A new blog for the Institute for Women’s Health Research was launched today. The site is built in Wordpress. The writers on the blog are planning to write about numerous topics related to the Institute’s research as well as controversial topics with the hopes of spurring debate.
Established in November of 2007, the Institute for Women’s Health Research was created at Northwestern University to help accelerate basic science and clinical research that will advance our knowledge of women’s health. Their mission is to increase the women’s health research portfolio at Northwestern University and their clinical affiliates; they focus on 5 ambitious goals to accomplish this mission:
To foster research that explores the sex and gender determinants of health and disease with an emphasis on women
To encourage interdisciplinary research, diversity inclusiveness and a comprehensive approach to women’s health research
To prepare researchers, scientists and clinicians who understand the sex and gender determinants of health and disease; develop leadership among women and girls interested in science
To accelerate the translation of basic science research into clinical practice
To become the authoritative resource for the community on women’s health issues and provide opportunities for the community to engage in the advancement of women’s health
Molly has helped to develop a great resouce for all of NUAMPS’ clients. Most of our clients are using Drupal or Wordpress for one or more sites / blogs. We wanted to have a general resource for them to refer back to from time to time as needed. The documentation site is very clean and is extermely useful. Check out the new site here.
Rare Africa Photos Go Online, Open New Options for Africa Research
EVANSTON, Ill. — This week — for the first time ever — a searchable collection of thousands of rare photographs chronicling Europe’s colonization of East Africa becomes available to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, thanks to the efforts of staff at Northwestern University Library.
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960 began attracting the interest of Africa scholars and others in 2002 when it was acquired by Northwestern’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. The library officially launches the online collection today (June 25).
The Digitization of the Winterton collection for NUL Digital Collections and the Herskovitz Library was a great project that we collaborated with the NUL library. Stefani Foster and a large crew of A&RT digital specialists worked for a year with Claire Stewart, David Easterbrooke, and the NUL staff on the imaging of the collection. It is a great example of the type of work that can be accomplished with the collaboration of many different groups within the University.
Semper Paratus, Latin for always prepared, is the motto of the United States Coast Guard, this is very similar to the Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared”, when it comes to data preservation is this a wise approach to take. Hard drives can fail anytime without warning.
After a hard drive failure on last Thursday, I realized how long it had been since I had backed up my machine, not a good time to make this realization. I would highly recommend making frequent backups of your computer and of any external storage that you may have, and if you can use a RAID configuration for external storage.
One of the main problems with making system backups is time. Thankfully Apple has addressed this issue with the introduction of TimeMachine. You can use TimeMachine on an external hard drive or over the network and it works automatically, creating backups of your machine every hour.
TimeMachine allows you to graphically explore the history of your computer and restore old files or even the entire operating system if needed.
Another excellent backup option, though a more manual process, is SuperDuper. SuperDuper is an exact backup solution. If you use SuperDuper to make a copy of your system drive to an external firewire drive you can then use that external backup to boot your system. SuperDuper has a free version that will allow you make full erase and copy backups, and for a small (and worth it) fee you can create scheduled and incimental backups. Check out Shirt Pocket for information.
Both of these options are for Mac users, there are similar options for PC users, but I’m not the one to ask, so good luck.
Make backups frequently!
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We worked with Professor Mark Robinson in the early stages of this project, many years ago.
Scheduled to launch this afternoon, it is the main mapping project to get very high resolution imagery of the lunar surface. Professor Mark Robinson was at NU when he won this grant award from NASA. Now he is at ASU and I’m gad to see this project lift off… so to speak.
Washington Times: State Dept. to Twitter: Keep site up in Iran
The State Department asked the social networking Web site Twitter last weekend to postpone scheduled maintenance that would have cut daytime service in Iran on Tuesday, just as protests against official election results were heating up, U.S. officials said.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, The revolution will be digitized:
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When working with the Open Source Systems like Wordpress and Drupal with numerous plugins / modules, there are constantly updates being released for modules, themes and the core. When are these updates needed and what’s the best process for updating your site?
Most updates are minor functional updates which are not urgent, but when the occasionally security updates are released it is very important that these updates be made as soon as possible.
With the newest version of Wordpress you should be able to run automatic updates, which download, unpackage and install the new plugin. For Wordpress this is usually the best method for updating your site. It is still recommended that you view the ReadMe file for the plugin or core update for any specific instructions. And it is always a good idea to make a backup of your site files and site database before an update.
Drupal is slightly more complicated. Our NUAMPS update process is:
Notify team / client that the site will be updated and may be down for 20-30 minutes
Download updates (modules / core)
Backup mySQL database
Backup site files
Put the site into maintenance mode
Delete the old modules or core files, leaving .htaccess and sites folder
Notify the team / client the site has been updated and is back online
This is not the only way that you could manage your site updates, but it has worked well for us. The same basic process can be used for Wordpress but seems like overkill when the automatic updates usually work well.
Jon and I attended the CSA Preparation Workshop last night at the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School. The workshop had two sessions one part focused on basic knowledge of the heart and the other focused on professionalism. The professionalism portion included first impressions, introducing yourself, table manors, dress and much more. The workshop was well received by the CSA Sisters.
The rig is up and working in the caves, and the DA team is adapting to the new system very quickly. Today we wrapped up practice shooting on a few lower rows of Cave 12, and then raised the whole rig up 14 feet to the ceiling test the its functionality at the upper limits. The process was slow, and involved a lot of troubleshooting, but ultimately the team was successful in capturing the top row of wall images.
As a plus, we found a great use for one of my favorite rigging accessories, the short-barreled cross (shown below in the Modern Studio Equipment showroom), as a fixed cross brace at the crown of the rig.