Day: February 27, 2004

I'm speaking managerese!!!!

We're bidding on a governmental RFP (request for proposal), i.e. a contract, for the DOD. I was asked to do a nice little write-up for a contract I recently worked on… Dear lord, I'm ashamed of what came out of my brain. If buzzwords don't scare you, look under the cut.

One of the major hurdles currently impeding the rapid exchange and dissemination of data between research projects is the lack of a scientifically-curated, standardized biological exchange format. As the scientific community currently stands, the main repositories for scientific data – be it sequence data, genomic annotations, expression data, genetic variability data, or any number of other data types – each have their own storage and export formats. Imagine a research project that requires sequence data from one source to be cross-referenced with functional annotations from another source and finally be correlated to expression data from a third. The complexities of dealing with the lack of a common format often preclude the timely completion of research projects, as a significant amount of work must be done simply to get the data at the same place, before any meaningful question can even begin to be answered. Now imagine this process being repeated every time a new data source appears on the global scientific landscape.

The vision of [the project] was to provide a unified, integrated data model, where heterogeneous data sources would only need to be processed once at integration time and then be accessible for any correlation or query. Another cornerstone of [the project] was application integration. Another hindrance to the efficient use of bioinformatics analysis tools is the lack of common, clear and concise user interfaces. To correct this, the [the project] build a framework where various tools already established in the scientific community, as well as any custom-required tool, could be seamlessly integrated within the system and thus acquire a graphical user interface that would fulfill the aforementioned criteria. Data integration and application would act in synergy to create a scientifically-sound, technologically-efficient work environment where previously impossible questions could begin to be answered.

I feel so dirty.

Don't ask me how I got to this, cause really, I can't tell you, but this is SO wrong as to be hilarious.

Check out the possum_nation blog.

From their description: A Possum is someone who has passed the point of ugly and has no hope of return. This community is dedicated to sorting the Possums out of the crowd. This is a rating community judging on LOOKS. We don't care if you're a saint and breast feed the homeless, if you're ugly, we will tell you. Members can respond cruely- this activity is encouraged- so don't apply if you can't handle it!