Procrastination with Coursera

Coursera is a place where you can take online courses from some of the best universities of the world (EPFL, Duke University...) and more universities are joining every month. You just have to register for the course and follow it weekly (on your own schedule). You might have assignments and everything. This is all completely free. There are so many courses that I think I didn't look at them all. Nevertheless, I point you to some that are interesting:

Medical Neuroscience
Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Writing in the Sciences
Image and Video Processing
Digital Image Processing
Computational Methods for Data Analysis
High Performance Scientific Computing
Introduction to Data Science

PhD comics talks about Open Access

And because there is no such thing as "too much talk about Open Access":

Original video here.

Educational Radiology

Radiopaedia is wiki-based collaborative website. It is rapidly growing and has been primarily compiled by radiology residents or fellows from across the world. The site's collective aim is to create the best radiology reference available, and to make it available for FFF: Free, Forever and For all.

http://radiopaedia.org/


The physics section (radiopaedia.org/encyclopaedia/phsyics) is still small, but already has interesting articles:
1.5T vs 3T
Inverse Square Law
Electron-Positron Annihilation

Medical Imaging scientists out there, let's contribute to this website too! Do you know other wiki-based websites in medical imaging?

Why would scientists share data?

F1000Research is an open access journal for life scientists, with rapid publication, transparent peer review (post-publication) and full data deposition and sharing. Open Access Journal have been widely discussed. I have talked about it here. However, sharing data is barely discussed. This journal has recently shared their experience with data openness:
http://blog.f1000research.com/2013/03/14/data-why-openness-and-sharing-are-important/

They raised several important questions, such as verification of results/conclusions, attracting collaborators or establish that you were the first to obtain those data. Scientists have also been questioned about their views and reported in Data Sharing by Scientists: Practices and Perceptions.

As a researcher, I have sometimes data which I would like to share (patient data can't be shared of course...), but I am torn between "I can't write a paper about the data itself" and "If I share it without caution, someone will use my data and not even acknowledge me and it gave me so much work!".

Did you ever considered sharing your data?