Researchers on the Edge 2.0

@mailandguardian: Women are the vulnerable HIV link.

2011-12-21T09:51:00.000+02:00

Women are the vulnerable HIV link - Newspaper - Mail & Guardian Online

"The largest portion of the global burden of HIV infection is shared by sub-Saharan Africa. But because of the availability of life-saving drugs, more and more people are now living a healthy life with HIV. "
http://t.co/NOgij1vr

MRC Articles

2011-12-21T09:39:00.000+02:00

Acomparison of two treatment protocols in the management of exercise-associatedpostural hypotension: A randomised clinical trial. Anley, C., Noakes, T., Collins, M. &Schwellnus, M.P. British journal of sports medicine, 2011, 45(14), 1113-1118. Readmore about the MRC/UCT Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine.

Reliabilityof the Lay Adherence Counsellor Administered Substance Abuse and Mental IllnessSymptoms Screener (SAMISS) and the International HIV Dementia Scale (IHDS) in aPrimary care HIV Clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. Breuer, E., Stoloff, K., Myer, L.,Seedat, S., Stein, D.J. & Joska, J. AIDS and Behavior, 2011. Articlein Press. Read more about the MRC Uniton Anxiety and Stress Disorders.

Maternalgestational dietary fat has minimal effects on serum lipid profiles and hepaticglucose transporter 2 and no effect on glucokinase expression in neonatalWistar rat offspring. Cerf,M.E., Williams, K., Muller, C.J. & Louw, L. InternationalJournal of Biomedical Science, 2011, 7(3), 209-217. Read more about the Diabetes Discovery Platform.

Insecticideresistance and the future of malaria control in Zambia. Chanda, E., Hemingway, J.,Kleinschmidt, I., Rehman, A.M., Ramdeen, V., Phiri, F.N., Coetzer, S., Mthembu,D., Shinondo, C.J., Chizema-Kawesha, E., Kamuliwo, M., Mukonka, V., Baboo, K.S.& Coleman, M. PLoS ONE, 2011, 6(9).Read more about the Malaria Research Unit

TypeV collagen genotype and exercise-related phenotype relationships: A novel hypothesis. Collins,M. & Posthumus, M. Exercise and sport sciences reviews,2011,39,(4), 191-198. Read more about the MRC/UCT Research Unit for Exercise Scienceand Sports Medicine.

BehaviourChange Counselling for ARV Adherence Support Within Primary Health CareFacilities in the Western Cape, South Africa.Dewing, S., Mathews, C., Schaay, N., Cloete, A., Louw, J. & Simbayi, L. AIDSand Behavior, 2011. Article in Press. Readmore about the Health Systems Research Unit.

Diagnosticability of obesity measures to identify metabolic risk factors in South Africanwomen. Evans, J.,Micklesfield, L., Jennings, C., Levitt, N.S., Lambert, E.V., Olsson, T. &Goedecke, J.H. Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders. 2011, 9(5),353-360. Read more about the MRC/UCTResearch Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine.

Mycofloraand absence of aflatoxin contamination of commercialized cassava chips inBenin, West Africa. Gnonlonfin, G.J.B., Adjovi, C.S.Y.,Katerere, D.R., Shephard, G.S., Sanni, A. & Brimer, L. FoodControl, 2012, 23(2),333-337. Read more about the PROMEC.

MRC Publications

2011-09-29T10:03:00.000+02:00

Image by dullhunk via Flickr

High-risk human papillomavirus is associated with HIV acquisition among South African female sex workers. Auvert, B., Marais, D., Lissouba, P., Zarca, K., Ramjee, G., & Williamson, A. Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2011. [Online]. Read more about the HIV Prevention Research Unit.

Trials of antenatal syphilis screening urgently needed - authors' reply. Bhutta, Z. A., Goldenberg, R. L., & Lawn, J. E 2011. The Lancet, 378(9794), 877-878. Read more about the Health Systems Research Unit

Insecticide resistance and the future of malaria control in Zambia. Chanda, E., Hemingway, J., Kleinschmidt, I., Rehman, A. M., Ramdeen, V., Phiri, F. N., et al. PLoS ONE, 2011. 6(9),[Online]. Read more about the Malaria Research Programme Unit

Individual tree detection based on variable and fixed window size local maxima filtering applied to IKONOS imagery for even-aged eucalyptus plantation forests. International Journal of Remote Sensing. Gebreslasie, M. T., Ahmed, F. B., van Aardt, J. A. N., & Blakeway, F. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2011. 32(15), 4141-4154.Read more about Malaria Research Programme Unit

Natural occurrence of aflatoxins from maize in Iran. Ghiasian, S. A., Shephard, G. S., & Yazdanpanah, H. Mycopathologia, 2011. 172(2), 153-160. Read more about the PROMEC Unit

Attitude and behaviour of junior rugby union players towards tackling during training and match play. Hendricks, S., Jordaan, E., & Lambert, M. Safety Science, 2011. Article in Press. Read more about the MRC/UCT Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine and Biostatistics Unit

Preliminary investigation of concurrent administration of phenylbutazone and romifidine in healthy horses. Kruger, K., Stegmann, G. F., & Becker, P. J. Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia, 2011. 38(5), 505-509.Read more about the Biostatistics Unit

Synergistic action between fractions of essential oils from cymbopogon citratus, ocimum gratissimum and thymus vulgaris against penicillium expansum. Nguefack, J., Tamgue, O., Dongmo, J. B. L., Dakole, C. D., Leth, V., Vismer, H. F., et al. Food Control, 2011. Article in Press. Read more about the PROMEC Unit

Does money matter for mental health? Evidence from the child support grants in Johannesburg, South Africa. Plagerson, S., Patel, V., Harpham, T., Kielmann, K., & Mathee, A. Global Public Health, 2011. 6(7), 760-776. Read more about the Environment and Health Research Unit.

Antiretroviral resistance patterns and factors associated with resistance in adult patients failing NNRTI-based regimens in the Western Cape, South Africa. van Zyl, G. U., van der Merwe, L., Claassen, M., Zeier, M., & Preiser, W. Journal of Medical Virology, 2011. 83(10), 1764-1769. Read more about the Biostatistics Unit

MRC Research Units

EzProxy Access!!

2011-08-22T11:23:00.000+02:00

We’ve had some queries from staff regarding access to the MRCStaff pages from home since the EZProxy system was introduced : click on this new link when Off-Campus:

http://ezproxy.mrc.ac.za.
Then use current username and network password, as with other EZProxy controlled pages.

If you want to bookmark this link (or put it in your Favorites) you must save the link BEFORE clicking on it.*

*Saving a link to Favorites or Bookmarks before opening link:

Internet Explorer
-----------------
Right-hand click on the link and select "Add to Favorites". Opposite the label:
"Create in", select "Favorites" or one of your own folders from the drop down menu. Click "Add".

Firefox
-------
Right-hand click on the link and select "Bookmark this Link ". Opposite the label:
"Folder", select "Unsorted Bookmarks" or one of your own folders from the drop down menu. Click "Done".

SA PMTCT Evaluation shows that virtual elimination of paediatric HIV is possible with intensified effort

2011-06-28T07:39:00.000+02:00

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Media statement
9 June 2011

SA PMTCT Evaluation shows that virtual elimination of paediatric HIV is possible with intensified effort

Durban

Study results from a national survey, conducted between June to December 2010, to evaluate the effectiveness of the South African Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (SA PMTCT) programme at six weeks postpartum show that out of a sample size of 9915 infants, 31,4% were HIV-exposed. The national HIV transmission rate from mother-to-child, measured in these 9915 infants aged 4-8 weeks attending public sector clinics for their (six week DTaP/Pentaxim) immunisation was 3.5%.

This survey was conducted by the Health Systems Research Unit of the Medical Research Council on behalf of the National Department of Health and several other role players including CDC (technical and financial support), Unicef (financial support for the data collection technology), NCID/NHLS, Wits Infant HIV Diagnostics and UWC.

The table below shows the rates of infant HIV-exposure and HIV transmission from mother-to-child transmission measured at 4-8 weeks post-delivery, by province.

(Analysis on 9915 completed interviews with DBS results)

Researchers visited 580 facilities across South Africa. Interviews were conducted with consenting caregivers of infants aged 4-8 weeks and dried blood spots (DBS) were collected from enrolled consented infants. DBS were tested for HIV-exposure using ELISA to detect maternal antibody. ELISA positive DBS were then tested for DNA PCR to detect HIV transmission. All infant test results were returned to mothers by the routine health care system and HIV-infected infants were fast-tracked into care. All mothers were encouraged to access HIV counselling and testing services.

“This survey was the first ever rigorous national SA PMTCT evaluation in the nine provinces of South Africa,” said Dr Ameena Goga, MRC, as she spoke on behalf of the survey principal investigators (Dr Goga – MRC; Prof Jackson – UWC and Dr Dinh – CDC) and collaborators. “The survey highlighted the acceptability of routine infant HIV testing once the advantages were explained” said Professor Jackson (UWC).”92% of eligible caregivers agreed to their infants being tested for HIV”. Dr Dinh (CDC) highlighted the fact that 4.1% of infants whose mothers reported being HIV negative were actually exposed to HIV, highlighting the need to strengthen repeat testing in pregnancy and couple testing.

The survey also highlighted gaps in postnatal care and infant follow-up” said Dr Goga, MRC. “This emphasises the importance of tracking MTCT rates until 18 months to measure the effectiveness of the complete PMTCT programme. In 2010 the SAPMTCT Evaluation only measured the effectiveness of the antenatal and intrapartum components of the PMTCT programme. Our sample size was calculated to obtain valid national and provincial level MTCT estimates at 4-8 weeks post-delivery”, said Dr Goga. “In 2011 and 2012 we plan to repeat the PMTCT Evaluation so that we can track MTCT rates over 3 years. However we will also follow-up infants so that we can also measure HIV transmission rates between six week and 18 months.”

In 2010 the South African government revised the PMTCT guidelines to include AZT from 14 weeks, HAART for all pregnant women with CD4 cell counts less than or equal to 350 and infant nevirapine prophylaxis for six weeks (if mum on HAART or not breastfeeding) or throughout the breastfeeding period. Furthermore the PMTCT guidelines promote the integration of PMTCT services into routine maternal, newborn, and child health services. The PMTCT Evaluation provides data to track the operational effectiveness of the revised guidelines.

Dr Goga mentioned that the SAPMTCTE data shows that virtual elimination of paediatric HIV could be possible by 2015, with intensified effort. However, we need to address the postnatal component and variabilities in PMTCT service coverage.” She added that:” Reduction in MTCT will contribute towards reduction of incident HIV infections at population level.”

Issued by the South African Medical Research Council (MRC).
For information contact:

Dr Ameena Goga on 082 302 3168 or Julian Jacobs on 082 454 4902.

New Research Published in The Lancet Reveals

2011-05-10T10:15:00.000+02:00

Media Release
15 April 2011

New Research Published in The Lancet Reveals

23,000 Babies Are Stillborn Every Year in South Africa

The global report highlights 2.6 million stillbirths per year. South Africa’s ranks 176 out of 193 countries for stillbirth numbers and 148 for stillbirth rate. Improving quality of care at birth and targeting disparities are key priorities for action.

Globally more than 2.6 million women experience stillbirth in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy every year, according to the first comprehensive set of stillbirth estimates, published in a special issue of The Lancet medical journal. The special series drew on the efforts of 69 authors from more than 50 organizations and 18 countries, with two papers being lead by South African authors.

Every day more than 7,300 babies are stillborn globally. In South Africa over 61 babies are stillborn each day. A death occurs just when parents expect to welcome a new life. These stillbirths are in addition to 58 newborn deaths every day, and yet newborn, child and maternal deaths count in national and global goals, but stillbirths do not.

“Almost no burden affecting families is so big and yet so invisible in society and on the global public health agenda. Yet this invisible loss deeply affects women all over the world. The new information documents their hidden grief as well as the social stigma these women often endure,” said Joy Lawn, Director of Global Evidence and Policy for Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives programme from Cape Town, coordinator of the new stillbirth estimates and a lead author of The Lancet’s Stillbirths Series. These are the first ever official estimates of stillbirth done in partnership with the World Health Organisation.

Globally, stillbirths have declined by only 1.1 percent per year, from 3 million per year in 1995 to 2.6 million in 2009. This is slower than reductions for child and maternal mortality. In South Africa, the average rate of decline has only been 0.9 percent per year, from an estimated 25,000 stillbirths in 1995 to 23,000 stillbirths in 2009.

The new stillbirth estimates would be even higher than 2.6 million under broader definitions used in most high-income countries. The Lancet authors used the WHO international definition, which classifies stillbirth as the loss of pregnancy after the 28th week. South Africa has a rate of 20 stillbirths per 1,000 births in 2009 using the WHO definition.

