e-Lab-book.com

A Sample of Samples (Simple, Clean, ELN software)

‘Samples’ is an ELN software from Scimatic. You can download a demo from their site here.

Wow, it’s actually not super expensive (for students) at ~100 dollars. And not oppressively complicated. And pretty flexible. I really kind of like it.

However, I can’t immediately tell whether this would be that good as a ‘group’ electronic lab notebook. How it would work over a network, etc..

Other than that, it is quite straightforward, and may be a perfect decision for getting old school PIs to start using an ELN. As my group uses Onenote, it was quite a pleasure to see the organizing helps that are integrated into the software.

For example, when you click on the start a new experiment button. A box opens that allows you to right aims, objectives, etc.. Certainly I could do this on Onenote, but I rarely do .

If you are trying to convince a ELN fearing professor to move to the digital age, this may be the ELN for you. My Onenote ELN is kind of abstract and a PI could easily argue – well that’s not an electronic lab notebook software. The PI can easily see Samples is an ELN software, and can easily be shown how it would be used.

There’s not alot of easily accesible info on Samples at their site, but go check it out and download a demo and you’ll be able to quickly tell what it’s all about.

Courier e-lab-book!!

An answer to my ELN prayers, check out the breaking story on engadget.

This is small enough for a lab coat pocket, around a pound, accepts pen input – handwriting recognition, I think it integrates with Onenote! What the!? This would be great.

It doesn’t come out until 3Q or 4Q of 2010, but man the future looks bright for ELNs – granted it will be marketed for other stuff, but we all know it was meant for the lab!

Sharing printers from 64-bit(or 32-bit) windows to 32-bit(or 64-bit) windows

This is SO ABSURD, but I thought I would put this here so I could personally find it. And hopefully others will be helped by it. The switch-over from 32-bit OS to 64-bit is on. And for the most part it is fine. But WHY sharing a printer is so insanely hard I have no clue!

Here’s what you have to do
1) Share Permissions
>>1. On explorer, go to C:\windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS
>>2. Right click, Properties
>>3. Sharing tab
>>4. Advanced Sharing
>>5. Check “Share this folder”
>>6. Permissions
>>7. Grant everyone Full Control

2) NTFS Permissions
>>1. On explorer, go to C:\windows\system32\spool\printers
>>2. Right click, Properties
>>3. Security tab
>>4. Edit
>>5. Add
>>6. Advanced
>>7. Find Now
>>8. Choose “NETWORK”
>>9. OK
>>10. Grant NETWORK Full Control

AND THEN we had to install as local printers, using the port trick. . .

1. Go to “Printers”
2. click “Add Printer”
3. “Add a Local Printer”
4. “Create a New Port”
5. use the “Local Port” option
6. at “Enter a Port Name” enter: “\\Computername\Printername”

21 CFR part 11 and Onenote

I received the question below about switching to ELNs, rule compliance, and Onenote:

Hi Shawn,

Im a second year graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. I was looking online for potential ELN options ( I use endnote for other things myself and was infact wondering how useful it would be as an ELN when I found your page). It seems to me that typing things out on a daily basis is far easier than writing them down in a notebook, not to mention the other great advantages an ELN offers. Considering 20 CFR part 11 requirements, how do you ensure that your records in one note are compliant with the rules? I know the files have date and
time stamps (for last used/modified) but how would you ensure that for sections and pages in one note? I would like to make the switch but am a little wary of the compliance part. What do you think?

Thanks

This is a great question and deserves discussion.
Continue Reading…

What ELN would you recommend?

I recently got the following email:

It seems that you have so many ideas, why you didn’t build your own
system?

I’m a PhD student, what would you recommend me to use as ELN?

THANKS
-hector

I had to laugh a little, because – have you read my ideas? Some of them are crazy dreams! I can’t wait for mind-computer interface devices and iphone/palm pre computer phones connected. So your ELN is simply you making ‘mental notes’

Anyway, since you’re a PhD student I would have to recommend Office Onenote. I love it as my ELN. The new Onenote 2010 (Beta), offers a second level of subpages now. The organization is good, and if you have multiple members of the lab working on the same project (and you can get them to login and logoff), then Onenote record when and who has written anything in the lab notebook.

If you were starting your own lab, a PI, or a lab manager. And you want a more powerful solution with less hassle to you, then I would recommend some of the other ELN software solutions. But as an individual or small group Onenote really is fantastic.

I can link to any file for analysis – excel, word, Prism (stats file). I can insert pictures, links to websites, searchs. I can search through my lab notebook instantly (as opposed to flipping through).

I recently switched over to Onenote 2010 Beta with my little group. And to be honest there isn’t alot of changes (which in some ways is good, if it was too different then people may not know how to use it). I’ll go into more detail later, but the best things so far to me are – the add layer of subpages (although I don’t understand why there has to be a limit- why can’t there be sub-sub-sub-sub-subpages?) and the user/change tracking is better. I can see any changes made by others since I last opened it.

