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GPUGRID.net is a distributed computing infrastructure devoted to biomedical research. Thanks to the contribution of volunteers, GPUGRID scientists can perform molecular simulations to understand the function of proteins in health and disease.

"How many mammal species live in the forest? It sounds like a simple question, but the actual distributions of shy, small or rare mammals are often murky, confounding conservationists seeking to protect them. Yet a paper published online on Tuesday in the journal Molecular Ecology explores a new way to track biodiversity: by capturing flies that feed on carcasses. The flies' stomachs offer DNA diaries of their recent meals, giving scientists clues to which animals live and die in the forest. "The animals are there, but you just don't see them," said Fabian Leendertz, a wildlife epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and an author of the paper. "Those flies will find them and will tell us what is there"

"A team of scientists at Oxford University have printed - yes, printed - what could be the predecessors to usable synthetic human tissue. The researchers released a paper called A Tissue-Like Material, announcing that they created their own version of a 3D printer, saying the current ones on the market couldn't print what they were after, according to PhsyOrg. And what were they after? A protein sack of water that can mold itself into different shapes and perform similar functions to human cells. After developing the printer, the team was able to print out a series of droplets that formed a network of human-like cells that could act like nerves and send electrical signals across the network."

The ScienceWISE.info provides scientists with possibilities of article annotation and scientific bookmarking, helping the international community of physicists to generate dynamically, as a part of their everyday work, an interactive semantic environment, containing a field specific concept ontology with direct ..

"Tissue engineering is often thought of as a "Frankenstein-type" science where scientists build living tissues from otherwise "dead" tissues and organs. However, current advances in technology mean bringing life to cadaveric tissues is becoming more and more sophisticated: less of the lightning strikes and more stem cells and 3D printing!"

AskMe - Experiment Publisher is a simple to use software package for users to publish their large scale life science experiment data on to the web by use of data mining and visualization concepts. With use of AskMe, scientists can share these datasets easily with their collaborators or they can be made publicly accessible to the scientific community by Sciencenet - our distributed peer to peer search and share engine.

"About the Cafe Cafe Scientifique is a forum for discussing and debating science issues which are of concern to everyone. Our aim is to promote public engagement with science and to foster interesting, fact-based discussions in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. Our speakers are scientists or science journalists, ethicists, or related experts from the local community who donate their time to present and discuss their work with the public. We include a range of topics and disciplines. Cafe Scientifique started in France and Great Britain in the late 1990′s, and has now spread all over the world -including Vancouver!"

"Nature: "A group called DIYgenomics has banded together to analyse their genomes, and even conduct and participate in small clinical trials" - October 2010 Nature Medicine: "...early adopters are showing how empowering and beneficial to science personal genetic information can be" - September 2010 WIRED: "...they wanted to build a model trial that could be easily replicated by citizen scientists anywhere" "

Kaggle is a platform for data prediction competitions that allows organizations to post their data and have it scrutinized by the world's best data scientists. In exchange for a prize, winning competitors provide the algorithms that beat all other methods of solving a data crunching problem. Most data problems can be framed as a competition.

"It seems like his brain isn't working quite properly and according to new findings, it may not be. Researchers have begun to explore the cognitive impairment that men experience before and after interacting with women. A 2009 study demonstrated that after a short interaction with an attractive woman, men experienced a decline in mental performance. A more recent study suggests that this cognitive impairment takes hold even w hen men simply anticipate interacting with a woman who they know very little about. Sanne Nauts ... Daisy Grewal is a researcher at the Stanford School of Medicine, where she investigates how stereotypes affect the careers of women and minority scientists."

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/101207.html Peter Rothwell: In this new work, scientists from Oxford, Edinburgh, London and Japan used data on over 670 deaths from cancer in a range of randomised trials involving over 25,000 people. These trials compared daily use of aspirin against no aspirin and were done originally to look for any preventative effect against heart disease. The results, published in the Lancet, showed that aspirin reduced death due to any cancer by around 20% during the trials. But the benefits of aspirin only became apparent after taking the drug for 5 years or more, suggesting aspirin works by slowing or preventing the early stages of the disease so that the effect is only seen much later. After 5 years of taking aspirin, the data from patients in the trials showed that death rates were 34% less for all cancers and as much as 54% less for gastrointestinal cancers, such as oesophagus, stomach, bowel, pancreas and liver cancers.

"Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut "microbiome" influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, altering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior. In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in how gut bacteria might influence the brain and behavior, says John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork in Ireland. So far, most of the work has focused on how pathogenic bugs influence the brain by releasing toxins or stimulating the immune system, Cryan says. One recent study suggested that even benign bacteria can alter the brain and behavior, but until now there has been very little work in this area, Cryan says."

The network of scientists will facilitate scholarly discovery. Institutions will participate in the network by installing VIVO, or by providing semantic web-compliant data to the network.

"I simply cannot believe that John Cook of Skeptical Science and psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky managed, in just 8 pages, to create something as magnificent as their new Debunking Handbook. It is packed not only with wonderful graphics, but also with a clear explanation of why many attempts to defeat misinformation fail, and what steps must be taken to do a better job. The core issue, of course, is one that I've written much about-too many scientists assume that that facts win out on their own, but that isn't actually true"

Scientist recently discovered the first ever Earth-like planet. The discovery was announced on 5th December 2011.

"We often think that the limiting factors to doing science are intellectual or technological. There are many unsolved scientific problems that we know how to answer. We aren't waiting for any conceptual breakthroughs or new technologies. We're waiting for people. We need "hands at the bench" to put in the time to collect the data. The instabilities of salary is a major limiting factor for science and is probably a big reason a lot of them get out of science: they don't see a way to pay the bills. Creating permanent, stable positions for scientists would release a lot of scientific research."

"Performing short cycle sprints three times a week could be enough to prevent and possibly treat type 2 diabetes, a study suggests. Scientists at the University of Bath asked volunteers to perform two 20-second cycle sprints on exercise bikes, three times per week. After six weeks, researchers in the university's department of health saw a 28% improvement in their insulin function."

William Gunn The Top 10 papers in Biological Sciences by Mendeley readership. With the Mendeley for Life Scientists webinar coming up on Thursday, I thought I would take a look at the readership stats for Biological Sciences. Biological Sciences has long been our biggest discipline, and having done my doctoral work in the Life Sciences, I knew this would be interesting. Overall, researchers in bioinformatics contributed most strongly to the most read papers, along with the older disciplines of micro- and molecular biology. Regardless of discipline, however, it's clear that the days of toiling away in isolation to thoroughly study one gene are over. Today, it's all about huge consortia and massive data. Here's what I found

The book is about networked science: the use of online tools to transform the way science is done. In the book I make the case that networked science has the potential to dramatically speed up the rate of scientific discovery, not just in one field, but across all of science. Furthermore, it won't just speed up discovery, but will actually amplify our collective intelligence, expanding the range of scientific problems which can be attacked at all. But, as I explain in the book, there are cultural obstacles that are blocking networked science from achieving its full potential. And so the book is also a manifesto, arguing that networked science must be open science if it is to realize its potential. Making the change to open science is a big challenge. In my opinion it's one of the biggest challenges our society faces, one that requires action on many fronts. One of those fronts is to make sure that everyone - including scientists, but also grant agencies, governments, libraries, and, especially, the general public -- understands how important the stakes are, and how urgent is the need for change.