The new findings in The Lancet’s Stillbirths Series include:

98 percent of stillbirths occur in low- and middle-income countries
Half of all stillbirths occur in just 5 countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, China and Bangladesh.
Pakistan has the highest rate of stillbirths – nearly 47 per 1,000 births.
Two-thirds of stillbirths occur in rural areas, where trained and skilled midwives are scarce.
Worldwide, the rate of stillbirths has dropped by only 1.1 percent each year since 1995 – much slower progress than for maternal and child deaths.
Finland and Singapore have the lowest stillbirth rate – 2 stillbirths per 1,000 births.
In high-income countries, the rate of decline in stillbirths has stagnated and 1 in 320 pregnancies end in stillbirth.

The Lancet special series highlightsthe “big five” causes of stillbirths: childbirth complications, maternal infections in pregnancy, maternal disorders, fetal growth restriction and congenital abnormalities. Almost half of all stillbirths (1.2 million a year) occur during labor and delivery. More research is needed on the interaction between HIV and pregnancy.

Interventions such as emergency obstetric care and treatment of maternal infections and conditions could prevent 44% of stillbirths (1.1 million worldwide) if made universally available (99%) in countries with the highest burden of stillbirths, according to the new analysis in The Lancet. In total 2.7 million deaths of mothers and newborns and stillbirths could be prevented, at only an additional cost of US$2.32 per person.

In South Africa universal coverage of key interventions for maternal and newborn health and stillbirths could prevent 24,000 deaths at an additional cost of ZAR 35 per person.

Prof Robert Pattinson, Director of the Medical Research Council and University of Pretoria Maternity and Infant Strategies Research Unit, states that ‘Maternal and newborn deaths as well as stillbirths could be prevented by improving quality of care, especially during child birth, addressing overcrowding and understaffing in facilities as well as developing the skills and commitment of those working in the health care system.”

The Lancet‘s Stillbirths Series includes groundbreaking analysis of this invisible and undercounted tragedy affecting women and families around the world. “Now that we have reliable data on stillbirths and consensus on how to prevent them, we must act. The positive news is that the same basic services proven to reduce maternal and newborn deaths could prevent over a million stillbirths worldwide each year. It is now clearer than ever that these services - especially care at birth - have a triple return on investment. Counting the stillbirths is added value for families and for health programs,” said Lawn.

The Lancet series is being launched globally this week. As of April 15, 2011, papers available free at: www.lancet.com/series/stillbirth

TV coverage and clips at www.lancet.com

For more information contact:
Julian Jacobs on 082 454 4902

Overview of the papers

Paper One: Stillbirths: Why They Matter

Stillbirth prevention is closely linked with prevention of maternal and neonatal deaths. In an era of global efforts in maternal health, most mothers’ own aspiration – a live baby – has been absent from the global health agenda. Affected mothers are often subjected to harsh stigma and marginalisation in communities that blame her stillbirth on her own sins, evil spirits and destiny. Most stillborn babies around the globe are disposed of without any recognition such as being named, held or dressed or a funeral, and are often seen as taboo objects. Fatalism is widespread, and to prioritise stillbirth prevention, health professionals need data on rates, causes and preventive opportunities, as well as global leadership.

Paper Two: Stillbirths: Where? When? Why? How to make the data count?

This paper presents new epidemiological data to prioritise actions to reduce stillbirth. Prior to 2006, no global estimates on stillbirth had been published. When countries are categorised by their stillbirth rate, there are clear correlations with maternal and neonatal mortality, as well as health system indicators. The paper highlights the variations in stillbirth rates regionally, nationally, and sub-nationally, the importance of maternal conditions for stillbirths and neonatal deaths as well as the importance of improving national stillbirth data to inform action. There is now more than enough data to justify urgent attention and action to reduce this large burden of around 3 million stillbirths in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, linked to around 3 million early neonatal deaths and 350 000 maternal deaths. Stillbirths remain invisible on programmatic and policy priorities and yet are highly relevant to current investigations for maternal and neonatal health, especially for care at the time of birth when a combined 2 million deaths occur.

Paper Three: What Works? How much difference can we make and at what cost?

A model using Lives Saved Tool (LiST) evaluating the potential impact of feasible intervention packages across 68 countdown priority countries with varying stillbirth burdens, indicates that if implemented at scale, these have the potential of averting a substantial proportion of stillbirths. While basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care had the maximum impact on reducing stillbirths, other interventions, especially those with the potential of inclusion in expanded antenatal care packages also have considerable potential of reducing stillbirth. Similarly screening, preventing and managing infections such as malaria and syphilis in endemic areas through effective outreach services also offer the potential of significant gains in low income countries. The overall costs for these interventions are within the general estimates of cost effective interventions for maternal care especially given the impact on outcomes across the spectrum of maternal, fetal and newborn health.

Paper Four: Stillbirths: How can health systems deliver for mothers and babies?

Causes of stillbirths, and the solutions are frequently the same for maternal and neonatal deaths and the time of birth is critical especially in low and middle income countries and the solutions overlap. Interventions are best packaged and provided through linked service delivery modes tailored to suit existing health care systems. Services should be integrated providing a continuum of care not only from home to hospital but also from pre-pregnancy to postnatal care. If achieving universal coverage (99%) coverage of care with these packages is reached in 2015, a substantial proportion of maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths in the 68 priority countries could be saved with additional cost which is comparable with other global price tags. A health care system is a complex adaptive system, so to successfully implement and sustain programmes requires interventions at the key interfaces. Coverage is improved if the woman has basic information and accessibility to services, quality of care is improved if health care providers have skills, knowledge and resources to provide care. Each aspect needs specific (targeted) implementation strategies which are designed to meet the needs of the population served.

Paper Five: Stillbirth: The way forward in high income countries

While further research is needed, this paper highlights that many stillbirths in HIC are potentially preventable. The disparity associated with disadvantaged populations requires urgent attention through improving living standards for women and provision of culturally appropriate accessible antenatal care. A greater awareness of risk factors for stillbirth is needed at the community, health care provider and policy levels. The lack of quality data on stillbirths is a major impediment to stillbirth prevention. Improvements in investigation and reporting practices, including consensus of definition and classification systems is urgently needed. Implementation of perinatal mortality audit at a national level could result in important reductions in stillbirth in HIC through improving quality of data and standards of maternity care. Parents have the greatest stake of all in the wellbeing of their baby, and must be part of the drive to reduce stillbirth. Parents and health professional working collaboratively (in such models as the International Stillbirth Alliance) have a powerful role to play in bringing stillbirth to public attention and pushing for the prioritisation of stillbirth in research and maternity services.

Paper Six: Stillbirth: The vision for 2020

The overall goal to achieve by 2020 is for all countries to reduce the stillbirth rate to < 5 per 1000 births, and in high-income countries, to eliminate all preventable stillbirths. Achieving a substantial reduction in stillbirths worldwide will require concerted action by many participants including country, regional and local governments, and their official health departments, the WHO and other international organisations, foundations and research institutes which must be guided by a series of goals recommended in this paper. We encourage all those with a specific interest in stillbirths, including the research community, to engage with those interested in improving other pregnancy outcomes so that an evidence based united front for improving all pregnancy outcomes is created.

The entire series of article can be viewed on: http://www.thelancet.com/series/stillbirth

CDC Science Clips - Monday, May 02, 2011

2011-05-10T10:08:00.000+02:00

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One of the Top Ten Articles of the Week
Science Clips - Monday, May 02, 2011: "Use of a WHO-recommended algorithm to reduce mortality in seriously ill patients with HIV infection and smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis in South Africa: an observational cohort study
Holtz TH, Kabera G, Mthiyane T, Zingoni T, Nadesan S, Ross D, Allen J, Chideya S, Sunpath H, Rustomjee R.
Lancet Infect Dis. 2011 Apr 20."
MRC Units Involved:
Biostatistics Unit
Clinical And Biomedical Tuberculosis Research Unit

New MRC Publications!

2011-05-10T08:04:00.000+02:00

HIV Prevention Research Unit
1. Halpern V, Lie C-, Feldblum P, Van Damme L, Weaver M, Mauck C, Guédou F, Mirembe F, Govinden R, Obunge O, Ogunsola F. Predictors of pregnancy in microbicide trials. Contraception [Internet]. 2011;83(5):436-40. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit;
Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Research Unit
2. Pattinson R, Kerber K, Buchmann E, Friberg IK, Belizan M, Lansky S, Weissman E, Mathai M, Rudan I, Walker N, Lawn JE. Stillbirths: How can health systems deliver for mothers and babies? The Lancet [Internet]. 2011 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit;

Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Research Unit
3. Lawn JE, Blencowe H, Pattinson R, Cousens S, Kumar R, Ibiebele I, Gardosi J, Day LT, Stanton C. Stillbirths: Where? when? why? how to make the data count? The Lancet [Internet]. 2011
Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit

4. Bhutta ZA, Yakoob MY, Lawn JE, Rizvi A, Friberg IK, Weissman E, Buchmann E, Goldenberg RL. Stillbirths: What difference can we make and at what cost? The Lancet [Internet]. 2011 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit
5. Brook DW, Rubenstone E, Zhang C, Morojele NK, Brook JS. Environmental stressors, low well-being, smoking, and alcohol use among south african adolescents. Social Science and Medicine [Internet]. 2011
Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit
6. Eshetu WB, Woldesenbet SA. Are there particular social determinants of health for the world's poorest countries? African Health Sciences [Internet]. 2011;11(1):108-15. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Tuberculosis Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit

7. Dharmadhikari AS, Basaraba RJ, Van Der Walt ML, Weyer K, Mphahlele M, Venter K, Jensen PA, First MW, Parsons S, McMurray DN, Orme IM, Nardell EA. Natural infection of guinea pigs exposed to patients with highly drug-resistant tuberculosis. Tuberculosis [Internet]. 2011 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

South African Cochrane Centre

8. Pienaar E, Grobler L, Busgeeth K, Eisinga A, Siegfried N. Developing a geographic search filter to identify randomised controlled trials in africa: Finding the optimal balance between sensitivity and precision. Health Information and Libraries Journal [Internet]. 2011 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

UCT/MRC Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine
9. Brown JC, Miller C-, Schwellnus MP, Collins M. Range of motion measurements diverge with increasing age for COL5A1 genotypes. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports [Internet]. 2011 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit
10. Loveday M, Zweigenthal V. TB and HIV integration: Obstacles and possible solutions to implementation in south africa. Tropical Medicine and International Health [Internet]. 2011;16(4):431-8. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Health Systems Research Unit
11. Lawn JE, Mwansa-Kambafwile J, Barros FC, Horta BL, Cousens S. 'Kangaroo mother care' to prevent neonatal deaths due to pre-term birth complications. Int J Epidemiol [Internet]. 2011;40(2):525-8. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Oncology Research Unit

12. Ramdial PK, Sing Y, Naicker S, Calonje E, Sewram V, Singh B. Langerhans cells in anaplastic kaposi sarcoma with a paucivascular phenotype: A potential diagnostic pitfall. Pathol Int [Internet]. 2011;61(4):221-7. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

World Health Day: Use Apps to improve your health

2011-04-07T11:57:00.000+02:00

World Health Day: Use Apps to improve your health

New Database: Dictionary of Natural products

2011-03-15T09:08:00.000+02:00

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A comprehensive structure database containing over 226,000 natural products. Continually reviewed to keep pace with the current literature, this database is the most comprehensive source of natural product information available.
The Dictionary of Natural Products is the only comprehensive source of chemical data on natural products. The database brings together factual data on virtually every natural product isolated and reported in the literature up to 1996. The data is published on subscription with cumulative six-monthly updates. The Main Work in print is supported by regular supplements.

The Dictionary of Natural Products on provides chemical and physical data on over 207,000 compounds gathered from the worlds chemical literature by a team of natural Products experts. Editorial policy dictates that a great deal of effort is expended to ensure reconciliation of contradictory data in order to provide the most accurate chemical profile every entry.

In addition, each entry within the Dictionary of Natural Products brings together structurally related natural products to ensure consistency of presentation and absolute clarity of information. Each entry includes

Chemical name - systematic names and all trivial names
Accurate high-quality structure diagram
Molecular formula and molecular weight
Natural source data
Use and importance
Important bibliographic data

Rapid access to the data on the Dictionary of Natural Products is provided using powerful searching tools. The intuitive search software interface allows searching by one or more of these techniques

Text, including multi-field logic searches
Exact structure
Substructure
Molecular formula

The data is cumulatively updated every 6 months, ensuring that compound coverage is kept at the cutting edge of new research

New entries (3000 to 4000 new entries every 6 months)
Additions to existing entries
Updates and refinements to existing entries
Software enhancements

Reviews

As an owner and daily user of the CD-ROM version of the Dictionary of Natural Products, I am very impressed by the amount of information given for each compound. Extremely easy to install, the flexibility of the CD-ROM version makes it an indispensable tool for research on natural products.

- Dr. Olov Sterner, University of Lund, Sweden

The way its presented is just perfect...it has saved me literally days of work since we started subscribing...its got to the stage where I walk into the library and they dont even ask what I want. They just say give him the green disc.

-Dr. Alan Freyer, Smithkline Beecham

...an exceptionally well done compendium that will be often used and save many hours in the library it should be given top priority for purchase.