Here’s a pdf (you can save you onenote pages as pdf for archive if you’d like) example of recent activity. PDFLINK

Happy Holidays – The new year…

I personally tried out the technical preview of Office 2010 and Onenote, but now that the Beta is out, I think I’m going to try actually switching my ELN in the lab over.

So hopefully the new year brings some cool new advantages…and not BUGS

Chek this link out for some my Master’s thesis work that was just published.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ppar/2009/193413.html

What else do I hope for in the new year…..
a brain-computer interface for my cell phone/internet/ELN device
win the biggest lottery jackpot ever so I can change the science world forever!
…I don’t know, maybe a non BCS, NCAA football tournament at the end of next year?

Going to SFN 2009 in Chicago

I will be at the annual society for neuroscience conference (this year in Chicago – hey, it’s better than the Olympics anyway, right?). Come talk to me about electronic lab notebooks or epigenetics or whatever. My poster information is:

The transcriptional repressor NRSF/REST mediates acquired HCN channelopathy in the epileptogenic process
Poster-147.7/I9
Session Number: 147
Session Title: Epilepsy and Channels
Date and Time: Sunday Oct 18, 2009 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: South Hall A

Email me if you’ll be there and I’ll come check out your poster

Office 2010 Review: ELN improvements and shortcomings

I’ll mainly be reviewing Onenote, but I do want to say that powerpoint seems to have some nice new stuff – particularly you can embed videos (man that has always been annoying, being on a computer without the right codec or something). The big thing (which wasn’t really a part of the technical preview) is the web app versions of office programs. They look to be very similar to running them locally. That could be a really big deal (since google apps haven’t done much since they were released).

Onenote 2010 ELN Summary

• Ribonnized: Hey, I don’t mind the ribbon, plus it’s very handy to hide and show it now.
• Organization: Multi-level subpages!
• SEARCH!! – a much better and faster search, plus search by date and author features!
• Quick styles – easier to make your ELN aesthetically pleasing
• Sharing and authoring slightly better for an ELN
• Web? It says ‘Access from everywhere, share on the web’ but I didn’t really see how to do that yet.
  • is Onenote going to be sharable on the web!!
  • According to this site – You will be able to synch to cloud (Windows Live), edit your notebook from a browser, and there will be a better Onenote Mobile app (which I know nothing about) THIS WOULD BE GREAT!!!!

Still wishing

• Embed already word, excel, … – why not? Why should I need to press a link and open excel files Why not be able to embed any application in a window?
• Separate user login – I like the authoring tracking, but wish you didn’t have to log out of windows
• Shared templates? not sure if this was addressed, hard to determine with the technical preview

Continue Reading…

Office 2010

Yeah! I was ‘accepted’ for the Office 2010 Technical Preview. I’ll check it out to see if it adds some functionality to my ELN.

The Academia Problem – Preventing ELN Adoption

I’ve been hanging out in the ‘Ivory tower’ of Academia for quite some time now. Trying to push my crazy/complicated tech nerd ideas. (These people work out complex signal transduction cascades of chemicals in the neurons of the brain, but writing into a searchable computer notebook is too complicated?)

We know that as tech in Universities goes, so goes tech in the world. That’s why apple gave computers to schools in the 80s, and that’s why software is cheap or free to students. So why is the electronic lab notebook working in reverse?

Interestingly, the bottom line that drives companies drives the push toward ELNs, efficient collaboration, and searchable results.

Ironically, Academia (which prides itself on pure research and rich collaboration) is actually quite insular in it’s approach. The whole process of publishing research in journals and aquiring grants does not lend itself to collaboration. In fact, collaboration has been heavily pushed recently in Academia. However, this collaboration is utilized to publish, publish, publish. And when you publish, you publish what ‘worked’ and what supports your story. What is missing is all the information on what didn’t work – so every lab has to learn on their own what doesn’t work. An ELN in a business is easily searchable and everyone in the company can learn from everyone else’s mistakes.

The essence of the problem is that the value of a network of ELNs grows exponentially with more users – and Academia essentially has units of 2-10 people that work by themselves and share only bits of information with the rest of the academic world (in Journals).

The best remedy would be to get rid of journals altogether and just have instant public access to everyone’s ELN.

Can you imagine!! All experiments tagged and searchable… yeah right, that’s a long ways off.

First ELNs need to infiltrate the system as it is now. The academic ELN must target small, small groups (like 3 people) and look to really add value to the small group. And, quite frankly, it needs to be pretty much free (unfortunately for ELN companies). However, Google is free, right. There are ways to make it worth the company’s time. In fact, a great step toward the super Academia ELN that could replace journals would be an online (or online/offline hybrid) ELN that has advertising. Sigma, Invitrogen, Eppendorf,… they would all love to advertise