Archive:Citizen/V1-N3

:: The Citizen ::

Vol. 1, No. 3 -- 3 / 1 / 2008
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The Citizen is always looking for contributions! If you have any contributions, news, updates, or interesting stuff, drop in at the talk page of the current issue. Welcome to the The Citizen--a monthly report--hosted on a CC-by-sa-3.0 Unported licensed knowledge base. You can access the news at any time from CZ:Citizen or CZ:CZ. The Citizen is an independant publication and the opinions or content expressed within do not reflect the positions or views of the Citizendium, unless there exists content contributed by the Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium that expressely dictates said opinion or view. Its Editor is responsible for all its content, but does not claim authorship of content written by its contributors.
CZ:Topics in the News 2008 United States presidential election regularly updated as the primary election campaigns continue. See the following articles on the current presidential candidates Democratic: Barack Obama Hillary Clinton Republican: John McCain Mike Huckabee Green Party (independant): Ralph Nader		Events Eduzendium continues, and articles are currently underway. Please take caution if you stumble across them as they are in-progress. Please see the initiative page for guidance. The Write-a-Thon! The next WAT is scheduled for March 5th Make sure to visit the Article of the Week and New Draft of the Week pages and nominate or vote for your choice for next week
Project Initiatives The Core Article Initiative: The core article development initiative continues. A new proposal system has been initiated so that all citizens alike can participate in the wiki governance by making community-wide suggestions and bringing up important issues. Some pages to keep in mind: CZ:Proposals/New - This is where new proposals are to be placed Archive:Proposals/Policy - The guts of the proposal process The panel at the bottom of each proposals page will allow to navigate to any section within the proposals system.		Help Wanted Community requests for assistance are posted below. Contact The Editor to post enlistments. An assistant to update Topics in the News and to update or create current news related articles. The next Olympic Games are scheduled for 2008. In preparation for the games, James has requested some assistance, particularly with the following: The creation/development of articles based on the different events to an informative state. A listing can be found at the related articles subpage, see section "Summer Olympic sports" The creation/development of articles based on the committees surrounding the games, particularly the International Olympic Committee, World Anti-Doping Agency, and Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Technical Initiatives A process to facilitate the creation of articles via email has begun. All citizens are encouraged to help test the system out.
Meet our Citizens Each month "The Citizen" spotlights one of our many contributors! This issue, Dr. David E. Volk is profiled. The Citizen: A short introduction, if you please :). David: I am a jack of all trades, expert at none. At various times in my life I have been a bowler, a state champion boxer, a soccer player, and a cyclist, and I started playing guitar at age 36. Having found accounting somewhat lacking in interest for me, I jumped into math instead, which lead to math & physics for my undergraduate degree, followed by chemistry in graduate school. Then I went to Duke University for a postdoc and got more involved in medical research, which continues at my present job. TCZ: What are your hobbies? / What do you do for fun? David: For fun, I mostly play bass guitar as part of two groups. In one group, I play bass guitar for Rex Bell, who at one time played bass guitar for Lighnin’ Hopkins (at Carnegie Hall) and Townes Van Zandt, but who is now a singer-songwriter and guitar player. My wife Lisa plays rhythm guitar, with Gary Ragan, playing lead guitar when he is in town. This is a weekly gig at the Old Quarter Acoustic Café in Galveston, TX, to start the open mic each Weds. and sometimes we are the opening act for the main bands on the weekends. Our next big gig is to play at the annual Stingaree Music Festival put on by Hayes Carll. The other incarnation has Lisa as the lead guitar player and singer, with me on bass guitar and sundry other musicians (violin, harps, guitars) joining us for a