-M.E. Kuehne, University of Vermont

If you are interested in natural products, you will want access to this dictionary.

- Natural Product Reports

New MRC Publications

2011-03-15T08:57:00.000+02:00

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BOARDMAN, L., VAN DER MERWE, L., LOCHNER, C., KINNEAR, C.J., SEEDAT, S., STEIN, D.J., MOOLMAN-SMOOK, J.C. and HEMMINGS, S.M.J., 2011. Investigating SAPAP3 variants in the etiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder and trichotillomania in the South African white population. Comprehensive psychiatry, 52(2), pp. 181-187.

CLEARY, S., SILAL, S., BIRCH, S., CARRARA, H., PILLAY-VAN WYK, V., REHLE, T. and SCHNEIDER, H., 2011. Equity in the use of antiretroviral treatment in the public health care system in urban South Africa. Health Policy, 99(3), pp. 261-266.

DUNBAR, R., LAWRENCE, K., VERVER, S., ENARSON, D.A., LOMBARD, C., HARGROVE, J., CALDWELL, J., BEYERS, N. and BARNES, J.M., 2011. Accuracy and completeness of recording of confirmed tuberculosis in two South African communities. International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 15(3), pp. 337-343.

SUMNER, A.E., MICKLESFIELD, L.K., RICKS, M., TAMBAY, A.V., AVILA, N.A., THOMAS, F., LAMBERT, E.V., LEVITT, N.S., EVANS, J., ROTIMI, C.N., TULLOCH-REID, M.K. and GOEDECKE, J.H., 2011. Waist circumference, BMI, and visceral adipose tissue in white women and women of African descent. Obesity, 19(3), pp. 671-674.

VAN DER WESTHUIZEN, L., SHEPHARD, G.S., RHEEDER, J.P., BURGER, H.-., GELDERBLOM, W.C.A., WILD, C.P. and GONG, Y.Y., 2011. Optimising sorting and washing of home-grown maize to reduce fumonisin contamination under laboratory-controlled conditions. Food Control, 22(3-4), pp. 396-400.

Thieme’s Teaching Assistant: Anatomy Trial

2011-02-18T14:18:00.000+02:00

Cover of Atlas of Anatomy (Thieme Anatomy)

1) ABOUT
The publisher Thieme has launched a new product, Thieme’s Teaching Assistant: Anatomy.
2) CONTENT

The Thieme Teaching Assistant is a state-of-the-art presentation tool featuring all 2,000+ stunning illustrations and clinical images from Atlas of Anatomy by Anne M. Gilroy, Brian R. MacPherson, and Lawrence M. Ross. Please will you look at http://www.thiemeteachingassistant.com/page.aspx?pid=0 to see this wonderful product!

This cutting-edge platform enables the lecturer to enhance students’ learning experiences by incorporating dynamic visuals into lectures and course materials to present complex concepts with unprecedented clarity.
The Thieme Teaching Assistant: Anatomy allows you to:
- Export images as individual files or embedded into PowerPoint slides or PDFs
- Locate specific images using the search function
- Turn individual labels and leader lines “on” or “off” to prepare student study guides, handouts, tests and other materials for an individual image or a series of images
- Use the Teaching Assistant live in the classroom to magnify images and demonstrate concepts with an unprecedented level of clarity
- A detailed brochure is available in PDF and can be downloaded from http://www.thieme.de/connect/en/services/brochure.html

Springer Publishers Workshops

2011-02-16T12:42:00.000+02:00

Write text here...

HOW TO: Use Amazon's New Kindle Lending Feature

2011-02-10T12:02:00.000+02:00

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HOW TO: Use Amazon's New Kindle Lending Feature

Amazon has rolled out its long-awaited lending feature for its Kindle ecosystem of devices and apps. Users can loan out supported titles once for a period of 14 days.

Very similar in execution to the LendMe feature built in to the competing Barnes & Noble Nook platform, borrowers can access books from the Kindle apps for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and of course, the Kindle itself.
Amazon has a pretty comprehensive page set up explaining the Kindle loan process, but we’ve put together our own guide to help users get started.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Research tools December 2010

2010-11-30T14:08:00.000+02:00

Image by iosonozuth via Flickr

GoPubmed

GoPubMed is a knowledge-based search engine for biomedical texts. The Gene Ontology (GO) and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) serve as "Table of contents" in order to structure the millions of articles of the MEDLINE database. The search engine allows its users to find relevant search results significantly faster. MeshPubMed was at one point a separate project, but now the two have been merged.

The technologies used in GoPubMed are generic and can in general be applied to any kind of texts and any kind of knowledge bases. GoPubMed is one of the first Web 2.0 semantic search engines. The system was developed at the Technical University of Dresden by Michael Schroeder and his team at Transinsight.

GoPubMed.com, the semantic search engine for the life sciences, has been recognized with the 2009 red dot: best of the best award in the category communication design – graphical user interfaces and interactive tool and the German Industry Prize 2010.

Read More

PubChem

PubChem is a database of chemical molecules. The system is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a component of the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH). PubChem can be accessed for free through a web user interface. Millions of compound structures and descriptive datasets can be freely downloaded via FTP. PubChem contains substance descriptions and small molecules with fewer than 1000 atoms and 1000 bonds. The American Chemical Society tried to get the U.S. Congress to restrict the operation of PubChem, because they claim it competes with their Chemical Abstracts Service.[1]. More than 80 database vendors contribute to the growing PubChem database.

PubChem consists of three dynamically growing primary databases. As of 10 July 2009:

• Compounds, 37 million entries, contains pure and characterized chemical compounds.[1]

• Substances, 71 million entries, contains also mixtures, extracts, complexes and uncharacterized substances
• BioAssay, bioactivity results from 1644 high-throughput screening programs with several million values.

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Patsnap

PatSnap is a patent search system that offers for-free and for-pay levels of access. Free access limits users to the United States (US), European Patent Office (EP), and Patent Cooperation Treaty (WO/PCT) collections, and does not offer any analytic features. The following information in this community report relates to the for-pay level of access.

Our current databases are as follows:
-United States Issued & Application (1876 - current)

-European Patent Issued & Application (1976 - current)

-PCT/WIPO (1976 - current)

-China (1980 - current)

-Japan (1976 - current)

-Korea (1983 - current)

-Norway (2001 - current)

and more than 70 countries' patent family documents through INPADOC.

Full text: US, EP, WO, CN

Bibliographic only: JP, KR, NO

It is notable that the US full text collection predates USPTO coverage due to PatSnap Optical Character Recognition (OCR) efforts.

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Drugs reduce HIV among Homosexual men by 44%

2010-11-24T07:19:00.000+02:00

Image by photoboothparty via Flickr

The HIV Prevention Research Unit (HPRU) on behalf of the Medical Research Council would like to congratulate the iPrEx team on the positive results of the trial conducted in South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Thailand and the United States. The large trial involved 2,499 HIV negative gay men and 29 transgendered women between the ages of 18 and 67. The trial was conducted between July 2007 and December 2009. Participants were randomly assigned to take either a daily dose of Truvada (an anti-retroviral drug used to treat HIV positive people) or a placebo. All participants received condoms, safe sex counselling and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

A total of 100 HIV infections were observed during the three year study. 36 infections occurred among 1251 participants receiving Truvada and 64 among 1248 receiving placebo, showing that the drug reduced HIV infection by 43.8% among those taking Truvada. The results are the first in showing that oral use of anti-retroviral drug among HIV negative gay men can provide protection.
The HPRU is currently testing both oral (Tenofovir and Truvada) and vaginal (Tenofovir gel) in a large trial called VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Intervention to Control the Epidemic). The study is conducted among HIV negative women among several communities in Durban. The success of both the 1% Tenofovir gel and now the oral use of Truvada for HIV prevention provides a lot of hope for use of new biomedical technologies, together with current options such as condoms and male circumcision for HIV prevention. The results of the MRC’s VOICE trial are expected in 2013.

ends
CONTACT PERSONS
Medical Research Council
For Prof. Gita Ramjee
Charmaine Pohl & Tracey Lloyd
E-mail: charmaine.pohl@mrc.ac.za / tracey.lloyd@mrc.ac.za
Phone: +27 (0)31 242 3631

Child pedestrian road safety tips

2010-11-02T12:28:00.000+02:00

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Children need adult supervision where ever a car might be moving. This includes:

Quiet Streets
Footpaths
Roundabouts
Residential areas
Traffic lights
Car Parks
Local Streets
Driveways
Busy Streets
Around schools
Pedestrian crossing
Shopping centres

Walking

Parents or guardians should meet your child at the school gate.
Children up to eight years of age should hold an adult’s hand even when walking on a footpath. Eight to ten years of age is appropriate when crossing the road.
Adults should not call children across the road, instead teach them to wait until you cross the road to them.

Holding of hands

Young children may not effectively use their hearing and vision and lack appropriate skills to make safe decisions when in road traffic environment. Consequently, parents/guardians are encouraged to hold their children’s hand as a means of protection.

Young children need adult support, supervision and guidance. Regardless of whether it is in a quiet or congested area/road/location, children’s hands should be held.
Should the adult be unable to offer a hand, allow the child to hold onto their clothing, bag, etc.
Encourage and praise the children when they hold your hand as a means of positive enforcement.
Children may know how to cross the road and/or be able to recite a road safety message, but this does not mean that they possess the skills and understanding to cross safely.
Adults need to be role model; talk and practice safe road behaviours

Commentary Walking

(the ability for adults to talk with their children about road safety behaviour while practicing it)

Speak about what they do whilst crossing the road
Why and how to stop at the curb
How to determine when it is safe to cross the road
The sounds to pay attention to and listen for before crossing a road
Explain when it is safe to cross the road and why
Why they have to keep checking the road until the are safe and securely on the pavement.

Safe School Crossings

Adults should ensure that children use the school or children’s crossing.
Some schools have a scholar patrol programme running, where the supervised school crossing can show learners when it is safe to cross the road.
Drivers must reduce car speed and stop should school supervisor show the ‘STOP’ children crossing sign. They may proceed when crossing is clear.

Conferences

2010-10-13T08:05:00.000+02:00

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New publications!

2010-10-13T08:01:00.000+02:00

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PRO2000 vaginal gel for prevention of HIV-1 infection (Microbicides Development Programme 301): a phase 3, randomised, double-blind, parallel-group trial. McCormack S, Ramjee G, Kamali A, Rees H, Crook AM, Gafos M, Jentsch U, Pool R, Chisembele M, Kapiga S, Mutemwa R, Vallely A, Palanee T, Sookrajh Y, Lacey CJ, Darbyshire J, Grosskurth H, Profy A, Nunn A, Hayes R, Weber J. Lancet. 2010 Sep 17. [Epub ahead of print] View online abstract. Register for full article. Read more about the HIV Prevention Research Unit.

Managing academic research. van Helden P. EMBO Rep. 2010 Sep;11(9):648. PMID: 20805837 [PubMed - in process] doi:10.1038/embor.2010.118 View online abstract. Free full text article. Read more about the Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Safety, Reactogenicity, and Immunogenicity of Human Rotavirus Vaccine RIX4414 in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-positive Infants in South Africa. Steele AD, Madhi SA, Louw CE, Bos P, Tumbo JM, Werner CM, Bicer C, De Vos B, Delem A, Han HH. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2010 Sep 13. [Epub ahead of print] View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Diarrhoeal Pathogens Research Unit and Pneumococcal Disease Research Unit.

Burden and epidemiology of rotavirus diarrhea in selected African countries: preliminary results from the African Rotavirus Surveillance Network. Mwenda JM, Ntoto KM, Abebe A, Enweronu-Laryea C, Amina I, Mchomvu J, Kisakye A, Mpabalwani EM, Pazvakavambwa I, Armah GE, Seheri LM, Kiulia NM, Page N, Widdowson MA, Steele AD. J Infect Dis. 2010 Sep 1;202 Suppl:S5-S11. View online abstract (Search for PMID: 20570800). Register for full text article. Read more about the Diarrhoeal Pathogens Research Unit.

Antigenic and molecular characterization of unusual rotavirus strains in Burkina Faso in 1999. Steele AD, Page N, de Beer M, Sawadogo S. J Infect Dis. 2010 Sep 1;202 Suppl:S225-30. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Diarrhoeal Pathogens Research Unit.

Q&A!

2010-10-07T13:32:00.000+02:00

Image by Danard Vincente via Flickr

Search Engines You Should (But Probably Don't) Know
“Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: ‘Google,’” says Charles S. Knight, Search Engine Optimizer and editor of AllSearchEngines. “Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But in my travels as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have discovered that in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen. So many, in fact, that I have had to limit my list of the very best ones to a mere 100.”

In fact, Knight’s ReadWriteWeb article The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines includes a wealth of information about search engines and how different kinds of search engines – like clustering, recommendation, and Metasearch engines – work.
At the end of the article, Knight provides a fascinating list which includes search engines like blinkx, factbites, mnemomap, WEBBRAIN, and 96 others. Please note that the list was compiled in 2007. Some of the search engines he identifies have changed (clusty is now Yippy, and Singing FISH is now AOL Video), and a few have faded into oblivion. But you’ll find plenty of functional search engines to check out.

