Category Archives: Twitter

Mayo Clinic Social Media Network Annual Conference, Day Two

Posted on December 14, 2018 by | 1 comment

The second day had fewer sessions (see the first day here), but they were so powerful and relevant to my work. They provided content I wanted to directly share with colleagues and implement back home. I highly recommend skimming through the tweets collected in the morning and afternoon Wakelets. There’s a ton of great stuff from the concurrent sessions I didn’t get to (like adapting content for voice searching, supporting your organizational leaders as they get into social media, social listening tools, deconstructing stigma in mental health, and so so much more).

Susannah Fox at #MCSMN wearing #pinksocks

Susannah Fox at #MCSMN wearing #pinksocks

Image credit by Chris Boyer: https://twitter.com/chrisboyer/status/1063079588882980864

(PS – in this pic, notice the socks. That’s worth a second blogpost, but Susannah and I both wear #pinksocks for a reason. More on that later. Or if you see me wearing pink socks, ask me about them.)

Social Media for Good

Susannah Fox is someone I’ve admired for a long time, and it was a pure delight to hear her keynote for MCSMN. This was especially true after so much as a focus the previous day on how to identify, prevent, and manage different kinds of problem scenarios in social media and communication. To hear Susannah focus on hope and growth and community was a perfect way to refocus on how we can use new and existing technologies to do good. Susannah generously shared core nuggets and references from her talk in a blogpost. As a librarian, I really appreciated her call to action in support of open access content in healthcare. There was a big response to her sharing an online tool / movement called Now Now Now (about it: http://sivers.org/nowff).    

Susannah is an amazing storyteller, and had some good ones, full of heart and soul and kindness and caring. The one which spoke most to me was of a family caregiver trying to look out for a loved one in the hospital, who discovered a blogpost from someone else that gave critical information about how to advocate for them in a way that literally saved their life. There are a lot of amazing nuggets from Susannah’s talk. Here are just a few.

Ikigai

Matthew Rehrl, MD started his talk about ikigai with the 1918 pandemic. Ikigai is an old Japanese concept, Iki = life; kai = shell (which was the currency of the time, thus equating to  VALUE). He went on to use a number of examples building up the audience’s skills around how to look at actions and events and choices to extract a sense of where to find passion and purpose. That’s one petal of the ikigai four-leaf flower. He reframed it as, what’s the reason you get up in the morning?

The basic concept is framed with what you love, what you’re good at, where is there a need, and what generates value. It’s not static, it grows and changes as you do. This is true for both individuals and organizations. Matthew asked, “What is your organization’s passion?”

I spent a lot of time thinking about how Jane Blumenthal, our recently retired library director, helped each person in our library craft a job position that allowed us to shine, building from our strengths and interests to create a position that connects with the needs and purpose of the larger organization. What a gift. She built ikigai in and with the library.  

Permission to Fail

Jacob Weiss, Ph.D. of Do Good and Juggle presented a surprising and engaging interactive hands on keynote where he literally taught the audience how to juggle. But the real underlying concept, the take home point, was that to make progress you need to allow yourself to fail and keep trying, and that failing together and trying together changes how you experience failure.  An important lesson. It didn’t hurt that he used lots of exciting visuals to get the point across. [Please note that WordPress is not displaying the tweets properly, and that you’ll have to click through to see the images and videos.]

Stories to Build Trust

“Transforming Medical Education and Clinical Practice to Give Voice to Vulnerable Populations, LGTBQ, and Homeless Persons” by Katherine Y Brown, Ed.D. was a powerhouse presentation that several folk said should have been one of the keynotes. It blew my mind. Just a gold mine of insight and best practices for building trust and making change in the health of a marginalized community. Katherine went directly to transgender persons in the community, brought them to the table, and collaborated with them on getting the messages to the medical faculty and students that would change medical education around transgender issues.  She captured videos of real person’s experiences and challenges, and made videos with what could and should happen. The curriculum was changed. In one year. This is powerful stuff.

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More!

There was a lot more, but I’ll have to save some of that for another time. They have the slides up online now, so maybe I can go into some of the individual presentations in more detail. In the meantime, here’s the slides for more to explore!

 

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Posted in Events / Calendar, Twitter

Mayo Clinic Social Media Network Annual Conference, Day One

Posted on December 11, 2018 by | 4 comments

Sylvia Chou (NIH) at the MCSMN 2018 Annual Meeting

I recently returned from the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network Annual Conference and my boss asked me how it went. I replied that every single session was useful. That impressed both of us! Everything. I mean, quite literally, EVERYTHING. It’s all good, and there is nothing they offered that I didn’t want to see.

You can check out the program here, and I didn’t get to all the sessions offered, but I’d like to give you a quick run through of what I did see and why I thought it was so useful. You can’t be everywhere at once, and there were two in particular that I had hoped to see and just couldn’t, but there are links to some of the content! Or you could just browse the #MCSMN tweets in the Wakelets or through Symplur. The official highlights are captured in Mayo’s Day One and Day Two blogposts.

DAY ONE

Training

The big news was that Mayo offers detailed social media training for their own staff and students which has been tested over time and proven solid and useful.  Part of what I’m most excited about with this is access to training that is tool-based, issue-based, and includes online literacies, ethics, reputation management, and professionalism. Mayo has just upgraded their institutional site license from 10 users to the whole campus at a very reasonable cost.

Storytelling

The first keynote was from Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa who told the story of having come to the United States as an illegal immigrant and migrant farm laborer and becoming the Chair of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic. Quite an impressive story (read his book if you want more), but the takeaways from his talk focused on the importance of teams, collaboration, surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, and listening to other people’s stories, helping people tell their own stories to create hope, understanding. My favorite quotes from Dr.Q’s talk:

Crisis Management

Dr Q (as he’s popularly known) was followed by a no-tweeting session on crisis communications in social media. The team of presenters (Lee Aase and Cynthia Manley) described real life scenarios, challenges, and solutions. The emphasis was in large part on what you know before the crisis starts — what is your organizational mission, focus, and purpose. Then when something goes wrong, at each step of the way, ask how does what you are doing support your mission, the ethics of your organization. The goodwill and trust you’ve built in advance can be your best defense. They also described challenges in knowing when the online problem is beyond your ability to manage, and some of the tools and strategies used by attackers to control the story to their own ends. The around-the-table conversations afterwards were pure gold.

Civility

Maureen S. Marshall from the CDC spoke on the need for civility in social media, whether you agree or disagree with the views being expressed. This is especially challenging when communicating around controversial topics or people who are frustrated with their experiences with your organization or others. How to encourage civility? Be respectful, don’t judge, don’t block, stick to the facts, use data. You don’t have to reply to everyone; it’s alright to ignore people who are being rude or trying to strike up an argument. Prepare in advance for those who try to hijack Twitter chats or Facebook streams. Consider the scale — what works with an audience of 100 may not work for 6000. Be sensitive to the tricky balance between get folk to share your important messages around safety and tipping over to fear-mongering. Have a fast approval process to pull in content from your experts. Prepare talking points for and with your experts, and share them. Be wary of styling templates, because bad actors can imitate your style to their own ends. Here are my favorite quotes from Maureen’s talk.

