Thanks to everyone who attended my AJAX Sessions at the Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer's Conference in Atlantic City last week. Here are links to the PowerPoints and Demos ASP.NET AJAX Security [Demo Code] [PowerPoint Deck] ASP.NET AJAX Patterns [Demo Code] [PowerPoint Deck] .... and here are links to the free ASP.NET Security Books from Microsoft Patterns and Practices. Building Secure ASP.NET Applications: Authentication, Authorization, and Secure Communication Improving Web Application Security: Threats ... lire la suite
Thanks to everyone who attended my AJAX Sessions at the Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer's Conference in Atlantic City last week. .... and here are links to the free ASP.NET Security Books from Microsoft Patterns and Practices.
For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at the Sheraton Hotel at a rate of $129.00 through March 31, 2008. You are responsible for your own reservations which can be made by calling 1-888-627-7212 (ask for the Sheraton AC Hotel) or visiting http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/microsoft08 by the above date to receive the discounted rate. Be sure to reference the Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer and Solutions Conference. After March 31, rooms will be available at the going rate. This is a unique event designed for developers, architects, technical and business decision makers in the healthcare industry. Please join us to discover how Microsoft, its partners, and customers make possible the delivery of Software + Services in Health & Life Sciences. Topic: Microsoft: Improving Health Around the World Peter Neupert - Corporate Vice President Health Solutions Group, Microsoft Corporation; Steve Aylward, Health & Life Sciences Industry General Manager, Microsoft Corporation At the heart of the health information management dilemma is the fragmented nature of how health data is created, collected, shared and stored. Few industries are as information-dependent and data-rich as health care and few are so siloed. It is our philosophy that technology is a cornerstone of enabling a critical and sustainable shift in the way that healthcare is delivered and managed: aggregating data within and across provider organizations, aggregating data for consumers across all of their sources, and ultimately connecting these views for better-informed health decisions and better clinical outcomes. A company with the reach and resources of Microsoft can play a major role in addressing these challenges and make long-term contributions towards improving the cost, quality and delivery of care. This keynote session will help instantiate Microsoft’s overall vision for improving health, and its commitment to achieving transformation through industry-leading solutions. Topic: Microsoft Connected Industry Framework: An enabler for meeting today’s demands and tomorrows expectations Paul Mattes - Industry Managing Director, Health & Life Sciences, Microsoft Corporation Every vision and strategy must have a plan - a blueprint for execution from both a near-term and long-term perspective. In this session we discuss Microsoft’s Connected Industry Framework, providing specific context and solution strategy across the Health & Life Sciences Industry. Our Premier Partner Sponsors will describe how they are leveraging the Framework in the delivery of Health & Life Sciences Industry solutions. Topic: Microsoft Health Products: Technology Roadmap & Customer Experiences Grad Conn - Senior Director Health Solutions Group, Microsoft Corporation Amalga, Amalga HIS, Amalga RIS/PAC, and HealthVault. Some of you may have heard about them, others may be scratching their heads in bewilderment. This is a great opportunity to gain business insight and technology perspectives on Amalga and HealthVault - Microsoft’s flagship Health Product brands. Touch the Future with Microsoft Surface You’ve heard of it..but NOW you can touch it. We will have a Microsoft Surface device available during the entire event - attendees will be able to view, interact, and see compelling demonstrations of how Microsoft Surface can be used. · Health 2.0 - Health & Life Sciences version of web 2.0 · Connected Industry Framework (CIF) - “SOA enablement for Health & Life Sciences” · Office Business Applications for Life Sciences - “solutions for Life Sciences” · Programming Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 · Presence and speech enabling your applications with Microsoft Unified Communications · Architecting for High Performance and Multicore with Microsoft HPC and the .NET Parallel Framework
This event will offer developers, architects, technical and business decision makers in the healthcare industry a chance to learn how Microsoft is making a big bet in the enablement and delivery of Software + Services in Health & Life Sciences. The Health & Life Sciences Developer & Solution Conference will include a mix of keynotes, panel discussions, industry theme/technology discussions, and interactive breakouts sessions. Our overall objective is to offer a forum that will serve as a culminating exposure to Microsoft platform and technology innovations from a Health & Life Sciences Industry Solutions perspective. Come see how Industry themes & solutions aligned to technology themes & trends. · Health 2.0 - Health & Life Sciences version of web 2.0 · Connected Industry Framework (CIF) - “SOA enablement for Health & Life Sciences” · Scientist Workbench Framework (SWB) - “Framework for building products and solutions in Life Sciences - helping scientists find the needle in the haystack” · Health Solutions Group - Product Innovations with Azyxxi, HealthVault, and more · Software + Services - “It’s what Microsoft is betting its future on...” For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at the Sheraton Hotel at a rate of $129.00 through March 31, 2008. You are responsible for your own reservations which can be made by calling 1-888-627-7212 (ask for Sheraton AC Hotel) or visiting http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/microsoft08 by the above date to receive the discounted rate. Be sure to reference the Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer and Solutions Conference. After March 31, rooms will be available at the going rate.