Add The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines to your online research toolkit.

This Information is from Q & A- Questia Newsletter

Home : Nature Podcasts

2010-10-07T07:55:00.000+02:00

Home : Nature Podcasts

World Health Summit: 2010

2010-09-15T14:59:00.000+02:00

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World Health World Health Summit: World Health Summit
Key Facts

Summit Profile

The World Health Summit is the world’s foremost meeting of researchers, physicians, politicians and stake holders within the healthcare system. It takes place every year, with it premiere instalment in October 2009 in Berlin.

Date

World Health Summit 2010: October 10th – 13th, 2010
Venue

The World Health Summit 2010 takes place at the "Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus" in Berlin, Germany.
Address

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Campus Mitte)

Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus

Luisenstr. 58/59

10117 Berlin, Germany

Science Direct - New Sciverse Hub

2010-09-02T11:42:00.000+02:00

SciVerse by Elsevier

Elsevier is integrating the world’s most trusted scientific content from ScienceDirect and Scopus into a single platform.

ScienceDirect, Scopus and the targeted web content from Scirus will be integrated within one platform – SciVerse. SciVerse will combine trusted content with an expanding universe of tools that accelerate search and discovery.

SciVerse Hub beta will include three search and discovery applications at launch:

- Methods section search application - allows researchers to search only the methodology and protocol sections of full-text articles.
- Matching Sentences application - returns search results with the query words highlighted in the full sentence where they appear.
- Prolific Authors application - prominently displays the most prolific authors for each search result.

Read More
SciTopics by Elsevier

Visit SciTopics to find authoritative discussions of current, up-to-date research topics in the fields of science, technology, and medicine (with some coverage from the arts and humanities, business, and the social sciences).
For each topic listed, a researcher explains the concept. Further reading and links are suggested, along with cross-references to other related SciTopic pages. In addition, a continually updated Scirus search of scientific web sites accompanies the article. Registrations let you sign up to track changes to the page as well as communicate with the author.

Read More

WorldCat
WorldCat is the world’s largest network of library content and service. WorldCat offers 1.4 billion items from more than 10,000 participating libraries and has now expanded the public available part with OAIster and two conference databases.
Find Journals:

Follow these steps to see if a journal title is available at a library near you:

1. Enter WorldCat.org using the link above.

2. In the "Title" box, type in the title of the journal (not the article title).

3. In the left column under "Format," click Journal/Magazine/Newspaper.

4. Click on the title of the journal you want.

5. Scroll down to the "Libraries" section to see libraries that own the journal.

6. Where there's a box for Location Information, enter your zip code.

7. View the list of libraries near you that have the journal.

Find Books and Other Materials:
Follow these steps to locate books and other materials:

1. Enter WorldCat.org using the link above.

2. Type in the title (or author or keyword) in the appropriate search box.

3. Click "Search."

4. Scroll down to the "Libraries" section to see libraries that own the journal.

5. Where there's a box for Location Information, enter your zip code.

6. View the list of libraries near you that have the book.
All WorldCat database records include a link that will display the libraries that own that item (for journals it will display what volumes are held as well). South African libraries are listed first by default.

You can print or e-mail to yourself the full record for each item you need to locate. This is helpful when trying to find the item in a library, request it via interlibrary loan, or order it through our document delivery service.

If you have questions about searching WorldCat, be sure to click on the "help" link at the bottom of the WorldCat.org page

Read More

Peter Scott's Library Blog: SciTopics

2010-09-01T07:37:00.000+02:00

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Peter Scott's Library Blog: SciTopics: "SciTopics is a free, wiki-like service for the scientific community, where scientific experts summarize specific scientific topics, and where... "

ChemSpider - Database of Chemical Structures and Property Predictions

2010-08-24T08:27:00.000+02:00

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ChemSpider - Database of Chemical Structures and Property Predictions:

"What is ChemSpider?

ChemSpider links together compound information across the web, providing free text and structure search access of millions of chemical structures.
With an abundance of additional property information, tools to upload, curate and use the data, and integration to a multitude of other online services, ChemSpider is the richest single source of structure-based chemistry information.
ChemSpider is owned by the RSC and provided as a free resource to the community."

UJ Science Librarian Blog: Peer Review: Guide for Researchers

2010-08-13T10:47:00.000+02:00

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UJ Science Librarian Blog: Peer Review: Guide for Researchers:
"The Research Information Network has published in March 2010 a Guide to provide researchers with an understanding of the peer review process and some of the current issues surrounding the debate about peer review"

Download the Peer Review: Guide for researchers (16 pages)
Read more about the Guide

The issues discuss are:

What is peer review?
How does it work?
Support and criticism.
Is it effective?
Is it fair? Subjectivity and transparency
Is it efficient? Speeding it up and lightening the burden
New challenges and opportunities

Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 Health Measurement Survey.

2010-08-13T07:18:00.002+02:00

Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 Health Measurement Survey. Your participation will provide information that will greatly improve the latest study, which aims to measure the impact of different diseases, injuries, and risk factors on people's health worldwide. (4 August 2010)

MRC researchers win top research award

2010-08-13T07:17:00.000+02:00

The Medical Research Council is pleased to announce that an article co-authored by two researchers from the Health Systems Research Unit has won the BioMed Central’s 4th Annual Research Award in the category of Medicine (http://www. biomedcentral.com/researchawards/winners/#research_awards). Dr Simon Lewin and Ms Karen Daniels collaborated on a qualitative study which explored the development of policy making for malaria control and eclampsia treatment in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Their collaboration culminated in the winning article entitled “Translating research into policy: lessons learned from eclampsia treatment and malaria control in three southern African countries”.
Translating research into policy and practice remains an important challenge in most settings. The paper focuses on understanding the factors affecting the use of research evidence, particularly findings from randomized control trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews, in national policy development in low- and middle-income countries. In exploring this issue, the paper draws on two cases – the use of magnesium sulphate in the treatment of eclampsia in pregnancy (a clinical case); and the use of insecticide treated bed nets and indoor residual household spraying for malaria vector control (a public health case) – across the three countries. The findings suggest that the translation of research into policy is a complex and context-sensitive process. Researchers aiming to enhance knowledge translation need to be aware of factors influencing the demand for different types of research; interact and work closely with key policy stakeholders, networks and local champions; and acknowledge the roles of important interest groups.
Dr Lewin is a social scientist at the Medical Research Council and the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services. His current work focuses on implementation research and he is an expert in health systems interventions, health services research and systematic reviews. In response to the recent award he says "'We are delighted and honoured that this paper has been awarded the annual Medicine Prize by the journal publishers, Biomed Central. Translating research into policy is necessary to improve public health and we hope that the findings reported in the paper will contribute to the development of strategies to support knowledge translation in low- and middle-income countries". Ms Daniels is a Senior Scientist specialising in qualitative research at the MRC of South Africa. Currently she is engaged in a PhD thesis focusing on community health workers particularly in relation to gender and policy making. The Health Systems Research Unit continues to investigate the problems which deter the delivery of health care in South Africa and aims to improve this by means of effective and simple health care interventions.
The full text of the article can be found online at http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/7/1/31. Earlier the MRC also published a policy brief which highlighted some of the findings (http://www.mrc.ac.za/techncalpolcybriefs/POLICY%20BRIEF%20March%202007.pdf)
For further information: Contact Ms Karen Daniels, Health Systems Research Unit, Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: karen.daniels@mrc.ac.za or telephone: +27 21 938 0454.

Related articles:

Esperanca Sevene, Simon Lewin, Alda Mariano, Godfrey Woelk, Andy Oxman, Shelia Matinhure, Julie Cliff, Bernidita Fernandes, Karen Daniels. (2005) System and market failures: the unavailability of magnesium sulphate for the treatment of eclampsia and pre-eclampsia in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. BMJ; 331; 765-769

Karen Daniels, Simon Lewin and the Practihc Policy Group (2008). Translating research into maternal health care policy: a qualitative case study of the use of evidence in policies for the treatment of eclampsia and pre-eclampsia in South Africa, BMC Health Research Policy and Systems 2008, 6:12

Woelk G, Daniels K, Cliff J, Lewin S, Sevene E, Fernandes B, Mariano A, Matinhure S, Oxman AD, Lavis JN, Stålsby Lundborg C, Translating research into policy: Lessons learned from eclampsia treatment and malaria control in three southern African countries, BMC Health Research Policy and Systems 2009, 7:31. (winning article).

Julie Cliff, Simon Lewin, Godfrey Woelk, Benedita Fernandes, Alda Mariano, Esperança Sevene, Karen Daniels, Sheillah Matinhure, Andrew Oxman, John N. Lavis, Development of malaria vector control policy in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe: a qualitative analysis, Health Policy and Planning, 2010

MRC Policy Brief (link above). Mar 2007. How is research knowledge translated into policies? Findings from studies of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia treatment and malaria control in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Librarians - Elsevier 2009

2010-07-30T11:01:00.000+02:00

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Librarians - Elsevier: "Presentations in Japan (2009)

See below a selection of the Publishing Connect Author Workshop presentations delivered in Japan

Chihaya Adachi, Kyushu University:
How to Get Published in Scientific Journals (in English and Japanese)

Tom da Costa, Edanz Editing:
Writing Research Papers: What Do Journal Editors Want?

Chad Walker, Edanz Editing:
Writing Research Papers: Tips from a Science Language Editor (in English and Japanese)"

South Africa: 'Step Up and Fight Women Abuse,' Men Urged

2010-07-21T08:20:00.000+02:00

Online article available on: http://allafrica.com/stories/201007200838.html

Ayanda Yeni

19 July 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"From domestic violence to trafficking to rape as a tool of war... We have many delegates that have come from really horrific backgrounds and they have experienced first-hand what violence against women and children is like in a conflict zone", said Karen Robinson, Managing Director of Man Up.

WIT in research link with South Africa

2010-07-21T08:16:00.000+02:00

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Friday, 9 July 2010 15:49

A college in Waterford is teaming up with a research unit from South Africa to study alcohol and drug abuse in that country.
Lecturer Marie Claire Van Hout at the School of Health Sciences in Waterford Institute of Technology is to serve as an associate staff member with the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Research Unit in Cape Town for five years from this summer.
The unit is part of the South African Medical Research Council, which works to improve the country's health and quality of life through health research. The research is hoped to lead to interventions that will reduce alcohol and other drug abuse, the unit tracks trends with a view to improving health in South Africa.

Story from RTÉ News:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0709/waterford.html

AIDS 2010: Study Finds Microbicide Containing HIV Drug Lowers Infection Risk In Women By 39% - Kaiser Global Health

2010-07-21T07:52:00.000+02:00

Image by FightHIVinDC via Flickr

AIDS 2010: Study Finds Microbicide Containing HIV Drug Lowers Infection Risk In Women By 39% - Kaiser Global Health

A Reuters factbox highlights findings from the CAPRISA trial (7/19)

A Wall Street timeline explores scientists' efforts to develop a gel capable of protecting against HIV, dating back to 1990 (7/19).

Webcasts of the trial presentation and press conference are now available. All of the Kaiser Family Foundation's webcasts of select sessions from AIDS 2010 are available at www.kff.org/aids2010.

CAPRISA 004 Tenofovir Gel Microbicide Trial: Webcast of Presentations Now Online

2010-07-21T07:47:00.000+02:00

The Kaiser Family Foundation has now posted a webcast of the CAPRISA 004 presentations that took place today at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

Safety and Effectiveness of 1% Tenofovir Vaginal Microbicide Gel in South African Women: Results of the CAPRISA 004 Trial - Kaiser Global Health

Presentations in This Session:

Introduction

Co-Chairs: Tim Farley (Switzerland)

Department of Reproductive Health and Research (WHO)

Gita Ramjee (South Africa)

Head – South Africa Medical Research Council’s HIV Prevention Research Unit

The Caprisa 004 Result in Context

Sheena McCormack (United Kingdom)

Clinical Epidemiologist, MRC Clinical Trials Unit

Effectiveness of 1% Tenofovir Vaginal Microbicide Gel in South African Women: Results of the CAPRISA 004 Trial

Presented by Quarraisha Abdool Karim (South Africa)

Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Columbia University - Southern African Fogarty AIDS

Do Systemic and Genital Tract Tenofovir Concentrations Predict HIV Seroconversion in the CAPRISA 004 Tenofovir Gel Trial?

