When I was moving between jobs at Pitt, I took a part-time consulting position with Penn State. I worked on several projects for the Penn State Center - Pittsburgh and the School of Engineering in College Park. In total, these projects ended up raising $19 Million for the University.
I don't know why we were so successful. I know I worked so very, very hard on each one. The power of the pen is amazing. Friday, I found out Penn State had received $5 Million in ARRA money for a $10 Million project I worked on.
I think it must be fluke and yet it keeps happening. I just wouldn't want to bet my career on it. I'd rather hold down a steady job and make extra money on top of that. I've already lived the life of an entrepreneur. It can be unbelievably hard.
Anyway, I imagine how I might be able to successfully write grants in the informatics world. Just take the skills I have gained and apply them to my current position and my own research as I continue to grow in academic skills. Synergy again!
The Internet and Heath Informatics class that has lead me to blogging has been great. I really like all the ideas and media that I have been introduced to.
Thanks to Elizabeth Larue!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Cataloging Abbreviations in Scientific Articles and Edward Tufte Workshop
As part of my Informatics Journal Club, it was my turn to summarize a chapter in our text. This particular chapter dealt with the use of abbreviations and I had to analyze two scientific articles based on what it covered. I decided to identify, catalog and count all of the abbreviations found in each article. I don't know why I like doing this kind of obsessive/compulsive thing but I do.
First, I captured every abbreviation with a yellow highlighter. Next, I created a small chart in the lower left-hand corner of each page to list all abbreviations found on that page. After that, I counted how many occurrences there were of each abbreviation. I built an Excel spreadsheet to capture all this information and created a scoring system for rating how well the abbreviation was used.
Unfortunately, I found I had to stop at that point. While I might be good at gathering data, I am not good at making mathematically significant meaning of what I gather. I see Statistics Classes looming large in my future!
So, I turned in this assignment electronically because I had signed up for the Edward Tufte workshop, downtown at the Westin Hotel, that was occuring oon the same day my class meets. At the workshop, listened to tips and tricks for making data and information accessible through the use of graphics. It was an interesting learning experience and I spent most of the time multi-tasking on my computer.
We got 4 beautiful hardcover books as part of our registration. It is really wild how important graphics can factor into the presentation of research results and the general transferring of information. One example of a supergraphic, as he calls them, was an illustration of the number of Napoleon's troops entering Russia, and making their way to Moscow, compared to the number of troops who actually made it out of Russia alive. The losses were staggering. They endured temperatures below -20 and -30. Crazy! Another reason NOT to go to war.
Check Professor Tufte out if you get a chance!
First, I captured every abbreviation with a yellow highlighter. Next, I created a small chart in the lower left-hand corner of each page to list all abbreviations found on that page. After that, I counted how many occurrences there were of each abbreviation. I built an Excel spreadsheet to capture all this information and created a scoring system for rating how well the abbreviation was used.
Unfortunately, I found I had to stop at that point. While I might be good at gathering data, I am not good at making mathematically significant meaning of what I gather. I see Statistics Classes looming large in my future!
So, I turned in this assignment electronically because I had signed up for the Edward Tufte workshop, downtown at the Westin Hotel, that was occuring oon the same day my class meets. At the workshop, listened to tips and tricks for making data and information accessible through the use of graphics. It was an interesting learning experience and I spent most of the time multi-tasking on my computer.
We got 4 beautiful hardcover books as part of our registration. It is really wild how important graphics can factor into the presentation of research results and the general transferring of information. One example of a supergraphic, as he calls them, was an illustration of the number of Napoleon's troops entering Russia, and making their way to Moscow, compared to the number of troops who actually made it out of Russia alive. The losses were staggering. They endured temperatures below -20 and -30. Crazy! Another reason NOT to go to war.
Check Professor Tufte out if you get a chance!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Pearls of Knowledge - MBA to PhD and Beyond
I am always looking for synergy between things. My ongoing fantasy is that I can somehow weave all aspects of my being into one discipline. I would like to bring my emotional, psychological, creative, scientific, business, physical and spiritual selves together into a purposefully cohesive whole.
My youngest daughter is 16 years old and I have 6 1/2 more years to help shepard her through two educational systems: high school and college. This gives me ample time to accomplish my own educational goals.
In my Decision Making in Complex Environments class, we are learning to do decision modeling using the professor's software program. Since I work in the area of Biomedical Informatics, I have been tossing around the idea that I could focus on how to improve significant decisions being made in the area of medicine.
This has lead me to considering the concept of getting both an MBA and a PhD in Biomedical Informatics. Business is really the discipline of considering all real-world aspects of a venture: benefits, opportunities, costs and risks. Informatics is a field that is so broad and comprehensive, like the universe, I haven't yet discovered even the edges. This provides me with the sensation that the door is wide open for exploration.
