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Policies that request and require investigators to share research data are becoming more common. This research study, The impact of public data archiving policies on attitudes, experiences, and practices of authors, explores the impact of journal policies on the experiences, attitudes, and practices of active scientists.

The fifth edition of the EFC Research Forum Stakeholders' Conference drilled down beyond the buzzword that "social innovation" has become in the corridors of public-benefit foundations and their partners in recent years by examining some key areas that are driving social innovation in research forward. Topics addressed included:   * The potential for foundations to spearhead socially innovative research * The impact of social media and networks on research * Open access and the challenge of quality assurance * Public participation in science: new modes of interaction

Models of whole-brain connectivity are valuable for understanding neurological function, development and disease. This paper presents a machine learning based approach to classify subjects according to their approximated structural connectivity patterns and to identify features which represent the key differences between groups. Brain networks are extracted from diffusion magnetic resonance images obtained by a clinically viable acquisition protocol. Connections are tracked between 83 regions of interest automatically extracted by label propagation from multiple brain atlases followed by classifier fusion. Tracts between these regions are propagated by probabilistic tracking, and mean anisotropy measurements along these connections provide the feature vectors for combined principal component analysis and maximum uncertainty linear discriminant analysis. The approach is tested on two populations with different age distributions: 20-30 and 60-90 years. We show that subjects can be classified successfully (with 87.46% accuracy) and that the features extracted from the discriminant analysis agree with current consensus on the neurological impact of ageing.

In the past decade, there have been remarkable advances in proteomic technologies. Mass spectrometry has emerged as the preferred method for in-depth characterization of the protein components of biological systems. Using mass spectrometry, key insights into the composition, regulation and function of molecular complexes and pathways have been gained. From these studies, it is clear that mass-spectrometry-based proteomics is now a powerful 'hypothesis-generating engine' that, when combined with complementary molecular, cellular and pharmacological techniques, provides a framework for translating large data sets into an understanding of complex biological processes.

We design and engineer biotic games in order to solve educational challenges and to support biomedical research. Playing games is deeply rooted in human culture, with new game modalities being repeatedly facilitated by new technology, such as video games enabled by electronics. Despite the recent advancements in biotechnology there is virtually no impact on gaming yet.

The Biotic Games project (Stanford University) enables players to interact directly with microorganisms. The game's "hardware" is a simple console which is hooked up to a lab slide. When players push buttons on the console the microorganisms on the slide react. These reactions are displayed onscreen in real-time via a microscopic camera.

"Research Excellence Framework (REF), an evaluation of UK academia that influences funding"