    Mistrust & Misinformation

    Wen-ying (Sylvia) Chou was an absolutely brilliant speaker. She presented on her research around health impacts of social media use. Like so many of the other speakers, a focus was the risks associated with fake news and misinformation, echo chambers and filter bubbles. She cited a ton of provocative articles and books. I was particularly  interested in LikeWar, the Weaponization of Social Media. Dr. Chou emphasized the motivations behind sharing, and how that impacts on the message and the receipt of the message. She described ways in which contentious health topics, like vaccines,  were used during the election to distract attention from specific political topics and also to foster mistrust of experts. The most powerful question she asked was, “Do we build trust? Or do we battle misinformation?” The impression I received was that it isn’t always possible to do both. Dr. Chou also relayed real world stories of patients asking questions triggered by things they read through social media, and being judged so harshly by the clinician that they fired the doctor and went elsewhere. Her research team is identifying communication best practices that are successful in addressing misinformation without undermining trust. Her strategy? Affirm their concerns. Praise them for being engaged. Then steer them to better information.

    Chatbots

    Rachel Haviland presented on how chatbots are being and can be used in healthcare. This is easily worth an entire blogpost just on this topic. The formative question from her talk was “What journey do we want to take our patients on?” She framed the ways in which chatbots can support a sense of caring and luxury and immediate thoughtful care, how chatbots can potentially support relationship building. She also discussed some of the risks, the pros and cons. Her marvelous slides are available here.

    Responding to Non-Local Crises

    Monique Tremblay and Tom Hardej’s presentation was a great followup to the morning’s crisis communications discussion, but with a different slant. When there is a crisis elsewhere or when there is social media buzz, how do you choose when and how to engage your communications or brand with that flow? Following examples of brands being blasted for doing this poorly, they described how their organization makes these decisions. Key takeaways:

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Posted in Health, Healthcare, Support, Science, Twitter

Tagged , ,

Library Twitter Chats Collection

Posted on August 9, 2018 by | 3 comments

I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for the various library-oriented Twitter chats, and recently what I’ve noticed is that some of the resources I’ve previously depended on for this are disappearing. It’s kind of frustrating, so I’m making this post as a placeholder to make it easier for me to find them. Chances are I may not be able to keep this updated myself, and personally, I think we really need a wiki for collaboration on this. There is a Padlet I link to at the end, so perhaps that will do the job?

Because this is going to be archival in nature (and kind of a dumping ground), there may be chats that aren’t actually active anymore, or which have irregular schedules, and I may (when possible) substitute Archive.org links for links that have gone dark. While most of these do have a regularly scheduled time, I’m also throwing in links where people regularly ask for help or share solutions.

Oh, and the “Core” group is the ones I personally tend to use the most, so they are all up at the top, easy to find. This is not a recommendation, but just personal. I can’t try them all out, you know?

Links will be spelled out, again because of the archival nature of the post. Who knows? I might want to print it out and post it in my office for quick reference or as a conversation starter.

You’ll also notice that most of the hashtags are being provided in mixed upper and lower case. This is called “CamelCase” and is an accessibility best practice to make it easier for screenreaders to read the hashtag aloud as something pronounceable. This may not actually be the standard practice of the community using that hashtag.

Many of the resource lists I collected on this include various educational Twitter chats as well. I’m not including those here unless I see an explicit library focus. I was sorely tempted by the various book chats, but I didn’t want to do the work of multiple codings for them. Some of them are organized by and for librarians (they are included), while others are broader in scope and origin. So I’m just going to leave those here (#1book140, #FridayReads, #gayYA, #KidLitChat, #LitChat, #pblitchat (picture books), #Poetry, #SciFi, #SciFiChat, #SciFiFriday, #SciFiSaturday, #SciFiSunday, #StoryAppChat, #TechnoRead, #YALitChat).

Last but not least, as of today (August 9, 2018) I have not made live links for the tags. This is a vacation day for me, and I have other things to do. I hope to later, but no promises. In the meantime, you can search the hashtags in either Twitter or Google to find tweets using them or to get to more information about them.

Go to:
Core | Alphabetical | Location or Geographical | Topic or Theme | Resources

CORE

#canmedlibs
#critlib
#libchat
#medlibs

ALPHABETICAL

#AisleChat
#ArkTLChat
#AslaChat
#AusLibChat
#BibChatDE
#CanMedLibs
#CritLib
#ePubChat
#InalJChat (“I Need a Library Job”)
#LibChat
#LibFaves
#LibLeadGender
#LibraryLife
#LibrarianProblems
#LisProChat
#MashCat
#MedLibs
#MNItem
#MWLibChat
#NDLibChat
#NJLibChat
#PubLibChat
#SchSDSLP
#SnapRT (archives)
#TASLChat
#TitleTalk
#TLChat
#TXLChat
#UKLCChat
#UKLibChat
#UKMedLibs
#VaslChat

BY LOCATION/LANGUAGE

Library in popular languages

#Library
#Biblioteca
#Bibliothek
#Bibliothèque

Unspecified (Usually North America)

#medlibs
#critlib
#libchat
#LisProChat

Australia

#AusLibChat

Canada

#canmedlibs

Deutschland / Germany

#BibChatDE

United Kingdom (UK)

#UKMedLibs
#UKLibChat

United States

* Regional

Midwest – #MWLibChat

* States

Alabama – #AslaChat
Arkansas – #ArkTLChat
Minnesota – #MNItem
New Jersey – #NJLibChat
North Dakota – #NDLibChat
Texas – #TXLChat
Virginia – #VaslChat

BY THEME

Critical Librarianship & Library Activism

#critlib

General Librarianship

#libchat
#uklibchat

Medical Librarians & Librarianship

#medlibs
#canmedlibs
#ukmedlibs

School Librarians & Librarianship

#AisleChat
#ArkTLChat
#MNItem
#MWLibChat
#NDLibChat
#NJLibChat
#SchSDSLP
#TASLChat
#TLChat
#TXLChat
#VaslChat

RESOURCES

Included in this resources section, links and posts, a calendar, infographic, librarians & other.

