Collaboration and Data-Sharing Tools calls for papers / meetings & conferences

Call for Abstracts: NTTS (New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics) 2013

5 to 7 March 2013 Brussels, Belgium

NTTS (New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics) 2013 is an international scientific conference on the impact of new technologies on statistical collection, production and dissemination systems.

The purpose of the conference is to stimulate and facilitate the preparation of new innovative projects, to encourage cooperation and possible building of consortia by researchers with the aim of enhancing the quality and usefulness of official statistics and to prepare activities related to research in statistics within the next European Framework Programme for Research and Development (Horizon 2020).

Previous NTTS conferences were organised in 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2009 and 2011.

The NTTS 2013 conference will take place from 5 to 7 March 2013 in Brussels.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 October 2012.

Aim and scope

Present and share the outcomes of recent research activities in statistics in general and in official statistics including Eurostat ESSnet projects and VIP (Vision Infrastructure Projects).

Promote new research methodological and technological development for use by Official Statistics.

Present the new research framework from 2014 onwards (Horizon 2020) in terms of orientations and deadlines and prepare further content and partnership for possible proposals submission.

Discuss future needs and developments of research in statistics, new paradigms for data use, access and retrieval (open data, big data, organic data) and ICT developments and infrastructures for use by Official Statistics.

Conference topics

NTTS 2013 addresses research and development aspects related to innovative methods and techniques for official statistics with a particular emphasis on automatic and ICT-based methods. Papers are accepted in the following areas:

New ways of collecting, accessing and using big amount of data. The Cyber-infrastructure has changed the way data are collected, accessed and managed. New sampling techniques and new survey approaches and methodologies for Official Statistics are also an important aspect of this area.

Integration, consolidation, combination of multiple data sources. ICT-based surveys and cross-linking of statistical data and their combination with textual, spatial, transactional and/or image information coming from different sources are an example of this phenomenon. The combination and use of multiple types of ancillary information (administrative data, organic data) is another example.

Analysing data. The high dimensionality, large amount and diversity of data types and structures, require new paradigms, mathematical background, computational methods and modeling approaches for data mining and analysis. The need to monitor and measure policies at different geographical levels (Small Area Estimation) requires new modeling techniques. New paradigms like moving from data to statistical information and from statistical information to knowledge should be considered. Issues like estimation methods and management of non-response are also be part of this area.

Distributing, presenting and accessing data and microdata. ICT has deeply changed the way information is presented, distributed and accessed. This has an impact on statistical data dissemination, visualization and retrieval. Topics like narratives, remote access, graphical and data visualization tools, data confidentiality, synthetic files are included in this area.

Support for evidence-based policymaking. Robust and scalable indicators building models have been produced for decades. How can new indicators be generated using multiple data types and how can we ensure their quality? Topics on GDP and Beyond and Well-Being indicators are also part of this area.

Use of standards for Official statistics. The ESS is confronted with new requirements for designing the future architecture of integrated statistical production systems. This requires further research and development in the use and integration of meta/paradata and their format, reengineering of the statistical production chain using enterprise architecture modeling, new collaborative tools and innovative distributed environments.

Call for Papers: International Conference in Modeling Health Advances (ICMHA'12)

San Francisco, USA, 24-26 October, 2012

The International Conference in Modeling Health Advances 2012 will take place in San Francisco, USA, 24-26 October, 2012.

A host of new diseases, like HIV/AIDS, BSE, Avian Flu, West Nile Virus and others have appeared on the scene during the last twenty five years and undoubtedly, more will come in the coming years. To tackle these illnesses, the cooperation of modelers, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and others, and of researchers from the medical community is absolutely essential. Modeling is important because it gives important insight into the method of treatment. In the case of HIV/AIDS, for example, mathematical modeling indicated that a combination of both protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibitors would be far more effective than any one of these two drugs.

The purpose of this conference is to bring all the people working in the area of epidemiology under one roof and encourage mutual interaction.

The conference ICMHA'12 is held under the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science WCECS 2012. The WCECS 2012 is organized by the International Association of Engineers (IAENG), a non-profit international association for engineers and computer scientists. The congress has the focus on the frontier topics in the theoretical and applied engineering and computer science subjects. The last IAENG conference has attracted more than five hundred participants from over 30 countries. All submitted papers will be under peer review and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceeding (ISBN: 978-988-19251-6-9). The abstracts will be indexed and available at major academic databases. The accepted papers will also be considered for publication in the special issues of the journal Engineering Letters, in IAENG journals and in edited books by publishers like Springer.

