MaRS

While World Aids Day (Friday, December 1, 2006) has come and gone, an online collection of more than 600 AIDS posters from around the world is still available for viewing. Sourced from a physical collection housed at the UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, images can be searched or browsed by visitors by country, topic, creator or title. Posters range from the terrifying to the amusing and use a variety of media – cartoons, photographs, slogans, and/or abstract drawings – to impart their message.

Access the poster collection at: http://digital.library.ucla.edu/aidsposters/

Give a Day to World AIDS

Here at MaRS, we participated in the Give a Day to World AIDS challenge. Every employee at MaRS gave a day’s pay on December 1st to fight AIDS around the world.

Did your company join the challenge?

New Scientist

(OK, another anniversary story. But aren’t we all getting older?)

The magazine New Scientist turned 50 last week and it’s celebrating this milestone with a special two-cover, extra-fat issue, available now at your newsstand. Much of the golden anniversary-themed content is now available for free on the magazine’s website. Of special note is the compendium of New Scientist’s ‘best’ articles from the previous 50 years, available at:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/classic-articles

‘Classic’ articles include one published in 1956 that highlights a new US digital computer, the Burroughs E 101, and one from 1990 that reports on the ‘trouble with Hubble’ [the infamous space telescope]. A great walk down memory lane…

Also interesting is the collection of forecasts by over 70 scientists and thinkers. Each piece provides a brief take on what the author believes will be the biggest scientific breakthrough in the next 50 years. Contributors include physicists, neuroscientists, cosmologists, psychologists and leading lights from every discipline. These articles can be found at:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts

If you’re looking for some inspiration (or simply something to eat up 43 minutes of your workday), check out the webcast of a presentation made by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at MIT this September. Timed to support the launch of his book entitled “iWoz: From computer geek to culture icon: how I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it,” Wozniak tells the story of Apple as a start-up.

The online video can be found at:

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/400/
RealPlayer is required for viewing.

PubMed, a favourite research tool of biomedical researchers around the world, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. First released as an experimental database in January 1996, it was officially launched as a free Web-based version of MEDLINE (which itself turned 35(!!) years old this year) on June 26, 1997. Its first month of official service saw some 2 million searches for the entire month. Current statistics indicate usage typically exceeds three million searches a day.

For more details about PubMed’s history and key milestones, see this National Library of Medicine press release.

I’m trying to imagine life without PubMed – can you?

Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards.
Image courtesy of Popular Mechanics

The magazine Popular Mechanics highlights the recipients of its annual Breakthrough Awards in its November 2006 issue.

The Leadership Award was presented to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer who was behind the first plane to circle the globe nonstop (Voyager, in 1986) and the first private craft to take a pilot to space, twice within two weeks — SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004.