Links & Posts

20 Essential Twitter Chats for the Library Crowd http://newsonrelevantscience.blogspot.com/2012/06/20-essential-twitter-chats-for-library.html

Library Twitter Chats: Part One https://www.hklibconnect.org/blog/2016/7/6/library-twitter-chats-part-one Library Twitter Chats: Part Two https://www.hklibconnect.org/blog/2016/7/8/library-twitter-chats-part-two

School Library Live Twitter Chats Are Cropping Up All Over! (2017) http://www.nikkidrobertson.com/2017/04/school-library-live-twitter-chats-are.html

Top Twitter Hashtags for Librarians https://hacklibraryschool.com/2014/05/27/hashtags/

Twitter For Librarians: Getting Your Library on Twitter! https://www.smore.com/9t6zp-twitter-for-librarians

Calendar

Dead Link: https://christianlauersen.net/library-twitter-chats-calendar/
Archive.org copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180129054601/https://christianlauersen.net/library-twitter-chats-calendar/
About: https://rbfirehose.com/2017/06/17/library-lab-library-twitter-chats-calendar/

Infographic

Librarian Twitter Chats [infographic] by EasyBib:
dead link at Piktochart: https://create.piktochart.com/output/2617218-library-twitter-chats-2
Archive.org link (but doesn’t display the image): https://web.archive.org/web/20171003153032/https://create.piktochart.com/output/2617218-library-twitter-chats-2
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144537469267409110/?lp=true
Content transferred to a Padlet for archiving and updating by Ashley Cooksey: http://agingerlibrarian.blogspot.com/2018/03/curation-teacher-librarian-twitter-chats.html
Direct link to the Padlet: https://padlet.com/ashley_cooksey2/2wvpnbjn28pu

And, in case that disappears, here are screenshots of the bits and pieces of the historic (and outdated) infographic.
Librarian Twitter Chats, Title

Librarian Twitter Chats, Monday

#TLChat, #EdTechChat, #TLNewsNight, #CollabEd, #PubPriBridge, #INALJChat

Librarian Twitter Chats, Tuesday

#SMedChat, #EdChat, #MakerEd, #Patue, #PBLChat, #CritLib

Librarian Twitter Chats, Wednesday

#LibChat, #YALitChat, #EduCoach, #Web20Tools, #EdTechBridge, #LitChat

Librarian Twitter Chats, Thursday

#ALSCChat, #BYOTChat, #FlippedPD, #DENChat, #WhatIsSchool

Librarian Twitter Chats, Friday

#EdBookTalk, #ConnectedPD, #ePubChat, #FridayReads

Librarian Twitter Chats, Saturday

#SatChat, #SaturdayLibrarian

Librarian Twitter Chats, Sunday

#TechEducator, #YALove, #TitleTalk, #21stEdChat, #CCSSChat, #1to1Chat

Librarian Twitter Chats, State Specific

#VASLChat (Virginia), #TxLChat (Texas), #IAEdChat (Iowa), #CAEdChat (California), #NCTLChat (North Carolina)

Librarian Twitter Chats, Footer

“Want to use Twitter as a teaching tool? Find out how: http://hubs.ly/y071Kt0 For a full list of educational hashtags, visit http://bit.ly/officialchatlist compiled by Thomas Murray, Chad Evans and Jerry Blumgarten.

Librarians & Other Links

2016: 19 AWESOME LIBRARIANS TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER https://www.quirkbooks.com/post/19-awesome-librarians-follow-twitter
2014: 200 Librarians To Follow On Twitter http://www.mattanderson.org/blog/2014/12/13/200-librarians-to-follow-on-twitter/
2013: 75 Of The Coolest Librarians To Follow On Twitter http://librarysciencelist.com/75-of-the-coolest-librarians-to-follow-on-twitter/

KUDOS

Thanks to Andrew Spencer and Leigh-Anne Yacovelli.

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Posted in Librarianship, Twitter

#WorldPoetryDay and #MedHum

Posted on March 22, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Books: Dental History: Poem: A Memory by Helen Chase

A group of us are trying to start a special interest group within the Medical Library Association around the theme of medical humanities. We’re all coming at this from the common love of Graphic Medicine (comics in healthcare), however we decided to propose the broader concept of medical humanities as one that encompasses graphic medicine, while offering flexibility, room to grow, and opportunities for creative partnerships. This came in part from realizing that 1) graphic medicine is only one of the emerging new literacies combining a variety of media in information delivery and storytelling, 2) preferred modes and names and media/mediums change over time, and 3) the long term value for sustainability of working under a broader umbrella. Please note, this expresses my views on our process, and I am not speaking for anyone else. If you want more info on the SIG (which is meeting for the first time at the MLA Annual Meeting on Monday) you can comment on this blogpost or reach out on Twitter to any of the co-conveners: me (@pfanderson), Matthew Noe (@NoeTheMatt), or Alice Jaggers (@AJaggers324).

Anyway, the field of medical humanities IS rather broad and large, with lots of subdivisions, one of those being ways in which poetry is used in healthcare, therapeutically for reading, therapeutically with writing, and educationally as a tool for creating insight in healthcare practitioners for the patient experience as well as the reverse. I’ve been collecting books of poetry on science and healthcare themes for literally decades. With yesterday being World Poetry Day, I scrounged around on Twitter to find examples of what other people were highlighting that might fall in this area.

In this small selection, you can find poems about hospitals and hospice, illness and injury, social determinants of health, pain (emotional and physical), dementia, grief and recovery, reasons to live, happiness and healing, and more. Poems included are written by a broad range of authors, near and far, old and new, soldiers, parents, friends, patients, doctors, activists, and more. Some of the names may be familiar (Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Bob Dylan, Robert Service, Emily Dickinson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker), while others may be less so (Kobayashi Issa, John McCrae, Kayo Chingonyi, Mark Strand, David Orr, Joelle Barron, Shawn Hunter, Helen Dunmore, Louise Gluck, Ali Jazo). I’ve divided it into two sections. The first section (“Poems to Read”) is tweets about or of poems by notable literary poets, which may make a nice place to find poems to read therapeutically. The second section (“About Poetry in Healthcare”) includes examples of poems written by patients, or clinical spaces as part of education and outreach, as well as articles about how poetry is being used in healthcare environments and settings, with some rather interesting projects and descriptions of patient experience. And remember — this is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more. Feel free to share soem of our own favorites in the comments!

POEMS TO READ

https://twitter.com/AllanDwyer/status/976439417538686978
https://twitter.com/AllanDwyer/status/976447006058070017

https://twitter.com/asukamaxwell02/status/976468508379934720
https://twitter.com/automaticdog/status/976442677897113603

https://twitter.com/callamnorman13/status/711993394734747648
https://twitter.com/ClaireElKelly/status/976443754675499009
https://twitter.com/ClaireElKelly/status/976446277314473984
https://twitter.com/DarrinLRogers/status/976433491825999872
https://twitter.com/DarrinLRogers/status/976458910042284032
https://twitter.com/DarrinLRogers/status/976464949147877377

https://twitter.com/DrFaustsNurse/status/976439076202123264

https://twitter.com/matthaig1/status/976369714317463552

https://twitter.com/P_R_Stephens/status/976463255647420417

https://twitter.com/romspeaks/status/976459568120246272

https://twitter.com/WesthaverEmily/status/976442954830159873

ABOUT POETRY IN HEALTHCARE

https://twitter.com/_nicolesjourney/status/976373114652291072

https://twitter.com/plattsnisbett/status/976442983821266945

ADDENDUM

How did I find these? Because someone always asks. Here — I searched in Twitter, like this: #WorldPoetryDay (cancer OR care OR clinic OR death OR doctor OR dying OR health OR healing OR hospice OR hospital OR illness OR injury OR injured OR medicine OR nurse OR nursing OR pain OR recovery OR “waiting room”)

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Posted in Medical Humanities, Twitter

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The “July Effect” and Tips for New Doctors

Posted on July 1, 2016 by | 3 comments

THE “JULY EFFECT”

It’s that time of year again. Maybe you’ve already heard of the “July Effect”? Here’s a post making the rounds again today illustrating the depths of sarcasm and irony with which this meme is sometimes considered in healthcare.