Important Dates:
Draft Paper Submission Deadline: 2 July, 2012
Camera-Ready Papers Due & Registration Deadline: 30 July, 2012
ICMHA 2012: 24-26 October, 2012

Call for Abstracts: 39th Association for Gerontology in Higher Education Annual Meeting and Educational Leadership Conference

Waves of Change: Charting the Course for Gerontology Education

February 28 - March 3, 2013 St. Petersburg, Florida

JUNE 20, 2012:

Abstract Submission deadline
Pre-conference Institute deadline

The AGHE Annual Meeting and Educational Leadership Conference is the premier national forum for discussing ideas and issues in gerontological and geriatric education. Educators, clinicians, administrators, researchers, and students share their experiences, expertise, and innovations regarding teaching and learning about aging and older persons. Plan now to be part of this opportunity for professional growth and development.

Upon completion of the Annual Meeting, participants will be better able to:

Describe educational programs and models addressing gerontology and geriatric content at a variety of higher education and learner levels

Understand key educational public policy issues as they relate to funding for higher education and work force preparedness

Identify factors that facilitate gerontology and geriatric education program growth and sustainability

Utilize educational evaluation methods to document learner outcomes and program value

Compare and apply teaching materials, methods, and tools in a variety of content areas to improve their institution’s educational programs

Develop collaborative opportunities in the scholarship of teaching and learning, with national and international colleagues in the field of aging

Strengthen the learning experiences and mentoring available to students in the field of gerontology and geriatrics education

Call for Papers: 2012 Quetelet Seminar--Adult Mortality and Morbidity

December 5-7, 2012 Research Centre in Population and Societies, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Numerous demographic studies have been focusing on mortality and range from analysis of age-specific mortality to cause-of-death analysis or risks factors analysis. In countries with a long statistical tradition, mortality levels by sex, age and cause of death are easily obtained. Epidemiologists as well as demographers took interest in identifying risks factors and markers by age, sex and cause. Although these factors and markers remain the same for morbidities and the resulting mortality, little is known about morbidity levels, be it in terms of prevalence or incidence, except for pathologies that are recorded in specific registrars or for which large surveys are conducted. In countries with incomplete demographic data, both mortality and morbidity are little or badly documented except when subjected to specific surveys such as under-5 mortality or, to a lesser extent, morbidity. The need for medical diagnosis and assessment of severity of illness makes morbidity data collection especially challenging. Morbidity data collection is especially challenging as it involves. In addition, in armed conflict, post-conflict or natural disaster situations, evaluating the number of victims is crucial to assess needs as well as to ease the reconciliation process.

The 2012 Quetelet Seminar will focus on adult age morbidity and mortality analysis from the data collection and measurement perspective. It will be organised in collaboration with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (UCL-CRED/WHO) and International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH). Communications will cover existing or in-the-making tools for data collection and measurement that serve to estimate adult-age morbidity levels in countries with good-level statistical data and adult-age morbidity and mortality levels in countries with incomplete data. Particular attention will be devoted to papers that deal with estimating mortality and morbidity in crisis or post-crisis time. Studies analysing interactions between mortality and morbidity as well as the role of health monitoring systems in situations conducive to potentially high public health risk are encouraged.

The 2012 Quetelet Seminar will be organised along the following three axes:

1. Morbidity Analysis

What are the existing data collection and measurement tools to estimate incidence and prevalence of diseases, including chronic diseases? What are their limits?

What morbidity data collection and registration tools are most effective? What are the most reliable data to collect for the measurement of functional and cognitive abilities in a population so as to evaluate dependency ratios? What health monitoring systems should be developed to detect and prevent infectious disease?

2. Adult mortality in countries where data are incomplete

What are the latest developments in the estimation of adult mortality in countries where civil registration data are incomplete or non-existent? How has adult mortality changed recently in developing countries, more than three decades after the onset of the HIV epidemic and in a context of increased access to antiretroviral treatment? Beyond mortality levels, how are inequalities in adult mortality analysed (by sex, according to educational or poverty levels)? What are the lessons to be learned from demographic surveillance sites, particularly in terms of causes of death, as reflected by verbal autopsies and associated tools?

3. Demographic impacts of armed conflicts and natural disasters

What impact armed conflicts and natural disasters have on adult morbidity and mortality? How is this impact measured? What different forms of resilience develop and how are they captured? What early warning systems can be put in place to limit the impact of disasters?