Presented by Angela DM Kashuba (United States)

Associate Professor of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC)

Safety of 1% Tenofovir Vaginal Microbicide Gel in South African Women: Results of the CAPRISA 004 Trial

Presented by Salim Abdool Karim (South Africa)

Chair, Department of Reproductive Health & Research WHO, Geneva

Director, Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (Caprisa), Durban

Director, HIV Prevention & Vaccine Research Unit, MRC

Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Contextualising the CAPRISA 004 Trial Results in the HIV Prevention Field

Presented by Aaron Motsoaledi (South Africa)

Minister of Health
Conclusion

Effectiveness and Safety of Tenofovir Gel, an Antiretroviral Microbicide, for the Prevention of HIV Infection in Women

2010-07-21T07:37:00.000+02:00

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1193748
Science Express Index
Research Articles

Effectiveness and Safety of Tenofovir Gel, an Antiretroviral Microbicide, for the Prevention of HIV Infection in Women

Quarraisha Abdool Karim,1,2,*, Salim S. Abdool Karim,1,2,3,* Janet A. Frohlich,1 Anneke C. Grobler,1 Cheryl Baxter,1 Leila E. Mansoor,1 Ayesha B. M. Kharsany,1 Sengeziwe Sibeko,1 Koleka P. Mlisana,1 Zaheen Omar,1 Tanuja N. Gengiah,1 Silvia Maarschalk,1 Natasha Arulappan,1 Mukelisiwe Mlotshwa,1 Lynn Morris,4 Douglas Taylor,5 on behalf of the CAPRISA 004 Trial Group

The CAPRISA 004 trial assessed effectiveness and safety of a 1% vaginal gel formulation of tenofovir, a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor, for the prevention of HIV acquisition in women. A double-blind, randomized controlled trial was conducted comparing tenofovir gel (n = 445) with placebo gel (n = 444) in sexually active, HIV-uninfected 18- to 40-year-old women in urban and rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. HIV serostatus, safety, sexual behavior, and gel and condom use were assessed at monthly follow-up visits for 30 months. HIV incidence in the tenofovir gel arm was 5.6 per 100 women-years, i.e., person time of study observation (38/680.6 women-years), compared to 9.1 per 100 women-years (60/660.7 women-years) in the placebo gel arm (incidence rate ratio = 0.61; P = 0.017). In high adherers (gel adherence >80%), HIV incidence was 54% lower (P = 0.025) in the tenofovir gel arm. In intermediate adherers (gel adherence 50 to 80%) and low adherers (gel adherence <50%), the HIV incidence reduction was 38% and 28%, respectively. Tenofovir gel reduced HIV acquisition by an estimated 39% overall and by 54% in women with high gel adherence. No increase in the overall adverse event rates was observed. There were no changes in viral load and no tenofovir resistance in HIV seroconverters. Tenofovir gel could potentially fill an important HIV prevention gap, especially for women unable to successfully negotiate mutual monogamy or condom use.

1 Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Durban, South Africa.

2 Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

3 University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

4 National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, South Africa.

5 FHI, North Carolina, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: caprisa@ukzn.ac.za

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Published Online July 19, 2010

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5990.374
Science Express Index
Received for publication 14 June 2010. Accepted for publication 13 July 2010.

Salim “Slim” Abdool Karim: Attacking AIDS in South Africa — JEM

2010-07-21T07:27:00.000+02:00

Image by exfordy via Flickr

Abstract of Online article available on:

Salim “Slim” Abdool Karim: Attacking AIDS in South Africa — JEM

Salim “Slim” Abdool Karim: Attacking AIDS in South Africa

Text and Interview by Amy Maxmen
amaxmen@rockefeller.edu

Slim Abdool Karim joined the anti-apartheid movement as a boy in South Africa and has had the pleasure of watching the regime fall. Now he's set his sights on taking down AIDS.

When Karim met Nelson Mandela for the second time in 2000, he had his camera in tow, ready to capture a photo of him shaking the hand of his hero. Mandela later wrote the foreword to Karim and his wife's book, HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
Karim has witnessed the emergence and exponential growth of the AIDS epidemic in his country, along with the concurrent explosion of tuberculosis. To reverse the epidemic, he is following disease progression, testing treatments and prevention strategies (1), and deciding if and how they can be effective in resource-limited settings (2).
By monitoring cytokines and T cell responses in the first weeks after infection, Karim has found that a more naive CD8+ T cell response is better in the long run than a more differentiated response that includes a high frequency of memory T cells (3, 4). These studies also revealed that the initial magnitude of HIV-specific, IFN-γ–producing cells does not predict viral load at one year.

News - Front Page: Breakthrough HIV gel earns applause in forum (Page 1 of 2)

2010-07-21T07:13:00.000+02:00

Abstract of Online article available on:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=79&art_id=nw20100720221609149C692283
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Breakthrough HIV gel earns applause in forum
By Richard Ingham

Vienna - The world Aids forum set aside rows about politics and funding on Tuesday, as delegates cheered South African scientists who announced a breakthrough in the quest for a vaginal cream to protect women from HIV.In a packed hall in Vienna, researchers, policymakers and activists gave three standing ovations to a presentation of trial data that some hailed as a landmark in the 29-year war on Aids.Several hundred others watched from a spillover room.The prototype is the first microbicide gel to offer a strong degree of protection against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

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2010-07-20T07:26:00.000+02:00

Image by BenSpark via Flickr

Lifestyle choices for the prediabetic

Persons with blood glucose levels that are abnormal, but not yet in the range of persons with diabetes, are said to have prediabetes - which often precedes the development of type-2 diabetes. Most persons with prediabetes are overweight, and obesity worsens the blood glucose and other problems associated with prediabetes. In this review we found that interventions involving diet, physical activity or behaviour produced significant improvements in weight among persons with prediabetes, as well as a significant decrease in diabetes incidence. Modest, but not statistically significant, improvements were noted in the few studies that examined blood sugar control, blood pressure, and lipid levels.

Norris SL, Zhang X, Avenell A, Gregg E, Brown TJ, Schmid CH, Lau J. Long-term non-pharmacologic weight loss interventions for adults with type 2 diabetes. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2005, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004095. DOI: 10.1002/ 14651858. CD004095. pub2.

Mass media interventions for promoting HIV testing

Mass media campaigns designed to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS have shown immediate and significant effects in the promotion of voluntary counseling and testing for HIV. According to UNAIDS, 42 million people in the world have HIV. Notably, the majority of new infections are preventable and are spread through unsafe sex. Voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) can lead to the practice of safe sexual behaviours and increased condom use, thus preventing the spread of the disease. While mass media campaigns have shown an immediate and significant overall effect on VCT, no significant long-term effect has been demonstrated. This may have been due to the short duration of the campaigns. Further research is needed to identify the impact of mass media campaigns, their cost-effectiveness, and types of campaigns and message characteristics. In addition, more studies are needed to explore new media strategies for the long-term.
Vidanapathirana J, Abramson MJ, Forbes A, Fairley C. Mass media interventions for promoting HIV testing. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2005, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD004775. DOI: 10.1002/ 14651858. CD004775. pub2.

View AfroAIDSinfo, MRC's AIDS information portal
Continuous support for women during childbirth

Continuous labour support - involving emotional support, information and comfort measures - may enhance the normal labour processes and thus reduce the need for obstetric intervention. Women who received continuous labour support were found to be less likely to use pain medications and were more likely to be satisfied and to give birth 'spontaneously' (with neither caesarean, nor vacuum, nor forceps being necessary). In general labour, support was more effective when it was provided by women who were not part of the hospital staff .
Hodnett ED, Gates S, Hofmeyr G J, Sakala C. Continuous support for women during childbirth. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2003, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD003766. DOI: 10.1002/ 14651858. CD003766.
Cognitive behaviour therapy for schizophrenia

Cognitive behavioural therapy is one of the talking therapies that is suggested to be of value to people with schizophrenia. This systematic review suggests that it may well be of value, at least in the short-term. Cognitive behavioural therapy should be further evaluated in various clinical settings and the effects for both expert and less skilled practitioners should be compared.
Jones C, Cormac I, Silveira da Mota Neto JI, Campbell C. Cognitive behaviour therapy for schizophrenia. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2004, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD000524. DOI: 10.1002/ 14651858. CD000524. pub2.
For more information, contact the South African Cochrane Centre on (021) 938 0438 or email Joy.Oliver@mrc.ac.za.

Reducing Men's Violence and Increasing Woman's Power in Relationships Key to Preventing HIV infection in women

2010-07-13T07:18:00.000+02:00

Women in South Africa with violent male partners or who are in relationships with low equality are more likely to become infected with HIV, compared to women who do not experience such behaviour. Nearly one in seven new HIV infections could be prevented if women were not subjected to physical or sexual abuse or relationship inequalities, according to an Article published Online First in The Lancet.

Despite most new HIV infections in high prevalence areas occurring in women, most HIV prevention programmes target male condom use, testing, treatment of sexually transmitted infections, male circumcision, and antiretroviral treatment. Previous studies have shown a potential link between male partner violence, relationship inequalities and increased risk of HIV infection in women. However, this evidence has not been substantiated by longitudinal research to support a causal association and this has limited the resources allocated to HIV prevention programmes and interventions that focus on gender issues.

To further examine the effects of male partner violence and power inequity in relationships on incidence of HIV infection, Rachel Jewkes from the Medical Research Council in South Africa and colleagues did a longitudinal analysis of data from a randomised trial in South Africa. They studied 1099 young African women who were HIV negative at the start of the study and who had at least one subsequent HIV test over 2 years of follow-up. Women were given face-to-face interviews to assess exposure to violence and gender equality in their relationships.

Women in relationships with low equality at the start of the study had a much higher incidence of HIV compared to women with medium or high relationship power (51 of 325 women vs 73 0f 704 women). Additionally, women who reported more than one episode of abuse at the start of the study were more likely to acquire HIV than those who experienced one or no episodes of abuse (45 of 253 women vs 83 of 846 women).

The researchers calculated that if gender inequalities were improved so that no women were in relationships with low power, 13.9% of new HIV infections could be prevented. Additionally, 11.9% of new HIV infections could be avoided if women were not subjected to more than episode of physical or sexual abuse by their partner.

The authors say: “This study provides strong temporal evidence to support a causal association between intimate partner violence or relationship inequity and HIV infection…Replicating this association in the context of trials to assess effective interventions should be a priority.”

They conclude: “Organisations driving HIV prevention agendas for women, particularly UNAIDS and WHO, need to ensure that policies, programmes, and interventions to build gender equity and prevent partner violence are developed and widely implemented. Donors and researchers must invest in efforts and resources in developing and testing new interventions.”

In a Comment, Jay Silverman from Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, says that these findings highlight the importance of altering gender-based abusive behaviour as well as reducing sexual-risk behaviour in men to prevent the transmission of HIV to women.

The fastest growing sector of HIV infection in Asia and Africa is women whose main risk factor is sex with a male partner. Yet, he says, there is a lack of “effective HIV-prevention programmes for women who fall outside of ‘most at-risk populations’… the global HIV community must move to make targeting such male behaviours a central focus of prevention efforts.”

Contact:

Professor Rachel Jewkes

Medical Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa.

T) +27 82 442 3655

E) rjewkes@mrc.ac.za

Professor Jay Silverman

Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA.

E) jsilverm@hsph.harvard.edu

SA Medical Research Council

2010-07-09T07:04:00.000+02:00

SA Medical Research Council: "Annual MRC Research Day
The Medical Research Council is calling all young researchers funded by the MRC to participate in this year's Research Day on 14 and 15 October 2010. For further information, kindly contact Ms Lebogang Montewa. (1st July 2010)"

New publications!!!!!

2010-07-01T09:27:00.000+02:00

Opportunities for enhancing and integrating HIV and drug services for drug using vulnerable populations in South Africa. Parry CD, Petersen P, Carney T, Needle R. Int J Drug Policy. Vol. 21 (4) July 2010, Pages 289-295.View online abstract. Free full text article. Read more about the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit

The COL1A1 gene and acute soft tissue ruptures. Collins M, Posthumus M, Schwellnus MP. Br J Sports Med. 2010 Jun 11. [Epub ahead of print] View online abstract. Free full text article. Read more about the Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Research Unit.

Following the path of most resistance: dhps K540E dispersal in African Plasmodium falciparum Naidoo I, Roper C Trends in Parasitology 2010 Jun 17. [Article in Press] View online abstract. Read more about the Malaria Research Unit.

The Feasibility of Implementing a Sexual Risk Reduction Intervention in Routine Clinical Practice at an ARV Clinic in Cape Town: A Case Study. Dewing S, Mathews C, Schaay N, Cloete A, Simbayi L, Chopra M. AIDS Behav. 2010 Jun 10. [Epub ahead of print] View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Health Systems Research Unit.
The association between the COL12A1 gene and anterior cruciate ligament ruptures. Posthumus M, September AV, O'Cuinneagain D, van der Merwe W, Schwellnus MP, Collins M. Br J Sports Med. 2010 Jun 22. [Epub ahead of print] View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Research Unit.

Publications

2010-05-26T12:55:00.000+02:00

Recent publications
Role of the DinB homologs Rv1537 and Rv3056 in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Kana BD, Abrahams GL, Sung N, Warner DF, Gordhan BG, Machowski EE, Tsenova L, Sacchettini JC, Stoker NG, Kaplan G, Mizrahi V. J Bacteriol. 2010 Apr; 192(8):2220-7 View online abstract. Read more about the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit.