Ask a July 1st Medicine Intern http://gomerblog.com/2015/07/medicine-intern/

But this is an idea that goes back for years. The gist of the idea is that it’s dangerous to go to the doctor in July because the new interns start then.

Here are a few pieces presenting that perspective.

Kirchheimer, Sid. Avoid the Hospital in July. Why? New doctors and nurses report to work for the first time. AARP June 2013. http://www.aarp.org/health/doctors-hospitals/info-06-2010/why_you_should_avoid_the_hospital_in_july.html

Headed to the Hospital? Beware the ‘July Effect’ — July means a fresh crop of medical residents. Should that scare you away? http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2014/07/21/headed-to-the-hospital-beware-the-july-effect

This idea has been around for decades, at least since the 1980s.

Dedra Buchwald, MD; Anthony L. Komaroff, MD; E. Francis Cook, ScD; Arnold M. Epstein, MD, MA. Indirect Costs for Medical Education: Is There a July Phenomenon? Arch Intern Med. 1989;149(4):765-768. doi:10.1001/archinte.1989.00390040007001. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2495778

Of course, it’s not as simple as the popular press would like to make it sound, and there is far more research presenting the opposing (but less well known) view, or that it is a small effect and one which impacts only certain patients in specific circumstances. Basically, the idea is that The “July effect” is mostly not true, and has been well debunked.

“For the subset of patients with internal medicine diagnoses, the expected “July Phenomenon” was observed, with significant relative declines in diagnostic and pharmaceutical charges in teaching hospitals over the academic year. In contrast, surgery patients showed an increase in length of stay and various charges over the academic year in teaching hospitals. There were no meaningful effects of housestaff experience on mortality, operative complications, or nursing home discharge. These results indicate that housestaff training is significantly related to the use of hospital resources for inpatients, but that the degree and direction of the effects differ by specialty.” (Rich et al, 1993)

“Although this study finds no support for a “July Phenomenon” in terms of quality of clinical care, house officers were found to be more likely to have poor documentation practices earlier in the academic year.” (Shulkin, 1995)

“There was no evidence of an increase in negative outcomes early in the academic year compared with the end of the academic year. We believe that a systematic approach to the diagnosis, resuscitation, and treatment of trauma prevented a July phenomenon.” (Claridge et al, 2001)

“Although small differences in outcome exist with respect to the academic time of the year, the timing of these differences indicates that there is not a “July phenomenon” in obstetrics at our institution.” (Myles, 2003)

“We find that the annual house-staff turnover results in increased resource utilization (i.e., higher risk-adjusted length of hospital stay) for both minor and major teaching hospitals and decreased quality (i.e., higher risk-adjusted mortality rates) for major teaching hospitals. Further, these effects with respect to mortality are not monotonically increasing in a hospital’s reliance on residents for the provision of care. In fact, the most-intensive teaching hospitals manage to avoid significant effects on mortality following this turnover.” (Huckman & Barro, 2005)

“The data suggest a “July effect” on some outcomes related to shunt surgery, but the effect was small. Nonetheless, the potential morbidity of shunt failure, infection, and the cost of treatment indicate that continued vigilance and appropriate supervision of new staff by attending surgeons is warranted.” (Kestle et al, 2006)

“Conclusions: High-risk acute myocardial infarction patients experience similar mortality in teaching- and non-teaching-intensive hospitals in July, but lower mortality in teaching-intensive hospitals in May. Low-risk patients experience no such July effect in teaching-intensive hospitals.” (Jena et al, 2013)

“Particularly in major teaching hospitals, we find evidence of a gradual trend of decreasing performance that begins several months before the actual cohort turnover and may result from a transition of responsibilities at major teaching hospitals in anticipation of the cohort turnover.” (Huckman et al, 2014)

“Data from a single institution study did not show a “July Phenomenon” in the number of operating minutes, overutilized minutes, or the number of ORs working late in July.” (Sanford et al, 2016)

“These data, in combination with the findings of Shah et al,1 suggest that the July phenomenon can largely be debunked in the modern era of surgical education.” (Thiels et al, 2016)

… and much more (Pubmed, Wikipedia)

The basic fundamental idea is, unless you are a high-risk patient, it is PERFECTLY SAFE TO SEE THE DOCTOR IN JULY.

TIPS FOR NEW DOCS

Why is it safe? Because the new docs are well trained, and have experience in a variety of situations. This all made me very interested in the annual event on Twitter in which experienced docs share tips with new docs just starting out. The biggest and best hashtag is #TipsForNewDocs, but others included #DearIntern, #DearResident, and #DearPatient.

I’ve collected a bunch of these awesome tips for all those new docs that started today, and you can find them here.

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Posted in Education, Health, Healthcare, Support, Science, Twitter

Heroes of CRISPR Through Twitter’s Eyes: A Sequence

Posted on January 20, 2016 by | Leave a comment

Who knows? Perhaps the story behind the story began here, last October, with a tweet about an article in Wired on “The Heroes of CRISPR.”

Zhang, Sarah. The Battle Over Genome Editing Gets Science All Wrong. WIRED Magazine 10.04.15. http://www.wired.com/2015/10/battle-genome-editing-gets-science-wrong/

Maybe that made someone else think that there really ought to be an article with that title. Although, hints of this arose earlier, with articles like “Who Owns CRISPR?” from last April and “Law, history and lessons in the CRISPR patent conflict” from March, or even the 2014 article “First CRISPR-Cas patent opens race to stake out intellectual property“. In any case, the “Heroes of CRISPR” debate which erupted on Twitter (reaching trending status yesterday) has roots far deeper than the article of the same name, which triggered the flood, or even the US Patent Office’s recent insertion into the CRISPR patent battle.

https://twitter.com/sarahzhang/status/686982618508869632

Zhang, Sarah. An Arcane Patent Law May Decide Crispr’s Big Legal Fight. WIRED Science 01.05.16. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/crispr-patent-dispute-gets-really-arcane/

The early tweets were mostly supportive, creating awareness of what is genuinely an eloquent and educational article, especially for those outside the field. There were, however, hints of the later discord even among the earliest tweets. Later concerns arose more from informed readers on the inside of the professions working with CRISPR and aware of the personalities and politics behind the piece, and then snowballed.