Instructions for submitting paper
Abstracts (1 page including tables) should be submitted by email before 8th June, 2012 to Isabelle Theys (Isabelle.Theys@uclouvain.be). The abstracts should include a description of the paper’s objective, background, data and research methods, as well as expected findings. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by 29th June.

Paper
The completed papers, either in English or French, should be sent before 15th November, 2012. The final version should not exceed 20 single-spaced pages, including tables and references.

Language
Papers will be presented in French or English, without simultaneous translation.

Publication
A selection of publications will be published in the proceedings of the Chaire Quetelet 2012.

Deadlines
Deadline for submission: 8th June, 2012
Author notification of accepted paper abstract: 29th June, 2012
Deadline for complete paper: 15th November, 2012
Quetelet Seminar: 5th-7th December, 2012

Call for Abstracts: International Society for Disease Surveillance Annual Conference

The ISDS Annual Conference is the premier event dedicated to the advancement of the science and practice of biosurveillance. This year’s theme, Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance, will highlight the importance of working together across agencies, sectors, and disciplines to improve surveillance methods and population health outcomes. The conference will be held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, CA, December 4-5, 2012, with Pre-Conference Workshops on December 3rd.

The ISDS Conference draws professionals from a broad range of disciplines— epidemiology and computer science to mathematical modeling and health policy—to learn and contribute the latest achievements, methodologies, best practices, conceptual frameworks, and technical innovations in the rapidly evolving field of biosurveillance. This year's conference will provide fertile ground for cultivating new ideas and partnerships with roundtable discussions, panels and other opportunities to collaborate.

The scope of this conference includes all of the components, policies, methods, practices, infrastructure, research and evaluation related to timely surveillance of communicable diseases, chronic diseases and injuries. This includes notifiable conditions, adverse events and emerging/novel threats; biological, chemical, and radiological health threats; plant, animal, and food surveillance; and environmental monitoring.

Questions regarding the Call for Abstracts may be sent to Tera Reynolds, ISDS Program Manager.

Submission deadline: September 6, 2012 (11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time)

Authors notified of acceptance: October 3, 2012

Pre-Conference Workshops: December 3, 2012

Annual Conference: December 4-5, 2012

Submission Types

Note: All abstracts for the ISDS Conference will be submitted using ScholarOne. There is a limit of 4810 characters for the text of your submission. The character count includes spaces. The character count WILL include title, authors, institutions, tables, and images, but WILL NOT include presenting author brief biographical summaries (bios) or the abstract summary that will be used in the conference program.

Oral

All abstracts submitted for oral presentation are automatically considered for poster presentation as well. Include the following components when submitting an abstract for oral presentation:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Methods

· Results

· Conclusions

· Acknowledgements

· References

· Names and affiliations of authors

· Brief bio of lead author/intended presenter (450 characters/75 words)

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of submission to be used in conference program

Poster

Include the following components when submitting an abstract for poster presentation:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Methods

· Results

· Conclusions

· Acknowledgements

· References

· Names and affiliations of authors

· Brief bio of lead author/intended presenter (450 characters/75 words)

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of submission (for potential inclusion in conference program)

Panel *New for 2012*

Panel topics should be a specific aspect of design, theory, application, or experience pertaining to the science or practice of biosurveillance. Suggested panels should be comprised of no more than four participants and a moderator. A typical panel session will consist of four 15 minute presentations, each followed by 5 minutes of questions, with 10 minutes for closing discussion (presentation lengths will be subject to change based on final agenda). When submitting an abstract for a panel, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Panel description

· How the moderator intends to engage the audience in discussions on the panel topic

· Names of panel presenters, moderator and affiliations

· Brief bios for each panel presenter and moderator (450 characters/75 words each) for abstract reviewers to assess appropriateness to serve on the panel for the described topic

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of panel to be used in conference program

Roundtable *New for 2012*

Roundtables can have up to three facilitators to briefly introduce the topic of interest and facilitate active discussion among attendees. Roundtables must be discussion-oriented rather than didactic, lecture-driven sessions. Roundtable discussions will be 60-90 minutes (depending on final agenda). When submitting an abstract for a roundtable, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Roundtable description

· How the facilitator intends to engage the audience in the roundtable discussion, including sample questions

