Epernicus was recently featured on a list of “10 Cool Niche Social Networks” by PC Magazine. While I’m not sure how I feel about us making the same list as MuggleSpace (a network for people who love Harry Potter), I do believe there is significant value to social/professional networking platforms that do a really great job of addressing the needs of a certain group of people. One of our core tenets has been that researchers are a unique bunch (with concepts like one’s scientific genealogy being a strong part of our culture, for example) whose needs can only be addressed via a networking platform that understands the way science works.

Other specialized networks mentioned on the PC magazine list would include Shelfari for book collectors and Bottletalk for wine aficionados. Members of both of these networks have very specialized knowledge across a number of categories.

By the way, given the popularity of Harry Potter, I wouldn’t be surprised if MuggleSpace were the most popular site on this list .

Bio-IT World recently published a great article on social networking for scientists. It explains the benefits of scientific social networking and why you need specially-built networks like Epernicus to do it right.

http://www.bio-itworld.com/issues/2009/mar-apr/keeping-science-connected.html

Somewhere in physics heaven Erwin Schrödinger must be having a laugh. The following T-shirt design by Jonathan Littleton of Purdue University (thank you Jonathan for sharing it with us!) claims to solve the issue of the superposition of two mutually exlusive quantum states: academic and social.

At the start of the year, Epernicus members cast their ballot for the top scientific breakthroughs of 2008. Below are the three candidates which received the most votes.

#1. GROWING A NEW ORGAN FROM A PATIENT’S OWN STEM CELLS

Thanks to stem cell research, people with failing organs may not need to wait for a donor or take harsh medications that prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted tissue. One of the greatest examples of regenerative medicine — the science of building or fixing body parts — took place in 2008, when doctors removed some cells from a 30-year-old woman with tuberculosis and used them to grow a new trachea, replacing a segment that was destroyed by the bacterium. They took stem cells from her bone marrow, layered them onto a decellularized trachea from a deceased donor, and surgically implanted it in the woman. Four months later, Claudia Castillo could breathe well and showed no signs of the side-effects that patients have when they receive an organ from someone else. (Source: Wired Science)

# 2. REPROGRAMMING CELLS

This year, scientists achieved a long-sought feat of cellular alchemy. They took skin cells from patients suffering from a variety of diseases and reprogrammed them into stem cells. The feat rests on a genetic trick, first developed in mice and described 2 years ago, in which scientists wipe out a cell’s developmental “memory,” causing it to return to its pristine embryonic state and then regrow into something else. Researchers achieved another milestone this year when they prompted mouse cells to make the leap directly from one mature cell into another – flouting the usual rule that development of cells is a one-way street. These achievements could be an important step on a long path to treating diseases with a patient’s own cells. (Source: Science)

# 3. TURNING WATER INTO FUEL

Companies like Nanosolar and Solyndra slashed the cost of solar energy, but we still need a clean way to store all this power. Daniel Nocera of MIT has an elegant solution: Use electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, store it in separate tanks, then recombine the gases in a fuel cell when you need power. While this process normally takes a lot of energy, Nocera and his team found a catalyst that makes the task of splitting H2O remarkably easy. It could prove to be an efficient storage mechanism for energy harvested by solar cells and wind farms. (Sources: Wired Science, Science)

As I was reading through questions and answers in the Epernicus BenchQ archive the other day, I was struck by how many questions have been receiving helpful replies.  Without the expectation of reward, Epernicus members from across the country have been helping fellow scientists (strangers though they often are), providing advice on equipment, kits, techniques, candidate antibodies, and much more.   Third parties have been reading and benefiting from these exchanges as well.  Overall, it has been quite exciting to see.

One of the things we’ve often discussed is if and how these types of contributions should be incentivized.  Should people be rewarded for sharing their knowledge through BenchQ or should it be left up to inherent goodwill?  And if answering questions is rewarded, should it be with public recognition, tangible rewards, or something else?  Shirley Wu raised this issue of rewards in a thoughtful blog post earlier this year, and it generated quite a discussion.  I’m not yet sure what incentive structure would be best (or if incentives are even necessary), but any incentive system will carry the inherent risk of distorting motives.  The question is what kind of distortion and to what degree. 

A related issue that comes up is whether contributions in a forum like BenchQ should be represented in a scientist’s professional record.  A scientist who helps 100 colleagues through BenchQ has made a real contribution to the community – should this be represented in his or her resume or tenure file?  We’d be interested to know what our colleagues in the scientific community think about these questions.