* Early Tweets about ‘Heroes of CRISPR’
* The Heat rises
* The Response(s)
* Ongoing debate
* More information

EARLY TWEETS ABOUT ‘HEROES OF CRISPR’

12:48 PM – 14 Jan 2016

1:17 PM – 14 Jan 2016

1:33 PM – 14 Jan 2016

1:47 PM – 14 Jan 2016

2:09 PM – 14 Jan 2016

3:52 PM – 14 Jan 2016

4:01 PM – 14 Jan 2016

4:50 PM – 14 Jan 2016

5:52 PM – 14 Jan 2016

6:22 PM – 14 Jan 2016

6:38 PM – 14 Jan 2016

6:44 PM – 14 Jan 2016

7:26 PM – 14 Jan 2016

8:22 PM – 14 Jan 2016

1:35 AM – 15 Jan 2016

3:17 AM – 15 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/AngelNadal1/status/687911577463459842

7:02 AM – 15 Jan 2016

7:35 AM – 15 Jan 2016

8:11 AM – 15 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/jsundmanus/status/687985448891846656

9:04 AM – 15 Jan 2016

9:10 AM – 15 Jan 2016

12:26 PM – 15 Jan 2016

THE HEAT RISES

10:31 AM – 15 Jan 2016

10:36 AM – 15 Jan 2016

10:49 AM – 15 Jan 2016

11:18 AM – 15 Jan 2016

12:41 PM – 15 Jan 2016


We Can Now Edit Our DNA. But Let’s Do it Wisely | Jennifer Doudna | TED Talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdBAHexVYzc

6:55 PM – 15 Jan 2016

THE RESPONSE(S)

4:01 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:03 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:11 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:14 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:21 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:24 PM – 16 Jan 2016

5:44 PM – 16 Jan 2016

4:12 PM – 17 Jan 2016

5:51 AM – 17 Jan 2016

PubPeer on Heroes of CRISPR

11:43 AM – 19 Jan 2016

11:57 AM – 19 Jan 2016

1:19 PM – 19 Jan 2016

ONGOING DEBATE

3:19 PM – 18 Jan 2016

7:04 PM – 18 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/VinayPrasad82/status/689236876905992192

3:33 PM – 19 Jan 2016

3:48 PM – 19 Jan 2016

3:54 PM – 19 Jan 2016

4:11 PM – 19 Jan 2016

5:06 PM – 19 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/RheeStrikesBack/status/689569660786737152

5:24 PM – 19 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/itskathylam/status/689574178396192772

5:30 PM – 19 Jan 2016

6:56 PM – 19 Jan 2016

6:58 PM – 19 Jan 2016
https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/689597766692044800

7:08 PM – 19 Jan 2016

7:45 PM – 19 Jan 2016

7:46 PM – 19 Jan 2016

7:52 PM – 19 Jan 2016

"Heroes of CRISPR" commentary

9:56 AM – 20 Jan 2016

MORE INFORMATION

USPTO: CRISPR Patents: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=crispr&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT

March 6, 2014. Doudna Patent, Methods and compositions for rna-directed target dna modification and for rna-directed modulation of transcription (US 20140068797 A1). http://www.google.com/patents/US20140068797

Apr 15, 2014: Zhang Patent, CRISPR-Cas systems and methods for altering expression of gene products (US 8697359 B1) http://www.google.com/patents/US8697359 | http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=8,697,359.PN.&OS=PN/8,697,359&RS=PN/8,697,359

July 11, 2015: CRISPR – Will This Be the Last Great US Patent Interference? http://blog.patentology.com.au/2015/07/crispr-will-this-be-last-great-us.html

November 9, 2015: The Crispr Quandary:  A new gene-editing tool might create an ethical morass — or it might make revising nature seem natural. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/magazine/the-crispr-quandary.html?_r=0

December 29, 2015: The CRISPR Patent Interference Showdown Is On: How Did We Get Here and What Comes Next? https://law.stanford.edu/2015/12/29/the-crispr-patent-interference-showdown-is-on-how-did-we-get-here-and-what-comes-next/

January 8, 2016: DuPont in CRISPR-Cas patent land grab http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n1/full/nbt0116-13.html

January 12, 2016: For journalists: Statement and background on the CRISPR patent interference process https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/project-spotlight/journalists-background-patent-process

January 12, 2016: USPTO Declares Interference Proceeding to Adjudicate CRISPR Patent Spat https://www.genomeweb.com/business-news/uspto-declares-interference-proceeding-adjudicate-crispr-patent-spat

January 12, 2016: Bitter fight over CRISPR patent heats up http://www.nature.com/news/bitter-fight-over-crispr-patent-heats-up-1.17961

January 13, 2016: USPTO ignites CRISPR/Cas9 patent battle http://www.lifesciencesipreview.com/news/uspto-ignites-crispr-cas9-patent-battle-1280

January 13, 2016: Control of CRISPR, biotech’s most promising breakthrough, is in dispute https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/control-of-crispr-biotechs-most-promising-breakthrough-is-up-for-grabs/

January 15, 2016: CRISPR Patent War: Billions at Stake for UC Berkeley http://ww2.kqed.org/futureofyou/2016/01/15/crispr-patent-war-billions-at-stake-for-uc-berkeley/

January 16, 2016: A Brief History Of The Gene-Editing Tool That Is Changing Science, Scientists have now actually watched the DNA-editing tool in action http://www.vocativ.com/news/263157/crispr-cas9/

January 19, 2016: Controversial CRISPR history sets off an online firestorm http://www.statnews.com/2016/01/19/crispr-history-firestorm/

January 20, 2016: A social media war just erupted over the biotech innovation of the century https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/20/is-a-history-of-biotechs-hottest-breakthrough-propaganda/

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New Year Surprises

Posted on January 7, 2016 by | 1 comment

You know the line “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing“?

Well, I can’t believe how little I’ve been here. I am absolutely SHOCKED that I haven’t blogged in over a MONTH! Of course, this is because I’ve been so gosh all darned busy, both at work and at home. Just briefly, what all is keeping me away is probably of interest to folk.

* MDMLG
* Opioid Overdose Summit
* Microbes and Mood
* Design Lab & Coloring
* PaGamO (Gaming)
* Graphic Medicine
* Librarians & Artists’ Books
* Sleep Trackers


MDMLG

First, a couple days after the last post, I was a keynote for the November meeting of MDMLG (Metropolitan Detroit Medical Library Group). It was a wonderful experience, a great group. I really enjoyed being with them, and by all reports, they enjoyed my talk. There are rumors that I might repeat it locally, and I’ve been pondering maybe repeating it in a Hangout or something for other folk. Maybe. In any case, here are the slides!

But is an Emerging Technologies Informationist a Librarian?


OPIOID OVERDOSE SUMMIT

Dashed away to visit family for the November holiday, dashed back, and immediately was livetweeting the UofM sponsored Opioid Overdose Summit. Another fantastic event! I’ve been working on a big beautiful Storify of the event for the last month, but the Storify platform developed a glitch and ate the whole thing. Unfortunately, the only engineer who MIGHT be able to restore the file from backup is out on vacation for another week, so for now I can offer you links to the UM Injury Center’s agenda, slides in Slideshare, their videos, and the hashtag #uminjuryctr.