South African Mutations of the CCR5 Coreceptor for HIV Modify Interaction With Chemokines and HIV Envelope Protein. Folefoc AT, Fromme BJ, Katz AA, Flanagan CA. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2010 May 3. [Epub ahead of print]View online abstract. Read more about the MRC/UCT Research Group for Receptor Biology.

Highlights from the first meeting of the Europe-Africa frontier research conference series infectious diseases: from basic to translational research. Capron M, Mizrahi V. FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 2010 Feb; 58(1):1-2. No abstract available. Register for full text article. Read more about the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit.

Factors associated with female high-risk drinking in a rural and an urban South African site. Ojo OA, Louwagie G, Morojele N, Rendall-Mkosi K, London L, Olorunju S, Davids A. S Afr Med J. 2010 Mar 8; 100(3):180-2.View online abstract. Read more about the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit.

High prevalence of hookah smoking among secondary school students in a disadvantaged community in Johannesburg. Combrink A, Irwin N, Laudin G, Naidoo K, Plagerson S, Mathee A. S Afr Med J. 2010 May 4; 100(5):297-9. View online abstract. Read more about the Environment & Health Research Unit.

Evaluate our Trials

2010-05-26T11:56:00.000+02:00

Tell us what you think of our databases trials via the evaluation form

New trial – Ebrary Academic Complete ebook collection

2010-04-16T07:47:00.000+02:00

Trial available until 31st May 2010.

Ebrary Collection contains around 50,000 ebook titles covering most subject areas. Approximately half of the titles have been published since 2004.

If you create an account, you will be able to:

• Make bookmarks and page notes for any available book.

• Highlight text in any available book.

• Quickly and easily access all books you have bookmarked, notated, or highlighted.

• Be notified of new features and new document collections as they become available.

View the Quick Start video at http://www.ebrary.com/corp/collateral/flash/QuickStart/ (please allow a few seconds to load). They also offer a one-page Quick Guide, which includes easy, step-by-step instructions on how to get started with Ebrary. The Quick Guide can be found online at http://www.ebrary.com/corp/collateral/en/Quick_Guides/Quick_Guide.pdf.

Go to: Ebrary Academic Complete trial

Tell us what you think of this database via the evaluation form, or use the Comments link on this post.

New Trial 2010

2010-04-07T11:26:00.000+02:00

TRIAL FOR SPRINGER

The library is pleased to announce a trial subscription to Springer eBooks and Springer Images.
Springer, the world's largest international publisher of scientific books introduces the world's most comprehensive digitized scientific, technical and medical (STM) book collection.

Springer eBooks

The Springer eBook Collection offers the first online book collection especially made for the requirements of researchers and scientists. Browse and access over 30,000 eBook titles in the sciences, social sciences and technology.

Available through SpringerLink’s IP-enabled eBook gateway libraries and corporations can offer their patrons online access to the most worthwhile books instantly from multiple locations, including library, office, home or wherever they are.

Springer’s eBook Collection uses the portability, searchability, and unparalleled ease of access of PDF and HTML data formats to make access for researchers, as convenient as possible. Springer eBook Collections offer accurate reproductions of high quality Springer print book publications, together with all the added benefits of an online environment, including exceptional search capabilities and bookmarks.

SEARCH Springer Ebooks NOW

Springer Images

Search and view over 1.5 million scientific, technical and medical images online. Scientific research has become progressively more focused on raw data and visual forms of learning and communication. These visuals come in many different forms, ranging from charts and graphs to high-quality photos. SpringerImages spans science, technology and medicine in 18 subject collections with over 2 million photos, graphs, histograms, tables and more. The Springer Images interface enables users to search faster, more broadly and more accurately, through captions, keywords, context and more, even jumping from the image to the source article.

SEARCH Springer Images NOW

I have arranged the following Trial Access for the MRC:

1. Springer e-books from 1st April –until 31st May, 2010.

2. Springer Images from 1st April –until 31st May, 2010.

Please send comments to MRC Library Document.delivery@mrc.ac.za

Recent Publications

2010-03-19T09:38:00.000+02:00

Developments in mycotoxin analysis: an update for 2008-2009. G. S. Shephard, F. Berthiller, J. Dorner, R. Krska, G. A. Lombaert, B. Malone5, C. Maragos, M. Sabino, M. Solfrizzo, M. W. Trucksess, H. P. van Egmond, T. B. Whitaker. World Mycotoxin Journal Tuesday, February 09, 2010: 3-23. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the PROMEC Unit.

The effect of brief interventions on the drinking behaviour of pregnant women in a high-risk rural South African community: a cluster randomised trial Sandra Marais; Esme Jordaan; Dennis Viljoen; Leana Olivier; Johanna de Waal; Caroline Poole Early Child Development and Care 29 January 2010 View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Crime, Violence and Injury Research Unit.

Overcoming fieldwork challenges in urban health research in developing countries: a research note Angela Mathee; Trudy Harpham; Nisha Naicker; Brendon Barnes; Sophie Plagerson; Monica Feit; Andre Swart; Shan Naidoo. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Volume 13, Issue 2 April 2010 , pages 171 - 178. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Environment & Health Research Unit.

Role of the DinB Homologs, Rv1537 and Rv3056, in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Kana BD, Abrahams GL, Sung N, Warner DF, Gordhan BG, Machowski EE, Tsenova L, Sacchettini JC, Stoker NG, Kaplan G, Mizrahi V. J Bacteriol. 2010 Feb 5. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit.

Report of the FIGO Working Group on Sexual Violence/HIV: Guidelines for the management of female survivors of sexual assault. Jina R, Jewkes R, Munjanja SP, Mariscal JD, Dartnall E, Gebrehiwot Y. Int J Gynaecol Obstet. 2010 Mar 3. View online abstract. Register for full text article.Read more about the Gender and Health Research Unit.

Link: http://www.mrc.ac.za/

Methodspace

2010-03-19T09:32:00.000+02:00

Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

SAGE has launched a public social network for discussing research methods online.
Methodspace.com aims to bring together researchers from different disciplines who want support and advice on any aspect of methodology. Registered users can participate in discussions about methodology issues and controversies; find out about relevant conferences and events; and discover and review new resources in methods, including free book chapters and journal articles.
'We intend that Methodspace should be the online hub for research methods, with the community driving the discussions and debates,' said Ziyad Marar, deputy managing director and publishing director of SAGE. 'Whether you are looking for resources in research methods, want to discuss a particular approach, or just connect with other researchers in a particular field, Methodspace aims to be the first place that any professor, researcher or student will turn.'

Click here to find out more"

Information

2010-01-29T13:45:00.000+02:00

Strategies for searching databases

Worksheet

This worksheet is designed to assist you in undertaking your searches. You can either complete the sheet online and save/print the completed document or print the sheet and complete by hand.

Plan your search and analyse your topic

Who is the intended audience - who is going to read what you write?

Why are you undertaking this?

How recent does the information you require need to be?

Where will you find the information you need?

What type of information will you need? Do you need to use primary, secondary or tertiary sources?

Define your concepts and keywords and the relationships

1. Define your topic and identify the main concepts involved

2. Make a list of keywords for each concept

3. Think about how you can combine these keywords in your search using OR, AND or NOT

Select the databases

Database name:

Database name:

Database name:

Database name:

Perform your search

Search statements consist of both the keywords describing your identified concepts and the appropriate commands which structure your search. Remember to check the help screens to find out how to combine terms in the database you have chosen.

e.g. anxiety OR worry AND study

Evaluate and refine your search

How could your search be improved?

Write your refined/modified search statements here

Select and retain your search results

Consider how you will be using the search results for YOUR topic

 would you prefer to sort the references by source to locate them more easily in the Library?

 will you need them as a text file to use in a Word document?

 how long will you need to keep them and in what format?

 if this is a long research project, how will you keep the references organised?

 keep a copy of the search history to record your research and in case you need to do more searching later

 how much information do you need for each reference?

Medline® with Full Text (EBSCOhost)

2010-01-29T13:28:00.000+02:00

Medline® with Full Text (EBSCOhost)

Online Access: Directly from PubMed (CPT ) / via Ebscohost

RSS Feeds: EBSCOhost Search Alerts & Journal Alerts Available via RSS Feeds see:

http://support.ebsco.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=2485

Subject Area: Medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more...

Title List: Available by request from the Librarian

Resource Type: Index with some full text

Description: MEDLINE® with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive source of full text for medical journals, providing full text for more than 1,370 journals indexed in MEDLINE. Of those, more than 1,340 have cover-to-cover indexing in MEDLINE, and of those, 528 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search™ or Biomedical Reference Collection™.

This wide-ranging file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the MEDLINE index - with no embargo. With full-text coverage dating back to 1965, MEDLINE with Full Text is the definitive research tool for medical literature.

MEDLINE® with Full Text uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals. Included are citations from Index Medicus, International Nursing Index, Index to Dental Literature, HISTLINE, SPACELINE, PREMEDLINE®, AIDSLINE®, BIOETHICSLINE®, and HealthSTAR®.

The majority of the publications covered in MEDLINE® with Full Text are scholarly journals; a small number of newspapers, magazines, and newsletters considered useful to particular segments of the broad medical community are also included.

Content includes: full text for more than 1,370 journal. Full-text coverage dating back to 1965.

Formats Indexed: Journal articles, book reviews, news

Update Frequency: Daily

Coverage: Full text and indexing from 1965 to the present (length of coverage varies with individual titles)

Interface: EBSCOhost

Content producer: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Help
More Information: Need help...contact a MRC reference librarian at the Information desk, or, Telephone: 021 938-0470 extension 0470.

Training Registration

2009-10-29T14:31:00.000+02:00

"Complete this form to register for Training."

Individual Training:

Group Training:

Quick & Dirty Tips :: Grammar Girl

2009-10-29T12:19:00.000+02:00

Quick & Dirty Tips :: Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Whether English is your first language or second language, Grammar Girl’s punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Mignon Fogarty is the creator and host of Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.

Women are the vulnerable HIV link - Newspaper - Mail & Guardian Online

2009-10-29T09:05:00.000+02:00

Women are the vulnerable HIV link - Newspaper - Mail & Guardian Online

The largest portion of the global burden of HIV infection is shared by sub-Saharan Africa. But because of the availability of life-saving drugs, more and more people are now living a healthy life with HIV.

link. http://t.co/NOgij1vr

Boolean Logic

2009-10-29T08:07:00.000+02:00

Why do we use Boolean operators

To narrow your search
get fewer superfluous results

What are the Boolean Operators

AND-looks for entries with both terms

OR-looks for entries with one term or the other

NOT (or BUTNOT)-looks for entries with one term but not the other

* (Wildcard) -looks for ALL entries that contain the term with the * after it

AND/OR/NOT

Recent Publications

2009-10-29T07:49:00.000+02:00

Estimating HIV prevalence and risk behaviors among high-risk heterosexual men with multiple sex partners: use of respondent-driven sampling. Chopra M, Townsend L, Johnston L, Mathews C, Tomlinson M, O'bra H, Kendall C. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2009 May 1;51(1):72-7. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Health Systems Research Unit.

Resuscitation-promoting factors as lytic enzymes for bacterial growth and signaling. Kana BD, Mizrahi V. FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 2009 Sep 4. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit.

Medico-legal findings, legal case progression, and outcomes in South African rape cases: retrospective review. Jewkes R, Christofides N, Vetten L, Jina R, Sigsworth R, Loots L. PLoS Med. 2009 Oct;6(10):e1000164. Epub 2009 Oct 13. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Gender and Health Research Unit.

Protease Inhibitor Resistance in South African Children With Virologic Failure. van Zyl GU, van der Merwe L, Claassen M, Cotton MF, Rabie H, Prozesky HW, Preiser W. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2009 Sep 24 View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Biostatistics Unit.

Investigating spatio-temporal similarities in the epidemiology of childhood leukaemia and diabetes. Manda SO, Feltbower RG, Gilthorpe MS. Eur J Epidemiol. 2009 Sep 26.View online abstract. Register for full text article.Read more about the Biostatistics Unit.

Successful Search Techniques

2009-10-23T09:58:00.000+02:00

Identify keywords

Don’t type your essay question into a database; instead break it into important concepts. For example, if your question is

“Investigate the issues in the treatment of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection)”.
Important concepts are treatment, tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Next think of alternative words (synonyms) for your important concepts. This will make your search as broad as possible.

Using the example above,

treatment could also be therapy

Combine searches

Combine your search terms using OR and AND. This will save you time and give you more accurate results.

OR will broaden your search, if you search for

treatment or theraphy

you will get results with any of these words in them.
Using OR between terms will broaden your search; you will get results on any of the two topics.

AND will focus your search, if you search for

Treatment AND tuberculosis AND human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

You will only get results containing all these words

For example you would find: Tuberculosis during early antiretroviral-induced immune reconstitution in HIV-infected children.

Using AND between terms will narrow a search. You will only get results where all three concepts are included, i.e. the intersection/overlap of the 3 circles in the diagram.

Use Truncation

Using truncation is a quick and easy way of saving time. It allows you to search for words which begin with the same letters. Databases use different symbols for truncation, the most common is *.

