Entries Tagged 'Thoughts' ↓

The other day Valentin and I were discussing how scientists confront the time-consuming task of looking for information in the scientific literature. From my experience as a scientist and from conversations with friends and colleagues, we found out that many of them end up in a frustrating situation when searching and that their path to successful searches in Pubmed can be summarized in one of the 4 following options:

1. Direct

We manage to find results from PubMed although in some cases we have to face the use of MeSH terms. Hashtag #nsdirect

2. Ask for help

After some time facing Pubmed search engine without any success, we decide to ask for help from a colleague or a librarian. Some of our friends told us that they don’t they take this path without trying to do it themselves. Hashtag #nsafh

3. Alternatives

After performing some searches in PubMed and not succeeding in our commitment we just look for alternative search engines like Google, 3rd party pubmed tools or obviously novoseek (we asked our friends they what do you expect them to use besides PubMed. Hashtag #nsalt

4. Beer. Why not?

I mean, after a hard working day, what is better than a beer and face the challenge some other day. Hashtag #nsbeer

Take a look at the image below, its so funny and so real

Now we need you to act! What is your path? Tweet this post to your followers adding the #hashtag that better describes you.

1. Direct, this is my path to successful searches in Pubmed
2. Ask for help, this is my path to successful searches in Pubmed
3. Alternatives, this is my path to successful searches in Pubmed
4. Beer, why not?, this is my path to successful searches in Pubmed

Have a great weekend.

The second of February of 2009 we did our official announcement of novoseek. Now we are a year older. We have learned a lot along the way from our users, partners and competitors. We have gone through some difficult and some really exciting moments. We continue to develop our system in order to give our users an alternative to PubMed that is easier to use and with which you can get relevant results faster.

New challenges are coming up this year. We are anxious to show the new features  that novoseek is going to offer which most of you will love while others will just think “why didn’t I came up with that idea”

Stay tuned and don’t miss this image that represent a few of the things we have been doing this pass year. We hope you like it.

Thank you.!

novoseek, the first year

Flash Forward is unsurprisingly one of the most exciting TV show of this year. As a result, I’m dying to watch a new episode every week. And when I do, I’m having a great time that leads to great discussions at the office about whether this is about future or not and how it can be modified. Nevertheless, I could notice a few weeks ago the interesting case of Edward Ned (also called Ned Ned) whose flash forward vision finds him in a club and having his skin totally black, whereas he’s white currently. Dr. Olivia Benford chooses to treat him as a regular patient no matter his flash forward but Dr. Bryce Varley -her colleague and now totally changed by his flash forward- has another opinion. Indeed, he thinks that this color change may be due to a disease; and that would explain many things regarding this patient. This is why he decides to refer to an online search engine to look for more information.

In order to know more about this Ned’s health condition, Bryce looks for “Pigment Change” in a symptoms search engine. His search returns 107 results and then helps him explain afetrwards that:

- Ned may have Addison’s disease which would explain why he’s black in the future (as he sees himself in his flashforward)
- The disease forces his body make melanine compounds instead of adrenaline
- Without Adrenaline his body is unable to build proper stress response (which explains he’s being so serene)

Obviously, novoseek has different goals (to the webpage Bryce is using) as it offers to explore the scientific literature. Nevertheless we can search for that disease -Addison’s disease- and observe what are the results like.

1. A search for Addison’s disease via the Advanced Search panel returns 2,563 results in Medline.
2. Observing the related concepts sidebar we can see that the most relevant diseases related to Addison’s disease are: Adrenal insufficiencies, primary adrenal insufficiency, autoimmune addisons disease, diabetes and Hyperpigmentation (with a relevance of 41%).

3. Also, the most relevant related Signs and Symptoms indicate: alopecia, fatigue, malaise, cryoglobulinemic purpura, scalp pruritus…
4. We click the “hyperpigmentation” disease and it is added to the current search: there are now 66 results in Medline
5. From there, we can start exploring the literature and read interesting publications such as Adrenal autoantibodies and organ-specific autoimmunity in patients with Addison’s disease, Generalized pigmentation due to Addison disease., Long-lasting subclinical Addison’s disease..
6. The reading of these is a good starting point to know more about the disease, its origins and possible treatments.

Obviously, this complementary information helps save Ned during surgery and Dr. Olivia Benford now has to admit that Ned’s Flash Forward actually helped save him. Based on that, we see the importance of research to know more about a disease, its symptoms and the existing treatments. Furthermore, a search for Addison’s Disease in US Grants could help know what are the current studies about this disease.

And now, I’m asking you:

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Madrid in August bears high temperatures and dry air, so citizens of the city scatter to cooler climates such as southern or northern Spain leaving Madrid high and dry (literally). As August comes to a close employees here at novoseek are trickeling in from vacations showing off their tans and telling stories of their time off.

As everyone gets settled back into work they find the innevitably FULL INBOX and VOICEMAIL but eventually you get back in the swing of things and find your “work groove.” So for everyone struggling to get back into their own “work groove” after a pleasant summer vacation, we know how you feel!

Where did you go this summer on vacation? Please, leave a comment giving us ideas where we should go (or not go) on our next vacation!

In ‘There’s Something About Mary‘ (1998), high school senior Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) suffers a tremendous accident triggered by an awkward situation that take place while he is in the bathroom.

This scene came to my head the moment Christian, inspired on a discussion over a post on the conversation on NCBI ROFL blog, sent me a search result in novoseek for penis zipper. I must confess that I was shocked to see that novoseek found 16 Medline articles on the subject and  that the first document goes all the way to the 70s. I guess that what it really surprised me is that in the year 2006 it still seems to be an unsolved problem.

One of my favorite study among the results  was the one from the journal The American journal of emergency medicine comparing 2 different methods of emergent zipper release. In this one, they study an alternate method of zipper release that is up to 65,3 second faster then the standard procedure that goes for 15 seconds over the minute. It as well concludes that the “optimal procedure is also dependent on the location of the entrapped tissue and the type of zipper”. What is also interesting about this study is that it was made with volunteers.  I can hardly imagine being part of them in this type of studies. And on top of that, testing in different types of tissues? wow!!

Anyway, another interesting result is that novoseek didn’t find any awarded grant for this kind of research. Does that mean that it is not and interesting research issue anymore? Has it been solved yet?

I guess that if Ted Stroehmann would have only known a way to get out of his situation in 10,8 seconds it wouldn’t have been such an embarrassment, and the movie wouldn’t have been as funny.