· Names of facilitators and affiliations

· Brief bios for each facilitator (450 characters/75 words each) for abstract reviewers to assess appropriateness to lead a discussion on the described topic

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of roundtable to be used in conference program

System Showcase Demonstrations *New for 2012*

System showcase demonstrations will be presented during the evening poster session on the first day of the conference. A typical demonstration will illustrate one or more aspects of an innovative population/public health surveillance system that is in use or under development. Demonstrations of open source and/or free products are strongly encouraged. System showcase demonstrations are not intended to be marketing or sales presentations and such submissions will be rejected; those interested in supporting the ISDS conference with an exhibit booth should contact Tera Reynolds at ISDS for more information. When submitting an abstract for a system showcase demonstration, include the following components:

· Title (85 characters MAX)

· Objective

· Introduction

· Description, highlighting benefits to public/population health surveillance and how this demonstration will be a unique addition to the ISDS conference

· Conclusions, including lessons learned and design principles from this demonstration that attendees can take away, even if not using or intending to use the system demonstrated

· Names of demonstrators and affiliations

· Brief summary (600 characters/100 words) of showcase to be used in conference program

Track Descriptions

I. Analytical Methods

a. Analytical Methods: Applied

b. Analytical Methods: Research & Development

This theme is focused on important and novel advances in the field of surveillance methodologies and analytical approaches. Abstracts in the Applied sub-track should describe methods or processes routinely used in a production-type environment. Abstracts in the Research and Development sub-track should describe methods and processes still under development or tested within a research or pilot setting. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Analytic evaluation of surveillance components

· Decision support

· Estimating morbidity and impact

· Evaluation of algorithms and systems through epidemic simulation

· Geospatial analysis

· Innovative use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology

· Integrating evidence from multiple sources

· Integration of mathematical modeling and statistical analyses

· New algorithms and evaluation of existing algorithms for cluster and event detection

· Pattern recognition algorithms

· Predictive disease modeling/predictive analytics

· Spatial cluster detection

· Statistical methods and tools for analyzing and interpreting data

· Time series analysis

II. Informatics

a. Informatics: Applied

b. Informatics: Research & Development

Abstracts in the Applied sub-track should describe methods or processes routinely used in a production-type environment. Abstracts in the Research and Development sub-track should describe methods and processes still under development or tested within a research or pilot setting. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Advances in methods for classifying data

· Approaches to building interoperable surveillance systems and components

· Borderless data exchange models (e.g. federated information sharing approaches)

· Cloud computing for public health surveillance

· Data integration – acquiring, moving, storing, processing, coding, normalizing, and preparing data for analysis between systems

· Data quality

· Data visualization methods

· Electronic health records and public health surveillance

· Health information exchange

· How clinical information systems can support public health surveillance efforts

· How public health information systems can support clinical efforts

· Informatics lessons learned

· Information and knowledge exchange

· Innovations in public health informatics

· Mobile technologies for public health

· Natural language processing

· Standards and Interoperability Framework (Public Health Reporting Initiative)

· Standards used in public health surveillance

· System architectures for limited connectivity environments and disaster surveillance

· System architectures for surveillance in low-resource environments

· System architectures to leverage HIE for public health surveillance

· System descriptions of real-world solutions to challenging integration problems

· Workforce requirements and training

· Use of social media for biosurveillance

III. Policy (at local, state, federal, international levels)

This theme is focused on sharing successes, challenges or approaches leveraged in the use or development of policy which affects biosurveillance operations and activities. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Creating successful surveillance partnerships

· Data sharing policies

· Federal policy agendas

· Funding strategies for surveillance

· How public health surveillance data have been used to inform policy

· International Health Regulations

· Legal/ethical/security/privacy issues in surveillance

· Meaningful Use responses by public health departments

· Policies around social media/leveraging social networks for risk communication, etc.

· Research collaborations to expand evidence-based health policy

· Workforce

IV. Public/Population health surveillance

a. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Practice

b. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Research

c. Public/Population Health Surveillance: Evaluation

This theme is focused on improving the daily processes of timely public/population health surveillance, including detection, signal validation, event characterization, investigation, and response. Abstracts in the Practice sub-track should describe practices routinely used in a production environment and/or deployed in field by public health departments or other agencies. Abstracts in the Research sub-track should describe research related to surveillance, health systems, etc. Abstracts in the Evaluation sub-track should describe evaluations of public/population health surveillance systems, workflows, protocols, etc. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Adverse drug events and pharmacovigilance

· Case studies

· Chronic disease surveillance

· Collaboration success stories

· Contact tracing and network analysis

· Disaster/event surveillance

· Disparities surveillance

· Evaluation of surveillance systems

· Infectious disease surveillance

· Influenza-like illness surveillance

· Injury surveillance

· Innovations in biosurveillance

· Integrating surveillance across multiple data sources

· Integrating surveillance systems, e.g. syndromic and reportable diseases

· Linking response with frontline health workers

· Meaningful Use and how it’s changing/not changing surveillance practice

· Measuring vaccine efficacy, coverage, etc.

