Shaking Up Earthquake Studies by Increasing Access to Data, Tools and Research Results

Earthquake rupture forecast studies provide information about the probabilities of when earthquakes will occur, where they’ll take place and how strong they’ll be, but the computational tools and data aren’t available to a wide scientific community. That’s about to change.

New Collaboration Between RCSB Protein Data Bank and Amazon Web Services Provides Expanded Data Storage and Access to Researchers Worldwide

The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB), headquartered at the Rutgers Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, announces the expansion of its data storage capacity through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Open Data Sponsorship Program. The AWS program is providing the RCSB PDB with more than 100 terabytes of storage for no-cost delivery of Protein Data Bank information to millions of scientists, educators, and students around the world working in fundamental biology, biomedicine, bioenergy, and bioengineering/biotechnology.

Data access restrictions reduce diversity in scientific research, study finds

New technologies have allowed governments and other organizations to collect large, high-quality datasets that can be used in a variety of scientific research, from economics to biology to astronomy. Yet high costs and restrictions can limit both the diversity of researchers who have access and the range of research undertaken with this valuable data.

The University of Chicago is awarded a major federal contract to host a new COVID-19 medical imaging resource center

A new center hosted at the University of Chicago — co-led by the largest medical imaging professional organizations in the country — will help tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic by curating a massive database of medical images to help better understand and treat the disease. The work is supported by a $20 million, two-year federal contract that could be renewable to $50 million over five years.

As hospitals walk the tightrope of patient data-sharing, one system offers a new balance

Every major medical center in America sits on a gold mine of patient data that could be worth millions of dollars to companies that could use it to develop new treatments and technologies. A new framework could help them do so more responsibly, going beyond the minimum legal requirements and respecting patients by giving them more say in how their individual data may be used.

Knowledgebase is power for nuclear reactor developers

Six new nuclear reactor technologies are planned to commercially deploy between 2030 and 2040. ORNL’s Weiju Ren heads a project managing structural materials information. This conversation explores challenges and opportunities in sharing nuclear materials knowledge internationally.

‘Hidden’ data exacerbates rural public health inequities

While some of the data rural public health officials need to better serve their communities and guide public health policy and spending exists, that data is hard to access and use. University of Washington researchers conducted qualitative surveys of rural public health leaders in four Northwest states to find the barriers they face to getting and using data. The results of their research have been published in JAMIA and the researchers are establishing an accessible database with the tools rural officials need to understand and share\ the data.