From: J. Paul Robinson (jpr@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 30 2003 - 23:29:01 EST
Dear cytometry/cytomics colleagues: 2003 has had more ups than downs! As I usually do, I want to review the year from the perspective of our Purdue community who provide many resources for the cytometry community. We completely rebuilt our web server hardware this year at a cost of about $30k. Yesterday, we did the audit of the entire years access to the PUCL server. It was totally overwhelmed with over 4 million successful requests for pages in 2003. The poor server delivered on average 441 megabytes of data per day every day for the last 364 days! Over 200,000 distinct hosts were served by our server. Over 100,000 distinct (i.e. different) files were delivered from our web archive. 2500 members currently participate in our cytometry discussion. If anyone tells me that cytometry is not alive and well on planet earth, tell them they're dreaming! (only the Aussies who have seen "The Castle" will know what that means!) The most accessed files are naturally #1 the email archive and #2 our education pages that currently contains over 1000 powerpoint slides on flow cytometry, imaging and related areas. http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/flowcyt/educate/pptslide.htm #3 are the CD-ROM pages that highlight our Purdue CD- ROM series. http://www.cyto.purdue.edu/flowcyt/cdseries.htm There is actually far too much information to be easily found and we are currently investigating ways to create a more useful database that might make the information much more accessible. The most exciting thing by far this year has been your responses to our new Purdue Surveys. I closed the calibration survey after 384 people contributed. This tells a lot about the changing environment of how we see data analysis and how important standards and calibration are becoming (finally!!). The "Future of Cytometry" survey is still open and 530 people have contributed so far. ( http://tinyurl.com/yq17 ). I am almost overwhelmed that so many people have taken the time to provide detailed comments on topics that clearly impact their professional lives. This survey is really exciting because it is revealing really important perspectives on how you see cytometry/cytomics. I am hoping that we will get another 1-200 respondents before we do a final analysis. I have already provided preliminary data to several colleages to get their initial opinions. I will post the entire survey and the analysis eventually for all to see. I hope that you will take the time to read what others are saying. I already mentioned that 96.7% of respondents say that they are optimistic about the future of cytometry. This is not to say that things are great! I find it a great concern that a number of respondents did not know what ISAC was! Of 65 student respondents, only 13 were members of ISAC - since there are only currently 15 student members of ISAC - I think you might see where my concerns are! "Houston, we have a problem"! What is on the horizon for 2004? Clearly the ISAC congress in Montpellier (www.isac-net.org) will be a highlight meeting. The area of CYTOMICS is not going away - indeed it was identifed by ISAC as an important developing area and it is. The cytomics sessions at the last ISAC congress set an important milestone (kilometer-stone just does not work does it!) I predict that we will all be talking more about cytomics than the more narrow perspective of cytometry over the next year. I think this is a good thing. Perhaps 2004 will see us rename our Purdue Cytometry service to Purdue Cytomics....in any case, I think that 2004 is going to be a year of change. I can tell you that we are changing our programs and directions at Purdue more than in any time in the past 15 years. Look forward to 2 new CD-ROMs in 2004 - Cytometry #8 and Microscopy and Imaging #2..(we are looking for sponsors by the way) Finally, if you want to know who to blame for talking the most on the list,.....here is the the 2003 top 20 villains in responses... Howard Shapiro 71 (always gets first prize and justifiably so!) J. Paul Robinson 46 Marty Bigos 36 Joanne Lannigan 28 Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz 27 William Telford 25 David Coder 21 Mario Roederer 20 Nebe-Von-Caron, G 20 Albert Tai 20 Simon Monard 20 Richard Haugland 19 Gerstein, Rachel 17 Prussin, Calman 16 Derek Davies 16 Fischer, Randy 16 David.C.McFarland@gsk.com 15 Frank Battye 15 Alice L. Givan 14 Stetler-Stevenson, Maryalice 13 thats it for 2003. May your flow cells not clog, may your gates remain latched, may your compensation be propery Mario'd and your data backed up before the crash may your fluorescence not fade too fast and your lenses only become slighly scratched when your cytometer crashes, be glad it restarts Don't drink too much on New Year's eve so you all make it to 2004 mostly in one piece. best wishes from our Purdue family who I want to acknowledge because they all contribute significantly to our program, our website and make all the CDs. -Kathy Ragheb and Cheryl Holdman (our great cytometry technicians) -Jenny Sturgis (our great image analysis technician) -Gretchen Lawler (Editorial assistant for Current Protocols) Bartek Rajwa and Gerald Gregori (our super postdocs) Steve Kelley (our computer and networking command center) and lots of students.... J. Paul Robinson Professor and Director J.Paul Robinson, PhD PH:(765)4940757 Professor of Immunopharmacology Professor of Biomedical Engineering Purdue University FAX:(765)4940517 EMAIL:jpr@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu WEB: http://www.cyto.purdue.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Thu Jan 01 2004 - 17:44:07 EST