dozen or so gigs a year. These have mostly been at Cocktails, The 39th Street Bar and Poor Michaels, all in Galveston, or functions for my department at the university. If my dog (Rocky) could read, he would suggest first billing in this category as he takes up a considerable amount of our time. He is a hundred pounds of lovable fur, until a stranger hits the front door. His sister lives a few blocks away with the inlaws, so we spend a considerable amount of time with her as well. Dogs love the beach and golf carts, because all four “windows” are always down. Finally, I love to play Texas Hold ‘Em. TCZ: What do you professionally? David: I am a research scientist working at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). My work is centered around using NMR spectroscopy to study the structures of proteins and DNA molecules of relevance to human diseases. The last few years my work has mostly involved determining the structure of the envelope protein domain III of West Nile virus, Dengue virus, Omsk Hemorrhagic fever and Yellow fever. I also dabble in quantum mechanics calculations involving the base pairing of oxidized or otherwise damaged DNA base pairs. In the last year or so, I have started a variety of metabonomics-based projects investigating fatty liver disease, diabetes, breast cancer, burns and other medical conditions. TCZ: What is your favourite topic of discussion? David: By far, my favorite topic of discussion is politics. You can always get a lively conversion started using the ‘’Cobert Report’’ style: “President Bush (Clinton), as bad as Nixon (Carter), or the worst president ever?” But why leave out the wishy-washy, do nothing Congress that has been abdicating its power for decades? I love discussing local politics just a much as national and state politics. Local politics have many more personalities. TCZ: Does your profession relate to any of the contributions you have made? David: Yes, I have started or worked on several articles relating directly to my work, including West Nile virus and Dengue fever, to name a few. In general, not counting the music articles I started, most of my contributions have been chemicals, drugs and diseases, which somewhat match my work. TCZ: What is your role in Citizendium? David: Although I am an Editor in Chemistry and Biology, to date my biggest role has been as a chemistry/health sciences author. At present count, I have created over 100 articles on CZ. I have just recently become an Editorial Personnel Administrator (EPA), but that takes very little time so far. My second biggest contribution has probably been helping to whittle down the CZ:Unchecklisted Articles list each week. I have plans to write many pages concerning the music scene in Texas, with particular attention to the folk, americana and outlaw country genres. Finally, I do a lot of random page searches trolling for articles that need corrections. TCZ: How do you see yourself fitting into the overall structure of CZ? David: One goal is to create pages for > 3000 drugs, complete with structure images, drug interactions, brands and so forth. I perhaps have started 20 or so drug articles so far, so there is much work to be done in this regard. I look forward to doing more editing of chemistry articles as they come in. TCZ: What motivates you to contribute? David: It is said that scientists do not do enough to spread the value of science to the general public. The CZ is one way to help in this regard. One of my functions is to assist and train younger scientists, so spreading knowledge just seems natural to me. One of the first pages I attempted was the list of NMR experiments so that I can direct new NMR users at work to that page for assistance in explaining what certain experiments do. More directly, stubs get under my skin and so do chemical articles with no structures. I try to improve both of those situations as I come across them. Steroid was one such article I came across that I think was 1 or 2 lines. I added many structure images and discussed the biosynthesis of the steroids. This in turn lead to stub articles for a handful of particular steroids, and then Robert Badgett joined in to improve the medical aspects. This page has a lot of work to go, but each new section illustrates new pages that need to be made. TCZ: What is your best experience on the wiki so far? Your worst? David: I really enjoy the friendliness and help I received from folks who were here when I first joined. I can also expect a fairly