MICROBES AND MOOD

The same week, I also livetweeted the seminar, “Gut Feelings: Microbes, Mood, & Metabolism” from the Depression Center’s Colloquium Series. It was a wonderful triple of presenters on how emerging and historic research is revealing connections between our microbiome (the bacteria that live in and on us) impact our own emotions. Powerful and exciting stuff.

I was making a Storify of this, too, but the same glitch (which prevent some content from being inserted and erases other content) has made it impossible for me to finish, so I’m releasing it in the raw form.


DESIGN LAB & COLORING

The following week I worked on various Storify stories in progress and had a bunch of meetings. One of the meetings was with the new Design Lab that lives on the main floor of the Shapiro Library, where we started planning a workshop which will sneakily use the adult coloring craze as a way to teach things like internet search skills, internet security, paper/art/book preservation concepts, some online tools and toys, etc. The workshop is happening next week, and I think it is going to be super cool. Just to whet your appetite, here is an example.

Original image:
Fleming Building at Sunset

Coloring version of the same image:
UM: Fleming


PAGAMO (GAMING)

PaGamO Screenshot

I didn’t livetweet this, but I felt very lucky that I was able to attend the small presentation by Dr. Benson Yeh on PaGamO for education. The lecture was FANTASTIC and was recorded, so I am hoping for a video to be available soon. In the meantime, here are a few links.

Why one professor created the first-ever social gaming platform for a MOOC http://blogs.coursera.org/post/64423209807/why-one-professor-created-the-first-ever-social

ReImagine Education 2015 Wharton Awards: PAGAMO, The World’s First Event Multi-Student Social Gaming, National Taiwan University; Winner: 1st Place E-Learning http://www.reimagine-education.com/the-winners-individual/8/PaGamO

PaGamO: First-ever Multi-student Social Gaming Platform for General Course (SLIDES) http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/pedagogical/website/files/theme/awards/winners/slider/pag/Benson_Wharton%20Award_V2.pdf

PaGamO, the world’s first ever MOOC-based multi-student social game platform https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKAWPqRtIe0


GRAPHIC MEDICINE

The next day, we had the first EVER meeting of the newly formed Graphic Medicine Interest Group for the University of Medicine. I took notes and lots of pictures, but the pictures did not end up in Flickr when I tried to put them there, so I have to hope they are in my hard drive backup for the phone. In the meantime, here is a picture of some of the graphic medicine titles I keep in my office when I have consults on the topic.

Graphic Medicine & Comics

Books included in this image:

1) REAL, by Takehiko Inoue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_(manga)
2) Graphic Medicine Manifesto, by by MK Czerwiec, Ian Williams, Susan Merrill Squier, Michael J. Green, Kimberly R. Myers, Scott T. Smith http://www.graphicmedicine.org/book-series/graphic-medicine-manifesto/
3) The Bad Doctor, by Ian Williams http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06754-4.html
4) On Purpose, by Vic Strecher http://www.dungbeetle.org/
5) Neurocomic, by Hana Ros, Matteo Farinella http://www.neurocomic.org/
6) Epileptic, by David B. http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/10851/
7) CancerVixen, by Marisa Acocella Marchetto http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/books/a-vixen-cartooning-in-the-face-of-cancer.html | http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107478/cancer-vixen-by-marisa-acocella-marchetto/9780375714740/
8) Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, by Roz Chast http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/books/review/roz-chasts-cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant.html
9) Second Avenue Caper: When Goodfellas, Divas, and Dealers Plotted Against the Plague, by Joyce Brabner and Mark Zingarelli http://boingboing.net/2014/11/30/second-avenue-caper-when-good.html | http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2014/11/joyce_brabner_creates_a_graphi.html
10) Diary of a Teenage Girl, by Phoebe Glockner http://stamps.umich.edu/creative-work/stories/phoebe | http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/431997207/a-diary-unlocked-a-teenage-coming-of-age-story-put-on-film
11) The Spiral Cage, by Al Davison http://the-toast.net/2014/11/03/disability-and-the-work-of-al-davison/
12) Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/
13) Oh Joy, Sex Toy, by Erika Moen http://www.graphicmedicine.org/comic-reviews/oh-joy-sex-toy-2/ | http://www.ohjoysextoy.com/
14) Chop, Sizzle, Wow, by The Silver Spoon and Adriano Rampazzo. https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/chop-sizzle-wow/ | http://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/chop-sizzle-wow-the-silver-spoon-comic-book-9780714868202/


LIBRARIANS AND ARTISTS’ BOOKS

A few days later, in between my frantically working on the Storifys and an article deadline, I was doublebooked to livetweet two lectures, and had to pick one. So, I picked the one that was related to the library and was being presented by friends and colleagues. It was incredible, and again I took lots of pictures that are hopefully on that other hard drive. I had been hoping to enrich the Storify with those, but that isn’t going to happen until Storify fixes their bug with inserting links into story streams. So, here is another partially completed Storify, this one on the amazing artists working in the library making phenomenal art books. Beautiful.


SLEEP TRACKERS

Pebble Pals

Last but not least, we finished and submitted our article on sleep trackers for consumers and how they may or may not be useful in healthcare. It was an exciting and rewarding project, but I don’t want to say too much until we hear if the article is accepted. It was a LOT of work, and we compared many dozens of devices and tools. Learned a lot, and I hope the article is accepted. I must confess, I found it ironic that my own sleep tracker (Pebble + Misfit) quit working over the holiday. Color me perplexed.

NOW YOU UNDERSTAND?

So you can see why I was so busy I wasn’t getting blogging done? I’ll be a little absent for a while yet, still, since I have a few presentations next week, and piles of meetings coming up. But I’ll have to tell you all about what I’m doing with comics and hashtags and coloring in a future installment. And the weird Storify glitch that is supposedly only impacting me and one other person. Hope you all had a great holiday and end-of-the-year, with expectations of a Happy (and productive and fulfilling) New Year!

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Insights into the Lived Healthcare Experiences of the Transgendered (#TransHealthFail)

Posted on November 5, 2015 by | Leave a comment

#TransHealthFail
https://twitter.com/mauloch/status/629336269290536960

#TransHealthFail

Several years ago, I was in an elevator with a then-local clinician (no longer here) who was complaining to me about how unhappy he was with his clinical practice. He had bought into the practice from another clinician who was retiring, and it wasn’t until he moved here and began actually working there that he discovered half of his patients were transgendered. I still remember how his face twisted up into a knot and his beard waggled as he snarled with disgust about being forced to treat “THOSE people.” He told me, “You don’t know. THEY are EVERYWHERE around here! How could I expect that?” I got out of the elevator as soon as I could. And then I started trying to plan a trans education event for our library. It took some years to be able to make it happen.

