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May 30, 2006

Online Community Tools: Streamline and Turbocharge Your Information Retrieval

A great deal of the power of science has come from collaborations. These days collaborations increasingly begin online or convert to online when one or the other participants move to another part of the country. Technology is making these connections easier in many ways. here are just a few.

The UM Research site facilitates connections among on campus researchers.

UM Research: http://www.research.umich.edu/

UM Research recommends the Community of Science, saying, "Community of Science publishes databases useful to the research community funding opportunities, in expertise, funded research, patents, and others. UM faculty and staff may search many of these databases free-of-charge." In the Community of Science, you can enter a personal profile describing your research interests, and then subscribe to a notification service for funding announcements in those areas or browse to locate other researchers working in those topics. Very useful.

UM Research: Funding: Community of Science: http://www.research.umich.edu/funding/cos.html

Community of Science: http://www.cos.com/

There are free online comunity resources also. One specifically in dentistry is the Dental Informatics Online Community, which provides "a networking platform for people interested in DI promoting the development of dental information resources, disseminate research results and encourage the formation of research and education partnerships."

Dental Informatics Online Community: http://www.dentalinformatics.com/

Not specifically dental, there are what are becoming known as folksonomy tools -- tools for 'folk' to share information, discover what other 'folk' think is worthwhile, and who the other 'folk' are interested in the same areas as you. Folksonomy tools initially were created for the general public, and over the past few years some have become available specifically for the scientific community. Here is an article about how these are being used in the scientific and research communities.

Social Bookmarking For Scientists - The Best Of Both Worlds, by Ben Lund, Nature Publishing Group, b.lund@nature.com (XTech 2006: "Building Web 2.0" — 16-19 May 2006, Amsterdam, The Netherlands):
http://xtech06.usefulinc.com/schedule/paper/75

So let's take a closer look at how this works in practice, and what you can expect to find. Here is an example of a general purpose folksonomy tool, del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a "social bookmarking" tool. You can put your bookmarks online, keep them private or share them, and access them from any computer with a network connection. Since del.icio.us is for the general public, its greatest strengths are in finding things of interest to lots of people. Let's see what they have for dentistry or dental.

Del.icio.us: Dental: http://del.icio.us/search/?all=dental

Now, knowing that this is not the likely place to look, let's see what they have for matrix metalloproteinases or MMPs.

Del.icio.us: Metalloproteinases: http://del.icio.us/search/?all=metalloproteinases

Now, let's compare this to what we can find in Connotea for the same topic, knowing that Connotea is for scientists and clinicians, and that it collects citations for articles, not web sites.

Connotea: Metalloproteinases: http://www.connotea.org/search?q=metalloproteinases

Connotea: MMP: http://www.connotea.org/tag/mmp

There are other scientifically focused folksonomy tools, most notably CiteULike. Let's look for MMP articles in CiteULike.

CiteULike: Metalloproteinases: http://www.citeulike.org/search/all?f=title&q=metalloproteinases

Do you like anything you saw? Just checking this topic, it looks like the MMP folk are hanging out at CiteULike, so if I was doing research in that topic, that might be a resource I'd want to start considering.

If you are thinking about using any of these tools, they are especially good to keep your favorite citations handy and accessible whenever and wherever you are. Here is a helpful tool that will allow you to send your favorite references from PubMed to either Connotea or CiteULike from within the Firefox browser. Recommended only for the truly advanced technophile (a.k.a. "geek"). If there is enough interest, I'll try to do a lunch class on this for faculty.

Pubmed2Connotea / Pumed2CiteULike:
http://www.urbigene.com/pubmed2connotea/

Want to know more about Folksonomy and folksonomy tools?

Wikipedia: Folksonomy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

Posted by pfa at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

Most Requested Dental Statistics

There are two particular statistics I am asked for on a fairly frequent basis -- 1) caries prevalence in various countries; and 2) distribution of dentists comparied to population for various countries. I thought perhaps it would help folks find them more easily if I post them here.

