Contents Have Been Much, Much Worse
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2 EMBL October 1999 &cetera Newsletter of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory published by the Office of Information and Public Affairs A new look and feel for EMBL’s Alumni Meeting official WWW pages Update The Office of Information and Public EMBL’s central site largely consists of You may not be an Affairs and Björn Kindler of the pages created by groups, services, facili- Computer and Networking Group have ties, outstations and individuals, and alumnus yet... redesigned several features of the EMBL these will not be affected. Groups and but you can still take part in the 25th website which will make it much easier individuals will continue to have a free Anniversary Alumni Meeting from to keep information up-to-date and will hand in designing the format and con- October 21 to 23, 1999. Programmes make the site as a whole more useful. The tent of their pages. The changes affect a are on display throughout EMBL and all events are open to current EMBL number of "official pages" which the site process is not yet finished, but enough staff. You do need to register to take has been done to start making the new has always hosted: the main page, part in evening meals and the visit to pages accessible. Users from inside research reports, the PhD Programme Schwetzingen Castle on Saturday EMBL can browse the new pages over the brochure, overviews of the Laboratory, afternoon... This is the only event next few weeks (see the address on page etc. The overall responsibility for this where space is limited. Please register 2). EMBL’s web presentation is such an part of the site belongs to a WWW "task by Tuesday, October 12. For more force" formed last year and headed by information and registration, visit the important issue that we need your feed- Alumni Website at back before replacing the main page and Christian Boulin. The OIPA will maintain opening the site to external users. the information that appears. page 2 www.embl-heidelberg.de/ LocalInfo/Alumni/ It was a (very short) dark and stormy night... ...for most watchers of the recent solar eclipse, but things could Contents have been much, much worse. Read about what happened during the transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769 in from the sister EMBL’s newww.pages 2 sciences. The Bioinformer 3 page 8 a talk with Harold Varmus 4 News from Hamburg 6 Kids @ EMBL 6 a talk with... The EMBO Corner 7 from the sister sciences 8 Harold Varmus Science & Society 9 People @ EMBL 9 Blunt ends & fill-ins 10 page 4 Harold Varmus is Director of the U.S. visit was to take part in an expert panel to make a great deal of scientific literature National Institutes of Health (NIH). His for consultations concerning EMBL’s next free and publicly available via the work in cancer research has been recog- five-year scientific programme. Internet. EMBO Executive Director Frank Gannon and Director General Fotis nized with numerous awards and hon- The NIH is involved in setting stan- Kafatos have been heavily involved in ors, including a Nobel Prize for Medicine dards for scientific policy in the United discussions to determine the ultimate or Physiology in 1989. He visited EMBL States and thus NIH activities have a sig- shape of this plan. from September 15 to 17 to deliver the nificant influence on the way science is second General Motors Cancer Research practiced throughout the world. Recently Despite the full schedule of his visit, Lecture; he discussed the use of viral vec- Dr. Varmus and the NIH have announced Dr. Varmus took time out for an informal tors in developing mouse models of a new initiative in electronic publishing, chat about his role at the NIH, science human cancer. Another purpose of his called “PubMed Central,” whose aim is funding, and electronic publishing. EMBL &cetera A much-needed overhaul of EMBL’s website (continued from page 1) This The immense size of our site encour- new standard header aged us to create an interface based on a List has links to the most impor- of group members. tant “official” pages for easy database rather than on individually- Clicking on individual names navigation. You can use the composed web pages. The former system will give you contact details header on other official EMBL often required recomposing, reformat- and other useful informa- pages maintained by your tion. ting, and uploading numerous files group. whenever a single piece of information changed. Now our web pages will be put together electronically each time a user The search engine looks at them, drawing on the latest retrieves scientific key - information in our database. Updating a words and people’s names piece of information there will automati- from an index that also fea- cally change every page on which this tures synonyms and alterna- tive spellings. You may enter item appears. single words, first or last names, or parts of Since most of the official information these. we maintain relates to groups and their research—PhD brochure pages, Research Reports, etc.—we have organized the new site around groups. Links to the Link group’s own page are provided in to the most recent several places. full-text Research Report Links Abstracts to your group’s home- of recent publications page Links Links to services your to recent press group provides will be releases and papers in listed here. press List of collaborations Short summary of research: the text from the PhD Programme brochure Keywords describing your research. Some of these Contact words are shared by other groups; information for clicking on the word links you to the group those groups. You can add or remove keywords to the list for your group at any time by sending an e- mail to info@embl-hei- TestTest thethedelberg.de web!. This is an example of a typical group www.embl-heidelberg.de page. The final www.embl-heidelberg.de pagesdifferent. may look /LocalInfo/webtest/LocalInfo/webtest Box for further searches 3 much easier for everyone when we have to produce these reports every year. Why can't I change the layout of the database page for FAQs my group? fearfully anticipated questions These pages are created using a standardized template and information from the database; they aren't com- posed individually and formatted the way single pages What effect will these changes have on my own page are made. Suggestions on formatting for the templates or my group's page? are welcome, but any changes will affect every page of a certain type (for example, all group pages). The only difference will be that we will provide new but- tons to replace the "home" and "search" buttons that Are my phone number and e-mail address visible to were made a couple of years ago. There will also be a people outside EMBL? new header which you can use if you want on official (not personal) pages. The links on the header will pro- At the moment, this information is visible only from vide more direct navigation around the site as a whole. another computer on the EMBL network. If you want it to be available to outside users, send an email to Why is an additional page for my group necessary? [email protected]. This is the easiest way to organize information that the Why aren't there more graphics or JAVA-scripted Laboratory needs to put on the Web. This information is items on the new pages? meant as a supplement to the groups' own pages, which should always be regarded as the primary source of We have tried to keep the main site "lean and mean" so information. All of the information presented here has that it will function as quickly and efficiently as possible. been provided by the group. Many people who visit our site won’t have the latest equipment or the most recent versions of web browsers; Why isn't there a link to my group's page from the they may also have slow connections. JAVA gadgets official page? often cause crashes; large graphics turn obtaining simple information into a long, frustrating process. At the Because the group didn't provide the OIPA or Björn moment, groups that wish to include more graphics or Kindler with the URL for its homepage. Simply send the more sophisticated Web techniques should feel free to address by e-mail to [email protected]. do so on their own pages. The Research Reports (soon to be produced on CD-ROM) will be more flexible. How do I update or change information on one of the new pages? Why are people missing from a group page? Just send an e-mail with the change or addition to info@ The names of group members were obtained from embl-heidelberg.de. Group Leaders in December, 1998, while preparing the Handbook of Statistics. Since then, information has Can I directly change the information myself? come directly from new people (the OIPA has been on the official sign-in sheet since Spring) and in some cases The database holds official information needed to pre- from Personnel. Inform us immediately of anyone miss- pare Research Reports and the Handbook of Statistics, ing. We should also be told about people who have left etc. Maintaining the database ourselves will make life the Lab. EBI Hinxton For over two years, an EBI publica- Riethoven previously worked in tion called the “Bioinformer” has been Holland for ABDLO, an organization the keeping the bioinformatics community devoted to biological research in agricul- up-to-date on what’s happening on the ture.