodrop Spectrophotometer and compares it to regular spectrophotometers in a funny, easy to catch way. (They were not paid by this.) And how the disclaimers would look like in peer review articles in that ad world?

Link: New wave of science marketing: Brown University iGEM 2007

New wave of science marketing: Brown University iGEM 2007

iGem is the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. Young, smart undergraduate faces, team projects, synthetic biology, cool science. (Those purple gloves are so popular in many labs.) Thanks for the tip, John Cumbers.

Aubrey de Grey’s Google TechTalk on Prospects for extending healthy life – a lot

Aubrey de Grey‘s presentation in Google Tech Talk series at the Googleplex, Mountain View, May 29, 2007 (Thanks, Russell Whitaker).

More on Aubrey on Pimm:

Content of Ending Aging, Aubrey de Grey’s coming life extension book

3 Edmonton Aging (Life Extension) Symposium videos

Blogterview with Aubrey de Grey: life extension stories

What Google Universal Search’s first 30 results know about “biotech blog”

Everyday web users are strongly adapted to a situation in which 99% of their information comes from the first 30 results of a Google Search (the first 3 pages with divine power, if the setting is 10 results/page). And they are strongly believe the results are significant in most cases. Right? So let us check now the first 30 results (in English language) of the newly introduced Google Universal Search for the term “biotech blog”. The 11-13 results for me (warning: the result positions could vary due to different settings and countries and also personalized search) are the following…

 

Let us give some attention to the 13th result (which is a mid-aristocratic position), which is a YouTube video with terrible sound quality. Do you think that this content is significant for you if you are hunting for some good “biotech blog” results?

Anthony Atala on regenerative medicine at New Yorker’s 2012 conference

Dr. Anthony Atala of pluripotent amniotic fluid-derived stem cell and tissue engineered bladder fame gave a presentation on Regenerative Medicine at the 2007 New Yorker Conference “2012: Stories from the Near Future”.

Atala, the director of the Biopolis-like huge Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine with circa 150 people, talks amongst others on the differences amongst embryonic, placental and adult stem cells, the differences between the tissue engineering of solid organs (kidney) and hollow organs (bladder) and on the five-year follow-up careful strategy behind the successful tissue engineered products. Here are some slides of the presentation in the order of appearance:

Bell curve in medical care: Atul Gawande in Author@Google

The Anna of my life mailed me the link of The Authors@Google program, which “brings authors of all stripes to Google for informal talks centering on their recently published books.” You can browse the Google Talks videos with one click.

And non other than Atul Gawande, author of New Yorker’s opinionated The Way We Age Now report, tells medical stories and draws conclusions in the following video out of his new book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, recorded on 1st May, 2007, at Googleplex added to YouTube on May 03, withdrawn the same day due to a bug, then reuploaded later.

The speech is a little bit longish for my taste, but that is typical in the case of performing narratives.

Edmonton Aging Symposium: full video, audio and presentation access

According to the organizers the Edmonton Aging Symposium “was a WORLD FIRST! in being streamed live onto the internet.” Now you can download where possible, the video, powerpoint and audio MP3 recordings of the streaming split up by speaker in alphabetical order. I think this is really webhistorical and good news for all open access friends of the life (extension) sciences. One critical point: Why Windows Media Video format? The following slide is from Judith Campisi‘s presentation (excellent aging blogger Chris Patil of Ouroboros is working with Campisi as a postdoc) called The double-edged sword of cellular senescence: Link

3 Edmonton Aging (Life Extension) Symposium videos

Following Reason’s links at Fight Aging here is a little conference webcasting from the Edmonton Aging Symposium. You also can read a Conference Report at Ouroboros.

There was a Symposium Live Streaming where for the very nominal fee of $5 CAD per connection to cover bandwidth costs people could watch the majority of presentations in a Windows Media Format. If anybody participated in this trial please share with us the information on it.

Debate between Gregory Stock and Daniel Callahan, which was moderated by Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey: Damage Accumulation and Age-Related Degeneration

Ronald Bailey: Estimating Your Future’s Options

LabAction.com: new player on the science video niche market

Well, I am pleased to announce that we’ve just entered into an era of online scientific video sharing as there exists now a nascent niche market around. After the first mover JoVE (Journal of Visualized Expermients, covered many times here), LabAction.com was launched on 21st March 07 with as many as 3 biology-related videos. And I am more happy since one of my post had a little role as founder Ian Brown emailed me: “I read one of your blog on Science: video protocols can help to share the tacit dimension that appeared in October 06. It really inspired me to do a YouTube for LifeScientists. It took me quite some time to figure out what it takes to built a video sharing site but yes that was a good experience. I have recently launched a site www.labaction.com for sharing Biology videos.”

Ok, so LabAction is a definitely a YouTube-like video sharing surface, where everybody can upload their scientific related videos on protocols, products and so on. That means there won’t be any quality control here in contrast with JoVE’s editorial review process due to the novelty and required quality of video science publishing, but on the other hand LabAction could be popular because everybody can upload videos here. It could become a pop science site and for instance it may also be the place of high tech product adverstising, just like this cool microarray video ad, where at the turntable there is a guru made out of pipette tips scratching with a magnetic mixer, while eppendorf hiphop freaks are enjoying the perfomance of microarray built high tech break dancers.

From Ian’s writeup: LabAction.com presents a portal where researchers can share the much needed information on essential steps of new protocols and techniques. Videos and commentaries on every aspect of biology ranging from basic molecular biology to complex protein microarray experiments or trickiest surgery could be made accessible using video formats.