As promised, Epernicus.com is happy to announce the winners of our first One Figure contest, recognizing the ten people whose Figures have been complimented the greatest number of times in the month preceding Marie Curie’s birthday (Nov 7). This year’s winners will each receive a (BPA-free Camelback) Epernicus water bottle. Our congratulations go to:

• Samuel Tia (UC Berkeley, UCSF)
• Duc Dong (Burnham Institute)
• Jeffrey Karp (Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
• Anthony Schillmiller (Michigan State University)
• Vanessa Horner (Emory University)
• Amanda Nottke (Harvard Medical School)
• Matthew Hutchings (University of East Anglia)
• Franz Gruswitz (UCSF)
• Jasenka Memisevic (University of Missouri)
• Maria Cristina Palmieri (Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen)

Here’s a sampling of the winning figures:

(A) “Developing zebrafish pancreas and liver” – Duc Dong
(B) “A 10.5 day old mouse embryo, stained to show canonical Wnt signaling. Wnt signaling is seen here in the forebrain, midbrain, limb buds, and neural tube.” – Vanessa Horner
(C) “Obstruction of the ammonia channel by the T-loop of GlnK as determined by the 1.96 Angstrom crystal structure 2NS1. “ – Franz Gurswitz
(D) “Gecko Feet” – Jeff Karp
(E) “Nitric Oxide production in Arabidopsis taliana mitochondria” – Maria Cristina Palmieri

Thanks to everyone who complimented these figures, and to the hundreds of members who have put up One Figures of their own. We hope you will agree that these figures are a great way to share something special about your work. You can add one to your profile under the Edit Profile tab. And browse the latest, most complimented, or in-your-network One Figures in the One Figure Gallery.

We are happy to announce that Pamela Silver, Ph.D. and Angela DePace, Ph.D. have joined the Epernicus Scientific Advisory Board. In addition to their rich scientific experience, Professors Silver and DePace bring a keen interest in the use of web technology to advance science. We’re looking forward to their input and advice!

Pamela Silver is a Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California Los Angeles. After completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, Dr. Silver served as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University where she was an established investigator of the American Heart Association and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. At Harvard, Dr. Silver’s work is directed at understanding the principles of natural biological design. Her lab hopes to develop principles for building novel cells and subsystems that act as sensors, memory devices, bio-computers, and energy producers. Dr. Silver has received many research and mentorship awards, and she serves on a number of editorial boards including Nature Molecular Systems Biology and Genes and Development. She is an avid runner, having participated in several Boston Marathons.

Angela DePace is an Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco. She conducted her postdoctoral work at the University of California Berkeley with Michael Eisen, Ph.D. before coming to Harvard Medical School. Dr. DePace’s work focuses on the evolution of transcriptional networks in animals. Using early development in multiple Drosophila species as a model system, her lab applies biochemistry, comparative genomics, molecular biology and quantitative imaging techniques to understand how regulatory information is encoded in the genome, how it is deciphered as gene expression patterns in space and time, and how it changes during evolution to contribute to organismal diversity.

You can learn more about Professors Silver and DePace through their Epernicus profiles.

Nice article on Epernicus in Mass High Tech on Friday!

We recently launched some new BenchQ features we hope will make your experience using BenchQ more productive and enjoyable.  The genesis of these features is user feedback — please keep the comments and suggestions coming!

Flagging
You are now able to flag BenchQ threads.  Flagging a BenchQ thread will ensure it stays in your list of BenchQ’s, and will make it visually distinctive in the list (a red flag icon will appear next to the subject).  You will also have the option of having replies to that BenchQ thread emailed to you (this feature can be turned on or off via the “Email Preferences” pane) and of displaying only flagged BenchQ’s (by selecting the “Flagged” option in the new “Show” filter).

Marking multiple BenchQ threads as read
You are now able to mark multiple BenchQ threads as read.  Select the checkbox next to the BenchQ threads you’d like to mark, and then click the green “Mark selected as read” icon.  (This, combined with the “Select All” option, allows you to reset your unread BenchQ count)

General interface improvements
The BenchQ interface has been enlarged a bit and you can now scroll through the list of BenchQ’s even while the detail pane is open (previously you needed to close the detail pane to scroll through the list).