Excitement is building up for the annual Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer and Solutions Conference. Check this teaser for what's in store at the conference. This is a unique conference sponsored by Microsoft (my team, US HLS Industry Group, Worldwide Pharma Industry Group, HSG, and Microsoft partners and customers)
Thanks to everyone who attended my talk about the new ASP.NET MVC framework at the Health & Life Sciences Developer Conference in Atlantic City last week! I've posted my slides for viewing up on SkyDrive: From there, you'll want to check out some of the other MVC resources out there. There's a lot of great blogs about MVC outside of Microsoft too. Chris Shoemaker has put together a decent MVC link list here:
During this journey, we will work with Healthcare & Life Sciences entities throughout China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. I plan on visiting many Healthcare & Life Sciences facilities like the one pictured here in Beijing One of the locals explained that when walking through a emperors passage or entrance into someone's home, it is proper for men to enter left foot first...and women to enter right foot first. So today as I start my journey @ Microsoft in China, I will be certain to enter left foot first and eyes wide open to everything this fascinating part of the world has to offer. -Ben Flock, Health & Life Sciences Industry Advisor, Microsoft Corporation
Craig Venter's A Life Decoded - a captivating read for adult boys (and for historians of the contemporary life sciences) When I bought Craig Venter's A Life Decoded (Viking 2007) more than half a year ago I didn’t have high expectations. A rapid look at the plates—with the usual mix of photos of the subject as a young man hiking with friends and as a mature man meeting other famous men—confirmed my prejudice about the genre and I left the book in the perhaps-to-be-read pile. Not even Venter's commanding blue eyes on the dust cover could persuade me to open it again. Venter doesn't try to diminish his maverick persona. If anything he inflates it. The basic story-line of A Life Decoded could be the manuscript for a Western movie. Venter portrays himself as the honest, outspoken, no-bullshit guy who was seasoned in Vietnam and who has defended fact-production and efficient science-making against a politically corrupt genomic establishment. He doesn't try to hide his contempt for the big power players in the game, including Jim Watson, Francis Collins and John Sulston, their (in his view) political maneuvring and protection of institutional interests. His Penguin/Viking publisher has probably toned down some of the most acerbic character assassinations but there is still much left. One of the few scientists in a power position that emerges unscathed is the former editor of Science magazine, Donald Kennedy. His knack for organising others to work for him is also reflected in the production of his autobiography. After having written some 240.000 words, i.e., more than twice the size of an ordinary book, Venter hired a Daily Telegraph journalist to help him trim and reorganise the text and to conduct interviews with other main actors in the story. His current fiancee gave him constant feedback, and several friends and colleagues, not to mention crew members of his famous yacht Sorcerer II, read multiple drafts. This doesn't mean that Craig Venter has had a ghostwriter—it means that A Life Decoded is as much a team-work as the scientific projects he has led. The professional support-team is probably the explanation for why this is also an unusually well-written book: as literature (don't forget that auto/biography is as much literature as history) it competes favourably with most mystery novels. Accordingly, long stretches of A Life Decoded are lucid introductions to bits and pieces of the history of biochemistry, molecular biology and genomics in the revolutionary quarter century from 1975 to 2000; an aspect of the book which in itself makes it obligatory reading for graduate students in the life sciences and for historians of contemporary biomedicine. It's all told from Venter's personal perspective, of course, like everything else in this strongly subjective story; but after all this is