Global Statistics about Caries

WHO Oral Health Country/Area Profile Programme: http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/index.html

International Statistics about the Dental Workforce

Global Atlas of the Health Workforce: http://www.who.int/globalatlas/DataQuery/default.asp

More International Health Statistics

FYI, WHOSIS, the statistical system from the World Health Organization, is in the process of a substantial change. For a brief time, you can still access both systems.

WHOSIS (WHO Statistical Information System): World Health Statistics 2006: http://www.who.int/whosis/en/

Posted by pfa at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2006

Resources for Chemistry and Molecular Biology

Here are just a few new and different resources available free on the web for these topics.

Databases

E-Books

Posted by pfa at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

Rollyo: Biomaterials Starter Kit

Made another Rollyo last night. Next time you are searching the web for information on biomaterials, try this and see what you think. Let me know if you have recommendations of other sites that would be better than the ones I selected.

Rollyo: pfa: Biomaterials Starter Kit: http://rollyo.com/pfa/biomaterials_starter_kit/

Posted by pfa at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

Free Bilingual Children's Book from Crest

This press release announces a book by actress and former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres published with the partnership of Proctor and Gamble and endorsed by the Hispanic Dental Association.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060523/cltu041.html?.v=51

Dayanara Torres Co-Authors Children's Book Exclusively for Crest Healthy Smiles Program: Bi-lingual Book Delivers Positive Oral Health Message and is Available To Consumers for Free for a Limited Time

"The book, written in English and Spanish, chronicles the experiences of a brother and sister as they take their first trip to the dentist. It will be released in limited quantity for free beginning May 23, 2006 through July 29th, just in time for summer reading. Consumers can order their free copy by calling toll-free 1-866-989-9968 or by logging onto www.cresthealthysmiles.com for details."

Posted by pfa at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

Rollyo: Search Like an Expert

I have been playing with a new-to-me folksonomy tool. Rollyo stands for "roll your own search engine." The idea, as I understand it, is that an expert in any area quickly finds that they are going to the same sites over and over again. Rollyo allows you to collect a group of sites that are your favorites for a specific type of task, and then search them all at once. It limits you to 25 sites in a list.

Here are a few examples I've put together. The first one selected reputable consumer health information sources to search for information for dental patients. The second one searches vendors selling historic and out-of-print medical and dental books. The third one searches free fulltext books online for the word, phrase, or concept of your choosing. I use this to find curious quotes to enliven my professional presentations and publications.

Rollyo: pfa: Dental Consumer Health Search Engine: http://rollyo.com/pfa/dental_consumer_health/

Rollyo: pfa: Antiquarian Medical Books: http://rollyo.com/pfa/antiquarian_medical_books/

Rollyo: pfa: Do-It-Yourself Quotations from Original Sources: http://rollyo.com/pfa/diy_quotes_from_sources/

Just imagine what you could do! I promise you, I'll be doing more of these, and will share those relevant to the dental community.

Posted by pfa at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2006

More about Deep Blue

Remember a couple months ago when this blog posted some of the dental faculty publications included in Deep Blue? Well, now you can join those august ranks of faculty whose work will always be remembered. Why will it be remembered? Because more and more faculty are exploring options to archive publications, data, and research images for posterity with the University Library's service Deep Blue. Read on, for a recent press release on this topic.

Deep Blue -- Your work: cited more, safe forever.

The University of Michigan has more than 150 years of experience and expertise in presenting and preserving the world's best research and creativity. With Deep Blue, the UM Institutional Repository, we now have a place specifically for our faculty work. Faculty create it, deposit it online, and decide who should have access. We take care of the rest, for free.