When the world becomes your oyster, it is easy to feel like a pearl!
My youngest daughter is 16 years old and I have 6 1/2 more years to help shepard her through two educational systems: high school and college. This gives me ample time to accomplish my own educational goals.
In my Decision Making in Complex Environments class, we are learning to do decision modeling using the professor's software program. Since I work in the area of Biomedical Informatics, I have been tossing around the idea that I could focus on how to improve significant decisions being made in the area of medicine.
This has lead me to considering the concept of getting both an MBA and a PhD in Biomedical Informatics. Business is really the discipline of considering all real-world aspects of a venture: benefits, opportunities, costs and risks. Informatics is a field that is so broad and comprehensive, like the universe, I haven't yet discovered even the edges. This provides me with the sensation that the door is wide open for exploration.
When the world becomes your oyster, it is easy to feel like a pearl!
Friday, March 26, 2010
USCAP 2010 - Washington, D.C. - People Love Truffles
I just returned from the USCAP Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. (United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology). It was attended by approximately 4,191 people involved in some aspect of the field of pathology.
I was part of a team of four conducting a research study involving 22 pathology residents, fellow and experts and a marketing effort to share information about SlideTutor, a computerized tutoring system for pathologists under development in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Rebecca Crowley serves as the Principal Investigator on the project. The system uses virtual slides and computerized tutoring tools to teach residents, fellows and attending pathologists visual identification of conditions and diseases.
Probably the biggest lesson I learned in the five days I spent in D.C. is that the only way to really make a project successful is to work it. Effort must be put forth. Thought must be invested. Energy must be expended. Adjustments must be continuously made to improve results.
As I gazed down our aisle at the EXPO, I saw many booths staffed by people who were sitting down and working on their computers or PDAs. Whether there was one person in our aisle or twenty, they did not alter their behaviors or work hard to engage attendees.
I spent almost 7 hours standing at the front of our booth each day for three days straight. I kept a perpetual smile on my face and said "Good Morning!" or "Good Afternoon" to as many people as possible. I engaged visitors and drew them into our booth for discussion and demonstration of our system. My marketing partner was the computer programmer on the SlideTutor project. He was able to continue the conversation or demo the system while I turned around and engaged more visitors.
Now, I must stop here and give credit where credit is due! Dr. Crowley suggested that our promotional item consist of very fine chocolates. She said it was a big draw for her at conferences. Based on this input, I chose Lindt Lindor Milk and Dark Chocolate Truffles which I placed in a white basket with colorful green tissue paper to draw attention. I also printed out two very large images of truffles to place in our booth and included, "Enjoy A Truffle" on our large sign outside the booth.
This combination did create a real draw! We immediately began a tally to keep fairly accurate count of the number of people who simply took truffles with no interaction regarding our computer system and the number who we were able to actively engage in conversations regarding the system.
Truffle count could not be used to tally the number of visitors since some showed great restraint and did not take a truffle, while other visitors took, literally, handfuls of truffles.
In our final count, we had over 394 visitors to our booth and actively engaged over 150 of those visitors in SlideTutor conversations and demonstrations.
Informatics Project - Success!
I was part of a team of four conducting a research study involving 22 pathology residents, fellow and experts and a marketing effort to share information about SlideTutor, a computerized tutoring system for pathologists under development in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Rebecca Crowley serves as the Principal Investigator on the project. The system uses virtual slides and computerized tutoring tools to teach residents, fellows and attending pathologists visual identification of conditions and diseases.
Probably the biggest lesson I learned in the five days I spent in D.C. is that the only way to really make a project successful is to work it. Effort must be put forth. Thought must be invested. Energy must be expended. Adjustments must be continuously made to improve results.
As I gazed down our aisle at the EXPO, I saw many booths staffed by people who were sitting down and working on their computers or PDAs. Whether there was one person in our aisle or twenty, they did not alter their behaviors or work hard to engage attendees.
I spent almost 7 hours standing at the front of our booth each day for three days straight. I kept a perpetual smile on my face and said "Good Morning!" or "Good Afternoon" to as many people as possible. I engaged visitors and drew them into our booth for discussion and demonstration of our system. My marketing partner was the computer programmer on the SlideTutor project. He was able to continue the conversation or demo the system while I turned around and engaged more visitors.
Now, I must stop here and give credit where credit is due! Dr. Crowley suggested that our promotional item consist of very fine chocolates. She said it was a big draw for her at conferences. Based on this input, I chose Lindt Lindor Milk and Dark Chocolate Truffles which I placed in a white basket with colorful green tissue paper to draw attention. I also printed out two very large images of truffles to place in our booth and included, "Enjoy A Truffle" on our large sign outside the booth.
