Is Wi-fi harmful?

Important conclusion quotes from an article regarding the potential harm of wi-fi:

"...it is possible to select the results of individual research studies in support of a variety of opinions [regarding exposure to RF energy]; which may range from no risk of health effects on the one hand, to a clear need to reduce current exposure limits on the other."

"...there is emerging evidence that long-term frequent use of cellphones may be associated with an increased risk of tumours on the side of the head where the cellphone is used. This is an active area of research and additional studies may confirm or refute this association."

"...Wi-Fi exposure are not only well within recommended limits, but are only a small fraction (less than 1%) of what is received during typical use of cellphones."

In other words, it isn't clear whether wi-fi is harmful, but cellphones, however harmful they may be, are almost certainly much worse.

[ Quotes from "Wireless Technology and Health Outcomes: Evidence and Review: Are there human health effects related to the use of wireless internet technology (Wi-Fi)?" from the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion ]

PubMed Central Canada is open for business

From an email from NRC-CISTI:

NRC’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) is pleased to announce the launch of PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the US National Library of Medicine (NLM). With PMC Canada, Canadians now have a freely accessible national digital repository of the latest peer-reviewed health and life sciences literature at their fingertips, including research resulting from CIHR funding.

PMC Canada also includes a manuscript submission system that will enable CIHR-funded researchers to deposit their peer-reviewed articles, exposing their research to a global audience and facilitating collaboration to advance scientific progress.

To find out more, please see please see the full press release.

Although it's not clear what exactly is in PMC Canada, most sources seem to suggest that it contains similar content to PMC (full-text health publications) with a focus on Canadian authored/supported/related content.

Check out PMC Canada and tell me what you think.

Cochrane Library available until April 1

Thanks to the efforts of CHLA, librarians, and everyone else involved, free Canadian access to the Cochrane Library has been extended until April 1, 2010. For more information, read the related CHLA blog entry.

PubMed Redesign 2009

There was an online presentation and q&a period on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009, about the proposed redesign of the primary PubMed pages. This was scheduled to be released this summer but is not up at this time yet.

My overall impression is certainly an improvement. It's a much simpler, streamlined and current design, which should ease public use and enjoyment of the product, both of which are rather important. There were the usual questions about functionality, but, as the presenter David Gillikin, Chief of NLM’s Bibliographic Services, repeatedly pointed out, this is an upgrade of design only. Strict functionality will not be touched.

Krafty Librarian points out:

Since most of the "cool" or helpful things like Details, History, Citation Matcher are only available from the Advanced Search, many people may want to have a nice short cut straight to that area.

I would have to suggest that NLM considers adding random reminders if not fixed links to tools like this in with the boxes on the right "Related Articles", "Recent Activity", etc.

I love forward to the the release of the redesign. I can't wait to play around with it and explore. It certainly welcomes a bit of curiosity and playing more than the current interface. What do you think? Are you excited?

[ "PubMed Redesign 2009" presentation, 45 min, learned of from a Krafty Librarian blog entry ]

Tobacco report to be 'socially networked'

A major U.S. government agency utilizing Web 2.0 methods and tools. It warms the heart.

The CDC is hoping that the next Surgeon-General's 2009 report on tobacco will "go viral" through using such tools as "Facebook, Twitter and MySpace" and RSS and devices like "iPhones, BlackBerrys and other personal digital assistants", and are going to try to make it possible for the public to share the information easily. It's certainly a good sign, but I have to say, not really a surprising one. We've all seen the effects of such simple technological tweeks enabling smoother communication, sharing and mixing, and how quickly a good portion of the public has taken to absorbing it into their lives and enriching the global society. It seems quite obvious by now that to not utilize this phenomenon would be to bury yourself and whatever information you are trying to get out to the world.

Now if only Canada would follow suit. lol

Anyone hear of any other group doing something similar? Do you think that efforts like this will succeed?

[From "Surgeon General's next tobacco report to get Web 2.0 push" by Doug Beizer at FederalComputerWeek found via Google News]

About "Medpedia"

Just checked out a relatively new wiki called "Medpedia". This is a highly controlled yet global wiki acting as an encyclopedia for medical concepts (such as drugs, conditions, anatomical terms, tests, etc.) for use by anyone from medical professionals to health care consumers (articles having tabs for both "plain english" and "clinical" versions). It is still in the development or beta stage and will be for a while, as projects like this must and ought to be.

It has a seemingly reasonable search function from my few tests, listing title keyword hits first then those from the article text. It's difficult to determine how effective it is at this time, given that there are so few entries written so far (I estimate only about 1700). To aid searching, there is also an "All Articles" display that lists all articles (duh) in alphabetical order.

From what I can see, the content is excellent, each article providing a wealth of information in a common format (recognizable to anyone who uses Wikipedia), organized into useful categories. For example, in the broad concept article for "Cancer" there is a glossary of related terms to help the user understand the subject better and to link them to other articles that may be helpful. Drug entries have the usual necessary subcategories such as other names, how it's to be taken, risks, and alternatives.

I have two problems with this otherwise exceptional tool (and project). Firstly, not all finished articles have what I would consider sufficient references to support the content. Some have dozens of excellent linked citations (such as the Plain English article for "Aspirin" but some have one citation or nothing listed under references. Hopefully, this will be remedied as the site grows.

The other issue I have has to do with the drug information. More than any other medical information, drug monographs are subject to confusion, rapid change and bias from interested parties. Although the articles about various pharmaceuticals are given as much scrutiny as all other content in this site, I'm more willing to trust the collective information about them from such texts as "DrugPoints" (formerly the USPDI), Martindale's Drug Reference, and even the CPS. I would think that a comprehensive reference for drug information would at least contain a mention of these resources.

So go and check out Medpedia for yourself. Tell me what YOU think about it.

(This entry was also written for BrackenBlog, the somewhat internal blog for the Bracken Health Sciences Library at Queen's University.)