Nature Publishing Editor on the idea of a public scientific multimedia site

Maxine Clarke, Publishing Executive Editor of Nature and blogger of Peer-to-Peer got interested in the problem of “supporting information” and in the idea of an open access, peer-review supporting information aggregator website. She shared with me her valuable thoughts and informations by mail, from which I now publish parts with the permission of Maxine Clarke (emphasis by me).

On the possibility of a community-approved public multimedia site (videos, audios, pictures) with open access supporting information from peer-review journals.

It would indeed be nice for authors and readers to have such a facility. If there were to be a multimedia database, accepted by the community, we’d be happy to consider making deposition mandatory. Our principle is that data described in our papers are freely available, so if there were a community-approved public multimedia site, which included annotatation and curation, we’d be happy to consider making it a condition of publication for movies etc to be deposited in it. It would need to be publisher-independent to work, so that authors could upload multimedia data wherever they’d published their paper.

The main point for us at Nature is that as a publisher we have to be confident that material published off our website is properly curated, archived and preserved. For example, when we introduced the microarray deposition policy we ensured that there was full community support for the two databases (in one of which, authors’ choice, we require deposition) before implementing the policy. So for this video idea to work, the “database” concerned would need to be publicly accessible (not commercial), curated, annotated etc.

On the status of online supporting information at Nature:

Supplementary Information on the Nature website is free, though you have to register. (Confirmed, see screenshot of a 3D supplementary animation showing that the gut-associated lymphoid tissue comprised of different subsets of haematopoietic cells, Veiga-Fernandes et al.)

On the problem and handling of online supporting information:

Let’s make ‘supplementary’ peer-review scientific videos free and youtubish!

In the last post on “supporting information” section I claimed that the problematic status of supporting information comes from the heterogeneity of its data, on the one hand genuine online multimedial files, on the other hand “paperlike” data. Big differences also occur concerning the importance of the data. The source of the heterogeneity is the traditional, offline, peer-review article format, which is not able to embrace multimedia files, videos, audios, big resolution pictures.

If you are working in a field, like cell and molecular biology, you are probably a heavyweight user of various imaging methods like laser scanning confocal microscopy, deconvolution microscopy or just lean on normal fluorescence microscopy. Increasingly you are involved in the making of gigabyte sized time lapse videos on living cells or 3D imaging visualizations made by special software, illustrating the biological phenomenon, pattern or effect you are publishing an article on. So scientific videos are more and more important part of scientific arguments in the life sciences.

But these videos can only be published online, under the humiliating title “supplementary information” since offline it is not possible to include videos in every Nature volume (although theorethically some thin film paper ultraexpensive technology can do that in the future). Examples of 3D visualizations are Wang et al.: Endothelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells form durable blood vessels in vivo in Nature Biotechnology (see left), and Zhu et al.:Spatiotemporal control of spindle midzone formation by PRC1 in human cells, PNAS (see right).

So here ‘d like to suggest for researchers who are making videos and upload it, the powerful editors of peer-review journals, coders, geeks in the uprising web video market to meditate on the possibility of liberating the so called supplementary science videos of peer-review articles and give some light to them by making them freely available and distributable on the web! What about a strict, searchable scientific video sharing site?

Points of persuasion:

1. the web is the natural home of multimedia files of scientific studies, not the published journal articles, so why not make available them in an open access style?

2. there must be some working creative commons like license construction referring to just multimedia parts of the supporting information section, not the whole article, which is good for the Publishing Groups, does not hurt their interests, but does enormous good for individual researchers, searching information outside their academic institutions for the public (if you heard of any type of license like this, please inform me, I am ignorant in this respect)

3. videos, 3D animations are convincing, sometimes crucial forces of scientific arguments in life sciences, so what about a free abstract+supporting information construction?

4. from a presentation point of view, videos are really spectacular and the liberation of science videos can do much for popularizing science worldwebwide

5. imagine a youtube-like video site collecting these videos and make them available for every web user

6. timing: the current web is dominantly about videos and video sharing

What I have in mind here, is a JoVE like website, serving as an ideal host of peer-review scientific videos, animations, audios….

The closest relative is BioMed Search, a Google-like Biomedical Image Search Engine which is currently unavailable due to some problems.

Update: Maxine Clarke, Publishing Executive Editor of Nature and blogger of Peer-to-Peer on the problem of “supporting information” and in the idea of an open access, peer-review supporting information aggregator website:
Nature Publishing Editor on the idea of a public scientific multimedia site

JoVE 2.0 makes science social and pop: video sharing, comments, interviews

You must definitely check the completely redesigned, upgraded JoVE website to see the enhanced present of online science! Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is an online journal publishing visualized (video-based) biological research studies. It was launched in November, 2006 and now due to the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of editor Moshe Pritsker, web developer Nikita Bernstein and others it became a mature adventure, that is sporadic with its advanced features within the current online scientific community. What are the main novelties? Well, they are mostly technical and partly content related. First, on the right the videos have a cool textual chapter menu, so you can jump instantly to the part you are interested most. (See the picture below) Second, related to the protocol video Studying aggression in Drosophila (fruit flies) there is an interview with Edward Kravitz. I find the interview option a huge step forward, if it will be regular here besides the protocol videos, that has the chance to make JoVE and life sciences really popular on the web. Interviews can serve almost as videoblogs.

Third, if you are logged in, you can comment the videos and start a discussion and this is a big opportunity for life scientists to share video protocols and insider tricks and to learn techniques and repeat experiments properly.