Use it to connect with other scholars: In a cross-disciplinary study, when compared to articles that require paid access, those in systems like Deep Blue "...have consistently more citations, the advantage varying from 25%-250%."[1]

Ask your librarian or send a message to deepblue@umich.edu to get started. For more information about Deep Blue, see http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/about/

1. Based on a study of 1,307,038 articles published from 1992-2003 in biology, psychology, sociology, health, political science, economics, education, law, business, and management. (Hajjem, Harnad, and Gingras, "Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How It Increases Research Citation Impact." IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, Vol. 28 No. 4, December 2005, 8pp.)

Posted by pfa at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

Dental Ethics Resources

In light of the recent ethics scandal at UMDNJ, here is a small offering of selected resources on the topic of professional ethics in dentistry.

Posted by pfa at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2006

UM Encyclopedic Survey Online

Looking for historical information about the School of Dentistry or the University of Michigan? A quick source of many key facts is the publication:

The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey: http://www.hti.umich.edu/u/umsurvey/

"The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey is a rich and particularly detailed source for the history of the university from its origins in Detroit in 1817, through the first century of its operation in Ann Arbor with updates extending the history through 1975. The Encyclopedic Survey is made up of more than 400 individual histories about the administration, schools and colleges, departments, programs, units, organizations, and physical facilities that comprise the university."

Posted by pfa at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

New Articles from UM SoD Faculty: May 06, part 1

Posted by pfa at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2006

Patient Assistance Resources

Do you have a patient who needs extra help with consumer health information, or is looking for local financial resources to help individuals who need health services? Don't forget that UMHS offers the following fine services that provide this sort of information for individuals who are patients here at University of Michigan or are local to our community.

Cancer Patient Education Resource Center (PERC): http://www.cancer.med.umich.edu/learn/leares.htm

Health and Wellness Resource Center U-M Hospital: http://www.med.umich.edu/1toolbar/visinfo/hwrc.htm

Health Education Resource Center (HERC), East Ann Arbor Health Center: http://www.med.umich.edu/mfit/herc/

FRIENDS Depression Education and Resource Center (FDERC): http://www.med.umich.edu/depression/friends.htm

Turner Senior Resource Center: http://www.med.umich.edu/geriatrics/tsrc/

Women's Health Resource Center (WHRC): http://www.med.umich.edu/whp/whrc/index.htm

Posted by pfa at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2006

Consumer Health Information: Kosmix and iBoogie and healthfinder

There are always a variety of Internet search engines, and som specifically on health. There is a new health Internet search engine that has some interesting features.

Kosmix: http://www.kosmix.com/

Kosmix focuses most searches towards health topics, and defaults to the health tab for your search. It does not search the complete Internet, and would not be a good choice for information about movie stars, for example. When you search a health topic in Kosmix, it takes the various results and sorts them into folders in a bar on the left side. The folders include such topics as "Written for Doctors", "Definitions," "Support Groups", "Overview", and much more. This can streamline a search, allowing you to zoom in quickly to the type and level of information you are seeking.

iBoogie: http://www.iboogie.com/

iBoogie is a broader Internet search engine, but has a similar interface, also using the tab-model to focus a search on a given area. Kosmix clusters results into predefined categories, but iBoogie comes up with categories based on the topic. Those topics can be useful suggestions to focus or broaden your search.

Still, when a patient wants health information, my favorite search engine is:

healthfinder: Consumer Health Information Search:
http://www.healthfinder.gov/search/

healthfinder's search focuses results just to government websites, and to 300 highly selected ones, excluding professional level information for results targeted just to consumers. This is a great way to find appropriate information without a lot of digging or sorting through results.

Posted by pfa at 09:11 PM | Comments (2)

May 04, 2006

Free Life Science and Health Books Online

Taken a look at the PubMed Bookshelf lately? Not only are there are several new books (free, fulltext) about public health and global health issues, but you can also search the content of their entire collection of books. For example, a search for matrix metalloproteinases brings back 72 results in 9 books; while a search for ("antibiotic prophylaxis" OR "SBE prophylaxis") gives 90 results in 8 books. Worth checking out. Meanwhile, here are those new books I mentioned.

Posted by pfa at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)