From owner-csm@net.bio.net Mon Apr 01 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: BIOSCI Administrator Newsgroups: bionet.prof-society.csm Subject: IMPORTANT - BIOSCI Fundraising Update! Date: 2 Apr 1996 07:54:27 -0800 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 150 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: csm@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca Distribution: world Message-ID: <199604011000.CAA13236@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net I'm interrupting the usual monthly posting of the BIOSCI miniFAQ to bring you up to date on BIOSCI fundraising progress, a topic of concern to your future use of this resource. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this message carefully. Last year we announced that BIOSCI was going to adopt the U.S. Public Broadcasting System model to fund its operations after our DOE/NSF grant runs out later this year. Unlike PBS, we are not soliciting contributions from users; we are only selling ads on our Web pages solely to cover our operating costs. Our goal is to seek sponsorships until we build up an operating reserve of about $100,000 and then cease further promotions until we need to build the reserve back up. (The accountants among our readership will be familiar with the problem of deferred revenue which we can not safely utilize until ads have been displayed for a period of time.) We have three sponsors to date with a couple more pending. The process is time-consuming, however, and we need your help as explained further below. Our operating costs consist of our network connection, phone lines, hardware maintenance (we hope to have new and faster hardware soon!), plus 0.7 FTE of salaries covering UNIX systems admin, technical support, quality assurance, i.e., testing, of our system, and administrative costs (such as the time it takes to actually find/write/call potential sponsors and raise money!). Although the BIOSCI staff does get compensated for a portion of the work that they do, this project has always received a lot of free after-hours and "vacation" time labor, so we hope that no one will begrudge the time that we do charge to the project to serve you. All of the three part-time staff members, Dave Mack, Julie Lawrence, and myself, have full time day jobs and families in addition to working hard to keep this service running for all of you. Julie and Dave Mack are subcontractors for BIOSCI; my time that is charged to the project defrays a portion of my regular salary instead of adding to my income. Besides having to relocate the project, we were very busy this last year building new infrastructure such as our WWW hypermail interface to the system. This was released last December along with scores of WAIS indices for the newsgroups. Virtually everything is complete, although we do continue to find and fix bugs (many through your helpful feedback!). We are still having some problems with our WAIS indexing. The archives continue to grow rapidly. We are running over 100 indexes now versus three previously and any systems crashes cause greater havoc with the indexing than before! We are still working to fix this as fast as our resources permit and appreciate your patience, but we have been able to automate a lot of the infrastructure to reduce labor as compared to past requirements. We have also implemented new software to make moderation of BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups much easier and combat the growing problem of Internet junk mail and USENET "spamming." About 20% of our groups are now moderated, many of them by the BIOSCI staff! This, for example, made a major difference last year in the quality of content in our EMPLOYMENT/bionet.jobs.offered newsgroup which many commercial concerns and recruiting firms are using **without charge** to recruit candidates for positions in the biological sciences. We are also now in a position to have sponsors for individual newsgroups as you will have noticed if you have visited http://www.bio.net/ and clicked on "Access the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups" recently. So, how can you help?? ---------------------- As noted above it can take a lot of time to contact potential sponsors if I have to do it all myself. Our request is quite simple. You can do two important things which will take very little time for you individually. First, please use our WWW system at http://www.bio.net/ to access the archives. You can now post or reply to messages via your Web browser. Your usage helps attract sponsors. If you contact any of our sponsors, please be sure to thank them for supporting BIOSCI. It is critical for them to get this feedback if they are to continue their sponsorship for the long term. Second, if you work for a company or organization that provides products or services of interest to the biology community, please pass this message on to your marketing or marketing communications department or other appropriate group. Please ask them to help support BIOSCI by sponsoring our Web site and explain the uses and benefits of the system to the biology community. If they are interested, they can then contact us for further information at our tech support address, biosci-help@net.bio.net. Our hope is to quickly raise several large corporate/institutional sponsors on our heavily-used WWW locations (some stats appended below), and then end this sponsorship campaign so that our resources can continue to be used for service provision, not fundraising. Many of our specialty newsgroup WWW archives are still used by small communities of scientists (and they haven't been heavily promoted yet). While these may be valuable niche markets to some advertisers, it will generate more labor and overhead having to find these sponsors, fairly price the locations, and deal with lots of smaller sponsorships than fewer mid-to large sponsors. We are striving to keep our operation as lean and efficient as possible since we are not trying to make careers out of running BIOSCI. We are trying if at all possible to avoid the administrative overhead entailed with processing lots of small payments to reach our fundraising goals. I'd like to thank all of you for your help in advance. In helping us, you are also helping yourselves, not only in keeping this resource available for all of the both large and small research communities that we serve, but also by alleviating the need for us to go back and compete with researchers for tight grant dollars! We promised NSF when we were awarded the BIOSCI grant that we would carry out this mission to make the service self-supporting. With your help, we will succeed in continuing BIOSCI's work into its second decade. Thank you very much! Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson BIOSCI/bionet Manager biosci-help@net.bio.net A list of our prime WWW sponsorship locations follow. Statistics are for the four week period from 22 Jan. - 18 Feb. 1996 and usage continues to grow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The overall BIOSCI WWW pages are currently visited by users from close to 5000 unique computer hosts per week. Web servers only log the Internet computer/host name and frequently more than one individual can connect to us from a particular host. Main home page, http://www.bio.net, visited recently by about 2100 unique hosts per week Main Newsgroups archives page, http://www.bio.net/archives.html, visited recently by about 1200 Unique hosts per week BIO-JOURNALS archive page, http://www.bio.net/BIO-JOURNALS.html, visited recently by about 1000 unique hosts per week. EMPLOYMENT archive pages: http://www.bio.net:80/hypermail/EMPLOYMENT/ and monthly header pages, visited recently by about 600 unique hosts per week. Address database search page, http://www.bio.net/addrsearch.html, visited recently by about 450 unique hosts per week. Methods newsgroup archive pages, http://www.bio.net:80/hypermail/METHDS- REAGNTS/ and monthly header pages, visited recently by about 350 unique hosts per week. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-csm@net.bio.net Mon Apr 01 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: John Nash Newsgroups: bionet.prof-society.csm Subject: How to get the FAQs Date: 2 Apr 1996 08:04:03 -0800 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 46 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: csm@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca Distribution: world Message-ID: <199604021555.KAA26639@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Last modified: Jan 01, 1996 Welcome to the monthly posting on how to get the Frequently Asked Questions lists (FAQs) for the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroup (bionet.prof-society.csm) and the accompanying mailing list (CSM) for the Canadian Society of Microbiologists. How to get the FAQs by: World Wide Web: -------------- Point your browser to: http://www.nrc.ca/~nash/csm.html. Click on the relevant document to view it, and save it from within your browser. Anonymous ftp: ------------- Use an "ftp program" to connect to nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca. Such programs are available on most computer platforms. Upon a successful connection, you will be prompted for a username. Use "anonymous" (without quotes). You will then be prompted for a password. Use your email address, e.g. user@site.domain.ca. Move to the directory holding the CSM documents by issuing: cd pub/nash Download the relevant document to your account by typing (without quotes): "get csm.faq" (to get the CSM FAQ list) "get bionet.faq" (to get the BIOSCI/bionet FAQ list) "get bionet.newsgroups" (to get the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups FAQ). Exit the program by typing: quit Email: ----- Send an email to csm@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca, and I'll send you the appropriate document. From owner-csm@net.bio.net Sun Apr 14 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: Joel.Weiner@UAlberta.CA (Joel Weiner) Newsgroups: bionet.prof-society.csm Subject: Graduate Student Opportunity Date: 15 Apr 1996 13:40:54 -0700 Organization: University of Alberta Lines: 18 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: csm@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca Distribution: world Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net The MRC Group in the Molecular Biology of Membranes at the University of Alberta is seeking outstanding individuals to commence graduate studies in the laboratory of Dr. Joel H. Weiner. An MRC Studentship is available to an appropriate applicant. The successful applicant will characterize bacterial electron transport chain enzymes using a combination of molecular genetics and biophysical techniques such as electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. This person will have undergraduate preparation in biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, chemistry or cell biology. Previous experience in research gained from summer studentships would be an asset. Excellent facilities are available for the anticipated research, including state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and synthesis facilities and a wide range of biophysical instrumentation. Edmonton has excellent recreational and cultural facilities, as well as easy access to both Jasper and Banff National Parks. For further information contact Dr. Joel Weiner, Department of Biochemistry, 474 Medical Sciences Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H7, CANADA or e-mail joel.weiner@ualberta.ca From owner-csm@net.bio.net Mon Apr 15 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: raymond.marusyk@UAlberta.CA (Dr R G Marusyk) Newsgroups: bionet.prof-society.csm Subject: Posion open (Microbiologist) Date: 15 Apr 1996 17:00:41 -0700 Organization: University of Alberta Lines: 27 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: csm@nrcbsa.bio.nrc.ca Distribution: world Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Position: Sr. Research Associate (Microbiologist) Location: Irvine, California An individual with a Ph.D. in Microbiology is being sought for a company (Quest) that is developing and evaluating gas plasma technology for sterilization. Responsibilities include performing basic research with the ultimate goal of developing new products and/or delivery systems for health care sterilization. Individual would be given considerable autonomy. Some travel would be involved. Quest is anxious to fill this position ASAP and is offering a quite competitive salary. Interested individuals should contact: Richard S. Boone 813-254-0101 813-254-0115 (FAX) Monday - Friday 8:30AM - 5:00PM EST -- Dr R G Marusyk, Professor & Chair pro tem Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2H7 E: raymond.marusyk@ualberta.ca