I was so excited when I heard about the Trans Health Fail hashtag during the Stanford Medicine X conference. I’ve been wanting to blog about it for a couple months, and finally it is happening. The post is divided into four sections: reports of experiences (mostly with insurance, staff, and clinicians); longer personal testimonials; healthcare reactions; and popular media. There is even a section where trans people have given kudos to the absence of failure, when folk have gotten it right. Most important take-away lessons to learn? Names are important (not just for people who are transgendered, but perhaps especially for them). Privacy is important. Respect is important. Information is important. Access to care is life-saving. Another big part of the conversation centers around the high mortality of transgendered persons, both from violence, and stigma. The basic assumption of what SHOULD be happening in healthcare gets back to “First do no harm.” A lot of the perceived harms which are described could be changed fairly easily just by better education of healthcare professionals of all sorts, and the office and support staff in healthcare facilities. Some of them make complete sense to professionals working inside the healthcare system, but obviously did not to the person on the other side. If you haven’t yet noticed this conversation, it’s worth taking a few minutes to explore. It could save lives. And if you are a healthcare provider who actually can and will treat transgender persons, please be aware of the Provider Self-Input Form for the Trans & Queer Referral Aggregator Database from RAD Remedy

LIVED EXPERIENCES

https://twitter.com/Eastownlewis/status/629108221811142657

https://twitter.com/arielvsmith/status/629816521297018880

https://twitter.com/WesleyWelch283/status/633798740197904384

https://twitter.com/lastoryx/status/630114860186013696

https://twitter.com/hir_or_their/status/631404279060922369

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Access to Care

https://twitter.com/dnt_val/status/643459695177527297

https://twitter.com/lastoryx/status/629849533753626624

https://twitter.com/Hyp0th3rm1c/status/650147540130660352

https://twitter.com/Eastownlewis/status/629107023217471489

https://twitter.com/ekobor/status/629401121564430336

https://twitter.com/tprideDallas/status/630821602712682496

https://twitter.com/hir_or_their/status/631404958529794049

!! https://twitter.com/TGGuide/status/629892052914991104

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Insurance

https://twitter.com/AlexanderDoodle/status/629384389395267584

https://twitter.com/Keepcalmlovesev/status/630801245763014656

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Healthcare Environments & Systems

https://twitter.com/feferipixies/status/629401766891646976

https://twitter.com/JennyVSimile/status/647446044679249921

https://twitter.com/twodogshowdy/status/632315263329812480

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Supporting Roles

https://twitter.com/tinygaydragon/status/655363213668786176

https://twitter.com/KlausThariaro/status/629363390432059393

https://twitter.com/plibbity/status/631637899595747328

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Clinicians

https://twitter.com/KlausThariaro/status/629362008060743680

https://twitter.com/BrieFuriosa/status/656813174063308800

https://twitter.com/mrgnptts/status/660121223817490432

https://twitter.com/twodogshowdy/status/632310917288497152

https://twitter.com/JennyVSimile/status/647448262937583616

https://twitter.com/pisscoffin/status/634450119258173444

https://twitter.com/JennyVSimile/status/635485724096233472

https://twitter.com/pisscoffin/status/634442903062974465

https://twitter.com/snugoh/status/629103310058815488

https://twitter.com/pisscoffin/status/642037841485238273

https://twitter.com/TallNerdyBean/status/629164057870778368

https://twitter.com/queeritout/status/629648454680055808

https://twitter.com/lukasberredo/status/629519659474137088

!! https://twitter.com/anaphylaxus/status/639815813495701504

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Children

https://twitter.com/trans_mama/status/631883051111460868

https://twitter.com/reeeiiid/status/650530365094928384

LIVED EXPERIENCES: Done Right

https://twitter.com/ftmtrans/status/632380554327920640

TESTIMONIES

https://twitter.com/mdbento/status/632302418424758272

HEALTHCARE RESPONSE

https://twitter.com/ShannonOMac/status/635150522115166208

https://twitter.com/iam_spartacus/status/647559105071083520

https://twitter.com/MMCTransMD/status/653779073680805888

MEDIA ATTENTION

Atlantic

BitchMedia ??

Buzzfeed
https://twitter.com/EncompassIC/status/639595792433590272

Cosmopolitan

DailyBeast

DailyDot

Distractify

FacesOfHealthCare

Feministing

Fusion
https://twitter.com/rpercelay/status/629666082329133056

HuffPostGay

HuffPost

Indiana

MarySue

Mashable
https://twitter.com/PostmodernCrack/status/629101069327450112

Metronews Canada

Mother Jones

NewNowNext

Patient Opinion

Vice
https://twitter.com/JadenFitz/status/649479140396109824

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Laboratory Life Online, Part 1 (A HOTW Post)

Posted on October 8, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Second Life: Nanotechnology Island

There has been a lot of science communication (#SciComm) action on Twitter recently centering around what does life look like for real scientists. I have a head start on this because when I was a little tyke, my dad dragged me into the lab with him and told me things like to watch the door of the High Wind Velocity Testing Lab so that the tornado didn’t get out while he was working on his mass spectrometer lithium sample testing. What can I say? I was gullible. So all those fun lifestyle pithy tweets will come in a later post, but for today, here is proof of presence of laboratories on Twitter. For the record, there are a lot more of these in each category, because Twitter’s search limits don’t return complete results for matches to the search criteria. Basically, that means I found a lot of these by browsing, when I should have been able to find them through search. I hope this is a useful resource. Enjoy!

ABOUT LABORATORIES

American Laboratory https://twitter.com/AmericanLab
Lab Design News https://twitter.com/labdesignnews
Lab Guru https://twitter.com/Labguru
Lab Life (@LabLife) https://twitter.com/LabLife
Lab Spaces https://twitter.com/LabSpaces
Lab TV https://twitter.com/LabTVCuriosity
Laboratory EQAS https://twitter.com/LaboratoryEQAS
Laboratory Equipment https://twitter.com/LabEquipment
Laboratory News https://twitter.com/laboratorynews
Laboratory Products https://twitter.com/labproductsnews

MICHIGAN LABS

Cardinale Lab (ecology and biodiversity lab) https://twitter.com/CardinaleLab
Decision Lab https://twitter.com/DecisionLab
Edelstein Lab https://twitter.com/EdelsteinLab
Lauring Lab https://twitter.com/LauringLab
Mahon Lab @CMU_Antarctica https://www.twitter.com/CMU_Antarctica
MiNDLab https://www.twitter.com/MiNDLab_umich
Michigan Tech High Performance Computing (HPC) @MichiganTechHPC https://twitter.com/MichiganTechHPC
MLabs (pathology) https://www.twitter.com/MLabsUM
National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (@NSCL) https://twitter.com/NSCL
NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (GLERL) https://twitter.com/NOAA_GLERL
Tronson Lab https://twitter.com/tronsonlab
U.M. Sex Lab https://twitter.com/SexualityLab
U Mich Concept Lab https://twitter.com/UMichConceptLab
University of Michigan Childhood Disparities Research Laboratory (@UMCDRL) https://twitter.com/UMCDRL