This combination did create a real draw! We immediately began a tally to keep fairly accurate count of the number of people who simply took truffles with no interaction regarding our computer system and the number who we were able to actively engage in conversations regarding the system.
Truffle count could not be used to tally the number of visitors since some showed great restraint and did not take a truffle, while other visitors took, literally, handfuls of truffles.
In our final count, we had over 394 visitors to our booth and actively engaged over 150 of those visitors in SlideTutor conversations and demonstrations.
Informatics Project - Success!
Photonovella Fun!
In my health informatics class, I was introduced to the concept of using the photonovella as a mechanism for health education. I learned that this form of communication is very strong in South America, Africa and many underdeveloped countries.
This surprised and delighted me. The idea that a comic book-like format could do so much social good was enlightening.
Sherry, my partner on this project, and I decided we would focus on childhood health/fitness/obesity. Sherry scoped out several programs for creating photonovellas and she suggested we use "Comic Life". I agreed that it had a very accessible format.
I started to consider what our story might consist of and began to run memories of childhood literary favorites through my head: Wizard of Oz, Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Stuart Little, The Borrowers, etc.
I was enamored with the idea of including little people or characters. My daughter had a copy of "Indian in the Cupboard" on her bookshelf so I breezed through that and loved it. However, I realized that including small figures in our pictures would add a level of technicality that might be quite difficult and time consuming.
After I saw "Alice in Wonderland" in 3-D with my family, I thought it might be a good idea if our main character went to sleep and woke up in a different, healthier, world.
From that point, everything began to fall into place. Comic Life has 16 panels to choose from and the first decision I made was to use each panel at least once. I asked my husband to give me his initial impression of what each panel indicated visually. From there, my story started to take form as a young person transitions from unhealthy to healthy thoughts and habits.
Sherry has recruited family members to participate in the actual photo sessions and we are going to use computer-aided treatment of the "other" world photos to help distinguish them from the photos taken of things happening in this world.
This is a very cool project and I am really happy to be working on it.
More soon!
This surprised and delighted me. The idea that a comic book-like format could do so much social good was enlightening.
Sherry, my partner on this project, and I decided we would focus on childhood health/fitness/obesity. Sherry scoped out several programs for creating photonovellas and she suggested we use "Comic Life". I agreed that it had a very accessible format.
I started to consider what our story might consist of and began to run memories of childhood literary favorites through my head: Wizard of Oz, Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Stuart Little, The Borrowers, etc.
I was enamored with the idea of including little people or characters. My daughter had a copy of "Indian in the Cupboard" on her bookshelf so I breezed through that and loved it. However, I realized that including small figures in our pictures would add a level of technicality that might be quite difficult and time consuming.
After I saw "Alice in Wonderland" in 3-D with my family, I thought it might be a good idea if our main character went to sleep and woke up in a different, healthier, world.
From that point, everything began to fall into place. Comic Life has 16 panels to choose from and the first decision I made was to use each panel at least once. I asked my husband to give me his initial impression of what each panel indicated visually. From there, my story started to take form as a young person transitions from unhealthy to healthy thoughts and habits.
Sherry has recruited family members to participate in the actual photo sessions and we are going to use computer-aided treatment of the "other" world photos to help distinguish them from the photos taken of things happening in this world.
This is a very cool project and I am really happy to be working on it.
More soon!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
More HTML Frustration
I can move forward but my ignorance holds no bounds in a new environment. I can do only so much and then, I am turned back, by a message
Error: 403
You are not authorized to view this page
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.
Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button to try again with different credentials.
If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Open the www.pitt.edu home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
I have worked without understanding. Look at how interesting my HTML appears in this post:
Pittsburgh Marathon
<br />
<br />
<br />
<title>This is a link to the Pittsburgh Marathon. You can use this link to access all information about the <br />
2010 Marathon.<br />
<br />
Link here:
Karma Lisa Edwards
2-28-10
link to top
Marathon Tips
This is a link to a website with marathon tips. You can use this link to access a variety of information about preparing for a marathon.
<br />
<br />
<font color="#006600"> Link Here:</font><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.essortment.com/all/marathontrain_rerg.htm"<a/a><br />
<br />
<p>put text in here <p><br />
<table border="2" width=75%><tr> <td>Race Date: .</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Start Location: .</td> </tr>
</table><br />
<br />
<ul><li>Search 1</li>
<li>Search 2</li>
<li>Search 3</li>
</ul><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol><li>Hunt 1</li>
<li>Hunt 2</li>
<li>Hunt 3</li>
</ol><br />
<br />
<br />
<!--Avatar picture--><br />
<img src="avatar.jpg"><br />
<br />
<!--My name--><br />
<title>Karma Lisa Edwards
2-28-10
link to top
Eating and Drinking During the Marathon
This is a link to a YouTube video about what to eat and drink during a marathon.
