AJCann

Ebolavirus (EBOV) and Marburgvirus (MARV) that compose the filovirus family of negative strand RNA viruses infect a broad range of mammalian cells. Recent studies indicate that cellular entry of this family of viruses requires a series of cellular protein interactions and molecular mechanisms, some of which are unique to filoviruses and others are commonly used [...] - AJCann

New research shows that Niemann-Pick C1–like 1 (NPC1L1) cholesterol uptake receptor is an HCV cell entry factor that functions after binding, at or before fusion. Together with the facts that NPC1L1 is a cellular cholesterol receptor, the HCV particle is enriched in cholesterol, and relative dependence on NPC1L1 is correlated with HCV particle cholesterol levels, [...] - AJCann

Arenaviruses comprise a diverse family of enveloped negative-strand RNA viruses that are endemic to specific rodent hosts worldwide. Several arenaviruses cause severe hemorrhagic fevers in humans, including Junín and Machupo viruses in South America and Lassa fever virus in western Africa. Arenavirus entry into the host cell is mediated by the envelope glycoprotein complex, GPC. [...] - AJCann

POST AFTER MS PUBLISHED links to ms & previous reflection LRA stats "Inviting your friends to review your work" - not valid peer review - open is open to all, friends and foes. bias - hide previous reviews - but then lose crowd impetus? 7 referees is definitely hard work. Thankfully in this instance none submitted conflicting requests, but even so the manuscript required substantial work to revise and produce the final version LINK - assuming you attract enough reviews, open peer review is definitely not an easy ride! No acknowledgements - solo effort, no external funding,not sure of the etiquette of thanking reviewers - hope no-one is offended. see: http://francesbell.wordpress.com/2012... The big question: is this model scalable? Too soon to say, but my concern is that it may not be because the reviewer ecosystem may not be able to circumvent the Tragedy of the Commons. Related posts: It's academic publishing Jim,... - AJCann

Whether or not you take a constructivist view of education, feedback on performance is inevitably seen as a crucial component of the process. However, experience shows that students (and academic staff) often struggle with feedback, which all too often fails to translate into feed-forward actions leading to educational gains. Problems get worse as student cohort sizes increase. By building on the well-established principle of separating marks from feedback and by using a social network approach to amplify peer discussion of assessed tasks, this paper describes an efficient system for interactive student feedback. Although the majority of students remain passive recipients in this system, they are still exposed to deeper reflection on assessed tasks than in traditional one-to-one feedback processes. Cann, A.J. (2012) An efficient and effective system for interactive student feedback using Google+ to enhance an institutional virtual learning environment. Leicester Research Archive.... - AJCann

An unfailing observation over the past 70 years is that resistance to all antibiotics emerges eventually after use in the clinic. Where does this resistance come from? Recent work has shown that antibiotic resistance genes are common in metagenomes of ancient sediments. This prevalence of resistance, well before the use of antibiotics, denotes the importance [...] - AJCann

How bacteria grow and divide while retaining a defined shape is a fundamental question in microbiology, but technological advances are now driving a new understanding of how the shape-maintaining bacterial peptidoglycan sacculus grows. This review highlights the relationship between peptidoglycan synthesis complexes and cytoskeletal elements, as well as recent evidence that peptidoglycan growth is regulated [...] - AJCann

"Evidence shows that engaged students perform better academically than disinterested students. Measurement of engagement with education is difficult and imprecise, especially in large student cohorts. Traditional measurements such as summary statistics derived from assessment are crude secondary measures of engagement at best and do not provide much support for educators to work with students and curate engagement during teaching periods. We have used academic-related student contributions to a public social network as a proxy for engagement. Statistical summaries and novel data visualisation tools provide subtle and powerful insights into online student peer networks. Analysis of data collected shows that network visualisation can be an important curation tool for educators interested in cultivating student engagement." Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 16283 doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/16283 Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

At the 64th gathering of the World Health Assembly in May 2011, a majority of delegates reaffirmed the view that the remaining stocks of variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, should be destroyed. But consideration of precisely when that action should be taken was postponed for several years pending completion of crucial research addressing [...] - AJCann

