Exciting news: Jason Hoyt, the founder of Ologeez (a semantic frontend for PubMed), is joining Mendeley! Jason holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University. At the moment, he is still based in Palo Alto, but once the visa issues are sorted out, Jason will be joining us here in London as our new Research Director. TechCrunch broke the story today with a headline that made our geek hearts beat faster, comparing us to a Klingon battle cruiser de-cloaking in London.

To get started, Jason wrote up his reasons for joining us, and how Mendeley can help change the Impact Factor. Over to him:

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Changing the Journal Impact Factor

Right, so the first thing I had to ask myself was “Why on earth would I move from San Francisco, leaving behind a cushy life for London, and work for a reference management start-up?” Surely any rational person would find this a bit odd.

Well, I’m not going to answer by talking about how great the team is or how enthusiastic the founders are about improving research, which is certainly all true. Rather, let’s take a real-world example of how the “tech” behind Mendeley is already making a difference with how we view the impact factors of research.

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Yesterday we posted a photo of the Mendeley Team on our roof terrace, trying to jump simultaneously to celebrate our Plugg.eu win:

Always vigilant, our very own Dr. Ridout said he “noticed something creepy” about the photo. Thanks to his keen perception and a few very subtle, barely noticeable image enhancements, he was able to uncover the harrowing truth! Here is the unsettling evidence, not suitable for minors:

THEY’RE SHUFFLING TO A COMPUTER NEAR YOU!

I just came across this, and it’s brilliant. Not least because our name, Mendeley, was partly taken from the discoverer of the periodic table. A team of chemists from the University of Nottingham set out to explain every single element in a brief, but very informative and funny, video: The Periodic Table of Videos.

The Hydrogen video, for example, largely consists of a guy named Pete blowing up balloons, and a frizzy-haired scientist explaining the reaction. My favourite moment comes at the end:

Frizzy-haired scientist: Deuterium gas, in all its properties, will be very similar to hydrogen. Of course it is denser, because it has a neutron as well as a proton, but it’s still much lighter than air. So, a deuterium balloon will still float up to the ceiling and make Pete look just as stupid as the hydrogen one.

Camera guy: But I was thinking more about fusing it, now that sounds like a really big explosion we could do at the back!

Frizzy-haired scientist: No, fusion reactors are way beyond what Pete can do. Unless he’s a lot cleverer than I think.

Here’s the video, but I encourage you to check out the entire website:

P.S. The guy who blows things up is Pete Licence, a lecturer in chemistry and chemical engineering, and the frizzy-haired scientist is Martyn Poliakoff, CBE, a research professor at the University of Nottingham.

Via total.pardo.

Our friend Vivek just shared this with me via Twitter: Newest Rulings on Alternative Source Citing. Might be old news, but it’s still kinda cute. Here’s an excerpt:

Alien Mind Transmissions

When citing telepathic transmissions from alien planets/spacecraft:

1. Name the aliens who sent the message (if known).
2. Identify the location of planet or craft.
3. Identify the location where transmission was received.
4. List the date the transmission was received.

Example: “Internal combustion vehicles are wasteful and evil. You must stand in the street and curse their drivers and occupants immediately.” [The Elders of Antares 7; A Ship Orbiting Saturn; Corner of Lawrence Avenue and Broadway, Chicago, IL: July 5,1989.]

It also has Rest-Stop Restroom Graffiti, Magic 8-Balls, Tattoos, and Epithets Hollered Out Car Windows.

We now have a Mendeley Photostream on Flickr where you can follow all of our exploits. First up: Our geektastic Christmas party which started at the go-kart racing track and ended in a no-holds-barred Rockband session at our office.

Moreover, pictures from my recent US tour giving talks and Mendeley demos at Drexel University, Princeton, NYU, Cold Spring Harbor Labs, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and MIT.

As a software engineer who spends the vast majority of each day sat at a computer a good keyboard is very important to me. I’m sure it is the same with many people who spend a lot of time typing. It’s certainly the case for the other Mendeley developers:

The Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 keyboard, favoured by many of the Mendeley developers

Some have the latest and greatest Microsoft ergonomic keyboards, others have fancy Logitech cordless keyboards that tell you how many keystrokes you’ve entered per day and all sorts of other useless statistics. One even has a keyboard that lights up in blue, red, purple or white!

Unfortunately until recently I was using the basic Dell keyboard that comes free with every Dell computer. Not a terrible keyboard by any standard, but certainly not in the same league as the Microsoft and Logitech keyboards that my colleagues were using. I was jealous! And I was worried that my inferior keyboard might be hindering my programmer productivity. This was Keyboard Wars, and it was time to get serious!