· Messaging/risk communication (what to say to the public, politicians and media about syndromic systems alerts)

· Mobile technologies for public health

· Novel approaches to communicable diseases surveillance and reporting (e.g., notifiable conditions, MRSA, nosocomial infections)

· OneHealth

· Outbreak detection, characterization and outbreak management

· School and university surveillance

· Situational awareness

· Social media and surveillance

· Surveillance across borders

· Surveillance for refugees and recent immigrants

· Surveillance in resource-limited settings

· Surveillance using ambulatory care data

· Surveillance using inpatient data

· Vaccine-preventable disease surveillance

Call for Abstracts: American Society of Human Genetics 62nd Annual Meeting

Tuesday, November 6 through Saturday, November 10, 2012 San Francisco, California

The receipt deadline for new abstract submission is June 4, 2012 at 8:00 pm (US EDT).

The world's top scientists and clinicians in the human genetics field will gather to present their latest research findings at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), which will be held on November 6-10, 2012, in San Francisco, CA (http://www.ashg.org/2012meeting). ASHG is the primary professional membership organization for human genetics specialists worldwide, representing nearly 8,000 researchers, academicians, clinicians, genetic counselors, nurses, and others with a special interest in this area (http://www.ashg.org).

The ASHG Annual Meeting continues to be the largest human genetics meeting in the world, attracting more than 7,000 scientific participants each year. The ASHG 2012 Meeting will provide attendees with the latest information about cutting-edge developments in human genetics and genomics research. In addition, nearly 250 U.S. and international exhibitors at this year's ASHG Exhibitor Trade Show will offer an unprecedented opportunity to view the latest advances in genetics-related products and services derived, in part, from work presented at previous ASHG meetings.

Topics to be addressed in the scientific program for the ASHG 2012 Meeting will include: gene discovery in human genetics; new insights and challenges from next generation sequencing; advances in medical genetics and translation/applications in clinical care; progress in gene therapy; personalized medicine; cancer genetics; advances in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis; revelations about human alleles from studies of model organisms; implications of population genetic studies; modeling in statistical genetics; data centralization and its implications for our field; ethical, legal and social implications of genomics; changes in genetics education; and much more.

For more information about the ASHG 2012 Annual Meeting, or to register and/or submit an abstract for presentation at this year’s meeting, please go to: http://www.ashg.org/2012meeting.

Call for Abstracts: World Health Summit

The M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centres and Medical Universities is pleased to invite submission of abstracts for presentation at its upcoming 4th World Health Summit. The World Health Summit is one of the world’s foremost gatherings of leaders from academia, politics, industry and civil society to develop joint strategies and take action to address key challenges in medical research, global health and health care delivery with the aim of shaping the political, academic and social agendas. This year´s World Health Summit “Research for Health and Sustainable Development” will be held in Berlin from October 21st to 24th, 2012.

The M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centres and Medical Universities was officially founded in 2009, as a medical and scientific forum of excellence on the occasion of the 1st World Health Summit in Berlin. It is composed of a network of prestigious medical institutions dealing with scientific, political, and economic issues related to medicine and global health. The M8 Alliance acts as a permanent platform for framing future considerations of global medical development and health challenges. It is the M8’s vision to harness academic excellence to improve global health.

The New Voices in Global Health (NVGH) is a competitive abstract submission and selection programme designed to highlight important research, policy and advocacy initiatives of new and future leaders in global health, and empower participants with global health advocacy skills.

Selected participants will have the opportunity to make a presentation at the World Health Summit 2012. The accepted researchers will participate in either the NVGH forum session or the NVGH poster presentation session. Selected abstracts will be published in a special booklet available at the World Health Summit and on The Lancet´s website.