reasonable response time to questions as they come up. Following Robert Badgett around has been very fruitful for ideas for me. When he writes up a medical page about something, it lists drugs taken for that illness, which gets me motivated to start new pages for each of those drugs discussed. Recently, I have started pages about many of the statin drugs (think Atorvastatin (Lipitor), Crestor, etc) used to lower cholesterol. Trolling the Recent Changes page is great for getting the next idea for a page too. To date, I have had no bad experiences at CZ. This is a nice contrast to working on WP where corrections are replaced back to incorrect statements, repeatedly. I thank Kim Komando for pointing out CZ to me. Does she have a page on CZ yet?? She certainly deserves one. TCZ: What do you look forward to the most? David: A new president, from either party, with integrity, honor and a concern for all Americans. TCZ: What would you like to see happen in CZ's future? David: I would like to see more people reach out to others asking for assistance with articles, particularly with aspects that they themselves cannot do. For example, I have asked others directly, via user email, for assistance on medical aspects for articles I have started. I do the chemistry part, and ask others for help when their former contributions suggests that they would be a good fit. I find this works better than waiting for someone else to join in or sending a generic message to a list. If you need a structure of a chemical, a protein, or DNA, just send me note and I can whip it out for you in a minute. TCZ: Do you have any specific goals for your involvement on the wiki? David: Although I touched on this earlier, it would be to make lots of pages for prescription drugs and chemicals, because laymen have virtually no knowledge of them. Secondarily, I want to fill in the whole Texas music scene, excluding Tejano music, because I don’t follow that at all. TCZ: What do you predict the future will be for wiki-based projects? David: I predict users and contributors will be in the millions as word spreads and the worldwide use of computers continues to expand. TCZ: Who will you vote for president and why? David: Although there are too many still in the race, at present I would like to see McCain as president. His honesty and integrity are beyond question, and his centralist views and ability to work with both parties would be a great asset. It would be nice to end the outright hostility present in politics in the last 25 years or so. At present, my second choice would be Obama, but more vetting needs to be done with him. TCZ: How would you like to see wikis implemented in the future? David: Eventually, corporate deals might become a huge factor. Image picking up a prescription at a drug store chain, and the information flyer listed an approved CZ web page in large letters at the top that patients could refer to, rather than trying to read the size 6 font used for the rest of the page. The article could then lead the patient to read about generic equivalents or other treatment regimes for their illness to discuss with their doctor. And eventually, Wiki’s might have voice readings of the text for use by those with very poor eyesight. Thanks for the insight, David! Next issue will feature Aleta Curry.
New artices created since February 1st, 2008
10 Downing Street 2046 (film) Abdominojugular test Abdominoplasty Acanthostega Acceleration due to gravity Acceleration Accidental release source terms Acetaminophen Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Agnosticism AIML Air Quality Modeling Group Air Resources Laboratory Alameda, California Albert Ritchie Allopatric speciation Altitude Amikacin Amine gas treating Aminoglycoside Ammonia production Amoxicillin Ampere’s equation Ampere's law Ampere's rule Ampicillin André-Marie Ampère Antidepressant Architect Arlington National Cemetery Arthur Conan Doyle Ashanti (film) Ashanti Auld Reekie Australopithecus afarensis Australopithecus anamensis Autopsy Aye-aye Azlocillin Azole Battle of Bannockburn Belz (Hasidic group) Biot-Savart's law Bipedalism Blondie (disambiguation) Blondie Bolshakovo Bond Bonobo Book value Boston Red Sox Brain Size Over Time Caipirinha Caliphate Capoeira Capture-bonding Carbenicillin Catalog of historic homes Cell cycle Central venous pressure Character actor Charlemagne Charles Lyell Charles-Augustin de Coulomb Chateau de Mores Chemistry style guide Chile Chimpanzee Chinese new year Chyi Yu