If you've ever wanted to know just exactly how much DNA you share with your ridiculously tall brother or doppelganger best friend, you'll soon be able to find out. 23andMe, a personal genomics startup in Mountain View, CA, is about to unveil a new social-networking service that allows customers to compare their DNA. The company hopes that the new offering will encourage consumers to get DNA testing, potentially creating a novel research resource in the process.
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March 2008 Archives
Family, friends can keep well-wishers updated on progress or setbacks when loved ones are dealing with long-term illnesses or extended hospital stays
You may think Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and the other top social networks are a waste of time or, more succinctly, that social networking is just for kids.
Think again. I'm going to tell you about one social site that is so useful, but I hope you never need to create a profile. If you do, you will be overwhelmed by good wishes.
The site is called CarePages, and the Chicago company was born in 2000, before those other social sites were even conceived. It is a very emotional place.
Mark Zuckerberg describes Facebook as a service designed to help people communicate better, primarily through the social graph, which is the network of connections and relationships between people.
Medical blogs have drawn back the curtain on the inner workings of the health care profession. Online readers can learn about the latest medical gadgets, read physicians' views on health care issues, even get a peek at the inner thoughts of surgeons. But despite their attraction, these blogs have raised concerns about privacy issues on the Web.
Since October, universities have been getting busy and setting up shop on YouTube, enough so that it seemed worth putting together a collection of what's out there. As you'll see, universities aren't always using YouTube to distribute educational content to the outer world. It's sometimes about that. But it's also often about "selling" the university -- about PR, in short. Below, we've put the more meaningful collections at the top of the list. Over time, we'll add new video collections as they come online, and we'll continue to distinguish the good from the only so-so collections.
The practice of using a social network to establish and enhance relationships based on some common ground--shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location--is as old as human societies, but social networking has flourished due to the ease of connecting on the Web. OCLC Social Networking Report
BioMedExperts is a new online community that connects biomedical researchers to each other through the display and analysis of the networks of co-authors with whom each investigator works to publish scientific papers. The comprehensive system of pre-populated expert profiles, coupled with the ability to analyze all associated professional connections within the co-author network, allows scientists and researchers across organizations the ability to share data and collaborate in ways never before considered.
Read more at SciTechNet
The 2007 Horizon Report looks at six selected areas--"User-Created Content," "Social Networking," "Mobile Phones," "Virtual Worlds," "New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication," and "Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming"--the project draws on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable individuals in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community itself. The Horizon Project's Advisory Board probes current trends and challenges in higher education, explores possible topics for the "Report," and ultimately directs the selection of the final technologies.