Contributed by Donna Kafel, Coordinator for the New England e-Science Program and Member of the NE Science Boot Camp Planning Group.
Along with my fellow New England Science Boot Campers, I headed Downeast this year for the seventh annual New England Science Boot Camp (SBC) at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, June 17-19th. Having heard many rave reviews about both Bowdoin and Brunswick, I was excited to have the opportunity to savor campus life there for a few short boot camp days. I instantly loved the Bowdoin campus and the town of Brunswick and soon found myself longing to be a Bowdoin student!
The science session topics for this year’s SBC were Cognitive Neuroscience, Marine Science, and Ornithology. Each of the boot camp science sessions feature two faculty from selected New England colleges and universities. Generally the sessions are structured so that for the first part one faculty member provides an overview of the science, followed by a second faculty member discussing the research he/she is conducting in the field. This year’s first science session was Cognitive Neuroscience. Dr. Erika Nyhus of Bowdoin College discussed key concepts and the types of classic experiments (remember Pavlov’s dogs and BF Skinner?) that laid the foundation for the field. Dr. Ann Maloney of UMass Medical School presented her research on altering neurocognition through videogames, specifically with children and teens with bipolar depression. Unfortunately many young people with bipolar depression require heavy doses of multiple medications to treat depression, and these medications have many undesireable side effects, such as rapid weight gain. The focus of Dr. Maloney’s research is studying the effects of video gaming on weight gain, and mood. Some preliminary findings from her research are that a significant number of her research participants with bipolar depression were able to stabilize their weight and required lower dosages of their psychiatric meds when they regularly engaged in active video games.
Wednesday evening featured a Literature and the History of Medicine themed talk by Dr. Ann Kibbie, of Bowdoin, “For the Blood is the Life: Dracula and the Early History of Blood Transfusion.” Dr. Kibbie discussed the perception of blood over the years in early medicine, the theories behind bloodletting as a way to restore wellness, and the early practice of blood transfusions—some of which were humans receiving blood from animals. I found myself astounded at how anyone could survive these early transfusions, from animals and other humans—without today’s technology of typing and crossing blood to ensure blood recipients are transfused with compatible blood.
The Marine Science session featured Dr. Barry Costa-Pierce of the University of New England discussing aquatic fisheries and the dire need to develop aquaculture in an environmentally sound way in order to feed the planet. Dr. Costa-Pierce noted that aquaculture and marine fisheries are often perceived negatively, as the popular press has done extensive coverage on antibiotic-laden fish farms, and recommended that consumers find out where their fish is from, as the types of fisheries vary dramatically from one country to another. Dr. Whitney King, of Colby College, presented his research on Maine lakes, the impact phosphorus pollutants have had on increased growth of algae and decreased oxygen in the lakes and approaches to alleviating the destruction of Maine lakes.
Ornithology was the last of the SBC science sessions. Dr. Michael Reed, of Tufts University, was the overview speaker. While he did discuss bird basics, and the interdisciplinary nature of ornithology research, what was striking about Dr. Reed’s talk is that he really covered his use of library resources—a topic that for years, our NE Science Boot Campers have wanted faculty speakers to address! Ornithology is a field in which print and digital resources are used extensively. Dr. Reed discussed popular ornithology journals, the relation of scholarly societies and journal publishing, increased availability of open source materials, his consults with Tufts Tisch Library staff searching for obscure documents, his frequent use of interlibrary loan, students’ database search practices and heavily-used ornithology data repositories such as ORNIS, NA Breeding Bird Survey, Xeno-canto (a bird song sharing repository), and Global Population Dynamics Database. These databases are heavily used and invaluable resources for ornithologists around the world. Dr. Nat Wheelwright of Bowdoin followed Dr. Reed’s presentation, starting off with a recording of a male Savannah sparrow. Dr. Wheelwright studies Savannah sparrows on the very remote Kent Island, where Bowdoin has a multidisciplinary field research station. In his presentation Incest avoidance in an island bird population, Dr. Wheelwright discussed the extraordinarily rare instances of accidental incest in the diminishing Savannah sparrow population on Kent Island. It was interesting to hear his data management practices. He collects data in the field on “Write in the Rain pads.” These are used frequently in field studies because they are water repellent. Every night he and other members of his team enter the data from the field studies into a database that has numerical limits enabling auto-correct for specific metrics.
The SBC Capstone session featured a presentation by Thea Atwood, Engineering Librarian at UMass Amherst, and Cara Martin-Tetreault, Director of Sponsored Research at Bowdoin, on the OSTP directive for enabling public access to federally funded research output. Thea discussed the policy and federal agencies’ responses regarding data management plan requirements, and the OSTP’s impact on library data services. Cara discussed funders’ requirements for data management plans in grant proposals from an institutional perspective. In her discussion, Cara noted that if Bowdoin Science Librarian Sue O’Dell hadn’t initiated a discussion with her about library interest in research data management, she would never have thought of the library as a partner in supporting research data management at Bowdoin. Data management plans are one component among many other grant proposal requirements that sponsored research offices have to address, and Cara welcomed this working partnership with the library in supporting researchers’ data management plans.
The second half of the session was a breakout activity. The week before SBC every Capstone attendee had been sent one research case from the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum (NECDMC), to read ahead of the Capstone, to prepare for the activity: writing and reviewing a data management plan. The Capstone attendees were divided into assigned groups of four or five and all group members had been assigned the same research case. Five cases from NECDMC were featured in the Capstone, and every two groups had the same case. The groups were tasked with writing a data management plan based on the case. After 40 minutes, each group swapped their data management plan with the other group who had been assigned the same case, and the groups reviewed each others’ data management plans. After the data management plans were all reviewed, scribes for each group gave their data management plans and reviews to one of the Capstone organizers, and returned to the auditorium for a whole group discussion. The group was asked several questions about their experience writing and reviewing data management plans. When asked what worked well in writing the data management plans, attendees noted having someone in their group with subject expertise, breaking down and mapping the data components of the case, and labeling the data as qualitative or quantitative. Challenges in writing the data management plans were not knowing the requirements of specific funding agencies, not having an institutional policy, being unfamiliar with terminologies or instrumentation. For some cases Capstone attendees noted that it would have been helpful to have disciplinary knowledge. Attendees noted that they liked being able to review another group’s data management plan on the same case, as it gave them an opportunity to see the data management components of the research case from different eyes.
This writing and reviewing data management plan activity was designed to give attendees the experience of reviewing a research project in a discipline that they may be unfamiliar with, and identifying the key data management components that would need to be addressed in a data management plan—a process that a librarian consulting on a data management plan would do in actual practice.
The cases, the group’s data management plans, and the reviews can be viewed on the the Capstone page of the 2015 Science Boot Camp LibGuide under the “Capstoners Data Management Plan and Critiques” section.
So that’s a not so brief recap of this year’s New England Science Boot Camp. Many thanks to this year’s gracious Science Boot Camp host, Sue O’Dell and the members of the New England Science Boot Camp Planning Committee for all their hard work over the year putting together this rich and unique learning and networking event. I’ll be announcing when the boot camp videos are available for viewing–stay tuned!