Biomedical Engineering Reference
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in natural product synthesis which became the wiki TotallyRetrosynthetic
[111], a laboratory notebook for Faith [112], and a blog and wiki for the
Rosania team based on the UsefulChem template to track his work on subcel-
lular drug transport [113, 114]. The Rosania group also extended the reach of
sharing their experimental results on Second Life [115].
25.3.10
Other Types of Collaboration
The UsefulChem project experimented with another form of collaboration:
guest blogging. David Bradley reported on open access in chemistry [116, 117]
and arsenic remediation projects [118]. On occasion a student would submit
a post, but over time the UsefulChem blog evolved to a single-author modality.
An unexpected collaboration arose involving the interaction of students in the
humanities with the UsefulChem project [119]. The UsefulChem Writing
Partners program required students from the Ritter-Guth group at Lehigh
Carbon Community College to write less technically about UsefulChem
themes, especially malaria [120]. This was benefi cial for both the humanities
students to understand how science is done and for the chemistry students to
try to explain their research to a wider community.
In July 2006 an anonymous commenter brought up the issue regarding
whether patents can help or hinder humanitarian applications [121]. This is an
example of a type of collaboration originating from working openly, where
larger issues and concerns can be addressed early on. We also found that
“accidental collaboration” was occasionally very useful. For example, by moni-
toring search terms on Sitemeter, we discovered that water was a viable and
potentially better solvent for Ugi reactions [122].
In November 2006 an offer was made to provide compounds on a “copy-
left” basis, the concept being that samples of products made in the lab that
could be spared would be provided freely—as long as the research done with
those compounds was made open immediately [123]. Thus far no requests for
this type of collaboration have been made.
In May 2008 another opportunity to collaborate with a company arose.
Mettler-Toledo lent Drexel a liquid-handling robot to carry out Ugi reactions
using more automation [124, 125]. An optimization study was done and the
problems encountered with the use of such a parallel strategy were reported
[126]. In addition, the
Journal of Visualized Experiments
(JoVE) contributed
by sending a cameraman to record a video to document the execution of the
reaction [127]. The JoVE article, composed of a conventional text portion and
a video, was published in November 2008 [107].
A fi rst attempt was made to allow collaboration via a specifi c page for
anyone to request experiments to perform [128]. No requests were made from
this attempt, although this strategy was successful for requests of solubility
measurements. For example, a request for the solubility of pyrene in acetoni-
trile was made from a group in Israel to assess soil contamination, and the
Drexel group provided an answer within days. A Google spreadsheet was set
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