nodalpoint.org - Corporate Biotechnology - Comments

it is unusual and wrong

Neil — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 23:19:29 -0400

It is certainly strange to see a country singled out by name in this way. I suspect it's also illegal.

Sounds more like racism to me

sukumar — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 16:36:44 -0400

That specific wording sounds more like racism to me... a few years ago it would have read: blacks(insert the n-word)/Jews/Poles/Hispanics need not apply.

More economics than anything else

Obi — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 01:31:10 -0400

I think is more about economics than anything else. Since the return to the number of H1B visas issued out, it is becoming harder for US based to sponsor foreign gradautes. Also there has been an increase in the number of new bioinformatics graduates from US colleges, who beacuse of the stiff competition are now likely to demand less in salaries than what we saw in the late nineties.

Having said that, we have developed a jobs aggregator called Biohealthmatics.com for bioinformatics jobs based in the US and UK, we receive far more correspondence from graduates in India than we do from either countries.

agreed

Neil — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:23:08 -0400

You see a fair few US jobs for US citizens only - probably is mainly a visa expense issue. Though they're pretty adamant about it in this post and singling out the upper-case INDIA certainly suggests they're had their share of "dear esteemed mr doctor neil" emails...

Spam

chris — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 22:28:48 -0400

I think it's probably a combo, mostly of the first two points you make. I suspect that there is a problem in the focus of education in different countries, particularly in bioinformatics. Some systems tend to produce graduates who are familiar with the web-based tools around, for instance, but not necessarily with the underlying code/principles.

There's also the problem of sponsoring someone for a visa, a not inconsiderable barrier of entry for non-US nationals.

for what it's worth...

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 12:10:15 -0500

I never told Jaffe I believed that we needed longer postdocs.
I told him I think we need a better career path for software
dev people in bioinformatics. So I'm in agreement with you.
- Sean Eddy

survival of fittest?

Neil — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 00:40:28 -0500

I think your point about open source repositories is a good one. I download a lot of free stuff, particularly for structural biology, some of which is years old and with virtually no documentation. It's useful to me, but I think if something is seen to be useful, it will survive and be maintained. There's a lot of really good GPL'd stuff around (e.g. Gromacs) and around 350 sourceforge projects under the 'bioinformatics' heading, so good software does have a home to go to. I like the Eddy group's work, but I have to disagree with him that we need longer postdocs purely for software development! What we need is a career structure for postdocs.

No easy solution

PedroBeltrao — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 04:12:13 -0500

Currently the only solutions seem to be spinning off the software into a company or securing a grant to develop upgrades. In Europe at least I think it could be part of a big center like EBI could play. Not only developing and maintaining databases but also software that is used by the community at large. I guess the other possibility is open source development. If the code is useful and visible than I think people would pick it up to develop it and maintain it.

Just one thing...

dopey — Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:40:02 -0400

I'd just like to point out that if any of the jobs from the RSS feed (sorry, I'm yet to have a look at it) strike people's attention and inspire discussion, they can 'blog it' and possibly promote it that way.

Thank you

Jason Skie — Thu, 05 Jun 2003 07:06:42 -0400

The feed looks great!

I recall incorrectly

Greg — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 22:31:19 -0400

Sorry, the polling frequency was set to 3 days not 18 hours. I've updated the aggregator to poll DNAjobs once per day. My email address is greg@nodalpoint.org.

Polling every 18 hours IIRC?

Jason Skie — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 22:00:19 -0400

Greg, I don't get it. If the feed is polling every 18 hours IIRC, then why has the feed not updated in over 2 days? The info listed in the feed on the side of this page is 2 day old data and not what was posted on the Blog yesterday. Also, I am not sure what your email address is. Thanks for all your help :)
- Jason

Aggregator determines frequency

Greg — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 08:08:57 -0400

It is the aggregator that determines the frequency of polling for RSS feeds (okay, this kind of architecture stinks but I won't get into that debate). In this particular case I've set the DNAjobs feed to poll every 18 hours IIRC. I set a long polling time because the jobs list was posted every week. This way I cut down on bandwith usage at *your* end by not polling too frequently for a feed that has not changed. I can increase the frequencey if you like, just send me some email and I'll deal with it.

Another issue is that the version of the Drupal aggregator that is running on nodalpoint is *very* bare bones and doesn't support HTTP conditional GET which helps to cut down on bandwidth.

left bar

chris — Tue, 03 Jun 2003 00:05:55 -0400

...is a good compromise, and potentially more accessible? Good idea.

Jobs outside the US

Jason Skie — Mon, 02 Jun 2003 20:55:32 -0400

Neil,

DNAjobs.com currently has jobs posted from Canada, Singapore, the UK, and India; however, the large majority are from the US. DNAjobs.com welcomes anyone from any country to post legitimate employment opportunities. Hopefully, as the "word gets out", more international listings will take place.

Regards,
Jason