As described earlier, ResearchGATE allows you to rate journal articles and group comments. Now, you can even choose to receive notifications whenever one of your comments was rated by another ResearchGATE member. Stay informed on how much your fellow researchers appreciate your input! Again, this tool has been inspired by your feedback. Please continue to send us your suggestions!

 

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, genetically engineered animals are considered a form of "Animal Drug". As such, the US FDA has released a set of guidelines, 10 years in the making, governing the approval of Genetically Engineered (GE) animals. The guidelines were released on the 15th January and can be perused over at the FDA site. While there is no doubt that it is an area needing tight regulation, the critics are concerned the FDA is the correct body to evaluate the approval of genetically modified animals and the possible environmental impacts that could occur if that animal was to escape. Questions are also being raised as to the approval process, which is largely a decision made in private, and how flexible that process will be for the large range of genetic animals currently being tested. Only time will tell how the approval process will impact the world of GE animals and whether it will be a hindrance on research or not.

Inspired by your feedback, we added the following small, but powerful feature: If you want to find and import your own papers from the pool of more than 30.000.000 documents accessible via ResearchGATE, we give you the choice of selecting the sources. As you might already know on which databases or publications your papers are located, your search results will now be much more precise.

“Your job as a scientist is to think for yourself and question what the herd is thinking.”—CHARLES COBBS, CALIFORNIA PACIFIC

MEDICAL CENTER, Science Magazine Vol 323, 2 Jan. 2009.

Cobbs believes the Glioblastoma multiforme (the most dangerous brain tumor, that kills 97% of those diagnosed within 5 years) may be caused or at least spurred on by cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common herpesvirus. An interesting suspicion, which is supported by several of Cobbs` studies. He could demonstrate that 90% of examined Gliobastoma samples are positive with CMV DNA. However, this finding is not 100% convincing as it has not been shown that CMV transforms healthy cells into cancerous cells. At the Karolinska Institute, Söderberg-Nauclér and colleagues have just completed a two-year trial with Valcyte (an antiviral drug) treatment of Glioblastoma diagnosed patients. These results have not been published yet. It would be a breakthrough if the treatment with an anti-CMV drug prolonged the five-year actuarial survival rate significantly.

When ResearchGATE launched in the spring of 2008, we aimed at creating a truly global network for scientists. We knew that this was an enormous task, but the prospect of connecting researchers throughout the world prevailed.

Today ResearchGATE is proud to announce that there are researchers and scientists from 137 countries using the platform. This is a testimony to the basic concept and the great success of ResearchGATE.

Thank you for your continuous support. 

Many researchers enjoy using ReMeet, our appointment organization tool. It's a powerful little application that simplifies creating appointments or deadlines for groups. We've just slightly improved it: If asked which dates are most suitable, you can now also click "no suitable appointment", prompting the group administrator to propose new dates.

Furthermore, we recently improved the structure of the discussion boards. It now allows the creator to delete threads, what is useful in case a topic became obsolete or two threads exist for the same topic.

Every day, thousands of researchers discuss their work on ResearchGATE discussion boards. In order to improve the structure, ResearchGATE now introduces sticky threads. These threads can include general information, guidelines and rules for each specific discussion board. 

Additionally, group administrators can now move threads within the group and sort them according to topics, representing them more clearly. 

Let us know what you think!

Recently, we introduced the possibility to rank papers on ResearchGATE. From now on, you can also rank comments on discussion boards on  scale from "not interesting" to "remarkable".