While much of it is often hidden from view, our modern society depends heavily on a wide range of minerals and materials. Advanced technologies in particular may rely on rare earth elements or on other more abundant minerals that are only found in certain key deposits scattered around the world. This fact and the global nature of the trade thus required can lead to significant … Continue reading National Minerals Information Center
At this point (February 2024), most academic librarians are aware that ChatGPT will create citations to books and articles that don’t exist to satisfy a query. However, does that mean that ChatGPT is of no use in the literature searching process? When creating and conducting a comprehensive search strategy, there are two major, time-consuming tasks that ChatGPT may be able to help with. The post … Continue reading Using ChatGPT to Generate & Translate Search Strings: An Exploration
Open Science Framework (OSF) is a fully open access tool, for use in any discipline, which can be applied to virtually all stages of the research lifecycle from the planning and design phase all the way through to publication, access and reuse. Before diving into OSF, let’s back up a bit and talk about open science which refers to a set of principles and practices … Continue reading Open Science Framework (OSF)
Figuring out where to start when looking for datasets can be an arduous task for many students and faculty. Common roadblocks are buried information on government websites, limited access to dataset databases at their institution or a unique topic makes finding data difficult through typical exploration. Google Dataset Search, a tool developed by Google in 2018, may help to simplify this process. What is Google Dataset … Continue reading Using Google Dataset Search to find Open Data
What is Critical Appraisal? The process of critically appraising a study for validity and applicability is a daunting one – not only for students but for professionals as well. Critical appraisal is “the skill to criticize medical [or scientific] literature and decide if results are credible or not” (Dans et al., 2017). Critical appraisal is an important part of the Evidence-Based Medicine skill set, and … Continue reading Critical Appraisal Tools for Health Research
Open Science is a hot topic right now, but it can be a little confusing as to what it all entails. Broadly speaking, Open Science is about making scientific research transparent and accessible to all. It encourages knowledge to be developed through increased collaboration. More specifically, “Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research … Continue reading What is Open Science Anyways?
The book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert reviews the five previous mass extinction events on Earth and warns that we are currently faced with another, this time driven largely by man-made causes. Providing members of the public, conservation organizations, and government officials with reliable information and generating awareness about those species in danger of potential extinction is one step in countering … Continue reading IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
I am a collaborator in my institution’s Responsible Conduct in Research instruction. After one recent session on data management best practices, a postdoc participant requested a consultation with us. He wanted guidance about how to establish and maintain a lab culture that fosters reproducible science. This question has taken on special urgency in the wake of the highly publicized case of former Stanford University President … Continue reading Lab manuals for data management and reproducibility
What is PRISMA? Published for the first time in 2009, “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement” (Moher et al., 2009) provides succinct and (relatively) manageable guidance for structuring, and therefore conducting, Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses. Evinced by the primary image on its Wikipedia page, PRISMA is known for its flow diagram, where authors illustrate the systematic process of screening … Continue reading PRISMA-Statement.org: Your one-stop shop for everything PRISMA
DrugBank Online is a free database that provides information on FDA-approved drugs and drug targets. The database started in 2006 in Dr. David Wishart’s lab at the University of Alberta, Canada. The database is now managed by OMx Personal Health Analytics and the University of Alberta (Wishart et al., 2018). DrugBank is described as a “… bioinformatics–cheminformatics database with a strong focus on quantitative, analytic … Continue reading DrugBank Online
News Yakaja Resources 