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is an important pathogenic agent that causes recurrent oral and genital lesions, blindness and encephalitis. It is a member of the family Herpesviridae, which contains three subfamilies (alpha- beta- and gammaherpesvirinae) whose members infect humans to cause a variety of ailments, from benign rashes to nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Although this review focuses [...] - AJCann

We don't even have a word for it - "public-ness" - as opposed to privacy. I never know quite what to make of Jeff Jarvis. And considering the publicity blitz around Public Parts I'm unsure whether to post a public review. But that's the point. Unlike Clay Shirky's books, which lay it all out for you, Jarvis's writing makes you work for the underlying conclusion. Although I find Jarvis' style sometimes grates against the content, there is real value here - for example the chapters on the history of public discourse and the bibliography. The later chapters on ethics challenging knee jerk reactions to open-ness are also a must read if you have a significant online profile. In spite of this, ultimately, I came away with the feeling that Public Parts is a book which asks the right questions but doesn't know the answers. Possibly because there is no answer, unless we each arrive at our own. Which is, I suppose, a recommendation to read it. Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

Recent evidence shows that the quadrivalent HPV vaccine prevents several HPV-related diseases in men. However, despite the licensure of the vaccine in the USA for men 9 through 26 years of age, rates of male vaccination are very low. Research on acceptability, in general, indicates strong interest in vaccination among men, parents, and healthcare providers, [...] - AJCann

By convention, the human adenovirus replication cycle is divided into two phases, an early and a late phase, which are separated by the onset of viral DNA replication. Based on temporal changes of the gene expression pattern as revealed by DNA microarray analysis, adenovirus type 2 (Ad2) infection in human primary lung fibroblasts can be [...] - AJCann

Competencies not Literacies! Measurable, deliverable, understandable. Why are people trying to burden students with things they can't even define? Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

When a virus infects a cell, it hijacks resources of the cell to manufacture and release a new generation of progeny virus particles. Yet despite its central importance, methods to precisely quantify virus production at the cellular level are lacking. Most approaches measure the production of virus by sampling from a population of infected cells, [...] - AJCann

What would happen if all the leaves fell off the trees and did not rot? We’d be buried under them and all plants would run out of nutrients and die, then we would starve. So the seemingly non-sexy buisness of rotting is rather important when it comes to element and nutrient cycles. In ecological studies, [...] - AJCann

Status text can be any length from 0 to 100,000 characters, enabling much richer interaction and detailed explanation. URL sampling provides rich snippets inline enabling rapid decisions over attention worth. Video and images displayed inline rather than as links. Hangouts (or direct video posting) with text chat/Google Docs/YouTube integration - a full blown conferencing tool much more stable than Skype. Circles and individual-targeted posts allow fine grained control of privacy. Circles and individual-targeted posts allow fine grained control of publishing. Google+ is a refinement of what has gone before, optimizing attention stream architecture. Google+ pages are a useful way to separate online identities, e.g. professional from personal interests. Hashtag searches highly filterable to eliminate noise, e.g. Public, from your Circles only, etc. Google has bet the farm on Google+. It isn't going anywhere. But my friends/family/colleagues don't use Google+ yet. They will do. Tweet... - AJCann

At #bathcr yesterday I preached the gospel of Heaphy's Law: For a successful career Find something to measure And measure the f**k out of it.Simple targets work best, for example, if you're measuring interactivity, count number of Twitter @ replies or followers. And definitely count the number of hits on your web properties originating from Twitter, Google+ or wherever. If you insist on having fancy tools, there are lots available, although I'm slightly dubious of the value of tools such as SocialBro, and outraged at the spurious influence claims made by Klout. So keep it simple and measure your impact by setting clear targets to aim for. For more in the same vein, be sure to follow the live video stream from Martin Weller's keynote talk at #dr12vitae. Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

Iron is a highly abundant metal on earth and is vital for virtually all organisms. Despite its abundance, iron deficiency is the most prevalent nutrition disorder worldwide. It mostly affects infants, young children and women in developing countries. Iron deficiency has major health consequences such as infection, poor pregnancy outcome, and impaired physical and cognitive [...] - AJCann

First it was foot and mouth virus. Then it was bluetongue virus. Now it is Schmallenberg virus. So here’s 10 things you didn’t know about Schmallenberg virus: Schmallenberg virus was first isolated in Schmallenberg, Germany, in November 2011. Schmallenberg virus is a Bunyavirus, one of a large group of of negative-stranded RNA viruses. Why should [...] - AJCann