<br />
<br />
<font color="#006600"> Link Here:</font><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-GzSmPan60&feature=related"<a/a><br />
<br />
<p>Put text in here<p><br />
<table border="2" width=75%><tr> <td>Race Date: .</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Start Location: .</td> </tr>
</table><br />
<br />
<ul><li>Search 1</li>
<li>Search 2</li>
<li>Search 3</li>
</ul><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol><li>Hunt 1</li>
<li>Hunt 2</li>
<li>Hunt 3</li>
</ol><br />
<!--Avatar picture--><br />
<img src="avatar.jpg"><br />
<br />
<!--My name--><br />
<title>Karma Lisa Edwards
2-28-10
link to top
Top Marathon Injuries
This is a link to an animation I made called Marathon Man III. It covers the top ten injuries <br />
marathon runner face.
<br />
<br />
<font color="#006600"> Link Here:</font><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6065191/"<a/a><br />
<br />
<table border="2" width=75%><tr> <td>Race Date: .</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Start Location: .</td> </tr>
</table><br />
<br />
<ul><li>Search 1</li>
<li>Search 2</li>
<li>Search 3</li>
</ul><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol><li>Hunt 1</li>
<li>Hunt 2</li>
<li>Hunt 3</li>
</ol><br />
<br />
<!--Avatar picture--><br />
<img src="avatar.jpg"><br />
<br />
<!--My name--><br />
<title>Karma Lisa Edwards
2-28-10
link to top
It is a test. Informatics is great!
This is my second sentence.
This is my third sentence.
This is a color sentence
This is a bookman size 7 sentence.
This is an italics sentence.
This is an underline sentence.
This is a bold sentence.
This is a heading sentence.
Error: 403
You are not authorized to view this page
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.
Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button to try again with different credentials.
If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Open the www.pitt.edu home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
I have worked without understanding. Look at how interesting my HTML appears in this post:
Pittsburgh Marathon
Link here:
Put text in here about the marathon
| Race Date: . |
| Start Location: . |
- Search 1
- Search 2
- Search 3
- Hunt 1
- Hunt 2
- Hunt 3
link to top
Marathon Tips
2-28-10
link to top
Eating and Drinking During the Marathon
2-28-10
link to top
Top Marathon Injuries
2-28-10
link to top
It is a test. Informatics is great!
This is my second sentence.
This is my third sentence.
This is a color sentence
This is a bookman size 7 sentence.
This is an italics sentence.
This is an underline sentence.
This is a bold sentence.
this is a Heading 3 sentence.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
HTML Frustration - Not enough data - Not enough memory
I am trying to work on the creation of my website. I thought that it would be easy. I thought I had enough information and enough recall from class a week and a half ago but no such luck. What seemed natural in class, following instructions like a good little sheep, seems totally inaccessible now.
So, here I sit, struggling to even figure out where to start. I can't remember how to connect, can't access my original notepad (it has turned into an html document and shows none of the code).
This reminds me of my very first encounter with a mainframe computer. It was my first year at the University of Iowa and I took a computer class. I thought I understood it all. I thought I could reproduce what I learned. I went back in the computer lab and nothing I did worked. I looked at the instructions, I followed the instructions and could not get it to work for hours. Turned out I needed to change the capitaliztion. I can't remember now if I should have done it lowercase or uppercase but it was something that simple.
This feels the same. I know so little and yet it will be simple things that I find out I have to do to make things work.
This is the intersection between my health and my informatics. My body is not happy I am sitting and working on trying to learn HTML. I cannot learn more informatics if I stop working and trying.
There's the rub!
So, here I sit, struggling to even figure out where to start. I can't remember how to connect, can't access my original notepad (it has turned into an html document and shows none of the code).
This reminds me of my very first encounter with a mainframe computer. It was my first year at the University of Iowa and I took a computer class. I thought I understood it all. I thought I could reproduce what I learned. I went back in the computer lab and nothing I did worked. I looked at the instructions, I followed the instructions and could not get it to work for hours. Turned out I needed to change the capitaliztion. I can't remember now if I should have done it lowercase or uppercase but it was something that simple.
This feels the same. I know so little and yet it will be simple things that I find out I have to do to make things work.
This is the intersection between my health and my informatics. My body is not happy I am sitting and working on trying to learn HTML. I cannot learn more informatics if I stop working and trying.
There's the rub!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)