Treatment* searches for treat, treatment and treatments.

Use the advanced features of the database
Most databases offer advanced search features. These can help ensure that your search is highly relevant. Check the individual databases for details; you may be able to limit where your search terms appears, for example in the title, or set a date range or a country of origin.

Review your results

Look at the results from your search, are they what you expected? Are they useful? Are they relevant? Could they be improved?
If at first you don’t succeed…

1. Look at your original search terms and be prepared to change them.

2. Identify useful articles from your results and try another search using the keywords which appear in these articles.

3. Use the database’s thesaurus or online help.

4. Make an appointment with nearest Information Officer (Staff & Contacts) for further assistance with searching.

5. Be prepared to try a different database - a full list of all databases can be found here.

Article Writing Tips: Part 1

2009-10-23T08:03:00.000+02:00

Writing articles isn’t as hard as you may think. If you understand the rules of proper grammar, and you have a word processor or word processing software that includes a spell checker, writing articles becomes quite easy in fact. Here are some tips to help you out.

1. Don’t make it harder than it really is. This is the first mistake that most new article writers make. Think about what you want to say, then just start writing. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, just write until you have said all that you wanted to say. Editing comes after the information is down on paper – or on your computer screen in a document.

2. Don’t get stressed over your topic. You already know what it is that you want to sell. Look at your product or service from a customers point of view. Visit forums where your customers participate and find out what their questions are. Base your articles on those questions, answering the questions.
3. Don’t make your articles too long or too short. Articles should be between 300 and 750 words, with the optimal length between 300 and 500 words. Use the word counter on your word processor, and don’t go over or under these words.

4. Do not submit your article the minute you finish it. Put it away and come back to it later. Read it over and make sure that you have said what you wanted to say, and then have someone else read it. Ask for constructive criticism, and really pay attention to what your test reader has to say.
5. You are writing an article, not a sales letter. The article should inform and lead readers to your website. The selling is done at the website. Articles that are obvious sales letters lose the readers respect and damage your credibility.
6. Stay Focused. Make sure your article stays on track. If you find yourself writing away from what you originally intended your article to be about, make a note about the new article idea you have accidentally found, and get back on track with your original plan.
7. Finally, write like you talk. Write like you are talking to a close friend. Don’t try to use words that you have to look up in the dictionary. Use your everyday language, and your personality will shine through. Allowing your true personality to shine through in your articles is the first step to building a relationship with your readers.

Article Writing Tips From Heather Turnbow

Recent publications

2009-06-22T15:04:00.000+02:00

Recent publications

The Global Burden of Tuberculosis - Combating Drug Resistance in Difficult Times.
Donald PR, van Helden PD. N Engl J Med. 2009 Jun 4;360(23):2393-2395 View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Developing a tool to measure health worker motivation in district hospitals in Kenya. Mbindyo PM, Blaauw D, Gilson L, English M. Hum Resour Health. 2009 May 20;7(1):40. View online abstract. Free full text article. Read more about the Health Policy Research Group.

The COL5A1 genotype is associated with range of motion measurements. Collins M, Mokone GG, September AV, van der Merwe L, Schwellnus MP. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2009 Apr 14. View online abstract. Register for full text article. Read more about the Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Research Unit."

Information From: http://www.mrc.ac.za

Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine

2009-06-04T10:18:00.000+02:00

Information provided from the UJ Science Librarian Blog has noted as a great resource for you our users.

"It is different from any other search engine I had used. It could of great interest to the sciences & engineering users; health sciences, education , finances, etc.Read the “iLibrarian” post: Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine Launches, which also provides additional articles.“Searchers using this engine can enter a question or a calculation, and rather than return relevant results, Wolfram Alpha uses its algorithms to digest the query and compute the answer based on its collection of data” …. “Scientists, researchers and techies alike will be interested in this new computational search engine which is running on R Smarr, the world’s 44th largest supercomputer, created by launch partners, R Systems…” Posted by P. Kovatcheva (UJ Science Librarian)"

According to WolframAlpha Website It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.

The Scope of WolframAlpha

What can I ask WolframAlpha?

Eventually you should be able to ask it about essentially any kind of systematic factual knowledge. You can get an idea of what it covers today by looking at the Examples. You can track its progress through the Blog and the Community area.

How can I tell whether WolframAlpha covers a particular area?

The easiest thing to do is just to try a simple case of it. You can also browse the Examples, or ask on the Community forum.

What are WolframAlpha's main limitations?

It can only know things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts, not opinions. It limits the computation time for each query. And, of course, it's in continual development—and always will be.

In what areas is WolframAlpha strongest?

We've first emphasized areas where computation or mathematics have traditionally had a more significant role, or where knowledge is more readily quantitative. But we're steadily working through all the content areas covered by reference libraries, handbooks, and much more.

Content: UJ Science Librarian and WolframAlpha Knowledge Enfine FAQ's.

Medicine 2.0

2009-06-03T08:12:00.000+02:00

Medicine 2.0 is the annual open, international conference on Web 2.0 applications in health and medicine, also known as the World Congress on Social Networking and Web 2.0 Applications in Medicine, Health, Health Care, and Biomedical Research.

Don't miss the 2009 congress on Sept 17/18th, 2009 - pre-register today for Medicine 2.0'09 to get on our mailing list, and also add yourself to the Medicine 2.0 social network.

What is Medicine 2.0?
Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies as well as semantic web and virtual reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups.

Deadline for Early Bird Registration:June 25th, 2009.Photos from Medicine 2.0'08 on Flickr.
(see also Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness [J Med Internet Res 2008;10(3):e22]).

Who should attend?
Academics (health professionals, social scientists, computer scientists, engineers)
Software and Web 2.0 application developers
Consultants, vendors, venture capitalists, business leaders, CIOs
End-users (health professionals, consumers, payors)

Medline on ISI Web of Knowledge

2009-05-29T14:26:00.000+02:00

Unique MEDLINE features in ISI Web of Knowledge On the ISI Web of Knowledge platform, MEDLINE retains its unique and powerful research features, such as:

MeSH mapping and “explode” features – plus the ability to turn off mapping

Ability to map natural language terms and phrases to MeSH terms

Ability to search for chemical substances or CAS registry numbers

Access to PubMed Related Articles from MEDLINE full records (using NLM calculation that is used on NLM)

Links to NCBI databases, providing genetic sequencing information for those involved in genetics research: – Entrez Nucleotide– Entrez Protein– Entrez Genome– Entrez PopSet– Entrez Structure– 3D Domains (a section of Entrez Structures)– OMIM– Conserved Domains Database

Gadgets

2008-12-11T10:53:00.002+02:00

For the discerning gadget geek, style and design can be as important as function. Companies spend huge amounts on the design of gadgets these days; some of the success of Apple’s range of products can be put down to their sleek design. Lets take a look at some beautifull gadgets …
Sony Soutina

These stylish minimal speakers from sony will set you back a cool $10,000, the casing is made from glass and gives off sound in 360 degrees. The body also lights up in blue, amber and purple.

Source : Uncrate

Dell Studio Hybrid

Dell finally build a sleek stylish desktop, the Studio Hybrid is available in 6 colors or bamboo. It uses uses energy-efficient Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Mobile Processors so its also their most environmentally friendly desktop.
Source : Dell

FAK3 360

FAK3 designed an elliptical cabinet that can rotate 360-degrees. On its two longer sides, it housed a set of keyboards and a desk; the two shorter sides accommodated storage and a television. Fitted with industrial strength bearings that can support up to two tonnes, the wooden cabinet rotates with the push of just one finger.”
Source : FAK3

Sony Roller

A funky mp3 player from sony with speakers that fold out depending which way you hold it, plus it dances to your tunes!
Source : Home Entertainment Magazine

Nemo LED Chain Lamp

At $595 this lamp from Iliara Marelli for Nemo Italianaluce is not exactly cheap, but I think you’ll agree it is a thing of beauty.
Source : Nemo via Technabob

Ovei home cinema pod

If you have $100,000 to spare and would like to cocoon yourself for the ultimate cinema experience then this could well be the gadget for you.
Source : Tech Radar

Simpletech Redrive

The Redrive is an external harddrive made from renewable, naturally grown bamboo and recyclable aluminum; the most recycled metal on the planet.
Source : SimpleTech

Salt & Pepper mills set, plus minus f

“Mills cases are suspended in mid air, above the base plate. it is effect of strong Neodymium magnet,s repulsion. inside of mill cases are composed of 2bodys. just case and floating plate. magnet builts in this plate. invisivle nylon line moor it to base plate. Floating plate stabilize strong at the point little bit inside of repulsion rang . now your pepper and salt mills are floating from the table. exordinary scene by simple magnet technique,inventive & new style. this product will be new landscape on your table.”
Source : Design Boom

Eleven The Game

This beatifull table football game would be a great addition to any home, the design resembles a modern football stadium and the chrome players set it off nicely.
Source : Eleven The Game via The Cool Hunter

Digital Clock Bookcase

This ingenious bookcase probably won’t actually hold any books - its designed to fit standard CD jewel cases but it does double as a large retro digital clock.
Source : Anka via Technabob

Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard

“Sure we’ve seen illuminated keyboards before, but then we saw the Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard and stopped looking. With 430 LEDs the Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of color. What’s more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it.”
Source : ThinkGeek

Roksan Radius 5

“Available in transparent acrylic, lacquered walnut veneer and lacquered maple veneer the Radius 5 borrows elements and technology from Roksan’s world class record players to combine innovation and practicality in this stunning piece of design.”
Source : Roksan via Wallpaper.com

Alpha Television

“An LCD TV set with built-in DVD player, characterized by a design which reminds of the immortal decorative masterpieces of the Thirties”
Source : Brion Vega

VW One

“The Volkswagen One is the ideal car for people with an active, urban lifestyle. With its flexible chassis design, it fits into every parking space and joins together with other ones to form trains during rush hour that can be steered automatically past every traffic jam.”
Source : Yanko Design

Black Diamond Phone

“Black Diamond mobile phone for Sony Ericsson, encases the device under a layer of polycarbonate with mirror-finish cladding. The OLED technology makes for vivid illumination under the polycarbonate skin and makes a borderless screen effect possible.”
Source : Yanko Design

Digital Pot

“The Digital Pot measures soil conditions, temperature, humidity, and water; it then calculates the requirements of the potted plant and displays the mood of the plant using smileys and other icons on the front display.”
Source : Live Grids

The Cinepod

“The Cinepod is the ideal building block that eases planning a surround system for all your home cinema needs. Used as surround speaker or as dedicated centre channel, Cinepod can be added at any point to expand your system to all current standards which currently allow the use of up to 10 surround speakers in your home cinema.”
Source : Scandyna Speakers

This article is taken from: What are some stylish gadgets ?

Open-Source (Freeware) Journal Management Software

2008-12-11T10:51:00.001+02:00

Article SystemArticle System is an open source, online article management system aimed to be an online analogy of a paper-printed periodical. The primary components to contain the articles are therefore issues. But it can nevertheless be used as an ordinary CMS (Content Management System) to build an internet presentation.

DPubS, Cornell University
DPubS (Digital Publishing System) is an open source general-purpose publication management system based on Cornell University Library's innovative publishing software, DPubS (Digital Publishing System). In collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University, Cornell will enhance and extend the DPubS software, which was developed to deliver Project Euclid. This flexible online publishing tool will aid institutions of higher education and research in managing and distributing the intellectual efforts of scholars and researchers.

eFirst XML, Openly Informatics
An open open-source service that will build, host, and operate electronic journals. The service uses Openly Informatic's document conversion software and its XML technology, eFIRST XML, which formats scholarly articles both for print and online presentation. Journals may download and use eFIRST XML components without charge. eFirst XML is specifically designed to allow journal articles to be optimized for presentation both on the Web and in print using a single storage format by supporting references to multiple graphic and multimedia files.

ePublishing Toolkit, Max Planck Society's ZIM
The open source software processes articles written in LaTeX with bibliographies prepared in BibTeX and produces an advanced web presentation in various formats. The software allows for reference and errata tracking, short cuts (pop-up windows) to cited equations, footnotes and article bibliography, and full-text search of the online articles.

Open Journal Systems, PKP @ Simon Fraser University
Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a comprehensive, open-source journal management and publishing software system developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions to online publication and indexing. Through its management systems and its finely grained indexing of research, OJS seeks to improve the scholarly quality of refereed research.

Online tools for research - one page guides

2008-12-11T10:47:00.003+02:00

Google Earth

Using maps to explore local issues can be powerful - and 3D interactive mapping can really add to that. Google Earth is a free tools for viewing and annotating a 3D globe, with the ability to zoom right in to view a street-level satelite image of your area.
Download the Google Earth guide here (PDF)

You can also use the My Maps feature in Google Maps to record your views of your local area. This wasn't covered in the sessions, but a guide is available here.