U.S. NATIONAL LABS

Ames Laboratory @Ames_Laboratory https://twitter.com/Ames_Laboratory
Argonne National Lab @argonne https://twitter.com/argonne
Berkeley Lab @BerkeleyLab https://twitter.com/berkeleylab
Berkeley Lab CS @LBNLcs https://twitter.com/LBNLcs
Brookhaven Nat’l Lab @BrookhavenLab https://twitter.com/brookhavenlab
DOE Science https://twitter.com/doescience
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) @ESnetUpdates
Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) @federallabs
Fermilab @Fermilab
Idaho National Lab @INL https://twitter.com/INL
ISS U.S. National Laboratory, Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) (@ISS_CASIS) https://twitter.com/iss_casis
Jefferson Lab P.A. @Jblab
LBNL Media Report @LBNLmediareport
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) @Livermore_Lab https://twitter.com/Livermore_Lab
Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) @LosAlamosNatLab https://twitter.com/LosAlamosNatLab
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) – Health (@LANL_Health) https://twitter.com/lanl_health
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) – Space https://twitter.com/lanl_space
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) https://twitter.com/NERSC
National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) @NETL_News https://twitter.com/NETL_News
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory @NationalMagLab https://twitter.com/nationalmaglab
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) https://twitter.com/NNSANews
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) @NREL
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) @NASAJPL https://twitter.com/NASAJPL
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) https://twitter.com/noaa_aoml
NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (GLERL) https://twitter.com/NOAA_GLERL
Oak Ridge National Laboratory @ORNL https://twitter.com/ORNL
Oak Ridge National Lab, Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (ORNL Manufacturing) @ORNLMDF https://twitter.com/ORNLMDF
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) @PNNLab https://twitter.com/pnnlab
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) @PPPLab
Sandia National Labs @SandiaLabs https://twitter.com/SandiaLabs [Sandia National Labs @SandiaLabsUVM https://twitter.com/SandiaLabsUVM%5D
Sanford Lab @SanfordLab https://twitter.com/SanfordLab
Savannah River National Laboratory @SRSNews https://twitter.com/SRSNews
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory @SLAClab https://twitter.com/SLAClab
U.S. Army Research Labs https://twitter.com/ArmyResearchLab
U.S. Global Development Lab https://twitter.com/GlobalDevLab

MORE LABS WORTH KNOWING

Arne Lindqvist Lab (cancer research) @LindqvistLab https://twitter.com/LindqvistLab
Boulby Laboratory (deep underground science) https://twitter.com/BoulbyLab
Cavendish Laboratory (physics) https://twitter.com/DeptofPhysics
Happe Lab (autism research) https://twitter.com/HappeLab
Hewlett Packard Labs https://twitter.com/hplabs
HHS Idea Lab https://twitter.com/HHSIDEALab
MIT Lincoln Laboratory https://twitter.com/MITLL
MIT Media Lab https://twitter.com/medialab
National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) Media Labs https://twitter.com/NARAMediaLabs
Public Laboratory (open source) @PublicLab https://twitter.com/PublicLab
Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory @SuicideResearch https://twitter.com/suicideresearch
The Food Lab https://twitter.com/TheFoodLab
U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory @UKNNL https://twitter.com/uknnl
Wired Gadget Lab @GadgetLab https://twitter.com/gadgetlab
Wise Laboratory (toxicology) https://twitter.com/WiseLaboratory

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Bugs & Genes, Mice & Poop, Worms & Shrooms: 24 Take-Aways from the Microbiome Symposium

Posted on October 6, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Loving the Microbiome Symposium

This time of year seems to be nonstop conferences, symposiums, presentations, meetings, and chats. I’ve been trying to catch up with the Storify collections for all of the ones I’ve been attending or lurking in recently. The Microbiome Symposium was a HUGE one!

In case you didn’t know, I’m fascinated by the microbiome, and have been for years. I’ve been tracking research about it, playing with personal microbiome testing services, finagled my way into being the liaison librarian to the Host-Microbiome Initiative here on campus, and doing my level best to make myself a useful collaborator with them. This all gained me access to the day-long Microbiome Symposium sponsored by Cayman Chemistry, where a few of us live-tweeted. I want to take just a brief moment to talk about some of the highlights. But in case you don’t have time, here is the number one most important critical thing to remember (the rest are in no particular order):

NUMBER ONE: Eat fiber. Lots of fiber. Many kinds.

2. What we don’t know about the microbiome is how all the species interact.

3. Microbes are sort of little factories that make all sorts of chemicals, drugs and poisons (which aren’t regulated by the FDA).

4. Liver and bile are way more important than we expected. To the gut. Yeah, really.

5. Nutrients from food are not one-size-fits-all. What you get out of your food is tailored by your microbiome.

6. The reverse is also true! What you eat tailors your microbiome!

7. What we don’t know about the microbiome is how it interacts with the rest of what our body does, say, for example, exercise.

8. We might be able to predict different diseases by watching changes to our microbiome, like cancer and diabetes.

9. If we can spot predictive changes early enough, we might be able to head them off by changing diet.

10. Most of the bacteria that show colon cancer seem to come via the mouth. So brush your teeth!

11. Don’t eat fiber? Changes your microbiome. Degrades mucosa. Erodes protection from mucus, first line defense. Triggers inflammation. OOPS!

12. It’s complicated.

13. Complexity is important. Eat the rainbow.

14. Fiber is IMPORTANT. Especially eating a diversity of fiber. Try counting how many different plants are in your meals.

15. A diet poor in what make the bacteria happy (fiber, a.k.a. microbiota-accessible carbohydrates, a.k.a. MACs) has immediate impacts on them, long term impacts on us.

16. Diet is a tool to engineer (program) our bodies to meet our goals. What are your goals? Optimize yourself, your health, and your mood, with food!

17. Break the chain, it stays broken. (Once you kill off the diversity of bacteria in your body through poor diet, they don’t tend to come back.)

18. How do you get a diversity of bugs in your gut again? Fecal transplants.

19. Avoid antibiotics whenever possible. but especially early in life.

20. Bugs I want to remember: FLVR = Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Lachnospira multipara, Veillonella parvula, Rothia mucilaginosa.

21. High fiber diets help protect against allergies, and allergens, and asthma.

22. High fiber diets help protect against different types of gut pain.

23. About probiotics: Dead bacteria don’t work. They have to be live, the kind you keep in the fridge.

24. This isn’t regulated territory yet, the FDA has little sway. Be cautious about product claims.

Now, those were the official take aways, but there were some deeply intrigued nuggets in the hallways conversations and posters as well. There was a lot of unofficial buzz around fungus, and worms (helminth therapy). Things to watch for in the future. Here’s the Storify, if you want to dig into this more deeply.

And in the meantime, I found ANOTHER Storify from a symposium that focused on microbiomics, so here’s that (from Cell Symposia as #CSMicrobiome) as a bonus.

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