We are continually looking for new ways to engage and share with students, scientists, and the general public. Everyone can follow us on tumblr, facebook, youtube, twitter, wikispaces, flickr, and figshare. Web-based resources we have developed include an online version of the Colton Shellfish Collection, crassostreome, Research Notes on Ocean Acidification and oystergen.es.
Recent Posts related to Outreach
Why do you put your lab notebook and data online?
The usual follow up to that question, is “what if someone scoops your research?“. I will not disagree this is a possibility. Others are concerned with intellectual 
property and I respect persons have their reasons, ambitions, and agreements with other parties. Rather than speaking to public perceptions I just want to respond to the initial question. The focus of our research program is environmental physiology with a reliance of genomic techniques. All students (graduate and undergraduates) maintain lab notebooks at genefish.wikispaces.com. Some use the wiki and a few people also use Evernote. As a PI, these notebooks allow me to easily monitor research progress. Our research group can easily keep up with each others research and providing assistance at the bench is simple. Another reason is that most of research is federally funded, therefore it seems sharing as much we can in real-time is appropriate.
Probably one of the biggest reasons is that by sharing our science we hope to contribute to a culture. In genomics, we have so much more data than we need. By sharing the data I hope others can use the information and focus more an making new discoveries (that they share).
oysters, urbanization, and crowdfunding – oh my!
I’m sure almost everyone has heard of crowdfunding for research dollars at this point, and maybe you are even intrigued by the concept. Well, two of us SAFS-ites (Lauren in the Olden Lab and Emma in the Roberts Lab) are out on the crowdfunding limb this month as part of the second #SciFund Challenge. #SciFund will run through the end of the month, during which time we will promote our projects through friends, colleagues, social networking, and media.
Crowdfunding isn’t only about raising research dollars, but a way to get a broad range of people interested and involved in research that they might not normally think about. So it’s about describing our research in a way that engages a lot of people through narratives, video, and creating relevant and unique rewards for contributors.
You are probably wondering how you can help these intrepid members of your department – right?
1. Check out the projects on RocketHub. They are really different and launched at different times, but both will run the rest of the month:
- Emma’s “Save Oysters from Ocean Acidification” Project- keywords: ocean acidification, aquaculture, food resources. URL: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/6330-save-oysters-from-ocean-acidification
- Lauren’s “The Lakes Are Alive With the Sound of Data” Project – keywords: urbanization, freshwater conservation, bioacoustics. URL: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/7545-the-lakes-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-data
2. Kick in a few bucks if you are motivated – even small dollar amounts add up and also create momentum for a project!
3. Are you on Facebook/Twitter/ or have a website/blog?
Or – do you know people who do? Could you post our projects to people you know or those that follow this kind of research? We both have short snippets about our research which you can use to re-post our content.
4. Do you know related researchers, organizations, or media that we should network with for support? Send us their names or contact information.
And since crowdfunding is about offering something in return, in return we promise to be good guinea pigs and share what we’ve learned through this process!
(and as always, sorry for the cross-posts!)
Sincerely,
Emma and Lauren
via the Lab Tumblr: http://genefish.tumblr.com/post/22275868550
Visualization tracks for the oyster genome
In anticipation of the release of the Crassostrea gigas genome we have been developing draft assemblies and tracks for visualization and integrated analysis. These include gff and bed files that provide putative annotations, RNA-seq data alignments, as well as DNA methylation data. All data including assemblies are available on our wiki at: genefish.wikispaces.com/crassostreome.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
Screenshot
FISHLINE
- Study: Less Lake Superior habitat for big trout – Sioux City Journal
- SAFS Seminar with Dr. Richard Whitney (tomorrow!)
- Study: Less Lake Superior habitat for big trout – Crookston Daily Times
- Warming Lake Superior already affecting fish – Duluth News Tribune
- Study of warming Lake Superior finds less habitat for siscowet lakers but more … – Duluth News Tribune
- Study of warming Lake Superior finds less habitat for siscowet lakers but more … – Budgeteer
206.685.3742
