LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook

The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, with funding from the University of Cincinnati’s Office of the Provost, is pleased to present the LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook.

LabArchives has been selected as the Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) vendor of choice due to its ability to assist in maintaining compliance, and to capture, secure and control data.

LabArchives:

  • Provides discipline agnostic tools and plugins to increase functionality, research efficiency, and management of laboratory data.
  • Is compliant with Federal mandates including: Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Internet2 Guidelines, FDA- 21 CFR Part 11 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).
  • Is a secure and intuitive cloud-based application enabling researchers to easily create, store, share and manage their research data.
  • Provides a flexible, extensible platform that can be easily customized to match your lab’s workflow providing benefits to Principal Investigators, lab managers’ staff, post doctoral fellows and grad students.
  • Can be integrated seamlessly with GraphPad Prism, MS-Office, PubMed, Box, Learning Management Systems and other software tools that are used extensively by Academic Health Center and university wide researchers.
  • Works on multiple platforms and devices including Mac, Windows, Android and iPad, allowing researchers to store and access their data virtually from anywhere with Internet access.

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Love Your Data Week Day 4 – Finding the Right Data

Today’s LYD post is by Don P. Jason III, MLIS, MS, Clinical Informationist based at the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library.

Welcome to Day 4 of “Love Your Data Week!” Whether you’re a student analyzing a data set for a school project or a researcher combining data sets to create new insights, finding the right data is essential! This blog post will list a few places you can look to find free, authoritative and unique data sets. The data sets have be broken down into three categories:  US Government Data Sets, International Data Sets and Google Data Sets.

US Government Data Sets

Data.gov http://data.gov – This web site has an eclectic mix of datasets from criminal justice to climate data.  This government site encourages people to use the data to create web and mobile applications and design data visualizations.

US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/data.html – This web site provides data on the US population and economy.  Utilizing this site’s data has never been easier thanks to new: API’s, data visualizations, mobile apps and interactive web apps.

Healthdata.gov https://www.healthdata.gov/ – This web site includes US healthcare data.  The site is dedicated to making high value health data more accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers.

National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/quick-links#loc-clim – This is the world’s largest archive of weather data. It has a robust collection of environmental, meteorological and climate data sets from the US National Climatic Data Center.

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HSL Informatics Lab: SAS, SPSS, R, or Python Help

A Collaborative Space for Innovation at the Health Sciences Library

 Looking for help with SAS, SPSS, R, or Python?

Check out the Informatics Lab at the HSL!

The Informatics Lab is a new space in the Health Sciences Library designed for innovative and collaborative hands-on learning experiences and discussions.

We now offer a tutor to assist students, faculty, and staff who wish to learn to use the statistical analysis tools, SAS, SPSS, Python & R.

To schedule a tutoring session in the Informatics Lab or for any questions, contact informaticslab@uc.edu. Appointments are available

Monday – Friday based on the tutor’s availability.

General Information

The Informatics Lab is open for reservations from 9AM – 5PM and provides students and faculty at the Academic Health Center with software programs and equipment not available in the normal computer lab.

Reserve the Informatics Lab now!

To view policies and guidelines visit the Informatics Lab website.

Contact us at informaticslab@uc.edu with questions or software requests.

Free Writing Assistance at the HSL During Spring Semester!

Academic Writing Center-Health Sciences Library Banner

Free Writing Assistance During Spring Semester!

Visit the Health Sciences Library and sign up for a same-day appointment with a writing tutor. 

Receive free writing assistance on all documents, including:

  • Personal Statements
  • Grant Applications
  • Reports
  • Articles

Writing Tutor available in the HSL Informatics Lab from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM on these dates:

January 18th
February 1st
February 15th
March 1st
March 22nd
April 5th
April 19th

This service is open to all.  If you would like to make an appointment during these hours (reserve time in advance) please email AWC Coordinator, Dr. Joseph Cunningham, at joseph.cunningham@uc.edu

But what about Robert Kehoe?

Recently, Smithsonian.com published a brief article on the history of leaded

Dr. Robert Kehoe, Kettering Laboratory, UC, date unknown

gas.  The article, seen here, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-invented-180961368/, is informative though by no means exhaustive.  The story begins in 1920, 55 miles up I-75, in Dayton, Ohio, at the General Motors Research Corporation.  An engineer there, Thomas Midgely, and his boss, Charles F. Kettering, had developed an anti-engine knock additive called TEL or tetraethyllead.

At the time, “engine knock,” which was due to a malfunction between the fuel, air, and ignition explosion in a car’s cylinder, was at best a mild annoyance causing a light knocking sound and at worst a problem capable of destroying an automobile engine. Midgely’s solution was to add TEL to gasoline which would raise the combustability, or octane, of an engine lessening its chances of malfunctioning.