Tomorrow I'm in Bath giving a workshop: Aim: To help you understand how social media can support your research and which tools are the most appropriate for you to use. Date: 26 Jan 2012 Time: 10:30 - 13:30 Location: University of Bath 1E 3.6 Speakers: Alan Cann, University of Leicester, with Jez Cope and Geraldine Jones, University of Bath. Funded by the EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Account. This workshop will show you how you can use social media to help your research and your career. Social tools have important implications for how researchers (and educators) communicate and collaborate. This session will provide you with information to make informed decisions about using social media and help you select from the vast range of tools available. Social media has downsides as well as upsides, but on balance there is real value for researchers, from information discovery, through dissemination of your research, to impact metrics. The hashtag for the session is #bathcr. I don't know how many... - AJCann

Staphylococcus aureus is responsible for the vast majority of bacterial skin infections in humans. The propensity for S. aureus to infect skin involves a balance between cutaneous immune defense mechanisms and virulence factors of the pathogen. The tissue architecture of the skin is different from other epithelia especially since it possesses a corneal layer, which [...] - AJCann

Last week I put up a manuscript for open peer review (It's academic publishing Jim, but not as we know it). In that post, I explained my reasons for doing this rather than going down the conventional (journal) academic publishing route. The review process, which I arbitrarily set at 14 days, is still running, but in this post I want to discuss my reflections on the process to date. As I expected, reviews started to come in rapidly, 7 within the first 48 hours, then stopped equally rapidly. Internet attention is transitory, but in part this is a reflection of the fact that I drew the blog post to the attention of a number of people by email, inviting reviews. However, this pattern is typical for Internet content - a fast decay phase followed by a longer, slower tail (The Spread of Scientific Information: Insights from the Web Usage Statistics in PLoS Article-Level Metrics. (2011) PLoS ONE 6(5): e19917). There were no "spam" comments, which I had anticipated, and even though I had... - AJCann

The fuss over Apple's launch of iBooks last week obscured what could have been much more important - the launch of the "new" version of iTunesU, together with accompanying free iPad/Phone/PodTouch app. At first, I was excited by this, because it appeared that this was iVLE, aka VLE in the cloud. And the iPad app is very nice. But sadly, the app functionality is not replicated well in iTunes, thus cutting out students who do not own iPads, and all Windows users. iPhones/Pods are OK for listening to a couple of podcasts, but no-one in their right minds is going to attempt a full-blown statistics course on an iPhone. And the content on iTunesU is still as variable in quality as it ever was. Presumably Apple could not see a revenue angle in iVLE. Oh, what might have been. Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

Regulons are the basic units of cellular response systems in bacterial cells, and represent a most basic concept in bacterial studies. A bacterial regulon is a group of operons that are transcriptionally co-regulated by the same regulatory machinery, consisting of trans regulators (transcription factors or simply TFs) and cis regulatory binding elements in the promoters [...] - AJCann

I'm delighted to say that Martin Weller will be giving the keynote address at The Digital Researcher conference next month (#dr12vitae). I've been preparing materials for my sessions and part of that involved generating this wordcloud of Martin's recent book, The Digital Scholar. #dr12vitae is sold out, but the intention is to livestream parts of the meeting and certainly Martin's keynote talk, so follow the hashtag for details. Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

Traditional approaches to phage therapy rely on the ability of viruses to kill their bacterial prey. However, the narrow host range or most bacteriophages and the ability of bacteria to become resistant to infection mean that in practice, using phage to simply replace antibiotics is not feasible. We need smarter approaches, which is where a [...] - AJCann

In my module questionnaires our students say they want face to face sessions - but so they? Very few students attend voluntary help sessions. In the past I have tried "Office Hours" but still very few takers. So what is the way forward? How do I give the "personal touch" with >250 students? Any suggestions? Tweet A.J. Cann, Science of the Invisible - AJCann

It was my priveledge to work with Brian Mahy many years ago. Brian has just retired as long-serving Editor of Virus Research, and his swansong is an excellent special issue on negative strand RNA viruses – an important read for all virologists and an even more impirtant one for all aspiring virologists.   Virus Research: [...] - AJCann