“Quick question: can we estimate the global investment in life science research? Is it increasing, or decreasing?”
4 hours ago
Very good question. I would say if we include Pharma research investments, it's going up - Deepak
Further: what's the return on that investment? These are hard problems though; I've wondered, but have no idea how to go about actually making the necessary estimates. - Bill Hooker
Very hard. The biotech industry as a whole makes a loss. Academic research funding is difficult to measure ROI for. - Deepak
I have no time to learn languages "for fun". If you need a new language to achieve a task in a better way to your existing one, then it's worth it. - Neil Saunders
I sometimes learn languages for fun and end up finding things that would be better in such languages. Like Python. - PauloNuin
Sometimes you just want to. I want to learn a new language, cause I've been away so long that I might as well be starting from scratch. Really it doesn't even matter which one you pick as long as you know there is a community to tap. - Deepak
I prefer the jack-of-all-trades approach. I will never program like a computer scientist, so let me be eclectic and have a bigger perspective of things. - PauloNuin
Can I be a fly on the wall for that talk? - Deepak
Interesting question: I've often thought that, similar to 'dark data', there is a whole load of 'dark' presentations that could add value. What's the answer for smaller meetings without AV support? - Matt Wood
Screencasting al la Jean-Claude is effective (and every time I try I have technical difficulties but I am still trying). Record the screen action and audio, post to Viddler or similar - Cameron Neylon
Screencasting and/or slideshare. And you can always post to Bioscreencast too :) - Deepak
and if you're on a Mac you can't go wrong with ScreenFlow - Deepak
Yay bioscreencast - which reminds me I need to do some for the current paper. I like the commenting on Viddler - Cameron Neylon
The viddler player is super cool. I prefer it to youtube for my own videos. The resolution is limited for screencasts, but it's the best of the consumer video sharing sites (IMO) - Deepak
Cool - I'll give it a try. I tend to wonder around when I present, so I might have to rerecord the audio. : ) - Matt Wood
the average webcam mike actually does a pretty good job, even when the speaker wanders. For a professional touch, get a lapel mike :) - Cameron Neylon
