601 West Lombard Street
Baltimore MD 21201-1512
Reference: 410-706-7996
Circulation: 410-706-7928
The last day we will accept and process interlibrary loan requests including those for books and articles held in HS/HSL will be Tuesday, December 16, 2014. New requests will not be processed until the service resumes on Tuesday, January 6, 2015. Requests with "Not Wanted After" dates falling within this period will be canceled.
Feel free to contact us with questions at 410-706-3239 or rs@hshsl.umaryland.edu.
A biohackerspace is a community laboratory that is open to the public. A biohackerspace is a biotechnological version of hackerspace where the public is encouraged to come learn about biotechnology and experiment with DNA, bacteria, and cells. Like makerspaces, biohackerspaces provide people with tools not usually available at home. Biohackerspaces, however, contain tools such as microscopes, Petri dishes, freezers, and PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machines rather than 3D printers, CNC milling machines, and laser cutters. Biohackers tinker with bacteria, cells, and DNA rather than computer code, electronics, plastic, and other materials for DYI-manufacturing. Genspace in Brooklyn, founded by molecular biologist Ellen Jorgenson in 2010, was the first biohackerspace in the United States. Since then, more biohackerspaces have opened, such as BUGSS (Baltimore Underground Science Space) in Baltimore, BioLogik Labs in Norfolk, BioCurious in Sunnyvale, Berkeley BioLabs in Berkeley, Biotech and Beyond in San Diego, and BioHive in Seattle.
According to Meredith Patterson, a notable biohacker who advocates citizen science, scientific literacy is not understanding science but doing science. In her 2010 talk at the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics’ symposium, “Outlaw Biology? Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio,” Patterson argued, “scientific literacy empowers everyone who possesses it to be active contributors to their own health care; the quality of their food, water, and air; their very interactions with their own bodies and the complex world around them.”
Biohackerspaces democratize access to biotechnology equipment and space, and enable users to share their findings. In this regard, biohakerspaces are comparable to the open-source movement in computer programming. Both allow people to solve the problems that matter to them. Rather than pursing scientific breakthroughs, Biohackers and the advocates of the DIYbio movement are looking for solutions to small but important problems. Large institutions, such as big pharmaceutical companies, may not pursue solutions to such problems unless they are sufficiently profitable. For example, China experienced a major food safety incident in 2008 involving melamine-contaminated milk and infant formula. Testing milk for the presence of melamine in a lab costs thousands of dollars. After reading about the incident, Patterson created an alternative test, which costs only a dollar and can be done in a home kitchen. To solve the problem, she spliced a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish gene into the bacteria that turns milk into yogurt and then added a biochemical sensor that detects melamine. If the milk turns green when combined with this mixture, it contains melamine.
Biohackers pursue a variety of projects ranging from making bacteria that glows in the dark by injecting a luminescent gene to identifying neighbors who fail to clean up after their dogs by comparing DNA from dog excrement with that of saliva samples taken from the neighbors’ dogs. You can also test if the food item that you bought at a supermarket is what it is advertised to be; work on creating bacteria that will decompose plastic; check if a certain risky gene is present in your body. If you are an investigational journalist, you may use your biohacking skills to verify certain evidence. If you’re a citizen concerned about the environment, you can check the pollution level of your city or neighborhood and find out if particular pollutants exceed legal limits.
DIYbio enthusiasts pursue most of these projects as a hobby. But some projects hold the potential to solve serious global problems. For example, Biopunk, a book by Marcus Wohlsen (p. 56) describes a DIYbio approach to develop an affordable handheld thermal cycler that rapidly replicates DNA as an inexpensive diagnostics for the developing world. Used in conjunction with a DNA-reading chip and a few vials containing primers for a variety of disease, this device called ‘LavaAmp’ can quickly identify diseases that break out in remote rural areas.
The DIYbio movement recognized the potential risk in biohacking early on and created codes of conduct in 2011. The Ask a Biosafety Expert (ABE) service at DIY.orgprovides free biosafety advice from a panel of volunteer experts, along with manybiosafety resources. Some biohackerspaces have an advisory board of professional scientists who review the projects that will take place at their spaces. Most biohackerspaces meet the Biosafety Level 1 criteria set out by the CDC.
While the DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces are still in the early stage of development, they hold great potential to drive future innovation in biotechnology and life sciences. The DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces try to transform ordinary people into citizen scientists, empower them to come up with solutions to everyday problems, and encourage them to share those solutions with one another. Not long ago, we had mainframe computers that were only accessible to a small number of professional computer scientists locked up at academic or corporate labs. Now personal computers are ubiquitous, and many professional and amateur programmers know how to write code to make a personal computer do the things they would like it to do. Until recently, manufacturing was only possible on a large scale through factories. Many makerspaces that started in recent years, however, have made it possible for the public to create a model on a computer and 3D print a physical object based on that model at a much lower cost and on a much smaller scale. It remains to be seen if the DIYbio movement and biohackerspaces will bring similar change to biotechnology.
PMC is happy to announce the addition of a citation exporter feature. This feature makes it easy to retrieve either styled citations that you can copy/paste into your manuscripts, or to download them into a format compatible with your bibliographic reference manager software. Click here for more information.