Issues addressed must be relevant, reflect current challenges, show originality and will spark the interest of conference participants and the readers of The Lancet. Topics of particular interest would be those linked to the summit’s main themes:

“Research for Health and Sustainable Development”

Educating Health Professionals
• Brain Drain in Medical Professions
• Educating Health Professionals for the 21st Century

Translating Research into Policy
• Integrating Research into Health Policies and Health Systems
• Minimizing Waste of Research
• Translating Genomic Research into Global Health Gains

Financing Health
• Economic Crisis and Health Impact
• Sustainable Health Systems Financing and Universal Coverage

Diseases of Modern Environments
• The Epidemic of Chronic Diseases
• The Future of Maternal and Reproductive Health
• Urban Development and Mental Health

Research using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods may be submitted. Abstracts should be submitted online no later than June 15, 2012. An expert committee composed of M8 Alliance members and Lancet editors will review the abstracts after peer review. Participants will be informed of the acceptance of their abstracts for presentation at the World Health Summit at the end of July 2012. (Authors of selected abstracts should submit a 10-minute-presentation / or poster by email no later than September 30, 2012. Deadlines will be strictly adhered to.)

• The New Voices in Global Health Forum is open to all. Abstracts should address current issues with a special focus on the main themes of this year’s World Health Summit.
• Abstracts must be free of commercial bias or promotion.
• Only one abstract per person is permitted.
• All abstracts must be submitted online.

Call for Abstracts: Dynamics of Preparedness Conference

October 22-24, 2012 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The University of Pittsburgh MIDAS National Center of Excellence, in cooperation with the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice and the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, invite researchers, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows to the Dynamics of Preparedness Conference in Pittsburgh, October 22–24, 2012.

Purpose: The past decade has seen unprecedented investments in research on preparedness from many sectors of government and the private sector. Numerous reports have appeared, evaluating the preparedness status of states and communities. Dynamics of Preparedness will convene researchers from diverse disciplines to present, critique, and consider the future of research on emergency preparedness in public health systems.

Dynamics describes the complex interactivity among numerous governmental, private, and voluntary components of public health systems. Systems must adapt to emergencies and disasters —both as individuals, agencies, and organizations and as system components affecting the populations served—in ways that often produce unexpected, secondary impacts. Preparedness includes prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery relevant to infectious disease outbreaks as well as other emergencies and disasters.

Goals:

Compile research on public health systems that support preparedness, specifically highlighting innovative methods and novel approaches.
Critique the rigor and quality of output from this research arena, noting the findings and insights with implications for public policy and practical application.
Catalogue the issues and problems where the evidence base for preparedness policy and practice remains weak as an agenda for future research and seek solution-focused innovations.

Dynamics of Preparedness will feature sessions in:

Data: resources for, as well as barriers and constraints upon, quantitative and qualitative research

Innovations: methodological challenges and novel multi-disciplinary approaches

Outcomes: demonstrations, observational studies, and comparisons focused on the outcomes of response to public health emergencies

Modeling: use of computational, conceptual, and mathematical modeling to explore legal frameworks, resource deployment, and operational efficiency and effectiveness under resource-constrained conditions

Progress of Research: presentation of studies on the critical themes of system sustainability, communications, workforce capabilities, and criteria and metrics and on the cross-cutting issues of legal infrastructure and special-needs populations

Translation: utility and application of research results for policy making and practice

Call for Abstracts: Research perspectives at this conference will include: law and policy—including statutory authorities, organizational structures, and governance characteristics; economic resources—including finances, workforce, physical assets, equipment, and facilities; and operational effectiveness—as measured by performance processes and outcomes, quality improvement and quality assurance, and operational plans and protocols. The Conference will welcome innovative computational researchers who have entered the field of public health systems using methods from systems engineering, mathematical simulation, computational modeling, natural-language processing, Bayesian statistics, and other fields.

Deadline for submission: Friday, June 1, 2012

Selection and Notification: Selected abstract authors will be notified beginning June 30, 2012.

Call for Papers and Apps: 2012 VIVO Conference

August 22 - 24, 2012 Miami, Florida

Who should attend?

Scholars, scientists, researchers, developers, publishers, funding agencies, research officers, students, institutional officials and those supporting the development of team science.

We are pleased to invite you to participate in this year's VIVO conference with contributions to the meeting. We request papers, panels and poster presentations exploring the many aspects of the world research community's vision for VIVO.