Flickr Photo Sharing

Flickr is a tool for sharing photos online. You can accept comments on your photos, turn them into a slide-show, organise them with tags - and you can plot them on an interactive map as well. The Young Researcher Network session focussed in on using Flickr for its maps feature, but this guide offers a broader overview of getting started using this powerful online tool.
Download the Flickr guide here (PDF)
VoiceThread

Voicethread is a tool for collaboratively narrating an annotating a slide show of images or documents.
Download the VoiceThread guide here (Word)

Motion Box

If you haven't got access to video editing software on your computer, you want to share the editing of video between members of a group via the internet, or you have creative ideas for using video editing to explore an idea - then one of the many online video tools available could be just what you need.
The sessions used MotionBox, and you can download the MotionBox guide here (PDF).

Online Tools for all Biomedical Researchers

2008-12-11T10:41:00.003+02:00

ExPASy Life Science Directory
This site provides links to resources related to biological macromolecules.

Digital Image Editing: Ethics
Publishing images in a journal article? Here's the ethical guidelines for manipulating those images in Photoshop.

CRISP: Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects

Acronyms and Initialisms for the Sciences (Marie-Lise Antoun Shams)
Acronyms and initialisms for global information and data resources in health, medical, and veterinary sciences. The linked acronyms point to selected related Web sites.

Scirus -a comprehensive science-specific search engine (Elsevier B.V.)
Scirus searches over 200 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web, find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.

Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: writing and editing for biomedical publication

PubChem: Compound, Substance, Structure and Bio-Assay Databases (NIH-NCBI)
PubChem provides information on the biological activities of small molecules.

12 Tools for researchers!

2008-12-11T10:38:00.003+02:00

Organizational Tools

iLeonardo is an impressive site for those interested in research. It’s a social utility that connects people and their notebooks which are collections of information from the Web. iLeonardo combines search methodologies, social bookmarks and social networks to produce relevant search results and ranking determined by people - not bots or publishers.The name of the service is obviously an homage to the legendary renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci, who was famous for his notebook collection of research information, thoughts and ideas. ILeonardo and its notebook collection technology strives to help the Leonardo’s of the digital age.

Google Notebook is a strange bird. It’s like Google Docs mixed with Google Bookmarks. You can save just about anything you want while surfing the Web to any of your notebooks with a simple click. You can keep it private or share them. Not only does it save the content but also the link to the source for easy reference.

Zoho Notebook is similar to Google Notebook but minus some critical features that make Google the edge if you had to pick between these two services. Here’s a short screencast that demonstrates the differences:

UberNote offers many ways to save your research notes: via a toolbar that you add to your browser, email, instant messenger, mobile device or even on their own website.

EverNote I know, I know, not EverNote again! They seem to appear on a list every week, but that’s because it doesn’t do just one thing. It’s hard to describe everything EverNote does, but it does provide many features that would be useful to people interested in researching and taking notes online and on the go via a mobile device.
Browser Extensions & Addons

ClipMarks is the premier online clipmarking tool. You can save chunks of any webpage and share them too. There’s a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

iLighter is simply a tool that lets you highlight portions of any webpage. You can then save those highlighted pages to your own notebooks on their site.

Twitterlights works with your iLighter account. Whatever you highlight and save can be sent to your twitter account automatically.

Dappadis a Firefox extension that lets you create notebooks in the firefox sidebar for easy access.

Scrapbook is an extension that mimics Opera’s Notes feature. Cool features include highlighter and eraser.

WiredMarker is another extension that allows you to highlight parts of any website in different colors.

NetNotes is a Firefox add-on that lets you store notes on websites.

Guess What ! If you love reading Magazines....

2008-12-10T07:28:00.002+02:00

Google Book Search Puts Magazines Online
First Google digitized books, then newspapers, then historic Time-Life photos and now — magazines. Today through Google Book Search, people can search the full-text of millions of articles from more than 10 magazine with hundreds more to come, the company has announced.

How do you access the magazines? Ideally, Google wants you to find them in response to a search for anything at Google Book Search. For example, a search for hank aaron catching babe ruth should bring up a listing tagged as “Magazine” that leads to a 1973 Ebony magazine article about Aaron nearing Ruth’s home run record

Want to browse through a particular magazine? Unfortunately, there’s no way to see the complete collection of magazines indexed. These include among others:
New York Magazine
Popular Science
Ebony
Jet
Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists
Prevention
Runner’s World

Hundreds more magazines will be added in the coming months from dozens of publishers, Google said. Unfortunately, no browsable guide to all the magazines indexed is planned. I think that would be useful. But Google said that if this turns out to be a popular request, it might come.
So how do you find only magazine content if you want it? Use the advanced book search page to use a new option to narrow searches just to magazines.
Once you’ve found a magazine article, you can then click on the “Browse all issues” link to the right of the article to get to a home page for the magazine itself (Found on SearchEngineland)

Craigslist

2008-12-01T13:55:00.001+02:00

Craigslist is a central network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements – with jobs, internships, housing, personals, erotic services, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories – and forums on various topics.

A faster and easier way to search the entire Craigslist is to use http://www.searchtheentirecraigslist.com

You could use this method to find items for sale...or you could use it to look for freelance contracts or job postings, if place is no object in your job search. Very useful if you are looking for sideline work like editing, tutoring or small writing contracts.

Scientific Webplus!

2008-11-25T11:09:00.003+02:00

Scientific WebPlus is a search engine created by the ISI Web of Science to search quality science websites. Allows searching for specific scientific topics (organism, gene and drug), refines search by domain, and type of website including Institutional Repositories.

>>Go to Scientific WebPlus

Coolest Websites!

2008-11-25T10:58:00.002+02:00

Instructables: www.instructables.com

The coolest site on the Web for how-tos. If you're looking for a new project, whether it's how to grow delicious peppers or how to modify your Xbox for rapid-fire cheating in first-person shooters, Instructables is the place to look. Best of all, it's a DIY site in the sense that anyone can contribute a project.

SmugMug: www.smugmug.com

SmugMug lets users share their photos with the world, order photo-centric gifts, and even make a little extra cash on the side.

ThinkGeek: www.thinkgeek.com

If you're into cool, kitschy, geeky, and/or nerdy technology, this is the shopping site for you. My personal favorites on the day I wrote this were the laser-guided scissors (Flowbee begone!) and the Annoy-a-tron, which is a small, easily hidden gadget that generates an annoying beep at random intervals—guaranteed to annoy.

What websites do you like to use?

EZPROXY : OFF-CAMPUS ACCESS TO LIBRARY RESOURCES

2008-11-14T13:54:00.001+02:00

What is EzProxy?
EzProxy is a service that provides authenticated off-campus access to selected web content for Medical Research Council staff. It is a reverse proxy system primarily intended to provide off-campus access to MRC Libraries' electronic journal subscriptions, databases, and other e-resources, which are generally restricted to access from computers on the Medical Research Council network.

To use the EzProxy system you need to be a currently staff member of the Medical Research Council

How to use EzProxy.
Dial up as normal to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and start Internet Explorer or another browser of your choice.
In the address bar type the following URL: http://ezproxy.mrc.ac.za/ NEW
Depending on your browser settings, you may see various screens advising you about security certificates. If you do, click the Yes button on these screens.
You will now see an EzProxy log-in screen. Type in the username and password you use to access your MRC Email/computer account. If you are a MRC staff member, use your MRC username and MRC network password. Then click the Login button.
Once you have logged in, you will see the MRC Intranet Portal. Select the Information Services Division link, and navigate to our electronic resources. You will see that the Libraries’ EZPROXY URL is: http://ezproxy.mrc.ac.za/ NEW

Expired Electronic Resource Trials, Summer 2008

2008-11-14T13:33:00.003+02:00

ISD regularly trials new electronic resources. If you'd like to recommend a database for us to purchase, please contact your library liaison. Unfortunately the following have expired:

Trial access to the following resources has now expired:

1) Morgan & Claypool biomedical e-books collections

2) Future Science Group medical e-journals

3) Psych Extra

4) IOP Science

Thank you for your interest. I hope that the trials were useful.

BioMed Central Database

2008-11-13T14:39:00.000+02:00

The MRC's Biomed Central subscription has not been renewed for 2008-09

Henry Stewart Talks

2008-11-13T14:34:00.001+02:00

A subscription to the Biomedical and Life Sciences Collection of Henry Stewart Talks - a seminar style talks by leading world experts has been arranged. All the talks can be accessed at http://www.hstalks.com/biomed-life-sciences/index.htm. This rapidly expanding collection already contains over 650 seminar style talks designed to meet the needs of research scientists, graduate students and the most advanced undergraduates. All of the seminars have been specially commissioned from leading scientists and are presented in a user-friendly format of animated slides with synchronized narration.

These seminars are commissioned by leading scientists and Nobel laureates from around the world and presented in a user-friendly format of animated slides with synchronized narration.
The collection contains over 700 seminar style talks designed for research scientists, graduate students and the most advanced undergraduates
You can view seminars at your own pace, wherever, whenever, and as often as you want
It already contains over 700 presentations, and is growing monthly to over 1,000 talks
The talks are organised into comprehensive series that cover both the fundamentals and the latest advances
Simple format – animated slides with accompanying narration, synchronized for easy listening
Look and feel of face-to-face seminars that preserve each speaker’s personality and approach
The target audience is research scientists, graduate students and the most committed senior undergraduates.

RSS Feeds

2008-11-13T12:53:00.001+02:00

RSS is a defined standard for syndicating headlines and other content.
RSS is created using XML or eXtensible Markup Language, which is a markup language similar to HTML. All fields are defined. Tags are used to denote the field’s classification. Like HTML, proper construction requires that tags are both opened and closed.

RSS has been around for more than a decade, but only recently the standard has been
embraced by bloggers, webmasters and large news portals as a means of distributing
Information, in a standardized format.

RSS as a means of communicating:
Email is burdened with:
• SPAM - messages are often deleted or are filtered because of cluttered mailboxes
• Viruses – more and more legitimate messages are not reaching their destination due to the proliferation of viruses.
Benefits to RSS:
• Opt-In – users elect which feeds which they subscribe to.
• Syndication – RSS is a defined standard for syndicating content, feeds extend reach
• Content – steady stream of fresh web content
• Aggregation – users can quickly scan multiple content streams and click on items of interest saving time Traffic – increased exposure and traffic for web sites

A New Tool!

2008-11-13T12:50:00.002+02:00

Connotea (http://www.connotea.org/, pronounced con-no-TAY-uh), an online tool that combines the ‘tagging’ features of services such as del.icio.us with an academic research focus.
Anyone can register at the site, create a username, and then begin building a library of resources—online articles, book reviews, web pages, anything with a URL—simply by clicking the “Add to Connotea” button that you add to your Internet browser. Connotea allows you to export your library of resources into other programs (like EndNote)

What is Web 2.0?

2008-11-13T12:26:00.001+02:00

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a
continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver
rich user experiences. By Tim O'Reilly

What can Web 2.0 do for your research?

There are more tools to help researchers work together. Now dubbed Research 2.0 (as in Web 2.0), these are described by Paula Hane as "Some of the tools emphasize organizing and managing references—an online extension of a software tool such as EndNote. Others emphasize collaborative knowledge sharing."

Here are some other community research sharing sites: (From a helpful list posted by blogger Bertalan Meskό: http://scienceroll.com/2008/05/24/community-sites-for-scientists-and-physicians-the-list)
BiomedExperts from Collexis (http://www.biomedexperts.com/)
LabSpaces (http://labspaces.net/)
Nature Network (http://network.nature.com/)
ResearchGATE (http://www.researchgate.net/)
SciLink (http://www.scilink.com/)

What is your view on what Web 2.0 can offer the research community? And do you have any examples which I can use?

Top Five Library Tools for Researchers

2008-11-13T10:55:00.002+02:00

1. Find out who is citing you!
Check ISI Web of Science to find out who is citing you, or your peers. This powerful tool, published by Thompson Corporation, uses data from the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index to assist you to find articles that have cited a previously published work. A cited reference search allows a search theme or idea to be traced over time, providing a context for current research and decision-making timeline for research communities.

2. WorldCat: WorldCat connects libraries all over the world with information on the Internet. Many university libraries like the University of Washington, Trinity College, Wheaton College, the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona all use WorldCat to enhance student, faculty and personal research abilities. Features like custom-designed search lists, shareable search results and browser plugins have made this beta a success so far.

3. Google Scholar: Google Scholar and Google Advanced Scholar Search are popular beta tools that allow researchers to search academic journals, books, articles and other materials.

4. Tools like EndNote have made creating citations simpler, but the program is costly and has features that most basic users won’t need. But the quickest, easiest , and (free) way to generate bibliographies is BibMe, which launched about a month ago. BibMe can generate citations in MLA, APA and Chicago style (which you can change on the fly), and I found it took half the time to create a bibliography than any other tool I have used.

5. A tool I have also used to create citations is Zotero, a Firefox 2.0 (must be 2.0+) extension developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Zotero combines features found in Google Notebook and BibMe, by allowing users to gather and organize information found on the Internet, as well as generate citations from their collections.

What tools benefit you as a researcher?

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