It worked.  Which was all well and good, but TEL contained lead, and as people have known for ages, lead isn’t particularly good for us.  In fact it’s rather deadly.  The author goes on to discuss the outcry that erupted after several workers died after being exposed to TEL on a regular basis.  A federal study was authorized in 1925 and it was decided that the amount of risk associated to every day exposure for most people was minimal and the production of leaded gasoline continued.  It was not until the 1970s that growing evidence over leaded gas’s danger became evident.  In January, 1996, the U.S. Clean Air act, officially banned the sale of leaded fuel for use in vehicles. Continue reading

Emily Kean New Research and Education Librarian in the Health Sciences Library

Emily KeanUC Libraries is pleased to welcome Emily Kean as the research and education librarian in the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library. In this position, Emily will provide research, consultation, instruction, collection development and outreach services to the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center. She will serve as liaison to Academic Health Center colleges with a focus on Nursing and Allied Health.

Emily has over 10 years of experience working in libraries, most recently serving as the digital services librarian at the Boone County Public Library.  Prior to that she was the electronic resources librarian at the Christ Hospital.  Emily brings with her great technical skills and a passion for teaching and developing new and innovative ways to provide instruction and library services.

Welcome to UC Libraries, Emily!

R Workshops in the Health Sciences Library: Coming Soon

In January 2017 the Health Sciences Library will begin to offer workshops on the R programing language and statistical software.

In these workshops participants will learn:

  • the various data types
  • how to install R
  • how to import and export files
  • how to select statistical methods
  • how to perform different statistical analyses on given data
  • how to understand when to choose a statistical analysis for answering a type of research question

In addition, some basic statistical analyses will be covered that include one sample t-test, two-sample t-test, and different types of regression. At the end of both workshops participants will gain a practical experience of using R programming for Data Analysis.

To register for the January R workshops go to http://webcentral.uc.edu/hslclass/home.aspx .  The January schedule will be posted toward the end of December.

If you have any questions, please contact Tiffany Grant, PhD, Research Informationist at the Harrison Health Sciences Library, at 558-9153 or joffritm@ucmail.uc.edu.

Join the LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook First Phase Users Program

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The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, with funding from the University of Cincinnati’s Office of the Provost, is pleased to present the LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook First Phase Users Program.

LabArchives is the leading secure and intuitive cloud-based Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) application enabling researchers to easily create, store, share and manage their research data. Far more than an “ELN”, LabArchives provides a flexible, extensible platform that can be easily customized to match your lab’s workflow providing benefits to Principal Investigators, lab managers  staff, post doctoral fellows and grad students. LabArchives can be integrated seamlessly with GraphPad Prism, MS-Office, PubMed, BOX, Learning Management Systems, and a number of other software tools that are used extensively by researchers of the Academic Health Center and University wide. Additionally, the LA ELN works on multiple platforms and devices including Mac, Windows, Android and iPad devices, allowing researchers to store and access their data from virtually anywhere with internet access.

An enterprise-wide license with LabArchives has been obtained for the Academic Health Center (AHC), which includes the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Allied Health Sciences and Pharmacy. This provides an unlimited amount of licenses to members of the UC AHC. An additional 100 licenses have been reserved for non-Academic Health Center UC affiliates, and each of these additional licenses will be distributed on a first-come, first-served method. The First Phase will continue until December 1, 2017.

For more information about LabArchives: http://www.labarchives.com/.

To sign up for a LabArchives account: https://shib.labarchives.com?entityID=https%3A%2F%2Flogin.uc.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth.

To sign up to view a LabArchives training webinar at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 7: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6150503497850714369.

To sign up for one of two in-person training sessions (10:30 a.m. – noon and 1 – 2:30 p.m.) to be held on Thursday, Dec. 15 at the Health Sciences Library: http://webcentral.uc.edu/hslclass/home.aspx.

More in-person and online training sessions will occur in the new year.

For more information, please contact Tiffany Grant, PhD, research informationist at the Harrison Health Sciences Library, at 558-9153 or joffritm@ucmail.uc.edu.

Writing Assistance at the HSL during the Winter Months

Writing assistance in the HSL Informatics Lab has been extended into the winter season.  Visit the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library and sign up for a same-day appointment with a writing tutor. Receive free writing assistance on all documents, including: personal statements, grant applications, reports and articles.

The writing tutor is available on these dates and times:

November 30th 12: 45 – 5:45 PM

December 7th 12:45 – 5:45 PM

January 18th 1:00 – 5:00 PM

The service is open to all. For more information, contact Joseph Cunningham of the Academic Writing Center at cunninju@ucmail.uc.edu.

Jerry Sheehan Post’s on Federally Funded Research Results and Accessibility

At the close of the 8th Open Access Week, Jerry Sheehan of the White House Office of Science And Technology Policy blogged about the impact of openly accessible research findings, especially federally funded research.

Three more agencies have announced public access plans (Department of Education (ED), Agency for International Development, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)), bringing the total to 19.  A good resource for understanding the requirements of the plans is the  the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition – http://sparcopen.org/ and the data sharing resource http://datasharing.sparcopen.org/ available through SPARC.

To read the complete blog post,  click here.