The Top 10 New Organisms of 2007
Genetic engineering isn’t just for scientists in ivory towers or corporate R&D labs anymore. Researchers are still creating new mice and crops every week, but the tools and knowledge necessary to create organisms never before seen on Earth have pushed out to pet breeders, artists and college kids.
A Wired News first, here we count down the top 10 organisms that didn’t exist on Dec. 31, 2006.
Source: Wired News
Lists: UK: Top Baby Names 2007
Complete News Release (4 pages; PDF)
From the report:
Boys
Once again, there is no change at the top, with Jack the number one boys’ name. Thomas also retains his second place slot with 5803 boys sharing the name in 2007. The only movement in the top five is the exchange of places between Joshua and Oliver to third and fourth respectively, with Harry remaining fifth.Girls
Grace, who only joined the top five last year, is now the most popular name for girls. Ruby has also increased in popularity and, with 4355 girls sharing the name, is the second choice for girls in 2007. Last year’s most popular girls’ name, Olivia, is third. Emily has risen one place to fourth and Jessica has fallen two places to fifth.
Source: National Statistics Office
Databases: Second Hand Songs (Cover Music)
From the site:
Find out who performed the original version of a particular song, or who covered that song.
Unlike many related sites, we try to be as complete as possible (not just performer and song title, but also songwriters and original media) and order the data in a reusable and maintainable way.The database already contains 66105 songs (15907 originals, 48608 cover songs and 1590 songs with samples) and 24043 artists (performers and songwriters).
Lots of fun and very very useful! Search by artist, song, label, or medium. Impressive advanced interface also available.
Source: S H S
Beta Microsoft Live Health (aka HealthVault) with Direct Link Live.com Beta Section
If you review the Live.com “More” section (below the search box) you’ll now see a link to Live Health. It provides access to the often discussed MS HealthVault (for personal health info) along with info on many health topics. The link is present on the U.S. version but not on the UK or Canadian versions.
Here’s a sample search for a common search and health issue: Diabetes
You’ll find content from the ‘open web,” and MedlinePlus along with sponsored links and books for sale from Amazon.com. You’ll also see how you can store and visualize your own health info using the MS HealthVault. Links to Live Health are also triggered on Live.com results pages as seen here.
What do others offer? Here are a few examples for the search Diabetes:
++ RevolutionHealth/Kosmix
Look for refinements in the left rail including:
+++ Drugs and Treatments
+++ Videos
+++ Clinical Trials
Revolution also offers services to store personal health data.
++ Google
Refinements to help focus search.
++ Yahoo
Leads user to Yahoo Health.
++ Ask.com*
Health Smart Answers with content from numerous sources including Healthline. Zoom Related Results (left rail) are also present. Expansions include:
+++ Hypoglycemia
+++ Insulin
+++ Diabetic Recipes
See Also: Other Beta Tests Found in MS Live Search “Other” Section:
+ Academic (Beta)
+ Book Search (Beta)
+ Macros
+ Feeds (Beta)
+ Local
Notice the directory structure on the Local home page.
+ QnA (Beta)
+ Classifieds
* Gary is Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com
See Also:
Web experts weigh value of ‘trustmarks’ for health sites
A seal of approval on a health information Web site should not automatically instill consumer confidence, according to experts who discussed the role of such “trustmarks” at a Health Improvement Institute workshop Monday.
Whatever rating “you come up with has to be page-specific, rather than just domain-specific,” Tom Eng, president and founder of health search engine Healia, said in explaining the difficulty of putting trustmarks on health sites.
The Good Housekeeping seal of approval does not apply to information on the Internet, despite such claims as “certified by the American Heart Association” or “dermatologist recommended,” many of the participants agreed.
The dialogue regarding site ratings — part of a daylong workshop on the quality of health information on the Internet — was intended to stimulate ideas for policy-making. Participants included representatives from Consumer Reports WebWatch, Indiana University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology and WebMD.
Source: Government Executive
+++ UK: People Search, New from 192.com: Semantic Search Beta
…a new search engine that is designed to deliver you more results, more often. It aims to accommodate user errors, and to always offer the very closest matches to a search, not only the exact matches. This semantic search engine is currently only available in this Beta Release for people searching.
+++ UK: New Video Page for Sky News
We’ve posted about new pages and services from CNN and CNBC, now it’s Sky News UK’s turn.
+++ New Editions from Oxford University Press: “Who’s Who” 2008 and “Who Was Who” Available Online
Webcasts: Author Interviews: Best of Publishersweekly.com “On the Road”
Q&A interviews with authors on book tours. Look for this series to continue as part of the many author interviews PW provides.
See Also: Author Interviews (RSS Feed)
Lists: Top 25 Science Stories of 2007
See Also: Scientific American Expert Directory
Source: Scientific American
ResourceShelf posted the national list as voted on by AP news editors and others, the other day. Here are several lists of Top News Stories by state also from AP editors.
+ Colorado ||| Sports Stories
+ Florida
+ Hawaii
+ Iowa
+ Montana
See Also: Top 10 Business Stories (National)
As voted on by AP editors and news directors.
