Janet Hock

Questions and Answers (7) View all

• Answer added in Science Communication
  53 How important is storytelling and visualization for your science?
  By Sven Schade · Geospatial Information Scientist
  Janet Hock · Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health

  Sven: what a great video - thanks for posting. 

  Sven: what a great video - thanks for posting.
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• Answer added in Science Communication
  53 How important is storytelling and visualization for your science?
  By Sven Schade · Geospatial Information Scientist
  Janet Hock · Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health

  Just an anecdote, We have been working for 3 years on software that maps clinical data on cancer patients and their lifestyle exposures with environme... [more]

  Just an anecdote, We have been working for 3 years on software that maps clinical data on cancer patients and their lifestyle exposures with environmental exposures and geographic features in space and time. We wanted to bring new ways of looking at problems to epidemiology and public health scientists and policy makers. We have presented to many different kinds of audiences showing screen shots, diagrams, cartoons, text synopsis, etc, while we worked on the prototype. We are really interested in having a variety of users pick this up, but no-one shared our enthusiasm until recently. My colleague created a stunning animated visualization of the concept at our last presentation. There was an audible hiss of breath from our audience, whose response was "You've just solved two problems for us" as they launched a lively discussion of how they could enhance the software with their expertise to fit a new application. All it took was the one graphic slide for our audience to "get it", and for our communication to work. As a dedicated scientist and teacher, I think we have to persevere in trying to find the most effective communications, knowing that many humans, scientists and non-scientists, often find visualizations and stories the easiest way to understand even the most complex hypotheses and datasets.
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• Answer added in Science Communication
  53 How important is storytelling and visualization for your science?
  By Sven Schade · Geospatial Information Scientist
  Janet Hock · Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health

  Data visualization is incredibly important as a tool of communication - whether for hard or softer data. We used our clinical data on biobanking to li... [more]

  Data visualization is incredibly important as a tool of communication - whether for hard or softer data. We used our clinical data on biobanking to link data on cancer with behavioral data, geographic data and environmental risks data to create a software prototype "User Gateway" so users (scientists and policymakers) can generate hypothesis on what might be linked to what and to allow users to ask questions about combinations of risks to develop scientific proposals. Commercially JMP, the stats company, has been developing beautiful visuals to show quantitative data analyses. The Polis Center at IUPUI developed and hosts SAVI http://www.savi.org/savi/ where they took data on urban living, environment etc and set it up so non-scientists, policymakers, new arrivals to Indianapolis, could use. They add health data as it becomes available. It is so nice to use that users dont realize they are applying science!! The other side to story telling! Because of the very severe cuts in funding and criticisms of universities and research progress, I think it is very important for us to communicate our science to non-scientists. Interesting and effective story telling and analogies are the easiest way to do this. Nice topic. Story telling is an art and free form mostly used as entertainment in the arts. The framework of story telling can be applied very effectively to scientific data to make it intelligible to those learning and those who are not scientists.
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• Answer added in Bone Research
  11 Cryosection or plastic inclusion of mouse femurs for histomorphometry?
  By Camille Bru · Bone Therapeutics
  Janet Hock · Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health

  Immunohistochemistry on undecalcified plastic embedded bones is very difficult and on mouse bones, is exceptionally difficult. If you want routine his... [more]

  Immunohistochemistry on undecalcified plastic embedded bones is very difficult and on mouse bones, is exceptionally difficult. If you want routine histomorphometry with fluorescent labels, there are many many protocols - Roland Baron, Yale Univ, US or Robert Schenk, Bern, Switzerland, have published the best protocols (the best protocol development work was done in mid-1970s-1990s). You can also use uCT with a quantitative imaging program as suggested earlier, as the more state of the art technology, although cannot do dynamic measurements so have to infer on bone formation. I would recommend using lumbar vertebra or hip bones for immunohistochemistry, and wax embedded, decalcified sections, unless your question is compelling and must use calcified bones - the ratio of trabecular to cortical bone and marrow volume of vertebra and iliac bones is easier to work with than long bones. We tried the cryostat and tape method - it is possible to get positive immunohistochemistry when the protein you're looking for is abundant, but the structure within the section is lousy, and it is very difficult to detect rare abundant proteins. David Rowe, Univ Connecticut health Center, US has publications where they have genetically labelled osteoblasts and other bone cells selectively, and managed to detect it by histochemistry, although they prefer direct fluorescence. So another alternative is to label your protein of interest with a fluorescent marker and tag it to a bone specific protein. I would not spend any money on equipment until you have test run the procedure you want, to be sure it works - do not believe manufacturer's claims. We and many others spent years on this problem with limited success. Dont expect to have wonderful histology with immuno and calcified sections. Conventional bone histomorphometry with fluorescent labels for bone formation is very well developed technology - find a lab where they can train you - there's a lot of art that goes with the protocols on MMA to get beautiful sections. Good luck.
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• Answer added in Air Pollution
  16 Mapping Urban vulnerability to air quality
  By Parth Sarathi Mahapatra · Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology
  Janet Hock · Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health

  In the US, NIH assembled PhenX as a website (https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/) that would provide standardized questions for surveys anywhere in the worl... [more]

  In the US, NIH assembled PhenX as a website (https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/) that would provide standardized questions for surveys anywhere in the world (this makes comparing studies much easier as we use a common standard). These are based on a long history of epidemiology studies and lessons learned from those studies. If you put a study together that you want published in peer-reviewed journal, suggest reviewing the questions in PhenX toolkit. You can select individual questions, or use a collection of questions that match your interest. The questions have been validated. In considering your question, please remember that people adapt and survive. Who is the susceptible subset? Exposures to one generation will stimulate epigenetic changes in the next generation that may be protective or increase susceptibility (Michael Walkees has a series of articles on pregnant mice exposed to arsenic and the consequences for the next 2 generations). Also remember that exposure to high doses of pollutants associate with toxicities while low doses, especially of endocrine disruptive chemicals such as arsenic, over long periods may be more conducive to increasing the risks of cancer - dose matters; duration matters. I would recommend you narrow your question to a protocol that can give you an answer and then add to the information with a 2nd well devised study. If too broad, you will be criticized as having uninterpretable data. On ARCGIS, we have found that most geographic maps data were never gathered to address health questions. Geographic sampling is seldom randomly collected (eg grid design), so you will have to be very careful and transparent about what resolution you can use from the available data. Also, weather data (eg air quality) is gathered by the second or minute whereas health data often requires years, so you need to think about how you will handle the time windows of interest. Dont forget to track the behaviors and habits of your cases - tobacco use, drugs, alcohol, nutrition and education - as those will interact with any of the environmental exposures, and you may find they are more important contributors to risk than air quality. I'd recommend trying to find a good statistician, a good epidemiologist, a good physician and a good mathematician as an advisory "board" to help you think about the question and the design of your study - the latter can be extraordinarily helpful in helping you think through the geography and time data. Good luck - this is a great area to study.
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