Cinoxacin Ciprofloxacin Clinical data warehouse Clostridium difficile Cloxacillin Colin Burgess Common cold Complexity science Conan O'Brien Concealed ovulation (human) Confidence interval Cost-benefit analysis	Coulomb's law Crystal (geology) Cucumber Curling Curry (disambiguation) Curry Cyrillic alphabet De Lijn Default risk premium Delayed coking Diabetic foot Dicloxacillin Diplomacy (board game) Dividends Doctrine of foreign equivalents Drenthe Eastern Michigan University Echinacea Edinburgh University Elasticity (physics) Ellen Richards Emtricitabine Entecavir Erlang (disambiguation) Essex Junto Established church Evolution of the Human Diet Evolutionary psychology controversy Evolutionary psychology Famciclovir Felix Savart Fenske equation Fidel Castro FIFA World Cup Financial economics Financial management Firefighting Flucloxacillin Flue gas desulfurization Flue gas stack Fosfomycin Franc Friesland Gender Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) Geographic information system Georges Cuvier Georgia Davis Powers Gloves Glucose Go Rules God Hand Golgi apparatus Grantwriting Great Lakes Groningen HAIKU Hallucination Halting problem Hans Christian Oersted Health care quality assurance Henry's law Hetacillin Hexose Historical novel Hominin intelligence Homo erectus Homo floresiensis Hudson Bay Human and ape behavior Human cladistics Human evolution Hundred Years War Hunter-gatherer Hyderabad, India Ibadi Idoxuridine Income statement Internet Safety Isle of Man airport Japanese Macaque Japanese popular culture	Jean-Baptiste Biot Jesse Helms Joule-Thomson effect K2 Kaithi Kaliningrad Kim Komando Knowledge Management Kosovo L5 Society Lactose Intolerance Lady Lambda calculus Lamivudine Laurentian Mountains Led Zeppelin Limited liability company Limited partnership Liver function test Lodhi dynasty Lodhi Lodi London Calling (novel) London Calling (play) London Calling! London Calling Louis XV Lucinda Williams Magnetic resonance imaging Major League Baseball Malpractice Manifest Destiny Marble (stone) Marble Mark (disambiguation) Mark Mauna Kea Observatories Mayan Osteology McCabe-Thiele method Media in India Medical malpractice Melbourne Mercaptan Merox Methylphenidate Mezlocillin Milankovitch cycles Misfit Misfits Mitosis Mohs' scale Mole (disambiguation) Monarchy MtDNA Naphtha National Institute of Aerospace National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine Naval guns Neanderthals Netilmicin New Brunswick Nova Scotia Oersted (unit) Oersted Orangutan Organization of the Islamic Conference Origins of Carpets Oseltamivir Osteology Oxacillin Pancake Pancreatitis Pazyryk Carpet Peking Man Penciclovir Penicillin G Penicillin V Peninsula Peopling the New World Periodization of the Middle Ages Peter Abelard	Phenomenography Piperacillin Poker Pope John II Pregabalin Primary election Primatology Prolog Proximity fuze Psychosis Raymond Dart Relative volatility Renaissances and the Middle Ages Ribavirin Rigi mountain Rimantadine Rite of Passage Robert Fergusson Roosevelt Corollary Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute RSA 275 RSA 658 Saint Lawrence River Saudade Schnapps Scientific visualization Scoliosis Scotland, history Scotland's Wars of Independence Second-generation antidepressant Shakespeare's First Folio Shortbread Shoulder pain Shrove Tuesday Skirt Slashdot Sophie Germain prime Souders-Brown equation Soul food Southern blot Spinal stenosis Spiritualism Statement of cash flows Stavudine Streptomycin Strong pseudoprime Studio One (recording studio) Studio One Sumer Super Bowl Survival of the Fattest Sympatric Speciation Synapsid Tagliatelle Talysh people TEC Tenofovir Terschelling The correspondence of Abelard and Heloise The Misfits The Piltdown Hoax The Prodigal Son The Union Theatre Theatre (building) Thomas Aikenhead Thomas Reid Thomas Telford Thousand Islands Tom L. Johnson Tram Trinity College Dublin True breeding Urban-type settlement Urdu Utility Vacuum distillation Violence in the Amazon Vitamin D Zalcitabine Zanamivir Zinoviev Letter Zork Zoroastrianism
Press Links Press Page Future Press Initiatives The CZ Blog Thanks to: The many contributors volunteering their efforts to build Citizendium into an excellent resource Larry Sanger for starting Citizendium Andrew Keen and Wikipedia, for inspiring us to achieve. Slashdot /. The Society for New Communications Research ArsTechnica NewAssignment.Net and Assignment Zero for getting me here!

--Robert W King 12:23, 29 February 2008 (CST)