Fast Facts: The Presidential Election 2008
Another useful compilation from the U.S. Census. Stats include:
71% and 72%
Percentage of citizens in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, who voted in the 2004 presidential election.
79%
The 2004 voting rate in Minnesota. Other states that voted at 70 percent or more included Wisconsin, Oregon, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Iowa and Montana.
20%
The percentage of registered voters who said the reason they did not vote in 2004 was that they were too busy or had conflicting work or school schedules.
80%
The turnout rate in 2004 for citizens with a bachelor’s degree or higher, greater than the rate for citizens whose highest level of educational attainment was a high school diploma (56 percent).
Many more stats can be found in the document.
Source: U.S. Census
Mobifusion Brings Oxford University Press to Mobile Markets
The mobile editions of Oxford dictionaries produced by Mobifusion are easy-to-navigate, ‘smart’ and complete versions of key dictionaries like the Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary and even Concise Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Also coming soon are Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary, Oxford-Duden German Dictionary, Oxford-Paravia Italian Dictionary and Oxford Portuguese Mini-Dictionary.
Source: FierceWireless
The Police Lock Top 2007 Tours Spot
Concert tours by The Police, Kenny Chesney, Justin Timberlake, Celine Dion and Van Halen lead the list of the 20 top-grossing tours in North America in 2007, according to Pollstar’s official year-end data.
The long-awaited reunion of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland earned the trio $131.9 million over 54 shows with an average ticket price of $114.32.
Source: Pollstar
Lists: Prominent Deaths of 2007
List with date of death and brief background about the person.
Source: AFP
See Also: Celebrity Deaths 2007
Source: AP
Resource Guide on Youth Employment
From Richelle Van Snellenberg at the International Labour Organization Library:
The ILO Library has produced a new resource guide on youth employment. This guide is a starting point for anyone beginning research on youth employment. It provides links to key ILO publications on the topic, ILO labour standards and data, as well as to other resources around the world.
Browse by theme or region. Page also includes annotated links to statistical resources.
Source: International Labour Organization Library
Year-End: 2007 Year in Sports Photos
An online gallery of images from SI.
Source: Sports Illustrated
See Also: Top 5 NFL Stories (Sporting News)
+ Become a Mozilla ‘Weaver’ (News.com)
A basic set of web-based services and more from Mozilla Labs.
Direct to Weave ||| Direct to Mozilla Labs
+ Call for Demos: The 9th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM 2008)
+ Call for Papers: Efficiency Issues in Information Retrieval
Integrating Ontologies and Relational Data
In recent years, an increasing number of scientific and other domains have attempted to standardize their terminology and provide reasoning capabilities through ontologies, in order to facilitate data exchange. This has spurred research into Web-based languages, formalisms, and especially query systems based on ontologies.
Yet we argue that DBMS techniques can be extended to provide many of the same capabilities, with benefits in scalability and performance. We present OWLDB, a lightweight and extensible approach for the integration of relational databases and description logic based ontologies. One of the key differences between relational databases and ontologies is the high degree of implicit information contained in ontologies. OWLDB integrates the two schemes by codifying ontologies’ implicit information using a set of sound and complete inference rules for SHOIN (the description logic behind OWL ontologies. These inference rules can be translated into queries on a relational DBMS instance, and the query results (representing inferences) can be added back to this database. Subsequently, database applications can make direct use of this inferred, previously implicit knowledge, e.g., in the annotation of biomedical databases. As our experimental comparison to a native description logic reasoner and a triple store shows, OWLDB provides significantly greater scalability and query capabilities, without sacrifcing performance with respect to inference.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 326 KB)
Source: University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report
MS Virtual Earth Adds 3D City Imagery for a Bunch of Locations
3D textured imagery for more than 60 cities (listed here).
Cities include:
+ Pasadena, CA
+ Kansas City, MO and KS
+ Boulder, CO
+ St. Louis, MO
+ Salt Lake City, UT
+ Cleveland, OH
+ Raleigh, NC
But that’s not all.
This post list what else was released in terms of new aerial imagery. Global in scope. Wow!
The delay index gives travelers a clear indication of the likelihood of disruptions in their travel plans at a glance. The system monitors delays and cancellations at airports worldwide and assigns a “delay index” ranging from 0 (little or no disruption) to 5 (severe disruptions) for each major airport. Users can then easily click through for details on specific flight status and create email and text message alerts to stay informed.
An airport’s flight delay index reflects its current on-time departure performance adjusted for delay severity and cancellations. Delay index scores appear as an overlay on country, regional, continental and global maps so travelers can see current conditions anywhere they expect to travel. Pop up windows appear when specific airports are selected that provide detailed scoring, an indication of the index trend (better or worse), and links to get current status information on individual flight arrivals and departures.
See Also: Our Most Recent Update of Places to Track Aircraft in Near Real-Time
+ Canada: e-Learning in the Education and Training Market
+ Doing Business in Trinidad and Tobago: A Country Commercial Guide
+ Germany: Pet Food and Supplies
+ Computer Hardware Market in Serbia
+ Japan: Diagnostic Imaging Device Market
+ China: Franchise Market Report Shanghai
+ Philippines: Franchising Industry
+ Crossrail – London’s Proposed New Rail Network
Source: U.S. Commercial Service
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