Foldit – New protein folding game

Foldit is a new computer game for protein folders. I found out about it whilst managing my BOINC account; my computer runs calculations for scientific and medical research programmes – rosetta@home, boincsimap, SETI@home and malariacontrol.net. Rosetta@home is about protein folding, design and docking, and Foldit uses the same program for the human effort.

The game is already popular (i.e. there are many players) and folding is accompanied by both friendly banter and serious discussions in the chat room. I’ve spent some spare time folding and recently there was a deadline for some of the puzzles, meaning I finally get ranked and receive my first “global points”. Folding is tricky, but there is help available 24/7 in the chat room, as players are spread all over the world in their respective time zones. For most people, it is primarily about giving a hand to research, but the game is a bit addictive, as well, and to date there are almost 29 000 activated player profiles. The software, by the way, can be used on most computers (although not on non-intel macs).

The quality of the video is much better if you watch it on the Foldit webpage.

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Tree of life

Tree of Life Web Project is an ambitious project about all organisms on Earth. The species are presented with high-quality pictures and references, making this web page particularly appealing in its conciseness. As I studied microbiology, I used the project as a first introduction and found the phylogenetic relationships between species to be easily understood. The design of the page also makes it easy to browse around without loss of feeling for the hierarchal level. A true nutshell!

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Art history – A fantastic timeline

Vatican Palace, Vatican State, Stanza della Segnatura, The School of Athens, 1510–1511, fresco by Raphael (Italian, 1483–1520).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made an extensive Timeline of Art History that is absolutely fabulous. It is easy to browse and the essays are an inspiration as are the many photographs of very high quality. All in a nutshell, enjoy!

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A tidal wave called information

For many years, the process of finding information on the web has annoyed me a bit, which is why I’ve spent some time looking for alternatives to Google and the other traditional search engines. Until this date I’ve found these appealing alternatives:

• Metacrawler is a meta search engine, i.e. it searches the other engines, and presents the results in a traditional list form. I’ve been using it for the past decade or so.
• KartOO is also a meta search engine, but the results are presented on a map where connections are visualized. A bonus for those who speak several languages is the possibility of changing language with just one click on a different flag so that you don’t have to start all over again with a navigation to another “subpage” (of for instance Google). You can also save your result map.
• Quintura is a new type of search engine that helps you refine your query instead of start all over again. In addition to the traditional list of links, there’s a cloud of refining terms with your original term centered at the center of it. You then choose a term to combine with the first one and then make a new query, only to narrow the list of links down. Finally, you can save and share your result.
• Walk2web is a starting point for “walking the web”, meandering along connections between sites, which means you start by entering a url and then walk2web shows you the incoming and outgoing connections to/from that particular site. The idea is not to go looking for answers to specific questions, but to browse rather aimlessly within a bigger category. This is a brilliant idea and I wonder why nobody has done this years ago.

I have also looked for specific search engines, i.e. engines that search within only one field, for instance medicine. So far I’ve found these pages:

• Medworm is a medical RSS filter engine.
• Intute, a service provided by several of the universities in UK, can help you on the way if you want subject-specific access to trustworthy web resources. (Trustworthy says who? Well, that’s what they claim on their homepage…) Especially their Virtual Training Suite is worth giving a shot, since it can direct you to search engines covering only your particular field.
• For instance the medicine-specific VTU directed me to MedHunt, an engine provided by Swiss HON, Health On the Net Foundation.

As the web expands, evolves and becomes more difficult to navigate, I find it crucial to know not only where but also how to find information fast and efficiently. Personal information management (PIM) is highly relevant these days and there is a vast array of tools to help on the way. Most people are rather “conservative” in their choice of search engine and this is an attempt to challenge that habitual behaviour, to shake things up a bit, so stay tuned.

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Fragments – The dangerous life of a red thread

Fragments will hopefully be my final attempt at blogging. I have kept several blogs for some years now, each of them for a different purpose, but I feel the time is right to bring them together. As I have many interests in the most diverse of areas, Fragments will probably evolve to a discontinuous text, in which it might be almost impossible to sense a red thread at times, but such are many things in life. I wish the reader welcome to an insight into the world seen from my point of view and I will do my best to provide a source wherever necessary, but the absolute truth is, as always, hard to define.

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