I trawled the web looking for the king of all keyboards. After reading lots of reviews I finally decided upon the Logitech DiNovo keyboard for Notebooks. I’ve no idea why the keyboard is marketed as “for notebooks”, as it works perfectly well with desktops too. There is also a DiNovo EDGE model which is supposed to be superior, but the lack of a numpad ruled it out for me.

My keyboard arrived a few months ago, and I absolutely love it. I couldn’t say for certain that my productivity has improved, but typing is certainly much more pleasurable now. And if I ever need to do a quick calculation I can press the “calculator” button, which instantly brings up the calculator application! That’s a feature I certainly didn’t have on my old Dell keyboard.

I don’t think there is a better keyboard in the whole of the Universe! Some of my colleagues disagree of course, saying they “don’t like the laptop like feel of it”, or that fact that “it’s not ergonomic”. It sounds like jealousy to me, because I’ve clearly won the Keyboard Wars!

As a recent member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, I’m marveling at their events calendar which strikes me as hands down the best entertainment programme in London (if you’re into scientific talks, that is). Two of the four lectures I’ll be attending in the coming weeks are part of the members-only, black-tie “Friday Evening Discourses” that were started by Michael Faraday in 1826 – isn’t that amazing?

One of the talks that I’ll unfortunately have to miss (because I’m travelling to Germany) is this one next Monday, 20th October:

Murder in Mayfair

London is an epicentre of medical advancement, from Edward Jenner’s pioneering work on vaccination to the world’s first heart and lung transplant. But London is also a hotbed of disease and demise and this event will take a look at the notorious murders and strange deaths in the capital. [...].

London has a rich and gruesome history of untimely demises. From the recent past we have the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, only a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Institution, who was killed by a radioactive teapot. 18 years earlier, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was dispatched with a poison tipped umbrella by Waterloo Bridge.

Or how about this one on 4th November:

The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy

Gray’s Anatomy is probably one of the most iconic scientific books ever published: an illustrated textbook of anatomy that is still a household name 150 years since its first edition, known for its rigorously scientific text, and masterful illustrations as beautiful as they are detailed. The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy tells the story of the creation of this remarkable book, and the individuals who made it happen.

Wonderful, isn’t it? So, in the spirit of peppering this blog with Edo period, medieval, and Japanese monster anatomy, here are some more highly rigorous anatomic drawings I just came across:

Via Gizmodo.

Long time no blog, indeed. I had wanted to write more about the numerous workshops and conferences I attended, but I didn’t get around to it because we’ve been very busy here at Mendeley HQ. Among other things, we’re planning a new release of Mendeley Desktop soon. Without giving too much away, it will include a few long-awaited and highly-requested new features. Stay tuned!

So I’ve been looking for a way to sum up my recent travels. With total disregard for Blaise Pascal’s famous quote “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”, I concluded that Haikus might be a solution. Here goes:

In Soton I sleep
on Ben’s futon which fails, my
talk is all woozy

Said futon

Listening to Yaroslav‘s talk

Moving on – my Science in the 21st Century haiku:

Waterloo WiFi
breaks during the demo yet
enthusiasm wins

Chad Orzel on Newtonian vs. Galileian science – our former landlord Michael Palin making another unexpected appearance

Collective mind-mapping exercise devised by Alex Pang

Panel with Steve Weinstein, Harry Collins, David Kaiser, Lee Smolin and impressively bescribbled blackboards

In short, I had a marvelous week at the Perimeter Institute. Thanks to Sabine for organizing such a great conference, to Mark and Eva for the many inspiring conversations, to Jen and Michael for inviting me over to dinner, to Chad, Simeon, John and Cameron for the nice evening at the brewery, to Katy for offering to help us develop data visualizations, to David and Paul for sharing their insights into the current US presidential election (and Paul giving me one of his Analog SF magazines so I’d have something to read on the plane), to Gerry for sharing his thoughts on social networking (and looking like Albert Einstein), and to Hassan for inviting me to contribute an essay about reputation systems in science to his upcoming book.

We had comparatively nice weather (i.e., it didn’t rain) in London yesterday – so we seized the chance and organised a Mendeley team BBQ on the roof terrace of our office! Luckily for us, we didn’t set the building on fire, and no one fell off the roof. Here are some impressions:

Paul being happy while stealing plants for decoration:

Paul becoming even happier and pointing at things:

Smoke signals:

Pankaj, Steve and Falk discussing physics and metaphysics:

More happy Paul:

Julia, Aaron, Ben and Britton Street:

Ben apparently not moving as much as the others:

Fin!

And just in case you’re thinking, “these kids should do less BBQs and more software updates”, we’ve got you covered! Tomorrow we’ll release Mendeley Desktop beta version 0.5.8 with plenty of bugfixes, speed and stability improvements. Happy Paul will blog about it in more detail.