When viewing an Entrez search results page, each result summary will now include a “Citation” link. When, clicked, this will open a pop-up window that you can use to easily copy/paste citations formatted in one of three popular styles: AMA (American Medical Association), MLA (Modern Library Association, or APA (American Psychological Association). In addition, the box has links at the bottom that can be used to download the citation information in one of three machine-readable formats, which most bibliographic reference management software can import.
The same citation box can also be invoked from an individual article, either in classic view (with the “Citation” link among the list of formats) or the PubReader view, by clicking on the citation information just below the article title in the banner.
These human-readable styled citations, and machine-readable formats, will be available through a public API, and we will be providing more details about that in another announcement, on the pmc-utils-announce mailing list. Please subscribe to that list if you are interested.
If you have large sets of research data that you want to share, consider publishing them in a data journal. Data journals are typically open access, peer-reviewed publications. Data creators submit their datasets to be peer-reviewed and published. The work is then citable by others and can be tracked for impact. Open access data journals include biomedical, public health, and psychosocial coverage.
The list of data journals is rapidly growing. The following are a small number of data journals that researchers on the UMB campus may find useful:
F1000Research is an Open Science publishing platform for life scientists, offering immediate publication and transparent refereeing. Peer review is as formal as that of a traditional journal, but the reviewer names, affiliations, and comments are published with the article.
Genomics Data is an open access journal that considers articles on all aspects of genome-scale analysis.
GigaScience publishes datasets from life and biomedical sciences research. The journal links standard manuscript publication with a database that hosts all associated data and provides data analysis tools and cloud-computing resources.
The Journal of Open Psychology Data features peer-reviewed papers describing psychology datasets with high reuse potential. Data papers may describe data from unpublished work, including replication research, or from papers published previously in a traditional journal. The data and papers are citable, and reuse is tracked.
Open Health Data features peer-reviewed data papers describing health datasets with high reuse potential. The publishers are working with specialist and institutional data repositories to ensure that the associated data are professionally archived, preserved, and openly available. Open Health Data also encourages the deposition of grey literature, such as research study protocols, data management plans, consent forms, participant guidance documents, and white paper reports.
Scientific Data, a Nature publication, is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets. The journal’s primary article type, the Data Descriptor, is designed to make data discoverable, interpretable, and reusable.
For additional information on sharing and managing data, take a look at HSHSL’s Data Management Best Practices Guide.
Over the month of October, the Library Genie asked for your top three library wishes. We have heard your requests and are looking at ways to grant your library wishes!
Overwhelmingly, the top request was for longer hours. There were requests for the return of Clinical Key and Access Pharmacy, two cancellations due to our recent resource cuts. Another resource request was for off-campus access to UpToDate. While we would also be happy to have this, the UpToDate subscription is purchased by the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Other library wishes were: coffee, access to food, Writing Center hours in the Library, login from the homepage, updated water fountains, quiet areas, lounge area, more monitors, name the Library, Mac lab, blankets, fax, napping stations, refurbished table tops, consistent clocks, more trash cans, free printing, collect textbooks, more weekend Reference hours, temperature regulation, more journals, new chair cushions, scan id instead of showing it to a guard, and more outlets to plug in to.
The Genie is looking into possibilities for granting some of your wishes. We’ll keep you posted!
The National Library of Medicine has released a new app using data from the AIDSinfo Drug Database, the drug app provides information on more than 100 HIV-related approved and investigational drugs. The information, in English and Spanish, is tailored to meet the needs of both health care providers and consumers. The app is designed to automatically refresh the content when the user is connected to a wireless or cellular data network. . In addition, the app works offline, ensuring that health care providers and consumers can access vital drug information anywhere—even in health care facilities that may not have an Internet connection.
JAMA has recently launched a new free app. The JAMA Network Challenge allows you to hone your diagnostic and management skills using case reports and images from across The JAMA Network. The app includes peer-reviewed cased reports with Images from the JAMA Network, review features to help you learn as you go through the app, and the ability to read the full case. Free for the iPhone/iPad. Click here for more information about this app.
Do you need to order an article or book that the HS/HSL does not have access to?
From the HS/HSL’s homepage choose “Request Articles & Books” and click on the big blue button that says “Login with UMID and Password.” If you are a first time user there will be a short registration process (you will need the 14-digit number on the back of your UM One Card id badge).
Next, choose which type of request you need from the list on the left-hand side of the page: journal article, book, or book chapter. Fill in the required citation information in the form and click the blue “Submit Request” button.
You can also make requests when you are searching databases. If you need something we do not own, click on the yellow “Find It” button and choose “Order a Copy of This Item.” You will be directed to the ILL form with the citation data already filled in. You just have to click “Submit Request!”
The HS/HSL will close at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, November 26th and be closed on Thursday, November 27th and Friday, November 28th, for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will resume hours on Saturday Novemeber 29th.
The University of Marland, Baltimore is sponsoring an Ebola Symposium on Tuesday, Nov. 18 from 12:30 to 5 p.m. in the School of Nursing Auditorium. Registration will begin at noon.
Be aware. Be prepared. An Interprofessional Approach.
University leaders and national Ebola experts will provide information on the following:
Register now at http://elm.umaryland.edu/ebola-symposium/