Submissions: All submissions are handled electronically at EasyChair. For information on submission requirements, refer to the Official Call for Papers http://vivoweb.org/files/VIVO%202012%20Call%20for%20Papers.pdf

Abstracts are due May 30.

Topics of interest:

Facilitating researcher collaboration and networking

Managing/discovering knowledge about researchers across institutional, disciplinary, and national boundaries

Approaches to the adoption of VIVO and related systems that interoperate through shared ontologies and Linked Open Data

The intersection of VIVO and international research standards

Research representation ontology/development

Open representations of research and implications for the research process, collaboration, and virtual research communities

Perspectives on policy, research representation, and research impact, including questions of privacy, individual vs. institutional sourcing of data, and change over time

Semantic Web development and extensions of the VIVO platform to reach the full Web community

Open research data and related issues in discovery, reuse, and attribution

Call for Apps

The conference is sponsoring a competition for applications using VIVO data to support science. Entries are due July 31. Refer to the Call for Applications for submission information, including eligibility, evaluation criteria and prizes.

Registration and additional conference information to follow.

About the Conference

The third annual VIVO conference runs from August 22 - 24, 2012 at the InterContinental in Miami, FL. This year's VIVO conference creates a unique opportunity for people from across the country and around the world to come together in the spirit of promoting scholarly collaboration and research discovery. Read more at the conference website, http://vivoweb.org/conference.

Call for Papers: Fifth International Symposium on Semantic Mining in Biomedicine (SMBM 2012)

September 3rd and 4th, Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

SMBM 2012 aims to bring together researchers from text and data mining in biomedicine, medical, bio- and chemoinformatics, and researchers active in biomedical ontology design and engineering, and the Semantic Web. The combined research helps to promote full integration of data and factual content from large text collections, biological databases, ontological and terminological resources, and from the Web.

However, many challenges have yet to be met to achieve this ambitious goal. Significant advances have been made and many working systems for tasks ranging from semantics driven literature analysis to cross-resource data analysis and open linked data on the web have been suggested and deployed. Where do we stand and how do we advance toward fully integrated systems combining the different solutions and data sources?

We are inviting papers from a full range of topics (see below), emphasizing in particular work on methods deployed in a production-like research environment, user-facing applications of text mining technology, the integration of text with domain resources such as content from reference databases (e.g., UniProt, EntrezGene, OMIM) and semantic resources such as GO, UMLS etc. We also welcome contributions from across the biomedical domains, including genomics, translational medicine, clinical practice, and public health.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Development and use of biomedical semantic resources

Terminology and ontology development for biomedical information systems including terminology evolution

Integration of text and data mining in the biomedical domain

(Semantic) Web mining of biomedical information

Text mining, information extraction, and information retrieval for the biomedical domain

Evaluation techniques and standards for text mining solutions

Annotation schemes for biomedical corpora

Text mining for resource building, e.g. ontologies, and resource enrichment, e.g., biomedical databases

Representation and discovery of biomedical domain knowledge

Image/caption processing in relation to content extraction

Domain-specific reasoning processes, e.g., to infer non-explicit information, validation (trust-worthiness, believability, safety) of extracted information

Integration of text mining in biological database curation workflows

All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings that will be available online. We invite three categories of papers: full research papers, short papers and system papers. Research papers will be given an oral presentation, short papers a poster presentation, and systems papers will be presented in systems demonstration sessions. System papers should describe an implemented system related to a topic of interest that the authors will demonstrate live during the symposium. The final modality of presentation will be decided by the organizing committee.

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version for publication in a special issue of an open-access journal (details to be announced).

Submissions should follow the ACL instructions for authors, with a maximal limit of seven (7) pages (plus one optional page for references). The recommended length for system papers and poster submissions is four (4) pages. Manuscripts will be submitted electronically as PDF files. Reviewing will be double-blind, and submissions should therefore NOT contain author names or other obviously identifying information.

SMBM 2012 is the follow-up to to the successful series:

SMBM 2005 (EBI, U.K.), SMBM 2006 (University of Jena, Germany), SMBM 2008 (University of Turku, Finland) and SMBM 2010 (EBI, U.K). A parallel event (LBM: The International Symposium on Languages in Biology and Medicine) has been held in 2005 (KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea), 2007 (Matrix, Biopolis, Singapore), 2009 (Jeju Island, South Korea) and 2011 (NTU, Singapore).

Important dates
Paper submission deadline: June 8th 2012
Notification of acceptance: July 1st 2012
Symposium dates: September 3-4th 2012