one of the limitations (and strengths) of the autobiographical genre. (Those who want another side of the story should also read John Sulston and Georgina Ferry's The Common Thread, 2003.) But first of all A Life Decoded is—personally, politically, scientifically—a book about passion in science. Venter describes his frustration when procedures and machinery didn't function as planned, and he relates the feeling of exctasy and relief when things worked, results were pouring in, and yet another article—about the Haemophilus influenzae genome, the Drosophila melanogaster genome, the mouse genome, and eventually the human genome—was sent for publication in the most prestigious scientific journals. Venter could have chosen to write yet another boring, self-congratulatory autobiography. Well, it is self-congratulatory and there are many successes in this story to be congratulated. But in addition to the triumphs, Venter also invites the reader to share his emotional ups and downs, even the painful and depressive feelings and (rare) suicidal thoughts. Forget everything you've heard about life sciences as boring. Craig Venter's life in science has been an emotional roller-coaster. The impression of a man who is driven by the passion for scientific success rather than for institutional power is reinforced by the fact that this book, compared with many other autobiographies, leaves most of the dinners-and-meetings-with-important-people stuff out. When, on one occasion, Venter and his second wife Claire were invited to dine at Clintons's table on a New Year's Eve dinner, he summarizes the event in four lines, concluding that Hillary was “like a sponge eagerly absorbing what I had to say about the genome”. Me too. I eagerly absorbed Venter's saga in one reading session and I already look forward to the sequel. The man is only 61 years old and despite having a lot of bad genes (he did of course sequence himself!) and having been diagnosed with early skin cancer, he will hopefully live long enough to write the story about his present work too. His mapping of the microbial genome of the oceans and his new institute's quest for artifical life promises to put even his 1990s genomic triumphs in the shadow. After these there will hopefully come even more exciting projects out of this man who seems to be genetically determined to live a life of competition.
Has the emergence of the life sciences reconfigured C. P. Snow’s two-cultures thesis? To celebrate this event, and to raise the question whether Snow’s notion has any relevance today, Science Museum and Tate Modern are organizing a two-day event on the theme ‘Art and Science Now: The Two Cultures in Question’:
It looks like microarray patterns are gradually replacing the DNA double helix as the central icon for biomedicine and the life sciences. For example, the new Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen—funded for a ten-year period with 600 mill. DKK (~120 mill. USD) by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and fully operative some time in 2009—has just presented their logo: thereby adding to the growing iconicity of microarrays, the new wonder tool of life science research. Martha de Menezes famously turned it into art a couple of years ago, we put it as a wall-paper on our blog about a year ago, and many others are beginning to employ the dotted pattern as an icon of the power of bioinformatics and systems biology in the life-sciences.
If you happen to be in Berlin next week, you are welcome to take part in the session ‘Rethinking Representational Practices in Contemporary Art and Modern Life Sciences’ at the 5th Biannual European Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA). The session takes place in the Kaiserin-Friederich-Haus (Robert-Koch-Platz 7) on Friday 6 June, 11-13 and has papers by Suzanne Anker, Rob Zwijnenberg, Thomas Soderqvist and Ingeborg Reichle. Finally Ingeborg Reichle, who organizes the session will talk about ”Art in the Age of Technoscience” and will present some issues she is dealing with in her forthcoming book “Art in the Age of Technoscience. Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art ” (Springer, New York 2009; see: http://www.kunstgeschichte.de/reichle/pub_technoscience_EN.html