As always at this time of year, there will be some changes to the library's usual schedule in the coming weeks. Here is a summary of library hours from December 23 - January 2:
Plan accordingly!
Starting tomorrow, we will be waiving fines for one week for our "Food for Fines" food bank drive. Bring in a non-perishable food item for the Connecticut Food Bank and take up to $5.00 off your Medical Library overdue book fines.
Tomorrow, Friday, December 11th, will be Finn's last visit until next year. After that he will be taking his annual Holiday Break. Catch him while you can!
Finn, our Friday therapy dog, & his mom Krista are taking today off. Sorry for the late notice! They'll be off next Friday as well, but will return Friday, December 18 for their usual scheduled visit from noon to 2pm.
The Yale Medical Library and Yale Program for Humanities in Medicine partnered on behalf of the Yale Medical Library’s newest collection: Humanities in Medicine. This collection focuses on works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that relate to the human condition and human experience.
This month, we feature a newly published memoir by neurosurgeon Henry Marsh: Do No Harm. Marsh’s writings give insight into the complex and oft compelling inner thoughts that reflect the life and death decisions made by one neurosurgeon looking back over his long career.
The Humanities in Medicine Collection can be found in the shelving units directly across from the Circulation Desk.
Come join us and browse through these great new books!
Please come visit us in the Library, which is all dressed up for the holidays! In particular, marvel at our iconic Book Tree, nestled by the fireplace in the Medical Historical Library. Library staff lovingly built the 3rd edition of our Book Tree, using almost 500 volumes from the National Union Catalog. We wish you a very happy holiday season!
Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. We’ve come a long way since the first cases of the disease emerged over 30 years ago, and today there is a wealth of information resources on HIV/AIDS.
Clinical practice guidelines are available at the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Guidelines Portal.
For more in-depth research, at Yale, we provide access to over 200 e-books on HIV/AIDS topics, plus thousands of additional titles available in print. NIAID offers detailed information on current research efforts. In addition, there are some thorough library research guides freely available on the web, including Georgetown University Libraries’ “HIV & AIDS Resources” guide.
For data and statistics, Michigan State University Libraries list some key resources.
PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis): Check out pages on PrEP at CDC and AIDS.gov.
For basic information, the layperson seeking to learn more should begin at AIDSinfo. Other general web resources include:
Newly diagnosed with HIV? Start with “Newly Diagnosed: What you need to know” at AIDS.gov.
As always, for comprehensive help finding and navigating current knowledge on HIV/AIDS, contact your departmental librarian.
(Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassynewdelhi/5217132779)
Last night, while preparing an RNAseq dataset for functional analysis. I found this problem again. When opening high-throughput data results into Excel be aware that this software will convert (by default) some gene symbols into a date format- see examples in the table below. These conversions are not reversible so the original name cannot be recovered. Zeeberg et al. reported this problem back in 2004. If you are not aware of this and proceed with the functional analysis, those genes (converted into dates) will not be recognized and will not be computed. If you think that this will never happen to you, this error have been found in a project as important as the Cancer Genome Atlas.
One way to avoid this –from the end-user bioinformatics perspective- is to define the column containing the gene symbols as “Text” under the “Column data format” as shown in the figure below. It is always recommended –whenever possible- to use unique identifiers (Ensembl IDs, Gene IDs, Affymetrix IDs, etc.) other than gene symbols. If you are not sure, you can always go to the Gene database (NCBI, NIH) whenever looking for the official symbol of a gene.
For questions, consultations, or help with you functional analysis, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Example of some human gene symbols that will be converted into dates by Excel.
GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network) is a global infectious disease knowledge management tool. It is designed to assist in diagnosing infectious diseases and staying current on the latest trends in epidemiology and treatment. It also provides information on the history of outbreaks. Gideon is used for diagnosis and reference in the field of tropical and infectious diseases, epidemiology, microbiology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. There is detailed information on vaccines and vaccination throughout the world and an extensive section on worldwide travel. Access GIDEON at https://web.gideononline.com/loginx.php?user=yale.
Thursday, November 19 is the American Cancer Society's annual "Great American Smokeout," encouraging smokers to quit, even if it's only for one day. What better time than to round up a few key information resources on tobacco cessation?
The DynaMed chapter offers patient education materials, as does ClinicalKey. Click the dropdown menu to the left of the search box to filter results in the "Patient Education" source type.
For help finding more evidence on tobacco and smoking cessation, you can always contact your department's librarian.
